Trump literally has no clue on Ukraine

Waking up to yet another extraordinary - actually insane story on Ukraine. See below from politico:
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-allies-secret-talks-volodymyr-zelenskyy-opposition-ukraine-elections-yulia-tymoshenko-petro-poroshenko/

The story I think just underlines how the Trump administration has zero understanding or, perhaps cares, around anything on Ukraine.

To imagine that the Trump administration actually thinks Ukrainians would wittingly replace Zelensky with Porosohenko, or Tymoshenko is a fantasy. Has the Trump information got like an info block on the history of Ukraine - first the Orange revolution and then Euromaydan? Ukrainians have a track record of not accepting imposed political solutions on them - it’s a reason for a revolution in Ukraine.

But I guess Trump et al don’t care, as their hatred of Zelensky knows no bounds, while they are looking (Putin style) to impose a new president on Ukraine, someone who would accept whatever peace terms Trump and Putin impose.

This just underscores the extent to which the Trump administration has been captured by Putin at this stage - literally Trump is doing Putin’s dirty work for him.

How the Trump administration assumes that Ukraine, with an imposed unpopular new president, would be stable going forward is beyond me.

That said, I do remember having conversations with State Dept folks in 2004, in the run up to the Ukrainian presidential election in that year, and them telling me that Yanukovych was their preferred candidate. As events unfolded, Ukrainians revolted against a fixed election, and rallied in favour of former President Yushchenko, who ended up winning the repeat 2005 election after the Orange Revolution.

The Yanks (Bush junior administration) preferred Yanukovych as, after the Gongadze and Saddam radar scandals, the Kuchma/Yanukoych regimes had kind of been on the hook to the US, and ended up being a loyal ally to the US in the war in Iraq sending troops there - many died, hence the irony now in respect to comments by Vance this week on allies’ abilities relative to the US. So it was a case of don’t rock the boat in hoping for a smooth transfer of power from Kuchma to Yanukovych. All this got overtaken by the Orange Revolution. In the end the Yanks then got on the Yushchenko boat - riding the wave, but I guess it goes to show the lack of interest really in Ukraine on the part of the US prior to 2004/05 at least. And despite what Putin might say, the Orange Revolutions was certainly not a U.S. inspired plot, it was a bottom up street driven protest which initially at least was “uncomfortable” for the then Bush administration.

But even assuming a peace deal is imposed, and then let’s say that Tymoshenko or Poroshenko are imposed as president on Ukraine, it’s hard to see Ukraine then as having a great economic outlook given the track record of Ukraine prior to 2013 in terms of state/oligarch capture. This would be just taking Ukraine back a decade or more. Under this scenario it is hard to imagine Trump’s minerals deal delivering very much. And hard to think that the Ukrainian political or social setting would be stable - one would have to expect yet more bottom up social and political revolutions.

In any event while Tymoshenko and Poroshenko are ambitious, given the opinion polls (Poroshenko polling in the twenties, far behind Zelensky, and Tymoshenko in the low single digits) I just cannot think that either would fall for this stupid Trump administration play.

The irony also really in that in the 2019 election Moscow favoured the native Russian speaker Zelensky who ran on a ticket of talking to Moscow to try and get peace, whilst Poroshenko was distrusted by Moscow for stalling/outmanoeuvring Russia in the Minsk peace process. Poroshenko is much criticised - and was for concluding the Minsk deals - but they bought the Ukrainian military time to re-group and re-arm after significant military defeats in 2014 and 2015. This time likely allowed Ukraine the ability then to mount the valiant defence of Kyiv et al then in 2022.

Poroshenko and Zelensky have a difficult relationship - Ze’s move last month to sanction Poroshenko was idiotic - but I doubt even that Poroshenko would sell out Ukraine to Trump and Putin at this point to get one back on Zelensky.

Bottom line in all this - the Trump administration simply appear to have no clue what they are doing on Ukraine at this point. They just seem to come over as the brain dead enforcers of Putin’s fascist state. The line seems to be to give Putin whatever he wants on Ukraine to get any kind of short term ceasefire and then let’s move on to other things with Putin - a Russian minerals deal, and some longer term alliance of anti woke against China.