Tag: ukraine

Delighted Kremlin says it ‘absolutely agrees’ with Donald Trump as panic grips Europe over President’s attack on Zelensky and ‘plans to abandon NATO’

The Kremlin has said it ‘absolutely’ agrees with Donald Trump after the US president warned Volodymyr Zelensky to ‘move fast’ to end the conflict in Ukraine – as Europe has been left panicked at the prospect of Washington abandoning Kyiv.

‘[The Trump administration] talk about the need to establish peace as soon as possible and do it through negotiations,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. 

‘We have also already mentioned that this position is more favourable to us than the previous administration, and that here we absolutely agree with the American administration.’

Peskov went on to hit out at the Biden administration, claiming that the previous team in Washington ‘did not declare any goals to initiate a peace process’ and spoke ‘only about war.’

He also declared that any plan to send European troops to Ukraine as part of a potential peacekeeping mission would be unacceptable for Russia and that it was monitoring such proposals with concern. 

Moscow is likely feeling emboldened following Trump’s scathing attacks on Zelensky yesterday, in which he called the Ukrainian President a ‘terrible’ leader, ‘a modestly successful comedian’ and ‘a dictator without elections’.

In what appeared to be a thinly-veiled threat, and a shocking departure from US policy on Ukraine, the President went on to say that ‘Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.’

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With just ONE HOUR to decide, Zelensky REJECTS U.S. proposal for rare earth minerals in exchange for military aid

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected a U.S. proposal to grant Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth mineral reserves in exchange for military aid, upping the stakes in an already complex geopolitical tug-of-war. According to reports from The Economist, The Washington Post, and Reuters, the proposal was first presented to Zelensky during a visit by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week. Zelensky, however, has repeatedly deferred or outright rejected the deal, signaling a reluctance to cede control over Ukraine’s natural resources to foreign powers.

The proposed deal, which reportedly grants the U.S. rights to 50% of Ukraine’s mineral reserves, emerged during tense negotiations amid the ongoing conflict with Russia. U.S. President Donald Trump has openly stated that he wants Ukraine to “pay back” the estimated 300 billion in aid provided since 2022 by offering the equivalent of 500 billion worth of rare earth minerals. These minerals, which include lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium, are essential for technologies ranging from batteries and nuclear power to advanced weaponry.

Misaligned expectations and strategy

Zelensky’s refusal to sign the deal during the Munich Security Conference last weekend underscores a fundamental disconnect between Kyiv and Washington. While U.S. officials view the proposal as a means of recouping investments and securing long-term strategic interests, Zelensky is advocating for a more equitable partnership.

In October 2024, Zelensky unveiled his so-called “victory plan,” which included a proposal for joint use of Ukraine’s critical resources with the U.S., contingent on continued military assistance and strategic deterrence. However, at Munich, he emphasized that Ukraine was not yet ready to commit to such a deal, seeking better terms that align with the country’s sovereignty and economic interests.

“This is not about who gets what,” Zelensky reportedly told reporters at the conference. “It’s about creating a partnership that respects Ukraine’s independence and ensures a sustainable future for our people.”

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Trump Blames Ukraine: What The New York Times Gets Right and What The New York Times Gets Wrong

On February 18, for the first time since the war in Ukraine began, high ranking U.S. and Russian officials met to begin talks on ending the war. The U.S. delegation included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East and a favorite negotiator Steve Witkoff and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. The Russian delegation included Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yury Ushakov.

Following the meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump stunned reporters at a press conference by blaming Ukraine, and not Russia, for the war in what The New York Times called “Trump’s Pivot Toward Putin’s Russia.” In its cross examination of Trump’s case, The Times gets some things very right. But they got some things very wrong.

As he walked out of the talks, Sergey Lavrov said, “We weren’t just listening to each other, but we heard each other. I have reason to believe that the American side started to better understand our positions.”

The position that the American side seems to have better understood is the Russian narrative that the war did not start on February 24, 2022 and that Russia did not start it. Russia has long insisted that the war began with the U.S. supported coup of 2014 and the failure to protect the linguistic, religious and cultural rights of the ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens who felt abandoned and threatened by that coup.

Lavrov has consistently argued that Russia is not demanding preconditions but that they are demanding that the West fulfil its previous agreement not to expand NATO eastward to Russia’s border and its previous commitment to settle the crisis in Ukraine based on the UN Charter that stipulates the principle of equal rights and self-determination. The first was broken with the promise that Ukraine was on an irreversible path to NATO; the second was broken with Kiev’s “extermination of everything Russian, including language, mass media, culture, and even the use of the Russian language in everyday life.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to this narrative that the Americans now “better understand,” was intended to prevent the first and protect the second.

So, The New York Times complains that “[a]s far as Mr. Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor. Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it.” Following the meeting of the American and Russian delegations, The Times complains that “American officials did not dwell on Russia’s violation of international law in attacking Ukraine.”

About this, The Times is right. Trump is wrong more for what he did not say than for what he did. “By contrast,” The Times says, “Mr. Trump uttered not one word of reproach for Mr. Putin or for Russia.” Putin is to blame for the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and the discussions on ending the war must put this on the record and address it, at least in security guarantees for Ukraine.

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Why It’s Crucial To Expose US Provocations in Ukraine

If you believe that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, you will likely compare Putin to Hitler and will likely oppose President Trump’s peace negotiations with Russia. After all, if Putin’s invasion was unprovoked, a settlement would reward naked aggression and would be akin to Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 appeasement with Hitler in Munich.

This is why it’s so crucial that people who know the truth about U.S. provocations in Ukraine and about America’s extreme hypocrisy to be fearlessly outspoken in proclaiming: the U.S. intentionally provoked the war, to weaken Russia, to wean Europe from Russian energy, and to make Europe more dependent on the U.S.

Unless the truth about U.S. provocations is exposed, there will be continued opposition to a peace deal for Ukraine, in both the U.S. and the EU. There is a chance that hawks in D.C. will force Trump to back down from negotiating a peace deal and that the U.S. will send U.S. troops, as Vice President Vance has threatened. And there is a chance that EU countries will try to extend the war without help from the U.S.

So far, EU nations have been willing to sacrifice their economies and social democratic safety nets for the sake of conflict with Russia. Likewise, EU governments have been cowardly about challenging U.S. support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza and of the West Bank. Moreover, there is pressure now from Trump for EU nations to increase their military budgets, to up to 5% of nations’ GDP. If people in Europe knew the cynical truth about U.S. provocations, they’d likely change their hawkish policies, which enrich U.S. military contractors.

Another, perhaps more important, reason to expose U.S. provocations in Ukraine is to undermine public support in the U.S. for the MICIMATT in general, and for the planned war with China, in particular. Many of the Trump administration advisors who want to stop the war in Ukraine are eager to prepare for war with China. Avoidable disastrous wars need to be stopped. The bloated Pentagon budget needs to be cut. The empire of overseas bases need to be unraveled. Regime change operations need to be curtailed. The culture of secrecy needs to be ended.

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Ukrainian Whistleblower: ‘How the SBU Robbed and Killed a U.S. Citizen’

One of Ukraine’s most important whistleblowers, former Parliamentarian and People’s Deputy, Oleksandr Dubinsky, currently imprisoned by President Zelensky, has released a stunning video testimony this week – which exposes an egregious crime committed by his country’s Secret Service (SBU) against a U.S. citizen who was residing in Ukraine.

Presently, Dubinsky is being held in a secure facility where his is currently awaiting trial, after the state after a criminal case had been initiated against him for the crime of high treason. 

In his video below, Dubinsky reveals more crucial details about the death of Gonzalo Lira, a popular American video blogger and independent journalist, who reportedly died under unusual circumstanced while held in custody for criticizing the Zelensky government’s performance in the war, as well as criticism of Kiev regime’s repression of religious freedom in Ukraine.

The following is an English translation of Dubinsky’s recent video, interspersed with statements made by Vasily Nebenzya, the current Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations:

Dubinsky: Friends, hello, everyone. I am glad to see and hear you all. Another important statement that came from the representative of the aggressor State, the representative of the Russian Federation in the UN Security Council, Nebenzya. This is a statement that a US citizen, Gonzalo Lira, died in the SBU concentration camps, in the so-called ‘torture and secret prisons.’

Nebenzya: And listen to what the escaped deputy of the Rada (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine) Artem Dmytruk told. How he was tortured by SBU officers in 2022, trying to extract testimony and confession of treason. The main claim against him was that he spoke in defense of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). Here are excerpts from his gruesome account published on the internet. I quote: “I was thrown on the cold and wet floor, somewhere nearby I heard the screams and groans of my friends. A little further away were the screams and groans of other people and the horrible sounds of torture. They were beating me terribly, trying to gouge out my eyes. I lost consciousness several times and fell from the chair, came to my senses and was tortured again.” End quote. He was threatened to be shot or disabled. After that he was transported to the gym of the Odessa SBU office, where he was forced to say loudly and clearly on camera that he would never again criticize Vladimir Zelensky and the head of his office, Andrei Yermak. In addition, he was forced to be an SBU agent to fight the opposition to Zelensky. Dmytruk is not the only politician who stated about the existence of SBU concentration camps in Kiev. Another Rada deputy, Oleksandr Dubynskyy, in particular, previously reported about the existence of such camps in Kiev. He claims that more than 300 people were tortured through it in order to extract testimony against now-elected US President Donald Trump for use in the electoral struggle in the United States. Interesting confessions, aren’t they? From them you can get an impression of what the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, arrested in August 2023, tortured to death and died in the SBU walls on January 12, 2024, had to go through. And what 70-year-old human rights activist Olena Berezhnaya, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison a month ago after months of torture in SBU custody, who was never broken by the Zelensky clique, had to face because she went to the United Nations and spoke out about human rights violations by the Kiev regime.

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Why was the US funding LGBT “Pride” marches in Ukraine?

There is an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization, for the uninitiated) called “KyivPride” that runs the annual LGBT “Pride” march in Ukraine, and has done so for approximately a decade. KyivPride, like many similarly situated organizations, received US government largesse through a dizzying array of funding mechanisms — mainly stemming from USAID, the agency to which a sledgehammer has now ostensibly been taken by the Second Trump Administration. Whatever else one may think of the recent developments around USAID, it’s simply factually correct to state that US taxpayers had previously been subsidizing LGBT activism in the Donbass — a fact that can only be seen as facially ridiculous when explained to the majority of Americans. Simply take a look at KyivPride’s own public website for confirmation of its highly fruitful partnership with USAID…

As much as the newly emboldened DOGE whiz-kid crew might want to take credit for dramatically unearthing and exposing these blunderous expenditures, the reality is they’ve long been available for public inspection. That they never aroused much scrutiny till now is perhaps the real scandal.

As the money has gotten doled out, the standardized LGBT acronym has concurrently grown (now approximating something like 2SLGBTQIA+, but who’s really keeping track anymore). US diplomatic personnel participated in a Ukrainian “Pride” march in September 2021, a few months before the Russian invasion, when there perhaps might’ve been some more pressing diplomatic matters to attend to. An annual report from USAID on its Ukraine-related activities, which I helpfully saved years ago before DOGE largely nuked the agency’s assets from the internet, boasts that these Pride Marches had been “safely conducted” in Ukraine since 2015 — a year after the Ukrainian government was overthrown in a violent putsch, and US funding for “civil society” organs in the country greatly accelerated.

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Zelensky Could Be Ousted As Trump Demands Ukraine Election

There are concerns that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could be ousted from office after President Donald Trump said that Kyiv should hold elections, according to British newspaper The Telegraph.

Newsweek has reached out to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine for comment via email.

Why It Matters

Zelensky was made Time Magazine’s person of the year in 2022 for his “success as a wartime leader” and has been lauded as the face of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion. His exit from office could drastically change the outcome of the war and the achievement of security guarantees for Ukraine.

Ukraine hosting an election also raises the concern that Russia could interfere in the poll and install a pro-Kremlin leader who would be more amenable to Moscow’s terms to end the war.

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Trump Calls Zelensky a ‘Dictator’ Who Has Done a ‘Terrible Job’

On Wednesday, President Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” who has done a “terrible job” as the two leaders are trading barbs amid renewed US diplomacy with Russia.

“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 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 US and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The post came after Zelensky said Trump was living in a “disinformation space” in response to his criticism of Ukraine not holding elections and for not reaching a deal with Russia earlier in the war or before the invasion. “I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Zelensky said.

Trump also brought up the lack of elections in Ukraine in his post on Truth Social. “On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’ A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” he said.

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Putin Ready to Speak With Zelensky Who Now Claims Trump Spews Russian Disinformation

On Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he is and always has been ready for peace discussions with Ukraine. He stressed it has been Ukraine which outlawed peace negotiations with Russia. Ukrainian ruler Vladimir Zelensky however believes that the U.S. President Donald Trump, who has orchestrated peace negotiations with Russia, is spewing out Russian disinformation.

“I’ve said this 100 times, if they are willing, they are free to engage in such talks,” Putin said Wednesday. “We are ready to go back to the negotiating table.”

The door to end the war has always been open, this is even something President Trump referenced on Tuesday.

“When they’re worried about not being seated [at the peace negotiations] you mean somebody who should have gone in and made a deal a long time ago,” Trump said Tuesday.

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Trump Slams Zelenskiy: Never Should Have Been A War. Mockingbird Media Jumps The Shark.

The globalist media is wailing and gnashing their teeth over Trump’s comments and actions over the Ukraine War and those of its President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Trump criticized Zelensky’s and the EU’s demand for a seat at the peace talks over the country’s future: “But today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

Trump he said he could have made a deal on Ukraine where no one would have been killed, and would have kept most of their land. But no, Europe, and the Biden regime wanted war.

The globalist media is wailing and gnashing their teeth over Trump’s comments and actions over the Ukraine War and those of its President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Trump criticized Zelensky’s and the EU’s demand for a seat at the peace talks over the country’s future: “But today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

Trump he said he could have made a deal on Ukraine where no one would have been killed, and would have kept most of their land. But no, Europe, and the Biden regime wanted war

Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, arriving in Kyiv today, for talks with President Zelenskiy and other officials. “We will listen. We are prepared to provide what is needed. We understand the need for security guarantees. Part of my mission is to listen.”

This is all classic Trump negotiations style.

Zelenskiy himself is making ridiculous demands, and immature statements, like those of a globalist puppet who must keep the war going for his paymasters at all cost.

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