So, President Donald Trump will meet with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. What can we expect?
Tomorrow, Friday, there’s a meeting scheduled between President Donald Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. What can we expect from that? What can we possibly expect from a meeting that is based on false assumptions?
One false assumption is that Donald Trump actually can make a deal here. He can’t. Yes, the United States provides plenty of military aid and civilian aid and whatever soft power aid the United States still has to Ukraine. But ironically, due to Trump’s America First policies, it’s actually been the Europeans onto which a lot of the burden has been shifted recently, especially Germany. Let’s not forget either that one of the driving forces behind the support for Ukraine from the outside has been Boris Johnson initially and still the United Kingdom.
And this pertains furthermore to a lot of equipment that is partially needed for air defense. But the other parts are needed for a form of ground warfare that isn’t really happening anymore. The war has transitioned to a drone war. Ukraine also has adopted a strategy in which they let the Russians come in and then exact heavy losses from them. When you see Ukraine losing a field, a village, some trees, this is all part of the strategy. Russian dictator Putin is sacrificing his own people and North Koreans and others for gains that are not any real gains. Any land that Ukraine right now is losing is coming at a heavy price for Russia. This is Ukrainian strategy. They’re defending. Russia chooses to attack.
Russia lost its best troops in the beginning of the war. And now what you see are soldiers on the Russian side that cannot even be described as soldiers. They’re just men, some of them almost children. It is a criminality what Putin is doing to his own people, not just to Ukraine.
Drone production is largely happening in Ukraine and is not as expensive as some of the other support. In addition, what some YouTube channels are faithfully reporting, but what major news outlets don’t always report, is the fact that Ukraine is succeeding in destroying Russian military and oil and gas infrastructure. Russia is getting weaker every day. The sanctions are working. The physical destruction caused by Ukraine inside Russia in its military infrastructure are working. Russian economy is failing.
So at this point, the best outcome out of whatever is happening tomorrow would be some kind of unconditional ceasefire. No ceasefire in the air because that would just take Ukraine’s ability to fight back away. No land swap. Well, in all honesty, a land swap would mean that Ukraine gets Russian territory—Russian territory, not just occupied Ukrainian territory. So that the terminology is wrong already.
Ukraine can’t give up territory because it’s in their constitution. Russia’s claims that their new regions are in their constitutions is—I don’t know. It is also horrible. This is also insulting. He put them in the constitution in order to conquer them. They are not in the original Russian constitution. This is all a lie. This is like you conquer something, then you put it in your constitution. No, this is different. The 1991 borders are Ukraine, including Crimea, including Donbas.
And I’ve said this before: Russia doesn’t want to give back territory because the Russian crimes in these areas that have been committed will become more visible. This is like when the Allied forces found out what happened in Nazi concentration camps. It will be—not on that order, but it will be on an order that is going to be devastating for the opinion that people have of Russia. We know that horrible things have happened in the occupied territories. This is another reason that Russia cannot get more territory—that there cannot be a land swap. Ukraine needs to get these areas back to protect whoever remains of their people.
So American opinion on Ukraine has been shifting towards Ukraine, partially because Donald Trump talked about it. Donald Trump has shifted in opinion because he said, to his credit, that whatever Putin is doing in Ukraine is disgusting. He complained that Putin talks a nice game and then keeps bombing. Putin is very good at propaganda.
So, whoever talks tomorrow with Donald Trump—whether it’s the real Vladimir Putin or one of his body doubles—will put on a good show. We already know he comes with maps. He’ll say, “Well, this territory back then, 150, 200, 500 years ago, was all Russian.” I don’t know who he thinks he’s talking to. This is no gullible person on the level of Oliver Stone or Tucker Carlson. You can put your narrative under those people. Donald Trump will probably not have the patience for that.
I can’t speak to whether Putin will be able to sway Trump in his direction. Certainly Trump has tried to use whatever influence he thought he had on Putin to use that to the benefit of ending the war. It has failed so far.
So Putin will try to charm Trump. Trump may seem to give in a little bit, but we just know that Putin can’t help himself. So, whatever will be talked about tomorrow, whatever we’ll hear from Trump afterwards—if you’re nervous about that, well, I am too. But, you know, that’s just the world we’re living in.
You can trust that Putin will not be able to contain himself. You can trust that Putin will continue to bomb. So if Trump makes a statement tomorrow that now it’s on Ukraine and Ukraine stands in the way of a peace deal, well then Ukraine has to say, “You know, I stand here with my European allies and the majority of the American people and respectfully please reconsider what you just said.”
And he will probably, because again, Putin will not be able to help himself.
Putin—he could withdraw every single soldier tomorrow. That wouldn’t solve his problems. His economic trouble is immense. He has lost people to war and to dictatorship. His country is suffering from a lack of people. There’s a potato shortage in Russia. They sent people to the war that were part of the workforce that repairs roads, bridges, power plants, and all of that. Russian society is not going to be very happy in the near future.
And you’ll hear all kinds of surveys, all kinds of reports, and you’ll see Russians talk on camera: “No, no, I love Putin and everything is fine.” I grew up in a colony of that country. I know how people are thinking in a dictatorship. I know they’ll say things in order to keep themselves out of trouble.
A system like Putin’s Russia can look strong and impenetrable till the moment it isn’t. In East Germany, till November 8th, 1989, everything was business as usual. You know, there were some people in Prague in the West German embassy in Czechoslovakia. There were some people in Hungary, but the East Germans basically said, “Oh, no, no, no problem.” November 9th in the evening, Günter Schabowski read out that the wall apparently is opened and people can now go to the West. That was it. One day to the other, from one day to the other, the Ceaușescu family found itself instead of their office in an alley. From one day to another, Saddam and Gaddafi were no longer in power. This is how quickly this can happen.
Russia is a house of cards held together by Vladimir Putin. And no, Trump can’t arrest him tomorrow. That would create a major international incident. And the United States is rightfully so not a part of the International Court of Justice. I say rightfully so because I don’t trust that institution necessarily and I sometimes am very skeptical towards institutional solutions like that. But that’s another topic.
Is it a good thing that Trump is meeting with Putin tomorrow? Maybe. Maybe, yes. Any effort to create at least a ceasefire is a step in the right direction. And let’s just be honest, the only reason we’re all skeptical is because of Donald Trump’s style of politics. If this wasn’t Donald Trump but somebody else, we’d probably all be excited.
So, what’ll happen at the meeting? Well, either something absolutely fantastic will happen or nothing much at all. Ukraine has continued resisting the genocide that Russia is waging against it. It will continue to do so. And Russia is damaged beyond repair.
Listen to people who know the economy of Russia. Listen to people who are reporting from Ukraine. They will tell you that yes, the Ukrainians are sick and tired of this war, but they don’t want to be governed by this butcher. They don’t.
And so if you care for democracy, if you care for peace, if you care for justice, you may well look at tomorrow with trepidation. But I’m rather sure that this trepidation will not be necessary. This is just another day. This is just another attempt at a meeting in which Putin will try to sway Donald Trump’s desire to make peace for whatever motive. And it will be just another day in which that will fail.
Thank you very much. I hope I’m right.
Ceterum censeo Ucrainam esse defendam. Слава Україні!
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
Erratic Attempts 