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Posted on 08/11/2025 7:51:09 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
U.S. President Donald Trump is joining European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an emergency virtual summit on Wednesday organized by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
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The virtual summit will focus on pressure options against Russia, questions about Ukrainian territories seized by Russia, security guarantees for Kyiv and the sequencing of potential peace talks, a German government spokesperson told POLITICO.
Merz and other European leaders demand that Putin first agrees to a ceasefire before any peace talks or land swaps between Moscow and Kyiv can take place. They have also made clear that any potential land swaps must be balanced and in agreement with Kyiv, and that Ukraine should further receive valuable security guarantees to protect it against further aggressions.
Three diplomats told POLITICO that Merz’ team had been in intensive discussions with other capitals in recent days to organize the virtual meeting. Merz also spoke with Trump via phone on Sunday night, and has repeatedly urged Trump to increase pressure on Putin by imposing crippling sanctions against Russia’s banking sector as well as secondary sanctions against Moscow’s trading partners.
Merz told German public broadcaster on Sunday night that “we cannot accept that territorial issues between Russia and America are discussed or even decided over the heads of the Europeans, over the heads of the Ukrainians,“ and added: “Putin only acts under pressure.“
According to a schedule seen by POLITICO, the virtual meetings will start at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, beginning with a one-hour discussion including leaders from Germany, Finland, France, the U.K., Italy, Poland, plus the European Commission and European Council presidents as well as Zelenskyy and NATO chief Mark Rutte.
The schedule then contains a one-hour discussion from 3 p.m., between the European leaders and Zelensky, with Trump and his Vice President J.D. Vance.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.eu ...
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Donald Trump to slap the euroweenies into shape.
Sabotage by Europeans.
“Merz and other European leaders demand that Putin first agrees to a ceasefire before any peace talks or land swaps between Moscow and Kyiv can take place. They have also made clear that any potential land swaps must be balanced and in agreement with Kyiv, and that Ukraine should further receive valuable security guarantees to protect it against further aggressions.”
Demand in one hand, and sh!t in the other.
See which fills first.
Same countries that dragged their feet on weapons for Ukraine. Especially Germany.
Before you go, how about releasing the Epstein files, including full client list?
>No can do. Innocent paedophiles could be hurt.
The neo-Trumpian position is to back Ukraine so long as it can be done so at profit. This flip-flop no doubt his a result of new intelligence coming to President Trump to the effect that Putin's domestic position and capacity to wage war has considerably weakened.
Putin is facing a crumbling economy, surging inflation, corruption without end in his military, stalemate as far as the eye can see, increased crippling international sanctions depriving him of what few Rubles he has left with which to wage war, and increasingly unsupportable human losses for no or little geographic gain.
Because of this new reality, Europe is quite right to admonish the president not to conduct this negotiation backwards as he did his first negotiation with Putin when Trump caved entirely and turned the pressure to surrender onto Zelinski.
The good news, Trump seems to have backed into solidifying NATO.
I still don’t think it’s fair that Trump has to deal with the Coke Heads.
Give the Russians the (non-exclusive) use of one rail line and one highway, and then leave the rest. Sort of like we had access to West Berlin through East Germany.
As best I know, Trump has not commanded the Euro’s to do anything. And he has not dictated their behavior.
Why is there this presumption that the reverse is appropriate? When there is talk of a united front of allies, the European portion of that is talk and the concrete actions are expected of Trump.
As for this sweeping presumption that Russia has been devastated and is ready to surrender, where does this come from?
Do your own research. Look into things. Ask AI how much oil and gas European countries are buying the past three years from Russia. Don’t dwell on talk of decline. Get the specific numbers. I’ll help you with that — it’s 10s of billions of Euros . . . each year. For gas, in 2024, Russia set a new record for its shipping of LNG to Europe. In fact, the amount of oil and gas bought exceeds the Europe aid sent to Ukraine (though I am confident this excludes weapons shipments, which are pre manufactured and were in inventory and can have a price declared with more or less no basis).
How does these billions equate to desperation on the part of Russia? Do people think that LNG was shipped free?
The most casual scan of Russia grocery store videos on youtube, filmed by travelers who are passing through and don’t even upload until they are in the next country of their travels, show no sign of scarcity. They have plenty of food. I have yet to see a woman in those vids dressed all in black. I did see an article this past week showing a Russian prototype of a plasma space engine that would cut time-to-Mars to about 6 weeks. This was obviously funded during this period of desperate, frantic, financial stress that somehow it is imagined a Central Bank cannot print its way past.
Oil and gas are everything. Europe has nearly none, and closer to none than nearly if you exclude Norway, which chose wisely not to be part of the EU.
If the EU rejects any peace deal Trump works it, it can assume 100% responsibility for the war in Ukraine.
And, your views represent the Bush/neocon wing of the Republican party.
There is no national interest in Ukraine, let alone one that was worth spending more than $200 billion on.
If you prefer Joe Biden's approach to the war, you should have voted for Kamala Harris.
Bush Republicanism and neoconism is DEAD and Republican party isn't returning to it.
BTW, the war in Ukraine is 100% the result of our meddling under Biden and Obama in that country. We helped foment an illegal coup that setoff a civil war that led to this war.
What's gone in Ukraine since 2014 is prime example of the failures of neocon foreign policy and provoking wars so our elite can profit from them.
When Europe stops buying Russian oil, then I might care about what they think.
I make this point often.
The world of oil is a world of scarcity. People want to look at production numbers and celebrate increase. They don’t look at global consumption numbers, which exceeded global production in 2024.
Europe buys that oil and gas from Russia . . . because they have to. There is nowhere else to get it, and oil is life. It carries food to grocery store shelves.
I will ignore the first four lines and respond to the last two.
BTW, the war in Ukraine is 100% the result of our meddling under Biden and Obama in that country. We helped foment an illegal coup that setoff a civil war that led to this war.
All of which makes the war more, not less, our responsibility. Our inveigling Ukraine to engage in this war, our support during the course of the war, our sanctions against Russia, our repeated laws in support of Ukraine, our repeated presidential promises to Ukraine of support, compounded our involvement and, hence, our responsibility to Ukraine in this war.
What's gone in Ukraine since 2014 is prime example of the failures of neocon foreign policy and provoking wars so our elite can profit from them.
Our pusillanimous skedaddle from Afghanistan, according to Donald Trump as well as many rational observers, was the catalyst that impelled Putin to this invasion on this occasion. Our fiasco in Afghanistan was hardly the stuff of neocon foreign policy. In fact it was the opposite, and the opposite is what got us into the mess of Ukraine.
It is not strength or deterrence that leads to profitless wars, but isolationism and misplaced jingoism.
God forbid that our pathetic record in Ukraine, hardly neocon, leads us into war over Taiwan because Xi is tempted by the same misconceived policies that motivated Putin.
This is a peace plan and not just a "ceasefire" of dubious benefit to both sides.
This, in fact, has been the big risk all along.
A real peace would require things both sides find unsatisfying, like the Russo-Japanese peace deal TR arranged.
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