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Is Trump planning on using Putin to get him out of the mess of both his low polling and the Iran war? Seems far-fetched perhaps at first, but he is completely snared in Iran, with whatever option he looks at appearing to be a doomsday scenario. Could Putin help him out both with diesel prices back home but also to broker a deal with Iran which makes it appear to Americans that he, and America, are somehow the winners?
For the Russian president to sell close to 2 million tonnes of diesel oil to Western countries, including the U.S. of course, seems like a sticking plaster to a huge wound in the American and Western economies. Unless, that is, there is a second deal behind it which journalists and pundits are not aware of, or are simply choosing not to report. For the diesel initiative from Putin, the amount which is being offered isn’t huge, but there are a couple of precedents which it sets which are important.
Firstly, it opens the doors for further lifting of sanctions (which could be bundled into Iran’s, given Moscow’s relations with Tehran), but perhaps even importantly, it makes President Zelensky of Ukraine an even bigger target for Trump. Much will rest on the coming days and the decision that Zelensky will take to continue bombing Russia’s oil facilities. Will he take that suicide pill? Wars are often messy, and there are always grey areas where the two countries at war with one another find situations which are illogical and impractical. Perhaps the bombing of oil facilities within Russia in the Ukraine war has reached its tipping point, and regardless of how close EU leaders are with Zelensky – who at best we can call a caretaker leader – this will test this relationship to breaking point.
Do great numbers of citizens in France and Germany need to die this winter simply because of an energy crisis and/or an economic malaise in their own countries which have poured billions into keeping the war in Ukraine alive? Is Putin so confident that this winter will be the last one for his troops, as the defensive line between Ukraine’s forces and those of Russia’s looks like it is about to break at any moment? Are Ukrainians themselves ready to face a freezing winter in Kiev, unable to power or heat their own apartments? So many wars started over energy reserves, but not Ukraine. Yet it might end over them.
Trump’s threatening comments on social media about Zelensky should be taken seriously. If Trump’s own cabal of unqualified advisers can seriously convince him that a ground invasion of Iran is feasible, if not winnable, one could argue simply that regime change in Ukraine should be a children’s picnic and gives him a huge payday – politically, economically and geopolitically. Removing Zelensky would stop the war immediately, and Trump could claim victory for that, while he asks his friend Putin to quietly intervene in Iran and fix the Straits of Hormuz.
For Trump to actually respond to Zelensky’s outburst to reporters that the move to buy Russian diesel was “weak” by threatening Zelensky with being removed shows that his patience has reached a point where he is starting to think of the Ukrainian president as the source of the problems. To remove Zelensky through backing a rival will be hard and will pitch him against EU leaders, but one could argue relations couldn’t really get any worse, and that once Macron and Merz understand that peace is the only option and Zelensky is actually the only real obstacle to that, they will do what all EU leaders do and follow America’s lead.
We often hear analysts on YouTube talk about the game of “chicken”, but there has never been a fleeting moment than now, as both Trump and Zelensky will be watching each other to see who blinks first. Zelensky, until now, has been playing a dangerous game of pretending to be servile to U.S. hegemony, while really just taking the cash and weapons and laughing at Trump among a coterie of weak European leaders in their palatial residences. The war has been complex since it began, as the U.S. and EU rarely saw eye to eye, but if Trump goes ahead with his threat of denying the Ukrainians shared intel, then this will be a very bad omen for the future of Zelensky, as he will put even pressure on the British, French and Germans to come up with weapons and money in an unwinnable war which they’ve bet the farm on and their entire political careers depend on.
The war, after this diesel decision, might have just become much simpler and binary, and a collective narrative might emerge from the insanity of EU gibberish from countries who can’t even protect their own people on their own soil against an invasion of bogus asylum seekers. It will not only be the ultimate test for U.S.-Ukraine relations, but also one for U.S.-EU ones, and perhaps represent the end of NATO as we know it.
