Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The Ukrainian weekly Magazine ”The Kyiv Independent” came to a withering conclusion: Trump wants to end the war on terms favorable to Putin.
It summarized some of the week’s events: the phone call first with Putin, with excessive mutual praise, then the call with Zelensky (the order of the calls is important). Then, the US Secretary of Defense declared that returning to the pre-war borders was not “realistic”, nor was Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Immediately afterward, the Secretary of the Treasury went to Kyiv to force Zelensky to sign an agreement to hand over half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals to the United States, the value of which is much higher than all the military support received by the Ukrainian armed forces in the almost three years of war.
The magazine sarcastically commented, “Not everything went wrong for us. At least Trump didn’t declare war on Ukraine.” And, acidly, it points out that Putin will not only win the war but that he will win it with the full support of Trump and the United States.
It observed that the internal social atmosphere in Ukraine is one of resistance to any defeatist pact with Putin. One of the reasons for this is the 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been abducted by Russia and forcibly taken to that country, to turn them into “Russians, anti-Ukrainians”.
Obviously, there is also the idea that the war can continue, that the Ukrainian army is far from being defeated, and the notion of ceding Ukrainian territory to the Russians raises the specter of an unstable ceasefire and that the war of aggression will continue at another time.
That is the mood in Ukraine. The magazine believes that more significant effort should be made to mobilize the European Union and Great Britain in its favor. It notes that British Prime Minister Starmer has insisted that Ukraine be admitted to NATO immediately and without delay.
From another perspective, US Senator Lindsay Graham announced that the rare earth minerals issue is a “game-changer” for the United States in Ukraine. An emerging deal in which the United States takes over Ukraine’s minerals offers Washington billions of dollars in profits, ensuring a supply of minerals needed to strengthen the US military industry. The thinking of the new administration in Washington is mercantilist (including the idea of turning Gaza into a luxury resort, mainly by driving the Palestinians into the idle lands of Egypt).
These are the cards Zelensky will have to play in his search for European and British military and financial support in the face of the negotiations that are said to be starting between the United States and Russia in Saudi Arabia. In some cases, it is said that Kyiv will not be present in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but others claim that it will be present.
For the time being, Kyiv has said, quite rightly, that it will not attend a conversation where it does not even know the initial rules of the game, starting with knowing who it will be talking to.
On the other hand, widespread sentiment in the United States continues to support Ukraine and oppose Russia as the aggressor. Various US media outlets reject the idea that to emerge minimally viable, Ukraine should pay with its natural wealth a kind of “post-war reparation” instead of making the Russian aggressor pay for the war reparations. It’s the world upside down.
Finally, there is the idea that the solution to achieve a “lasting peace” in that part of the world is still a long way off. Perhaps it will never be achieved.
@rpascoep
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