On Zelensky’s ordeal at the Oval Office

It is impossible for a rational person acquainted with even a fraction of the relevant facts, and acting in good faith, to do other than conclude that Russia was intentionally provoked  to the point where her special military operation in the besieged Russian speaking oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk – the US-orchestrated coup of 2014 having triggered eight years of civil war, empowered Neo-Nazis and posed an intolerable threat to Russia’s security – was her least bad option. steel city scribe, below

The US isn’t suddenly ruled by billionaires now Trump is president; it was already ruled by billionaires. The US isn’t suddenly an empire bent on global domination now that Trump has been sworn in; that was already the case. But you’re not supposed to just come right out and say that. Caitlin Johnstone

I get physically ill watching liberals complain about Donald Trump, instead of what made people desperate enough to vote for him. Reverend Chris Hedges

Would those who haven’t yet seen it please take ten minutes to view this clip from Friday’s now infamous Oval Office meeting between US President Trump, his Vice President Vance, and the Ukraine Pretender, ¹ Zelensky? The full recording is fifty minutes, though two-minute clips have gone viral. Here I split the difference with six hundred sensational seconds.

For all his arrogance and worse, it’s hard not to feel for Zelensky: pushed into an unwinnable proxy war by Biden and an economically suicidal Europe, into a corner by Ukraine’s far-Right – and under a bus by Trump

Before considering reactions to that extraordinary confrontation, let me reassert a claim I and others have been making for three years. The Official Narrative parroted by Western corporate media, that in February 2022 Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, can no more stand up to even the most cursory examination of the evidence than can flat-earthery or denial of heliocentrism. It is not possible for a rational person acquainted with even a fraction of the relevant facts, and acting in good faith, to do other than conclude that Russia was intentionally provoked ² to the point where her special military operation in the besieged ethnically Russian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk (the US-orchestrated coup of 2014 having triggered eight years of civil war, empowered Neo-Nazis and posed an intolerable threat to Russia’s security) was for Moscow the least bad option. ³

The Banderite Azov Battalion in Kiev after the Maidan Coup of 2014, their banners a steal from Waffen SS iconography

This is far from the only reason for saying Russia was hugely provoked. Just the most graphic.

Let me also restate my opinion, argued in posts like this, that despite a tone markedly different from that of his predecessors, Trump represents greater continuity of foreign policy than either his detractors or admirers recognise. In backing Israel’s expansionism, to tighten US grip on the Middle East, Trump’s crime is to say out loud what Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden kept under wraps. The Ukraine bloodbath differs in that aims set out in a Rand Report of 2019 ⁴ were more modest. Where an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel furthers US geo-strategy decades in the making, US plans for the Ukraine were more opportunistic: to weaken a rising power thwarted at every turn, before finally doing what she should have done decades ago in pivoting to Asia, by US refusal to allow her to join the West except on terms dictated in Washington. ^{5 6}

More specific issues also arise from those heated Oval Office exchanges on Friday. One is the ‘Russiagate’ fabrication, thoroughly debunked but still irking Trump, as well it might when a lie can circle the globe twice before Truth is out of bed and putting on her running shoes. Another is Zelensky’s having publicly backed Kamala last autumn, a folly not lessened for being shared by most of Europe’s leaders.

Having set my own potted version of context – do please correct me if you find it wrong – here are two wholly predictable but monumentally ill informed responses.

The UK’s Independent, yesterday:

Zelensky has laid bare the ugly truth about Trump, the Godfather President:

The world owes the Ukrainian president a favour for showing us the true face of the pair of American gangsters who are waging war on truth and democracy. It may well go down in history as the most remarkable, brutal and shocking political event ever seen on live television. But it may prove more than a piece of TV history. It may be the moment an entire nation was wiped off the world map.

Or worse, it might trigger events that are a threat way beyond the borders of Ukraine.

A threat to the rest of Europe and, yes, a threat to Britain. There is no point denying it.

But the extraordinary televised clash between President Zelensky and Donald Trump and his sidekick JD Vance was not just momentous for what it meant to the global political situation. It was the moment the world saw the truth about three men.

On one side, Zelensky – physically small, but a giant in moral stature – the comedian who became an accidental hero, elected to lead his country only to see it invaded by the murderous totalitarian monster that is Vladimir Putin.

Such cartoonishly grandiose hyperbole! As for the thin veiled allusion to a Russia bent on sweeping west to goose-step the Champs Elysees and Mayfair, those who speak in these terms offer no evidence of any such intent because none exists. What would she do with such an empire? Given a vast country self sufficient in all but labour power (a problem for which immigration from Central Asia and beyond promises a solution less costly in every way) these are choleric ravings rooted in centuries of visceral Russophobia.

Tax specialist and modern monetary theorist Richard Murphy …

 … a UK economic, monetary and fiscal expert I frequently cite – but a geopolitical know-nothing who once in a while strays from his area of (considerable) expertise into spouting fact-defiant, unexamined liberal CorpSpeak best kept to himself:

Let’s be clear who is responsible for the war in Ukraine. Putin’s Russia has invaded Ukraine twice in little over a decade. Crimea was seized in 2014, and he invaded again in February 2022. Both acts were those of an aggressor. Ukraine was not in any way responsible for provoking these wars.

Let’s be clear not only that Russia was provoked for decades – I repeat, intentionally ⁷ – but that Crimea’s predominantly ethnic Russian and Turkish Tartar population responded to the US coup of February 2014, which unleashed Ukraine’s darkest elements, by voting the following month by 97% of an 83% turnout to annexe with Russia. In speaking of a Crimea ‘seized’, Professor Murphy shows not for the first time a lazily armchair abuse of his platform by pronouncing on matters he knows not the first thing about. ⁸

Trump‘s own behaviour on this issue is quite extraordinary. His suggestion that he could have prevented this war starting is completely unfounded.

One, Trump could have refrained from ousting the lawfully elected government of Viktor Yanukovych to shoe in one hand-picked by Victoria Nuland. ⁹ Two, he could have made clear that Ukraine would never join Nato. Three, he could have pushed hard for Minsk to be honoured. He’d certainly have managed the first since Nuland, a non aligned Neocon, served under Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden but not Trump. Whether he’d have done the second and third, when placed on the back foot by a Russiagate smear designed to do exactly that, is debatable. But since Richard writes “could” – not “would” – the only things “completely unfounded” here are his facile judgments.

The blame that he is heaping on President Zelenskyy for having permitted this war is completely unjustified.

Addicted to that hyperbolic, “completely”, Richard misses a partial truth. Mr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a ticket of mending fences with both Russia and, after five years of civil war, the Ukraine’s ethnically Russian eastern oblasts. He swiftly became a captive of the far Right and reneged on electoral promises – including honouring Minsk. ¹⁰ – which had garnered votes east and west.

The abuse that he is delivering against President Biden for his support for Ukraine during the course of this war is completely inappropriate.

How odd for a self-avowed Quaker to leap to the defence of a man who never saw a war he didn’t like, his administration steeped in personal ties to a multi-$tn arms-for-profit sector and ending with his graduation from Warmonger Joe to Genocide Joe!

His support for the aggressor in this war is wholly unjustified, and without political precedent in the USA, or elsewhere.

I’ve said all I need on that.

As you’ve likely noticed, my two selections barely scratch the surface of liberal media rage at Trump’s treatment of Zelensky. I won’t offer more when all labour under the same delusions. But let me repeat an invitation made earlier in this post. If you dispute my take,  get in touch – by email or BTL comment. You’ll get a courteous response and, since I do change my views in light of new facts, have your points contested or conceded.

Can’t say fairer than that, can I?

Finally, let me suggest a few pieces by pundits who actually know something, and prioritise reasoned argument over the ignorantly emotional:

• Andrew Korybko – Zelensky Picked His Fight With Trump & Vance After Getting Cold Feet About Making Peace

Zelensky was triggered after realizing that the Trump Administration wants to coerce him into peace with Putin and won’t be manipulated into prolonging, let alone escalating, the conflict after signing their rare earth minerals deal like he somehow expected that they would …

• Simplicius the Thinker – Bloodbath in the Oval Office

This seemingly trivial little speed bump likely has more significance than meets the eye. Despite appearing on character for Trump, his setting the tone of the meeting with such an obvious stinger implies that the now-famous ambush carried out moments later by him and Vance was pre-planned ….

• Ola Tunander – It’s Over Mr. President. It’s Over

Yesterday, a president was publicly disgraced and thrown out of the White House, because he didn’t understand that “No security guarantees” means “No security guarantees” and that he is losing on the battlefield. This reminds me of a similar event during a Vietnam War the CIA was unable to understand the U.S. was losing. In April 1975, at a White House meeting, President Ford, State Secretary Kissinger, Defense Secretary Schlesinger and CIA Director Bill Colby discussed the fact that Vietnamese troops were taking more and more territory. Colby was arguing for regrouping, to force a “North Vietnamese” retreat, but was confronted by Schlesinger: “It’s over Mr. President. It’s over” …

• Aaron Maté – Zelensky’s hostility to peace triggers White House meltdown

The meeting resulted in Zelensky’s ejection from the White House, cancellation of a planned minerals agreement and, according to one report, a review of continued US military assistance to Ukraine. For panicked cheerleaders of the proxy war against Russia, the consensus view is that Trump has betrayed a stalwart US ally, sided with an enemy in Moscow, and may have even deliberately triggered the clash to serve his treacherous agenda …

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1. Zelensky’s term expired last May. Kiev’s declaration of martial law does not legitimate his staying in office when the Ukraine Constitution stipulates that in such circumstances the Rada Speaker assumes interim leadership. Not only is all pretence of democracy and procedural rigour swept aside. A more immediate consequence is for peace talks when, as the Kremlin points out, any agreement signed by Zelensky could later be declared non binding on the ground he had no authority to make it.
2. See the 2019 Rand Report, Extending Russia, referenced and cited at length in my post, written on the eve of the SMO, Kazakhstan: why is the steppe on fire?
3. There are those, like Reagan Treasury appointee Paul Craig Roberts, who prior to 2022 argued that decades of appeasement by Moscow posed almost as grave a risk of nuclear war as Western aggression. See my post, Is Vladimir Putin too soft?
4. Again, see my post, Kazakhstan: why is the steppe on fire?
5. Last December, in a footnote to a post on Syria’s fall, I wrote:

   US Senator Lindsey Graham defended the $billions sent to Kiev (to be black-holed in that mire of sleaze, though the contractors had been paid so any loss was to US taxpayers) as “the best money we’ve ever spent” since it meant Ukrainians dying to further US goals. Graham is GOP but, in the blue corner, Antony Blinken urges Kiev to lower its conscription age so 18 year-olds may bleed out in an unwinnable war to keep Russia tied down. Neither Graham nor Blinken have ever seen active service.

6. While those US aims have been been unsuccessful as regards its proxy war in the Ukraine – with Russia militarily and economically stronger now than in 2022 – America’s biggest trade rival, the EU, has been irreparably weakened. As has the UK.
7. Within that camp, still a minority but a growing one, which defers to facts rather than the opinion-manufacturing narratives crafted by ruling elites, a further divide exists: between those who acknowledge Russia was provoked but condemn the SMO, and those like me who ask a question so far unanswered. After years of diplomatic rebuff, what alternative path could she have taken?
8. One of many critical issues Richard is oblivious to is that Crimea was Russian until 1954, when, for reasons lost in the mists of, Khruschev allotted this strategically vital Black Sea peninsula to the Ukraine. With all three entities in the USSR, the reclassification was an administrative detail, and might have remained one even after Ukraine’s secession. The Maidan coup of 2014 changed all that. Affirming for the nth time the law of unintended consequences, neither Victoria Nuland nor her bosses, Obama and Mrs Clinton, foresaw so swift a curtain call on Crimea’s sixty years in the Ukraine.
9. When Russia’s FSB released an eaves-dropped recording of Nuland’s phone call with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyott, the media-fest over her “fuck the EU” remark obscured the graver truth of a US Assistant Secretary of State calmly discussing who would/would not be allowed to serve in a government set to replace that of the incumbent but soon-to-be-ousted president.
10. Minsk I and II sought to implement in eastern Ukraine a principle more widely applicable (including to Georgia vis a vis South Ossetia). When one nation secedes from another, as the Ukraine had from the USSR, large ethnic populations in clearly identifiable territories should be consulted by referenda as to whether they wish to stay with the seceding state, have autonomy, or join the mother country. (It’s largely forgotten but two days before the SMO of February 24, 2022, Moscow recognised as autonomous the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.)

    Minsk is also significant for Angela Merkel’s boast – echoed by François Hollande and the Washington-anointed beneficiary of Yanukovych’s removal, Petro Poroshenko – of tricking Mr Putin by pretending to take Minsk seriously to buy time for Kiev to prepare for war.