Zelensky Turns Against Trump
Zelensky Turns Against Trump
The former president has previously praised the Ukrainian president, but was not sufficiently anti-Putin
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky recently sat down for an interview with CNN where he had some harsh words for former president, and current Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination for president, Donald Trump.
Former US President Donald Trump will be “against Americans” if he chooses to support Russia over Ukraine, the war-torn country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.
Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in Kyiv, Zelensky said he “can’t understand how Donald Trump can be on the side of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”
“It’s unbelievable,” he added.
It might seem strange that Zelensky would turn against Trump given that it was Trump who first really began to send weapons into Ukraine, which is part of what prompted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the first place, after his predecessor refused. Barack Obama, despite presiding over the 2014 Ukrainian coup that prompted Russia’s annexation of Crimea, made the point, that I agree with, that Russia’s interest in Ukraine would always be greater than the United States’s interest, and refused to send American weapons into Ukraine on that basis. In “The Obama Doctrine,” an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic near the end of his presidency, Obama says, “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” In response to a question from Goldberg about whether it might be beneficial for Putin to think that there might be consequences to his actions in Eastern Europe from the United States, Obama replies:
“There is no evidence in modern American foreign policy that that’s how people respond. People respond based on what their imperatives are, and if it’s really important to somebody, and it’s not that important to us, they know that, and we know that,” he said. “There are ways to deter, but it requires you to be very clear ahead of time about what is worth going to war for and what is not. Now, if there is somebody in this town that would claim that we would consider going to war with Russia over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, they should speak up and be very clear about it. The idea that talking tough or engaging in some military action that is tangential to that particular area is somehow going to influence the decision making of Russia or China is contrary to all the evidence we have seen over the last 50 years.”
Given that Russia did invade Ukraine despite warnings from the United States and NATO, not to mention an influx of western weapons and money beforehand, it seems clear that Obama was correct.
Back to Zelensky:
Zelensky said that he believed Trump — who also claimed he would end the conflict in one day if elected — did not understand Putin’s goals.
“I think Donald Trump doesn’t know Putin,” Zelensky said. “I know he met him… but he never fought with Putin. (The) American army never fought with the army of Russia. Never… I have a better understanding,” he said.
“I don’t think he understands that Putin will never stop,” he said.
Zelensky then insists that Russia is spreading misinformation in the West regarding the war to try to convince Americans to stop supporting the U.S. government backing Ukraine, such as inflating the number of Ukrainian casualties, but given that he has the same incentive that Russia has to spread misinformation to Americans to help his cause, and given the credible reports of corruption regarding the billions of dollars already sent to Ukraine by American taxpayers, it’s hard to take his claims or complaints seriously. In fact, let’s take a look at the corporate media’s endless mantra that “Ukraine will win,” or that they have already won, somehow, from Racket News.
A mass amount of misinformation is being spread in the United States about the Russia-Ukraine war, but it’s almost entirely in the opposite direction of the one that Zelensky is claiming.
But why has Zelensky turned against the politician largely responsible for beginning the gravy-train of American dollars and weapons that has been flowing into his country in Donald Trump? The answer is fairly simple, Zelensky’s hold on power in Ukraine depends entirely on the United States backing the war against Russia indefinitely, and Trump is talking about trying to end the war diplomatically which could possibly lead to Zelensky losing his office one way or another.
Remember that so long as Zelensky can declare that Ukraine is in an official state of emergency that elections are cancelled in Ukraine. This means that nobody in Ukraine can even challenge him for the presidency let alone meaningfully attempt to change course. This is the “democracy” the United States is spending billions to defend.
No Elections in "Democratic" Ukraine
So if the United States were to successfully work out a peace agreement with Russia and Ukraine under a second Trump presidency, a prospect I find highly unlikely despite his rhetoric, then Zelensky would be vulnerable to electoral defeat or to simply being removed as part of a peace agreement between the two countries. Obviously this gives Zelensky every incentive to work against diplomacy and to continually escalate the war against Russia. Military victory against Russia would obviously be his best case scenario, but is not realistic absent direct involvement by the U.S., so his only option to maintain power is the status quo: brutal, WWI-style trench warfare that goes nowhere with endless backing by U.S. taxpayers.
This means that the slightest hint of the United States changing their policy regarding this conflict is going to prompt Zelensky to go on a propaganda offensive, as we’re seeing here, with anti-Trump, corporate media outlets like CNN being all too happy to give him a non-adversarial platform to demand that Americans sacrifice even more so that he can continue to hold on to his power.
Donald Trump, however, is a notoriously thin-skinned and spiteful person, so Zelensky harshly criticizing him in a clear attempt to help President Biden beat him in the 2024 election may not sit well. My hope would be that it would prompt Trump to take an even harder line against continuing to fund Ukraine, though I doubt even if he does so rhetorically that it would amount to much in reality, but it would be nice if Zelensky’s attempt to influence an American election blew up spectacularly in his face. Especially considering the state of the economy for the average American while politicians continue sending our money into the Ukrainian blackhole without even the pretense of oversight.