Behind the Trump-Zelensky clash

The Chinese have an old saying: the greatest misfortune that can befall a man is to live in interesting times. The truth of that ancient wisdom has now suddenly dawned on the rulers of the western world. 

The public row between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance hit the world with the force of a violent tsunami.

Western leaders must have looked at the extraordinary scenes coming out of the Oval Office with a mixture of stunned disbelief, shock and utter horror. That was quite understandable.

On the face of it, the cause of the unprecedented row in the Oval Office may seem almost trivial. For some weeks before the fateful meeting, Donald Trump had been boasting that he had arrived at a fantastic deal with the man in Kyiv, whereby the US would be handed control over vast quantities of mineral wealth, which (so we’re told) lie beneath the soil of Ukraine.

President Zelensky was supposed to be coming to Washington for the purpose of signing this deal – neither more nor less. In the event, however, things turned out differently.

Ironically, it was Zelensky himself who first raised the question of mineral rights, which he clearly intended as a bribe to the Americans. By dangling the tempting prospect of vast quantities of rare mineral wealth, offered in exchange for future arms deliveries, he hoped to entangle the Americans in a deal that would guarantee the continued flow of arms and cash to Kyiv.

Unfortunately for him, Trump interpreted the idea in quite a different sense. Arguing that the USA has already given the Ukrainians huge amounts of cash to subsidise their war (the sum of $350 billion was mentioned), he was expecting some kind of return on his capital outlay.

The businessman who now sits in the White House was thinking in purely commercial terms. He expected Ukrainians to hand over the rights to the aforementioned minerals in repayment for past generosity, not at all for an advance on future weapons supplies.

The two men were clearly talking at cross purposes. It was a comedy of errors that was pregnant with many tragic consequences.

What are the war aims of the different parties?

In order to shed light on all subsequent events, it is first of all necessary to state clearly what the war aims of the different parties to the dispute currently consist of.

In the course of the election campaign, Trump made it abundantly clear that the intention was to put an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, or at least to completely disentangle the USA from the disastrous conflict which was brought about by his predecessor, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., without any regard for the core interests of the United States.

Trump has since reiterated his position, which remains up to the present moment exactly what it was in the beginning.

Normalisation of relations with Russia is now very high on Donald Trump’s agenda / Image: public domain

However, it is impossible to understand this decision in isolation from Trump’s general strategy and worldview. And contrary to a widely held view, he does actually have such a strategy, and is following it with characteristic single-mindedness.

Many European leaders (not to mention the ones in Kyiv) seem to have extreme difficulty in understanding this. They have consistently underestimated Donald Trump. Consequently, they always assume that, when he makes a statement, he does not really mean it. Then they are astonished when they discover that, in fact, he did mean it all along.

The permanent bewilderment of these ladies and gentlemen is a reflection of their stubborn refusal to take Donald Trump seriously. But events are forcing them, reluctantly, to abandon this comforting vision. The last ones to admit this sad fact are President Macron of France and Sir Keir Starmer of Great Britain – without a shadow of a doubt, the most stupid and self-centred of all the stupid and self-centred European leaders. But more on them later.

To return to the United States, Trump has understood that America has now seriously overreached itself on the global stage. It has an enormous public debt (over $36 trillion), its inventory of weapons is extremely depleted, and it is faced with the alarming prospects of conflicts in the Middle East and the Asia/Pacific region for which it is not fully prepared.

Given this situation, he has decided that America must retreat from its global role and retrench behind its natural strategic borders – including Canada, the Panama Canal, Mexico and Greenland. Those are his priorities, and Europe must now take a back seat in US foreign policy.

A key element in this strategy is to repair relations with Russia, which were severely damaged by the aggressive imperialist policies of the Biden administration. It is an incredible fact that for the past three years there have been no contacts between the US and Russia in any official capacity. That was never the case even in the worst years of tension during the Cold War.

Normalisation of relations with Russia is now very high on Donald Trump’s agenda. This has immediately set alarm bells ringing in most European capitals, and above all in Kyiv, where Zelensky and his clique live in fear of an American sell-out in negotiations with Russia.

The war aims of the Ukrainian leadership are therefore diametrically opposed to those of Washington. The Americans are seeking peace in Ukraine through a deal with Russia which recognises the reality that the war is lost. But for Zelensky, peace is little short of suicide. It would mean the end of martial law, which removes the only serious obstacle to the convening of elections.

The legal term for his presidency has long since expired, and this is justification for Trump’s remark that he is a dictator who refuses to hold elections. The Americans are now pressing for elections in Ukraine – evidently because they are exasperated with Zelensky and would like to see the back of him. There is little doubt that he would lose any fair election at the present time, despite all claims to the contrary.

Ukraine’s war aims are therefore very simple. The war must be kept going at all costs, until Russia is finally defeated and driven out of all the occupied territories. The fact that this aim is so absurdly unreal that no one can really take it seriously does not prevent the ruling clique in Kyiv from pursuing it to the bitter end. They are entirely indifferent to the human cost involved in persisting in what is clearly an unwinnable war.

Certain things flow from this. Above all, they must by all means prevent the Americans from disengaging. Ukraine is entirely dependent on the steady flow of large amounts of cash and arms from the USA. The cutting off of all supplies would deal a mortal blow to them. And despite all the noise emanating from London and Paris, there is absolutely no way that the Europeans could possibly make up for the shortfall if that were to happen. Zelensky is fully aware of this fact and has admitted it publicly. 

It is in this context that we have to understand the ferocity of the argument over so-called mineral rights, and the violence of the conflict that erupted in the Oval Office as a result.

The relentless advance of the Russian army and the equally rapid collapse of morale on the Ukrainian side lend a growing sense of urgency, bordering on desperation, to somehow drag the United States into the conflict. Once we have understood this fact, the meaning of the diplomatic game that has been played out in recent weeks becomes transparently clear.

Enter Macron and Starmer 

The visit of Macron and Starmer to Washington was part of a strategy that has clearly been secretly put together with the men in Kyiv. The sole aim is to prevent the Americans from reaching a deal with Russia to end the conflict and also to prevent the eventual withdrawal of the USA from Europe – something which the Europeans fear more than anything else.

To this end, they used a few transparent tricks. Macron and Starmer were beating the drum for the so-called European ‘peacekeeping force’, which was intended to be sent to Ukraine after a deal had been reached, in order to guarantee a ceasefire. However, such a mission would be utterly impossible without the active involvement of the United States.

Macron turned up in Washington, oozing Gallic charm, lavishing the most extravagant praise on his “friend in the White House” / Image: Trump White House Archived, Flickr

If they could have convinced the man in the White House to accept what was referred to as a US ‘security guarantee’, it is quite clear what the next step would be. The Ukrainians would find an excuse to provoke the Russians into some kind of action which will be presented as a breach of the ceasefire. The so-called peacekeeping force would then move into action and immediately find itself in trouble, since the Russians enjoy an overwhelming superiority both in men and in armaments.

The Europeans would then call upon the Americans to come to their aid under the terms of the security guarantee. The Americans would respond and promptly be involved in a shooting war with Russia. The commencement of World War III would follow, to the horror of everyone, except for the Zelensky clique and the neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, for whom it would be a great success.

Such, at least, was the theory. But between theory and practice there is often a considerable gap. As we have pointed out, one of the main failings of the rulers of Europe is that they have consistently underestimated Donald Trump. They imagined that by a combination of flattery and clever manoeuvres, they could fool him and get him to change his position. They failed, and failed miserably.

Donald Trump may be many things, but a fool he is not. Macron turned up in Washington, oozing Gallic charm, lavishing the most extravagant praise on his “friend in the White House”, smiling and laughing at the president’s jokes, which he did not find the least bit amusing, and generally acting the court jester in the presence of the Emperor.

Trump responded by lavishing equally extravagant praise on his “friend in Paris”, shaking hands, smiling from ear to ear and generally being most agreeable. But all the time, he studiously avoided giving any firm answer to the Frenchman’s urgent request for support for his imaginary peacekeepers.

Realising that the purpose of this diplomatic minuet was to keep him dancing in ever-decreasing circles, at one point Macron became impatient and started to speak in French. Undisturbed by this somewhat impolite gesture, his ‘friend in the White House’ commented: “What a beautiful language! I didn’t understand a single word!”

Afterwards, his French ‘friend’ returned to Paris, just as empty handed as he had left it. It was, when all is said and done, a complete humiliation. He should have remembered the words of his countryman Charles de Gaulle: nations have no friends, only interests.

Exit Macron, enter Sir Keir

Observing with interest this Gallic comedy from the other side of the Atlantic, Sir Keir Starmer decided that somewhat different tactics were needed. Undaunted by the Frenchman’s failure, he worked out a different strategy with the aid of his highly professional advisers at the Foreign Office.

Not possessing any noteworthy charm of his own, and being, unlike the mercurial Macron, a typical stiff, boring and unimaginative English upper-class gentleman, he needed something special to present to the man in the White House. To this end, hidden in his inside pocket, he carried a secret weapon – something that could not fail to impress any American President – especially one called Donald J Trump.

To be fair, our prime minister made a most valiant effort to conceal his natural clumsiness and lack of communicative skills by an uncharacteristic display of body language, not limited to innumerable handshakes, but even extending daringly to physically touching the person of the US president (admittedly, only on the sleeve of his coat).

We do not know what effect this uncharacteristic display of familiarity had on the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, but to judge from the nervous grin that appeared fixed on the face of the British Prime Minister, he at least was overjoyed with his apparent success.

Sir Keir then produces the secret letter, which up to this point has been burning a hole in his pocket / Image: No 10, Flickr

It is difficult to convey the sense of embarrassment that any normal person in Britain would feel upon witnessing the following scene, which would not be out of place in a second-rate television situation comedy. Perhaps the best description was made later by a British journalist who unkindly compared Starmer to a nerdy schoolboy cosying up to the school bully.

To explain this interesting analogy, in every school there is a school bully, a tough kid that makes a habit of bullying small children and making their lives generally miserable. Such individuals are usually accompanied by a weedy little boy who is not strong enough to bully anybody, but imagines that by staying close to the tough guy, he can pretend to be tough himself.

This is a very fair analysis of what the British like to call their ‘special relationship’ with the United States of America – the equivalent of the school bully, but on a vastly expanded scale. One only has to add that the school bully invariably treats the attentions of the weedy little kid with the contempt that it deserves.

Greatly pleased with himself (presumably because, up to this moment, the president of the USA has not actually rewarded him with a kick up the posterior), Sir Keir then produces the secret letter, which up to this point has been burning a hole in his pocket. 

With a majestic flourish that one associates with a faithful butler delivering the morning mail to his master, he carefully hands this precious item to its eminent recipient, announcing proudly that it is nothing less than an invitation from King Charles III to Donald Trump Esquire to visit him, his wife and kids in the Palace at the earliest convenience.

Now, for some obscure reason, it is generally assumed in the British establishment and media that all American politicians and presidents are mightily impressed by the British monarchy – possibly because these days we do not have much more to be proud of.

Therefore, Starmer could not resist the temptation of making a pompous speech, in which he pointed out that this invitation was “very special”. It was the first time in the whole of human history that an American president has been invited to the Royal Palace TWICE! A great honour, indeed!

Curiously enough, Trump’s face did not display any particular emotion at the news although he graciously accepted the invitation, adding (whether deliberately or by mistake) that it would be a great pleasure for him to honour His Majesty with his presence.

Let us now draw a discreet curtain over the remaining procedure, which was merely a tedious repetition of what had previously happened with the French president. Starmer eventually plucked up sufficient courage to ask the question which had been nagging at his brain all the time: what about some kind of US security guarantee? 

Actually, he did not use that precise expression, since the Americans were somewhat allergic to it, but instead spoke of “a backstop” (whatever that might mean).

At this point, when things had seemed to be going so well, everything went into reverse. It was like the moment in the fairy story when at the stroke of midnight, Cinderella’s dress turns to rags and the magnificent coach and horses become a pumpkin drawn by a team of mice.

Trump replied with a mischievous air that he did not see the need for any such thing, since the British Army was well-known to be a splendid institution full of courageous young men who were quite capable of taking care of themselves, thank you very much. And to rub salt into an open wound, Trump asked Starmer whether he thought Britain could take on the Russians alone – to which he received no answer other than an embarrassed laugh.

Just like his French counterpart, Sir Keir Starmer returned to London empty-handed. True, he was rewarded with the gift of an American football shirt, which seemed to be a rather inadequate return for a very special invitation from his Britannic Majesty.

But the determined attempts to force the Americans to get involved militarily in Ukraine ended in a farce. It seemed that things could not get any worse. But then they did. 

The clash 

What transpired subsequently did not have to happen at all. Donald Trump – evidently suspicious of Zelensky’s motives – expressed the wish to cancel his visit to Washington that had been fixed for Friday. His misgivings must have been redoubled when Zelensky, ignoring the message from the President of the United States, insisted on coming.

So far, so bad. Nevertheless, Trump stated publicly that the Ukrainian president was indeed coming to Washington for the sole purpose, he said, of signing a deal on mineral rights that had already been drawn up and agreed in advance.

The problem is that our friend from Kyiv has a most peculiar way of expressing himself. For example, when he says yes, he really means no. And when he says no, he really means yes, and when he says maybe, it means nothing at all. Likewise, when he says he is for peace, he is in fact in favour of war. And so on, and so forth, endlessly.

This was once again the case over the famous deal on mineral rights. Did Zelensky agree to sign the aforementioned deal? Yes, he did. But he did not do this as an act of generosity to the United States, or to thank it for the vast quantities of arms and money he had received from it. Oh no! To part with something so immensely valuable, he was going to demand something in return, otherwise he was not going to sign anything.

What he wanted in return is simply stated: a firm declaration that the USA would provide Ukraine with a ‘security guarantee’. But he had made this request on innumerable occasions and had always been firmly turned down. Moreover, he noted with extreme displeasure the failure of his friends Macron and Starmer to extract any such guarantee during their trip to Washington.

The president of Ukraine was therefore not a happy man. In fact, he was already in an extremely bad mood. But this mood exploded into anger when he read the text of the document prepared by the Americans that he was expected to sign.

I have not seen the text of the agreement myself, but from what I understand it is a most peculiar document – a general vague declaration without any actual detail. It is roughly the same as the useless scrap of paper that Starmer brought back from Kyiv that established an unbreakable treaty between Britain and Ukraine for a period of no less than 100 years – although Starmer must be aware that it is doubtful that Ukraine will last even for 100 days, let alone years, without military support from the US which is now being withdrawn.

But let us leave legal niceties to one side. The plain fact is that there is no proof that the vast quantities of minerals mentioned in the deal actually exist at all, and if they do, they are far from readily available for mining and processing. The idea that the Americans could extract enormous profits from such a deal is therefore open to serious doubt.

But leave that to one side also. What concerned Zelensky more than legal niceties or geological realities was what was not included in the document. There was absolutely no mention of any security guarantee whatsoever! Zelensky was now incandescent with rage. 

The whole mineral issue, which he himself had dragged up initially, was intended as a bribe to obtain an American security guarantee that would tie the Americans inescapably to Ukraine and to its war, eventually bringing it into conflict with Russia. The whole elaborate swindle had absolutely no other purpose.

But what he now had in front of him was a deal whereby the Americans would pocket the bribe, but give nothing in exchange. He therefore made up his mind to go to Washington and make such a row that Donald Trump would understand what kind of a man he was dealing with.

Here we have the background to the subsequent events. There have been attempts in the western press to accuse Trump and Vance of organising an ‘ambush’ for the Ukrainian president, that it was they – specifically, Vance – who deliberately provoked a row.

Zelensky reiterated his demands for security guarantees before the television cameras and made other remarks that caused serious annoyance to his hosts, who eventually exploded / Image: President.gov.ua, Wikimedia Commons

But if one studies the whole of the available videos, it immediately becomes evident that the source of the aggression was not the Americans, but precisely Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy. 

From the very beginning, he went over to the offensive, on the principle that attack is the best form of defence. He chose to do this, not in the privacy of a conversation with Trump, but before the television screens – that is before an audience of millions of shocked American viewers.

It had been made very clear to him before he arrived that the text of the deal was not up for negotiation; that it had been thoroughly discussed and agreed – including by Zelensky himself; and that no changes or amendments could be made to it. Copies of the document were printed and pens were ready. The only thing that remained were the signatures. 

Despite this, he reiterated his demands for security guarantees before the television cameras and made other remarks that caused serious annoyance to his hosts, who eventually exploded. It is generally agreed that this was the first and only time that Donald Trump has publicly lost his temper with a foreign leader. It was certainly a sight to behold.

Many people who saw the incident have declared their shock at what they were seeing. But others – including myself – found the whole episode quite amusing, although the actual content had very serious implications indeed.

A friend of mine, having watched the clash in the Oval Office, said to me: “I could not stop laughing. But there’s a serious point about this. The millions of people watching this will be able to learn far more about the real situation than what they have learnt from the so-called free press over the last three years.”

He has a point. When, in the course of the heated argument, Donald Trump accused Zelensky of gambling with World War III, that was absolutely correct. Zelensky did this consistently, actively aided and abetted by Joseph Biden and his warmongering agent, Anthony Blinken. That they did not succeed was due entirely to the restraint shown by the Russians.

By the way, even now, when Ukraine is staring defeat in the face, Zelensky is still pursuing this same little game. In fact, it is – to use Donald Trump’s gambling analogy – the only card he has left to play now. 

There is not much point in going into the details, since by now everyone has had a chance to see the recording several times. Suffice it to say, that this clash has caused a severe, possibly irremediable, breach between Ukraine and the United States. It has also had a tremendous international impact, particularly in Europe, where it left the leaders reeling in a state of shock and disbelief.

The aftermath

There are now desperate attempts to salvage whatever they can from the wreckage. But that is far easier to say than to do. Immediately after the fracas in the Oval Office, the Ukrainian leader appeared in the studio of the Fox Broadcasting Company for yet another interview.

No doubt, he will have had his arm twisted to try to rectify his blunder in confronting the man in the White House in public. But Zelensky is far too conceited, arrogant and self-centred to admit a mistake, and only succeeded in compounding his errors even more.

Asked several times if he owed the president an apology, Zelensky typically dodged the question, confining himself to saying: “I respect the president and I respect the American people.” Evidently, expressions such as ‘I am sorry’ do not figure in his somewhat limited vocabulary.

Asked several times if he owed the president an apology, Zelensky typically dodged the question / Image: Kmu.gov.ua, Wikimedia Commons

Worse still, he appeared to think that he had been quite right to speak as he did: “I think we have to be very open and very honest, and am not sure we did something bad.”

The man from Kyiv later admitted that the clash was “not good” but he remained confident that his relationship with Trump could be salvaged.

“I just want to be honest and I just want our partners to understand the situation correctly and I want to understand everything correctly. That’s about us, not to lose our friendship,” he said.

A highly worthy sentiment, but not entirely appropriate in dealings with a man like Donald J Trump, who is known to be somewhat allergic to being contradicted and therefore not always sympathetic towards even the most open and honest critics. 

Even less is he likely to be impressed by a slippery and manipulative individual like Zelensky, whose openness and honesty is well-known to resemble that of a disreputable dealer in second-hand cars. 

This public confrontation clearly marks the beginning of the end for Zelensky, a man who is clearly obsessed with his own exaggerated sense of importance. For years he has become accustomed to being lavishly praised by all sides. He came to believe that he could go anywhere, walk into any Parliament, Senate, or even the British cabinet, and spout anything that came into his head, receiving applause and adulation.

This gave him an inflated sense of empowerment, whereby he feels entitled to make the most extravagant demands on governments and expects them to be met promptly and in full without any questions. 

He has succeeded in extracting enormous amounts of money, large amounts of which are missing and which have undoubtedly ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt officials and oligarchs.

No wonder Mr Zelensky is so keen to continue the war for which he is rewarded with such unstinting generosity. But for millions of Ukrainians suffering needlessly in senseless conflict, their only rewards are the deaths of sons, brothers and fathers, the destruction of their homes, and ultimately the destruction of their fatherland itself.

The war is lost 

A retired American lieutenant colonel was once asked if it was conceivable that the Russians could lose the war. He replied laconically that there was only one circumstance that could achieve such a result: that is if, one morning, the Russians woke up and forgot how to walk. He did not dignify the question with any further answers.

Russia has won. And this will have important consequences. Russia now emerges as an important world power. In the recent past, we have characterised Russia as a regional power. This definition is now seen to be totally inadequate. In fact, it is doubtful that was correct even before now.

Russia is clearly a global power, alongside the USA and China. Trump has understood this and is acting accordingly. And now, at last, at least some of the more intelligent bourgeois strategists in Europe have understood this also.

The Financial Times on 26 February 2025 contained a plaintive article by Martin Wolff, which, under the striking headline of ‘The US is now the enemy of the West’, concluded:

“These past two weeks have made two things clear. The first is that the US has decided to abandon the role in the world it assumed during the second world war. With Trump back in the White House, it has decided instead to become just another great power, indifferent to anything but its short-term interests, especially its material interests.”

That is correct. And Trump has drawn the necessary conclusions. Of course, in any war there will be many reverses and changes of fortune on the battlefield, and this was no exception. But in the last analysis, the balance of forces was far too uneven. Russia was too powerful not to prevail in the end.

The Ukrainian forces have been devastated to the point that a recovery is no longer possible / Image: own work

What was really remarkable about this war was the role of the mass media. From the beginning, the pages of the western press were full of reports of Ukrainian victories and crushing defeats for Russia – some true, many false and all absurdly exaggerated to create an entirely false impression. Realistic coverage of actual events on the battlefields was virtually non-existent. 

Western audiences were fed a constant stream of one-sided and misleading reports, which were concocted in Kyiv. This remains the case even at the present time, although increasingly a dim sense of reality is beginning to penetrate through the thick fog of propaganda.

One of the most frequent assertions (repeated even occasionally today) was that the Russian advance was so slow, amounting to the conquest of this or that village, that it amounted to little more than a stalemate. They are not able to take a single main city, so the story goes. It misses the point entirely.

Very early in the war, I quoted an important passage from Clausewitz’s celebrated classic On War, in which the great Prussian strategist pointed out that the purpose of war is not to conquer territory or cities, but to destroy the enemy’s forces. Once that aim has been achieved, victory is assured for obvious reasons.

That strategy has been consistently pursued by the Russian army, with devastating results. The Ukrainian forces have been devastated to the point that a recovery is no longer possible. The Russians have achieved a crushing superiority, both in numbers and armaments, which renders Ukrainian resistance increasingly difficult.

Articles have appeared even in the pro-Ukrainian media in the West which show the demoralised state of the Ukrainian soldiers at the front. There has been a wave of desertions, mutinies and refusals to fight for a cause that is clearly lost.

Ukrainian soldiers complain of a lack of arms, equipment and ammunition. But the most serious problem is a lack of manpower. Whereas at the beginning of the war, men were queuing up to join the army, it has now become virtually impossible to find recruits prepared to serve as cannon fodder.

The Russian advance is relentlessly proceeding towards the borders of the Donbas and from there towards the river Dnieper (Dnipro). At that point, there will be little to stop them advancing west. The war will have been decisively lost.

That is the decisive element in the equation that determines everything else. And no matter what may be decided in the West, nothing can be done now to change the result.

From a rational point of view, the only way out of the impasse would be for the Ukrainians to enter negotiations with the Russians, with a view to salvaging whatever might be salvaged from the wreckage brought about by this criminal and unnecessary conflict.

It is a hard fact of war – but a fact nonetheless that must be accepted – that the victors will dictate the terms to the vanquished. By prolonging the war long after it had lost any meaning, the Zelensky clique has now brought about precisely that situation. It is a result entirely of their own making.

They must now swallow a bitter pill and accept whatever terms Moscow is prepared to offer them. By continuing the war even now, when they know quite well that this will be doomed to failure, all that they will achieve is the needless slaughter of a large number of young men that will further worsen Ukraine’s appalling demographic catastrophe.

The ultimate result may well be the disappearance of Ukraine as a nation state altogether. Such is the disastrous consequence of the activities of reactionary Ukrainian nationalism and its imperialist backers. Yet there are those in the West who will persist in trying to continue this insane slaughter, with no end in sight. This brings us to the war aims of the Europeans.

The Europeans 

The Europeans are playing a criminal role in all this. When this war broke out in early 2022, some European leaders such as Macron and Olaf Scholz, were highly sceptical. Nevertheless, they went along with Biden’s project.

The Europeans are playing a criminal role in all this / Image: Number 10, Flickr

Others, however, such as Boris Johnson and the Nordic and Baltic leaders were exultant. They were so enthusiastic that they were jumping with joy at the prospect. And they were all completely convinced that Russia would soon be brought to its knees by a combination of sophisticated American arms and unprecedented economic sanctions.

They were going to flood Ukraine with modern weapons. Every single one was heralded as a game changer. That turned out to be a joke in very bad taste, although it must be said many people were deceived by this nonsense. But for anyone with eyes to see, it was very clear from the beginning: Ukraine could never win this war. It was a physical impossibility. 

That makes the Europeans’ opposition to Trump’s peace talk proposal even more cynical. The European leaders and Zelensky are intent on continuing the destruction of Ukraine and the sacrifice of its people, solely in order to tie Trump and the US to their own narrow interests. 

Ever since the election of Donald Trump, the western world has been shaken to the core by one setback after another in the treacherous field of diplomacy. 

Initially, they tried to comfort themselves with the illusion that things were not as bad as they might be. Surely, once he was safely installed in the White House, he would begin to see reason. Under the pressure of hostile public opinion (read: the Democratic Party) and the free press (read: the billionaire press controlled by the Democratic Party and its backers) he would abandon his wild ideas and settle down to be a normal bourgeois political leader.

But one by one, these illusions evaporated like soap bubbles in the air. Gradually, the truth has begun to dawn on the establishment, both in the USA and in Europe, that things have begun to change in a very dramatic direction. To use the colourful expression of JD Vance: “there’s a new sheriff in town!”

This was echoed in Martin Wolff’s article mentioned above:

“Donald Trump’s secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, (...) told the Europeans that they were now on their own. America was now principally concerned with its own borders and China. In sum: ‘Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO. As part of this Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine.’”

What we saw in the Oval Office was not just a violent argument between two unpredictable individuals. It was nothing less than the shattering of the entire world order that has existed since the end of the Second World War. This has caused alarm bells to ring in the corridors of power all over Europe. The western alliance is rapidly collapsing before their eyes and the leaders of Europe are scrambling to try to pick up the pieces. 

Everything now suggests that the old order of things, whereby the security of Europe was guaranteed by the military might of the USA, has gone forever. The Europeans will now have to come to terms with this uncomfortable truth and learn to live with the fact that, for the Americans, Europe is no longer so central to their interests as it once was.

This is no small matter. It represents a fundamental change in the entire edifice of world relations. And very serious consequences will flow from this fact. Wolff says that the USA is no longer an ally of Europe, it is their enemy. That puts it very nicely. Yet this is something that Starmer doesn’t understand. Both he and the entire British political establishment are living in the past. They actually believe that Britain is still a power in the world as it was a hundred years ago.

These ladies and gentlemen are so stupid that they cannot see that their pathetic overtures to Trump mean precisely nothing. When we read what is actually written about what Trump says, it immediately becomes evident that both Starmer and Macron returned empty-handed. Trump had promised them precisely nothing – at least on the essential question, which was US guarantees for a so-called European peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

Even now, at this late stage, when everyone knows that Ukraine has lost the war, the stupid European leaders are in a state of denial / Image: European Union, Wikimedia Commons

Even now, at this late stage, when everyone knows that Ukraine has lost the war, the stupid European leaders are in a state of denial. Immediately after the disastrous shouting match between Trump and Zelensky, they hastened to express their full support for the Ukrainian president, inviting him to a so-called peace conference in London.

The results of the conference were what one might expect: the usual meaningless declarations of solidarity with Ukraine, coupled with offers of economic and military assistance that they must know they’re unable to fulfil. Above all, they repeat like a mindless litany the pointless rhetoric about the European peacekeeping force, which is to be organised by the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’.

They cannot even speak in the name of Europe, since Europe is not united on this issue. Nor can they take a single step in this direction without the actual participation of the Americans, who have made it clear time and again that they are not in favour. Despite this, Starmer insists that he intends to go back to Washington to repeat his case once again. He is not likely to succeed, in which case the whole piece of nonsense will fall to the ground.

For their own selfish interests, European rulers are striving to prolong the bloody war in Ukraine and, if possible, to push the Americans into the conflict. They hypocritically present themselves as the ‘friends’ of Ukraine, while pursuing a policy that is both highly detrimental to the Ukrainians and, in the final analysis, without any real content.

Despite all the inflated promises delivered to Kyiv, European governments are in no position to step in and provide the enormous sums of money required to keep the war going nor to plug the gaping gap left by an American withdrawal.

Even if they were to agree and deliver everything they propose  – more money, more arms, so-called peacekeepers – which won’t be the case, that would not and could not possibly change the outcome of the war. At most, it could delay the result by a few months. That is all. 

By continuing to feed the Ukrainians’ false hopes of huge supplies of cash and arms in order to continue the war, they are helping to push Ukraine further and further in the direction of an abyss. With ‘friends’ like these, the Ukrainian people really do not need enemies.

London, 2 March, 2025