The Ukraine IS actually making gains on the battlefield….
The War is now MAINLY about Drone Ops….
Ukraine aiming at military and Russian energy infrastructure targets…
Russian’s at civilian structures…
The Global Picture…..
Donald Trump as other Republican President’s have been pushing Europe to move from Post WWII America that came to save their continent and stayed…
To look at the history of some of this from back with Rumsfeld and Gates…..
There HAS been American admin’s pushing for Europe to upgrade it’s military forces ….
America HAS fought in conflicts and wars far from home since WWII….
It has been the ‘Police Man’ of the World FOR Democracy…
The US Now has a President who IS acutely focused on MONEY….
He isn’t picking only with Europe…
He’s doing it at home….
Ukraine President Zelensky IS in a BAD place….
Trump has NOT love for the guy who didn’t help him go after Biden, who beat him and sent him to a impeachment trial…
Zelensky, who Trump correctly points out WAs a comedian in another life IS a heroic Everyman figure…
He now has a Big Bad Wolf trying to eat his country alive….
Donald Trump is trying to hang him out for Putin to run over in public ….
Europe HAS a decision to make….
Putin, if allowed to?
Would march across it just like Hitler….
And Trump HAS already reminded Everyone America has the Atlantic Ocean between it and Russia….
The whispers about a ‘European Army’ maybe whispers attached to a desperate Zelensky request…..
One should expect that they should become VERY SERIOUS on this….
Trump seems to NOT want to ‘save the day’ for Ukraine OR Europe….
Of course?
President Trump would VERY HAPPY to SELL Weapons and Ammo to the Europeans, eh?
Trump ‘very frustrated’ with Zelenskyy for failing to ‘come to the table’ and ‘take opportunity’ of US-agreed peace
“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with president Zelensky, the fact that that he hasn’t come to the table that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered, I think he eventually will get to that point, and I hope so very quickly,” Michael Waltz said.
He went on to add:
“President Trump is, as we made clear to our Russian counterparts, and I want to make clear today, he’s focused on stopping the fighting and moving forward, and we could argue all day long about what’s happened in the past.”
Waltz did not directly answer a question on whether Donald Trump views Russian president Vladimir Putin as a dictator, a term he used to call Ukrainian president Vladymyr Zelenskyy earlier this week.
Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
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French president Emmanuel Macron is set to visit the White House on Monday, according to the White House, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, UK prime minister Keir Starmer will visit the White House on Thursday.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US envoy Keith Kellogg after Donald Trump called Zelenskyy a dictator and warned him to “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left.” On Thursday, Zelenskyy took to X to describe his meeting with Kellog, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine. “I had a productive meeting with @SPE_Kellogg — a good discussion, many important details. I am grateful to the United States for all the assistance and bipartisan support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”
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Over in Greece prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has highlighted the need for Europe to augment its defence capabilities earlier telling Bloomberg TV: “This is really the time when we need to move more from words to actions.” The centre right leader, who has long advocated that the continent spend more on defence, said increased budget flexibility was required to allow EU member states to allocate funds to the sector.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has posted about his phone call with Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen. In a social media post, he said the pair “discussed European affairs together,” and compared their notes from recent talks with other global leaders.
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Former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin has warned that Vladimir Putin’s Russia would not stop at Ukraine if it is allowed to continue its aggression and could attack other neighbours and eventually Nato allies.Speaking at the event in London, she warned that “the world seems very dangerous place” now as she called for further support for Ukraine.
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JD Vance claimed without offering further evidence or information on the progress of talks with Russia, that thanks to the US administration “we are on the cusp of peace in Europe,” as stated that US president Donald Trump was determined to “bring peace to this endless war.” I think with president Trump, what makes him such an effective negotiator and I have seen this in private, is that he does not take anything off the table. … Everything is on the table. And of course that makes the heads explode in America because they say, ‘Why are you talking to Russia?’”
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Meanwhile, UK and Norwegian defence ministers said today the two countries were working on a new security pact that would cover development of defence capabilities, closer cooperation in the High North, and more exercises and joint training missions. Britain and Norway said in their statements that the pact would also cover closer intelligence cooperation.
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Nato secretary general Mark Rutte is speaking in Bratislava after meeting with the Slovak president Peter Pellegrini. He says that Slovakia hosts one of the alliance’s multi-national groups, which he calls “very impressive.”
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The US administration could adjust its sanctions against Russia in response to potential peace talks on Ukraine, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg. Bessent also joined the growing chorus of US voices criticising Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his criticism of Donald Trump, saying that “he unfortunately escalated” and “put some daylight” between Ukraine and US, and calling his remarks “inappropriate.”
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From claiming Ukraine was responsible for the war to incorrect numbers about aid received from the US and Europe, Donald Trump made a number of inaccurate statements while praising the progress made in US-Russia talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia….
NATO and Donald Trump 2.0…..
And a America move that actually started before Donadl Trump….
In his first term President Trump episodically threatened to pull out of NATO, removing the United States as the linchpin of the most successful military alliance in modern times. In his second term, he is trying a different approach: hollowing it out from within.
Mr. Trump’s decision to reverse three years of unity in aiding Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and open negotiations with President Vladimir V. Putin has forced NATO leaders to confront a fundamental question: If Mr. Putin decided to pick off a member of the alliance, is there any reason to assume Mr. Trump would come to that country’s defense, the key to its strength?
“We have to assume not,” a senior member of the German government said at the Munich Security Conference, declining to speak on the record because of the huge sensitivity of his conclusion. In one short month as president, he and others contended, Mr. Trump has undercut the trust that sits at the center of the 75-year-old defense pact, that an attack on one member of the alliance would bring a response by all, led by the United States.
That fear has only accelerated in the past day, since Mr. Trump began echoing Mr. Putin’s talking points, falsely accusing Ukraine of provoking the invasion of its own territory and casting Russia as the aggrieved party rather than the aggressor. It is a rewriting of modern history that has left the NATO allies stunned and questioning the viability of an alliance with Washington at the center…
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But the fact is, American military officials say, Europe is far from ready.
Before Mr. Trump’s remarkable reversal, American military officials began executing a step-by-step, carefully coordinated handover of critical defense roles from American forces to European ones. But it is a yearslong process, American and European national security officials say, done carefully to make sure no gaps are left in defenses. A rapid American withdrawal would leave huge vulnerabilities.
After the Cold War, much of Europe dismantled its tanks and closed the factories that made standard ammunition, thinking that a land war in Europe was not unthinkable. Britain and France have independent nuclear forces of course, but they are a fraction of the size of American and Russian arsenals. Some European leaders, Mr. Macron included, have begun to concede that Europe responded far too slowly to the United States imploring that it spend far more on its military and rearm. And those arguments go back well before anyone imagined an American president would side with Mr. Putin…
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Fourteen years ago, as he was leaving the post of defense secretary, Robert M. Gates used his last speech in Europe to warn of what was coming. “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress, and in the American body politic writ large, to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources” to the military, and “to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”
Budget cuts, the decommissioning of armored vehicles and tanks and other basics of NATO defense, and a reluctance to fight had shifted the burden of Europe’s defense to the United States, he warned.
Three years later Mr. Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine, in what the Obama administration assumed would be a wake-up call for the NATO allies. It was not….
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“For decades we have always wanted countries like Germany to be capable of building a far larger military force, but not the largest, or most capable, for all the obvious historical reasons,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.
“We are about to test that.”….
Daily Kos grunt Report for Today…..
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