Zelenskyy’s stance in effect is that he will accept no agreement in which he is not involved, despite his record of bad faith.
European countries have allowed themselves to become part of the problem where the Russia-Ukraine conflict is concerned, hence it is no surprise that they were excluded from the talks which took place in Riyadh between Russia and the US about measures for ending the war. It is a surprise that President Zelenskyy of Ukraine and his European counterparts question the value of discussions from which they were excluded. Countless meetings have taken place in Europe and in the US about the war and ensuring a stable peace, and in none of these was Russia included. They saw nothing amiss in a peace conference from which one of the two adversaries was excluded, but now protest the exclusion of the Europeans and especially Ukraine from the Riyadh confabulations between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. As President Trump has made clear, the Ukrainian issue is a European problem and must be settled by the Europeans themselves. True, under President Biden, the US was far and away the biggest booster of the conflict, but that administration was voted out by the people of the US in November and Donald Trump handed a second term in the White House. There are reports that President Trump would like half of the profits of Ukrainian oil and gas exports to go to the US Treasury. If so, the suggestion ought not to be met with shock. After all, for quite some time, much before he was sworn in as the 47th President of the US, Trump has demanded that Ukraine compensate the US for the vast amounts of money spent by Biden on the war since 2022. Where Zelenskyy is concerned, his stance in effect is that he will accept no agreement in which he is not involved,. The fact is that he has been a spoiler rather than a facilitator of a peace agreement since the start of the war, walking away from the agreement he had reached with the Russian side to accept a peace based on the status quo as early as April 2022, less than two months into the war. The US, UK and others in the EU joined hands to sabotage the deal, and from that time onwards, Zelenskyy has been doing everything he can to increase the role of NATO in the war despite his record of bad faith, as have such hawks on Russia in UN policy circles as former USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who was among the boosters of the Hillary Clinton-led efforts at regime change in the Middle East through supercharging the 2011 Arab Spring, which wreaked havoc on several regimes in that sensitive region and for a while ensured that ISIS was enabled to set up governments in territories controlled by them in Libya and Syria, while in Egypt, an extremist group briefly gained control of the government
Earlier, as a consequence of some of the postwar policies of President George W. Bush, the same took place temporarily in Iraq after the country was liberated from Saddam Hussein in 2003. In 2021, the unconditional and hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan ordered by President Biden brought the Taliban to power and a few months ago, an Al Qaeda associate in much of Syria. And it is the very policymakers in Europe and across the Atlantic who caused such devastation in so many countries who want to be in the forefront of the efforts by the US to end the Ukraine war. Prime Minister Keir Starmer notwithstanding, the UK does not have the wherewithal to sustain the Ukraine war, even if Germany and France assist in the effort, unlikely in the case of the first, which already has an economy in trouble as a consequence of cutting off direct access to Russian oil and gas. As for France, any assistance to Ukraine for reconstruction would make Macron even less popular than he already is, to the benefit of Marine Le Pen, who is looking to emerge as the first lady President of France. Unfortunately for the Ukrainian people, they are likely to be on their own where reconstruction is concerned, discounting a few small amounts from Baltic states and perhaps a few other smaller European powers. In Asia, Africa, South America and to most of the population of North America, the war in Ukraine is looked at as a European war. Former US Vice-President Kamala Harris, in her quest for the US Presidency, joined hands with Biden in being a booster of the Ukraine war, a lapse of judgment that played into the hands of an acknowledged sceptic of the war, Donald Trump. Under MBS, Saudi Arabia has become a much greater voice in international affairs than it previously was, a promotion underlined by the fact that Riyadh was the venue chosen by the US for talks with Russia on ending the war. An understanding is close to being reached between Moscow and Washington, a task that has been complicated by the fact that a few of the policies of President Trump indicate that he on occasion has a view of US power that reflects not present-day realities but the situation as it was in the regions around the US during the period in office of President James Monroe (1817-25). Perhaps President Trump will indeed succeed in making America as great again as he wishes, but that goal is yet to be accomplished. Given realism on both sides, Trump could indeed emerge as the peacemaker where the Ukraine war is concerned. In the Indo-Pacific, together with partners such as PM Modi in India, PM Ishiba of Japan and President Subianto of Indonesia, a deterrent force may get built during his term that would deter Xi from attacking any country, whether that country be so de facto or de jure, in the Indo-Pacific. 2025 is a year that will have consequences that would shape the Indo-Pacific for a generation to come.