RT
Let’s be clear: This is, in and of itself, a positive and badly overdue development. The recent, officially confirmed “lengthy and highly productive phone call” (Trump’s words) between the two leaders may not yet amount to a breakthrough. Even if Trump’s rhetoric – about a “successful conclusion, hopefully soon!” – already makes it look like one; Trump, it’s true, can be grandiloquent.
Yet the conversation does already serve as a big, heavy slab of a tombstone on America’s absurd and very dangerous policy of decrepitly stubborn non-communication. Moreover, Moscow has now confirmed that a full summit is in the making.
Even better, we also know already that neither Kiev nor the EU-NATO vassals were in the loop: There goes the daft, devious, and very deadly (for Ukrainians, too) mantra of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” And as a bonus: Soon there will be a lot about EU-NATO Europe without Europe. The fact that its leaders are, in the Financial Times’s words, “reel[ing]”and already clamoring for being heard merely confirms that they have been shunted aside.
Rest assured: whatever cosmetic role the Europeans may be allowed to play (or not), they are delusional if they think they’ll matter. In reality, the Trumpists are brutally frankabout what they have in mind for their underlings: Washington and Moscow make the decisions, the NATO-EU vassals fall in line and, also, pay for the outcome: Reconstructing Ukraine, Trump’s people feel, is for European budgets. And if – a big if, given Moscow’s objections – any Western troops somehow end up stationed in what will be left of Ukraine, then those too will be Europe’s very bad business to take care of as well.
Both steps look harsh, but they are necessary. In the case of Ukraine, its leadership needs to be deprived of its implied veto power over peace. Because, first, that power is not real anyhow. It has always served as a smokescreen to allow warmongers in the West – recall Boris Johnson, anyone? – to sell their proxy war as the “will of Ukraine,”while Ukrainians have been used up as cannon fodder.
As things seem to be shaping up now, the US has signaled that it is ready to accept crucial Russian war aims: Ukraine will not get into NATO and Moscow will retain territories conquered during the war, as Trump’s secretary of defense Pete Hegseth has made clear. Both points, it is true, require serious elaboration: Moscow has been explicit for years that it will not agree to any settlement that leaves open the possibility of a “sneak”-NATO membership for Ukraine, where the West’s war alliance arms, trains, and equips but without formal membership, as it has already done. If anyone in Washington – or somewhere in Europe, for that matter – still thinks they can cheat, again, Russia will keep fighting. A Russian red line is a red line is a red line.
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