Donald Trump's recent summit with European heads of state ostensibly dedicated to obtaining peace between Russia and Ukraine has only accentuated the gap between a fading superpower and its partners in the NATO alliance, as well as the pathetic role to which Ukranian president Volodomyr Zelensky has been reduced.
Zelensky; the Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte; the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen; British prime minister Keir Starmer; the prime minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni; Finland president Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, president Emmanuel Macron of France, all by now have learned the lesson of never publicly contradicting Donald Trump while they fall all over themselves offering praise for the Dear Leader and his efforts, in spite of the obvious clash of interests, goals, and strategies that marked the summit from start to finish.
While Trump reiterated his round rejection of admitting Kiev to NATO and left aside the issue of hardening sanctions against Moscow, Starmer renewed his commitment to an irreversible path for Ukraine to join the military alliance, and, through a spokesperson, repeated the nonsense of deploying British troops in Ukraine, along with other countries forming a "coalition of the willing," to re-use the name originally given to the imperial extras in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, hardly an appropriate reminder for a summit allegedly dedicated to peace.
Zelensky out-did Starmer's lunacy by claiming that Russia can only be forced to concede peace, and that President Trump alone wields the necessary force, a reckless invitation to direct U.S.-Russian conflict that carries a high risk of nuclear annihilation of the human race.
At bottom, Western Europe stubbornly insists on continuing a policy of "everyone against Russia" that emerged during the Crimean War (1853-1856), when London, Paris, and a part of the future Italian state joined together to prevent Moscow from expanding into a power vacuum around the Black Sea due to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The hostility to Russia created then and exacerbated during the years of the Soviet Union continued after the demise of the Eastern Bloc nations and their military arm the Warsaw Pact, at which point NATO ceased to have any legitimate reason to exist. Nevertheless, instead of dissolving itself in recognition of the disappearance of its ideological and geopolitical enemy, NATO continued to expand eastward, making itself an instrument of shackling Russia with a chain of hostile countries all along its Western flank. From the beginning this was at the initiative of the White House, which sought to widen U.S. hegemony over Europe and guarantee that Moscow would never again be a world power. The permanent hostility against Russia had the unplanned but predictable effect of stirring up Russian nationalism and facilitating the rise to prominence of Vladimir Putin, who halted Western expansionism in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, when a coup d'etat orchestrated by Washington and Brussels installed a client regime whose current leader is Zelensky.
In an effort to bleed Russia dry, ex-president Joe Biden decided to escalate tensions, to the point of precipitating an essentially civil war between Ukraine and Moscow, using Ukrainian soldiers and civilians as cannon fodder. In spite of the severe damage done to the Russian economy and of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in 42 months of mutual massacre, the West has not managed to destroy Russia or topple Putin. Meanwhile Trump, who entered his second term promising to end the Ukraine war "in a day," and who seems genuinely reluctant to continue financing a puppet like Zelensky, is nevertheless helping Brussels fight the war "to the last Ukrainian," in spite of the fact that no Ukranians can be found to voluntarily enlist in the military, a fact conceded even by the most NATO-sympathetic media.
In short, Zelensky, Von der Leyen, Starmer, Merz, Macron and their media lackeys stubbornly continue sacrificing the Ukrainian population in a power game that offers them no prospect of military victory, disguising it as a struggle for liberty and democracy while ignoring Ukraine's immediate helplessness should the White House decide to leave them to their fate.
Source: "Washington: Disappointment For The Hawks," La Jornada, August 19, 2025 (Spanish)
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