Zelensky needs to go …been risking nuclear war far too long

 Zelensky needs to go …been risking nuclear war far too long

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is a spectacularly failed leader. He’s failed on every indicator of good governance.

He failed the largely Russian cultured Ukrainians in the Donbas who overwhelmingly voted him for president in 2019. He promised he’d end the war on them by their own government after the 2014 coup toppled elected pro Russian President Victor Yanukovych. Once in office Zelensky caved to the ultra-nationalists who wielded the real power in Kyiv. The war on the Donbas separatist movement escalated under Zelensky. He massed 60,000 elite troops on the Donbas border to complete destruction of the separatist movement. Guess what that provoked February 24, 2022?

He failed by continuing his predecessors’ desire to join NATO, knowing full well Ukraine in NATO crossed a red line Russia viewed as an existential security threat. That made the February 22, 2022 Russian invasion even more inevitable.

Two months into the war he failed to conclude a peace treaty with Russia in April, 2022 that was about to be signed. He allowed US and UK war hawks bully him into rejecting the settlement which would have cost Ukraine nary a square mile of territory. He swallowed whole their delusion he could win the war with US weapons but not US cannon fodder Now he’s lost about 45,000 square miles for caving to his US/UK masters of war..

Worst of all, Zelensky failed the most important responsibility of any leader: do nothing that could risk nuclear annihilation. He’s spent the entire 3 years of war asking, begging, demanding the US give him the weaponry to attack deep inside Russia. He appears oblivious how easily such attacks could trigger nuclear war between the US and Russia.

Astoundingly, when an errant Ukrainian missile killed a couple of Poles in Poland, Zelensky claimed that represented a Russian attack on NATO requiring an immediate NATO military response. Hello WWIII. That alone made Zelensky unfit to serve another day as Ukraine leader.

With the US proxy war on Russia lost and Ukraine in ruins, Zelensky’s failed days in power are dwindling. His exit cannot come soon enough.

Once again Sanders lone congressional voice against US enabled genocide in Gaza

One might surmise that out of 535 congresspersons, more than one would call for ending America’s grotesque enabling of Israeli genocide in Gaza.

But, no, that critical element of decent, moral governance falls solely on the shoulders of Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders.

For the second time since his overwhelmingly ignored resolutions last November to end the flow of US weapons to Israel that have pulverized Gaza’s 139 square miles into rubble, Sanders stepped up to the plate for a second swing at ending it.

He’s introduced 4 Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) that would block the next tranche of $8.6 billion in weapons to further ethnically cleanse Gaza of those pesky Palestinians blocking Israel from developing Gaza’s valuable oceanfront property. If passed they would block 2,166 Small Diameter Bombs, 2,800 500-pound bombs, tens of thousands of fuzzes, thousands of Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits for use on bombs, 3,000 Hellfire Missiles, and 10,000 155mm High Explosive artillery shells.

Whew.

Israel can sure eliminate more thousands of innocent Palestinian moms and kiddies with Uncle Sam’s finest genocide weapons. Bernie didn’t pull his punches: “Netanyahu’s extremist government has instead waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people, killing more than 48,000 and injuring more than 111,000 – the vast majority of whom are women and children. Tragically, much of this carnage has been carried out with American bombs and weapons. Netanyahu has used our bombs to damage or destroy almost 70 percent of the structures in Gaza, including hundreds of schools. All of this has been done in clear violation of U.S. and international law. With Trump and Netanyahu openly talking about forcibly displacing millions of Palestinians from Gaza – in other words, ethnic cleansing – it would be unconscionable to provide more of the bombs and weapons Israel has used to kill so many civilians and make life unlivable in Gaza.”

Sanders noted the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) require such sales to be consistent with internationally-recognized human rights. Sending weapons to complete the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza sure seems to be a tad inconsistent with ‘internationally recognized human rights.’

Why are Bernie’s 534 other colleagues ignoring him like the plague on the most important moral issue of their lifetime? Inquiring opponents of US enabled genocide in Gaza would like to know.

US correct to vote against UN resolution solely condemning Russia for Ukraine war

 US correct to vote against UN resolution solely condemning Russia for Ukraine war

Less than half of the UN’s 193 member states voted for the Ukrainian resolution in the General Assembly solely condemning Russia for invading Ukraine on the third anniversary of the war.

The vote on the non-binding resolution was 93 to 18 with 65 members abstaining.

In an astonishing reversal of previous US policy at the UN on Ukraine, the US joined Russia and 16 other states in opposing the resolution.

Why?

US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea argued that the Ukrainian resolution ignored that the war actually started 11 years earlier with the Russian Ukraine war that ignited after the 2014 coup that toppled democratically elected Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych.

Shea didn’t mention that the US was heavily involved in supporting the coup in order to prevent Ukraine from partnering economically with Russia. Nor did she mention that after the coup the US heavily armed Ukraine to complete the destruction of the Ukrainian separatist movement seeking freedom from Kyiv’s policy of destroying Ukrainian Russian culture in the Donbas. Shea also omitted that 14 years of US efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO crossed a red line for Russia that would inevitably provoke a Russian invasion.

But all of these critical omissions were implicit in the Trump administration's refusal to continue the Biden administration’s fantasy that President Putin woke up one day in February, 2022 and decided to attack Ukraine unproved.

This was a welcome dose of reality sorely missing from the Biden administration for all two years, eleven months of their proxy war to weaken Russia using Ukrainian proxies to do all the dying.

President Trump is telling the world that this war must end with a settlement based on reality. Ukraine will not join NATO. Ukraine will not get back the oblasts containing Russian cultured Ukrainians seeking relief from endless destruction by their own government. Ukraine will refrain from being a US/NATO Trojan Horse to keep Russia out of the Western Europe political economy. Most importantly, the US and Russia can normalize diplomatic relations and end three years of risking nuclear annihilation from America’s zero sum game approach to the war.

Based on the vote of Ukraine’s one sided resolution putting all the blame on Russia, a majority of UN members agree with the Trump path to peace.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL