Washington Drops Ukraine, Israel Backs Down on Hamas Demands
The two big stories in the news today are the Trump administration saying Ukraine is going to have to give up territory and NATO ambitions in order to secure a peace deal, while Israel appears to retreat from its ceasefire standoff with Hamas.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US “does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome for a negotiated settlement,” and that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” This comes as Trump announces that he is in talks with Vladimir Putin to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.
Both NATO membership and recapturing all territory lost to Russia have been the goal of Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the NATO enthusiasts throughout the western world who adore him. Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains:
Restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has been a war goal of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, although there have been signs in recent months that he’s accepted that’s unrealistic. But he is still calling for strong security guarantees from the US that involve the deployment of troops, which Hegseth also dismissed.
“Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said.
“There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” Hegseth added.
“Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive had Biden been willing to say this three years ago,” Aaron Maté wrote on Twitter regarding Hegseth’s comments. “Instead, Biden refused, fueled a proxy war, presided over Ukraine’s decimation, and then turned around and said that Ukraine isn’t ready to join NATO anyway. It was all a bait and switch with one goal only: use Ukraine to bleed Russia. Whoever went along with this epic disaster — and that sadly includes progressive lawmakers and media — should ask themselves if it was worth it.”
And now the US treasury secretary is meeting with Zelensky to negotiate a deal granting the US access to Ukraine’s considerable rare earth mineral wealth — not to continue the war, but to pay for a post-war “security shield” that the US would be supplying under President Trump’s plan. Ukraine has been scorched, shredded and spat on by its buddies in Washington, and now it’s being strip-mined.
Everyone who knew anything about anything said from the very beginning of the war that this would happen. Professor John Mearsheimer warned back in 2015 that the west was leading Ukraine down the primrose path and that the result would be Ukraine getting wrecked. Many other experts and analysts warned that NATO provocations would lead to disaster for Ukraine, long bef
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