Unusually warm greeting
Trump just wants Ukraine to surrender, that’s all.
Russian officials and commentators were especially enamored by Trump’s unusually warm red-carpet greeting to Putin on Friday in which they saw an opening to pull America away from its traditional allies in Europe.
Of course they were. Every time Trump goes belly-up to Putin, that “opening” gets wider.
Within hours of the meeting, Trump had discarded his previous position — and that of Ukraine and Europe — that a full ceasefire was required to allow the details of a peace agreement to be hammered out. The move enables Russia to keep fighting without the risk of U.S. sanctions, and puts pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to Russian terms or face open-ended attacks.
In other words Trump is Team Putin all the way. We know.
Trump told Zelensky that Putin had demanded that Ukraine cede all of Donbas, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and other occupied territory…Trump told Zelensky that Putin was “ready to promise” to end the war and not start wars against other nations, in exchange for Donbas and the other Ukrainian territory he has seized, the official said. Zelensky is unwilling to give up any more territory, he added, but Trump wants a fast deal — setting the stage for a potentially difficult clash.
In other words Trump told Zelensky to do whatever Putin wanted him to do, aka lose the war and see Ukraine absorbed back into the Russian empire.
Trump’s call to inform Zelensky and European leaders about the summit, which included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the leaders of France, Germany, Finland, Italy, Britain, Poland, NATO and the European Commission, was more tense than the phone call between the Europeans and Trump earlier this week, a second official said.
I should damn well hope so. Trump is helping Putin devour Europe; this is not the sign of a glorious future.
Putin’s other important wins at Friday’s summit included deflecting, for now, tough new U.S. sanctions that would hamper his capacity to keep waging war on Ukraine and repairing his fraying relationship with Trump.
Trump told Fox News after the meeting that his relationship with Putin was “fantastic,” adding there was no need to go ahead with sanctions at this point.
Pro-Kremlin commentator Sergei Markov said Trump had natural empathy with Putin and natural antagonism with the Europeans and Zelensky — and he was moving closer to Putin.
Yeah, we’ve noticed.
Former Swedish prime minister of Carl Bildt said that “from the European point of view the best thing that could be said about the meeting is that it could have been even worse. Combined European efforts blocked at least any deal over the head of the Ukrainians,” he wrote on X.
But he said Trump had suffered “a distinct setback” as Putin once more deflected the full ceasefire he had demanded. “What the world sees is a weak and wobbling America.”
Because it’s been captured by an amoral conceited nincompoop.
That phrase “belly up” is most appropriate. All Putin’s validation and praise are nothing more than a belly rub – and Trump started purring immediately.
And as Hitler kept assuring the gullible after Munich, “I have no further territorial demands in Europe.” I find it a complete mystery that such a self-styled “stable genius” as Trump has both dudded so much of the American population, and at the same time has swallowed so much of Putin’s megalomaniacal bilge. I can only conclude that “it must be something in the beer.”
A reasonable course would be to follow Mao’s old dictum: “Support what the enemy opposes ….” Shouldn’t be too hard. Putin clearly wants a series of Ukraines that he can pick off one by one. Like dominoes in a line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=-Ue5F57dZMU
Chamberlain at least maybe had the excuse that it gave time for Britain to rearm.
Good point.
“from the European point of view the best thing that could be said about the meeting is that it could have been even worse.”
It seems, according to ‘The Bulwark’ (a good website run by conservatives who are rightly disaffected from Trump), that it is “even worse” — which is why, according to the Guardian, a number of European leaders, including Macron, Merz, and Starmer, will be coming to Washington with Zelensky to prevent a repetition of the despicable behaviour of Trump & his sidekicks that occurred the last time Zelensky came to Washington alone.
But DT is angling for his Nobel Peace Prize (which he will never get), and he thinks that selling out Ukraine and its European allies is the best way of getting it.
Jim.
But Britain didn’t re-arm. Even after Poland fell, the nation wasn’t on a war-time economy.
OK
My impression was that even if Britain could have done more to rearm it at least made a decent start.
Also my impression was the Royal Tours of the Dominions in the late 1930s were mostly to shore up support there in case war *did* start.