"This is a person [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] who keeps his word — a man."

"He does not follow his tail. If he believes it is advantageous for his country, he goes to the end"

"There is an element of predictability, and it is very important to understand who you are dealing with."

Vladimir Putin, 2021

 

"[Putin’s words are] exactly how I have known Mr. Putin since I first met him."

"He is straightforward and keeps his word."

"It is rare to have such strong relations with any state."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Kremlin on March 5, 2020 in Moscow, Russia/ Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

  

"On Nov. 24, 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet over Syria, resulting in the deaths of two Russian soldiers and prompting a sometimes spine-chilling war of words. At his annual press conference in December that year, Putin’s description of Erdoğan was quite different from the one he gave five years later. He said he did not “see any prospect of improving relations with the Turkish leadership,” whom he accused of trying to “lick the Americans in a certain place”."

"Sinking the knife in even deeper, Putin accused Erdoğan of betraying the secular system put in place by Turkey’s national hero, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. “The creeping Islamization would probably cause Atatürk to turn in his grave,” he said. Erdoğan, for his part, lambasted Russian “war crimes” in Syria. Russia imposed sanctions, with the package holidays that brought hundreds of thousands of tourists to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast halted and goods like Turkish tomatoes no longer welcome in the other direction."

Stuart Williams, New Lines Magazine  

Suddenly Turkey is Ukraine's best friend -- no, really. With Erdogan's courteous assistance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now has cordial ingress to the movers-and-shakers of the Middle East. Many of whom have been under extreme violent duress, with the Islamic Republic of Iran punishing the Gulf states for their friendliness with the United States, not to mention Israel. U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, all of whom have been, to some degree targeted by the IRGC; above all, the United Arab Emirates.

 

If any leader of any country currently knows anything about counteroffensives and self-preservation, it is the Ukrainian President, and he is more than pleased to be able to demonstrate what the Ukrainian military has learned while it has been under massive bombardment by an aggressive, much larger conventionally armed neighbour. The Iran war has enabled Mr. Zelenskyy to cultivate closer ties with Gulf states. The Shahed-136 kamikaze drones that Russia uses in Ukraine have been supplied to Iran by Russia and China.

 

At the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a meeting with President of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  President of Ukraine

 

Ukraine's answer to the devastating attacks on its cities and civil infrastructure was almost-instant devising, production and use of surprisingly simple advance drone technology which has given it longer reach into Russia itself, demonstrating what's good for the goose is fine for the gander in blowing up Russian military bases, bridges, ships, weapons storage, and oil depots. Ukrainian resistance has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands Russian servicemen monthly, dealing severe blows to Russia's troop numbers and recruitment.

 

With all that experience behind them, Ukraine was pleased to dispatch air defense teams to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, in ushering Ukraine into the comfort zone of making new contacts in the Middle East, has a new partner, as it leaves behind the old one with which its own agenda was never quite a perfect fit. After all, during the drawn-out civil war in Syria, Turkey armed the Sunni groups trying to break Bashar al-Assad's Alawite grip on the country, even as Erdogan targeted Kurds whose fighting prowess was superior to all of the regime's opponents.

 

And it was Russian warplanes out of the Russian air base in Syria that constantly flew over Sunni strongholds bombing them mercilessly. Just incidentally the very same Sunni fighting groups that Mr. Putin has attempted after the fall of President Assad, (domiciled now in Russia), to ingratiate himself with, hoping to be able to maintain both his remaining naval and air bases in the new Sunni-led government of Ahmed al-Sharaa. 

 

The Russian military presence in Syria has declined significantly over the past two years, from 114 military sites to only two bases today. [Getty]

 

In the early years of Russia's conflict in Ukraine when Moscow was isolated by the West, Turkey, though a standing member of the NATO alliance, spurned the sanctions. In the process becoming a link for Russian trade, investment and energy flows. A situation that gave Ankara greater leverage over Moscow. Russia, before the ouster of the Syrian Alawite regime, could do anything it wanted there and had hundreds of military bases; now under the new Sunni-led regime, reduced to two, albeit its major bases. 

 

It is Turkey that is now the power lever in Syria, helping its interim president al-Sharaa to be presented to the EU, the U.S. as the new, kinder, 'democratic' face of Syria with whom they could all do business with confidence. And in the process, Turkey has become the king-maker, which suits its future plans of greater dominance in the Middle East very well. A role that as a junior partner to Russia for so many years, Russia cultivated for itself, while it is Turkey now that has inserted itself in helping to rebuild the Syrian Army.

 

By openly giving assistance to Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, Mr. Erdogan is amply demonstrating that once again Turkey has spurned its sometimes-tenuous, but generally past-useful allyship with Russia, moreover a Russia that has, by its territorial aggression served to isolate itself, while continuing to aggravate and threaten his eastern European neighbours and needling NATO, of which Turkey is a member. Vladimir Putin and his war-wearied economy has lost the projection of global power, and Turkey for the time being has no further use of his allyship with Russia. 

 

Russian and Turkish delegations at a summit in Tianjin, China, September 2025 Vladimir Smirnov / Reuters

 

"We Will Achieve This By Force"

 

Photo montage, Getty Images

"We need to sit down and discuss this seriously."

"[President Donald Trump's plan is] a set of issues put forward for discussion [rather than a draft agreement]."

"If Ukrainian troops withdraw from the territories they occupy, hostilities will cease."

"If they don't withdraw, we will achieve this by force."

Russian President Vladimir Putin 

Russian President Vladimir Putin reviews the honor guard during a welcoming ceremony at Yntymak-Ordo in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, November 26, 2025. Igor Kovalenko/EPA/Shutterstock

 

Force, of course, is what this revanchist imperialist employed with his 'special military operation' launched against a sovereign Ukraine, with the intention of dragging the nation back into the fold of the Soviet Union that Vladimir Putin is planning on reconstructing. It is the reason Russia's near neighbours shudder at the Kremlin's actions in Georgia, Moldova, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 

 

Speaking of Ukraine in holding its own territories as 'occupied' is typical Putian logic. It is, of course, Russia/Putin that 'occupies' Ukrainian territory starting with the coveted Crimean Peninsula and going on six years later to add Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts. Even that is not enough for Putin, vowing to fight on 'until the last Ukrainian dies'.  

"Putin does not want an agreement." 

"The only agreement he wants is diktat -- a Ukrainian surrender. Otherwise, he wants to continue fighting."

"I suspect if Ukraine had accepted those dreadful 28 points, Putin would come back for more."

"He realizes those 28 points reflected great flexibility moving his direction on the part of the United States, and he would say, 'See what else we can get'."

John Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine  

Vladimir Putin's idea of an end to war and the arrival of peace, is that Ukrainian forces must vacate the areas they 'occupy', for if they insist on remaining in defense of Ukrainian territory, Russian troops will roll right over them. With Russia's larger military, generously equipped, the original Ukrainian defensive swiftly turned into an offensive, demonstrating the courage and determination of a unique social/political order and historical culture to protect its inalienable sovereignty from the malign grasp of a warmonger.

 

Russia is demanding territory from Ukraine it has devastated throughout the course of the nearly four-year war (AFP/Getty)

 

The U.S. president's confidence that his status as the reigning world leader would convince two warring parties to submit to reason; enough blood shed, enough material destruction, enough displacement, enough refugees, and more than enough madness in the fog of war, greed, revenge, fear and misery. The tactics employed to date; strong-arming and verbally abusing and threatening the defender, while deferring to the offender have failed in their aberrant and clumsy overtures.

 

What is obvious that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not bow to the unreasonable pressures he has been plied with, while acknowledging the need to placate to a certain measure some of the demands impressed upon him. Putin, on the other hand, remains fixated on the enterprise he set out to accomplish; acquiring by limitless force as much of the geography of Ukraine for a Greater Russia that the sacrifice of lives on both side can accomplish.

 

Andriy Yermak (right) said Ukraine’s Zelensky (left) would never give up land before he resigned on Friday amid an anti-corruption probe.  Reuters

 

Ukraine, as far as Putin is concerned, must withdraw completely from all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions to make way for Russian annexation. Until this demand is satisfied, Moscow has no interest whatever in 'peace negotiations'. Nor can Ukraine be permitted to join NATO. Much less be permitted to host NATO troops for security reasons. 

 

European leaders, in their support of Ukraine while regarding the scenario that has been unfolding for the past three years in that country to be a potential prelude to what they too might experience should Russia prevail, are anxious to be consulted along with Ukraine for any alterations to the draft peace plan the Trump administration has pieced together. 

 

Europe is well aware that their adversary in Moscow plans to outwait their commitment in supporting the Ukrainian war effort. They are also acutely aware that it wouldn't take much for this irascible president who does not take kindly to opposition, to walk away from American past obligations in upholding the world order. Ukraine shudders at the prospect of being left adrift without any support at all from the U.S., whether it be badly needed military arms, or intelligence.  

"I see nothing at the moment that would force Putin to recalculate his goals or abandon his core demands."

"He feels more confident than ever about the battlefield situation and is convinced that he can wait until Kyiv finally accepts that it cannot win and must negotiate on Russia's well-known terms."

"If the Americans can help move things in that direction -- fine. If not, he knows how to proceed anyway." 

Tatiana Stoyanova, founder, R.Politik, senior fellow, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center  

 

"We're sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100 percent."

"So what we're doing is, the weapons that are going out are going to NATO, and then NATO is going to be giving those weapons [to Ukraine], and NATO is paying for those weapons." 

U.S. President Donald Trump 

 

"[The U.S. is encouraging its NATO allies] to provide those weapons, systems, the defensive systems that Ukraine seeks ... since they have them in their stocks, and then we can enter into financial agreements with them, with us, where they can purchase the replacements."

"It's a lot faster to move something, for example, from Germany to Ukraine than it is to order it from a [U.S.] factory and get it there."

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

 

"There is no silence in Ukraine."

"We found a solution, as a country, scientists and engineers fund a solution. That's the key."

"We need financing. And then, we will intercept."

"Russia does not change its strategy, and to effectively counter this terror we need a systemic strengthening of defences: more air defences, more interceptor [drones], more determination to make Russia feel our response."  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, first responders work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in the Kyiv region on Friday. (Ukrainian Emergency Service/The Associated Press)

 

That's the beauty of the 'art of the deal', so beloved of the American President. He can advance aid to Ukraine, fighting for its survival against a larger army with endless military equipment at its disposal, in a  tangential manner without direct involvement that would really annoy his erstwhile friend Vladimir Putin and in the process ensure that American manufacturers of military equipment gain new orders to be sent on to Europe, finessing a deal that transactionally benefits the United States financially.

 

So the answer to the quandary is encouraging allies to transfer their U.S.-made, high-functional military gear to Ukraine, with the Trump administration's approval, while holding out the advantage to all concerned of bolstering American weapons-producers through future sales to replenish their reduced stocks. Finessing the art of the deal, pleasing the mercurial president no end at his clever manoeuvres. It is Europe, after all, that would find itself in Russia's crosshairs should its 'special military operation' in Ukraine gain Moscow its territorial enterprise aspirations.

 

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed out, the U.S.-made weapons Ukraine desperately seeks are already deployed with NATO allies in Europe, transferable to Ukraine, leaving European countries to seek replacements from the United States. Greater numbers of Patriot air defence systems are badly needed by Ukraine in its efforts to stop Russian ballistic and cruise missiles at a time when the Trump White House issues conflicting views of its preparedness to provide more vital military equipment to Ukraine.

 

 

First there was a pause on the shipments of some weapons from the U.S., then the  usual Trump turnaround stating he would continue sending defensive weapons to Kyiv. U.S. officials assured Ukraine this week that 155 mm munitions and precision-guided rockets were in transit. Patriot missile systems are in the possession of Germany, Spain and other European countries, among whom some have placed orders to acquire more of them.

 

Russia is attempting to overwhelm Ukraine's air defences through the launch of major aerial attacks on its cities. In relation to which Ukraine has pleaded with other European countries for supplies of an additional ten Patriot systems and missiles. Russia had fired over 700 attack and decoy drones at Ukraine last week, in numbers well in excess of previous nightly barrages for the third time in a two-week period. This, at a time when Russia's military is pressing on the front line where thousands of soldiers on both sides have died since February 2022.

 

Waves of drone and missile attacks targeted Kyiv overnight into Friday in the largest aerial attack since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began more than three years ago, injuring 23 people and inflicting severe damage across multiple districts of the capital in a seven-hour onslaught. (Gleb Garanich/Reuteres)

 

A Russian drone barrage hit the centre of Kharkiv before dawn on Friday, damaging a maternity hospital in the second-larges city in Ukraine. Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, has endured intensifying repeated drone attacks recently, as have other regions of the country. The highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years occurred in June, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, as a result of Russia launching ten times more drones and missiles in that month as they had a year ago that month. 

 

Mr. Zelenskyy reminded his European colleagues that Moscow has plans to manufacture up to 1,000 drones a day, fashioning them after the Shahed drones supplied to Russia by the Islamic Republic of Iran, with modifications to make them even more effective. More interceptor drones are also required by Ukraine, to down Russian drones. The repeated Russian drone and missile onslaughts inspired Kyiv authorities to establish a comprehensive drone interception system under a project named Clear Sky.

 

The Clear Sky project includes a $6.2-million interceptor drone investment, operator training and new mobile response units, according to the head of the Kyiv Military Administration. And it is the production of the newly developed interceptor drones proven successful against Shaheds, that Mr. Zelenskyy appealed to his European partners to help accelerate production for. Ukraine is also installing nets to deflect the drones by interrupting their settings and neutralizing them.

 

A woman stands next to damaged cars following what local authorities said was a Ukrainian drone attack, amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in the town of Voronezh, Russia July 15, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer

 

 

Transparently Disingenuous Russia

"Under the auspices of the United Nations, with the United States, even with European countries, and, of course, with our partners and friends, we could discuss the possibility of introduction of temporary governance in Ukraine."

"[It would allow the country to] hold democratic elections, to bring to power a viable government that enjoys the trust of the people, and then begin negotiations with them on a peace treaty." 

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Putin said Russian troops had the "strategic initiative" in Ukraine   Reuters

"He is afraid of negotiating with Ukraine."

"He is afraid of negotiating with me personally, and by excluding Ukraine's [government] he is suggesting that Ukraine is not an independent actor for him."

"Europe definitely knows how to defend itself, and we are working together to ensure greater security for our country and all European nations." 

"Russia continues looking for excuses to drag this war out even further."

"Putin is playing the same game he has since 2014 [unilateral annexation of the Crimean peninsula]."

"This is dangerous for everyone -- and there should be an appropriate response from the United States, Europe, and all our global partners who seek peace."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"You could say that I was very angry, pissed off, when... Putin started getting into Zelensky's credibility, because that's not going in the right location."

"New leadership means you're not gonna have a deal for a long time." 

"If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia's fault - which it might not be... I am going to put secondary tariffs... on all oil coming out of Russia."

"There will be a 25% tariff on oil and other products sold in the United States, secondary tariffs."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy / X)

 

As a brilliant solution to vexing problems, Russian President Putin's Friday proposal for Ukraine to be placed  temporarily under external governance throughout the efforts to reach a peaceful settlement in the conflict that Russia imposed upon Ukraine through its military invasion and subsequent claims of legitimacy in annexing Ukrainian provinces as Russian territory, this one registered as just another form of naked aggression on the part of Russia in its territorial grabs. 

 

Further, calling into dispute Ukrainian democracy and President Zelenskyy's legitimacy reminds one of Vladimir Putin's musical chairs performance when he brought in Dmitry Medvedev as president while he took on Medvedev's prime ministerial role, to enable them to once again reverse the situation ensuring that Russia's two-term presidency limit would not interfere with Putin's designs to remain Russian president in perpetuity to which end he changed the constitution and now sits secure as Russia's legal long-term president. Any challengers have been summarily either murdered or imprisoned.

 

Yet this is the man who insists that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has no legitimacy to sign a peace agreement since his term expired. A pathetic piece of demagoguery since he would be very well aware that it is illegal in Ukraine for national elections to be held during times of conflict and the nation is under martial law. Still, Putin pressed ahead with the claim that any such agreement to a permanent ceasefire signed by the sitting Ukrainian government could be challenged by a successor government so that new elections should be called for, through external vigilance under temporary guardianship. 

A summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron considered plans for troop deployment to Ukraine in view of an eventual peace deal where Macron announced that 'several' other nations would volunteer to participate in the force along with France and Britain. Mr. Putin, however, made it clear that he would not accept troop involvement from NATO members in a prospective peacekeepng force. So, for Mr. Putin it would be far more appropriate if Belarus, Iran and North Korean troops comprised such a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

 

"They are playing games and they're playing for time", stated U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while Macron and other Paris summit participants accused Russia of insincerity in its offering to participate in negotiations that could lead to a peace agreement to end the bloodshed. 

Both Russia and Ukraine agreed in principle to a tentative US.-brokered agreement to pause strikes on energy infrastructure even as both sides hold varying views on when the deal to halt strikes should become effective, accusing one another of violations, making it more than obvious just how fraught any semblance of an agreement would be in the challenge to negotiate a broad peace. 

 

Germany has voted to hugely boost investment in its military   BBC

 

Russia's claims of wanting peace and an end to the conflict -- as long as it is able to hold on to the one-fifth of eastern Ukraine that the Kremlin now considers part of Greater Russia, are viewed with skepticism by its neighbours. Leading Norway, as an example to refurbish its old Cold War Military Bunkers, and leaving Germany convinced it must now begin to rebuild a viable military, the better to confront any future expansionary moves by Moscow.

 

Bunkers like the ones at Bardufoss can keep expensive fighter planes safe from attacks by drones (Credit: Norwegian Armed Forces)

 

 

"The First Step In A Movement To Peace"

"[This is the first step in a] movement to peace."

"Both leaders agreed this conflict needs to end with a lasting peace." 

"The blood and treasure that both Ukraine and Russia have been spending in this war would be better spent on the needs of their people."

White House statement

 

"We have received signals from the United States that we are talking about the ceasefire on energy facilities, so not to attack energy infrastructure, and we are also talking about the civilian infrastructure facilities."

"We talked only about one power plant, [Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south Ukraine] which is under Russian occupation."

"[I had] felt no pressure [from Trump]. It was a fruitful conversation, perhaps the most fruitful we have had, the mood was positive."

"We instructed our teams to resolve technical issues related to implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he had ‘a positive, very substantive’ conversation with the US president. Photograph: @ZelenskyyUa/X

 

"The need to halt arms supplies to Kyiv was discussed during Putin and Trump’s conversation."

"[Ceasing military aid would be] high on the agenda in negotiations between Russia and the US, but the topic will not be discussed publicly."

Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov

 

"It’s a very strange demand, of course. He [Vladimir Putin] wants Ukraine to give up its army, to give up security guarantees, to give up its right to be in alliances, and to give up on various territories."

"This is what he’s been fighting for for three years, and he couldn’t do it militarily …"

"And now that’s what he wants from the negotiations process."

Zelenskyy aide Mykhailo Podolyak

During a lengthy telephone call on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to seek a limited ceasefire against energy and infrastructure targets in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, an agreement that the White House felt would eventually include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, and ultimately, a full and lasting end to the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. 

A statement by the White House added plans for negotiations to "begin immediately" on those steps, to take place in the Middle East, though it was not clear whether Ukraine is in agreement with the phased ceasefire plan. A limited ceasefire covering the Black Sea and long-range missile strikes and the release of prisoners was what Ukrainian officials envisaged at their meeting with the U.S. delegation this month in Saudi Arabia.

 

Mr. Putin, on the other hand, according to the Kremlin, welcomed President Trump's calls for the maritime ceasefire and felt confident enough it "agreed to begin negotiations to further work out specific details of such an agreement".  Russia and Ukraine were preparing to exchange 175 prisoners of war on each side the day following, according to the Putin-Trump conversation. Russia planned to hand over to Ukraine in addition, 23 badly wounded soldiers.

 

During the 90-minute conversation, Mr. Putin called on his American counterpart to end its foreign military and intelligence arrangements with Ukraine. While the White House focuses on Russia to sign off on its 30-day ceasefire proposal aimed at ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials agreed last week to the 30-day ceasefire proposal in talks led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, nonetheless remains skeptical that the Russian president is sincere in his oblique statements for peace, given that Russian forces continue to pound his country. The latest engagement is yet another turn in dramatically shifting U.S.-Russia relations reflecting Mr. Trump's pre-election statements of his intention to quickly put an end to the war as a top priority. 

 

That in so doing ties with longtime U.S. allies are strained, given their insistence that Putin must pay a price for its invasion of Ukraine, seems not to trouble Mr. Trump one whit. 

As for Ukraine's president, in his nightly video address on Monday, his statements clearly reflected his doubt that Putin is ready for peace. "Now, almost a week later, it's clear to everyone in the world -- even to those who refused to acknowledge the truth for the past three years -- that it is Putin who continues to drag out this war", he said.

 

As an aside during the conversation between the U.S. and Russian presidents, the White House later stated that what also came under discussion between the two leaders  during their extensive conversation, is the explosive situation currently unfolding in the Middle East; both purportedly agreeing that "Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel".

 

As for Mr. Putin's longer-range designs, the Kommersant Russian newspaper reported that Putin had informed a meeting of senior business leaders of his intention to continue the fighting until such time that he obtains full control of -- along with international recognition of -- the four regions in Ukraine that Moscow annexed in 2022. Quite obviously, Mr. Putin has abandoned none of his hardline objectives in the war he imposed upon Ukraine.

 

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meeting at a summit in Helsinki, July 2018. EPA-EFE/Mauri Ratilainen

Kyiv to Washington: Explain Your Game Plan!

"If anyone wants to replace me right now, then it just isn't going to happen."

"I wish Trump's team had more truth. Because none of this is having a positive effect on Ukraine."

"[Claims from Trump that ratings stood at four percent is disinformation] coming from Russia."

"Since we are talking about 4 percent, we have seen this disinformation, we understand that it is coming from Russia. We understand this, and we have evidence that these numbers are being discussed between America and Russia."

"President Trump, with great respect for him as a leader of the people (...) unfortunately, lives in this disinformation space."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Zelenskyy says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

 

"Well, we have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine; where we have martial law, essentially martial law, in Ukraine; where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% percent approval rating."

"He [Zelensky] refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden 'like a fiddle'. A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left...I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died."  

U.S. President Donald J. Trump

President Donald Trump speaks during the signing of executive orders at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday.   Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

The verbal jousting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy has resonated deeply in Ukraine. Ukrainians who have been chafing at the ongoing conflict that Russia imposed on it, finding fault with their president's positions have now been unified with those of their compatriots who find the president doing all that can possibly be done in defence of their country amid the conflict, and his unstinting efforts in the international diplomatic field to bring together staunch supporters and allies, imploring them to aid Ukraine in its existential struggle against the territorial ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

Assertions by Donald Trump of the Ukrainian President's failures in the field of popularity among Ukrainians, faulting him for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that has displaced millions of Ukrainian citizens, levelled huge swaths of Ukrainian infrastructure, killed or wounded hundreds of thousands have not been well received by the Ukrainian population at large. Nor has most of Europe been impressed by the statesmanship of the leader of the most powerful country in the world, who has suddenly once again turned against America's traditional allies and found common ground with Vladimir Putin's Russia.

"Today I heard, 'Oh, we weren't invited'."

"Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it."

"You should have never started it."

"You could have made a deal."

Trump taunting Zelenskyy 

Ukraine, held President Trump, must hold elections. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Ukraine's premier polling organization, published a survey concluding that 57 percent of Ukrainians place their trust in Zelenskyy. Trump's election call for Ukraine and erroneous claims of  low approval ratings echo Vladimir Putin's attacks on the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leader whose Churchillian performance has been outstanding, has become a matter of confused conjecture over Mr. Trump's logic and comprehension of the Russian invasion leading to its occupation of a sixth of Ukraine.

 

Transposing Russia's own flawed election results and the manipulation of Vladimir Putin's changes engineered to alter the Russian constitution in 2021, to enable Putin to remain power up to 2036, appears to have escaped the American President's notice in his tirade against a democratically elected president in Ukraine with a high trust rating among his electorate.  Moreover, charging Ukraine with 'starting' the war is a direct quote from Vladimir Putin that Russia had 'no choice' but to attack Ukraine as a matter of self-defence.

 

"It sounds like there was a handout prepared by Lavrov given to Rubio, and now they're just reading it", remarked former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. A situation alerting Europe that the alliances the West has been dependent on for mutual security since World War II appear to be unraveling. "Diverse, varied and often incomprehensible", is how French government spokeswoman Sophie Primas characterized Trump's remarks. "We do not understand the American logic very well."

"I would love to meet with Donald. It's been a long time since we've seen each other. I would love to meet with him now as well. I think he will, too", chortled President Putin, praising the meetings between the U.S. and Russian diplomats in Riyadh as 'friendly', describing how different the U.S. representatives were from their Biden predecessors.

 

The resulting firestorm of support for Zelenskyy in Ukraine, where under Ukrainian law, an election cannot be called under a state of martial law and the country steeped deep in conflict, with millions of its citizens abroad, making voting a strategic nightmare, the call for elections has been viewed as an underhanded attempt to sow chaos and divide the country at a time of its vexing existential dilemma. 

 

A prominent documentary director and commentator in Ukraine, a critic of Mr. Zelenskyy, wrote: "After Trump's verbal diarrhea, by tomorrow, Zelensksyy's approval rating will be back above 90 percent -- just like it was on February 24, three years ago", with the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow. 

 

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks after signing an executive order on reciprocal tariffs in the Oval Office at the White House on February 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the 61st Munich Security Conference on February 15, 2025 in Munich, Germany.   Getty Images

 

Britain's Fulsome Embrace of Ukraine's Sovereign Resistance Against Russia

"[The agreement] commits the U.K. to consult with Ukraine in the event it is ever attacked by Russia again and to provide 'swift and sustained' assistance for their defence."

"[The agreement is intended] to be the first step in developing an unshakable hundred-year partnership between Ukraine and the United Kingdom."

"[London would also] provide intelligence sharing, cybersecurity, medical and military training, and defence industrial cooperation."

"The United Kingdom is the first country [in the Group of Seven] to deliver a final agreement [among those pledging to do so in the July NATO summit]."

"[Much of the additional $250 million pledge would be spent] on a major push to rapidly procure and produce thousands of military drones for Ukraine, including surveillance, long-range strike and sea drones."

This will be the largest delivery of drones to Ukraine from any nation."

Bilateral British/Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with President Volodymyr Zelensky (right) at a signing ceremony during a visit to the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, to announce a major new package of £2.5 billion in military aid to the country over the coming year, January 12, 2024. Stefan Rousseau/Pool via REUTERS

 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Kyiv bringing with him good cheer and good news for embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the effect that the United Kingdom is prepared to provide Ukraine with over $3 billion in military aid over and above what it has supplied to date. Documents were signed establishing bilateral security guarantees locking London and Kyiv in a close embrace through a formal alliance on security and intelligence-sharing.

Called the U.K.-Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation, this package will hearten President Zelenskyy, even as it delights the British Prime Minister to announce its generous and badly needed support for Ukraine enmeshed in an armed conflict with a viciously obdurate Kremlin, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has quashed his home critics, repeating the dire need for Moscow to deter Ukraine from destabilizing Russia by imposing its fascist neo-Nazi agenda on poor helpless Russia.

 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a visit to the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, to announce a major new package of military aid to the country over the coming year, January 12, 2024. Stefan Rousseau/Pool via REUTERS

 

Already one of Ukraine's most stalwart supporters, this visit by the British Prime Minister along with the badly needed assistance, made for an uplifting message for Kyiv at the very time that Russia has increased its aerial bombardment campaign. Crucially, the proposed aid package of over $60 billion that US. President Joe Biden anticipates gifting Ukraine is stalled, blocked in Congress. The U.K.'s commitment is doubly appreciated in the face of Russia's ongoing violence against Ukraine.

Kyiv has been anxious that support against Russia not wane from its Western supporters; a strong unified pledge for ongoing support was the message he brought with him on a world tour recently, seeking to persuade his Western backers to ratify unremitting security guarantees to highlight for Russia that support remains unshakeable for Ukraine at a time when questions have arisen over the commitment by the West to continue aiding Ukraine in its existential determination to defend itself from tyranny's re-conquest.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with President Volodymyr Zelensky (centre right) arrive for a press conference during a visit to the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, to announce a major new package of ?2.5 billion in military aid to the country over the coming year, January 12, 2024. Stefan Rousseau/Pool via REUTERS

Cap in Hand, Urgently Earnest and Hoping

"If there's anyone inspired by unresolved issues on Capitol Hill, it's just [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his secret clique."

"Ukrainians haven't given up and won't give up. We know what to do. And you can count on Ukraine. And we hope just as much to be able to count on you."

"We are using every day, every minute to give more to Ukraine, to our people -- more opportunities, more protection, more strength."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

In a photo posted on his Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks at the National Defense University in Washington, Dec. 11, 2023.

The White House pointed to declassified intelligence indicating that Ukraine has inflicted heavy losses on Russia in fighting that took place recently along the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka axis, resulting in 13,000 Russian casualties and over 220 combat vehicles destroyed. This is where the partly occupied east of Ukraine has been the centre of some of the recent weeks fiercest battles. All of which take time, grit, casualties of their own, and weaponry requiring replacement.

Which led Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to another visit to Washington where he first spoke to a defense university, where he dropped the intelligence from Ukraine's point of view that Russia may be fighting in Ukraine but it's "real target is freedom" in America and around the world. It certainly looks that way from any perspective, given the evidence of the past few years. 

His purpose was to issue a personal plea for Congress to resolve its deadlock and in the process unlock roughly $60 billion scheduled in military aid, unable to flow to Ukraine while Republican lawmakers continue to hold up the process, pressing the Biden administration to first tighten the southern border to put a stop to floods of migrants entering the U.S.

 

In a photo posted on his Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown, Dec. 11, 2023.

 

Tuesday was the day earmarked for Zelenskyy to meet with the American lawmakers to make his case for additional military aid in view of the reality that the Biden administration is running out of the money approved in previous aid packages helping to repel the Russian onslaught in Ukraine. To them, President Zelenskyy warned that his country's counteroffensive has stalled for lack of all the weapons his military is in need of.

"As Russia ramps up its missile and drone strikes against Ukraine, the leaders will discuss Ukraine's urgent needs and the vital importance of the United Sates' continued support at this critical moment", a statement delivered by White House spokeswoman Karina Jean-Pierre stated. Even as Zelensky embarked on  his trip to Washington, Moscow targeted southern Ukraine with 18 drones, launching eight ballistic missiles at the Kyiv region.

While senators struggle to reach a compromise on U.S.-Mexico border policy changes Republicans insist on, assistance to Ukraine cannot pass both houses of Congress. "Right now, Republican demands are unreasonable", stated lead Democratic negotiator Senator Chris Murphy; that he expects the White House to become more engaged in the negotiations to resolve "some pretty big differences that remain". 

"They seem to be focused on how many people can we just release into the country and tell them we'll do a hearing sometime later", said Republican negotiator Senator James Lankford. This, while Zelenskyy explained his country's counteroffensive wasn't able to achieve its goals since allies failed to provide anticipated weaponry. As a relentless ground war in eastern and southern Ukraine heads into winter, Ukraine deals with a troop shortage, uncertainty over military aid and divisions with the EU.

 

President Joe Biden shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as they meet in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

 

Almost $106 billion in emergency spending was proposed by President Biden in October, inclusive of $61 billion for assistance to Ukraine for a year and $13.6 billion to secure the U.S. southern border. The package in limbo, Shalanda Young, Biden's budget director stated that the US. would run out of resources to assist Ukraine by the end of the year. "We are out of money --- and nearly out of time", she stated to congressional leaders in a letter.

"I don’t know whether he moved the needle at all."

"The only thing that is really holding this up at this point is the unwillingness of the White House so far to acknowledge that they’re going to have to deal with the border component, not just to pay for the current policies, which are releasing millions of people into the interior, but actually changes in the asylum system, changes in the mass release system known as parole."

Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas (post-meeting)

Prior to his Washington trip, Zelenskyy travelled to Argentina in an effort to persuade Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to drop objections to the start of European Union accession talks with Ukraine. While the two leaders spoke briefly on the sidelines of Argentinian President Javier Milei's inauguration in Buenos Aires, Orban seems committed to blocking $53.8 billion EU aid package for Ukraine, set to be discussed in Brussels during the Dec.14-15 summit. "We spoke with maximum honesty clearly, about our European affairs", said Zelenskyy.

The Emotional Passion : Loyal Nationalist Fighting for Ukraine

"We trampled this land with our bare feet and breathed into our souls and hears its its magical aromas, and our eyes, like memory tapes, forever recorded the beauty of the cities, villages and landscapes of our native land."

"[As the Polish army and civilian population fled, Hunka's village looked toward the west and] the hope that those mystical German knights who give 'bullets' to the hated Poles will appear."

"[Instead of Germans], a column of horsemen with red stars on their caps arrived."

"This was the first demonstration of 'father' Stalin's guardianship over us -- the first echelons of 'enemies of the people' sent to Siberia. More and more new ones followed."

"Friend to friend and brother to brother could not speak sincerely for fear of betrayal. At school, we had to sing praises to our executioners, and the monthly printed murals that each class had to create praised Father Stalin and the communist party to the heavens."

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, former member WW2 Nazi Waffen-SS Galicia

"Ukrainian nationalists faced an impossible choice during the war, but we definitely shouldn't celebrate their Sophie's Choice in the chamber of the Canadian House of Commons."

Joe Roberts, Jewish activist with Ukraine's Jewish community

 

"...The SS Galician Division helped the Germans murder Galician Jews and participated in anti-Polish massacres."

"...It is hard to imagine that Hunka would have been unaware of the region's brutalities and the SS Galician Division's crimes against Poles and Jews; Heinrich Himmler gave a speech to the Galician Division, praising them for removing the 'dirty blemish' of the Jews and 'liquidating' the Poles."

"...In his memoir, not a word of recognition given to these victims."

Adam Zivo, journalist, Odesa, Ukraine

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons on Sept. 22. It later emerged Hunka was once part of a notorious Nazi unit during the Second World War. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

Last week in Ottawa, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was present in the House of Commons to be received in respect by Canadian Parliamentarians and invited diplomats. He was to address the House. The Speaker of the House introduced the presence of an invited Ukrainian-Canadian patriot, a war hero, an introduction that saw all present rise in two ovations for the presence of this 98-year-old hero of World War Two. Several days later, the venerable Jewish journal the Forward revealed that the invited man, Yaroslav Hunka, had fought with the Germans as a volunteer, against the Soviet Union.

 

The Battalion he fought in was notorious as a foreign arm of volunteers fighting alongside Nazi German battalions. Enlistment in the SS Galicia Division came with an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. And service to the battalion involved voluntarily assisting Germany in its dedication to slaughtering Jews. This man was no patriotic hero as far as any Allied-nation country was concerned; his presence in the House was an insult to the Canadians who died defending the world against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.

 

The trigger-words for the adulatory reception given the elderly man who wrote of his years fighting with the SS Galicia Division as the happiest years of his life, came in the introduction of a Ukrainian fighting Russia. Not as a Ukrainian fascist allied with Nazi Germany fighting against the Soviet Union which by then had turned against its former Axis membership when Germany marched on its former Axis ally leading Stalin to throw in his lot with the Western Allies. The Division of Ukrainians, under direct German orders, was declared a criminal organization by the Nuremberg war trial investigators.

 

The quotes above citing words that Yaroslav Hunka had written were extracted from a 2,000-word memoir published in News of the Combatant in 2011, a blog managed by an association of Ukrainian veterans. The brutalities of Soviet rule were memorialized as it were, in the memoir alongside efforts by Ukrainian partisans to establish an independent state. The mind-confusing Ukraine-Russia conflict of today where Moscow has invaded Ukraine, claiming its territories to be part of Russia, and the war crimes committed by Russia at the present time may echo those of the Second World War, but they are different worlds.

Before the war in 1939 Stalin imposed a famine on Ukraine, which caused countless Ukrainians, including Ukrainian Jews, to perish from hunger, when Ukraine, an agricultural super-power then and now, saw its grain yields confiscated and sent to Russia during a time of grain shortage, leaving Ukraine to fend for itself, its harvest maintaining life for Russians, while its absence to feed Ukrainians dealt a near-genocidal blow to the nation; that was the historical Holodomor. 

Mr. Hunka was born and raised in the village of Urman, Eastern Galicia, ruled at that time by Poland. In 1939 when war began Hunka was 14.  Initially under Soviet occupation Hunka, from an impoverished family, was sent to a Polish 'bursa' in Berezhany where many of his classmates were Jewish refugee children. Which puzzled Hunka and his Ukrainian coevals, why Jews "were running away from such a civilized western nation as the Germans". Preparations underway to murder millions of Jews were not long in coming.

Soon people began disappearing, deported to Siberia, including Hunka's family members. Students suddenly disappeared from school and were never seen again. Anyone deemed to be anti-Soviet became part of the deportations. Finally, two years on, in 1941, the Soviets were turned out and Nazis occupied the region. Villagers "welcomed the German soldiers with joy"; ethnic Ukrainians could sleep in peace without fearing "there would ... be that dreaded knocking on the door in the middle of the night".

Soon, their 'liberators'  changed and a new wave of arrests occurred. "The Fuehrer immediately revealed his plans for Ukraine: liquidating the provisional Ukrainian government in Lviv and imprisoning Ukrainian leaders in concentration camps", Mr. Hunka wrote in his memoirs. The Germans spoke a foreign language, he wrote, and "did not permeate our society with informers as the Muscovite did". Soon enough Hunka described the next two years of "charming girls, carelessly cheerful friends and fragrant evenings in the luxurious castle park", the happiest two years of his life.

Ukrainian nationalists imagined Poland's return to control the region, concluding a solution existed; an autocratic ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian state they would create. Whose intention led to atrocities as Jews and Poles, comprising a large minority in East Galicia were being massacred. From 1943 to 1945, Ukrainian Insurgent Army actions and their collaborators aided the Germans in hunting down and exterminating Jews so that an estimated 1.5 million Jews perished ultimately, during the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appalud Hunka. Trudeau has since apologized for the diplomatic disaster. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

 

Ethnically cleansing Galicia, collaborating with the Nazis' campaigns of extermination saw favour in the aspirations of the Ukrainian nationalists of this time in history. The impression was given with this man's introduction to Parliament last week that the current battle for Ukraine's sovereignty bears similarity to the WWII situation. Except that now, at the present time, it is a Jew that leads Ukraine in its existential conflict with Russia. And the Parliament of Canada, feted both that Jew, and a Nazi-affiliated Ukrainian guilty of at the very least voluntary association with the mass murder of Ukrainian Jews.

Errors of judgement can be monumental in their revelations, and the judgement of their peers consequential to those who pay insufficient heed to history.

Heinrich Himmler, one of the top Nazi officials, inspects a line of troops with the 1st Galician Division, also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, in an undated photo. (Polish State Archives)