When the Russian forces crashed on the borders in Ukraine in 2022 he decided to dry it from the map as an independent state, the United States hurried to help the besieged nation and threw its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a resistance hero.
Three years almost a day after, President Trump is rewriting the history of the Russian invasion of his smaller neighbor. Ukraine, in this version, is not a victim but a bad guy. And Mr. Zelensky is not a last day of Winston Churchill, but a “dictator without elections” who somehow started war alone and deceived America to help.
The revisionism of Mr. Trump prepares the foundations for a geopolitical face unlike any generation of generations since the president undertakes negotiations with Russia that Ukraine fears could come at their own expense. Vilifying Mr. Zelensky and moving the fault of the war from Moscow to Kiev, Mr. Trump seems to throw a predicate to collect support for an ally under attack.
The strong exchange of words between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky this week reported what has changed with the inauguration of a new president in Washington. Also for Mr. Trump, who has never been a fan of Ukraine and expressed admiration for the president Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for a long time, the vitriol expressed himself towards Mr. Zelensky has aroused jets of surprise on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
One day after having falsely declared that Ukraine started the war, Trump doubled on Wednesday with an extraordinary side forbidden against the leader of an ally, built on a lie. “Think about it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, convinced the United States of America to spend $ 350 billion dollars, to go to a war that could not be won,” Trump wrote on social media.
It was a surprising distortion of reality. Mr. Zelensky did not convince the United States to give him money “to go to war”. He and his country were attacked, and only then the United States under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. respond with wide financial assistance. And even then, it was only a third of what Trump said.
But Mr. Trump continued, characterizing Mr. Zelensky not as a defender of democracy but an enemy. “He refuses to have elections, he is very low in the Ukrainian surveys and the only thing he was good when he was playing biden” like a violin, “Trump wrote.” A dictator without elections, Zelenskyy is better that he moves quickly or not A country will remain. “
While Ukraine suspended the elections during the war, Mr. Zelensky was actually originally elected by a landslide in 2019 in a competition considered free and just by the international community – unlike Mr. Putin, a real dictator who remained at Power for a quarter -cine centuries through the elections widely considered to be farsa. And Mr. Zelensky enjoys an approval evaluation of 57 %, according to a new survey, higher than that of Mr. Trump.
The president’s “dictator” jab came a few hours before referring to himself online regarding a domestic question such as “Il king”, followed by an official of the White House who published an illustration by Mr. Trump in real dress .
The attack of the president to Zelensky, while saving hard words for Mr. Putin caused indignation among European leaders, the Democrats in Washington and even some Republicans who were willing to speak.
“Mr. President, Ukraine did not” start “this war”, said Mike Pence, his former vice -president, online. “Russia has launched an unprotected and brutal invasion by claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The road to peace must be built on the truth. “
Charles M. Kuppeman, who was deputy director for the National Security of Mr. Trump in his first term compared the president’s actions with the British Prime Minister who tried to appease Adolf Hitler by agreeing to give him a part of Czechoslovakia. “The name of Trump will be remembered in history as a surrender artist just as Neville Chamberlain,” Kuppeman said in an interview.
Moscow, on the other hand, seemed happy. Dmitri A. Medvedev, Putin’s Senior Councilor who was president of the custodian for four years, mentioned Mr. Trump’s comments on the fact that Zelensky is a dictator without elections. “If I had told me only three months ago that these were the words of the President of the United States, I would have laughed aloud,” he wrote online. Mr. Trump, he added, “It is right by 200 %. Bankruptcy clown. “
There is obviously a long story of American presidents frustrated by the leaders of foreign allies who were trying to help during the war. Charles De Gaulle never liked Franklin D. Roosevelt even when US troops fought to free France. John F. Kennedy was thus alienated by the South Vietnam’s Onh Diem Diem that his government has not discouraged a coup.
George W. Bush and Barack Obama both discovered that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki of Iraq was mercurial and non-constructive. Mr. Biden certainly got angry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel even if he supported his war in Hamas. Moreover, Mr. Biden’s relationship with Mr. Zelensky could be pungent sometimes.
But as often happens, Mr. Trump went beyond any of them in terms of public vitriol against an ally that faces an existential threat, using the type of language that the presidents rarely use on an apparent friend.
Vice -president JD Vance, who in 2022 said that “I don’t really care about what happens to Ukraine”, he went to the point of warning Mr. Zelensky not to fight. After Mr. Zelensky complained on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was “captured in a disinformation network,” said Vance at the Daily Mail that these comments did not refer alone.
“The idea that Zelensky will change the president’s mind making him hurt in public media,” he said, is “an atrocious way to face this administration”.
Trump has never been particularly understanding with Ukraine even before the last fight. Until his first campaign for the president in 2016, he reported that he could have accepted the illegal annexation of Crimea from Russia from Ukraine and expressed admiration for Putin’s strength.
His contempt for Ukraine later became absolutely animosity when it became persuaded that Ukraine had intervened in the 2016 elections against him, repeating a propaganda line driven by Russia, which actually intervened in the elections on behalf of Trump. Former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, his ally and lawyer who was in contact with Ukrainian figures looking for influence, encouraged this line of thought, to the point that Mr. Trump has seen Ukraine more and more like A personal opponent.
“Trump was guided in his first term by the intense desire to refute any Russian collusion in the 2016 elections,” said Kuppeman. “He wanted to demonstrate that he won without any influence or external interference, and he gnawed him when he was accusations he won due to Russian assistance. Ukraine has become a path to demonstrate that it has won without such assistance. “
In the end, this led to the famous phone call with Mr. Zelensky in 2019 pushing Ukraine to help clouded Mr. Biden, then the main democratic candidate for the presidency, announcing an investigation into corruption. Trump has retained military aid in Ukraine at the same time and issued him only under pressure from republican consultants and senators. The revelations on his actions led to his impeachment by the house later that year.
When Russia mounted its vast invasion in 2022, Trump offered little sympathy or support for Ukraine, even if the blue and yellow flags went up to the United States in solidarity. In the days preceding the attack, in fact, Trump praised the move of Mr. Putin’s “genius” in exerting pressure on Ukraine.
In the following years, Mr. Biden’s decision repeatedly asked to dedicate so much American money to the defense of Ukraine, just like the commentator Tucker Carlson and others at the far right of the Republican Party, even if more leader of the mainstream party were criticizing the Mr. Biden for not having done more.
In response to the pressure of Mr. Trump, the republicans of the Chamber have blocked a new request for help for months, underestimating Ukrainian forces and giving Russian invaders the time to group and stabilize their positions. Only after the allies of the Gop and foreign dignitaries did it pressure to sell did he allow the republicans of the Chamber to let the help pass.
But while many Americans could be understandably opposed to investing taxpayers in someone else’s war, Trump goes beyond asking if Ukraine is legitimately the injured party. Several times in the last few days, he expressed great anguish for how many people have been killed and how much of the country he was destroyed.
Yet, in doing this, indicates Mr. Zelensky, rather than Mr. Putin, as the author of all that carnage. “I love Ukraine,” he wrote on Wednesday, “but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his country is broken and millions died unnecessarily”.