Australia and the World Past and Present

It was hard to watch.

The Presidents of the US and Ukraine were going at it in a place normally associated with diplomatic tact and decorum.

Zelensky started schooling Trump: “(Putin) occupied it, our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of east and Crimea. So he occupied it in 2014. So during a lot of years…president Obama, then President Trump then President Biden, now President Trump”

Trump: “Oh, 2014? I was not here”.

True, Trump was not President in 2014, but he was between 2016 and 2020. During that time, nothing he did made Putin withdraw from Crimea.

Trump likes to begin time in 2022 when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Why? Well, because Biden was President at the time.

Trump had been pushing Ukraine to sign some kind of ceasefire agreement with Putin even though the details of such an agreement were not clear.

Zelensky continued the history lesson “we signed with him…we signed ceasefire…But after that, he broke the ceasefire.”

Vice President Vance was roused to life and started going for Zelensky’s jugular, “I think it is disrespectful for you to come into the oval office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.”

Some watching the exchange would have thought that Zelensky was not the one being disrespectful. Trump and Vance were on home turf conversing in their first language. The Ukrainian President was didn’t have the home-ground advantage and was trying to make pertinent points in a language not his own.

Zelensky went somewhere that made the American leaders wild “First of all, during the war everybody has problems, even you. But you have a nice ocean and don’t feel it now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless…you will feel influenced”

This put Trump into pure lecture mode “You’re not in a good position…you don’t have the cards right now”. It is a fair point. There is maxim in international relations that strong states do as they wish and weak states do as they must. Whether Trump knows about the ins and outs of history, when he talks world leaders listen and his government responds.

A recurring gripe among the Americans, and the Europeans for that matter, is that as soon as they have assembled and handed over the last request for military equipment by Ukraine, the hand it is out again urging for more. Saying ‘thank you’ has become an issue of contention. Vance hammered this point home. He also seemed to be upset that the Ukrainian President had toured a munitions factory in the key swing state of Pennsylvania with Biden in the run up to the last election. Democrats will hit back and say that Biden was no longer the presidential candidate. I guess Vance saw things differently.

Trump declared that he wanted to stop the war now. It is a legitimate issue. Is it best for Ukraine to agree to a peace deal now even though it has lost so much of it’s territory? They do have problems sourcing military equipment. They do have problems getting enough boots on the ground. There is no surprise here as Ukraine is much smaller than Russia in so many respects.

It was surreal to hear Trump declare “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. he went through a phony witch hunt”. He talks of Putin as if they are old buddies.

Trump finished off with “This is going to be great television. I will say that”.

There’s probably no more telling line than that.