Ukraine is not master of its own destiny.
Unless you ignore the Nuland tapes where we pick and choose who is in Ukraine’s government post 2014 revolt, unless you ignore our testimony of how we spent >5 billion to buy influence in Ukraine pre-revolt, unless you ignore the fact that our social media played a MAJOR role in getting Mr. Z elected and Google is a NSA creation, FB and others play along with our IC especially overseas (example: Arab Spring)... Mr. Z is very likely the “puppet,” a term some here like to use but would never apply to their own guy. The fact that our MSM and social media threw their weight behind Mr. Z should tell you everything.
Just in case you doubt it (Google): https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance
Social media and its impact on the 2019 elections: https://lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu/2020/05/ukraines-social-media-presidency/
However, once this war started, to answer your question, “yes for sure” Ukraine is subordinate to us.
At that point, there was no doubt that we have the reigns in our hands, maybe not Trump entirely, maybe not even the US entirely, but the West et al. US, EU, NATO.
Ukraine floats or sinks based on Western (US, NATO and EU) support in terms of intel, weapons, the free flow of mercenaries we ensured was wide open, logistics, training, political backing, and money to keep their government and social services running. Don’t quote me, but I think between the US and EU something like 1/2 of Ukraine’s entire government budget was our aid!
If you think Ukraine is an independent nation once this war started, you may as well believe in the tooth fairy.
However, Ukraine is an Allie and we do not want to force them into a deal by cutting off crucial aid which would cause many people to lose their lives.
What we will likely do as a nuclear option if Ukraine’s junta does not play along is to push for elections and have them removed.
If Ukraine’s leadership does not do as told, Trump will push more and more for elections, and that would be their end: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5640123-trump-says-ukraine-should-hold-elections/ (From a year ago and now in the news again as Mr. Z is giving some pushback)
Mr. Z’s support in Ukraine and the BS polls you see published are about as real as Russian and Ukrainian casualty reports. According to Ukrainian polls he enjoys support by as many as 84%. Do you realize the ethnic Russian minority is about 18% in Ukraine? Can you do basic subtraction?
This guy used his Russian ethnicity to get support by the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine (why they also voted for him) but then cracked down, purging pro-Russian influence in government, restricting the use of the Russian language, going after the Russian Orthodox church, sending Azov and thugs to the East to put a boot on the ethnic Russians neck. He said he would reform conscription (while he has done such, it’s not how the people envisioned it / sarc). He ran on a peace platform and we’re now in the 4th year of war with close to 200,000 Ukrainians dead or missing and many, many more crippled. Ukraine’s economy took a 30% nosedive, their currency has devalued, inflation is at 9.3% (official but far worse in reality), national debt exploded (the people’s wealth has evaporated). Kids are being chased down on the streets to be forced to fight in this war. You have millions of Ukrainians as refugees. He cancelled elections, has jailed opposition leaders, closed the borders to leave (as in turned Ukraine into a prison for its citizens - except for the elites), shut down radio, TV and print media that disagree with him, jailed journalists that dare say what he doesn’t like, you have widespread corruption, and everyone knows that he’s a draft dodger that never served in the military despite always wearing olive drab to show he’s a wartime leader. Do you (really) think this guy is loved like the Ukrainian polls and media pretend is the case? He’s about a popular as a colonoscopy. The only Ukrainians who love this guy are the ones living in Monaco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9tyMQEePSE and of course our Western leaders, media and social media.
All Trump has to do is push for elections in Ukraine and if these aren’t fudged, Mr. Z is gone.
Complete nonsense. The Europeans are now providing 99% of the aid to Ukraine. The US sells weapons that the Europeans pay for, and even with that, supply of air defense has been slowed or withheld entirely. So exactly what leverage does Trump have?
The Ukrainian constitution specifies that elections are not to be held during wartime. The funniest part is the claim of "Russian language persecution." Every educated person in Ukraine speaks Russian, except maybe in the far west. I doubt even Zelensky or most of the high-level Ukrainian officials speak it very well. Many people speak a middling dialect. And even native Russian speakers may no longer identify as Russians any more than English-speaking Americans think of themselves as Brits. The same is true about the "persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church." That church has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian state since Peter the Great, so of course some of its congregations have been suppressed. Not all.
As far as foreign interference goes, Yanukovych was elected mainly as Putin's cats paw in Ukraine. He arrested his predecessor, wrecked much of Ukraine's military, and was clearly positioning himself as -at best- another Lukashenko. Refusing the EU agreement passed by parliament to accept Putin's offer clearly signaled his intentions. So the Ukrainians, with some US assistance, forced him out, although he only fled when it became apparent that Ukrainian forces would not machine gun their own people on Maidan. US assistance may have been a necessary condition, but certainly not a sufficient one given the depth of resistance.
The bottom line is that Putin invaded Ukraine thinking it would be an easy target. The "Biden" regime believed the same, which is why they offered Zelensky a ride out. The "Biden" regime was willing to sell out the whole country to Putin without lifting a finger. Trump believed he could easily bully and entice Putin with some economic deal. All this shows is he misunderstood both the Ukrainians' capacity for stubborn resistance and self-reliance and Putin's motivations, which are about glory and conquest for Russia, not money. Now Trump has reduced his leverage over Ukraine to almost nothing but is slowly tightening the screws on Russia. For the Ukrainians the best path is to play along with the talks and keep killing Russian soldiers faster than Putin can supply them.
“we do not want to force them into a deal by cutting off crucial aid”
Which aid are you talking about ?