There is not a lot of complexity to the ongoing war in Ukraine. In early 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin amassed tanks and troops at the nation\u2019s eastern and northern borders. He created a pretense under which he might present his country as protecting separatists operating in a portion of Ukraine occupied by Russia eight years prior. And then he swept in, aiming to quickly subjugate the Western-allied nation and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t prove to be that easy. Ukrainian forces, with support from the United States and other European allies, were able to disrupt and then stall Russia\u2019s invasion. For more than two years now, the conflict has been at a near-impasse, with Russia holding an expanded segment of eastern Ukraine but little more.<\/p>\n
For many Americans and many in the U.S. government, Putin\u2019s initial failure was a remarkable success. Here was an allied, democratic nation fending off \u2014 at least for now \u2014 an authoritarian regime bent on Ukraine\u2019s subjugation. But asked to pick between autocracy and democracy \u2014 and particularly when asked to pick between Putin and a traditional American ally \u2014 Donald Trump chose Russia.<\/p>\n
He immediately embraced Putin\u2019s conceit that the separatists needed Russian protection, calling it \u201cgenius\u201d and \u201csmart.\u201d He figured that it was \u201cvery smart\u201d for Putin to annex an entire country for the price of \u201c$2 worth of sanctions.\u201d And then, as Putin\u2019s genius invasion ground to a halt, Trump soon began elevating skepticism about Ukraine\u2019s odds of success and the utility of continuing to back the effort. This argument trickled out into the broader MAGAverse.<\/p>\n
The conflict is ongoing. And speaking to a podcaster this week, Trump identified the culprit: Zelensky.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so bad what they\u2019re doing with the money,\u201d Trump said, referring to the Biden administration and what Trump presents as profligate spending. \u201cThe billions and billions of dollars. I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I\u2019ve ever seen. Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There\u2019s never been.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t want to help him because I feel very badly for those people,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut he should never have let that war start. That war\u2019s a loser.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump noted that the country had been tremendously damaged by the conflict \u2014 a conflict that, again, was a function of Russian aggression.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should have been settled before it started,\u201d he insisted. \u201cIt would have been so easy if we had a president with half a brain, it would have been easy to settle.\u201d At another point in the interview, he claimed not for the first time that, should he win the presidency in November, he would quickly and easily bring the war to an end.<\/p>\n
The response to Trump\u2019s latest comments have understandably focused on his assertion that Zelensky \u201cshould never have let that war start.\u201d Even in the context of Trump\u2019s long-standing obsequiousness to Putin, it\u2019s hard to understand how Zelensky would have prevented having his nation be invaded. He could, in theory, have taken the approach that many Trump allies have since endorsed: simply agreeing to cede some or all of Ukraine to Russia, a move that would have prevented the damage incurred to the country\u2019s buildings but amplified the damage done to its sovereignty.<\/p>\n
It is generally understood that Trump\u2019s promises to bring the war to a rapid end would likely mirror this approach. Were the United States to withhold aid to Ukraine to afford Trump a political victory \u2014 a phrase which might sound familiar from his 2019 impeachment \u2014 the result would presumably be a capitulation on Zelensky\u2019s part in favor of Putin. The United States doesn\u2019t have leverage over Russia beyond the threat of our directly engaging in the conflict, something no president would threaten \u2014 particularly if that president were Donald Trump. We do have leverage over Zelensky, which a president could threaten \u2014 particularly if that president were Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s suggestion that it\u2019s somehow Zelensky\u2019s fault that his country was targeted by Russia has some familiar undertones. It is the case that the weaker kid could have avoided being beaten by the bully, for example; the weaker kid simply needed to hand over the dollar as requested. There are any number of other examples of blaming victims of assault for being victimized, of course, like that the victims are simply awestruck at being in the presence of a celebrity. The subtext of abuse and the excuses of abusers here are unavoidable.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t know how often Trump and Putin have spoken since the full-scale invasion got underway in 2022. It\u2019s likely that it has been at least a half-dozen times, according to reporting from The Washington Post\u2019s Bob Woodward. It seems very possible that, given Trump\u2019s ear, Putin might have offered up the sort of history-adjacent rationalization that he has presented elsewhere, including to Trump\u2019s ally Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump once emerged from a meeting with Putin and declared to the world that he equated Putin\u2019s word about Russia\u2019s 2016 election interference with that of America\u2019s intelligence officials. It\u2019s not a stretch to think that Trump might similarly accept an assertion from Putin that Zelensky forced him to invade against his will.<\/p>\n
At other points since the invasion, Trump has insisted that Putin would never have invaded had Trump remained president. He claims to have had conversations in which Putin indicated that Ukraine was \u201cthe apple of his eye,\u201d to use Trump\u2019s phrasing, but Trump told him hands off. So Putin kept his hands off \u2014 until Joe Biden was president and \u2026 Ukraine let Russia invade?<\/p>\n
None of this makes sense unless we view this not through the lens of geopolitics but through the lens of Trump. To Trump, the powerful do what they want and the less-powerful are expected to acquiesce. No more, no less. So it is with Ukraine. So it is with everyone else.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There is not a lot of complexity to the ongoing war in Ukraine. In early 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin amassed tanks and troops at the nation\u2019s eastern and northern borders. He created a pretense under which he might present his country as protecting separatists operating in a portion of Ukraine occupied by Russia eight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}