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Thursday, February 20, 2025 11:52:55 AM
Donald Trump is moving the US closer to Russia, and history says that could be a big mistake
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All the ways Elon Musk is breaking the law, explained by a law professor"
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...11-year-old took her own life after classmates threatened
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[...]Trump turning children against each other. Forget U.S. incorporating Greenland and Canada, Trump is trying to reward Putin for invading Ukraine by attempting to force Putin peace terms upon Zelensky and by attempting to mold the USA into something more like autocratic Russia. To Putinize USA. McConnell helped Trump get SCOTUS. Musk is working at getting important government agencies for Trump, even though they are now saying Musk is not in charge of DOGE. That dodge to dodge pertinent U.S. laws, of course.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175834265
By Riley Stuart in Washington DC
6 hours ago
Donald Trump has previously described Vladimir Putin as "strong". (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
The relationship between the United States and key ally Ukraine is dissolving before our eyes.
Donald Trump's social media diatribe on Wednesday .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/donald-trump-describes-zelenskyy-as-dictator-in-social-post/104958360 .. , local time, in which he described the country's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "dictator" who's "done a terrible job", was just the latest deterioration.
It's been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the new US president has made it clear he'd rather deal with Moscow than Kyiv when it comes to finding a way to end the conflict.
To understand why that could be a big mistake, let's rewind one day to when the US and Russia got back on speaking terms, publicly at least.
Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's been in the job for four weeks, led a US delegation to Saudi Arabia for a hastily organised meeting with Kremlin counterparts.
Sitting opposite him was Sergey Lavrov — the Russian foreign minister of 21 years — who's seen it all before.
This article contains content that is no longer available.
There was plenty of anticipation ahead of the summit, which was billed as an important precursor to three touted get-togethers between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As Rubio pointed out, Tuesday's meeting marked the first "regularised" contact between Moscow and Washington in three-and-a-half years.
That may be true, but there are claims Putin and Trump have never stopped talking, since the latter was swept out of the White House in 2020.
A book by journalist Bob Woodward released late last year detailed seven phone calls between the pair that allegedly took place in the years after Trump lost the presidency.
That's on top of the five in-person meetings that they had when they were both in power — a period when Trump famously described Putin as "strong" and "nice".
Forget needing to break the ice with a summit in Riyadh this week, some have gone as far to describe the pair as being in a "bromance".
Marco Rubio, second from left, prepares for the talks at Riyadh's Diriyah Palace on Tuesday. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)
It's not just Trump that's giving clear signs he wants the US to get closer to Russia.
Rubio, after Tuesday's meeting concluded, said ending the war in Ukraine could create "incredible opportunities" to partner with the Russians on issues of common interest.
Every country that's got a stake in the conflict — and there are many — claims they'd like to see it end, albeit on vastly different terms.
"So far I have seen zero evidence that Putin is willing to give one inch in order to negotiate a peace deal," Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia posted to social media.
Trump, meanwhile, has already flagged the possibility of several concessions, including cutting aid to Ukraine and denying its bid for NATO membership, encouraging Kyiv to cede territory to Russia and withdrawing US troops stationed in Eastern Europe — something considered a deterrent for Putin, amid fears he could launch future invasions.
[Insert:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175831948]
What has the Russian president promised in return? Nothing, apparently.
Russia showing signs of weakness
Some analysts contend that, despite the deadly Ukraine conflict, this is not the right time to be bowing down to Russia, which is showing clear signs of weakness.
While its economy has defied predictions (or in some cases, hopes) that Western sanctions and Putin's prolonged invasion of Ukraine would prove ruinous, there are plenty of red flags.
Russia's currency, the rouble, has fallen to some of its lowest levels in a decade. Inflation, in December, was 9.5 per cent, with the cost of household essentials soaring.
Labor shortages, sparked by people being sent to Ukraine and fighting-age males fleeing the country, are stymieing the economy.
---
[Can Zelensky, without American help, hold Russia at bay for one more year. Many suggest one more year of war will push Putin's economy to the brink. Can Europe help enough to that end. OR, could U.S. Congress Republicans stand against this Russian aggression and rebuff Trump on the issue of Ukraine aid. See:
[This first bit meant to be satire:]
Don't worry Donald we have Russia covered no matter what position you publicly take. Either 'i really respect him' friend, or great dealmaker 'i'll finish the war in a day', or tough 'if he doesn't take the peace deal i'll hit him with more sanctions, tariffs' tough guy talk which is great for your domestic audience. All solely in American interests, of course. If the Russian economy doesn't tank you will still be in Putin's good books and you will feel good for a friend. If his economy tanks you can claim credit for tanking it, even though you had little to do with it as it's already in big trouble from Biden's ding. Just talk tough and most will not remember you had virtually nothing to do with his economy going bad. Don't worry, Don, say one thing one day and another another. We have it covered, i mean you have it covered. You really are brilliant, aren't you.
[...]
Russia's weakened energy trade and lost access to the dollar will spark a severe recession within a year, a top economist says
[...]
According to UC Berkeley economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko, the nation's economy is in deep trouble and is set to enter a damaging recession within a year.
P - That's mainly because Russia is losing two things its economy desperately needs, he told Business Insider — a robust energy trade and a steady flow of US dollars.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175750451
That is before Trump. Question is will the USA encourage Trump to act more like an American who cares more for America than he does for a Trump hotel in Moscow.]
---
And, while Russia undeniably wrested the upper hand in the war last year, it came at an enormous cost.
Casualties are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. With prisons already emptied and no appetite for another round of conscription, Putin became so desperate he turned to North Korea for troops and weapons.
Elsewhere, rebel forces swept Russia out of Syria without so much as peep amid the fall of dictator Bashar Al Assad, whose regime the Kremlin had devoted copious amounts of money and blood propping up over decades.
Some experts argue the West should seize the opportunity to exploit Putin's weakness and, potentially, flip the tables in Ukraine, rather than offer him a seat at the table.
How Putin benefits from team Trump's 'rookie mistakes'
In a matter of days, the United States has brought Russia in from the cold, writes Emily Clark.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-17/putin-us-concedes-points-to-russia-as-ukraine-negotiations-begin/104943678
The events of the past week have sparked concerns in some quarters that the US and Russia could be growing too close.
Dialogues, however, are nothing new.
Officials from both nations have gathered in person and spoken over the phone regularly throughout the past 20 years.
Lavrov and Putin met George W Bush and key figures in his administration on multiple occasions.
At one point, the Russian president even stayed at his American counterpart's family home, where they went fishing and discussed the "possibility of raising our relations to an entirely new level".
Barack Obama held several in-person talks with both Lavrov and Putin. Trump met Putin five times, and Lavrov on multiple occasions. The veteran foreign minister and Russian leader also attended a summit with Joe Biden in Geneva.
Putin could start another war
Even when diplomatic contact between Washington and Moscow was officially cut after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, dialogue continued elsewhere.
Secret talks the White House described as "unsanctioned" took place in New York in 2023. Again, Lavrov was there.
When put in an historical context, there's a case to be made that US-Russia meetings are more routine than revolutionary.
Still, there are concerns that Trump, despite being an experienced negotiator, is underestimating Putin.
"I hate to jump to premature conclusions but suspect that Putin-Trump's bromance will not be long-living because the strategic goals of the Russian Federation and US are strikingly different and the level of anti-Americanism in Putin's Russia is exorbitant," Russia expert and visiting fellow to the Australian National University Leonid Petrov said.
This article contains content that is not available.
The Kremlin says Putin is ready to talk about peace in Ukraine, but analysts argue Russia's entire economic system has been entwined with, and even powered by, war for a long time.
Under Putin's decades-long reign, Moscow has pursued multiple conflicts: in Chechnya for 10 years from 1999, in Georgia in 2008, in Crimea in 2014 before a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Last week, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy warned his country had intelligence that Russia was training up to 150,000 troops to, possibly, launch another attack on "maybe Poland, maybe the Baltic countries" as early as next year.
Putin has made no secret of his imperialist ambitions, even comparing himself to Peter the Great, a tsar who annexed swathes of new land for Russia centuries ago.
[Att: B402 - What John Mearsheimer gets wrong about Ukraine
[...]Equally perplexing is Mearsheimer’s tendency to conflate Putin’s obsessions with Russian interests as a whole. Mearsheimer’s assertion that “Russian leaders” viewed the invasion as “just” ignores the fact that much of the Russian foreign policy establishment was blindsided by the start of the war. Within the Kremlin elite, it was not a settled matter that conflict with Ukraine was inevitable or desirable. In fact, according to the Financial Times .. https://www.ft.com/content/80002564-33e8-48fb-b734-44810afb7a49 , Putin did not even consult his own foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, ahead of the attack. “He has three advisers,” Lavrov reportedly complained to an oligarch later: “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”
[The long history of Russian imperialism shaping Putin’s war
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173910279]
While many in the international community would welcome an end to the bloody war in Ukraine, questions remain about the wisdom of negotiating with an autocrat so thirsty for territorial expansion, who's presiding over an increasingly frail economy and military.
Congressman Joe Wilson, from Trump's own Republican Party, argued in a social media post on Saturday: "The fastest way to end the war is to win it. War Criminal Putin is weaker than ever. The killing stops immediately when Russia leaves Ukraine."
That ship appears to have sailed, though. Trump and Putin are organising multiple meetings, and the US president's rhetoric about Ukraine is deteriorating.
[Again, question is will the USA be able to force Trump to
act more like an American president than a Putin toady.]
Trump this week claimed the war could have been settled years ago "very easily".
What the president may find more of a challenge is ensuring the "strong" and "nice" Russian leader does not to start another one.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-analysis-after-zelenskyy-spray/104953186
"At least 11 lawsuits are taking on DOGE over data access and privacy laws
All the ways Elon Musk is breaking the law, explained by a law professor"
Related:
...11-year-old took her own life after classmates threatened
to call ICE on her family, devastated mother reveals
[...]Trump turning children against each other. Forget U.S. incorporating Greenland and Canada, Trump is trying to reward Putin for invading Ukraine by attempting to force Putin peace terms upon Zelensky and by attempting to mold the USA into something more like autocratic Russia. To Putinize USA. McConnell helped Trump get SCOTUS. Musk is working at getting important government agencies for Trump, even though they are now saying Musk is not in charge of DOGE. That dodge to dodge pertinent U.S. laws, of course.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175834265
By Riley Stuart in Washington DC
6 hours ago
Donald Trump has previously described Vladimir Putin as "strong". (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
The relationship between the United States and key ally Ukraine is dissolving before our eyes.
Donald Trump's social media diatribe on Wednesday .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/donald-trump-describes-zelenskyy-as-dictator-in-social-post/104958360 .. , local time, in which he described the country's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "dictator" who's "done a terrible job", was just the latest deterioration.
It's been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the new US president has made it clear he'd rather deal with Moscow than Kyiv when it comes to finding a way to end the conflict.
To understand why that could be a big mistake, let's rewind one day to when the US and Russia got back on speaking terms, publicly at least.
Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's been in the job for four weeks, led a US delegation to Saudi Arabia for a hastily organised meeting with Kremlin counterparts.
Sitting opposite him was Sergey Lavrov — the Russian foreign minister of 21 years — who's seen it all before.
This article contains content that is no longer available.
There was plenty of anticipation ahead of the summit, which was billed as an important precursor to three touted get-togethers between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As Rubio pointed out, Tuesday's meeting marked the first "regularised" contact between Moscow and Washington in three-and-a-half years.
That may be true, but there are claims Putin and Trump have never stopped talking, since the latter was swept out of the White House in 2020.
A book by journalist Bob Woodward released late last year detailed seven phone calls between the pair that allegedly took place in the years after Trump lost the presidency.
That's on top of the five in-person meetings that they had when they were both in power — a period when Trump famously described Putin as "strong" and "nice".
Forget needing to break the ice with a summit in Riyadh this week, some have gone as far to describe the pair as being in a "bromance".
Marco Rubio, second from left, prepares for the talks at Riyadh's Diriyah Palace on Tuesday. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)
It's not just Trump that's giving clear signs he wants the US to get closer to Russia.
Rubio, after Tuesday's meeting concluded, said ending the war in Ukraine could create "incredible opportunities" to partner with the Russians on issues of common interest.
Every country that's got a stake in the conflict — and there are many — claims they'd like to see it end, albeit on vastly different terms.
"So far I have seen zero evidence that Putin is willing to give one inch in order to negotiate a peace deal," Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia posted to social media.
Trump, meanwhile, has already flagged the possibility of several concessions, including cutting aid to Ukraine and denying its bid for NATO membership, encouraging Kyiv to cede territory to Russia and withdrawing US troops stationed in Eastern Europe — something considered a deterrent for Putin, amid fears he could launch future invasions.
[Insert:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175831948]
What has the Russian president promised in return? Nothing, apparently.
Russia showing signs of weakness
Some analysts contend that, despite the deadly Ukraine conflict, this is not the right time to be bowing down to Russia, which is showing clear signs of weakness.
While its economy has defied predictions (or in some cases, hopes) that Western sanctions and Putin's prolonged invasion of Ukraine would prove ruinous, there are plenty of red flags.
Russia's currency, the rouble, has fallen to some of its lowest levels in a decade. Inflation, in December, was 9.5 per cent, with the cost of household essentials soaring.
Labor shortages, sparked by people being sent to Ukraine and fighting-age males fleeing the country, are stymieing the economy.
---
[Can Zelensky, without American help, hold Russia at bay for one more year. Many suggest one more year of war will push Putin's economy to the brink. Can Europe help enough to that end. OR, could U.S. Congress Republicans stand against this Russian aggression and rebuff Trump on the issue of Ukraine aid. See:
[This first bit meant to be satire:]
Don't worry Donald we have Russia covered no matter what position you publicly take. Either 'i really respect him' friend, or great dealmaker 'i'll finish the war in a day', or tough 'if he doesn't take the peace deal i'll hit him with more sanctions, tariffs' tough guy talk which is great for your domestic audience. All solely in American interests, of course. If the Russian economy doesn't tank you will still be in Putin's good books and you will feel good for a friend. If his economy tanks you can claim credit for tanking it, even though you had little to do with it as it's already in big trouble from Biden's ding. Just talk tough and most will not remember you had virtually nothing to do with his economy going bad. Don't worry, Don, say one thing one day and another another. We have it covered, i mean you have it covered. You really are brilliant, aren't you.
[...]
Russia's weakened energy trade and lost access to the dollar will spark a severe recession within a year, a top economist says
[...]
According to UC Berkeley economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko, the nation's economy is in deep trouble and is set to enter a damaging recession within a year.
P - That's mainly because Russia is losing two things its economy desperately needs, he told Business Insider — a robust energy trade and a steady flow of US dollars.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175750451
That is before Trump. Question is will the USA encourage Trump to act more like an American who cares more for America than he does for a Trump hotel in Moscow.]
---
And, while Russia undeniably wrested the upper hand in the war last year, it came at an enormous cost.
Casualties are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. With prisons already emptied and no appetite for another round of conscription, Putin became so desperate he turned to North Korea for troops and weapons.
Elsewhere, rebel forces swept Russia out of Syria without so much as peep amid the fall of dictator Bashar Al Assad, whose regime the Kremlin had devoted copious amounts of money and blood propping up over decades.
Some experts argue the West should seize the opportunity to exploit Putin's weakness and, potentially, flip the tables in Ukraine, rather than offer him a seat at the table.
How Putin benefits from team Trump's 'rookie mistakes'
In a matter of days, the United States has brought Russia in from the cold, writes Emily Clark.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-17/putin-us-concedes-points-to-russia-as-ukraine-negotiations-begin/104943678
The events of the past week have sparked concerns in some quarters that the US and Russia could be growing too close.
Dialogues, however, are nothing new.
Officials from both nations have gathered in person and spoken over the phone regularly throughout the past 20 years.
Lavrov and Putin met George W Bush and key figures in his administration on multiple occasions.
At one point, the Russian president even stayed at his American counterpart's family home, where they went fishing and discussed the "possibility of raising our relations to an entirely new level".
Barack Obama held several in-person talks with both Lavrov and Putin. Trump met Putin five times, and Lavrov on multiple occasions. The veteran foreign minister and Russian leader also attended a summit with Joe Biden in Geneva.
Putin could start another war
Even when diplomatic contact between Washington and Moscow was officially cut after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, dialogue continued elsewhere.
Secret talks the White House described as "unsanctioned" took place in New York in 2023. Again, Lavrov was there.
When put in an historical context, there's a case to be made that US-Russia meetings are more routine than revolutionary.
Still, there are concerns that Trump, despite being an experienced negotiator, is underestimating Putin.
"I hate to jump to premature conclusions but suspect that Putin-Trump's bromance will not be long-living because the strategic goals of the Russian Federation and US are strikingly different and the level of anti-Americanism in Putin's Russia is exorbitant," Russia expert and visiting fellow to the Australian National University Leonid Petrov said.
This article contains content that is not available.
The Kremlin says Putin is ready to talk about peace in Ukraine, but analysts argue Russia's entire economic system has been entwined with, and even powered by, war for a long time.
Under Putin's decades-long reign, Moscow has pursued multiple conflicts: in Chechnya for 10 years from 1999, in Georgia in 2008, in Crimea in 2014 before a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Last week, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy warned his country had intelligence that Russia was training up to 150,000 troops to, possibly, launch another attack on "maybe Poland, maybe the Baltic countries" as early as next year.
Putin has made no secret of his imperialist ambitions, even comparing himself to Peter the Great, a tsar who annexed swathes of new land for Russia centuries ago.
[Att: B402 - What John Mearsheimer gets wrong about Ukraine
[...]Equally perplexing is Mearsheimer’s tendency to conflate Putin’s obsessions with Russian interests as a whole. Mearsheimer’s assertion that “Russian leaders” viewed the invasion as “just” ignores the fact that much of the Russian foreign policy establishment was blindsided by the start of the war. Within the Kremlin elite, it was not a settled matter that conflict with Ukraine was inevitable or desirable. In fact, according to the Financial Times .. https://www.ft.com/content/80002564-33e8-48fb-b734-44810afb7a49 , Putin did not even consult his own foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, ahead of the attack. “He has three advisers,” Lavrov reportedly complained to an oligarch later: “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”
[The long history of Russian imperialism shaping Putin’s war
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173910279]
While many in the international community would welcome an end to the bloody war in Ukraine, questions remain about the wisdom of negotiating with an autocrat so thirsty for territorial expansion, who's presiding over an increasingly frail economy and military.
Congressman Joe Wilson, from Trump's own Republican Party, argued in a social media post on Saturday: "The fastest way to end the war is to win it. War Criminal Putin is weaker than ever. The killing stops immediately when Russia leaves Ukraine."
That ship appears to have sailed, though. Trump and Putin are organising multiple meetings, and the US president's rhetoric about Ukraine is deteriorating.
[Again, question is will the USA be able to force Trump to
act more like an American president than a Putin toady.]
Trump this week claimed the war could have been settled years ago "very easily".
What the president may find more of a challenge is ensuring the "strong" and "nice" Russian leader does not to start another one.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-analysis-after-zelenskyy-spray/104953186
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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