When a war is built on lies, making peace will hurt the liars
Let’s play a game: It’s called “Putin says, and so does Trump.” Because, recently, after years of disagreeing on, really, everything – from the order of the world to the meaning of simple phrases such as “not one inch” – the leaderships of Russia and the US have suddenly found not merely a common language, but a lot to agree on.
In particular regarding Ukraine, which used to be the Ground Zero of their great disagreement. That’s a good thing in case you wonder. As in, the good things that keep the world from burning, literally. The US president has just observed that World War III had become a real possibility under the preceding Biden/Harris (or whoever was really in charge) administration. And he’s correct: There’s a reason why the metaphorical fingers of the famous Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have crept “closer than ever” to “midnight.”
Now, the American president agrees with the Russian one that Ukraine’s leader Vladimir Zelensky is one election short. Indeed, in a withering social media post, Trump has been blunt: Zelensky is a “dictator.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin also see eye to eye concerning the root cause of the Ukraine War, namely NATO’s – that is, let’s be frank, America’s – predictably catastrophic yet perniciously obstinate policy of overreach. That in turn, means Trump and Putin also share a sensible and rather traditional assumption which – somehow – many in the West’s elites have managed to forget: namely that all great powers have legitimate security interests in their neighborhood.
With thinking in Washington and Moscow converging this far, it is no wonder that there is agreement now as well on centering their relationship on sensible and mutually respectful dialogue on national interests.
And speaking of national interests, Trump has been clear that he can’t recognize any in sinking ceaseless billions into the Zelensky regime, its war, and its humungous corruption. True, the American president may have gotten his precise figures wrong, but for all the NAFO-id “fact-checkers” (i.e. info-warriors) out there: Don’t be silly: Trump’s key point stands, whether the US has wasted 500 or somewhere between 100 and 200 billion dollars on this bloody and stupid business.
So does, by the way, his characterization of Zelensky as a “dictator.” I know, for many in the West it feels like root canal extraction to finally face that reality, but the Zelensky regime is authoritarian and its leader had no right to give himself a waver on his last election. Therefore, his term ran out on 20 May 2024. Since then, like it or not, Zelensky’s legitimacy has at the very best been in an extremely murky gray zone. Moreover, he did not turn so bossy because of the military escalation of February 2022. In reality, his many prewar opponents and critics in Ukraine were accusing him – correctly – of severe authoritarian tendencies in 2021 already.
And make no mistake: this is not a “soft” authoritarianism. It hasn’t “merely” muzzled the media, as even the staunchly bellicist New York Times has admitted. Instead, this is a regime with teeth and claws and a great appetite for harsh repression. Ask the members supportterts of the 11 – yes: 11 – opposition parties the Zelensky regime has long suppressed. Or the clergy and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) that has simply been banned. There are also individuals suppressed by police-state methods and even murdered in detention. Consider the cases of, for instance, the socialist activist Bohdan Syrotiuk, currently being subjected to a political trial, and the libertarian Gonzalo Lira, a US citizen and social media journalist, whom Ukrainian authorities tortured and killed for his criticism of the proxy war and the Zelensky regime (and also robbed him).
As should be clear by now, Trump and Putin and more broadly Russia and the US are not agreeing because of some dark Russian information war magic. Zelensky’s silly – and very arrogant – attempt to depict the American president as a helpless victim of Moscow’s “disinformation” only made Trump even angrier. And rightly so. Because the reason for the new spirit of agreement between Washington and Moscow is simple: Regarding Ukraine, the US government under Trump has rediscovered reality.
That reality includes another fact Kiev hates to hear about: Russia, in Trump’s words, has “the cards” in the war. True again: Moscow does have the upper hand on the ground, and any negotiation that aims to actually end this senseless war will have to start from that reality. If not, the war won’t end.
It is true that there are rumors – partly due to Germany’s Annalena “360 Degrees” Baerbock not mastering the diplomatic art of discretion (surprise!) – about insane EU-European ideas of pumping another 700 billion euros into the meatgrinder. But Euro-fantasies tend to fall short. And even if they don’t this time, all that would happen is making the EU’s economic malaise much deeper and Ukraine’s defeat much worse.
In that regard, let’s not overlook something simple but very important about Trump’s harsh approach to Zelensky and his regime: As US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has highlighted on Fox News, the US president is exerting pressure to speed up the process of ending the war by diplomacy. About that, Trump is, of course, absolutely right, because every single day of fighting is completely superfluous. This war should not only never have happened, it is also over. For those not blinded by wishful thinking and ideology, the result is clear: Russia has won. The sooner this futile madness finally ends, the more Ukrainians – and Russians, too – won’t be killed, injured, or maimed for life in a fight that does not even have a prospect of making a difference.
Trump’s political opponents are, of course, trying to exploit this moment, namely by shouting “betrayal!” Such as senator Richard Blumenthal from the Democratic Party, for instance. For good measure, the senator also denounced the president’s actions as “utterly despicable” and “disgusting.” Trump, he charged, has disregarded the “truth” and the “sacrifice of brave [Ukrainian] men and women who are upholding their freedom and ours.”
Really? Let’s talk about the truth then: In reality, Ukrainians have been sacrificed indeed, but not for anyone’s “freedom.” Instead they have been used as cannon fodder in a proxy war that was explicitly designed to inflict a strategic, that is, crippling defeat on Russia. Ukraine has been devastated but not for any noble values, whether “freedom,”“democracy,” or even gay parades and mixed bathrooms. Ukraine has been sacrificed, as so many before, in a US play for geopolitical advantage.
Trump is right to pull the plug on all of this. And he is right to stop babying Zelensky and his regime. And he is right to agree with Putin where both simply agree with reality.
