Putin suggests to Trump and Xi that the three of them 'divide up' Ukraine. What will this lead to?
A bit of history
I remember the period when relations between Ukraine and the United States were "frosty." That was when Russia played its card: the Russians started a media frenzy claiming that Ukraine had allegedly sold passive radar reconnaissance stations to Saddam Hussein's regime. The Russian provocateurs achieved their goal: Ukraine's path toward NATO and the EU was blocked. The West significantly curtailed its contacts with Leonid Kuchma, and efforts began to portray Ukraine as a pariah, cut off from the Euro-Atlantic cultural community.
It was very strange and painful to witness the process of Ukraine's becoming North Korea-like. Even the fact that Ukraine had previously, under pressure from the US and Russia, disarmed and signed the Budapest Memorandum – which was very weak in terms of safeguarding Ukraine's national interests – did nothing to save the situation.
Ultimately, after Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown in 2003 by an international coalition led by the United States and Great Britain, no trace of Ukraine's Kolchuga radar systems was ever found. Yet the Russian provocation against Ukraine had worked. No one apologized to Ukraine. Everyone simply pretended nothing had happened and brushed the whole affair aside as a minor issue.
But Ukraine had suffered a devastating geopolitical blow. The country was pushed away from Western civilization and found itself back within Moscow's sphere of influence. Ukraine's political elites were demoralized. The pro-Russian fifth column within the country's governing structures received a powerful signal: the European path was "frozen," and the familiar Russian-style corruption schemes could be restored.
Of course, Ukrainian delegations continued to travel to Brussels and Strasbourg. Ukrainian and EU officials, standing against backdrops of Ukrainian and EU flags, continued to recite the ritualistic assurances that "the doors of the EU – and, for a time, even NATO – remain open to Ukraine." But everyone understood what was really happening.
Russia was restoring and refining its corruption networks in Ukraine. It continued to use the already well-established "gas" schemes, creating shell companies that purchased Russian gas at special prices personally granted by Putin and then sold it in Ukraine at entirely different prices. Representatives of the Russian-Ukrainian state corruption apparatus pocketed the difference. And that "spread" amounted to billions of dollars.
It now appears that the Kremlin is expanding the scale of its operations and drawing U.S. President Donald Trump and his business associates into its web of corruption.
Today, Putin finds himself in a Zugzwang situation. Instead of a blitzkrieg, he has ended up with a war that is also destroying Russia. The Russian dictator is therefore trying to bring China – and even the United States – openly onto his side, using the American president, Donald Trump, as his intermediary.
Putin wants both Trump and Xi to share responsibility for his crime, to bind them to it through bloodshed and turn them into his accomplices. He wants to transform a new Munich-style deal into a conspiracy of global proportions.
It appears that Putin is making headway on the American front. The statements Donald Trump is making now suggest that the world has been turned upside down. The U.S. president has described Russia's conduct toward Ukraine – including its attacks on Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and attack drones – as perfectly acceptable.
Trump said:
"Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't been doing much."
In other words, "Russia has been behaving perfectly acceptably toward Ukraine" and "they [the Russians – ed.] haven't really been doing anything."
In my view, statements like these encourage Putin to continue killing Ukrainian citizens, including children.
I know that not all of Trump's supporters will hear us. For many of them, you and I are nothing more than microorganisms, with no right to self-identification or independent existence in this cynical world, a world divided into "spheres of influence" by its largest predators.
The American political commentator Tucker Carlson made this paradigm abundantly clear in his interview with British Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg. With people like Carlson, everything is clear enough: they will help Putin destroy Ukraine.
But the rest of the world must understand one thing: what Putin is offering Trump and Xi is a road to a major third world war.
The "predators" will not stop at Ukraine. The taste of blood does not encourage restraint. Pandora's box will be opened, and wars over "spheres of influence" will erupt, engulfing other nations and countries as well – as though Putin were unleashing all his reserves of diesel fuel and gasoline upon them.
And that would mean opening new fronts in a war that is already underway.
Блог автора – матеріал, який відображає винятково точку зору автора. Текст блогу не претендує на об'єктивність та всебічність висвітлення теми, яка у ньому піднімається. Редакція "Української правди" не відповідає за достовірність та тлумачення наведеної інформації і виконує винятково роль носія. Точка зору редакції УП може не збігатися з точкою зору автора блогу.
