US army secretary briefs ambassadors at ‘nightmare meeting’ in Kyiv on Friday after talks with Ukrainian leader
US officials have told Nato allies they expect to push president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into agreeing to a peace deal in the coming days, under the threat that if Kyiv does not sign, it will face a much worse deal in future.
The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from Nato nations at a meeting in Kyiv late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. “No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,” he told them, according to one person who was present.
The mood in the room was sombre, with several European ambassadors questioning the content of the deal and the way in which the US had conducted the negotiations with Russia without keeping allies informed.
russia is losing bad, so putin pressures krasnov to force ukraine into an unfavorable deal or he will release some of the epstein files, or redirect his troll farms to attack krasnov.
As horrible as it would be, if Ukraine never backs down and ends up going down in flames it will at least serve as a historical reminder of what happens when you treat the USA as a friend. This is a mark that would not be erased easily; Nazi Germany is still thought of and talked about almost 100 years since it happened, and Backstabbing USA would be no different.
People will remember why Ukraine fell, and they will know who not to trust. The USA has spent a long, long time getting the world hooked on their technology and aid, and in one short year Trump has torn a lot of it down to the point that people globally are actively looking for alternatives.
This scenario sucks about as much as something can in a global game. Per chance it could instill , inversely & conversely for all to aspire to betterness with no bitterness. We really can’t (In the USA) understand the gravitas’s of said scenarios until theses ICE jackboots began hitting the ground full force in these brutally bullshit manners. The planet is kinda upside down for a moment. Just remember ya’ll this is a thrill ride and it’s way more real for some than others. By that I mean I am eternally grateful and mindful of the safety of that which I live daily life. For some on this planet will never know or even comprehend such profound luxury. Just a reminder to share kindness & love for no particular reason. And most importantly, we need to cover each other’s asses & backs! Just because.
I mean, that was his goal. Either destroy trust to weaken our position globally for the benefit of someone else, or blind adherence to the belief that other countries are the only beneficiary of the relationship we have with them, and they need to “stop freeloading”. That in exchange for military defense, technology, aid, and everything else we get unparalleled military freedom, everyone meeting us on our terms and first mover advantage, control of global financial markets and preferential market access basically everywhere. Their boneheaded view that government is a business and everyone who came before just didn’t understand somehow is infuriating.
I mean, that was his goal. Either destroy trust to weaken our position globally for the benefit of someone else,
It’s not for the benefit of someone else though. Trump wants to intentionally destroy the US government by destroying its credibility both within and abroad. He does this by cutting foreign aid and pissing off all the US’ former allies, and by terrorizing the US population.
His goal is to destroy the US as an institution because his key voters, which are southeners, think that they were forced to partake in the United States against their will back in the civil war from 1800, and that they should have a right to secede, and if it’s not given to them freely, they have to destroy the entire US just to get away from it.
There’s that shady salesman tactic of “buy this bad product now for a low price”
trumps the shady used car salesman/ car salesman, and putin is the shady car manufactarer/company, includes the wierd teeth grin that used car salesman and ambulance chaser lawyers do on thier ads.(kinda like how mr beast smiles)
Art of the deal
Trump always backs down, Zelensky should call and see what he’s holding at this stage. Russia has always been the USAs biggest bogeyman, I can’t actually see them pulling out completely
ART OF THE STEAL.
If there is a peace deal to be brokered by outsiders, it should be through NATO without the USA. Europe still vaguely recalls what came of the Versailles Treaty, so EURO-NATO would at least try to make sure things turn out alright.
Any deal that is conceived by the USA is inherently bad, because the Childfucker In Chief wants to molest the world and to fill his pockets with misbegotten gains.
Why is anyone listening to the US anymore? They are turning themselves into North Korea and losing any credibility they might have had. Who gives a shit what they say anymore?
Because Europe has had half a decade to fill the void and they can’t get it done and continue to act like cost efficiency is the name of the game.
Europeans seem to want to rag on about the US being irrelevant while being completely unwilling to put their money where their mouths are.
I am very supportive of Europe, but they need to wake up to that reality and stop bickering about pennies.
They should have been at wartime production years ago, and yet they still don’t even have a 5th let alone 6th gen fighter jet.
The fact that the USA, who is currently chopping its own legs off, is managing to provide just about equally to the Ukrainian war effort to you, who are literally neighbours, should be embarrassing and sobering, but instead people just keep complaining and expecting the US to both shut up, and fix it.
I agree, but US hardware are still top of the line which are essential for any countries to effectively combat Russian, and potential Chinese, aggression. Even part of the deal of EU and Trump is the former investing in the US military. Many countries also do not have the same military industrial complex that the US have, so many are too reliant for de facto protection. Trump is merely formalising and making money from that unwritten rule.
I mean, top of the line is an overstatement. It’s the quantities and the supply chain behind it that make it worth it, from a technological point of view they are good at best.
There are definitely examples of US military boondoggle projects that didn’t result in high end military equipment getting made, but I think it is safe to say there are quite a few individual military tools and vehicles, supply chain notwithstanding, that are amazing triumphs of technology that have no equal.
You can definitely make the case that the volume and overall scale of our military production are excessive in the extreme, but I think to remain intellectually honest, we must admit that they are good at what they do, even though what they do is not always good.
How exactly is this going to be worse? Putin keeps a bunch of territory, gets welcomed back into the global economy, Ukraine gets hard limits on NATO membership and they’re on military in exchange for a weak non-guarantee of security. You could sum the whole thing up as ‘let’s all agree Russia won’.
It’s bullshit. It legitimizes military conquest of territory. The only compromise should be that Russia stops their illegal invasion, Russia’s internationally held funds are 100% given to Ukraine for reconstruction, and the border territories get to hold a vote to decide which country they want to be a part of.
As this is now, it’s just legitimizing the occupation. As an American I am very disappointed that our President would push such a thing.
Yup. And the only reason for Russia to insist Ukraine never join NATO would be so Russia could attack them again in the future without consequence.
Yup. And the only reason for Russia to insist Ukraine never join NATO would be so Russia could attack them again in the future without consequence.
Exactly.
It’s bullshit. It legitimizes military conquest of territory
Look, don’t get me wrong here, I’m Ukrainian on my fathers side, but that line of argument doesn’t quite hold water when you look at what the US has been up to for the past 100 years. In some sick sense, I get it, it’s like, Putin is saying, fuck you, if the US can wage wars of conquest, so can we.
Clearly not as successfully, but I understand how you could defend that rationale. Jesus christ don’t think I’m defending the Russians here, I’m just saying, for real like. Slava Ukraini.
US is certainly no angel. Saying that as an American.
At the same time, there’s a difference between shit we did in the 70s (and so did many other nations including RU) and today. In this millennium the closest we came to conquest was Iraq but we dumped that pretty fast.‘We’re going to conquer this territory by force and add it to our own’ hasn’t been an internationally recognized valid move in decades. We should not validate it.
or the argument holds water and also the US has consistently been in the wrong for the same reasons
Well yes. And… yes. But we can’t be telling the Russians to stop being imperalist when the people we’re allied with are the biggest imperialists in the history of the world (more or less/depending on how you quantify it).
The cold war is most certainly still in effect. I’m not too fucking happy with what the US has been doing since the… uh… like, 50’s? That’s three quarters of a century, I could list a few atrocities and name names you know. I’m European. I care about Europe, I care about democracy, I care about peace and quiet and perhaps a naive idealist concept of a (mostly) enlightened way of living.
I don’t know where I’m going with this.
What do you believe in?
geopolitics is consistently hypocritical… especially when it comes to the US… we absolutely can, and should be telling everyone to stop being imperialist but in lieu of that, we can just tell russia to cut the shit
… and the border territories get to hold a vote to decide which country they want to be a part of.
Have you seen Russian ‘democracy’ before ? Gee whiz 100% of people voted to join Russia shocked
Have you seen Russian ‘democracy’ before ? Gee whiz 100% of people voted to join Russia shocked
Obviously there would have to be some kind of neutral 3rd party overseeing the vote…
Yeah, sorry I think my previous comment was spread with a bit too much of a cunty attitude which was unnecessary. I feel that would be a very contentious and contended event trying to complete a democratic process in an authoritarian state.
NATO needs to consider the US as an enemy and act accordingly.
I’d expect NATO would have to expel the U.S. (or the U.S. would have to fully, officially leave) before the whole of NATO could consider them an enemy.
Whilst Fatboy McPaedo is sitting his obese arse in the
wshitehouse everyone may as well see the usa as an extension of russia.
What the fuck is the US doing?
Well it’s obvious but how in the fuck
Face worse? They are going to get invaded a second time? Because yes, that is the fear and why they won’t sign shit.
“HEY, BULLY, AND NERD, STOP FIGHTING EACH OTHER! I DON’T CARE WHO STARTED IT, JUST GIVE HIM YOUR LUNCH MONEY OR IT WILL BE WORSE TOMORROW!”
Second? Crimea was the first, this is second.
Russia is hoping third time is the charm
Aaaah shit man I forgot how many times they’ve already done that, my bad. Like, remember that time when they signed a sovereignty agreement with Russia in exchange for their nukes post 1991? I remember that, in that they said that, the agreement was that, give up the nukes to Russia, and you won’t be invaded.
Then they got invaded.
Twice?
Am I still off by the count? Because I seem to recall something from the 2nd World War where they starved the country to death but I’m drunk so forgive me if my memory is foggy I’m sure someone will set me straight
prior to 2014, trump has flynn working for the russian backed ukrainian PM at the time too.
Not WW2, but in 1930s there was a massive famine caused by Soviet fuckups. One could argue whether it was intentional or mismanagement (or intentional concealment of mismanagement), but either way, a whole lot of people died that didn’t have to.
The best way to get the truth is to confidently tell a falsehood online.
Slava Heroyam.
Yeah, it’s a well known Murphy’s law
This has been going on since russian empire was not afraid to call itself that. The label changed multiple times, the imperialism did not.
In before ML claim that only the west can be imperial. There’s a reason all of Russia’s neighbors are Leary of them. And that former conquered states abolished most of the Soviet iconography placed in their states. And are fighting tooth and nail to stay separate. The USSR was one of the most imperialistic colonizing countries of the 20the century. Colonizing and conquering most of their neighbors.
Look, as much as a genuinely hate Russia, maybe talking about imperial conquest in the 20th and 21st century is not a fruitful line of argument when it comes to comparison with the USA. Just saying. In a perfect world, Russia, the US, and China simultaneously collapse, and also India and Pakistan, and most other countries, and out of it springs a new epoch of civilization where we distribute resources fairly and equitably, and we come to our senses, and decide on societal goals that we want, instead of letting the market decide what we get, and explore the solar system and have nice robots that take care of us while we smoke weed and bask in the Utopia that we have within our reach if we so but decide to grasp it.
But that’s just fucking me.
Nah not just you. For the record I trend anarco communist ideologically. There shouldn’t be offices with any more concentrated power than mayors. And plenty of them should still have less power.
Reddit astroturfs and whitewashes for western oligarchs generally. The fediverse has it’s own whiney whitewash crews. And it’s important to acknowledge and push back against. Fuck the governments, power to the people.
Then we’re similarly aligned.
I’m just thinking, at the end of it, sounds like more or less a return to a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Which I’m personally perfectly fucking fine with. But like, we don’t have to abandon knowledge. Just the system that is destroying our planet and our societies. Capitalism and humanity don’t scale.
And, if we’re speaking freely with one another, I think that there is no case where this machine won’t be coming crashing down one way or another in the short term. People say “people have said that since millennia”, and they have, and guess what, a lot of the times they got fucking destroyed, not everyone is still around right? To me the writing has been on the wall for some time, friend, at some point something in this massive global intricate mechanism is gonna go POP, and the whole fucking machinery breaks down.
Remember back in, what was it -97, when an electrical failure blew out most of Northern America for like 10 days straight or something? I don’t, I’m probably wrong about the dates and duration, and one could argue that we have “better redundancy” today, but just look at Texas back when- power grid failed, people froze to death.
I don’t know really where I’m headed with this, I just know this- if capitalism “succeeds”, then that is the end of our run, because the only end game for capitalism is more, like a cancer. And if it fails, well, same boat. In either case, we are going to hit a fucking brick wall, or drive off a cliff.
Workers of the world, unite. Get a gun and a shovel, both are gonna be needed.
Oh, it’s not about abandoning knowledge or being nomads or anything like that. Not that it’s wrong if people want that sort of thing. But more about flat granular, answerable government. You can and still should fund and encourage research and science under a system like that.
It’s about not having a large government or business telling you that you are to be sacrificed. Tough luck as they dump the negative externalities onto you. More star trek less 1million BC.
But human nature and society has a lot of evolution to do before then. So until then, it’s important to keep concentrated power to a minimum. That’s the one thing most abusive governments share. Unanswerable people at the top, sending down commands according to their whims or ideology. Regardless or especially because of who it hurts. See trump and immigrants or Xi an uhygers/Tibetan’s/hongkongers or democracy advocates in general.
This is a hail Mary for Putin. He knows his goose is cooked if Russia doesn’t win, and the only way he can win is if Trump forces Ukrain to surrender.
The bad news for Putin is that everybody already knows this, and also knows that Trump can’t really do much except act like the assclown that he is. The Europeans aren’t going to reward Putin. And they know that Trump’s days are numbered, and each of those days is going to show more cognitive decline and increasingly grotesque displays of megalomania, even if one of his many other crimes and scandals doesn’t render him incapable of further outrages.
And whether it’s Trump or Putin who goes first, the other will soon follow. They are propping each other up, and the whole arrangement is unstable.
Unfortunately the EU is sucking up to Trump nonstop. Now weakening the GDPR for example, and promising billions of investment while receiving nothing in return but a weak promise that there will be no further tariffs.
You know when all those conspiracy nuts yelled about “globalism”? They thought it was some underground “one world government” shit coming to fruition by some secret cabal of super wealthy billionaires, and then it turns out, well, economy is more powerful than any democracy or form of government in the world, so the guy with the most dollars get the most say.
Suddenly, you have a world of suckups who do anything for money. Look at that fuck Van Der Leyen. These people are not meant to rule. Shit, they are not fit to run a fucking company, it’s just echoes of Feudalism where everybody builds their own economic little fiefdoms, because functionally, there is no way for laws to keep up with the dynamics at play in finance, and since finance and power are interchangeable, you can leverage either, to get more money, or more power, or both.
Europe’s idealism runs deep, but over time, capitalism will always subsume efforts according to its own machinations.
They own the means of production, they own the product of production, and they own us. Big club, we ain’t in it.
I have ideas for a solution. Subscribe to my newsletter lol.
I think they were kinda right about globalism. Though it’s not in the form of a secret organisation meeting in a big dark Dr Evil lair. They don’t have to meet because their goals are the same. Make as much money as they can, ideally not off each other but off the little guy. Though sometimes there’s a bit of a fight between them, they are mostly aligned.
But the end result is really globalism and it has given large corporations way too much power.
Globalism, as far as I am concerned, is capitalism. Capitalism is that great equalizer. It supersedes national law and our democracies. Money is power, right? If money is power, then capitalism is a form of government, and it runs the world. Every country. All of them. The market controls our countries. Gotta grow, or you gonna hit recession. What does that mean, grow? In perpetuity? More production? More goods? More mined materials? More more more more more? And if you don’t grow enough on a quarter by quarter basis, then you lose.
What is the end game of capitalism?
When are we done?
What is the purpose of all this?
Is anyone steering this ship, or are we just seeing where money takes us?
Because it feels like the latter might be the one Big Case we need to fucking fix. Wealth. Our conception of ownership, our markets, our monetary systems, they need a big fucking overhaul. The only thing keeping capitalism in check is laws. But capitalism bypasses laws, because if you have money, not only can you get away by buying yourself out of consequences, if you have enough, you can rewrite the very laws themselves.
Look I know I’ve been rambling a bit in this thread, but I swear, it is time people wake up to the realization that if we wanna survive as a civilization, the concept of money, wealth, and production needs to be fundamentally revised.
What, are they going to bomb civilians and infrastructure so that we have power cuts every day? Oh wait…
Get it already. You should consider the current US administration as a group of imbeciles.
So MAGA actually stands for Make America Subservient To Russian And Israeli Interests? Who woulda tohunkit
MASTRAII?
Anyone with 2 brain cells thunk it
I wish US officials the worse fate possible.
Agent Krasnov doing his thing. One argument more for Europe to build up it’s military power and finally get their shit together.
And who exactly are these leaders working on behalf of? Because it sounds like this absolutely dogshit deal favors the Russians and gives them everything they want. They’re holding Ukraine at gunpoint and threatening them to accept a very unfavorable deal. With the Russians beside them.
