Abandon your foolish Greenland fantasies, Mr President, and remember Ukraine

Now let’s delve deeper into what can be called his anecdote, Donald Trump couldn’t control himself at the World Economic Forum in Davos, delivering his usual repertoire of supposedly entertaining and inspiring stories to a stunned, captive audience.

Just a few hours later, he made a surprise U-turn and completely abandoned his latest threat of tariffs on Europe after reaching “the framework of a future agreement” with NATO. One wonders if it’s worth all the drama.

In any case, the president found time to mention the war in his long speech. Ukrainian – A real and bloody conflict, in sharp contrast to the improbable one in Greenland. The president specifically referred to tens of thousands of people. soldiers still slaughtered every week like Vladimir PutinThe ‘special military operation’ is nearing the end of its fourth year.

Absolutely no glitches occurred RussiaMissile and drone attacks on civilians are no longer We target Kyiv and electricity production as temperatures drop well below freezing. Lack of power affects everything; lighting, water resources, industry and transportation as well as heating.

This is nothing more than state terrorism orchestrated by the Kremlin, as the progress of poorly trained and ill-equipped troops on the battlefield remains pitifully slow. The most serious interstate conflict in Europe since World War II continues as brutally as ever. It doesn’t make for an ideal backdrop for the White House’s renewed peace efforts.

Mr. Trump said he hoped to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, even though the Ukrainian leader left Davos and returned to Kiev earlier in the week, disappointed with recent developments in U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Zelensky was and is right to be skeptical.

Although Ukraine had accepted a US ceasefire proposal last March, President Putin found every reason to continue the conflict and Reject any peace agreement that does not reward Russia There is huge Ukrainian territory that he has not yet conquered; or even a White House-approved zone. But Mr. Trump seems to persist in thinking that neither side is serious about ending the war and that they are taking turns rejecting a ceasefire, which is simply not true.

According to Putin, there were always some excuses to reject a deal; These excuses often included lengthy discourses about why Ukraine wasn’t even a real nation with its own culture. The Russians think Ukraine should belong to them, with about the same excitement that Mr. Trump thinks Greenland belongs to America. It seems unlikely that anything Mr. Trump has said or done in recent days will change that stance.

However, President Trump’s peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are heading to Moscow for further discussions on moving the US peace plan forward, but there is no great expectation of immediate progress.

After all, he didn’t come. Last August at the summit of AlaskaMr. Trump may have expected some reward for so openly and generously bringing President Putin out of the cold. Pushing the boundaries of satire, President Trump even invited accused war criminal Putin to join Trump’s vanity project, the Gaza peace board. To be fair, he also asked President Zelensky to join the new structure, but Mr. Zelensky refused; no doubt he saw this as a depressing sign of how naive and insensitive Mr. Trump is. It could be about the Kremlin.

President Trump said it would be “stupid” for Ukraine and Russia not to sign the peace agreement. But it fails to capture how positively and conciliatory the Ukrainian side has been and, worse, how putting more pressure on President Putin will push him to end the war he started. Instead, Putin is continually rewarded for his stubbornness despite Mr. Trump. He expresses that he feels some anger from her from time to time..

This being the case, Putin is effortlessly accomplishing where all previous Russian and Soviet leaders have failed, and is watching NATO disintegrate incredibly quickly.

The US National Security Strategy, published in November, portrayed Europe as a greater threat to US interests than Russia, and the “erasure of civilization” theme was revisited by Mr Trump in Davos. NATO managed to hold together under the strain of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the decades of the Cold War. Mr Trump casually ripped apart.

If he had had time to watch President Trump’s speech, Putin would certainly have been pleased to hear an American president say that NATO has done nothing for the United States and that he does not believe the Europeans and Canadians would support the United States if it asked for help (contrary to the bitter experience after 9/11, of course).

The late U-turn is as welcome as it is sudden, but Mr. Trump has nevertheless shown himself willing to shake this Western alliance to its foundations. That’s quite a legacy for an American president.