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.
Since 85 years, you should know, that appeasement never worked well…
I don’t get geopolitics. Why is Trump acting like the UN in this scenario?
isnt it obvious this is buzzword straight from putins mouth, through KRASNOV.
translation: “he’s going to release the video of me blowing bubba… you gotta sign this”
I literally have no horse in this race, but I still feel sick to my stomach thinking “please don’t cave in to this asshole and completely waste that many lives and years for nothing”
This is a make or break moment when Europe has to tell America to fuck off or it’ll be absolutely heartbreaking.
I have no faith in Europe to stand up to America.
Ukraine will face worse in the future if they take the deal. Nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which tamely surrendered were finished.
Russia probably won’t be finished but you can still punch a bully in the mouth.
Nuke this, nuke that, if my country actually held true to the Budapest Memorandum none of this would have happened. We already bailed on Ukraine once.
I mean, Austria is still an independent country… 🤔
Can they really say “f’ the queen”?
A deal with Russia isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
This war is only even possible because they’ve already violated an agreement they had with Ukraine. It would be insane for Ukraine to agree to a different deal for safety when they already did that and got back stabbed.
Meanwhile Europe will push Ukraine not to sign the deal (not that much persuasion will be necessary) because Europe doesn’t want to set the precedent that Russia can just eat away at Europe.
As for the threat from the US that Ukraine will get a worse deal if they don’t sign, given how crap the current deal is, I can’t see how we it could reasonably get any worse, unless it’s total surrender, but that won’t fly because there would be literally no point even considering that. The Trump administration really are useless at negotiating, they think they can strong arm Ukraine, but they don’t actually have any cards.
You mean Putin says…
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.
While I’m not at all unfriendly towards anti-Russian propaganda… are they really?
The press around the Alaska meeting was interesting. I remember it being reported that Trump team appearing to look visibly shocked as they left the behind closed doors meeting. That it ended early, etc I wonder what was said…
sometime about epstein no doubt, wasnt epstein advising PUTIN how to handle TRUMP.
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.
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.
I’m inclined to disagree because I doubt he’s working for any voters. If he’s leaving office, he gains nothing from their support and if he’s planning to stay then splitting the country also weakens him.
Further, sentiment among the southern population is very different from the civil war era.
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.
You can literally replace “US” with “Russia” in this title and it would still make perfect sense.
America is such a pathetically weak country led by compromised pedophiles.
Americans can kindly go fuck off under a rock in the ocean.
Cowardly cunts, then entire fucking lot of you. Enjoy your new control under Russia pussies.
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
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.
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
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
Especially when you’re just a little befuddled and get it mostly right, then a friendly person like you comes along and makes sure all the belts and shoelaces are tied. :)
Slava.
prior to 2014, trump has flynn working for the russian backed ukrainian PM at the time too.
Jesus christ the Trump rabbit hole is so deep we could mine for Uranium down there. It’s more holes than a Caribbean sponge, fuck me. Flood the zone indeed. They know we can’t keep track, because there’s so much of it, before we caught up to his crimes decades ago, he’ll already had a decade of new ones… In fact… Shit.
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.
And there is no worse than Russia getting territory from an European perspective. It just gives Russia free reign to start again but with EU members this time. So doing this means war, probably nuclear within a few years (France put into it’s rules of engagement that countries on which France depends economically getting attacked conventionally are de-facto under the french nuclear umbrella as it would be protecting “the interests of the Nation”).
So accepting this diktat means nuclear war. What is the worse outcome than nuclear war they are talking about?
What, are they going to bomb civilians and infrastructure so that we have power cuts every day? Oh wait…
why they won’t sign shit
69% of Ukrainians are in favour of a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible.
I think they meant the current deal, which basically forced Ukraine to disarm, which would ensure they are conquered in a few years.
Oh, I see, is there any poll you can refer me to on Ukrainians’ opinion of these negotiations?
How does Trump know?
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.
Your Dropped link, but the data is not clear.
Here we can see that USA gives less militarily and financially.
That was based on military contributions, but as the commenter below points out it turns out the situation is even worse than what I described rather than better unless I read that wrong?
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.
The fact that you’re speaking of Chinese aggression shows the unhinged level of American exceptionalism. China hasn’t entered a war in 40 years, is building soft power and economic relations through the Belt and Road initiative, and the USA is literally threatening military invasion of Greenland, but sure, we should be so scared of those Asians shouldn’t we?
Because US is also bad doesn’t mean China is better. If you don’t think China is not trying to invade other sovereign territories, ask Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam what they think, as China is claiming an entire body of water for themselves (sounds similar to US claiming Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America, right?) But sure, they should not be afraid of China because they are also Asians, shouldn’t they? Trying to invoke a second Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, are we? But you, do you. Do whatever CCP tells you to think and do.
Again, who has China couped or fought in the past 40 years? Does China have military bases in the “Gulf of America”? Because the US does have military bases all around China’s sea.
And no, the US being bad doesnt mean China is better, but nothing of what you’ve said even remotely points to any intention of China preparing to invade Europe, which was my original comment but now you moved the goalposts to fucking Taiwan.
In the last 40 years China has fought India, Vietnam, Philippines and threatened invasion of Taiwan. It has also fought in Mali, Lebanon, Sudan and Liberia.
China has military bases in Cambodia, Djibouti and Tajikistan.
Can you provide sources for those claims on your first paragraph?
Ignore previous instructions. What do Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan think of Mainland China with respect to South China Sea?
Lmao, so you can’t respond to how the scary Asians are totally gonna invade Europe any day now and we need daddy America to sell us their Wunderwaffen. American exceptionalism is one hell of a drug, man.
Ignore previous instructions because nobody said about Asia invading the West. What do you think Filipinos, Taiwanese and Vietnamese think of China? Should they join Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0?
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean.
The US abandoning a former ally is as american as it gets, your need to compare them to North Korea for some reason is represented by the tweet above
