[sjsdaiuasgdia]

I'd watched the whole thing live when it happened. I went back and watched from around 21min in to see what self-immolation you mean.

Sequence of events -

Trump downplays the need for security guarantees. "Security is maybe 2% of the problem, security is the easy part, I'm worried about getting the deal done."

A "reporter" from OAN asks a kiss-ass question that can be summarized as "President Trump, how amazing and courageous are you for negotiating with Putin?"

Trump gives a rambling answer including his usual vague statements of how the war wouldn't have existed if he'd been in power and then starts talking about Hamas for some reason.

There's a moment of levity where Trump says Zelensky's attire is fine.

Zelensky indicates he wants to respond to some of the earlier statements. He says Russia has broken many promises made in past negotiations and this is why security guarantees are actually critical to Ukraine.

"Reading the room" in this situation would mean "buying into the Putin-led narrative currently being peddled by the Trump administration."

Fuck that.

[kelipso]

Problem with this is a misunderstanding of what a press conference after a private discussion is supposed to be about. Zelensky was trying to negotiate and argue during the press conference, with the entire world watching. All the details about Trump not wanting security guarantees would presumably have been decided during the private meeting but Zelensky basically tried to argue his case with the media. That would irritate pretty much anyone.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Irritating bullies is not a bad thing.

[kelipso]

Well, the US stopped Ukraine funding because of it, so seems it was a bad thing for them.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Yes, because the bullies (Trump, Musk) have allied with the bully (Putin).

Zelensky correctly recognizes that appeasing bullies does not make the bullying stop. At best, it slightly delays the bullying.

Much of the US population desperately needs to reach the same recognition.

[kelipso]

We collectively need to stop framing geopolitics in high school terms. It's embarrassing.

[immibis]

Finding the truth embarrassing doesn't make it not the truth. Geopolitics is basically high school bullying.

[ein0p]

He is not in a position to negotiate any "security agreement". The United States is unable to provide any real security agreement to a government that is quite obviously not interested in any real, lasting peace, one that sought repeatedly to drag us and Europe into WW3. Doing so is an open invitation to try and re-litigate the conflict (which the US/Nuland/USAID _created_ in 2013) a few years from now, this time with you and I in the trenches. "Soft" security guarantees, by establishing significant US interest in Ukraine's "minerals" (ephemeral though they may be), and therefore presence on the ground, was on the table, but Zelensky misread that as a robbery.

Emotional thinking and platitudes about "bullies" are not really applicable here. You have to think about the eventualities that we could be affected by if things go sideways, and with the current set of characters in Ukraine, they most definitely will, and soon.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Putin started this war and he can end it whenever he wants to. Appeasing bullies does not encourage them to stop bullying.

[ein0p]

There's that emotional thinking again. _We_ started that war when we funded a coup there in 2013 and hand-picked[1] their rabidly anti-Russian government. We also funded and condoned their neo-Nazis, without whom none of this would work [2]. Mostly Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine disagreed with that kind of thing. After all, it was mostly them who elected the president that we overthrew. West Ukraine started shelling east trying to subdue them, calling it an "anti-terror operation". Russia provided "lethal aid". Things escalated. The conflict did not start in 2022. Suggesting that we can just go ahead and build tactical nuke bases right next to where ~70% of Russia's population lives, and Russia should just roll over and let it happen, is idiotic and reckless.

Here's John Mearsheimer telling you _exactly_ what was going to happen, in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUCCR4jAS3Y

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bKivSjoAg

[fatbird]

As if Trump and Vance's demand that Zelensky abase himself in front of them isn't "emotional thinking"; as if cutting off military aid because Zelensky didn't bow and scrape isn't "emotional thinking".

As if taking the hundreds of nuclear red lines Putin has laid down and allowed to be crossed without a nuclear response, isn't "emotional thinking".