At the Fulcrum of History

Pressure is brought to bear

Zelensky has always known what a pathetic, deviant loser this is.

Every day I ask myself some version of the question “What have we done?” in response to some new indignity, some new horror inflicted upon us by the fascist regime currently in control of every branch of the United States government.

I know, of course. I know what we’ve done. And I know why we’ve done it, but such knowledge brings no comfort as the earth shifts beneath our feet and it feels increasingly like there’s very little to hold onto.

Recently, the United States, according to Reuters, recently sent European leaders a so-called “diplomatic questionnaire” about Ukraine's security, which essentially reads as a test of their willingness to defend Ukraine without U.S. leadership.

The questions weren't just vague, they were insulting. For example, this one:

“Are there any countries you believe would be indispensable, like maybe the United States of America?”

Or

“Specifically, what short-term and long-term resources do you think will be required from the United States?”

Why do I find these questions this insulting? Because we should already know the answers to them. Because it is an inescapable fact that we should have been helping Ukraine with every resource at our disposal since the beginning of Russia’s illegal invasion. I would argue that it is to our eternal shame that the United States under the Biden administration did not do nearly enough to make sure that this war against our ally perpetuated by our enemy ended as soon as humanly possible.

Why suddenly is the United States riddled with such uncertainty about its role in the conflict? That’s simple: it’s because Donald Trump and his corrupt fascist regime are aligned with the agenda of Vladimir Putin and Moscow. This is a travesty. And it’s a travesty that the people in charge, including those at the State Department, care nothing and know nothing about diplomacy and statecraft.

The United States has now pivoted to offloading its responsibilities to our erstwhile allies and is waiting to see who's naive enough to stand for it.

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Donald’s increasingly hostile stance towards Ukraine and continuing appeasement of Putin has European leaders scrambling to respond to yet another reckless move by the United States. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio landed in Riyadh to attend talks hosted by Saudi Arabia between America and Russia.

Billed as “peace negotiations,” these talks excluded both Ukraine and Ukraine's European allies.

In response, Europe is doubling down on its efforts to counter Donald's intentional foreign policy disaster. On Monday, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark, along with top EU and NATO officials, held an emergency summit in Paris to formulate a response to these alarming, if not unexpected, developments.

Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of Great Britain said, “Europe must play its role, and I'm prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement. But there must be a US backstop because a US security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine, again.”

And Danish Prime Minister, Better Frederikesen said, “I am very concerned about making a fast ceasefire because it can give Putin and Russia a better possibility to go back to Russia and to re-ramp and to mobilize again, attack Ukraine or another country in Europe.”

That’s what it’s like to have leaders who understand the gravity and scope of the situation. We, it should go without saying, are not so lucky.

Another meeting was convened in France and participation has been expanded to include Norway, Canada, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Romania, Sweden, and Belgium, which is to say everybody who cares about the Western Alliance, one of the greatest diplomatic alliances in history, which was created in the wake of the horrors of World War II. Tragically, this alliance no longer includes the United States of America.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Donald before the emergency EU meeting in Paris, but Euro News reports that Donald made it crystal clear: Europe would not have a seat at the negotiating table in Riyadh, as shortsighted and obscene a move as it seems. Macron, however, remained steadfast in his belief that it is untenable for Europe to be excluded from negotiations. This, in part, is because European countries have been in this fight since the beginning, but also because there is so much at stake for them.

In a post on Twitter, Macron wrote:

After bringing together several European leaders, I've just spoken with Donald, and then with President Zelensky, we seek a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine. To achieve this, Russia must end its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians. Otherwise, there is a risk that this ceasefire will end up like the Minsk agreements.

We will work on this with all Europeans, Americans, and Ukrainians. This is the key.

That is exactly right. The whole point of Joe Biden’s attempt to isolate Russia after its illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine was to prevent Putin from dictating terms. Now, Donald is doing Putin's bidding, because he doesn't care about Ukraine. He only cares about keeping Vladimir Putin pleased.

Meanwhile, in Riyadh, Donald's people met with Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who is one of the architects of the invasion of Ukraine, and Yuri Shakov, Putin's top foreign policy aide, for more than four hours. The Kremlin, of course, is thrilled with how this is all unfolding. Lavrov said the meeting was productive, while the Russian foreign ministry called it a “very serious conversation,” which is hard to imagine considering Marco Rubio was involved.

During the discussions, Lavrov and top Kremlin officials escalated their demands to Donald's “negotiating “ team, more accurately described as a group of people just taking dictation and handing over Putin’s wish-list to Donald, who will make sure every item is checked off.

Lavrov rejected NATO membership for Ukraine as “not enough,” stating that NATO must go even further and revoke its 2008 promise that Ukraine would eventually be allowed to join the alliance. Lavrov also declared that any NATO troop deployment to Ukraine under any flag would be unacceptable.

In the wake of the discussions, Shakov said that Russia is looking for a full reassessment of its relationship with the United States. This is an alarming development, and one of the things that is so incredibly frustrating here, besides the fact that we are betraying one of our greatest allies, is that we are also betraying Western democracy with these self-serving and destructive moves. Also, many of us have seen this coming since 2016—and probably well before that. Yet, here we are.

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President Volodomyr Zelensky has remained crystal clear himself as to Ukraine’s position on what the future of Ukraine looks like.

“We will have low chance, low chance to survive without support of the United States. I think it's very important, critical, but I mean, I don't want to think about it. Yes, we have to think about it. I don't want to think that we will not be strategic partners. I don't want to think about it because it'll make a pressure on morality of Ukrainians and it will be worse, the thing from the very beginning of the war, but we increased our production that really we really can count on our level of defending industry, but it's not enough.”

This is both tragedy and travesty, and if things go the way that Zelensky believes they very well might, if the United States withdraws from NATO and NATO cannot step up without the support of the United States, it will also be disaster and atrocity. And all of it can be laid at the feet of the traitor, Donald Trump.

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Donald is calling this the grotesque display that occurred in Saudi Arabia a “peace negotiation,” but Zelensky very properly is calling bullshit. He originally had scheduled a visit Saudi Arabia but canceled it when he realized that the United States and Russia planned to meet without giving Ukraine, the aggrieved party, a seat at the negotiating table.

Instead, Zelensky visited Turkey to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While at the Ukrainian embassy, he said, “It is critical that any negotiations to end the war are not happening behind the backs of the key parties affected by the Russian aggression.”

Zelensky has also continued to deny Donald's offer for the United States to take 50% ownership of Ukraine's rare earth minerals in exchange, essentially, for nothing. The so-called deal was submitted to Zelensky last Wednesday, and this is what Zelensky had to say about his decision not to sign the agreement.

We cannot forget about the main idea that was in the very beginning that let us protect all that. Help us defend this and we'll make money on this together. And here it's very important that in this shall be a term two protected, and that is the security guarantees. And if we're not given the security guarantees from the United States, I believe that the economic treaty will not work.

Former Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmitri Kba went further: “Why should Europe give away the resources that should fuel its own economy to America? It unequivocally should not.”

This is grotesque. Donald Trump is demanding that Ukraine hand over half of its natural resources to pay for assistance the United States already provided during the Biden administration.

In an official press release sent out by the US Department of State, the following cryptic measures were laid out:

• Establish a consultation mechanism to address irritants to our bilateral relationship with the objective of taking steps necessary to normalize the operation of our respective duplicate matter missions.

If you understand what that means, please let me know, because I have absolutely no idea. It sounds like doublespeak to me.

And then this:

• Respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.

Accomplishing that is impossible as long as the victim in all of this is not included in these so-called negotiations.

Next:

• Lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and historic economic and investment opportunities, which will emerge from a successful end to the conflict in Ukraine.

The United States official position is that the only way to secure an illicitly negotiated peace is to give Russia everything it wants—including Ukrainian territory Russia has already captured,

Ukraine, on the other hand, will not only lose said territory, but Donald has made it explicitly clear that he has plans to raid Ukraine's abundant supply of natural resources, including its rare earth minerals.

The unconscionable meeting in Riyadh was a pledge for the parties—again, excluding Ukraine and the EU—to remain engaged to ensure that the agreement between Russia and the United States, which has been agreed to by no other interested parties, moves forward. And this will be entirely at the expense of Ukraine, while its enemy, formerly our enemy, receives the spoils of its illegal war of aggression.

All of this is happening, because one twisted and corrupt man, whom a plurality of American voters so ignominiously put in charge of our once great democracy, who understands nothing and cares about nothing, will wreak whatever untold damage he is capable of unleashing all for the sake of enriching himself.

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The Trump regime will continue to move ahead without allowing for the involvement of Ukraine. The U.S. is already in talks with Russia to plan another meeting about the future of Ukraine and its people, and, to the humiliation of all of us, Putin has extended an invitation for Donald to visit Moscow, which this abject failure of a man will almost certainly accept.

There is some speculation that Donald might join Putin at Red Square this May when Russia commemorates the 80th anniversary of its victory in World War II. The idea that those two traitors to humanity will be allowed to oversee such a commemoration is an obscenity.

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At a press conference held at Mar-a-Lago recently , Donald blamed Ukraine for having been illegally invaded by Russia. He said this because he is insane and he is beholden to malign forces.

Throughout all of this, though, Pres. Zelensky has stood firm, approaching this unfathomable nightmare with as much restraint and diplomacy as he can muster. After Donald’s latest comment, Zelensky addressed the kind of disinformation that originates in Russia and is then repeated ad nauseum by its greatest ally, Donald Trump.

Another story, since we’re talking about percentages, we are seeing a lot of disinformation coming from Russia. We understand this and we have proof that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. Unfortunately Pres. Trump, with all due respect, for him as the leader of a nation we respect greatly, the American people, is living in this disinformation space.

Donald, responding on his failing social media platform, posted this:

Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle.

The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation.

He escalated tensions further by claiming that Zelenksy is a “dictator without elections,” an incendiary and wildly untrue statement that he later repeated.

This is where we are, this is what we have been reduced to.

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Last week, Christophe Heusgen, chairman of the 2025 Munich Security Conference, gave his farewell address at the event on Saturday in which he said the following:

This conference started as a transatlantic conference after the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday. We have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore. I'm very grateful to all those European politicians that spoke out and reaffirmed the values and principles that they are defending. No one did this better than President Zelensky. Let me conclude, and this becomes difficult. . .

Chairman Heusgen had to suspend his remarks because he was weeping, as we all should, for the grievous blow struck at the heart of the Western alliance and the fact that that weapon striking the blow is being wielded by the United States of America, once the greatest democracy in human history and a bright light in the fight against tyranny and fascism.

I cannot improve upon Heusgen’s words, at least those he was capable of uttering, except to say that America’s values and European values are no longer closely aligned. They are not aligned at all. America is in the throes of a fascist movement, and I worry for all of us. But right now, in particular, I worry for our ally Ukraine.