Russia and Ukraine

[Belacqua]

Trump takes the place of Chamberlain in this meeting: "accede to this deal that will dismember your nation, or fight on alone." Shameful day to be an American.

At least the Poles and other Europeans will still back Ukraine.

We hope.

The one bright thing about this is that this may be the kick in the ass Europe needs to get real serious about its own defense. This is proof the USA cannot be counted on.

Europe doesn't have the resources to keep the war going. Zelensky has said so. 

People have known for a long time that the USA cannot be counted on. 

So the Military Industrial Complex Blue Team was supporting a proxy war and it went badly. Ukraine can't win. The way the system works is that now the Military Industrial Complex Red Team is in office, so they can change course. They can say out loud that the US isn't willing to continue. 

One of the refreshing things about Trump is that he says the quiet parts out loud. The US has always been eager to get Ukraine's natural resources, so Trump just makes it a condition of continuing the war -- even though there's no point in continuing other than having an excuse to get the resources. 

The fight in the Oval Office led all the morning news programs in Japan, and of course it's all over Twitter. If you watch the whole meeting, the first 40 minutes or so are all very cordial, and Zelensky is on the brink of getting what he came for. Then he said stuff that you're only supposed to say when the cameras aren't there, and he made the whole thing more difficult. He messed up big time. 

There is still A LONG WAY to go before anything solid happens. 

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodit...025-02-28/

Ukrainian minerals are not easily accessible, and haven't been surveyed since the Soviet era. Even if the whole process starts now, with no interruption from nearby hostilities, the first usable minerals won't come out of the ground until Trump is out of office. And by that time a different representative of the Military Industrial Complex will be in power, and will be more than happy to do whatever is convenient for the US at that time. Anyway, there's no way Ukraine can hold out until then, if hostilities continue.

So the deal which was on the table, to hand over Ukraine's mineral wealth to the US in exchange for a few more months of a failed war, is not at all done yet. Trump wants peace, he says, though he may want the minerals more. But if he finds a way to get the minerals without continuing the war, no doubt he'd be satisfied with that. 

Anyway, Putin can wait and watch while the US changes its mind and eventually decides that it can make more money from a different war elsewhere. A lot of politicians still want hostilities with China, and the Middle East is always a good excuse for a few billion in defense spending.