The prime minister spoke to Zelensky on the phone and expressed support for "Ukraine's democratically elected leader".
Summary
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer defended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a "democratically elected leader" after Donald Trump called him a "dictator" for suspending elections during the war.
Starmer, who spoke with Zelensky, supported Ukraine’s decision, comparing it to the UK's actions during World War II.
The controversy comes ahead of Starmer’s meeting with Trump, where he plans to push for a US security "backstop" for Ukraine.
Trump’s remarks have sparked criticism, while Russia continues to dismiss potential peace deals without Ukrainian elections.
I am too, but holy fuck do I wish that literally anyone tried to make a plan for this contingency ahead of time. It really feels like everyone is scrambling to respond, both domestically and internationally.
Edit: the only “success” story I’ve seen so far was out of Japan, where the PM reportedly extensively wargamed dealing with and playing Trump, and it seemed to have gotten the country a favorable deal. Just shocked it seems like nobody else seems to have done even that much.
Seriously though, I saw this shit coming from a mile away, it's been dead obvious that the US had some really bad growing fundamental issues that were never going to just magically go away by themselves (I mean, hell, not just the US, but still, they were going to be the first ones, and then there's stuff like climate change..)
Why the hell do I seem to be able to figure out overarching trends better than literal professional politicians and leaders of countries? It's so immensely infuriating
Right?!?!? Genuinely, I fucking hate feeling like I have some special predictive powers. I don’t. I just pay attention to what’s going on in the world while having an interest in history and geopolitics that tends to take me down rabbitholes in that domain. It simply cannot be so rare that we’re the only ones thinking of this shit. It’s not hard to extrapolate, and it’s not outlandish or unexpected.
I think this is part of why I’ve become such a misanthrope over the years: seeing “leaders” at every level (professional/corporate, local, state, federal) just doing the most vapid, idiotic plays possible instead of actually addressing the root causes of problems. It’s so deeply dismaying. At this point, I kinda believe it’s actually a core flaw that our society has developed.
I'm guessing that being involved in government gave them a false sense of security that things could never get this bad in the US, since for all our faults we never went full Nazi, even in Trump's first term. Hell, the far right is making strides in a lot of governments around the world, so if they don't get their shit together they're gonna fall into the same fascist shithole that we have.
I kinda believe it’s actually a core flaw that our society has developed.
It is, and it's called capitalism. When capital is the driving force of everything, not the well-being of the people, this is an inevitable end result.