While the Ukrainian situation in the battlefield keeps getting from bad to worse, and in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s resigning from the Presidential race, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team have to re-caliber their approach to the bilateral relations with the US, without which they can’t continue their disastrous war effort.
But in doing so, Zelensky has to pay close attention to the public opinion in his country, so he is presently doing parallel PR movements: one towards the Trump world and other publicly repudiating it for domestic consumption.
It is now reported that his team has long been ‘gaming out’ what Donald Trump’s victory will mean for their expectation of aid on the war against Russia.
Time Reported
“’The first eight or ten months, basically all of 2025, would be very hard’, a senior Ukrainian official tells TIME, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Trump would be likely to slash aid to Ukraine and push Zelensky to accept a peace deal skewed heavily in Russia’s favor. Like previous U.S. presidents, Trump could also seek a reset in relations with Vladimir Putin at the start of his term.
‘But over time he will see that Putin cannot be trusted’, the Ukrainian official says. More important, he adds, Trump will eventually realize ‘that Putin can’t care less about Trump and his agenda. That’s when we could start to see some advantages from Trump. He will not want to be played by Putin’.”
The Time article dwells on this hope from Ukrainian officials, and show us just how much they misunderstand the specific Trump phenomenon and the wider populist movement that surrounds him.
In their process of courting Trump, they also leak their ‘simmering frustration’ with feeble Biden.
Zelensky ´repares for the return of Trump.
While Zelensky praised Biden after his withdrawal from the Presidential race, his team is out there – off the record – throwing him under the bus.
“Over the past two years, however, Zelensky and his allies have often complained that the U.S. response to the Russian invasion has been too slow under Biden, too hesitant, and too distracted by fears of Russian escalation. A growing number of them believe that if Trump takes power and decides at some point to help Ukraine, U.S. support would become more decisive.”
This echoes the position by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who says Trump has ‘the strength and the bravery to fix [the war], to save Ukraine, to bring peace — and to stop the disastrous contagion of conflict’.
“In choosing his running mate last week, Trump sided with the more isolationist wing of his party; Senator J.D. Vance has been among the fiercest opponents of American involvement in Ukraine. But some in Kyiv maintain hope that Vance, in the role of vice president, could also be swayed over time. ‘He’s like a pendulum’, the senior Ukrainian official says. ‘His position swings from one side to the other’, he added, noting that, in the past, Vance had been one of Trump’s most strident Republican critics.
In trying to win over Trump and Vance, the Ukrainians are also counting on help from their allies in Europe and from the U.S. military industrial complex, which stands to earn enormous profits from the continued production of weapons for Ukraine. ‘They can explain to [Trump] why this benefits many people in America, especially in red states,” says the senior official. ‘It creates jobs. It supports the economy’.”
This PR offensive is counterbalanced by the Zelensky’s heavy questioning of Trump’s plans while in Britain, insisting that Ukraine ‘will not be pressured to make large territorial concessions to Russia’.
Washington Examiner reported:
“’The question is, what is the price [for peace]? And who will pay? So do you think you might pay?’ Zelensky told the BBC during his visit to London on Friday. ‘If he wants to do it during 24 hours, the simple way is to push us to pay… It means just stop, and give, and forget. Sanctions out, everything out. Putin will take the land’.
‘We will never go on this. Never. And there is no guy in the world who can push us to do it’, Zelensky said.”
He insisted that ‘people are important but it doesn’t mean we can give them 30% of our land’.
“’First, it’s our land. Secondly, who says they won’t go further’, Zelensky said, according to a BBC translation during the portion of the interview in which Zelensky spoke Ukrainian. ‘Who said Putin does not simply want us destroyed? He does’.”
Read more:
PEACEMAKERS: Orbán Writes to EU Leaders That Trump ‘Has Detailed and Well-Founded Plans’ to End the War in Ukraine
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