There's at least EIGHT sides on Russia-Ukraine, along with a deeper dive on Zelensky

About 10 days ago, I posted here about John Mearsheimer hitting a foul ball on this issue.

Then, after Bagger Vance as Trump's flunky sandbagging Zelensky, I expanded that on Substack to at least seven sides, along with an extensive rewrite.

But, I missed an eighth side, and missed some things about the original seven that I put into comments to the piece. So, we'll further rectify that back here.

1. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ in the professional governmental and academic world, shading into neocons; almost all Democrats, and Never Trumper Republicans, fall here. So do the NAFO Nazis (sic) on Shitter and elsewhere.

2. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, et al, who probably still represents a plurality of Ukrainians vis a vis the shakedown, without a lot of concrete guarantees, being offered for peace. This of course does not excuse him not wanting a peace deal that would include letting go of the Donbas, without a Trumpian shakedown. (And, just because Boris Johnson allegedly sabotaged things in 2022 doesn’t mean that Zelensky would have gone along then, either. That said, he didn't actually sabotage them. We'll get there.)

3. Trump and his sheeple. (On Substack, I thought that would cut more than "MAGAts".)

4. John Mearsheimer-types who, while not Trumpian sheeple, have as their ultimate desire on this issue the desire of owning the neocons to the point that they can't condemn Trump. (A LOT of people on his Friday afternoon YouTube said, too bad he and Bagger Vance won't talk to Bibi that way. Mearsheimer wishes that were so, and the Trumpian sheeple do not. Link coming up below; his Feb. 27 Substack post, of discussion with Andrew Napolitano, pre-Trump/Zelensky clusterfuck, spills the beans enough.

That said, on March 7, he said he wants "Ukraine to get the best deal possible," about a minute into that short video. OTOH, he then quickly spoiled it again by saying that "Donald Trump wants peace. He wants to improve relations with the Russians and he wants to help create a security architecture in Europe so everybody can prosper and we don't have any more war."

No, he wants to create his own, transactionalist and grifting version of the American imperium. It's what he wants in Gaza, but Ukraine is too big for his direct control, unlike his dreams for Gaza.

Mondoweiss gets it totally right here, in talking about Trump and direct negotiations with Hamas, which have some in Israel worried.

Donald Trump is very difficult to predict. His mercurial, transactional, and self-centered approach to policy is often ill-defined and is subject to change on a whim as he fancies himself more king than president.

Well put. If only Mearsheimer would put that on an equal footing with his desire to own the neocons.

Trump may not be a warmonger, in part because he's like the bully afraid of getting punched in the face. But, peacemonger?

The difference between Ukraine and Gaza is there's nothing to exploit in Gaza, other than Israeli tourists looking for beachfront sand in Trump's eyes.

4A. Simplicius, if he's not in Group 6. Per his piece after the dust-up, I was open to putting him there. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he, unlike the Dissident and people like me, ignores that Trump wants to establish an American imperium, just like the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™. It's a different one, and a nakedly transactional one, but it's still an American imperium. 

That said, with this piece March 13 and this one March 11 about Trump's fake cease-fire plan, he has redeemed himself to a fair degree. But not totally. He still gets one skeptical eyeball from me.

5. Norman Finkelstein and types like him who think Putin’s invasion was “justified.”

6. Putin blank-checkers of various sorts. These are often Communists of some sort who, delusionally, think Putin is one. A subset is non-Communist anti-imperialists of the left, non-skeptical version, who can't condemn Russian and American imperialism both. 

7. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté types. Grifters. They may have some sincerity of being in Group 6 as well, but still.

These two, 5 and 6, are in some degree triangulations on 4, but still separate.

8. People who read the likes of Ivan Katchanovski, and are well informed about Tsarist Russia, USSR and post-breakup history of Russia and Ukraine, but don’t fall into any of the above groups.

OK, now the hot takes.

The first group can shut the fuck up until admitting they’re Cold War 2.0 warmongers, with NATO expansion, etc. There's nothing further to be said to my typical audience.

The second group? Zelensky can semi-shut up, but still with fucks, until he can get non-US members of NATO, and the EU, to propose peace talks that accept some version of accepting reality on the ground. I covered this is much more detail in my "Zelensky as Churchill" piece.

The third group? Trump himself, Bagger Vance (Trump’s Dan Quayle, it appears more and more, see below), and Trump’s sheeple can definitely STFU, just as much as the Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™.

The fourth? Mearsheimer and any others in his orbit or line of thought? They can shut up for now, without fucks, until they, per the Dissident, accept that Trump is proposing his own form of American imperium. The more Mearsheimer cuts Trump blank checks by not calling him out, the further downward he goes in my estimation. (Trump’s sheeple already know this and are applauding.) To put it as bluntly as hell for the Mearsheimer types? Trump’s proposal is about as trustworthy as his plan to “own Gaza” and rebuild it as “Tel Aviv South Beach.” The only difference here is that in this case, Trump is trying to rope the American government in as backstop. Mearsheimer can also STFU until he talks to some leftists of the world, not just the Napolitanos and the RT-paid talking heads like Glenn Diesen, even if Diesen reportedly opposed Putin's invasion. Has a, say, Counterpunch Radio asked to talk to you, John, and you said no?

Simplicius? Not in comments because he only lets subscribers comment, but in quote/restacks, I first politely, then moderately less politely, called him out. If he gets worse, he gets a STFU up too, and I suspect that, by not getting better, he'll get worse.

The fifth? Without mentioning Finkelstein by name, nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece rejecting the idea of “justified” war in Ukraine. (Per Walter Kaufman, and rejecting the idea of “justified” vs “unjustified” on many serious moral issues, I also reject the idea of it being “unjustified”; trying to call it either one, for any of groups 1-6, is bad framing.) On the likes of Finkelstein, another reason I don't use "justified" or "unjustified" about the Russia-Ukraine war is that risks falling into another version of twosider framing.

The sixth? I've not directly run into anybody, by full posts, on Substack. But, they're all over the place on Shitter. 

The seventh? No, I don’t know if Max is getting paid in any way by Russia (or China); if he is, which is certainly possible and even plausible, it’s being laundered through sufficient third, fourth and fifth parties to disguise its origins. In addition, per Ken Silverstein, I just remember who Max’s dad is to think about the likelihood of his grifting. Also per Ken, I just think about Assad’s minders leading Aaron Maté around the nose several years ago. To the degree people like this are right, I don’t have to cite them as support. And won’t.

Let's not forget that, besides his long-ago RT work, RT was found to be laundering money to multiple conservative pundits last year. (That said, has there ever been a similar investigation related to Chinese $$, because I know Max is wrong on things like Xinjiang and plenty of good leftists have the goods on that? Folks, Max is full of shit on Xinjiang, on Danny Ortega in Nicaragua and more. And, I don't believe it's for entirely idealistic reasons. That said, beyond Max, many other alleged left-liberals and leftists, including Green Party thought leaders, are full of shit on Xinjiang; it's another argument in favor of the reality of horseshoe theory.)

The eighth? Maybe I’ll have further triangulation in the future, but that’s enough for now.

Zelensky IS on ever-thinning ice, whether The Resistance 2.0 knows it or Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ will admit it

A MUST READ on this issue? The piece that Der Spiegel dropped on March 3. It non-snarkily portrayed Zelensky as a would-be Churchill whose popularity had pretty much cratered on broken promises before the Russian invasion. It also notes that then-PM of Britain Boris Johnson did NOT sabotage a peace deal. It references his comment and analyzes it:

"Nobody can tell me that anyone can simply talk President Zelenskyy out of something like that, not even Boris Johnson. His closest advisors can’t even do so,” says Reznikov, the former defense minister. "The conditions laid out by the Russians were completely unrealistic,” says Mykhailo Podolyak, one of the Ukrainian negotiators.

That's within the context of also saying Bucha, where Russia upped the ante on war crimes (of which Ukraine is not innocent, whether at Bucha or more broadly) was also a deal-breaker at the time. 

As for realness or unrealness? Ukraine's insistence, per Wiki, at least before Trump became president, that Putin and other top Russians be prosecuted for war crimes and that it surrender all lands, including I presume the Donetsk and Luhansk that were supposed to be guaranteed autonomy under Minsk, is more unrealistic than Russia's stance today and, AFAIK, in mid-2022. If you want back the post-2022 lands, Zelensky, I can buy that, even if it's not totally realistic? Crimea? Even if I discount Putin for lying levels at 50 cents on the dollar, blame the US and the Maidan. Per Counterpunch, the likes of John Mearsheimer had Putin worried the Crimea would be like an aircraft carrier: 

Mearsheimer presents the basic outline of Putin’s response to the coup. If Ukraine joined NATO, the Crimean port of Sevastopol would serve beautifully as a US/NATO military launching pad. The act of incorporating Crimea into Russia was “not difficult given that Russia already had thousands of troops at its naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Those forces were augmented by additional troops from Russia, many of them not in uniform. Crimea was an easy target because roughly 60 percent of the people living there were ethnic Russians, and most preferred to become part of Russia.

You're not getting it back. On the third hand, Yeltsin did pledge to respect Ukrainian territory; presumably, at least in 2000, Putin accepted that. On the fourth hand, in light of Counterpunch, the Maidan made that null and void.

That said, on the other side, the level of demilitarization of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted, along with just what constituted "denazification," were unreal on the Russian side. The latter was perhaps face-saving, but there was no way Ukraine was going to shrink its army by two-thirds or whatever. See this long piece for all the issues being faced at Istanbul in spring 2022.

None of this is to say that Johnson's framing of Zelensky had no effect. His referencing Zelensky as a new Churchill would have increased his willingness to dig in. But, he already had the support of his full government, and a vast majority of the populace, at the time.

One other thing must, MUST be raised here, which I already knew, but is further backgrounded by Der Spiegel. Per the Ukrainian constitution, Zelensky can “undeclare” martial law and ask the Rada to approve that; he can then hold an election after all.

We have parallels in the US. We held midterm elections in 1814, even though the British had burned the White House in late August and the threat of further invasion stood overhead. The first Tuesday following the first Monday in November was not a uniform election date then and many states held elections on other dates. Per Wiki, the dates were April 26, 1814, to August 10, 1815. Eight states were between Aug. 29 and Oct. 11, 1814, in the shadow of the Aug. 24 burning. Of more direct relevance yet? On Sept. 25, 1862, Lincoln declared nationwide martial law and nationwide suspension of habeas corpus.  We still held midterm elections. Later, tho not nationwide, Lincoln both declared martial law and suspended habeas in Kentucky, starting July 4, 1864. The presidential and lesser elections that fall were still contested in Kentucky like elsewhere. To add to that? More than once, and most recently since the dustup in DC, Zelensky has promised to resign — with new elections following — in exchange for Ukraine getting into NATO. So, you're wrong, Ms. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ fellow traveler at The Dissident. Zelensky just said you're wrong.

Zelensky, as Der Spiegel makes clear, doesn't want an election because he's almost certain he'd lose. And, I read through him enough to think that, for this and other reasons, he wants the end of the war to be very far away, per his March 3 statement. (One other reason is that he fears for his life if a peace treaty has any real land concessions. On that, I can't blame him; the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and fellow travelers are deadly serious.)

More here from Spiegel:

He has a powerful challenger in Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former head of the armed forces, who everyone believes is going to go into politics.

Second, once this war ends, Zelenskyy will have to take responsibility for an odious deal with Russia, which is likely to force Ukraine into difficult concessions. "Sixty percent of people want a deal. But when he signs, even these 60 percent will gather in front of the president’s office and protest against it,” says a close associate of the president.

"Zelenskyy will become a scapegoat. Everyone will pin their dashed hopes on him,” says Golovaha, the sociologist.

Can't argue with any of that. 

If that's not good enough? Ivan Katchanovski:

Those who claim to be pro-Ukraine are in fact pro-Zelensky. Pro-Zelensky does not mean pro-Ukraine. He is no the same as Ukraine.

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) March 4, 2025

That's the bottom line.

Beyond elections? Zelensky's idea to make the EU into a covert NATO for Europe is laughable. EU members that aren't in NATO have even less desire to spend more on defense budgets than do NATO members, in my opinion. Yes, EU head Ursula von der Leyen is proposing a spending hike; call me when it happens, as in, not just approved by EU member states, but when it happens. Beyond that, with Germany already staring at recession, a stare that helped trigger its snap election, the US now staring at a recession that will spread abroad and more, there's just no appetite for this.

As for the "Churchillian" angle? Spiegel nails that. Zelensky has an image investment:

"I think Zelenskyy is not yet psychologically prepared for the end of a war in which he is not the victor,” says Fesenko, the political scientist. The president, he says, has literally become one with this war, Zelenskyy demonstrates this by his beard, his paramilitary outfit and his evening addresses. "If he were to suddenly stop giving speeches and start wearing a suit and tie again, it would come as a shock to the Ukrainians.”

Exactly. He either can't, won't, or some mix of the above, on not letting go. And, this isn't new:

"Zelenskyy is consciously playing the role of Churchill, and he plays it well,” says historian Yaroslav Hrytsak. "But he won’t play it to the last consequence because he still can’t utter one sentence that Churchill said: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’”

There again, it's hard to tell whether it's "can't" or "won't" that was in the driver's seat. But, the result is the same in any case. 

Anyway, go read the full thing. Zelensky wasn't alone in thinking that Ukraine could make the war end with a Russian capitulation. We're talking his advisors here, not Boris Johnson or US Nat-Sec Nutsacks™.

As for the war itself? No, Russia hasn't had millions of casualties, contra Trump's blather. It's had a lot fewer, relative to population, than Ukraine. And, though Zelensky had great military PR with his excursions into Russian lands last summer, with Trump cutting off the US military pipeline, that bird is very much coming home to roost now.

None of this is to excuse Trump's version of American empire, which would not come with actionable security guarantees. None of this is to excuse Bagger Vance's sandbagging.

But? Even were Kamala Harris president, and trying to push Zelensky half as hard toward a peace with concessions, and without a shakedown, Zelensky would still resist just as much. 

That said, after both US and European media posted 48 hours of blather from Trump surrogates, while Zelensky and his team smartly kept radio silence, he has now said he still wants to see progress — but with a vacuous statement that doesn't indicate anything has changed on his end. Per Binoy Kampmark, he in all likelihood won't change.

On the last hand? Vladimir Putin as president of Russia is as much an obstacle as Volodymyr Zelensky as president of Ukraine, as noted up near the top. He, too, wants a maximalist solution, because of how much he's invested after the initial failure to blitzkrieg Kyiv. You should have read Colin Powell. This all said, I don't think he believes his own bullshit or his internal press clippings as Zelensky believes HIS own bullshit or Western press clippings.

To summarize? Zelensky is in trouble, but even if Kamala Harris were president, would still be obstinate. Putin is still greedy, despite the fact that, contra the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, Trump is not his puppet. And, Trump is always greedy. A recipe for continued disaster bubbles on the stove.

John Mearsheimer hits a foul ball on Trump and Russia; The Dissident gets some things right

NOTE: I have expanded and reframed this piece, including talking about all of the "sides" on Russia-Ukraine issues, at Substack. 

Note 2: Both here and at Substack, before posting that, I forgot to check Simplicius. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he, unlike the Dissident and people like me, ignores that Trump wants to establish an American imperium, just like the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™. It's a different one, and a nakedly transactional one, but it's still an American imperium. Simplicius may, or may not, have good battlefield analysis, but on the geopolitics of Russia-Ukraine, he seems content to, if not outrightly desireous of, nothing other than triangulating off Trump.

Yes, John Mearsheimer, in his latest, as of Friday, interview with Napolitano, is right about NATO expansion and Ukraine.

He’s half-right about EU expansion, at best, since the US is not a member of the EU and has conflicts with it, and will again the next four years over agriculture and other items.  

And, yes, the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ were and are indeed wrong, and so is Zelensky for playing to them. Speaking of? Zelensky is of course wrong to have cancelled Ukraine's presidential election. Hold the vote in the part of the country you still possess. (And, per a commenter on Substack? Zelensky's never "undeclared" martial law and asked the Rada to confirm that. When you do that, you can indeed still hold an election. Whether it's wise to do so, or not, is another issue, including whether doing this, like actually trying to enforce Minsk, would put a price on his head. That said, otherwise? We in America held a presidential election in 1864 despite Southern states still in rebellion; also, Lincoln never considered a nationwide suspension of habeus corpus and nationwide declaration of martial law earlier in the war, Sept. 25, 1862 as suspending elections. Later, upon the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863, he did both the habeas suspension and martial law declaration in Kentucky on July 4, 1864; the presidential and lesser elections were still contested in Kentucky that fall. Also, we held midterm elections in 1814, shortly after the British burned Washington and while the country faced other invasion threats. Per Wiki, with no uniform election date then, elections ran from April 26, 1814 to August 10, 1815. Eight states were between Aug. 29 and Oct. 11, 1814. Finally, more than once, and most recently this weekend, Zelensky has promised to resign — with new elections following — in exchange for Ukraine getting into NATO.)

He’s all wet for not mentioning Trump’s shakedown of Zelensky even though he has a clip embedded in his video of Trump talking about the shakedown. Neocon fellow traveler Bret Stephens got that right.

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.

I don't totally agree with the framing; FDR hadn't been egging Churchill on, for example. But, Bret's framing isn't all wrong, and it's better than Mearsheimer simply ignoring this issue.

And, right as of the moment John’s Substack went live, he was behind the curve because Zelensky just told Trump and Vance to fuck off.  More here.

It's typical Trump transactionalism, that he's done for 50 years, since his 1970s Mob dealings in his early construction projects. It, to riff on a 2020 hashtag on Shitter, and an old Trump book, is "The Art of the Steal."

Mondoweiss gets it totally right here, in talking about Trump and direct negotiations with Hamas, which have some in Israel worried.

Donald Trump is very difficult to predict. His mercurial, transactional, and self-centered approach to policy is often ill-defined and is subject to change on a whim as he fancies himself more king than president.

Well put. If only Mearsheimer would put that on an equal footing with his desire to own the neocons.

Speaking of Dum Fuqs? Beyond both Trump and Zelensky being headstrong, it looks like Bagger Vance was a key fuck-up yesterday. And, no, Zelensky didn't campaign for Harris. Per Bagger Vance flapping his mouth, he wants Zelensky, under the guise of "accept(ing) there are disagreement" to "accept a cave-in." I mean, the WSJ editorial board, in an official editorial, said Vance massively screwed the pooch.

Finally, no, John, not all of Russia is Caesaropapist Orthodox worshipers with traditional values, no more than the US is. Look at all of Pussy Riot’s fandom. Gack. Do you really believe that? If so, you may be a great geopolitical strategerist, but a cultural sociologist you are not.

It doesn't make Trump right, contra either you or Noam Chomsky. God, what a Dum Fuq he was, and even more than Mearsheimer, in a position and of a mindset to know better. I still have no idea why Chomsky thought that. With Mearsheimer, I do. It's his idea of "owning the neocons."

I'm with The Dissident. This is clearly a both sides at fault issue. Zelensky has played to the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ but at the same time, Trump did rip off the mask of empire. (Actually, he did that with the rare earth minerals etc. shakedown itself; this was a doubling down on that.) 

The Dissident is also right on the neo-Nazis in Ukraine putting Zelensky in a bind. If he did accept this, per the likes of Ivan Katchanovski, he'd be a walking dead man without something like UN peacekeepers.

The background to all this? The person to blame more than anybody else is Uncle Joe Stalin as Lenin's Commissar of Nationalities. No, really.

And, not a Dum Fuq but a Cock Whore? I thought Bret Baier's post-explosion interview of Zelensky would be better than him asking if he should apologize to Trump.

A lesser Dum Fuq? Danny Davis, who hosted Mearsheimer Friday afternoon. Their exchange starting here, followed by a clip of Zelensky talking to either the people of Ukraine or its government a day or two before coming here, reads things into what Zelensky said, at least then.

Then there's Mearsheimer taking off his own mask:

"What Trump wants is what's best for Ukraine."

WHAT? As I commented on his YouTube:

A real non neocon president who's ALSO not a shakedown artist wouldn't be offering Zelensky a take it or leave it holdup at gunpoint. As The Dissident said on Substack, Trump is just practicing a new version of the American Empire, different angles of play. And if you, and Danny Davis, Napolitano and others refuse to accept THAT, and to talk about THAT, you're part of the problem yourselves.

And, I stopped watching at that point. (That comment is at about the 11-minute mark.)

If we take Mearsheimer as a third side, there's at least four sides on the Russia-Ukraine issue. Actually, there's at least five. 

1. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ shading into neocons

2. Zelensky, et al, who probably still represents a plurality of Ukrainians vis a vis the shakedown, without a lot of concrete guarantees, being offered for peace

3. Trump and his sheeple. (On Substack, I thought that would cut more than "MAGAts")

4. Mearsheimer-types who, while not Trumpian sheeple, have as their ultimate desire on this issue the desire of owning the neocons to the point that they can't condemn Trump. (A LOT of people on his YouTube said, too bad he and Bagger Vance won't talk to Bibi that way. Mearsheimer wishes that were so, and the Trumpian sheeple do not.)

So, I'm on the same side as, say, Ivan Katchanovski.

That said, about everybody of all stripes are right is that this meeting shouldn't have happened at this time in general and certainly not in public. Also, Zelensky should have brought an interpreter.

Update: It's interesting that Trump's advisors have spent the 48 hours since the meeting in massive spinning. Presuming the Guardian, AP, Beeb, NYT etc. asked him and them for comment, Zelensky and advisors are presumbly, albeit a bit too late, maintaining radio silence.