US president warns Ukrainian leader he ‘better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left’
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Trump calls Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’ as US rift with Ukraine deepens
US president warns Ukrainian leader he ‘better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left’
Donald Trump has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and warned that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left”, in a deepening rift between the two leaders.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, the US President hit out at his Ukrainian counterpart hours after Zelenskyy accused Trump of living in a “disinformation bubble” and disputed his $500bn bill for aid to Kyiv.
The bitter exchange comes after Trump upended decades of US policy by convening bilateral talks with Moscow on the Ukraine war without inviting Kyiv and blaming Zelenskyy for the 2022 Russian invasion.
In his most overt threat yet to end the war on terms favourable to Moscow, Trump wrote: “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
He added that Zelenskyy had “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won”.
Speaking in Kyiv earlier on Wednesday, Zelenskyy, who was sidelined this week from high-profile talks between the US and Russia in Riyadh over the conflict, blasted Trump for pushing “a lot of disinformation coming from Russia”.
“Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly . . . is living in this disinformation bubble,” he said.
He made his comments as Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the US-Russian rapprochement and argued that European leaders had excluded themselves from the talks.
Zelenskyy’s retort was prompted by Trump’s remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday, in which the US president falsely claimed Kyiv had started the conflict, the largest on European soil since the second world war.
Trump added he was “very disappointed” that Ukraine was “upset about not having a seat” at Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia.
“Today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited’,” the US president said. “Well, you’ve been there for three years . . . you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Zelenskyy’s comments came a day after the US and Russia agreed to “lay the groundwork for future co-operation” on ending the war, in their first high-profile talks since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
Amid a dramatic reversal of decades of US policy towards Russia, Trump last week announced that he had spoken to Putin about ending the Ukraine war, without consulting Kyiv or its European allies.
In his first comments since his conversation with Trump, Putin said he “highly appreciates” the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, which he said “made the first step to resuming our work on all sorts of issues of mutual interest”.
“The US negotiators were totally different — they were open to a negotiating process without any biases or judgments about what was done in the past,” he said. “They intend to work together.”
Putin said Russia would not “speculate” on US-European relations, but claimed EU leaders had “insulted” Trump during his election campaign and said “they are themselves at fault for what is happening”.
Putin said he would meet Trump “with pleasure” but that any summit required substantial preparation.
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy pushed back against Trump’s suggestion that elections should be held in Ukraine, after the US president claimed that his Ukrainian counterpart had an approval rating of just 4 per cent.
Pointing to polling from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, which in February found that 57 per cent of Ukrainians trusted their president, Zelenskyy said: “So if anyone wants to replace me right now, that will not work.”
Putin has long sought regime change in Kyiv.
The Ukrainian president also disputed Trump’s claim that Ukraine owed the US $500bn worth of rare minerals and other resources for past military assistance.
Kyiv has spent $320bn on its war efforts against Russia, with $200bn coming from international military assistance, Zelenskyy said.
“The United States has contributed approximately $60bn so far, with an additional $31.5 billion in financial assistance,” he said. “That’s $67bn in weaponry and $31.5bn in direct budgetary support.”
US state department data broadly supports Zelenskyy’s figure for US military support for Ukraine.
Convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, serial fraudster and sexual harasser, serial adulterer, serial business bankrupter, pathological liar, and life long conman says more stupid shit.
It is concerning but the US is only the most powerful country in the world because of its influence. The rest of the world sees Trump as a dangerous joke. The US loses influence under Trump. The US closes, most trusted allies now see the US as untrustworthy because Trump is up to his old tricks of bullying others into renegotiating treaties that he signed because he doesn't like the terms. Why would anyone make a deal with the US if it's just going to throw out the deal and force a new deal whenever it wants?
Trump is going to be good for the rest of the world because he will greatly diminish the standing of and trust of the US. Trade relationships will realign to exclude the US. China will continue to increase its lead in EVs and cheap, renewable energy. The US has already lost and doesn't even know it.
or they could say between the US government and Ukraine.
I still support Ukraine and most Harris voters and many traditional Republicans (Eisenhower type) do, too.
I hope that the Biden admin did a good job of building them up and building Europe up to last through 2-4 years of a potential MAGA administration. Even if they were confident it wouldn't happen. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst and all that.
Self projection again? The official white house xitter account published an AI generated image of a turd with a crown, officially stating that the USA are now ruled by a king with absolute power
That wouldn't surprise me. Trump is without doubt serving Russian interests. Next, Trump will try to pull the US out of NATO, after that he'll push for an amendment to scrapping the maximum of two presidential terms. US democracy is being rapidly dismantled along with the West.
If you are referring to Iraq, not selling oil to the US wasn't their big sin; it was trying to establish international oil trading in a currency other than USD.
You should have had that nervous eye twitch for the last 40 years, the U.S. was doing plenty of fucked up shit even when we were projecting calm security. The first Trump presidency was the wake-up call to the rest of the world to start cutting ties with us, it actually blows my mind how little there was in place internationally for when he won again. Sanctions should have been placed on us, trade agreements dissolved, we should be getting isolated right now. I'm sure we'll get there eventually, but it might be too late by then.
It is just getting started. You have not seen anything yet. We have if we are lucky 3 years more of this. If unlucky this is how it will be going forward.
If we're really lucky, 2. If we take congress then they can at least limit his powers or, with a strong enough change, remove him from office. Now, if this happens I don't expect him to actually accept it and there will still be a fight, but the only real factor that matters at that point is if the military sides with him or the constitution. Right now, he doesn't have the military support to successfully perform a self coup.
If we are lucky this is only how bad it will be. I strongly suspect it is going to get much worse before it gets better.
The outright corruption and country-killing isn't really having that much impact yet, but it will. And just wait for the global economic crisis.
However, if things get bad enough there's a better chance of people rising up and things changing for the better. Or if things stay sane enough somehow, the midterm elections changing everything.
This is what around half of the voting public wants. I'm going to be doing what I can to try to fight against this (for as long as I remain anyway), but the rest of the world needs to plan as if the U.S. is an enemy state and an active threat. We should be given no benefit of the doubt. No trust. Assume the worst and then try and think about how it could be even worse and go with that.
I'm sorry but there isn't going to be a big moment any time soon unless he tries to stop the 2026 elections or does something like declaring martial law. There's a good possibility there will be 4 more years of this.
Strikes. The only thing that works and is non violent. The rest is just reminders that the working class can stop working. Or reminders that one can do a Luigi.
It’s crazy to witness everything happening, in 10 years when the USA is best allies with Russia and they are invading all other countries and starting wars and the USA has no check and balances people will look back and ask why they didn’t do anything to stop it.
This transition will not take 10 years. It has barely been a month since the new administration took over and they’re well on their way to fundamentally changing the USA for the foreseeable future.
If a foreign actor had directly attacked the Americans, they would be up in arms ready to "glass parking lot" whatever country had attacked them, but this attack from the inside (though partially pupprteered from abroad) is going almost entirely unchallenged (and barely noticed inside the country thanks to a mostly captured and complicit media).
Your use of "in 10 years" is incorrect: in 10 years, there will only be 4 meaningful-factions left on this world, the "Russian Empire", which is then actually just a decorative-cloth-glove for the CCP, as Putin's inability to understand anything not centered on him, has already made Russia the economic vassal-state of China, & his doing that well-broadcast teleconference-with-Jinping during Trump's inaugeration-day, was Jinping getting Putin put-down some, so that he'd be more-controllable-by-Jinping..
That Trump is now sucking-up-to his mentor-of-multiple-decades ( read The Kremlin Papers stuff, on The Guardian, if you want, or Solnit's stuff identifying how sooo many of his top-people are tied to the kremlin, also on The Guardian, a news-source who recently fired many?most? of their journalists, prefering to be more-profitible, & more aligned with their new-owners.. no real/actual Journalism left, only corporate-partisanship, eh?
I remember when NONE of the so-called "Journalism" reported on the actual-election-results in the Phillipines was happening..
after the beginning, suddenly polling-station after polling-station was reporting exactly identical "2/3rds of all votes are for Marcos"..
& NONE of the "Journalism" of the West considered that to be news??
Traitors, all of 'em )
& has now been in-power for exactly 1 month ( 20th of Feb, as I write this, morning.. )
I guarantee you that there won't be more than 4 factions left in 1 decade..
"Russian Empire"
CCP
MBS
remnant-of-NATO, with the US of A completely-destroyed by its Civil War Part2
A former-spy named John Braddock has 3 books on understanding/thinking, in adverse contexts..
The 1 thing that makes me recommend his 3 books, in spite of the nauseating-to-me trance-induction-writing of his ( "Ten Types of Human" also demonstrates trance-induction-writing mode, & also is an important read, for any who care about the meanings in it )
is that he identifies the real-truth about strategy:
There are 3 categories of "games":
Postive-Sum games
Zero-Sum games
Negative-Sum games
IF you don't know which of those 3 your-opponent is playing, THEN you're incompetent at strategy, within the context your-life is caught-in.
The most-important book on strategy other than Braddock's books, is "Playing to Win", by Lafley, on the 5 dimensions of strategy that HAVE to be got-right, to win, strategically..
But .. IF you don't understand that your-opponent is playing a nihilist-game, a negative-sum-game, wherein their being "kings" of the world, while intentionally butchering/annihilating ALL others' chances, where that is the whole point, THEN you are living entirely-in Hopium, with no traction, whatsoever.
WHEN you see a violent/aggressive phase rabid-animal running to kill your child, you do not go & have sociopolitical-debates with it, to try to make it feel "belonging" with your sociopolitical faction: you kill it, as directly as you can, accepting that its condition is beyond reason.
Some humans, including mass-shooters/murdercide-bombers, & other narcissist-ideologues/prejudice-enforces/"religion"-enforcers, are unreachable-by-reason, & either are dealt-with as the actually-are, XOR are allowed to take as many other-lives down with them, as they can..
Humankind will be spending the next .. less-than-decade .. finding-out that this is true.
Once it's too-late, & there's NO US of A left, THEN the BRICS-axis would be incompetent to fail to launch everything they've got against the West's lives, to take all the opportunity that they can: it's basic military pragmatism.
I'm expecting that to happen, the actual conflagration-of-the-world in global war ( not nuclear-inferno, but 1/2-century of war-of-attrition ), to begin sometime between 2031 & 2035, but I think it begins early, not late ( that obviously depends on how-long-it-takes for Trump to convert from wounded-narcissist to no-humanity-left-psychopath-with-absolutely-coherent-instinct, which I believe will take from now to 2028-ish, -/+ 1 year ).
In between now & the actual-beginning-of-the-conflagration-of-the-world, is the setting-up-of-that, which is when the fascist-alliance ( Trump, Putin, Orban, Millei, Germany's AfD, Canada's Poilievre, Farage in England, etc ), pull the world into obeying their global-alliance/network's power, AND China obliterates independence/autonomy from Asia ( India, having relied on "king" Modi's "Russia will save us from China" "strategy", is hosed: Russia won't lift a finger to save India from China, as CCP has its noose around Russia's neck, already, thanks to Putin's war against Ukraina ), & MBS, once his dad dies, will wipe independence/autonomy off the map from the entire Middle-East & African region.
( Israel's playing right exactly into Hamas's hand: Hamas, whether unconsciously or consciously, intentionally-sacrificed the entire Palestinian-people as bait, in order to get Israel's nihilist-sadism on-display enough, & Israel took that bait, & is in the process of converting all Arabs into "martyrs" against the psychopathic-rampaging of Israel ( video of an IDF soldier using a Palestinian small-child for recreational-target-practice is exactly how you manufacture "I don't care if I'm killed: theyhave to be annihilated from the world, at ANY cost!" motivation.
Israel's incompetent at understanding that "deterrent" actually requires that the opponent feel deterred!!
No matter: the Christians have, in their Matt 24, a prophecy that Israel will be outright-annihilated, & Eitan Bar identified that 6 times has the annihilation-of-Israel been attempted, & their-own bible ( some book which begins with "J", iirc, not book-of-Jacob, since apparently that doesn't exist, but one of 'em ) identifies that 7 nations did Israel genocide/holocaust/put-to-The-Final-Solution, back in the biblical-times..
Consider that!
Israel holocausted 7 nations, & that is its "validity" & its identity, & now 6 times annihilating-them has been attempted, & now Hamas has set-up an absolutely-infallible 7th annihilation, which is going to succeed, before global-conflagration!
7 annihilations-enforced, then 7 annihilations received, the last one being fatal..
That looks just a little too perfect to be "mere coincidence", to me: that looks like "karma" XOR "hand of G-D", whichever-label your-culture prefers..
Anyways, there isn't going to be any Israel, during the global-conflagration portion of this-century, thanks to the nihilist-sadism of Israel's taking the bait that Hamas put in their face.
True-addicts can be witnessed while they destroy their-own lives, but they cannot be "saved" from their own instinct/intention.
This, of course, will enforce on the surviving-Jews, a catastrophic-recalibration: G-D didn't mean geopolitical-"Zion", did G-D mean the inner-mountain??
.. shrug ..
Every "believer" in the world is going to either be converted to objectivity-rooted spirituality, XOR they're just going to die living-in their belief-worship.
THAT is the true-nature of this-entire-remaining-century.. )
So, Trump's implimenting his Project 2025, same as Hitler did his-equivalent, & it's already too-late to save the US of A .. the Confederate/Nazi reverse-takeover was successful!
Instead of living in Hopium, *intentionally set-up your surviving the remains of the US of A's life!
the US's "GEOTUS" ( stands-for "God, Emperor of the United States", & if you search Wikipedia for GEOTUS, you will be landed on the Trump page, but the search-result-statistics won't show any GEOTUS page: they altered the search-logic of wikipedia to hide that they were providing this result*.
The US's "GEOTUS" isn't playing for a long-lived empire:
he's playing for the intentional complete-destruction-of-all-others, so he gets to be the only "possessor" left, when the country's corpsed.
Negative-Sum game.
Who will own South America?
China's working on it, through their Belt & Road Initiative..
the West certainly isn't.
That will be militarily-significant, in WW3: BRICS will own those resources, & the remains of NATO won't, if things continue as they are..
"Penny wise, but pound foolish", in Western, that is "cent wise, but dollar foolish"..
"winning the battle, but through doing-so, losing the war"
That is the "strategy" of the West.
The fundamental-problem, however, is that we've been gaslighting ourselves for centuries:
Representative-republic ISN'T what democracy means: democracy means the rightful-&-competent-citizens-vote-on-the-actual-issues.
Representative-republic never was democracy: it is 1x removed from democracy, & that is without even adding-in lobbying/bribing, or "the electoral college", or any other "leverages"..
Being ruled by the intersection of political-motivation's-"parties", AND moneyarchy, AND legalism-their-prybar, while gaslighting ourselves about this being "democracy" .. wasn't either wise, or intelligent.
Or strategic, for that matter.
No matter: EITHER a subset of humankind holds unbreakingly to the intersection of responsibility-archy & merit-archy ( IF you haven't earned your transport-pilot's-license, THEN you aren't permitted to command the helm of any transport-aircraft!! IF you haven't proven your competence in considered-reasoning, THEN you aren't competent for either holding-civil-authority, or for voting!! NO ideology has any right to highjack our countries, exactly as no-amount of viruses-of-HIV has the "right" to destroy the human-life it's highjacking, either! Cancer hasn't rights, & neither has any ideology/prejudice/"religion"! )
XOR .. humankind's going to be totally extinguished, within 1 century.
The Great Filter.
Comically, I believe that you could drop the same set-of-prophecies ( that the Abrahamic apocalyptic-religions did ) into ANY world which just reached its industrious-empire/Roman-empire-equivalent, & about 2 millenia later,
those-prophecies would be fulfilled, simply because it isn't religion that makes them come-true,
rather, it is hitting the industrial-revolutions-sequence, while still no-more-mature-than-the-Animals-&-Tribes-Time-people-of-the-past that makes them come true..
So, I think the same kind of pophecies could be dropped into ALL worlds who hit the industrious-empire stage, which enables the future industrial-revolutions-sequence, & in most, if not all of those worlds, the same "fulfilling of prophecies" would happen..
So, to me it's a psychoevolution-system structural-consequence of unconscious-mind problems, not in any way tied to "this" or "that" religion.
The specific "religions"/ideologies/prejudices are just .. "makeup", to be honest, on the fundamental-unconscious-ignorance-breaking-world-to-prove-that-it-is-"GOD".
A tantrum, in other words.
A world-breaking tantrum, to break god & make god OBEY the breaker-of-world-life.
THAT is what's fundamentally going-on.
Have you got it in you to face into your own unconscious-mind darkness, & FORCE it into breaking, FORCE the total-you into growing-up, shattering/destroying all "identities" in you, until successful?
Boot-camp which never ends, in other words..
That is what Consequences, aka karma, are forcing into/on humankind, this-next-century.
Will humankind survive?
A remnant may..
IF the upright earns that result, & IF the upright have sufficient strength, in the world
( same as with cancer: if the cancer has taken-over ALL systems in one's body, then the best one can hope-for is a good-death.
However, if one digs-in quick-enough, systematically-enough, strongly-enough, strategically-enough, not-sacrificing-what-cannot-be-lost, like brain, then surviving becomes possible.
Humankind's now in this exact situation: what cannot be saved, what can, what NEED get done to enforce that humankind CAN continue-living.. )
Sorry to be thorough/rigorous, unlike MSM, but "profitable stampeding" is what got humankind into this shit, in the 1st place.
Humankind's survivors need to be centering on objective-and-spiritual-pragmatism, right now, & unbreakably, until this is all finished.
I don't see how any other single human being could have done a better job at leading and defending Ukraine these last 3 years than Zelensky has. The only reason Russia/Trump is pushing for elections is so Russia can interfe with them.
Who was the one literally saying that when voting for them, that would be the last time the people would need to vote, implying the erection of a dictatorship?
Pro Palestinian activists overwhelmingly voted for the Dems. Mainstream media is just once again blaming people on the left for their party leadership's own failures. That's what the Dems do every time they lose. They blame the progressives, claim that the party has somehow gone "too far left," and claim that they just need to move the party further to the right.
Don't blame the activists. Blame the Dem leadership who care far more for their millionaire and billionaire donors than they do their own constituents. Who care more about their donors than they do the end of democracy.
I feel the same way. But TBF I live in a country that voted for brexit. Essentially voted for sanctions against ourselves FFS, even though it should clearly have seemed like a horrible idea to everyone at the time. It's not the same as electing an actual fascist but I'm just saying that Americans aren't the only electorate that makes terrible decisions based on ignorance, xenophobia and misinformation.
I'm right there with you and I live here. It boggles my mind that people voted for him and people stayed home.
The leadership on the left is terrible, and there is so much money and propagandizing on the right, it is insane.
They know who and how to target political messaging in a way that that was unheard of 20 years ago.
Even now, there are smart intelligent people that are like, "He seems to be making a difference." Holy fucking shit!
And then they get mad when I ask them how. They always have bullshit propaganda points that were spoon fed to them and zero, actual understanding of the issues.
Mm it makes me very angry and sad to see peoples response to this. I feel like in Europe at least more and more people are becoming aware that it is not in fact just "the art of the deal", but serious. Still a lot of careful rethoric thrown around and a lot of people refuse accepting the situation (fascists in the white house) but it is getting better. I have no idea how it is in the US tho except for some news articles which don't tell me shit about what people think..
Trump is gonna get those rare earth minerals anyway he can. If Ukraine won't sign them over he'll make a deal with Russia to get them and Ukraine be damned. Licking Putin's butthole is just a bonus.