Zelenskyy Not Helping Ukraine, Nearly* Gets Himself Kicked Out of the White House
Get it together Z. This war needs to end. Get the best terms you can. Then leave.
This is the hour long press conference. I have to say, Trump comes off as pretty reasonable.
If there is anything that we should be thankful for in the wake of the Trump election, after of course the wholesale deep dive into (and hopefully complete reworking) of the administrative state, it is the change in the equation around the war in Ukraine.
There are people who from the opening salvos of the conflict were convinced that Ukraine was a “good” war. (Almost never the case, and certainly not in this case.) Ukraine (the state), backed by the vast globalist machine was attacked by an egotistical, despotic, “misogynist”, anti-democratic despot. And Ukraine was. No one is arguing that is wasn’t. If Russia could have rolled into Kiev it would have done so.
But many of the “good war” people are woefully misinformed as to what led up to the war, and why it happened at all. I am talking about some reasonably sophisticated people too. They have little understanding of the Ukraine within the Soviet context. Most people do not know that Khrushchev, who was born on the border but grew up in Ukraine transferred the Crimean Peninsula from Russia to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Historically if anyone can lay claim to the strategically important peninsula, aside from the Tatars who were brutally removed, it’s the Russians. There is a reason why the Black Sea Fleet is based in the Crimea.
A little closer to recent times many of the “good war” people do not know that we, it is rumored, through Secretary Baker, assured the Soviets that if they backed down in central Europe that we would not expand NATO “one inch”.
What did we do? In the years after the Cold War NATO expanded into Eastern Europe.
Why?
Because NATO was a vast and very lucrative bureaucracy that suddenly post-Cold War was looking for a reason to exist (and keep getting funded). Instead of pulling Russia into the European fold when it could, it sought to exclude Russia which would have challenged France, Germany, and to some degree Britain for supremacy, economically speaking, in Europe. Russia has oil, gas, uranium, timber, basically everything. But with Russia reeling in the early 90s the European establishment wanted Russia on its knees, not as a partner. Partners can dictate terms sometimes. The European Union, NATO, and affiliated bureaucracies wanted Russia to bow and to essentially act as a client state. When Moscow indicated that it was not inclined to capitulate, even in the midst of the post-Cold War chaos, NATO and friends decided that they would seek to target and marginalize Russia as a matter of policy.
This was great for NATO (the organization) because suddenly the Cold Warriors who found themselves totally irrelevant got a kind of new lease on life for their institutions. When Putin came on the scene, and took power in a very Russian way, France and Germany, the old European rivals, got their hackles up even more.
The entire European Union/NATO situation as we now have it was originally all about “elites” in Brussels trying to remain relevant. No joke.
Today the EU/NATOites see themselves as heirs to those who controlled the great power fluctuations of the the past on the Continent pre-Marxism. They think of themselves as foils to one another. Germany is a foil to France in its way. Britain to France and Germany. Germany and France to Russia. It’s all basically a giant centuries old European pissing match that went haywire in the wake of Covid in 2022.
What’s great is that we, as in the United States, the country where we still have things like free speech (basically absent on the Continent and in Britain at this point), have been funding this pissing match. The Germans, Brits, and French (some anyway, mostly the establishment left), want war with Russia for their own stupid and selfish interests (I know I am using strong language here but it is so true), and have made the Ukraine, almost always a battlefield historically, into their battlefield.
Right now Ukrainian conscripts are fighting and dying, some reportedly against their will, in a country where elections have been suspended because Zelenskyy would almost assuredly be replaced, for what? One, because we keep funding the carnage. It’s good business. But more than that the kids are dying because the European Union wants to be able declare victory, somehow, versus Putin. It’s absurd. It’s criminal.
The Donbass should probably go to Russia, which is a relatively small sliver of Ukrainian territory dominated by ethnic Russians which (probably) wants to be part of Russia anyway. The Crimea, with it’s long ties to Russia, dominated by ethnic Russians, where the Black Sea Fleet is, is not a point of negotiation. Ukraine could never subjugate the population there anyway. And why on Earth would they want that headache? Again, total absurdity.
When it comes down to it the Donbass is probably more Russia than Ukraine, the Crimea absolutely is more Russian than Ukrainian.
Still, arrogantly, the wonks in the pathetic ties and ill-fitting pantsuits in Brussels encourage the sending of young men to the Ukrainian killing fields because it’s not THEIR sons dying. THEIR sons aren’t firing the weapons. No, the Germans and the French want to prove a point and they are willing to kill as many Ukrainians and Russians as they have to, and to spend as much American money as they have to, to prove their psychopathic Great Game points. You know, because they are important people in Brussels and it would just kill them if Putin was able to save face.
Good. Let it kill those bureaucrats who think of most people as nothing more than pawns (at best) to be manipulated by the state.
F the entitled wonks. End the war.
And Zelenskyy, you can come back when you can stop being an arrogant little creep. You do your country a deep disservice with your bravado and your silly unfounded swagger. You are just getting even more people killed.
Good luck in the next election Zels (whenever that happens). You wont have the US bureaucratic machine propping you next time. Thank God.
*Some outlets are reporting that the Ukrainian leader was in fact “kicked out” of the White House.
If you want to get into how this disaster really got going I encourage you to watch this discussion from 2015 with John Meirshimer at The University of Chicago.
