Date: Sunday, 09 March 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/trumps-misrepresentation-of-his-ukraine
https://theduran.com/trumps-misrepresentation-of-his-ukraine-negotiations/
Trump’s Misrepresentation of His Ukraine Negotiations
8 March 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
U.S. President Trump is misrepresenting to allege that he is making progress in his attempt to get Ukraine’s leader Volodmyr Zelensky to accept ending the war in Ukraine on any other basis than defeating Russia outright (no compromise).
When I reported, on March 1st, about “The Trump-v.-Zelensky Comedy Show” which had been held at the White House on the prior day, February 28th, I explained that the reason for the blowup between the two men was Zelensky’s refusal to accept any other outcome from the war than a clear and humiliating defeat of Russia. Right after Zelensky’s meeting with Trump, Zelensky met with the leaders of UK and France; and, on March 3rd, Pavitra Shetty headlined at The Law Reporter, “Zelensky Stands Firm After Diplomatic Clash with Trump”, and reported that, “After an intense Oval Office meeting with Trump that turned confrontational, Zelensky was welcomed in the UK, where he held talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and King Charles III. In his final moments before departure, he made it clear that he would not apologize to Trump and stood firm on his position regarding the war in Ukraine. … He dismissed talk of [Russia’s “red”] ‘lines’ on a map [Russia’s refusal to allow America to place its nuclear missiles in Ukraine a mere 317 miles away from The Kremlin] and refused to discuss territorial compromises with Russia at this stage.”
This position by Zelensky was repeated on March 7th, when Newsweek headlined “Zelensky Won't Apologize to Trump Over 'Useful' Conversation: Aide”. The only thing that can be ‘negotiated’ with Russia is Russia’s surrender to Ukraine, according to Zelensky. That Democratic Party news magazine explained “Why It Matters” as follows: “With tensions between Trump and Zelensky having worsened, Ukraine's chances of maintaining its territorial integrity have been jeopardized.” The Democratic Party’s news-media (the news-media that are controlled by that Party’s billionaires) have been blaming the Republican U.S. President (supported by Republican Party billionaires) — NOT blaming Zelensky — for the blowup; and, so, according to their media, the courageous Zelensky was rejecting the Republican U.S. President Trump’s intention to negotiate regarding Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity’ (as that is being defined by Zelensky), which Zelensky (who blamed Russia 100% for the war) refused to do. Zelensky’s official spokesman Podolyak was quoted there as saying “Unlike us, the United States continues to think that Russia is a country with which one can negotiate.” Republican Party billionaires want their Government to conquer China before conquering Russia — not like Democratic Party billionaires, conquer Russia before China — and, so, Republican Party billionaires want their public to view Zelensky (instead of their man Trump) to be blamed for the likely defeat of Ukraine and NATO, by Russia.
So: Zelensky is, IN FACT, maintaining a 100% hard line on his position, against Trump’s position (whose position has become the Republican Party’s viewpoint). So long as Zelensky does that, Trump will have no chance at all of being able to arrange a summit with Putin. This means that Trump would have no chance to be able to use diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has already made clear that he would blame Putin and Russia — NOT Zelensky and Ukraine — for that. On March 7th NBC headlined “Trump threatens to impose 'large scale' sanctions on Russia until a peace agreement with Ukraine is reached”, and reported him saying on Trump Social: “Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.” So, OF COURSE Zelensky will be rewarded for refusing to budge. Trump gives him the biggest possible incentive to do that — even though he complains against Zelensky for DOING it. Does he have a brain? And is there any sincerity at all in that man when he is addressing the citizenry in public, or is his sincerity only in private to the billionaires who have funded his political career?
Here is the transcript CNN issued of Trump’s March 7th press conference, the part of it that referred to Putin and Ukraine (and here you can see and hear that part from Fox News’s telecast of the entire conference):
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) on Russia, if I may. President Putin is bombing Ukraine.
TRUMP: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you still believe him when he tells you that he wants peace?
TRUMP: Yes, no, I believe him. I believe him. I think we're doing very well with Russia. But right now, they're bombing the hell out of Ukraine. And Ukraine -- I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don't have the cards. They don't have the cards.
As you know, we're meeting in Saudi Arabia on -- sometime next week, early. And we're talking -- I find that in terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia, which is surprising, because they have all the cards.
I mean -- and they're bombing the hell out of them right now. And I put a statement in -- a very strong statement, you can't do that. You can't do that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --
TRUMP: Trying to -- we're trying to help them. And Ukraine has to get on the ball and get a job done.
Michael, could you come up here? I see Michael back there.
Good, I'm glad -- he's traveling all over the world. I just saw him come in the door.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
TRUMP: Could you give a little definition of what's going on, please?
MICHAEL WALTZ, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER OF THE UNITED STATES: Sure. Well, the president has been crystal clear, and he's been clear to all sides. The fighting has to stop. Both sides need to get to the table. We had a good engagement. Both leaders have said only President Trump could do so, and only he has been able to do so.
We had an initial engagement with the Russians. The Ukrainians had a great opportunity to bind our economies together through that mineral deal. Unfortunately, that didn't go so well. But we think we're going to get things back on track.
Secretary Rubio, myself, and the Ukrainian delegation will be meeting in Saudi Arabia next week to get these talks back on track, get a ceasefire in place, and drive peace home under President Trump's leadership.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, you put out --
TRUMP: I think both parties want to settle. I think if I wasn't president, this war would have had no chance of settlement, zero chance.
But I think we're going to get it settled and stopped. We got to stop. They're losing, on average, 2,000 soldiers a week. That's a lot of soldiers. Do you agree, Peter?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a lot of soldiers on both sides, I agree. Do you, Mr. President, think that Vladimir Putin is taking advantage of the U.S. pause right now on intelligence and military aid to Ukraine?
TRUMP: I actually think he's doing what anybody else would do. I think he's -- I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he's hitting them harder than he's been hitting them. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.
He wants to get it ended, and I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don't see it. It's crazy. They're taking tremendous punishment. I don't quite get it, but I suspect, Michael, he probably wants to get it ended.
WALTZ: He does, Mr. President. The Russians are taking incredible losses on the front. As the president has said, this is a meat grinder of people, of material, of national treasure, and no one else has any solutions except to let this war continue forever.
But I'll add, the president has had multiple conversations and a visit from President Macron of France, Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom. We have the NATO Secretary General coming next week. We have this meeting with the Ukrainians.
We've had it with the Russians. All of this in the president's first month in his leadership. We will engage in the shuttle diplomacy, and we will continue to use his leadership and what leverage we have to get both sides of the peace table. It's not going to be easy, but President Trump —
TRUMP: This war should have never happened. It would have never happened if I were president, but it did happen. So a lot of other things shouldn't have happened too. We shouldn't have 21 million people pouring into our country through open borders, many of whom are criminals, very bad criminals, including murderers, thousands of murderers.
Many killed far more than one person, and they're roaming our streets. But Tom Homan and Kristi Noem are doing an incredible job, and we're getting them out of here, and we'll get them out. We'll get them all out. But all these things shouldn't have happened.
We shouldn't have inflation. We shouldn't have had this horrible inflation where the prices have gone up. Look at eggs. So we're doing a good job. We're doing a good job.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, in regards to the pause on military assistance to Ukraine, you put out on your social media post today that Russia is pounding Ukraine.
TRUMP: That's right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not provide Ukraine with air defenses? And what happens, Mr. President, when Ukraine runs out of air defenses?
TRUMP: Well, because -- yes, yes, good question. Because I have to know that they [Ukraine] want to settle. I don't know that they want to settle. If they don't want to settle, we're out of there. Because we want them to settle. And I'm doing it to stop death. More important than anything else.
Secondarily, way down the line is the money. So we're in for $350 billion and Europe is in for $100 billion. They should be in for the same or more than us. And, you know, I watched over the last week or so what's going on in Europe.
This thing could end up in World War III if we don't get it settled. This could really end up in a World War III. We got to get it settled.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So on Iran?
TRUMP: This war should have never happened. It would have never happened if I were president, but it did happen. So a lot of other things shouldn't have happened too. We shouldn't have 21 million people pouring into our country through open borders, many of whom are criminals, very bad criminals, including murderers, thousands of murderers.
Many killed far more than one person, and they're roaming our streets.
He is lying when he says “we are doing very well with Russia,” and “they're bombing the hell out of them right now. And I put a statement in -- a very strong statement, you can't do that. You can't do that.” He is falsely assuming that Russia is the aggressor — started the war in Ukraine in 2022, instead of the truth, which is that America started the war in Ukraine in 2014, as I have thoroughly documented (in “Why America, the EU, and Ukraine, Should Lose to Russia in Ukraine’s War”) to be the actual HISTORY of this war: that the U.S. Government STARTED this war, Russia’s Government did NOT. Trump is instead continuing, from Obama and then from Biden, the lie about that matter; and this is quite fascinating, because he COULD simply blame THEM for this war and then say “Our so-called ‘news’-media have been deceiving you, all along, about this war,” but everyone except his die-hard faith-based fans knows that he lies routinely (as Obama and Biden and so many other recent U.S. Presidents ALSO have — and our ‘news’-media also have), and the only REAL way to prevent a WW3 from ultimately resulting from this is for the U.S. regime finally to ADMIT that IT (NOT Russia) started this war. Just as a drug-addict cannot overcome an addiction without FIRST admitting that oneself IS an addict, the U.S. regime must admit that it IS a regime and NOT a democracy. Only THEN can salvation become possible. Either Trump is as stupid as he pretends too be, or else he lacks the guts to do the right thing, even though he knows that it IS the right thing — REGARDLESS of what the billionaires who fund both of America’s political parties will allow to admit.
It wouldn’t be like a criminal admitting to a crime he didn’t commit in order to become able to get a reduced (“plea-bargained”) sentence for the one that maybe he DID actually commit; this is instead a crime that ALL of America’s rulers — all of America’s billionaires — have committed, and Trump will have to admit that their Government has committed it and has lied pshychopathically about it, in order for him to become then enabled to terminate the thousands of U.S.-empire lies that have sustained this war, and thus to PREVENT a WW3 to result FROM the war in Ukraine. In some ways, Trump SEEMS to have courage, but here he does NOT. Real truth is necessary in this case, and he is hiding it, NOT admitting it.
When Trump said of Ukraine, “I have to know that they want to settle. I don't know that they want to settle. If they don't want to settle, we're out of there,” he was threatening Zelensky in a way that Zelensky now obviously takes to be a mere bluff. During the past two-and-a-half years of this now 3-year-old war that has brought the world closer to a WW3 than even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Russia seems to be almost inevitably the likely winner of it, on all of the terms that Putin announced to the Russian public on the day of the invasion, 24 February 2022 (but which speech went almost entirely unreported by the media throughout the U.S. empire). In it, for example, he stated:
Any further expansion of the North Atlantic alliance’s infrastructure or the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us. Of course, the question is not about NATO itself. It merely serves as a tool of US foreign policy. The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape. Fully controlled from the outside, it is doing everything to attract NATO armed forces and obtain cutting-edge weapons.
For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation.
This is the basic reason why Russia can’t accept ANY of the U.S. Government’s demands regarding Ukraine. Regarding Ukraine — which is around 300 miles from hitting The Kremlin but 4,657 miles from hitting The White House, and thus presents enormous danger to Russia, but NONE to America (UKRAINE IS NONE OF AMERICA’S BUSINESS): To take Trump’s views seriously is to share in either his stupidity or his psychopathy. The U.S.-and-allied media do, but some prefer the OTHER Party’s strategy and tactics for achieving them.
So, Trump’s claim that “we are doing very well with Russia” is also a lie, because there is, as-of yet, zero indication that Russia will negotiate an end to this war on anything remotely resembling what have been Trump’s consistent demands upon Russia regarding Ukraine. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable that Trump will utterly fail on this, as he probably also will fail on so much else that he is promising to his public. He’s just another hack in the White House for America’s billionaires — to them, he really IS committed. And he doesn’t have the guts to reverse that — to switch to representing the American public, and to cease to represent America’s billionaires against the entire world (i.e., to end the “This is the Democrats versus the Republicans” HOAX).
Sadly, we are STILL heading toward WW3. Only the name of the tyrant — Trump now, instead of Biden, instead of the most-guilty of all, Obama, who started this — changes, but the regime does NOT.
Trump (who is himself a billionaire) would have to get off the billionaires’ gravy-train. How many people still think he would do any such thing?
For a typical example of how this works, a study published in 2022 by Bernstein Research found (as reported on its page 75) that, for one typical ‘defense’ corporation, Northrop Grumman, its “stock has outperformed the S&P 500 by 451% over the last 10 years.” Furthermore, “Defense stocks … also tend to outperform through recessions and are uncorrelated with inflation.” That’s the type of extraordinary profitability that a corporation which controls its own market normally achieves; and, in the U.S., ‘defense’ stocks started taking off like a rocket in 1991 and have been continuing that astounding growth ever since. The less necessary that a capitalist nation’s military is for protecting the nation, like in the U.S. since 1991 when the Soviet Union ended, the more profitable its military manufacturers are, because the corruption then becomes virtually unlimited (see this and this for the evidence). Right now, the U.S. Government spends 65% — almost two-thirds — of the entire world’s military expenditures — almost twice what all of the world’s 200 other nations together spend. Now, THAT’S corruption, on a massive scale! It’s shown right there, in those numbers.
America’s ONLY federal Department that has never been audited, the ‘Defense’ Department, is also the only federal Department that Trump and his biggest donor Elon Musk, are thus far NOT planning to cut -- and are the one federal Department that the American public want to cut THE MOST.
Only the tyrant’s name (and personal style) has changed, to protect the guilty.
America’s leaders are figureheads.
On March 8th, the great geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris headlined “Kiev’s Worst Defeat, Kursk Troops Surrounded Desperate, Mass Surrenders; US Shifts On Russian Terms”. However, on March 4th, Kanal13 headlined “Ukraine’s drones take 53 million tons of Russian oil offline, crippling 10% of refining capacity”. As I reported on March 2nd, “The Current Situation in the Ukraine War”, I noted that the Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel might have enabled Ukraine to mass-produce extraordinarily advanced drones that might enable Ukraine to turn this war into a stalemate, and I closed by saying that “The ‘Kursk moment‘ has not yet come — for EITHER side, in THIS war by Russia, against nazism.” So, Mercouris’s report might indicate to the contrary. Nonetheless, as between “stalemate” and “Russian victory,” I remain an agnostic. (Of course, I hope that Russia will outright win it.) The only thing that is clear to me — which is incontestable in the historical record — is that America, the EU, and Ukraine should lose to Russia in Ukraine’s war. And this is the chief reality that any truly great political leader in the U.S. and its empire (if such a leader even exists) will publicly acknowledge and explain, based upon that history. What should be, is much clearer than what is, about this war.
PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
