Working for free now that the USAID propaganda funds dried up?
Being born; being weird: being a weird president; wanting war instead of peace: taking lots of money for himself and his cronies; oh and 6 telling Trump to piss up a rope.
Feb. 12: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met Zelensky in Kyiv to offer a proposal that would give the U.S. access to Ukrainian mineral rights in return for de facto U.S. protection. Trump later told reporters Zelensky was “rude” and delayed his meeting with Bessent because he slept in.
Feb. 14: At the Munich Security Conference, Vance and Rubio met Zelensky to get his approval for the mineral rights deal. But, the officials said, Zelensky surprised the Americans by saying he didn’t have the authority to unilaterally approve it without parliament.
Feb. 15: Zelensky publicly rejected the offer at the conference. White House sources noted that his remarks to reporters — that the deal was “not in the interests of a sovereign Ukraine” — were markedly different from more positive-sounding comments he’d made on X the day before.
Feb. 18: As Rubio, Waltz and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff sat down with Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia to talk peace, Zelensky criticized the meeting for occurring without Ukraine at the table. An angry Trump then lashed out at Zelensky at a Mar-a-Lago press conference, falsely suggesting Zelensky had started the war with Russia and had an approval rating of only 4%.
Feb. 19: Zelensky fired back, saying the U.S. president “lives in a disinformation space.” Trump then ratcheted up the pressure by posting on Truth Social that Zelensky, a former actor, was a “modestly successful comedian” who has become a “dictator without elections.” Trump has refused to criticize Putin as a dictator.
The Crimea was ethnically Russian, had been part of Russia since Catherine the Great [before the US was a country], and the deep state was maneuvering to cut off Russian access to the Black Sea. Oh and the continued advancement of the what we now know to be war mongering expansionist anti-democratic NATO/ EU.
I’d say that’s been the end game for a very long time.
“Cocaine is a helluva drug”
Honestly, Marcus, Ukraine is NEVER going to win those back in any battle.
They should just agree. Reluctantly or unhappily, but agree.
It stops the war they cannot win. And I say this as someone who wishes them well.
Which of-course, leads to Putin taking more after his military gets stronger. Corruption abounds in both countries and Zelensky's alignment with Western liberal morality* in seeking their favor is suicidal.
However, only one country (outside China) is at present an ongoing military threat to the US (and has wicked allies: China, Iran, etc.), and with whom the US has fought proxy wars for over 70 years, flowing from an alliance with wicked Stalin and material aid given in that interest.
With an overthrow of Putin, could ideally, enable Trump to help rebuild Russia as an ally of the US. Which opportunity I think the US missed in the 90's, taking advantage of Russia's weakness, while the pervading culture of corruption (and Russian mafia) enabled the rise of Putin under the premise of MRGA.
*liberal abortion laws and in 2019, Zelensky commented “Leave those people [the LGBTQ community] alone, for God’s sake,” which is the opposite of God, though as yet same-sex couples are explicitly banned from adoption and there are no legal grounds for same-sex marriage and civil partnerships in Ukraine, but in December 2022, the Ukrainian Parliament unanimously passed a bill that banned hate speech and discrimination against LGBTQ people in mass media. The provision was included in the media regulation bill, which was one of the main requirements for approval of Ukraine’s EU candidacy status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Ukraine)
“The conflict between Trump and Zelensky escalated into a war of words between the two that scared European allies who are worried...”
Sounds like mom and dad are fighting again and the kids are afraid. Western European allies are completely useless
Awesome to hear the negotiations are progressing.
Lose 20% of your dirt and have peace.
Lose 100% of your dirt, 40% of your people, and $1T of our dollars and have this war.
I don’t think we will be funding your loss.
Game over.
The U.S. insistence on claiming a share of Ukraine's mineral rights has been compared to a "mafia shakedown" by liberal critics, who point out that the country would lose land and mineral rights and get little in return.Axios and some unnamed person have quite a way with words. Tasty."It's a sh*t sandwich," a Trump administration official acknowledged.
"But Ukraine is going to have to eat it because [Trump] has made clear this is no longer our problem."
Somebody needs to hide the mighty Z’s drugs.
Zelensky is a little whippersnapper who needs his ass kicked. He dragged America into his war to distract Americans from the fact that America was also being invaded. Nobody was spending billions to stop that invasion.
This is called bringing Zelensky to the table. Crimea was always going to part of the deal as well as the Dinesk and Donbass. Putin didn’t lose 600,000-700,000 troops taking that territory just to give it up. One of the things that led to the war was the Ukraine threatening to cancel the lease on Putin’s only port on the Black Sea.
If we don’t get the rights to those minerals China will swoop in and grab them as soon as the ink is dry on the peace treaty.