In a press conference later Trump told incredulous reporters that, “They (Ukraine) should never have started” the war, suggesting that Zelensky had become the first president in history to invade his own country using foreign troops. It was total madness. I wonder if he hasn't had some sort of breakdown.
Credible reports have emerged that any ‘peace’ deal was contingent on new elections being held in Ukraine, giving Russia and Musk the chance to interfere in the process to see a pro-Russian candidate imposed on Ukrainians. Trump has already conceded everything to an aggressor that has been weakened to the verge of a crushing defeat. He has helped snatch it from the jaws of victory.
Everyone connected with him will be forever stained by Trump and what he’s doing globally and domestically. In the last eight years I have never heard a whisper of criticism of Putin by Donald Trump. What has Russia got on him?
Trump and Putin behaving like the heads of two crime families
If you haven’t seen it yet, The Telegraph has a report by Ambrose Evan’s Pritchard, their economics editor, setting out a draft contract that US Treasury Scott Bessent took to President Zelensky to have him sign, four hours after the Ukrainian president had first seen it. The deal appears to allow America to:
"...take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of 'all new licences issued to third parties' for the future monetisation of resources. There will be 'a lien on such revenues' in favour of the US. 'That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations."
It essentially gives the USA rights to half of Ukraine’s mineral wealth in perpetuity. Imagine being given that, not by your victorious enemy after a heavy defeat, but by your own ally!
Evans-Pritchard says if it's ever accepted, Trump’s demands would "amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty." Ukraine is now being penalised for being attacked!
It’s like two crime families dividing up their ill gotten gains and territorial rights between themselves.
Someone likened it to Franklin D Roosevelt demanding half of Britain’s future coal and mineral reserves in 1942 to pay for American help in defeating the Nazis. What FDR actually did is get the Lend-Lease Act through Congress allowing the US to provide $650 billion (in today’s money) of military aid to Europe, mostly to Britain.
Trump is no Roosevelt and wants his pound of flesh. He is also no Ronald Reagan who spent big on his ‘Star Wars’ programme, effectively bankrupting Russia and bringing the Soviet Union (the ‘evil empire’) crashing down.
Zelensky didn’t sign Bessent’s humiliating deal and maybe he won’t. The EU is reported to be on the verge of offering €700 billion to Ukraine, presumably in a belated effort to buy its way back into relevance. Even if Ukraine agrees to some sort of deal with Trump, it won’t be enforceable I’m sure and a future Democrat president would probably cancel it.
I should also add that given the importance of events yesterday you would have thought US TV channels would be dominated by them. Anyone looking at Fox News website would have searched in vain. They had little or nothing on the Saudi talks, Ukraine or the plans for regime change in a foreign country. Surprising? Perhaps not.
Britain has more political prisoners than Russia?
As if that, as well as the rolling chaos in the USA, wasn't enough, on BBC Newsnight last night we had Carla Sands, the former US ambassador to Denmark from 2017 to 2021, appointed by President Trump. She is a fervent MAGA supporter and is so far down the rabbit hole it's doubtful she will ever find her way out again. Ms Sands suggested Trump was the greatest US president in the modern era!
More than that, she actually claimed Britain had imprisoned more people for their political views that Russia. Whaaat!!! As far as I know, nobody has been jailed for criticising the government or for their religious or political beliefs. They might have been convicted of incitement or other public order offences but not for their beliefs. In Russia, there are at least 1500 political prisoners. Opposition figures like Navalny routinely die, often in prison, or appear to come to an otherwise sticky end.
When has that ever happened here?
Vance's Munich Speech still reverberating
Gideon Rachman in the FT has a terrific piece about Vance’s speech last week and his claims about democracy in Europe being 'under attack by elites'. The odd thing to me was that Vance chose as his example events in Romania where the presidential election was cancelled by a court due to perceived Russian interference.
But there should have been for him a far better illustration much closer to home which he didn’t see fit to mention.
He, and I assume most of Trump’s cabinet, continues to insist Trump won the 2020 election. In short, if true it means that the United States has been governed by an illegitimate president for the last four years. Joe Biden was apparently unlawfully installed in the White House by elites who run the deep state, or so the MAGA cult believes.
But Vance didn’t raise that as a demonstration of how democracy was not just under threat, but had actually been overthrown. Surely there was no better example?
The only problem was that the Vice President would have to explain how it was that Biden presided over an entirely peaceful transfer of power in 2025. What happened to this ‘elite’ who were prepared to trash democracy and the Constitution four years ago? Tricky, eh?
Europe isolated
It’s quite obvious now that Europe is on its own. We know that Trump and Vance support Brexit and the US is now busy backing every extreme right-wing party in many EU member states in an effort to break up the bloc. American and Russian foreign policy objectives are now aligned, and probably China's too.
For decades, I have always believed we, the people and politicians in Europe, have been at the forefront of efforts to spread democracy across the world and I thought we were having some success. Now, I am not so sure.
China isn’t democratic. Russia certainly isn’t, the Middle East and Africa are democratic deserts and now for the first time in 250 years, America is in the process of turning its back on democracy, abandoning any pretence of wanting to help in the struggle.
Europe is isolated and the future of democracy on this planet is now in its hands. Leaders must step up to the plate. We cannot fail.
