Donald Trump keeps insisting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the reason why the war in his country continues to wage, and not his pal Vladimir Putin, who could end the conflict any time he wants.
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Proclaiming that he has “nothing to do with Russia,” Donald Trump — who was the beneficiary of the election interference campaign that Moscow waged on his behalf, routinely expresses his admiration for Vladimir Putin, and seems to do the dictator’s bidding at every turn — wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to just get over it and cede the territory his country has lost since it was attacked by Russia.
Trump had pledged to end the war between the two countries on the first day of his presidency. However, three months in, all his administration has done is to undercut Ukraine’s negotiation position, try to blackmail Kiev into giving up mineral rights, and, most recently, threaten to walk away from the negotiating table if Zelenskyy does not sign off on an American peace agreement that favors Russia.
While US military aid is one of the keys to Ukraine’s defense, there must be a part of Zelenskyy that simply hopes that Trump will stop getting involved since he often sounds more like a commentator on Russia Today than one of Kiev’s allies.
It would be a fair assessment of the situation, as the US president once again proved on Wednesday, when he took to social media to lambast Zelenskyy for saying that his country would never recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
“This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion,” Trump wrote in a social media post while also pointing out that “the area” houses major Russian submarine bases. “Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”
The US president added that it is “inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s,” i.e., a country’s leader saying that he does not accept giving up territory to an invading force, that make peace negotiations so difficult.
“He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country,” Trump added. “I have nothing to do with Russia, but have much to do with wanting to save, on average, five thousand Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, who are dying for no reason whatsoever.”
The reason, of course, is that Putin decided to attack Ukraine and could stop the war at any moment.
It should also be noted that Trump does not seem equally concerned about people dying elsewhere across the globe, for example as a result of the (potentially unconstitutional) foreign aid cuts he has made.
Finally, it is important to remember that, while Putin was instrumental in getting Trump elected, Zelenskyy played a (passive) role in his first impeachment after a whistleblower revealed that the US president had tried to coerce Kiev into helping him win the 2020 election.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
