“Pick up the pace, man. We’ve given you how many tens of billions of dollars, and for what, retaking a couple bridges? When we started supporting you, we figured you’d get this wrapped up in six months or so, yet here we are a year and a half later and nothing doing. Sure, you’re a pretty boy on the battlefield, but there are a lot of pretty boys around here, you feel me? We can have Letterman over there interviewing some puppet in a hoodie at the drop of a hat. You think I’m bluffing? We helped put you there in 2019, so don’t think we won’t help take you out in October 2023. Look, man, it’s nothing personal. This is just the cost of running a hegemonic global superpower, and you knew that when you threw in with us. Get it together, or else.” Biden reportedly finished the call by telling the Ukrainian president that if he so much as whispered the words “peace negotiations,” the official U.S. replacement plan would have the Mariinskyi Palace surrounded by Zelensky’s own army in no time flat.