LOS ANGELES.–Ukraine’s 47-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky showed he’s not serious about peace, exploiting the European Union [EU] to undermine 78-year-old President Donald Trump’s ongoing peace efforts with 72-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky’s only way out the destructive war is to let Trump negotiate a workable peace plan, not to run to EU claiming he’s been excluded from all peace negotiations. Zelensky has put out his 10-point peace plan for years after rejecting all peace plans by several respected foreign power including China and Brazil. Claiming that all plans favor Russia, Zelensky rejects them all, choosing instead to keep fighting but only if the U.S. foots the bill. Trump coming into office promised to end the Ukraine War in short order, a top priority for his 2024 presidential campaign, something Zelensky and the EU knew about.
Zelenksy and the EU knew that if Trump came to power his first order of business was ending the Ukraine War. All of Zelensky’s past peace plans were unrealistic, actually provocative to the Kremlin, like saying he wants to put Putin in jail for war crimes. Zelensky demanded in past peace plans that Putin remove every Russian soldier from Ukraine, including in Crimea and Donbas, the Russia-speaking enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk. Trump sized the war up quickly in Ukraine: Russia had won the war at least two years ago. Saving Ukraine from itself, actually from Zelensky’s chasing, was a top priority of his new administration. Zelensky kept promising different results if only he got more cash and weapons from the U.S. But whatever Zelensky got from the U.S. and NATO over the last three years, it wasn’t enough to stop a superior Russian military.
In the early days of the war in 2022, Zelensky’s propaganda machine said the Russian military was near collapse, prompting 82-year-old former President Joe Biden to fund proxy war with the Kremlin. Biden believed Zelensky’s propaganda that Putin suffered from a terminal illness and his military was near collapse. So, Biden opened up the spigots funding the war with Zelensky making more excuses why he wasn’t making progress. Zelensky promises in 2023 a counteroffensive that would drive every Russian soldier out of Ukraine. Yet nothing happened headed into 2024, other that Ukraine steadily losing more sovereign territory. As failures piled up, Zelensky feared a loss of U.S. funding if Trump came to office. All he could tell the U.S. and EU was that the Ukraine War prevented Putin from taking over more European territory, another feeble excuse.
So, when Trump started his phone conversations with Putin and meeting with Russian officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Zelensky mapped out a new strategy of turning the EU against Trump. At the Munich Security Conference three weeks ago, Zelensky told EU foreign ministers that Trump was no longer committed to European security. He whipped up the EU to make a glaring mistake to turning against Trump. Before you knew it, French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were calling Putin a “clear and present” danger to Europe. EU officials have no real plan for Ukraine peace, only a plan to placate Zelensky who still harbors fantasies to getting his lost sovereign territory back from Putin. EU officials know that only Trump can work with Putin to pull off a workable peace deal, not the plan Zelensky wants.
Zelensky watched his country get its energy infrastructure hit again over the last two days, inflicting more damage to Ukraine’s energy system. Zelensky said that Putin must be “forced to stop the war.” Well, how’s that supposed to happen if he and the EU don’t sign on to Trump’s peace plan and let him go to work? EU announced its own plan for a one-month ceasefire that does nothing for peace because Zelensky hasn’t agreed to anything. Trump is doing everything possible to stop Putin from continuing the war but Zelensky and the EU have done everything to continue the conflict. Putin and Trump are working on a deal that would end the nightmare for Ukraine. “Ukraine is ready to go the way of peace, and it is Ukraine that wants peace from the very first second o this war. The task is to force Russia to stop the war,” Zelensky said, making zero sense.
EU officials need to tell Zelensky in no uncertain terms to let Trump handle the peace negotiations. No one in the EU is ready to battle the Kremlin for Zelensky to end his war with the Kremlin. Macron and von der Leyen need to stop undermining Trump and giving Zelensky false hope of what the EU can do in the future to rearm. If Zelensky really wants to stop the carnage and destruction to Ukraine, he’ll welcome Trump overtures to Putin to finally get a peace deal that works for both countries, not just a futile attempt to blame Putin for his Feb. 24, 2022 invasion. Trump understands that Putin would have never invaded Ukraine if he were president in 2022. Both leaders would have worked out their differences, unlike Biden who kept arming Ukraine to the teeth for eventual war with the Kremlin. EU leaders need to stop pandering to Zelensky and back Trump’s peace efforts.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
