The whole Zelensky White House thing just felt like Trump signaling good faith to Putin. Or else it wouldn’t be public.
So, publicity stunt to get on a good footing with Putin. Makes sense.
Discussion
Who knows, maybe he was.
It is funny tho, that he's constantly being accused of not being transparent enough, and then when he is, he is accused of staging publicity stunts haha.
I don’t know who is accusing who but normally these things are closed doors. The fact that it was so public makes me believe it was for show to appease Putin. Question is does he care? He’s not stupid.
It was public because it was a setup from the start. It was a staged event with the goal of publicly trashing Ukraine under false pretenses so Russia got the green light to ramp up pressure on Ukraine, and the US got new justification for abandoning our ally and further aligning with Russia.
Why is aligning with Russia terrible if your goal is to bring about an end of the war? I’m thinking nostr:npub1acg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeyse9p35c is correct that maybe it just went south unexpectedly
Lol Russia isn't our friend. Russia is our enemy and had been effectively since the end of WWII. Ukraine is our friend. They are our ally. That's why we've be helping them, and not Russia in this war of Russia's making. It's not Ukrainian jets who we consistently have to ward off on our borders new Alaska. It's not Ukrainian jets who repeatedly fly within inches of our aircraft in provocation efforts. Aligning with our enemy and the enemy of our ally in ending the war between our enemy and our ally is pure insanity. Imagine your friend asked you for help with a bully who keeps beating him up after school. Would you "help" by taking the bully's side and threatening your friend? Would you tell your friend to just give the bully his lunch money every day, and then publicly humiliate him when he objected to giving his money to the bully? That's essentially what you're arguing for. We'll have to just agree to disagree on this because I believe what you're suggesting, and the position you're taking is absolute madness that completely ignores history, and our respective relations with the countries involved.
Insanity is continuing to support a war that will likely end the world as we know it. The only rational move I see is to try and stop that. The war mongers would love to continue fighting but they are not sending their kids to the front lines. I’m not saying any of this is fair but if you have a shot of ending an unfair conflict, you take it.
It has nothing to do with fair. It's about not buddying up with our greatest adversary to pressure our ally to give up, and give Russia everything they want. You don't reward behavior like what Russia has done in starting an illegal war with a sovereign nation by allowing Russia to keep all the land they're illegally occupying.
They’ve been warning about their red lines since the 90s and certain people in US ignored the warnings. Ukraine was never our ally, it was our pawn.
That's OK plainly not true. You're revising history, and selectively deciding which facts you'll accept.
Got my dates wrong. This is from 2008 I guess:
Yes but in 1994 people were already speculating that NATO expanding into the no-mans-land would be seen by Russia as aggression, as Jack Matlock says in this video I posted recently which was a conversation that happened on the day of the Budapest Memorandum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHm_7T7QNl8
Because NATO is not an economic union, but a miliary one. And while military unions are defensive in nature, enemy nations can't be sure of that (it's called the security dilemma). And NATO weaponry went into these countries, which even Kissinger (who was pro NATO expansion) argued we shouldn't do.
It makes sense. US wouldn’t tolerate Russia or China building up anti ballistic defense systems in Canada or Mexico or even South America. It’s strange that some think that only applies to us.
military brass often take the security dilemma even more seriously by thinking ahead of the politically foreseable future into geographical imperatives.
A = Russia's mindset for centuries has been to have a large buffer because the plains are hard to defend.
B = Now suppose for the sake of argument, as premises, that NATO is 100% defensive and so russophile that there is 0% chance that anything bad to russia happens in the foreseable future given current leaders and politics.
A + B => fine, but if UA is in NATO, how would russia be sure these premises would hold 30 or 50 years in the future? They have to stop it now, anyway, to avoid a future existential threat. They said repeteadly that UA in NATO would be a red line. Right or wrong, they see it as a threat, with some reason.
Ok, I'm going to bed now. Fortunately, this fight will still be going on tomorrow and we can pick it up then. Lol I appreciate the civil discussion, tho. Gnight buddy!
This "don't reward bad behavior" argument, which I've heard countless times now, is super weak. Because Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of men. They paid dearly so far for this war (but not as much as Ukraine). You think that they will say "that was easy we didn't get punished, so let's go do it again?" No, the cost of this war was so high already that we don't have to make it even more costly to avoid moral hazard. I'm sure it is already clear to all would-be aggressors that the cost of aggression is super high.
You seem to care very little about how Putin works. Putin at no point cared about russian people nor ukrainian people. He cares about restoring the great Russia Stalin has built.
Perhaps. But how is that relevant? If you can predict that Russia will take all the land and win, what then should you do? Fight and lose? That just does not make sense to me. Just because Putin is evil and wrong and expansionary and aggressive... that doesn't mean you will win if you fight him.
A lot of people think that if the US with all it's military might stood behind Ukraine fully, moved in forces, that Russia would fold. And I think they are probably right. I think the US probably could stop this war by taking aggressive action aganst Russia.
But probably isn't good enough. Because if they are wrong we get nuclear armageddon. So instead of hundreds of thousands of people die, billions of people die.
And so in a "less death" kind of calculus, I'd rather that Russia win, even if he does "keep going" into Moldova and right up to NATO's border.
He won't attack NATO, that would be suicide, and if he did I 100% support starting WW3 and putting him down. But not until he attacks NATO.
What is the advantage of the west stopping him later instead of stopping him early?
And how in the world should Russia win, when Ukraine just has far superior weapon?
manpower? The idea of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian doesn't seem right.
This is barely something that is the decision of defending forces if like this or not.
Defenders at most can decide how hard it will be to kill them. But if they gonna be killed or not is the offenders decision when it is within their powers. But it is clear, that the united west has the means to empower the Ukraine to defend their lives and their freedom. The question is only if we are willing to help.
Or they could negotiate a ceasefire and not die at all. But I don't want my country to do everything in it's power to ensure that doesn't happen, which seems like what the US and Europe have been doing, at least up till Trump.
Ukraine doesn't have superior weapons, and they barely have soldiers left, they are having to conscript 18 year old boys and elderly men.
Quit talking out your ass.
The BBC wouldnt lie would they?
We probably should have just let Russia join NATO when they applied, or at least given them a path to join after certain reforms.
Wut? The whole purpose of NATO is to protect its member nations from Russian expansion and aggression. That's explicitly why it was formed. Bringing a fox into a clubhouse for hens under the belief that doing so will make the hens safer is preposterous. I think that idea is a non-starter. Not a surprise that it was Putin who suggested it.
It was to protect from Soviet expansion, and when the USSR fell apart, there was a chance to change the paradigm, but it didn't happen. Is it any wonder that Putin thinks NATO's purpose is to stand against Russia and keep them down?
The pro-Russia sympathizing is really disturbing to me. It's the result of nonstop propaganda campaigns, and influential people softening Russia's image via Western media. Respectfully, I disagree with your perspective on the matter.
You're reading way more into what I'm saying than intend. Is it really so radical to say that maybe, had the western world brought Russia into the fold and treated them like an equal while encouraging improvement where needed 35 years ago, we would likely have been in a better place than we are now?
The best way to support a never ending war ist standing with Putin.
You make allies with enemies and guarantee survival of the human race.
In which illusions are you living? A contract of stoping the war today is not at all stopping russia of reformation and have the next wave being bigger then all we have seen until today.
Seems like common sense to me. If you want to end a war you don’t keep pushing a nation with enough nuclear armaments to erase all of the world at once. You do realize these things travel at Mach 11 and there is nothing to stop them, right? Or does that not figure into your version of ideal world where we just magically defeat this nation?
It is already clear that Putin uses this as his aces. So your solution is that any country Putin wants to make part of Russia should immediatly wave the white flag?
It is quiet obvious that the Ukraine is not the last country Putin attacked. No reason why this should be.
Europe has NATO and US is part of it. Simply don’t expand.
NATO and it's NGO trojan horses aren't expanding just "spreading democracy", it's all peace and love baby, chill.
It is not about expansion. It is about defending Ukraine that is all. Russia is expanding. And has no right to do this.
Bro, it's about expansion, get a grip.
And you defend this expansion?
Things don't happen in a vaccum.
I did ask you a simple question. You defend the expansion?
The expansion of NATO? Fuck no.
So you prefer expansion of authoritarianism over the expansion of democracy. This is your last vote then.
I assume you are planning your yourney to North corea or Russia, when you favor their expansion?
Marvel movie rhetoric.
It is no rethoric. It is a very easy question.
It's over simplified, exactly my point.
And it is rhetorical, you are in essence asking me whether I would prefer the 'bad guys' to win or the 'good guys' to win.
I don't see the world in those terms, because I'm not a retard.
So how you see the world. Is russia rather a libertarian government in your brain or is it rather a regime that is enforcing its opinion over the population?
That's based purely on conjecture and is the kind of fallacious rhetoric that prevents dialogue.
It's a logical fallacy known as the "Slippery Slope".
A Slippery Slope Fallacy occurs when an argument suggests that a single action or event will lead to a series of other events without providing substantial evidence to support that claim.
Yes is is very easy to support that claim since russia already did exactly the same inlthe war against Ukraine.
Do you understand why Russia is "our" enemy?
From the perspective of a soldier, the enemy is the enemy and you don't ask why. But from the perspective of leaders and diplomats, relationships are hyper complex, and friend/enemy don't cut it anymore. And anyhow, even if you thought of Russia as an enemy, that needs to always be re-evaluated.
So why should Russia remain an enemy?
From a geopolitical strategic perspective, according to John Mearsheimer, it would have been far better to get Russia on the US side of the ledger so that US and Russia together could contain China.
russia is bad in various aspects. but what if it desintegrates?
Chinese siberia, giving china many mineral resources it lacks...
more emirates in the caucasos and urals. Like, chechens dream about killing slavic infidels, and if russia is gone, then they may dream about killing other infidels... Russians and chechens have been handling themselves for a couple of centuries... don't the west have enough troubles?
besides, russia demographics are already too dangerous. too many chinese in the far east and too many muslims.
The lefty media is the one usually making the accusations. For example: "The obvious, most brilliant, most awful Machiavellian stunt"
Not saying it wasn't a stunt, but Trump has been pretty public with most of this presidency so far. Think about how many times you've seen groups of people in the oval office with him at his desk.
Putin would definitely be taking notice tho.
It definitely makes perfect sense if he's a Russian asset who's sending his boss key signals.
Not really it’s just theatre for negotiations. If you want to bring this conflict to an end you’d want to be on best footing with the other party.
That meeting was an enormous gift to Putin, as it signals that the US is no longer allied with Ukraine or the rest of Europe, and is totally fine with Russia escalating their war against Ukraine. We're abandoning our allies, and preparing to partner with the nation's greatest historical adversary in a new Axis of Evil. We're now the the bad guy.
It’s exactly what was needed. Biden fked everything up by cornering Putin. Trump is making an openin for him to save face because it’s not like they’ve been doing that amazing in Ukraine.
Never forget that the alternative to violence is always dialogue.
and Biden didn’t even bother.
Only two western leaders to my mind have even suggested opening up dialogue.
Viktor Orban of Hungary
and now obviously Trump.
Both demonised for suggesting (and now doing) what is essentially the alternative to violence, which is dialogue/diplomacy.
Crazy. You’d think that would be the first thing you try.
Not if the aim is the Balkanisation of Russia, which by the way it has always been.
Never back an enemy into a corner.
As Sun Tzu wisely said:
"Build a golden bridge for your enemy to retreat across"
countries have partnerships. Any reason not to have one with Putin? I mean Russians are white and Christian. Seems like a more natural ally to have than with Jews and Israel which tell America what to do.
Oh grow up, it's not a spy movie.
I watched it again and again and you can clearly see how Trump's body language shifts when Zelensky says things like crazy Russians or when he calls Putin a terrorist etc. And the final straw was when Zelensky tried to open up the issue of the Minsk accords ceasefire violations... An accord that Merkel and Hollande have both said they had no intent of honouring and was just to buy time to rearm Ukraine.
I watched the whole thing, the longer version. For most of it Trump thinks they already have an agreement. They plan to eat in the East Room and sign it after eating. But when Zelensky speaks, what he says isn't quite making sense to Trump. And vice versa (Zelensky squirrles up his face numerous times). And only after a lot of statements it seems both of them are more and more uncomfortable and starting to realize they are not actually on the same page. Then JD vance picks a fight and Trump already feeling these things (and supressing them for the sake of the deal) realizes the deal isn't happening as he envisioned and goes ahead and says what he really thinks.
I don't think any of this was planned to happen that way.
In fact I suspect some people set them up to make them think they were on the same page and getting a deal, lied to both of them, and they only found out they were not on the same page during the press conference. Their trickery failed.
The plan was to string America along into providing security guarantees by essentially bribing them with the 'mineral deal', while Europe went about setting up it's 'alternative peace plan' but it fell apart.
That would make Zelensky retarded or what? Why would he pick a fight with Trump?
What?
He didn't pick a fight with anyone. He rightly described the situation on the ground in his country, and expressed his apprehension with making a deal with Putin given Putin's history of reneging of his seals with Ukraine. A history that has consistently led to the deaths of more Ukrainians. And when he called Putin a dictator, a terrorist, and a murderer (all truth accusations), that's when Trump lost his mind. He completely ignored the context and facts surrounding what Zelenskyy was saying, and acted like Zelenskyy had just attacked his best friend. Remember, Ukraine is supposed to be our ally, and Russia is supposed to be our adversary (and has been since the 50s). To put what happened on Zelenskyy is incredibly dishonest, and ignores the context Zelenskyy was speaking, and the objective facts he laid down.
So he threw a wrench in the deal. Still doesn’t explain why it’s public. It’s as if Trump knew that would be one of the outcomes. In any case he gained some points with Putin.
I think you're not getting that earning points with Putin isn't a desired or admirable goal. It's actually the opposite.
I think Zelensky indeed did state his position and make his case. And from an idealistic view, Zelensky is right. Russia invaded, Russia can't be trusted to hold to an agreement (violating the Budapest memorandum among others), etc.
What is very hard but necessary for the leader of a sovereign state is that they must judge the balance of power and not cling so tightly to right and wrong. When you are right and your enemy is wrong, but your enemy is far more powerful than you are, you need to befriend them anyways. And when America gets zero benefit from being involved, and has already spent lots of money helping out, and you want them to help you more, and you have no cards, nothing to trade for their help, then you had better offer up some cards (minerals) and you had better get down on your knees and kiss their boots. Zelensky is an idealistic child (as are many people on nostr, as was I most of my life).
Someone must have misled Zelenskyy into thinking that Trump was going to stand up to Russia for him. But if Zelensky had paid any attention to who Trump is at all, he would already have known that was an impossible hope.
Exactly.
That's for Zelenskyy and Ukraine to decide. It's not the prerogative of Trump to decide the fate of Ukraine, or decide what Ukraine is going to give up to his buddy Putin who after 50+ years of adversarial relations is suddenly our friend, and people who have drank the Trump Kool-aid have magically decided is reasonable.
There’s not one party at play in US. Trump is likely facing internal pressures to let the war carry on - from the same people who enabled it all along.
The director of the CIA back in the 90s stated that if Russia was pushed by nearby countries joining NATO, we’d be in this exact situation we are in today. But the powers that be ignored him and here we are.
zelensky was supposed to come suck some but he didn't
so stop with your dumbass theories, you know nothing
Sorry didn’t realize we can’t share opinions here.
Trump said outright he wanted the american people yo see this, Zelenski calling for more : more, weapons, more money, more deaths. Jeffrey Sachs has been very good at analysing the Ukraine war as a deep state construct started all the way back to 1996 when NATO's expansion was decided. I can't recommend enough his many interviews.
I’m of the opinion that Sachs is correct.
Yeah Jeffrey Sachs is a good source, as are John Mearsheimer, Colonel Douglas McArthur, Anders Puck Nielsen, Daniel Davis, David Oualaalou, and Glenn Greenwald, all of which hold similar opinions about the Ukraine situation which Trump now seems to share too.
I diagree with Sachs on his core competency though, of bailing out failed states according to Keynesian economic principles.
Trump also said “American First” but the only one benefiting from his attack on western values is the Kremlin
That also incidentally and totally coincidentally is Trump’s employer since 1987 & his single funding source since 1992, according to Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Don Jr Trump and Deutche Bank
One would say that Trump says anything and everything if it suits him in the moment
Oh, and as a cherry on top, his VP also thinks that Trump is Americas Hitler and cultural heroin before he strapped himself on that train
So, either they lied then or they’re lying now
You can choose your lies, but don’t pretend otherwise
That’s called treason in English
What is
Who benefits from Pam Bondi ending the FBI Task Force to combat Foreign Influence Operations, who benefits from alcoholic Hegseth’s order to the Pentagon to deprioritize operations against the Kremlin, who benefits from January 6 insurrectionists being set loose and the agents working those cases having their names public and why is it the Kremlin that bought Trump in 1987 ?
I think public because the US is backing down from NATO expansion to Russian border and trying to block access to the black sea. Public ridicule of Zelensky saves face for US who have had to foot the bill for a fight that Ukraine couldn't win.
Well, I thought Zelenskyy cut in and asked, "can I ask a question?" And they gave him some space to do so, but then he was kind of arrogant and entitle sounding and after everything the Left has thrown at Trump and JD, they had zero space for it. Maybe I need to watch it again, but that's the lasting impression I got. 🤔
That's precisely what happened.
Seems Zelensky had leverage on Obama/Biden's fuck up with "bio labs" in Ukraine.
I think they have been fighting Trump because they didn't trust he would allow this crazy shit to go on.
Trump found out why they pulled all the scandals on him now the little crackhead kike Zelensky is now his punching bag.
follow the money
all the money always flows back to the weapons manufacturers
trump, unlike some of the predecessors, isn't that connected to the MIC, he's not establishment
he is, however, in Putin's pocket in a different way, all it takes is a cursory search for their dealings just 9-10 years ago
What dealings?