Ukraine deal: on or off?
Trump has paused military aid to Ukraine:
The United States is pausing all U.S. military aid to Ukraine until President Trump determines the Ukrainians show a commitment to good faith peace negotiations, a senior Trump administration official tells Fox News.
“This is not permanent termination of aid, it’s a pause,” the official emphasized. “The orders are going out right now.”
Meanwhile, Zelensky seems to be ready to deal [my emphasis]:
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
We are ready to work fast to end the war, and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same. Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the US to agree a strong final deal.
We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins. We are grateful for this.
Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.
Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.
Of course, if Zelensky had said this when he was in DC and signed the papers, the parties would already be working on the next steps.
One of the many problems is that, according to Rubio (whom I believe), Zelensky has been playing a game something like Lucy with the football – promising to sign the deal and then pulling back, many times. The debacle last week was only the most prominent one of these events because it happened with Trump and Vance in attendance and the cameras rolling. I think that was part of Zelensky’s plan – to get more publicity for his dickering – but it backfired in a manner he probably didn’t quite expect when Trump and Vance called him on it.
I am concerned that Zelensky may have so alienated Trump that no such deal is possible anymore. Trump’s unpredictable nature is sometimes a tool he uses to get what he wants, and yet it’s sometimes just a result of his volatility. I have no idea what he’ll do next, but I doubt he’ll give Zelensky any more photo-ops if and when any deal is signed. Certainly, if a photo-op is in order, it would happen afterwards rather than before.
And use interpreters.
Photo-opportunities are trivial things when set beside the grinding evils of trench warfare, no? Easily dispensed with one would think. I believe the genuine object remains ending the war, its death and destruction. And that is what is meant to be served by the mineral deal and its ancillary conditions. So, as before, this business was over before it began.
Sad situation is that none of the parties can be trusted long term.
Trump gone in four years so next dem president can undo the agreement
Putin or Zelinsky become un-happy and start fighting again.
Ironically, Trump is the most trustworthy involved and legitimately wants to stop the death and destruction
I don’t see how Ukraine has a choice. Europe isn’t going to give them what they need to avoid defeat.
Either Zelenskyy signs or someone else does.
I believe Trump still wants the deal, though he might ding Zelenskyy for the FAFO.
@Fullmoon:Sad situation is that none of the parties can be trusted long term.
In a representative democracy, if you want consistent long-term foreign policy, you’d have to let it be up to Sir Humphrey Appleby and all the unelected foreign service people. And we’ve already seen with USAID what they get up to without supervision from the elected leadership.
I guess Russia negotiating in good faith is not on the table. They never have in the past . Hope Z does not fall from a bridge or out of a building.
The history of Russia and its neighbors and anyone who questions the great leader ending up in a gulag just can’t be made up. I could go on.
I don’t give a tinkers damn about Ukraine. It was part of the Soviet Union for many decades, so what if worst case it goes back to Russia?
It’s a totally corrupt country, never allied with us, that demonstrably bought off the Biden crime family and others to our detriment. Not to mention the twin bloated treasonous Army guys who set up Trump for impeachment. Led by the same little crooked punk who aided and abetted that.
The question I have is what minerals deal? This one or the one Z already did with the UK. Is he selling the same product twice?
Given his most recent comments, it would appear that Zelensky does not have great confidence in the EU. The Europeans are great talkers, but when push comes to shove—. The bottom line is that they desperately need Russian oil; and Russia desperately needs to sell them their oil. Who blinks? Putin is tougher, so Europe may not be in a postion to broker anythng. Without Trump/U.S. Zelensky is between a rock and a very hard place.
I was all in for supporting Ukraine, even though I knew that it was probably the most corrupt country north of Africa.
Reality can be ignored at some risk, but cannot be denied. They stopped Russia, for now; but it is inconceivable that they can evict Russia; and it is problematic what Putin might do if he becomes frustrated enough.
Despite being called out for my comparisons to WWI by someone whose name I forget, I see others making the same comparison It is time to try to end the stalemate that has been described as a meat grinder. There are other ways to punish Putin and the Russians for anyone who has the will to do so.
I doubt Trump was truly bothered, and if Zelenskyy waves the white flag, Trump will go forward as if nothing happened. He isn’t that unpredictable, indeed, his response to Zelenskyy was completely predictable.
Then why why oh why did soldiers and armies ever entrench?
Because if you as a soldier don’t go to ground you die, very quickly. The French army learned that after the horrendous, abominal, deaths in the fall of 1914. Machine guns, bolt action high velocity rifles, and arty killed anyone out in the open, killed them in heaps and heaps. The Germans found out that the British “Old Contemptables” in shallow scrapes and Lee Enfield rifles could and did decimate their advancing troops. Both sides dug those evil trenches. That was even before barbed wire arrived.
Entrenchments are defensive though, and you don’t retake your occupied lands from an invading army with trenches.
But drones make trenches much less safe or usefull but drones also make being out in the open even more dangerous to the soldiers.
And Russian drones make being a noncombattent (civilian) in Kherson very deadly too. See Russia’s Safari tactics. What does that word evil mean? What does it look like in practice?
Warfare is politics by other means IIRC.
“I don’t give a tinkers damn about Ukraine. It was part of the Soviet Union for many decades, so what if worst case it goes back to Russia?”
I do hope the piece of xyz who wrote this is a ruSSian troll because if he is ‘MAGA’ then that means that for Vladimir Trump and sycophants laws, treaties and so on mean nothing and the strong can do whatever they want with the weaker (perhaps that’s what bully boy Vance meant when he wanted Europe to be more like the us).
But at least he doesn’t pretend it’s all about ‘peace’ while shedding some crocodile tears for the (corrupted, Untermensch) ‘victims’. Oh, and “It was part of the Soviet Union for many decades” is also a good one. There was a time Reagan called the USSR an Empire of Evil.
“Putin or Zelinsky become un-happy and start fighting again.”
Again? RuSSia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine is fighting for its existence. And it is not ‘Zelensky’ who is fighting but the Ukrainian nation. Zelensky happens to be the president since 2019 (beating the sitting president btw). Stating it like ‘Putin and Zelensky’, ‘unhappy’ and ‘fighting again’ is a sure indication of a terminal moral sickness.
Ukraine has an independent existence since 1991 and has been part of the International community since then with membership of the UN and treaties with all kind of countries including ruSSia. That’s longer then Poland had in 1939 or Czechoslovakia in 1938. Under the kind of morality displayed here Adolf (and ‘Uncle Joe’) was the good one. Really, Adolf’s only ‘crime’ was loosing the war (/s).
@Bill
Then it will destroy a democratic republic and longstanding Western ally – utterly flawed as it may be – and reward a tyrant and his nutjob junta allied with the PRC and Iran. Oh and also choking the global food and fertilizer supplies and cutting us off from valuable rare earths for whatever showdown will happen with the CCP.
And why am I supposed to care as much?
As if Russia is not also a totally corrupt country? As if the Republic of China under Chiang’s KMT was not even more totally corrupt and inhumane to boot by absolutely any metric, but STILL the lesser evil compared to the Maoists or the Japanese?
Moreover, Ukraine at least shows some evidence of trying to tamp down on its corruption. And even if it were not, that does not justify illegal invasion and dismemberment on false pretexts.
This is blatantly false, and something I will not stand for. It IS true that Ukraine was never formally a part of NATO. However, it was and is a loyal member of the Coalition of the Willing that fought alongside us in Afghanistan and Iraq when even many NATO members refused.
https://www.army.mil/article-amp/15056/ukrainians_complete_mission_in_iraq
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/07/24/the-troubled-story-of-ukrainian-afghanistan-veterans_6064538_4.html
But thank you for advertising how little you know or care on this issue.
Ok, but so has Putin and the Russian oligarchs. Or are you forgetting who funds the West’s eco-looks or where Hillary Clinton got the dirt for the Steele Dossier BS?
So we have two corrupt countries that have had leadership that have bought off the Biden Crime Familt. The difference is, one is a tyrannical dictatorship Allied with the PRC and the Mullahs in Iran that invaded a neighbor on false pretexts, and the other a flawed democratic republic trying to defend itself that already fought alongside us.
This should not be a particularly difficult dilemma.
The Vindimans are scum and at a minimum Zelenskyy shafted Trump by refusing to investigate the investigation into the Shokin firing. But that hardly justifies ignoring treaty obligations and allowing a hostile country to rip one of its neighbors apart. Trump has valid grievances with many Ukrainian leaders and even more globalists tied with them.
But he also has plenty of ones with the Kremlin.
In any case, the sins of the Vindimans do not justify tolerating this.
Try reading the deal and educating yourself. It would be a welcome change.