Michael

Despite the murder of thousands of innocent Ukrainians, this war has become a geopolitical game of imperial 3D chess. I’ve already debunked the NATO expansionism claim and the threat to Russia as a nation. We have established the aggressor is Russia and the innocent party is Ukraine. These are easy to verify FACTS. Three years have passed of brutal fighting which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. 10.6 million Ukrainians have been displaced, 6.9 million of them abroad. More than 2 million homes have been destroyed. That’s about 10% of the housing stock. 1.5 million Ukrainian children are at risk of long-term mental health consequences from what they have endured. Ukrainian losses even at the lowest estimates are 153,000. To date, 12,654 have been verified by the UN to be civilian casualties. The true total though is likely to be considerably higher. Russia has lost at least 95,000 soldiers and currently holds 20% of Ukrainian territory. State Department figures indicate that Washington appropriated nearly $174.2 billion from 2022 to 2024. This figure includes assistance through USAID, the World Bank and other agencies. The total amount of aid Ukraine has received from donor governments over the course of the war is $279 billion. This includes military, financial and humanitarian assistance. I provide the above FACTS simply as context, so we are all aware of the starting point. I’m not going to re-litigate the Oval Office engineered theatrics, other than to say, before this meeting even took place, Trump had called Zelenskyy ‘a dictator’, inferred he was an illegitimate president and had started the war. If anyone in that room had a right to be unhappy it was Zelenskyy. He had effectively been briefed against by his hosts before he even walked through the door. The only crime Zelenskyy had committed was to show support for the previous administration during the election campaign. Hardly surprising given Trump was running on removing Ukraine aid. However, his biggest crime had been to refuse to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in 2019, which led to Trump’s impeachment. Trump has a visceral hatred of ANYONE who has disagreed with, or even perceived to have disrespected him. History is littered with the bodies Trump has thrown under the bus who refused to show him fealty. As soon as Zelenskyy pushed back, Trump started the usual concertina solo and we were off down the road to the Russia Russia hoax and Hunter Biden grievances. The administration had already tried to strong arm Zelenskyy into signing a totally one sided deal, sight unseen. National Security Advisor Mike Walz, was so confident they could force Zelenskyy to sign, he stated at the time, “Here’s the bottom line: President Zelenskyy is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,” This was a deal to hand the rights to Ukraine’s minerals to the US in perpetuity. This was a blatant act of extortion from a ‘so called ally’. Who needs enemies when you have friends like Trump? In the run up to the Friday meeting, press were reporting that the deal was only a framework deal. However, Walz had already said to Fox News, Zelenskyy should “tone it down” and sign the proposed deal. What happened here was, Zelenskyy was expecting to sign a framework agreement to begin negotiations on the final deal. He believed this would then give him the opportunity to make the case to include security guarantees before the final deal was signed. Trump simply wanted the deal signed so he could screw the guy who screwed him in 2019 on the ‘beautiful phone call’ which led to his impeachment. Trump is purely transactional. He feels no obligation to do what’s good for America. He simply wants what’s good for him. He’s prepared to burn down the house down, leave NATO and the UN on his vengeance tour. Tragically, everybody around him who DO KNOW BETTER, are enabling him. It’s terrifying. Next Up : Finding a solution.

Worth noting that Donald Trump just announced the end of NATO and the Special Relationship in one tweet.

🥴Trump threatens to halt arms supplies to Ukraine if Europe does not join the coalition in the Strait of Hormuz — FT.

Trump: You don’t have the cards Zelenskyy: I’m playing chess ♟️

Trump: “My Envoy to Belarus, John Coale, after negotiating with Highly Respected President Alexander Lukashenko, got 250 more Political Prisoners freed…I look forward to being with him at the next Board of Peace meeting!”

The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. will allow a Russian-flagged crude oil tanker, possibly the Anatoly Kolodkin, to dock and offload its approximately 730,000 barrels of crude oil amid a 'quarantine' of the island nation of Cuba.