L’attacco selvaggio di Trump su Zelenskyy a forma di coterie filo-russa

Donald Trump’s tarring of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” who is to blame for the war with Russia, plunging Ukraine into a Darwinian struggle for its very existence, landed like a bombshell on the diplomatic landscape. But it did not come out of nowhere.

The US president has left the already badly frayed western alliance in disarray with a devastating social media attack on his Ukrainian counterpart, just hours after he had already implicitly blamed Kyiv for Russia’s invasion.

After much of what he said appeared to echo Kremlin talking points, including falsehoods about Zelenskyy’s popularity being at 4% (a recent poll put it at 57%), Ukraine’s president attributed it to Trump being trapped in a Russian “disinformation bubble”.

In fact, Trump may be the author of his own misconceptions about Ukraine – or at least responsible for having built the bubble himself, by surrounding himself with prominent figures who have often seemed to echo the Russian line.

A year before he left European leaders mortified at last week’s Munich security conference by accusing them of threatening their own democracies with supposed free speech restrictions, JD Vance – now Trump’s vice-president – was already questioning military support for Ukraine.

“How long is this expected to go on? How much is it expected to cost?” he said, complaining of a “lack of strategic clarity” in US and allied goals.

It was one of Vance’s milder comments. Last year he labelled Zelenskyy “disgraceful” when he visited Washington last year to lobby Congress for military aid, and days before Russia’s invasion in February 2022 he told Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon he did not “really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other”.

As stories emerged of Russian atrocities, he doubled down, telling Bannon: “I don’t care enough about what’s going on over there that I’m going to step in, get a bunch of our citizens killed and pour more and more money into the war sinkhole.”

Other members of Trump’s inner circle long associated with a pro-Russian viewpoint also include Tulsi Gabbard, newly confirmed as director of national intelligence, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who remains one of the president’s most influential backers.

Gabbard has been accused of parroting Kremlin talking points and was challenged on the subject at her recent Senate confirmation hearings – particularly her decision to blame the Russian invasion on Ukraine, as Trump has now done.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she wrote, as Russian missiles struck Ukrainian cities.

Carlson, meanwhile, conducted a face-to-face interview with Vladimir Putin last year as the war raged, which some commentators said the Russian leader used to broadcast a message to Trump and other US conservatives. Carlson was ridiculed for a Pravda-esque video segment praising Russian supermarkets for having coin-operated shopping trolleys, which all western supermarkets have had for decades.

In fact when Pete Hegseth, Trump’s new defence secretary, gave a speech shortly after Vance’s in which he said the US would no longer be “primarily focused” on European security and that Ukraine would never be allowed to join Nato – appearing to simply hand Russia key concessions in the negotiations over ending the war without getting anything in return – he was condemned by the Republican senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate’s powerful armed services committee.

“I don’t know who wrote the speech – it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Wicker said.

But Wicker – and recently Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, who wrote on social media, “Mr President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war” – are rare Republican voices of dissent. The Reaganite hawks from Trump’s first term such as Pence, Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger, who might have advised a US president to hold the line against Russian expansionism into Europe, have been purged.

Regardless, Trump may need little outside prompting to feel friendly towards Russia, or Putin, for whom he has long displayed personal admiration. Russian interference on Trump’s behalf during his victorious 2016 presidential election campaign against Hillary Clinton was well-documented by the US intelligence community – and Trump has since developed a hatred of those agencies such as the FBI and CIA, who pointed it out.

Men in suits shake hands
Trump meets Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in Helsinki in 2018. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In particular, an inquiry conducted by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into alleged collusion between the campaign and Russia, was bitterly resented by Trump, who denounced the allegations as a “hoax”.

And in 2019 Trump attempted to pressure Zelenskyy to launch an investigation into Joe Biden and the business interests of his son, Hunter, in Ukraine, in return for US military assistance – an apparently clear abuse of presidential power for Trump’s personal political gain, and which led to his first impeachment.

What’s more, his new righthand man Elon Musk, who supported Ukraine with Starlink satellite service to help repel Russia’s invasion, tangled with Zelenskyy in 2022 after suggesting Ukraine abandon Crimea permanently to Russia and drop its ambitions to join Nato. In recent days, Musk has targeted Zelenskyy on social media in personal terms – perhaps providing the inspiration for Trump’s dismissal of the Ukrainian president as “a modestly successful comedian”.

Yet the causes of Trump’s latest breach with Zelenskyy are equally likely to be immediate and devoid of outside influences, said Charles Kupchan, a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations.

“Part of it is Mr Trump’s thin skin and his response to what he sees as criticism,” said Kupchan, a member of the White House national security staff in the Obama and Clinton administrations.

“I think he sees himself as going out and trying to help Europe and help Ukraine – and instead, he’s been met with a wave of criticism. And I see his calling Zelenskyy a dictator, blaming him for starting the war, as a kind of impulsive, angry response.”

Kupchan believes that given Trump’s whims, the relationship could be suddenly repaired under pressure of self-interest.

“Trump’s relationship with leaders blows hot and cold. He’s had good meetings with Zelenskyy,” he said. “If you look at Trump’s history, one day he’s good buddies with Macron and then they fall out. I don’t think there is an enduring nature to Trump’s relationships with foreign heads. It’s very much: what have you done for me today?

“At the end of the day, Trump wants a deal to end the war. If he’s going to get that, he needs a working relationship with Zelenskyy … If Trump goes over the heads of Zelenskyy and European allies, to cut some kind of deal with Putin, it will not stick.”

This is one of the most shameful episodes ever by a US President, America is no longer leader of the free world. A bastion for global liberal democracy and freedom. The world is being run by strongman who wield there own spheres of influence. The world was like that nearly a century ago as well. Hitler Mussolini Stalin Hirohito and where did it get us? How does this usually end. Fuck fascism

In other news, bears shit in the woods.

Trump is a wannabe business man and a narcissist. He’s also compromised. Putin and his ilk have a kompromat on him and there are others too that are in it.
They seek to destabilise everything and take gain from it.
Trump is just a pawn, even though he refuses to see that. His attacks on Zelenskyy only proves that right. Like why would he say those things about him and the people of Ukraine if he wishes to distance the USA from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine? I could take seriously some of his snides towards Europe not being independent and prepared for war, because he is right, but how could I now? He’s a clown. And JD Vance is even worse. He’s a snake. He didn’t like Trump until being selected as a vice. What a back stabbing piece of shit.

Meanwhile Germany reiterates its refusal to supply Ukraine with long range missiles….

Trump is the only play Ukraine has left, thanks to European dithering…

Aside from all the bullshit, fake news and lies, Trump has objectively no interest in defending Europe and has an interest of being an ally of Poutine. And this objective interest is not only for Trump, but for the whole USA, or at least the USA in a MAGA vision (that is majoritary now). That’s a hard to swallow truth.

We’ve been a little bit fooled by the obsolete loyalty to the good old Atlantism of Biden, who had also a personal feud against Russia. But at the end, why is America defending Europe against Russia imperialism? For three historical reasons that are now mainly gone:

1. Because USSR was a global and systemic rival, it was two global imperialisms one against the other
2. Because of communism and the fear of the world to fall into the communist ideology
3. Because at the opposite, the USA wanted to defend the main bloc of countries in the world that shared its democratic values

If you look objectively and carefully at these three reasons and look at what are MAGA USA objectives and values, hey, let’s be honest, they have an interest to side with Poutine:

1. The global rival of the USA is now China. Russia has no more possibilities to be a global power, they can be a regional power and have some bits of Europe and Africa and a local empire, the USA doesn’t care.
2. In terms of values, Russia is no more communist and has the exact same conservative values and vision of society than MAGA Republicans. Like, really, what is said against wokism is the same. The vision about “free speach” that is just being free to say far right things too. This is what Vance came to say to Munich: he has a problem with European values and vision of what should be a democracy.

So, hey, why would they defend us, instead allying with Poutine with whom they share values and economical interests (countering the shift to renewables and sell oil, for example)?

I don’t understand why?

Why makes Russia so appealing to US Pres?

USA trying to split up Europe. They want to divide us by supporting far right governments
Trump wants facists in charge so Europe is divided. Please wake up. Saying Ukraine started war is scandalous.
Trump kissing Putins balls is embarrassing, even for him