The US-Russia-Ukraine Peace Process is ongoing with meetings of technical level between American and Russians in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, one day after the Trump negotiators had a meeting with the Ukrainian team all dressed in military attire – a very explicit sign.
Today, also, the PR golden boy of the West, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, is getting ‘canonized’ in the USAID media with another major puff piece in the Times magazine, a globalist rag where he was elected person of the year in 2022.
The Time piece runs 4500+ words long, and it’s of such a nature that makes boastful Zelensky and his grey eminence Andriy Yermak look quite humble in comparison.
The article gushes over the fact that in the back of his ‘chambers’, there is a space that ‘feels like home to Zelensky’ – a small room with a single bed and a painting showing the Kremlin engulfed in flames.
The article totally pities the Kiev regime’s leader, and we see things like: ‘Among the most painful exchanges in the Oval Office meeting took place near the end, when Zelensky asked whether J.D. Vance had visited Ukraine during the war. They both knew he had not, and Vance shot back that he had no interest in Zelensky’s ‘propaganda tours’.”
The article repeats some Ukrainian propaganda – that Kiev resisted and heroically repelled a Russian siege at the start of the war, when in fact Putin ordered troops to withdraw during the Istanbul negotiations as an act of good faith.
During a celebration near Kiev, the reporter reflects: ‘Maybe Vance had a point. It can be hard to hold the line between solemnity and propaganda’.
A lot of time is devoted to the repercussion for Zelensky setting himself on fire in the Oval Office: “The next day, Trump set the minerals deal aside and decided to get tough with Zelensky. His administration announced a suspension of aid to Ukraine, including supplies of critical intelligence, weapons and ammunition. Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, said the Ukrainians had ‘brought it on themselves’. Zelensky had failed in the Oval Office to demonstrate a willingness to accept Trump’s plan for peace, and the U.S. response was ‘sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose’, Kellogg said. ‘Got their attention’.”
It’s a complete softball profile, in which ‘Zelensky declined to pin the blame on the Trump administration’ for the crumbling of the Kursk pocket. Because, of course, the reporter does.
But then we get where things get more complicated and Zelensky says things he will wish he hadn’t: “What bothered Zelensky most about Trump’s role in that operation had less to do with intelligence sharing than with Russian disinformation. In the middle of the battle, Trump held a call with Putin, who told the U.S. president that thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk had been surrounded by Russian forces. ‘That was a lie’, Zelensky told me. But Trump continued to amplify it.
For Zelensky, it looked like part of a pattern. U.S. officials, he says, had begun taking Putin at his word, even when their own intelligence contradicted him. ‘I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information’, Zelensky told me. ‘Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them’.”
Let’s repeat the fairly serious accusation: ‘I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information’.
Start the countdown until he has to walk this back.
Ten days after Zelensky’s tantrum, US and Ukrainian senior aides met for a round of talks in Saudi Arabia. The meeting lasted nine hours.
Andriy Yermak: “The Americans did not grandstand or make demands. They took the time to listen to the Ukrainians recount the history of the war and the battles fought along the way to the present moment. Several hours into the talks, Yermak and his team placed a call to Zelensky and asked for instructions. He told them to agree to a ceasefire with no preconditions. In some ways, it was another massive climbdown. Zelensky has spent the entire war demanding security guarantees from the Americans and concessions from the Russians. Now nearly all of his demands had been set aside. Yermak admitted this was difficult. ‘But we have to be pragmatic. We have to move step by step’, he told me. ‘This is not the moment for idealism’.”
Zelensky also makes a troubling statement about a man in love with his pretense popularity: “As Trump continues to push for peace, Zelensky intends to influence the process by making direct appeals to American voters. No doubt he agreed to give me an interview in part for that reason. But he also acknowledges that, without winning over Trump himself, he has little chance of securing a stable peace.”
Another propaganda point is pushed hard: ‘While Zelensky has given ground and made concessions, the Russian demands have only grown more extreme’. But in fact, Zelensky is repeatedly breaking the partial ceasefire he agreed to, targeting Russian oil facilities.
Zelensky: “If he wants to, Trump can squeeze concessions from the Russians, because he seems to be the only one that Putin fears. At points in the peace process, when the U.S. threatened to sanction the Kremlin for its continued bombing raids against Ukraine, ‘the Russians got really scared’.”
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