Well, no one except maybe one who got smart
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Top level meet between Russia, Ukraine and US and European reactions buzzing in awe and shock:
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Politics
‘The US is ready to hand Russia a win’: newspapers on Europe’s Trump shock
By Jon Henley Europe correspondent, 7 hrs ago
The Guardian
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US representatives including JD Vance (second right) and Marco Rubio (third right) meet Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy (third left) on the sidelines of the Munich security conference. Photograph: Matthias Schräder/AP
This year’s Munich security conference exposed the chasm in core values separating the Trump administration from most Europeans and sparked deep alarm at US efforts to control the Ukraine peace process and exclude European governments from it.
Here is what some of the main European and US newspapers had to say about it.
Le Monde
Through JD Vance, its vice-president, the US has “declared ideological war on Europe” , wrote Sylvie Kauffmann for the French title. If Vladimir Putin turned on the US in a famous 2007 speech at the conference, in 2025 it was the US that turned on Europe.
In a “virulent diatribe against European democracies he accused of stifling freedom of speech and religion”, Vance said the greatest threat to the continent was not Russia or China but Europe’s own retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”.
Worse, his relative silence on “the topic Europe most wanted to hear him on”, Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, “prolongs the incomprehension and confusion over Trump’s initiative aimed at ending the war”, Kauffmann said.
“A thick fog now surrounds Washington’s intentions; between the public statements of Vance and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the various interviews followed by denials, contradictory positions have multiplied,” she said.
New York Times
The US administration had done nothing less than “offer what may be a preview under Mr Trump of a redefinition of a transatlantic relationship built on postwar bonds of stability between allied governments”, the paper said .
It too reminded readers of Putin’s 2007 speech in which the Russian president “demanded the rollback of American influence and a new balance of power in Europe more suitable to Moscow”, adding that he “didn’t get what he wanted – then”.
Now, top Trump officials had “made one thing clear: Putin has found an American administration that might help him realise his dream”. The comments raised fears the US may now “align with Russia and either assail Europe or abandon it altogether”.
Such a shift, the paper said, would amount to “a previously unthinkable victory far more momentous for [Putin] than any objectives in Ukraine”.
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Commentator Daniel Brössler said in the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung that Vance had not come to the German city to give “a friendly wake-up call”, but as “an arsonist”. The US vice-president’s mission was “the triumph of rightwing populism – with the backing of America’s billionaire chief Elon Musk”.
His silence on security policy was because “work has already begun on a deal with Putin at the expense of Ukraine, but also of Europe … This much is clear: Trump will make the deal, and the Europeans will have to pay and secure peace militarily.”
Europe, Brössler said, was being attacked “by Putin, who has come a good deal closer to his goal of revising the European order in recent days. And by Trump, who no longer even recognises common interests – and certainly not common values.”
On the one hand, the US “is demanding Europe finally become capable of defending itself against Russia. On the other, it is backing Putin’s henchmen and appeasers”, from Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to the Alternative für Deutschland co-leader Alice Weidel.
The continent, he said, “will have to rise above itself”. Editorialist Detlef Essinger said Vance had deployed “a trick that populists and authoritarians have used for years … The principle is: accuse others of exactly everything that you do yourself.”
This “confuses them. It puts you on the offensive, and your opponents on the defensive. It gives you sovereignty over the terms. And a debate is not won by the person who has the better arguments, but by the person who owns the terms.”
The Kyiv Independent
“The US administration is ready to hand Russia a win in its brutal war against Ukraine. That’s the only conclusion we can make,” the paper said in a blunt editorial . The words and acts of Trump and his team go “beyond appeasement”.
But, it added, while the US may be “the biggest and richest ally Ukraine has”, it is far from the only one: “That means all eyes are on you, Europe. The real decision on whether Russia wins the war doesn’t actually sit with Trump now – it’s with Europe.”
Europe’s leaders, if they are “real leaders of their nations and not political opportunists, need to recognise the urgency of the situation, and act now. After all, if the US is out and Ukraine falls, Europe will be left to face Russia one on one.”
Russia, the paper said, “is not at war with Ukraine, it’s at war with the west. And if a significant part of the west deserts, the rest needs to make sure to show up for battle.” Nobody, it said, wanted the war to end more than Ukrainians do.
“But we understand that any compromise with Russia won’t be the end of the war. There can’t be a compromise in this war. Russia wins – the west loses. The west wins – Russia loses. Europe, the time is now.”
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Here is a quick Turned revision by Vance, (so soon after ) but then could a turn re-turn , sustaining the same commonly shared trust that went on before!:
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February 16, 2025 11:09 PM UTC
Ukraine, Europe will be part of ‘real’ peace talks, says Rubio, as US weighs Putin’s motives
Summary
Rubio assures Ukraine, Europe will join talks if they progress
US officials prepare for Saudi Arabia talks with Russia
Concerns over European exclusion from peace talks addressed by Rubio, Witkoff
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said Ukraine and Europe would be part of any “real negotiations” to end Moscow’s war, signaling that U.S. talks with Russia this week were a chance to see how serious Russian President Vladimir Putin is about peace.
America’s top diplomat played down European concerns of being cut out of the initial talks between Russia and the United States set to take place in Saudi Arabia in the coming days. In an interview with CBS, Rubio said a negotiation process had not yet begun in earnest, and if talks advanced, the Ukrainians and other Europeans would be brought into the fold.
Earlier on Sunday, Reuters reported that U.S. officials had handed European officials a questionnaire asking, among other things, how many troops they could contribute to enforcing a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.
“President Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin last week, and in it, Vladimir Putin expressed his interest in peace, and the president expressed his desire to see an end to this conflict in a way that was enduring and that protected Ukrainian sovereignty,” Rubio said on CBS’s “Meet the Press.”
“Now, obviously it has to be followed up by action, so the next few weeks and days will determine whether it’s serious or not. Ultimately, one phone call does not make peace.”
U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and national security adviser Mike Waltz were due to leave for Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening, Witkoff said in a Fox News interview.
Rubio noted he was due to be in Saudi Arabia anyway due to previously arranged official travel. The composition of the Russian delegation had not yet been finalized, he said.
The planned talks in Saudi Arabia coincide with a U.S. bid to cut a deal with Kyiv to open up Ukraine’s natural resources wealth to U.S. investment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an NBC interview broadcast on Sunday, questioned if minerals in areas held by Russia would be given to Putin.
Trump, who held a call with Putin on Wednesday and said the Russian leader wants peace, said Sunday he was confident Putin would not want to try and take control of the entirety of Ukraine.
“That would have caused me a big problem, because you just can’t let that happen. I think he wants to end it,” Trump told reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump added that Zelinskiy would be involved in the conversations to end the conflict.
EUROPEAN ROLE IN PEACE TALKS, OR NOT?
Rubio and Witkoff rejected concerns that Ukraine and other European leaders would have no place at peace negotiations, despite Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, suggesting precisely that at this weekend’s Munich Security Conference.
Witkoff noted in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that Ukrainian officials had met several U.S. officials in recent days at the conference, while Trump had talked with Zelenskiy last week.
Rubio, for his part, said that Ukrainians and other Europeans would be included in any meaningful negotiations.
“Ultimately, it will reach a point - if it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet - but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved because they’re the ones that were invaded, and the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well,” Rubio said.
“We’re just not there yet.”
French President Emmanuel Macron will host European leaders on Monday for an emergency summit on the Ukraine war, Macron’s office said, in the wake of Kellogg’s remarks.
European officials have been left shocked and flat-footed by the Trump administration’s moves on Ukraine, Russia and European defense in recent days.
Chief among their fears is that they can no longer count on U.S. military protection and that Trump will attempt to ink an Ukraine peace deal with Putin that undermines Kyiv and broader European continental security.
Asked if he had discussed lifting sanctions on Russia during a Saturday phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Rubio declined to provide confirmation, saying only that they “did not go into any details.”
After the call, Moscow said that the two had discussed the removal of “unilateral barriers” set by the previous U.S. administration in relations with Russia.
Rubio said he did address the “difficult” operating conditions of the U.S. embassy in Moscow with Lavrov. If there was to be progress in Ukraine peacemaking, both Russia and the U.S. would need properly functioning embassies in the other country, he added.
Reporting by Gram Slattery; editing by Michelle Nichols, Mark Heinrich, Leslie Adler and Marguerita Choy
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles
And here, Putin’s reaction, the true puppet master!?!
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.and here is Zelensky’s reaction to Putin’s reaction to Trump’s impending visit and subsequent telephone call:
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Funniest reality TV show ever
Just guessing: as far as ratings go, in the olde TV guide rating days, it was a tossup if a 40/60 % split on were a show was renewed or canceled afforded a much widespread sympathy, based on audience participated questionnaires, and I am just guessing, now it’s down to the wire with advertisers pulling out by even a few percentages of variance:
How close this is getting,
Therefore perhaps some critical points have been reached where guesstimates take over with ever improved tech know automatically cutting out conventional methods of appraisin profit/cost variance.
So we are all prevy to the forces of market place, and this has been steadily standard since way back even to the days when laissez faire played on the meaning of ‘what’s fairs’ like in love and war, or: live or war or whatever.
So the question reduces ultimately to the necessary ration that shrunk to maybe a few percentages below that maybe, that Marx had predicted early on, ,
His role is to prepare the Empire of Lies, for its new global status in a multipolar world order.
Americanism’s New World Order has failed.
The messianic globalization project, of his adversaries, have suffered a setback.
Perhaps, but it’s a strong possibility that such preview was necessitated by a show to gain time, to prepare and renew the ‘assault’ on the forces to be, that would increase the resistance to perform a mock trial of predicted outcome?
What if the left coalesced to such a scheme to strengthen a rather then weaken a preplanned script to regain a feared loss of union, a union which could loose capital overseas investment, rather than gain more?
What it’s really about the strengthening of the economy of the ID, rather than a demonstration of actual numbers, that may loose interest, if the actual mechanics of monetary value were manipulated, rather then fixed through building confidence in the dollar, , with no hope of setting it back on the gold standard.
Perhaps the union of oligarchy world wide use this show to be able to revalu work as the product of robotic reliance against the world wide decline of interest in human production on an ever growing technologically massed production method.
What if the subservient third world is deliberately put into a position of keeping the cybernetic superiority of the United States, as an ideal form , that remains in the permanent control and exclusive use of this new world order?
An Empire of Lies, based on a systematic meritocracy of liars, can only be expected to use pretences.
No doubt, a lair caught will not change. He will adapt, change his lies, and try again.
But can a liar, no matter how gifted, fool existence itself?
He may fool gullible humans who want to give him the benefit of a doubt…but is existence swayed by his duplicitousness?
Cybernetics may compensate for weakness, but at what cost?
Every silver lining has a dark cloud.
Miscegenating systems may dream of evading the consequences of lowering median human IQ by using technologies, such as AI, to compensate.
How much is they willing to sacrifice, if they choose to refuse correcting their original error?
Very true, except, that the process, may not be faulted and the energies expanded against, may be prohibitive, but then the procedure has to be aligned to it in form; even if, it appears fake, for fake and lie seem not to differ in kind.
Is it the info that is processed, or is human understanding decline as the consequence of modern industrial dystopia ? Or, must both be used simultaneously, to accord with spatial incongruity, as physics is reduced to a metaphysical minima?
Overpopulation, Capital crisis, cybernetic compensation , diminished resources, are some of the variables that fuel an initial class conflict that ignited class conflict,
Now, with supposing a classless society, deeper levels of yet unmined value need to be found
Human understanding is declining in heterogenous systems where a lowest-common-denominator is the only way to fabricate uniformity.
They use metaphysics to subdue the physical - memes usurping genes.
In the Behaviour Sink experiment this was a byproduct of shrinking spaces, increasing populations, and an overabundance of resources.
Inaccessible frontiers allow parasitical strategies and viruses of the mind to flourish - ideological (memetic).
Feminization is necessitated when natural culling cannot rebalance an environment. Or is it how nature is hormonally rebalancing by mankind, reducing procreativity
But no enclosed spaces exist…not even planetary.
In the end, they are expose to a world from which they cannot quarantine themselves.
Nature always has the last word.
A clever feminine strategy to use masculine ingenuity to create AI alternatives, to hide behind, and sue as their new proxies.
Are they trying to create a new scapegoat/father figure to surrender?
Pretty well describes the situation.
As far as it is a continuous day by day changing situation which drives this show onwards, it is interesting to note the latest on the previous show and tell:
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February 18, 2025 2:29 PM UTC
Russia and US agree at talks without Ukraine to press ahead with bid to end war
Summary
US says both countries will name high-level teams
Riyadh talks follow Trump’s call with Putin
Russia: NATO must cancel 2008 promise of Ukraine membership
Ukraine not at the talks, rejects deals without its consent
US-Russia Talks Live
The United States and Russia agreed in Riyadh on Tuesday to press ahead with efforts to end the war in Ukraine, a U.S. official said, as Kyiv and its European allies watched anxiously from the sidelines and Moscow raised a major new demand.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the two sides agreed to appoint “respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides”.
Russian negotiator Yuri Ushakov told reporters after more than four hours of talks: “It was a very serious conversation on all the questions we wanted to touch upon.”
Ukraine and European leaders are worried that President Donald Trump could cut a hasty deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin that ignores their security interests, rewards Moscow for its invasion and leaves Putin free to threaten Ukraine or other countries in the future.
Even while the meeting in the Saudi capital was under way, Russia signalled a hardening of its demands.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow it was “not enough” for NATO not to admit Ukraine as a member. She said the alliance must go further by disavowing a promise it made at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 that Kyiv would join at a future, unspecified date.
“Otherwise, this problem will continue to poison the atmosphere on the European continent,” she said. There was no immediate response from Ukraine, NATO members or the United States.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has consistently demanded NATO membership as the only way to guarantee Kyiv’s sovereignty and independence from its nuclear-armed neighbour.
U.S. spokesperson Bruce said in a statement: “President Trump wants to stop the killing; the United States wants peace and is using its strength in the world to bring countries together. President Trump is the only leader in the world who can get Ukraine and Russia to agree to that.”
She said the two sides had also agreed to consult in order to address “irritants” in their bilateral relations, which the Kremlin described as “below zero” during the previous U.S. administration of Joe Biden.
Ushakov was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying conditions were discussed for a meeting between Trump and Putin, although he said it was unlikely to happen next week.
The talks in Saudi Arabia, which has friendly ties with both countries, underscored the rapid pace of U.S. efforts to halt the war, less than a month after Trump took office and six days after he spoke by phone to Putin.
Critics say that Trump’s team, by ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine and saying that Kyiv’s desire to win back all its lost territory is an illusion, has made major concessions in advance. U.S. officials say they are simply recognising reality.
Ukraine says no peace deal can be done on its behalf. “We, as a sovereign country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us,” Zelenskiy said last week.
Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Riyadh and Dmitry Antonov in Moscow; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Frances Kerry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles
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Further spin by Zelensky
booo evil russia boooooooo putin BADDDDDDDD omg noooooooo zelenskyWEF GUUUDDDDDDDDDD NATO yayyy good natoooooooo
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Play three card monte, then? Why not,
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Trump tells ‘dictator’ Zelenskiy to move fast for peace or lose Ukraine](Trump tells 'dictator' Zelenskiy to move fast for peace or lose Ukraine | Reuters)
Europecategory · February 19, 2025 · 9:59 AM PST
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “a dictator without elections” and said he had better move fast to secure a peace or he would have no country left.
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Zelensky called Trump a dictator… 
when all bro really wants to do is help him reach a resolution.
Does Zelensky actually want this war to end? otherwise why is he moaning. 
Trump stated that Ukraine needs to call a General Election as soon as a peace-deal is struck… I bet Zelensky ain’t happy about that. 
Zeelsnky is a puppet. One of the circumcised clan - place there by another one of the circumcised clans billionaires - put there to destroy Russia.
Destroying Ukraine is enough, because Rusia with Ukraine intact would be formidable.
This is why he did not sign a peace agreement when Ukraine was losing massively… He is not a real Ukrainian. He does not identify with Ukraine.
He is one of the chosen.
Then this to confirm the game of raising the ante on this show , more then a 3 ring circus:
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Politics
Zelenskyy to meet US envoy after fallout with Trump as European leaders rush to contain crisis – live
By Jane Clinton and Jakub Krupa (earlier), Erum Salam (now); Léonie Chao-Fong, 13 hrs ago
The Guardian
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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US president Donald Trump. Composite: AP, REX/Shutterstock
9.13pm GMT
Britain and France are leading efforts to create a European “reassurance force” intended to prevent future Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, ports and critical infrastructure in the event of a US-brokered peace deal.
The proposal, western officials said, would involve less than 30,000 troops and would be likely to be concentrated on air and maritime defence. Ground forces would be minimal and not deployed near the frontline in the east of Ukraine .
Among the aims of the force would be to ensure the safe reopening of Ukraine’s airspace to commercial flights and to maintain the security of seaborne trade over the Black Sea, critical to the country’s food and grain exports.
Ukraine’s electricity and other utilities have been repeatedly bombed by Russia during the near-three-year war, and maintaining their integrity is also deemed critical to the recovery of the country if the conflict is brought to a close.
It is unclear whether a force that is relatively small in number would be supported by Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for the creation of a deterrence force 100,000-150,000 strong , which involves the US.
Here’s more on this story:
Related: Britain and France working on plans for ‘reassurance force’ to protect Ukraine
8.58pm GMT
Elon Musk took to X, the social media platform he owns formerly known as Twitter, to echo Trump’s rhetoric that Zelensky is a “dictator.”
“Zelensky cannot claim to represent the will of the people of Ukraine unless he restores freedom of the press and stops canceling elections!”
World leaders like the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer have denounced such comments.
Aww poor widdle WEF stooge installed in Ukraine by a western coup. I feel so bad for him
Btw, Trump called him a tyrant because… suspending human rights including free speech critical of the government, canceling elections, and arresting and torturing/killing journalists is… what tyrants do.
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The other side of the coin created a split within the US Republican Party , as it’s working through the legislature:
…
GOP senators fact check Trump’s rhetoric on Ukraine, while still backing his strategy
Lawmakers sought to dispel Kremlin talking points echoed by the president that Ukraine was responsible for the war with Russia. But they said Trump should be given room to negotiate.
Some Senate Republicans took issue Wednesday with President Trump’s escalating criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and his false assertion that Ukraine provoked the ongoing war with Russia, now in its third year.
Trump’s “dictator” remark came in a scathing post on his TruthSocial social account, and followed comments by Zelenskyy earlier in the day that he “would like to see more truth from the Trump team.”
The president’s comments left several lawmakers looking to dispel Russian talking points about how the war began and who bore ultimate responsibility.
“We must remember that the instigator of this war was Russia,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “It was President Putin who launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who just returned from an official visit to Ukraine, lauded Zelenskyy for keeping his nation together and putting up a tougher fight than Russia anticipated.
“I think we should give [Zelenskyy] a fair amount of credit for that work,” he said.
The response among Senate Republicans highlights a public intraparty rift with the president on a key White House priority, even though lawmakers have little power to change Trump’s mind about approving any more funding for Ukraine, his personal view of Zelenskyy or the increasing likelihood of a peace deal that many lawmakers worry is more likely to favor Russia’s interests.
The president holds tremendous constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy with little check on that power from Congress or anywhere else. An initial round of U.S.-Russia talks kicked off in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday — without Ukraine at the table.
Senators like Tillis expressed some concern that the president is taking a cozier approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin, someone who more conservative defense hawks traditionally view as a direct threat to U.S. interests.
“Putin’s a murderer,” Tillis said. “He’s a very bad person who needs to be stopped. He’s going to metastasize across Europe if we don’t [stop him.]”
At the same time Tillis, who is up for re-election in 2026, suggested that Trump’s negotiating tactics often work for him and said he’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to try to finalize a deal that protects Ukraine.
“I’ll give him latitude for now, but at the end of the day, Putin needs to be a loser and the Ukrainian people need to be the winners,” Tillis said.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., echoed the view that Trump should be given room to negotiate, telling reporters the president is “a public negotiator and understands positioning and likes to soften his targets.”
Asked what he would tell Ukrainians following Trump’s moves, Cramer said: “Watch Donald Trump masterfully bring an end to the war in your country and don’t expect to get everything you want and don’t expect Vladimir Putin to get everything he wants, but a permanent peace which I think almost every Ukrainian wants.”
Whether or not Trump can broker an end to the war is unlikely to affect the reality that the GOP-controlled Congress has little appetite for approving any more foreign aid to help Ukraine in its fight. All in, Congress has approved about $175 billion that includes direct military assistance to Ukraine and funds to rebuild the U.S. military stockpile.
Zelensky told NBC in an interview that aired Sunday that it would be “very very difficult” for Ukraine to survive without U.S. aid. “I don’t want to think about it,” he said. “Yes, we have to think about it.”
Prior to Trump’s comments, other top Republicans were already expressing concern with the president’s posture toward Russia. During the Munich Security Conference last week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaration that Ukraine would not be offered NATO membership as part of any peace deal with Russia.
“There are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys,” Wicker said during a programming interview hosted by Politico. “They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated. And Ukraine is entitled to the promises that the world made to it.”
While former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was – and remains – one of the loudest defenders of U.S. aid to Ukraine in Congress, his successor made clear Wednesday he is taking a softer approach.
“I think what I’m in support of is a peaceful outcome and result in Ukraine, and I think right now the administration, the president and his team are working to achieve that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters. “And I think right now you’ve got to give them some space.”
Asked about Trump’s characterization of Zelenskyy as a dictator, Thune responded: “The president speaks for himself.”
Deirdre Walsh and Lexie Schapitl contributed reporting.