Friday's the big day. Putin will fly to Alaska and meet Trump for cup of tea and biscuit.
They'll negotiate the terms of ceasefire for what the Russians are calling a 'Ukraine crisis', rather than a bloody war they started.
The body count is as astonishing as the fact there's a war raging in Europe in 2025.
One million Russian soldiers killed or injured. 400k Ukrainian casualties, including between 60 and 100k dead.
Moscow now occupies 20% of the country.
And the guy responsible for this hellfire is not being dragged by soldiers into an international criminal court to face charges, he's about to be welcome, wined and dined by the most powerful man in the world to discuss terms for a ceasefire, which includes keeping land he's not entitled to.
If we put ourselves in Ukrainian shoes for a second, if war returns to the Pacific theatre.
It would be like Washington and Beijing meeting to decide that China can keep and occupy all the land north of Auckland simply because they took it.
And you're meant to sit back grateful that at least the fighting will stop?
Ukrainians certainly aren't ready to roll over on territory.
The Europeans are huddling round Zelensky now to give him some moral support.
But, they need more than huddles and handshakes to bandage over what must feel like an insult to their country and sovereignty - two global superpowers meeting far, far away in Alaska to decide their fate.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
18 comments:
We can all sit back in our comfortable armchairs and say "Hey, don't give an inch Zelenski"! At least the US are trying to put an end to the carnage. Relinquishing a few areas of soil is preferable to having your own loved ones killed. Bear in mind as well, many Ukrainians are okay with Russian rule. The mineral deal with the US, if it eventuates, is also good for the Ukrainians as it ties in the US-Ukraine relationship and repairs a war-torn nation. China has a monopoly on essential minerals and that's not great for western nations.
I see the history of this conflict differently from the writer and anything i say with verification would be dismissed as lies anyway so i will say just this. Russia's socalled narrative is correct .
Dear Ryan, Why are TV anchors like yourself who are simply meant to read the news writing this rubbish? So you're keen on thousands of Ukrainians & Russians continuing to be slaughtered on a weekly basis?Since European countries refuse to remotely provide the military funding & arms to win the war for Ukraine. Their leaders just have big mouths, like you. The lions share of funding comes from the US. Why is stopping the slaughter through a territorial deal so repugnant to you, Ryan? How can Ukraine ever get that land back? Why don't you get off your arse and fight there yourself, Ryan? How repugnant of you to write, "the guy responsible for this hellfire [Putin] is .. about to be welcomed, wined and & dined by the most powerful man in the world to discuss terms for a ceasefire, which includes keeping land he's not entitled to". Given the Americans are funding most of Ukraine's war effort, isn't the US entitled to its view on a deal? A deal that would stop the killing? You're not paying 10 bucks for this war, Ryan. Your opinion is so worthless you're best sticking to business & economics, of which you also know nothing. By the way, my ancestors are from both Russia and Ukraine.
Do you really think that Russia will stop at Ukraine?
Elite American troops have been operating behind Russian lines in this war assisting Ukraine. Ukraine has been largely propped up by American military hardware. Let's not pretend Ukraine would have lasted long without US help.
Pity a significant amount of the minerals Janine finds so exciting appear to be in the Russian controlled part of Ukraine. I bet those are the bits of territory Trump wants Russia to give back. I wonder which bit of Ukraine he will offer Putin in return. Trump's not trying to put an end to the carnage. He's trying to cut a deal, and demand a Nobel Peace Prize on the side. Stopping the carnage is a bonus.
And as for "many" (such a precise metric don't you think) Ukranians being OK with Russian rule, last time I looked Ukraine was a democracy and its current government had been elected by a majority of voters expressing anti-Russian sentiment. Yet Janine seems to approve of letting the pro-Russian minority prevail anyway. What an awful precedent for the Baltic States to contemplate. Or to reframe the position closer to home, "many" New Zealanders are OK with tribal rule, (remind me how many votes Te Pati Maori won) but that doesn"t make it a good governance model for the country, and it will never happen. Why should Ukraine be held to a different standard?
So "Jones Boy". You seem so full of wisdom always, not. What is your answer to the war? More bloodshed? An endless battle? The US invading Russia? You seem to contradict most views but have no answers. In an ideal world no country would invade another would they? We do not live in an ideal world. Who is going to rebuild Ukraine? Ukraine is okay with, and has already signed the mineral deal with the US. The US will protect their interests obviously. What's your solution pray tell?
There can only be one honourable outcome in this war and it is that Russian forces return forthwith to their homeland and subsequently help Ukraine rebuild what they have destroyed. Such is likely to happen, but Russia has no claim of Ukraine or its minerals. If Trump can at least bring about a ceasefire then good for him. That’s a start. He can have his Nobel Peace Prize, but pay for Ukraine’s resources. But in these negotiations, he has one thing going for him; Putin is heading down a no-exit road in this war and must realise it. It has been suggested, though, that the Russians have something on Trump that could be a problem for him. Who knows? In any case, a forfeiture of territory to bring about peace didn’t work at all well with Czechoslovakia in 1938, did it? And it was a deal that was done by superpowers in the absence of the victim.
Zelensky doesn't want the money to run dry. He forgets that when you're not winning you don't get to dictate the terms. He needs to end sending his population to the meat grinder and cede lost ground to end this unwinnable war.
Ryan, I don't think I could come up with a less nuanced, less accurate or more shallow take on the war if I tried. For starters it didn't start with Russia's invasion in 2022 or the unconstitutional overthrow of Yanukovich after the Maidan massacre in 2014, but more reasonably with the end of the Soviet Union and the subsequent rise of US unipolarity. Why are you even writing this nonsense?
A couple more points: Ukraine does not have the resources to mine its minerals. This ability to actually access and profit from, is to be supplied by the US. Ukraine still owns the rare earth minerals. The US has already agreed to help rebuild Ukraine.
Within New Zealand we also have large groups comfortable with minority rule. The entire Labour government was preparing for this in 2040 with He Puapua. So warfare from outside or from within, each is as bad as the other.
Sorry, that should read Such is UNlikely to happen,
Thank you for your confidence that I am able to promote world peace Janine, but, with respect, it’s not my ideas that are under scrutiny here; it’s the deeply flawed ideas of Donald Trump and those who cheer him on. But after reading your comment about He Puapua, I can understand your indifference to the democratic process, both here and, by extension, in Ukraine.
Thank you, Ryan, for putting this war into a New Zealand perspective. There is clearly an aggressor here and just as clearly a victim. To Janine and those who share her opinion – Many Ukrainians are not okay with Russian rule. Clearly no one in your extended family has experienced their rule. You know nothing of the hurt caused by Holodomor, collectivization, forced relocation of families, moved borders, political imprisonment, letters from family members in the west that never arrived, the secret police, and signing documents at gunpoint. Ukrainians simply aspire to self-determination for themselves and their country. The gave up nuclear weapons for global peace, expecting their sovereign borders to be recognized. Remember the Revolution of Dignity – the Maidan. The people clearly demonstrated their abhorrence for the state (Russia) that peddles corruption and coercion. Anger against Russia runs deep. We remember the stories told to us by our parents and our grandparents who were forced to live under communist rule. If you think we want to return to that scenario, think again.
Jones Boy. I should be highly flattered that you choose to engage with only moi.
I don't have confidence in your ability to solve Ukraine at all. So far, you simply reflect typical MSM views. I would respect you if you thought outside the square. The Ukraine situation is deeply complex. It is not a matter of Putin saying"Okay folks, you win...I'm outta here!" The world is a more deeply complex place as well, therefore the solutions we once thought were the only ones acceptable are now not so clearly defined. We see that most clearly here in our own country. Who would have envisaged a clamour for tribal rule by 2040? Who would have envisaged half the population concurring?
To anonymous at 2.33. I am merely trying to be pragmatic. If part-Maori radicals had the military might and were causing death, bloodshed and maiming to fellow citizens and the only way to stop it was to give them say, the East Coast and Northland of New Zealand, then I would do it. I am not territorial. That is how I see Ukraine. Nineteen million Russian speakers there, so some must be pro-Russia.
"If we put ourselves in Ukrainian shoes for a second, if war returns to the Pacific theatre.
It would be like Washington and Beijing meeting to decide that China can keep and occupy all the land north of Auckland simply because they took it."
I struggle to see how this scenario resembles anything at all about what is going on with Ukraine. And therefore what the point of this exercise is beyond the extremely superficial feeling of being left out.
Surely, the reason why China invaded Northland in this scenario is highly relevant. And how the US figures in this scenario is also rather significant. OK, let's make some adjustments to this scenario to help make sense of it.
China and New Zealand share a common border, and that border between them has changed over the centuries. Most of the people in Northland are of Chinese extraction and speak Chinese. In fact China and New Zealand belonged to the same country until around 30 years ago. Tensions grew between Northland and the rest of New Zealand around that time and there was often violent conflict between them. Basically a civil war broke out in New Zealand. The people in Northland sought autonomy from the rest of NZ and made repeated requests to China for assistance and even intervention.
In the meantime, neo-con war hawks in the US made it very clear that they disliked China intensely and repeatedly called for its demise either through pressure or even violence. The people south of Auckland decided it was time to join a military alliance with the US, to the delight of the ne-cons there, who actively went about training and arming the south-of-Auckland people in the expectation that conflict would eventually break out between NZ and China. China repeatedly made it clear that they would not tolerate a US military alliance on its borders.
In 2022 China invades New Zealand from the north. The US ramps up its supplies of weapons and cash to New Zealand and violence escalates. Without these weapons and cash and the extraordinary courage and resilience of the people of NZ, the war would have only lasted a few weeks or months, such is the disparity between China and NZ in terms of manpower and resources. The neo-cons are delighted to see this and predict the imminent downfall of China. They are thrilled that only New Zealanders and Chinese are getting ground up, with the US only needing to keep sending money and weapons. It turns out that this is a classic proxy war between the US and China being fought in New Zealand, but without any real prospect of NZ becoming officially part of the US military alliance. NZ finds itself on a hiding to nowhere. The US talked big about "whatever it takes" but weren't that serious. The US make it clear they will not get into a hot war with China because that would be the definition of WWIII. Besides the Americans don't really have any interest in NZers beyond using them to weaken China. Now polls have come out showing that the majority of NZers are willing to make concessions on land to put a stop to the slaughter of their young men.
The victim is NZ. The aggressors are the Chinese and the US. Finally, the Chinese and US leaders are going to talk face to face and see if they can find a way to put a stop to this. NZ is not invited. NZers may choose to feel hurt by this, but in the end, it isn't really going to matter. Without a deal between the main protagonists, there's nothing much the NZers can do anyway. Fair? Hardly. Just? Definitely not. But without a deal between the main protagonists, there's nothing much the NZers can do anyway.
So yeah, in this scenario, NZers will feel insulted and hard done by, but that is by far the very least of their concerns. They may quite rightly want all their land back, but how on earth is that going to happen? Who's going to do it? You can blame whoever you like, but NZ will never be the same again, and the longer it goes on, the worse it's going to be for them.
Now THAT'S putting NZ in the shoes of the Ukrainians.
It seems as usual every arm chair observer is an expert. Nobody really knows whats in Putins mind (or Trumps for that matter)
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