Trump throws Zelensky onto the third rail

It’s at best ignorant and at worst dishonest to quote the “then” part of an if-then  conditional as a standalone. I’m not one for defending war criminals but a textbook case is the oft repeated claim that President-elect Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State to be, one Henry Kissinger, said …

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

… when what he in fact said, in November 1968, was that if the Nixon Administration in waiting were to abandon Ngô Đình Diệm (Washington’s corrupt puppet in “South Vietnam”) then:

… word will go out to the world that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.

Since Mr Diệm was indeed abandoned I might be accused in this instance of pedantry, but the principle matters. On pragmatic as much as ethical grounds I object to mendacious or stupid reasoning, even when from quarters I’m broadly sympathetic to.

Park that thought.

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A mix of fog of war and pace of events makes what is happening and where things are headed, in Middle East as in Ukraine, so uncertain as to generate markedly divergent takes from pundits who have my ear. Especially when we add wishful thinking to the mix. A recent example was the Electronic Intifada joy at a Gaza ceasefire serially breached, in line with the habit of decades, by the genocidal apartheid state. It now looks certain that the “ceasefire” gave Trump a quick win prior to assuming office on January 20, to be followed by a quid pro quo in the form of the most vivid green light since 1948 for the “biblically ordained” expansion cherished by Israel’s far Right, whether of secular or religious stripe.

As for the Ukraine, here’s Caitlin Johnstone today …

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US “does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome for a negotiated settlement,” and that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” This comes as Trump announces that he is in talks with Vladimir Putin to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

… while Andrew Korybko, normally dismissive of Alt Media overegging, is uncharacteristically wild-eyed:

12 February 2025 will go down in history as the day when the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine officially began to end. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth started everything off by declaring that: Ukraine won’t join NATO; the US doesn’t believe that Ukraine can restore its pre-2014 borders; the US won’t deploy troops to the conflict zone; the US wants the Europeans to assume some peacekeeping responsibilities there instead; but the US won’t extend Article 5 guarantees to EU forces there.

For his part Simplicius the Thinker writes today that:

Hysteria Ignites as Trump Throws Ukraine on the Third Rail

Part two of our double-decker brings us to the maelstrom sweeping through today between Trump, Putin, and Ukraine which has sent shock waves through NATO’s Magical-Thinking Wonderland.

It began with Trump’s announcement of having finally reached Putin on the phone, which was this time confirmed by the Kremlin:

But everyone appears to be misreading the above, sent into swoons of bliss or outrage over the now “certain” war-ending peace talks set to take place.

I beg to differ.

If you read between the lines above, you’ll note Ukraine barely covered a fraction of the talk, which included artificial intelligence and a host of other geopolitical issues. Likewise, Trump’s guarded remarks in press statements afterwards also left much to be desired, for instance describing the only Ukraine-related ‘achievement’ of the talks being Putin acknowledging that ‘he would like to end the killing’.

This is the clear definition of reaching: Trump’s team is trying to sell the phone chat as a much larger leap of progress than it really was. The added declaration that Putin intends to meet Trump in Saudi Arabia was empty garnish, as no urgent date was set, and they were bound to meet at some point in the future anyway. The same goes for the timed release of “political prisoner” Mark Fogel, which was meant to dress up the occasion, to add grist to the narrative that Trump is making some big ‘headway’ with Russia—nothing of the sort; this is desperate trickery to mask the major failure of Trump’s braggadocio about swiftly ending the war.

In short: the talk was the perfunctory, basic exchange of pleasantries and customary political gestures, nothing more. If you read the actual quotes and soundbites from various Russian officials, it is clear that Russia is no closer to any real negotiations, and is merely indulging the US its moment in the limelight of ostensibly ‘leading the peace charge’. In fact, I believe Trump even said he offered Putin a temporary ceasefire, which was quickly swept under the rug after Putin declined.

I say the above because I was quite taken aback by the online reactions, particularly from well-known geopolitical cognoscenti, who have flown into premature declarations that the war is now officially nigh over, and the final performative phase of negotiations will proceed from here on out. They even convincingly link the recent seeming slow-down on the front to this, painting a portrait of Putin ‘winding down’ the action as a ‘gesture of good will’. I see no evidence of such a thing, and in fact Russian forces currently appear to be gearing up to escalate again, after spending a couple weeks using long range strikes to soften up the new defense lines Ukrainian troops had retreated to. That’s not to mention the massive strikes on Kiev and other cities carried out last night.

If anything, Trump just walked back his plans of ending the war swiftly after announcing that no ‘peace plan’ would be presented at the upcoming Munich conference, but rather instead Hegseth and Kellogg would be sent to “listen to what European partners have to say” before the US presumes to finalize any kind of plan.

The Telegraph, February 10, 25

This is clearly a step back rather than forward, and the desperate meaningless Putin conversation was likely the patch-up job meant to give the appearance that Trump’s big brawny peace initiative was still proceeding.

In actuality, there’s virtually nothing to talk about. Not only has Putin clearly dictated that no legal document can be signed with an illegitimate president like Zelensky ¹ – which itself puts off any “negotiations” until Zelensky is long gone – but the truth is, it’s hard to imagine any legal document being signed with the West at all. Russia has long suffered the betrayals of not only the various Minsk agreements, but endless other reneged ones in the past, from the ‘not-an-inch-eastward’ NATO understanding to the various treaties US pulled out of, as in the ABM Treaty.

Putin and other Kremlin officials have hinted at this before, but signing any long term foundational agreements with the US is folly because only four years later, another deep state neocon president can steal the election, be elected and immediately bin the agreement, if only to spite his previous rival. In such an uncertain political framework, in recent years known for its erratic and schizo-level politics, how can any foundational agreement in good faith be signed?

There remain many neocons still pushing for escalation against Russia which will certainly give Putin pause, vis-a-vis the point above. US congressman Joe Wilson from today:

That certainly doesn’t lend much confidence to a far-looking leader like Putin.

But there are now indications that perhaps Trump will not mind to eventually dump Ukraine entirely. His latest interview snippet evoked uproar as he outright admitted that Ukraine may end up entirely subsumed into Russia proper

:

Trump appears intent only on extracting recompense from Ukraine for the alleged hundreds of billions that the US gave them. The message seemed clear: Trump doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine as long as he gets his compensation.

Let’s reflect on that a moment. Eleven years ago this month the US engineered a regime change in Ukraine, condemning it to eight years of civil war then three and counting of Russia’s SMO. Having lied to Moscow about Minsk and much besides, Washington assured Kiev it had its back while openly bragging of value for money in bleeding Russia without loss of a single American life (but hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians). Now, to affirm the conditional part of Kissinger’s words, it speaks of taking that devastated country’s mineral wealth as payment for the privilege of being pushed into a war the US knew it had no chance of winning; a war calculated (however misguidedly) to weaken a rising power once thought of as just another vassal.

This all while Zelensky had to endure the humiliation of meeting with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent apparently for the sole purpose of ironing out the ‘critical minerals’ reimbursement deal, where it was again hinted that the Munich meeting would consist of nothing more than the signing ceremony for the mineral wealth handover.

This was followed by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech today at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, wherein Hegseth peremptorily outlined the US’ priorities:

No NATO, no 2014 borders, and very definitively: no US troops anywhere in Ukraine at any time, including as peace keepers after end of hostilities. ²

Oh, and the other big one: any European troops ever deployed to Ukraine will not be covered by Article 5. ³ Does it sound to anyone else like Trump’s team is purposely ‘feeding’ the European lambs to the Russian wolf on a silver platter?

Simplicius offers more in similar vein before asking:

… why in the world would Russia want a ceasefire that puts NATO troops literally on Russia’s border? The entire raison d’etre of the war was based on keeping NATO away—yet Russia is going to sign a ceasefire that permits a massive NATO coalition within tank firing distance of Russian villages?

The whole idea is absurd. It just further cements this simple fact: Putin is merely playing the gracious host, and indulging the West in its bold extravagances of peace ‘showmanship’. In reality, Russia would never brook such deals, and so the war will continue on to its most logical conclusions until Trump or the West cry uncle.

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1. Simplicius refers to the fact Zelensky’s term expired last May. His illegitimate status is more than a propaganda own-goal. It obstructs a peace treaty a subsequent leadership could renege on, citing Zelensky’s lack of legal authority to sign it.
2. For more on Hegsworth’s remarks, see today’s piece by John Mearsheimer.
3. Article 5 of the NATO charter mandates that an attack on a member state will trigger full Alliance support of that member state. Or does it?