The latest is that Russia and the United States have yet again kicked the can down the road about resolving the Russo-Ukraine War. Now the world must wait until June 2nd for the next sit-down talks. Only the most naive among us or those who are helplessly partisan hold out any hope that something substantive would come out this meeting. One does not need to be a diplomat to see where this is going. In the meantime the killing and destruction goes on literally minute by minute. The president and his \u201cknow it all\u201d vice president should be required to spend 72 hours inside the killing zone that is Ukraine and maybe, just maybe, they might sober up to the recklessness of their politics toward that country. But I doubt it.<\/p>\n
Further, it does not require a prophet to predict what is going to happen. Most likely, the meeting will end with positive words from Putin and Trump saying they made progress. Trump might offer his usual optimism that they are getting close to a resolution. Perhaps, there might even be more prisoner swaps, but the upshot will be \u201cstatus quo<\/em> ante<\/em> negotiations.\u201d In the interim, Russia will up its attacks and more Ukrainians will die.<\/p>\n A much scarier scenario is all too possible. An intractable Putin and an impatient Trump might very well agree on conditions to end the war that favor Russia and penalize Ukraine. Russia would get assurances about the future of Ukraine – that it couldn\u2019t join NATO or the EU and the United States would step aside in the conflict. More significantly, Russia would come away with virtually all the territory that it occupies, including the Crimea. Ukraine would be presented with a fait accompli<\/em>, take it or leave it. Putin would win, gaining time to sit back and wait until the next opportunity to take advantage of a much weakened and abandoned Ukraine. Trump, true to his guile, would announce a \u201cgreat big beautiful treaty,\u201d take credit for the \u201csolution\u201d and promptly condemn Ukraine\u2019s predictable refusal to accept the settlement.<\/p>\n American abandonment in this case would make the world shudder about the future of the Middle East, Taiwan and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The latest is that Russia and the United States have yet again kicked the can down the road about resolving the Russo-Ukraine War. Now the world must wait until June 2nd for the next sit-down talks. Only the most naive among us or those who are helplessly partisan hold out any hope that something substantive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-robert-fischer"],"yoast_head":"\n