As the US midterms approach, Donald Trump is abandoning Ukraine’s democracy in a desperate effort to deny responsibility for worsening inflation. Yet this past weekend’s dramatic elections in Brazil and Serbia show that voters can see through such subterfuge.

There is nothing like a political party’s corrupt indifference to the plight of ordinary people to galvanize voter turnout. If US voters follow in the footsteps of their Brazilian and Serbian counterparts, a Democratic landslide is likely.

If that happens, Democrats in Congress must act quickly to rein in Trump before he does more damage to the US’s economy and global stature.

Any objective observer would see that Trump’s war of choice against Iran has inflated energy prices, because Iran predictably responded by restricting shipments in the strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Middle East’s oil and gas flows. But Trump, never one to admit error, needed a scapegoat. Enter Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

While holding off Russian troops on the front lines in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s forces have been damaging the Russian economy by attacking its oil refineries. That has finally brought the war home to ordinary Russians in the form of long lines at gasoline stations. It has also disrupted oil production, putting pressure on a major source of revenue for Putin to fund his invasion.

Trump is trying to blame the inflationary surge in US gasoline and diesel prices on these attacks, even though their effect on the global market is small compared to the diminished flow through the strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, with Russia making only limited progress in eastern Ukraine despite losing hundreds of thousands........

© The Guardian