Donald Trump has said Vladimir Putin was “doing what anybody would do” after Russia launched a massive missile and drone strike on Ukraine days after the US cut off vital intelligence and military aid to Kyiv.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday Trump said he finds it “easier” to work with Russia than Ukraine and that Putin “wants to end the war”.
“I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards,” Trump said. “In terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia.”
Asked whether the Russian leader was taking advantage of the pause in US intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine, Trump replied: “I actually think he is doing what anybody else would do.”
How so? Trump is stupid yes but in regards to this? Zelenskyy is too far into “to the last Ukrainian” camp.
Atleast Putin attempted to force realistic (and rather lenient) terms on Ukraine way back in 2022, meanwhile Zelenskyy has given out his ten point peace nonsense for years.
You mean terms like „I‘ll stop hurting you if you give me more land and don‘t ask for help from the west.“?
Give me a break!
Nope, Ukraine would have kept all of its land had they accepted Putin’s offer in 2022. Even the status of Crimea was to be negotiable after 10-15 years.
Putin’s peace treaty would have the US and the UK, as guarantors, who were obliged to assist Ukraine in case of aggression against it.
Try again.
Right, but Crimea is Ukraine’s land which Russia invaded and stole in 2014. So that’s not letting Ukraine have all its land is it? It’s letting Ukraine keep bits of land you haven’t stolen yet. Can you see how that might not seem very reasonable?
Take it back then. Oh wait Ukraine tried and is failing to that. Instead they have lost a larger portion of their country. Ever heard of the sunk cost fallacy? Ukraine should take the loss and make peace before more people sadly die from this horrible war.
Ukraine was at peace in 2014 before Russia invaded. The only reason there is not peace is because of Putin.
No they weren’t. Before the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine underwent a violent coup against the democratically elected government where Ukrainian ultranationalists burned down an entire building filled with dozens of unarmed protestors who were against this illegitimate coup conducted by said ultranationalists.
Yanukovych was a Putin puppet that turned armed forces against unarmed civilians. The armed forces themselves turned on Yanukovych. That tells you how bad he was for Ukraine. If you’re looking for Yanukovych now, you’ll find him in Russia. I wonder why…
What happened was that pro-maidan snipers shot their own protestors and then blame it on the government in a false flag operation.
Oh and have a fun time trying to prove that several hundred witness testimonies, 2,000 videos, and 6,000 photos, and 30 gigabytes of radio intercepts are Russian propaganda.
And what would Ukraine have to give Putin in return? The thing is Putin started the war! Putin started the war because Ukraine was daring to enter NATO which you could literally only hate if you actually wanted to fuck with some country!
Putins offer can be boiled down to „If you don‘t tattle to the teacher, i will stop punching you. Perhaps i could give you back your iPod when you graduate high school if you ask me nicely then.“
What the fuck is that kind of a bullshit deal? This could only be beaten if another bully agrees with the first bully to take your phone and leave the iPod and both of them will not beat them into the hospital. Oh wait…
Putin’s reasons for starting the invasion was multifold. Ukraine was to cease NATO membership plans; downsize its military forces; forbid foreign countries from hosting military bases; and pay reparations. In return, Ukraine would be allowed to keep all of its territory, Crimea would be negotiable after 10-15 years, they would be allowed to join the EU, AND Russia would allow several NATO members to guarantee Ukraine’s soveriengty. This means that Ukraine would get the main benefit of joining NATO (protection) without the ability to act as a base for NATO soldiers and weapons that can be used for offensive purposes against Russia.
NATO looked like the next coming of the Axis powers to Russia and can you blame them? It practically surrounded them. Perhaps you would be more understanding if you would think about what if Mexico, Cuba, and Canada was part of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War? You can say that this is Russian propaganda and you can be right but you forget that Russia and its people unironically believe in their own propaganda that NATO is out to get them.
TLDR: Russia would have allowed Ukraine to invoke Article 5 if invaded but not base NATO weapons and soldiers during peacetime that can be used for offensive purposes.
That’s none of Putin’s fucking business. Ukraine is a sovereign country that can make its own decisions about its future. If your bullshit reasoning is reasonable, if Putin takes Ukraine fully are you justifying Putin invading Poland and Romania for being in NATO with foreign miltary bases too?
It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s the firehose of bullshit.
It stopped being a sovereign nation after the illegitimate coup which occured in 2014.
Yanukovych was a Putin laptop that was thrown out by the citizenry as well as the Ukrainian military. You’ll find Yanukovych in Russia now, but I probably don’t have to tell you that. You’re probably closer to him than I am.
He was thrown out due to a false flag operation where pro-maidan snipers shot their own protestors in order to incite public backlash against Yanukovych.
This has been confirmed by several hundred witness testimonies including wounded protestors, 2,000 videos, and 6,000 photos, 30 gigabytes of radio intercepts, and forensic examinations.
Yeah, I would be getting the fuck out of dodge and be escaping to Russia too if far right snipers shot their own fellow protestors and managed to convince the populace including your own armed forces that it was you who done it.
Yes?
And as for the rest: Putin has a long and sordid history of ignoring treaties with former parts of the USSR. He dangles the carrot and then hits with the stick if any of the soviet states actually try to eat it.
Russia wants Ukraine to become another Belarus or Georgia. Ukraine does not want that. Ukraine is a sovereign nation and does not want to invade Russia or take its land. Neither does NATO.
After that, your argument completely falls apart. It’s no more than the excuse, but has no grounding in reality.
Maybe Ukraine should not act like Georgia. I.E, conducing massacres against civilians during a civil war.
Ukraine has not been sovereign since 2014 imo. The democratically elected government got overthrown by a violent coup leading to massive amounts of unrest in Eastern Ukraine leading to this new illegitimate government conducting massacres like the Victory Day Massacre where they fired into an entire crowd.
You don’t get out much, do you?
The only place that narrative is still accepted is inside Russia.
Oh, and it’s not a civil war when one of the combatants is significantly made up of foreigners from Russia.
Next thing you know, you’ll be saying that Ukraine is really just a disputed Russian territory because they rejected their democratically elected Russian selected leader.
Even Ukraine admitted that the vast majority of Separatists were Ukrainians. The Victory Day Massacre occured before Girkin’s intervention. Protestors showed their passports to Vice News showing that they were in fact Ukrainian. Do you want me to PM you the video of the AFU and Azov firing into a crowd of unarmed protestors? People also like to quote Girkin to prove that Russia started the War in the Donbas forgetting the rest of the quote. He acknowledged the movement started before he intervened. What he did say is that it would have been crushed without his support naming the Victory Day Massacre as evidence for this where the AFU put down unrest by simply shooting everyone in the crowd. Russia did provide support to them. Yes. They provided intellgence and leadership with Girkin becoming the leader of the DPR. Russia provided weapons. But the movement was ultimately organic. Russian forces did not storm Ukraine in any significant number until 2015 when they thrown BTGs into Ukraine to stem the tide when DPR and LPR forces were being pushed back.
In other words, he would have allowed them to draw NATO into a conflict, but not to do anything to deter actual aggression or make it possible for NATO to fight effectively if called upon to do so. And any such conditions would violate Ukraine’s sovereignty. Free countries can ally themselves with whoever they want to.
So you are part of the To the last Ukrainian camp. You know Russia is not going to withdraw from Ukraine unless Ukraine surrenders. You know Ukraine has no chance to win. But instead of demanding Ukraine to make peace, you want the war to continue including all of the horrible suffering it has caused.
Reparations for being invaded…
Oh, so it’s Zelenskyy’s fault for continuing to resist aggression. Victim-blame much?
He should have implemented Minsk II as promised in his election.
Simply put, the Russians can’t be trusted to honor any agreement that’s not backed up by force. Their “terms” aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. They’ve never honored any agreement they’ve made with Ukraine, and as long as Putin is in power they never will.
Except, there are multiple problems with your logic.
Had Zelenskyy accepted Putin’s offer in 2022, future Russian aggression would encounter a problem, the peace treaty would have the US and the UK, as guarantors, who were obliged to assist Ukraine in case of aggression against it. While the Russian Federation attempted to add on another condition where all guarantor states including Russia itself would have to agree to intervene in Ukraine possibily giving Russia the ability to veto other countries from aiding Ukraine in the event Russia broke the agreement, they were likely willing to drop that condition. Throughout the negotiations, Russia was actually dropping many of their previous demands and compromised with Ukraine on multiple occasions (unlike Zelenskyy who didn’t even invite Putin to his peace summits, kinda like the Russia-US peace summits rn).
And that previous agreements were also broken by both sides:
Budapest Memorandum was made null and void in 2013 when the US sanctioned Belarus which was explicitly prohibited in the agreement.
Minsk II was made null and void after Ukraine not only refused to implement them but created laws that violated the agreement and this is more or less the main reason 2022 invasion happened.
Minsk I "agreement quickly broke down, with violations by both sides."
Except, again, there’s no reason to believe that Russia was negotiating in good faith, and it sounds like the inclusion of security guarantees from the West is one of the reasons the talks broke down.
Again, Russia has broken basically every treaty and agreement they’ve ever made with Ukraine.
https://thedispatch.com/article/russia-history-broken-treaties-agreements/?signup=success
Your article basically stated that western countries are not willing to protect Ukraine. So what is the point of Ukraine trying to join NATO? That is the entire reason why this war started alongside Ukraine’s violations of Minsk II. So Ukraine could have simply prevented all of this nonsense by simply trying to not join NATO which they won’t join anyways.
Also love how you bring up a biased source.
The Budapest Memorandum only applied to the legitimate government of Ukraine. Russia does not consider the government of Ukraine post-Maidan to be legitimate for obvious reasons. Maidan was a violent coup against the democratically elected government with the post-Maidan government launching massacres against anti-Maidan protestors in Eastern Ukraine. It was also first violated by the United States who sanctioned Belarus which was explicity prohibited under the Memorandum.
Minsk I was violated by both sides. Even Ukraine admits this. This is why Minsk II was created because no one followed Minsk I.
Minsk II was violated by Ukraine not Russia. The agreement explicity stated that elections come first and then withdrawal. Ukraine wanted Russia to withdraw first before allowing elections in the DPR and LPR which is against the agreement.
The rest of those agreements are mainly between the US and Russia. Both of them violate it. US continued to develop nuclear weapons despite of the New START Treaty which is one of the reasons why Russia withdrew from it. The US illegitimately removed the accountability under the Treaty about a hundred strategic offensive arms. Both sides violated the Open Skies treaties. Treaties between Russia and the US are irrelvant when talking about Russian treaties with Ukraine.
I think you’re going to keep finding reasons why it’s Ukraine’s fault no matter what I or anyone say!s! I won’t waste any more time on this. The fact remains that Russia has broken pretty much every agreement they’ve ever struck with Ukraine since at least 2014, and Ukraine has zero incentive to enter into a new one without the force to ensure it’s followed. Their only choice is to try and wear Russia down with prolonged conflict.
Nope. Russia followed Minsk II. Ukraine did not.