Tag: Next Ukrainian presidential election

US ‘just about’ ready to lift Ukraine intel freeze, Trump says ahead of Saudi meet

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

US ‘just about’ ready to lift Ukraine intel freeze, Trump says ahead of Saudi meet

The U.S. is “just about” ready to lift its freeze on intelligence sharing with Ukraine, President Donald Trump said Sunday, as American and Ukrainian negotiators prepare for bilateral talks in Saudi Arabia intended to move toward a peace deal to end Russia’s three-year-old invasion.

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The U.S. delegation in Saudi Arabia will include Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz. The Ukrainian team will be led by Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s presidential office. The U.S. side is expecting Ukraine to show willingness to make peace, Trump suggested on Sunday.

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Trump and his top officials have said that both Ukraine and Russia will be expected to make concessions in pursuit of a peace deal to end Moscow’s invasion, which itself is only the latest chapter in more than a decade of cross-border aggression.

Trump last week suggested in a post to Truth Social that he was “strongly considering large-scale sanctions” and tariffs on Russia until a deal is reached, adding that Moscow “is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now.” Trump also told a joint session of Congress he had received “strong signals” that Russia is ready to make peace.

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The Kremlin has also cited a September 2022 Ukrainian decree in which Zelenskyy declared negotiations with Putin “impossible,” after Moscow claimed to have annexed four partially-occupied Ukrainian regions.

On Monday, Peskov told journalists that Russia’s read on this week’s meeting “is not important.”

“What is important here is what the United States expects at various levels,” he continued. “We have repeatedly heard statements that the U.S. expects the Ukrainians to demonstrate their desire for peace. That’s probably what everybody is waiting for. Whether the members of the Zelenskyy regime really want peace or not. Of course, this is very important and it is necessary to decide.”

Top Trump allies hold secret talks with Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opponents

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Poroshenko: ‘Donbas children will sit in cellars, ours’ will go to school’

Top Trump allies hold secret talks with Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opponents

The senior Trump allies held talks with Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a remorselessly ambitious former prime minister, and senior members of the party of Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s immediate predecessor as president, according to three Ukrainian parliamentarians and a U.S. Republican foreign policy expert.

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Zelensky’s wear and tear

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)2 Comments

Zelensky’s wear and tear (original)

For more than two and a half years, war has been the raison d’être of the Ukrainian state. The budget presented by Kyiv this week allocates more than 50% of the budget to the defence sector – to which must be added the cost of veterans – something that has been repeated since 2022. Maintaining the front, avoiding its collapse and ensuring that there is still enough support to continue fighting until the objectives are achieved is the priority of the government team, which has set aside practically all other obligations of the state, which today depends entirely on foreign subsidies that make it possible to pay salaries and pensions. One of the aspects that has completely disappeared under the cover of the unity demanded by the war is precisely domestic politics. The Russian invasion gave Zelensky’s team the opportunity to create for the president the image of a war leader, the representation of the nation, a savior capable of achieving what he sets out to do, the only person capable of rescuing the country from certain ruin.

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Ukraine: Imposing the plan

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

After briefly presenting his Victory Plan at the seat of Ukraine’s national sovereignty, the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Zelensky has continued his tour to try to win the support of the people and institutions that really matter – his foreign partners. In Brussels, the Ukrainian president sought to curry favour with one of his main suppliers, the current support of the Ukrainian state, the European Union, whose Parliament once again welcomed him as a hero. “The last time you were here,” wrote Roberta Metsola, “I promised you our unwavering support on your country’s path to EU membership. Today I am proud to welcome you to the House of European Democracy as the leader of a candidate country for EU membership.” “Ukraine is Europe,” she said, deliberately confusing the continent with the political bloc. However, with EU entry long understood as a decision that has been made and that it is simply a matter of time, Zelensky’s speech did not focus on the benefits of the Union or the enormous benefit that will be obtained by admitting Ukraine into the European family, but on the continuation of his campaign to formalize the Victory Plan as a possible way out of the war. Kiev is acting in the same way that in the last decade it has managed to institutionalize the nationalist discourse, previously only characteristic of a part of the country, as the only possible national discourse. Ukraine is working to achieve the same objective and to make its plan – in reality a wish list that its allies must help it to fulfill and not a roadmap to achieve them – appear as a path to a just peace.

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The NATO “solution”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The NATO “solution”

The focus of political and media attention has inevitably turned from Europe to the Middle East, where the United States, through the Secretary of the Pentagon, has insisted on “Israel’s right to defend itself,” has welcomed the assassinations of Hezbollah leaders carried out by means of massive bombings in Beirut, and has given explicit approval to the ground operation with which Tel Aviv and Washington claim to want to “dismantle the attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that the Lebanese Hezbollah cannot carry out attacks in the style of October 7 against communities in northern Israel.” The precedent of the last twelve months in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon foreshadows what the ways of defending oneself against Israel will be and that the United States will continue to justify any excess, selective assassination or massacre, while any response, such as that which occurred yesterday with the launching of Iranian missiles against Israeli military bases, will be considered an unacceptable escalation. And although Ukraine’s public concern for securing priority war status has not yet begun, any escalating war could affect Kiev, especially when it comes to imposing its discourse of existential war on the West as a collective.

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Ukraine: Dysfunctional Politics

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

“Dysfunction Sidelines Ukraine’s Parliament as Governing Force,” is the title of an article published this week by The New York Times in one of the few political critiques that has appeared in the Western press recently. It took two years after the Russian invasion for the grace period of absence of political comments on the Ukrainian authorities to be broken, although always partially and only temporarily. It was the news that included Vitali Klitschko’s words against what he perceived as authoritarian drift that opened the door. Like the current information, that news also lacked the contextualization that politics requires, and it was left unmentioned that the criticism of the mayor of Kiev and the measures by which the protesters were part of a confrontation that went back almost to the beginnings of the presidency of Zelensky. The origin of the rivalry lies in the struggle for power and control of the resources of the State between the two protagonists. What is more, the attempt to Zelensky snatch administratively, the mayor of Kiev Klitschko, a man with powerful connections and political contacts, especially in Germany, is one of the examples that show that the authoritarian drift of Volodymyr Zelensky is not justified in the wartime situation today, but that precedes it in several years to the military intervention of Russia.

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Oleksiy Arestovych: Zelenskyy’s challenger (video clips)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
On retaking Crimea and the Donbass
On meeting Aleksandr Dugin
On recruitment and mobilization
Polyculturism
USofU: Fifth Project
On sincerity of negotiations

Oleksiy Arestovych: Zelenskyy’s challenger (archived)

Arestovych’s in the US, now, and plans on running in the next Ukrainian Presidential election. What he says isn’t too bad but we know how it turned out with Zelensky. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the clip on European and NATO memberships. He basically said that Ukraine should be a neutral country. All of these clips are on my YouTube, as well. The full interview is here.

Additional sources:

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Disgraced Ukrainian Ex-Army Spox Slams Zelensky’s Theatrics, Complains About Drugged Up Mercs

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Prank with Sarah Ashton-Chirillo

Ukraine is fighting to protect “Western values” from Russian “slaves” descended from the Mongols, but is facing difficulties due to poor morale, corruption, drug-addicted mercs, and a president who seems more focused on theatrics than the conflict itself, disgraced Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has revealed.

Disgraced Ukrainian Ex-Army Spox Slams Zelensky’s Theatrics, Complains About Drugged Up Mercs

[07-2023] Zelensky showing ‘authoritarian traits’, says Swiss intelligence report

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Ukraine is at a “critical point” in its democratic evolution as it heads towards presidential elections in 2024, says a confidential assessment by the Federal Intelligence Service.

Zelensky showing ‘authoritarian traits’, says Swiss intelligence report (archived)

H/T: Emil Cosman / Rand Paul

Related:

[2021] Ukraine’s Accelerating Slide into Authoritarianism

The Maidan Revolution alumni now seem to be trying to devour even some of their own members. In mid‐May, Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko charged agents of the SBU, Ukraine’s state security agency, had come to his apartment in what he denounced as a continuing attempt by his political rival, Zelensky, to put pressure on him. Earlier in May, the SBU, the state prosecutor’s office, and police carried out large‐scale searches of various units of the Kiev city government, accusing the local authorities of misappropriation of budget funds and tax evasion, among other offenses. Although Klitschko was one of the original leaders of the Maidan demonstrations, Zelensky apparently now regards him as an annoying rival, since the Kiev mayor was a close ally of former president Poroshenko.

[2021] KIIS poll: Every fifth Ukrainian ready to vote for Zelensky in presidential elections

If presidential elections were held soon, incumbent head of state Volodymyr Zelensky would receive about 21.8% of the vote, according to the results of a sociological survey “Social and Political Sentiments of Ukraine” conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).