Don’t Forget Ukraine |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Was it just me or was there nothing more weird than when the US over a year ago opened up direct US-Russian talks on Ukraine without even having Ukraine in the room? I keep coming back to that, especially after seeing Vance recently in Budapest.
Even with all this spiralling and insinuating madness in the Middle East, the thought is always there. Lest we forget, on February 18, 2025, the Trump administration agreed to continue talks with Russia on ending the war after an initial meeting in Riyadh that excluded Kyiv. Reuters described it as a departure from the previous US policy of isolating Putin and placing Ukraine at the centre.
And I still find myself wondering how you can talk about the fate of a country while it’s still burying its dead, still being bombed, without that country present? To this day, it feels like one of the clearest indicators of a Russia-first negotiating position.
Then there’s the rhetoric. On February 19, 2025, Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and warned him to move fast or lose his country. I keep going back to that phrase—lose his country—as if that loss is theoretical, when in reality it has meant shattered cities, families displaced, terrified children, brave civilians living under sirens and missile fire.
Whether or not one agrees with Trump’s view, and people obviously can disagree, that rhetoric echoed Kremlin-style attacks on Ukrainian legitimacy a hell of a lot more than it resembled any kind of pressure on the aggressor state that invaded Ukraine.
The US also sided with a much more neutral line on Ukraine at the UN. On February 24, 2025, Reuters reported that the UN Security Council........