The heated argument in the Oval Office between Zelensky and Trump and Vance portrayed the real problem and barrier of the status quo and conventional approach of facing this three-year-old war that has seen this senseless war dragging the world down and costing millions of lives on both sides.
Trump and Vance stayed true to their common sense model of ending the war and demanding a direct call for peace, but Zelensky blew the chance to seal a historic deal with Trump and to pave the way for peace by doubling down on his antagonistic approach at the Oval Office.
Recent developments saw that Zelensky has now realised his strategic mistake which saw Trump halting the aid, and now he is scrambling to revert the situation by sending a letter to Trump to reengage and re-commit to find ways for peace.
Trump has now ordered a pause on shipments of US military aid to Ukraine, seeing how Zelensky has not got the sincere intent to pursue peace. This halt in aid will remain in place until Trump determines if Zelensky has made a firm commitment to peace. This move to halt the aid also is a brilliant move to send a strong message to Zelensky and his team in Kyiv and also as a message to Putin that Trump is adamant and has the higher card in ending the war and piling the pressure on Putin to agree to the peace talks.
For Zelensky, the halt in aid will severely affect Ukraine’s fighting abilities and threaten further losses on the battlefield, essentially forcing it to quickly negotiate and agree to the peace talks.
After a week of open hostility between Washington and Kyiv, Monday’s pause of the aid portrays the ultimate card that Trump has, not the other way around.
Biden rushed shipments of weapons to Ukraine in his waning days, providing the country with large stockpiles of advanced weapons, in which Ukraine used to strike deep into Russian territory and this has been a thorn in future peace talks. This halt in aid is only the first move, but Trump has the ultimate card and more cancellation of aid might be on the cards, including on intelligence sharing and the training of Ukrainian forces.
Trump and his senior aides are seeking an acknowledgement from Zelensky, probably a public apology from him before moving ahead with a deal on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
Zelensky remains adamant in not apologising to Trump on the fiasco in the Oval Office and instead said that his country’s freedom is not for sale.
The phrase you don’t bite the hands that feed you portrays this well, encapsulating the strategic mistake Zelensky made. Trump was the one who gave Ukraine javelins and more firepower during his first term, as compared to Obama. Despite this and others, Trump and Vance got the most brickbats, being labelled as the Russian apologists and Zelensky being the adult in the room, even being accused of orchestrating the meet-up to humiliate Zelensky in the eyes of the world and the media.
Peace is the Ultimate Urgent Agenda
Trump’s dressing down of Zelensky is also being seen by the far left as a humiliation of the US and a shocking moment of American betrayal. What is not realised is that without the US support for Ukraine, Kyiv would not last for more than a few days and weeks with the far greater Russian military sphere.
Trump is right in seeing the bigger picture of this scheme. If Zelensky does not want to negotiate peace, then it is not the obligation of the taxpayers to continue to fund an endless war and to let more lives be lost.
Trump wanted peace, and for the war to end immediately, but as Trump stated, Zelensky wanted continuous and greater American involvement and support to further boost his cards at the negotiating table with Putin.
Like Rubio argued, the goal of the Trump administration is to end the war, where time is of the essence.Every day that goes by without stopping the war, more lives are lost, and unnecessary cost of the war escalates, with money wasted on the war mongers.
Trump is the only leader who can get Putin towards the path of peace, but he needs Europe and Zelensky to also have the same desire for peace urgently.
Trump does not want advantage or cards or mind games, he wants peace but to Zelesnsky, peace has to come in the form of long term assurances for Ukraine safety and Ukraine full sovereignty in terms of regaining lost territory during the war. This remains the biggest impediment and is not based on realistic and practical reality of the current scenario which only prolongs the war.
Reality speaking, Putin would not tolerate the fact that the three-year old war would have amounted to nothing, an end to the war based on these strict criteria would not have yielded anything, and the same goes to Ukraine’s NATO membership which is the final nail in the coffin for any prospective peace talk.
Trump would not want to jeopardise the long term peace prospect with Russia over Zelensky’s stubborn and unrealistic stance, especially at a time when Trump is undoing all of Biden’s mess in the ties with Moscow and with other powers including Pyongyang and Beijing.
Trump needed Russia to rein in China, Iran and the DPRK, and needed Russia to help stabilize the Middle East just like when Moscow helped to fight Isis during Trump’s first term. Putin has also just announced that he will help Trump broker nuclear talks with Iran, as a gesture of goodwill that will help to pave the way for a more substantial peace talk. Trump is now undoing decades of norms and barriers that have limited Washington’s choices before this, and fixing Biden’s mess.
With a potential new thaw in ties, Moscow can be a useful partner for Washington in distancing itself from BRICS and to reduce the impact of de-dollarisation, and more importantly for Trump, to help fill the critical minerals gap and in controlling the risks of a nuclear fallout.
Ukraine is a senseless war that should not have happened in the first place; it happened because of Biden’s fixed and old-school mindset that benefitted the warmongers.
Trump is a common sense figure and a pro-peace figure. When Trump proposed for peace and refrained from being dragged by Ukraine and Europe’s political games, he was attacked by the liberal globalists as being pro Putin.
People are dying in the millions on both sides, and it is aghast to see that Zelensky is not ready for peace and Europe still wants to fund the war for as long as it takes.
Trump sees the senseless war of madness and futility in this, and he wants peace more than saving the money for the US with the mineral deals and the halt in aid.
A growing number of calls have been made from the US Republicans for Zelensky to resign but he has rejected the calls.
Zelensky’s Backfiring Move a Barrier to Peace
Zelensky’s different approach further validates Trump’s anger and argument that he is trying to capitalize on Washington’s support and is not interested in peace. It seems Europe is also dragging its feet on the ground that any peace agreement must also ensure Europe’s future safety.
Like Trump said, every US president since George Bush has given Ukrainian land to Russia except him.
Zelensky’s conduct in the Oval Office, and the admission by European powers that they still need American military support for Ukraine, further weakened Zelensky in the eyes of Putin, who has now got more cards and chips.
Europe is simply not strong enough to defeat Russia in terms of military and volume gap. While European nations may be able to provide alternatives to the US shipments of artillery, the most advanced weapons used by Kiev come from the United States.
Putin is now realising that Trump is more eager to end the war and more likely to accept the intent for the thaw. Zelensky wanted to continue fighting despite knowing that on its own, Ukraine cannot stand a chance against Russia, a fact that the US knows very well and explains why Trump is berating Biden and Zelensky for not cutting a deal to prevent the war in the first place. Without the weapons and military support from Washington, Kyiv will not last for days or weeks in the initial period of the conflict.
Now that Trump has halted the aid and now that Zelensky has overshot his his own calculations with the US at least for now, it is high time for peace to finally take hold with the adults in the room, in avoiding the mistake that created the war in the first place and in bypassing the fixed conventional power dressing and confrontational approach that have only emboldened the status quo elites and warmongers, while ignoring the clear cut and common sense solutions to this senseless war.
Putin moved into Ukraine after seeing how Biden handled the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that portrayed American weakness and the wrong negotiation move that Biden and Harris did further compelled Putin to act on Ukraine. If Trump was still in power, this would not have happened.
Europe and the world cannot afford for this war to prolong even for another day. Three years of Biden’s mistake and incompetency and Zelensky and Europe’s strategic miscalculations, as well as Putin’s uncalled-for move in Ukraine, created a senseless war that has cost unnecessary lives and destruction.
It is time to stop it now. Trump has been right all along.