DONALD Trump is delusional and he is throwing allies to the wolves.
Sun reporters have risked their lives to report the truth from Ukraine’s frontlines and it is nothing like the fairy tale Trump describes from the warmth of Mar-a-Lago.
APDonald Trump shakes hand with Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Helsinki in 2018[/caption]
peter jordanJerome Starkey at the scene of a devastating missile attack in Kharkiv[/caption]
Jerome met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine in November 2023
I woke to the sound of 4am air strikes when Vladimir Putin ordered his full scale invasion almost three full years ago.
The next day I found myself diving for cover on Kharkiv’s snow covered ring road as rockets and shells screamed over our heads and pounded the apartment buildings on the edge of Ukraine’s second city.
I have met maimed civilians in hospitals. More than I can count. I have survived indiscriminate rocket bombardments.
I have travelled in battlefield ambulances with unconscious soldiers and their separate, severed limbs.
I have listened to shell-shocked children tell me tales of their own abduction.
And I have felt the gnawing fear of death while creeping along frontline trenches and scouring the sky for one-way drones.
No sane person who has seen these things wants this war to last a second longer than it has to.
But make no mistake. Putin started this war. Not Ukraine.
Zelensky’s approval rating is not 4 per cent. It is probably higher than Trump’s in the fifties.
Kyiv hasn’t held elections because the country is at war. Britain suspended elections while World War Two was raging.
And Europe has given more aid than America – both in real cash terms and relative to GDP.
Europe gave €132bn to America’s €114bn, according to Berlin’s respected Kiel Institute.
So why is the world’s most powerful man spouting Kremlin inspired nonsense?
Trump has a man-crush on Putin and a vendetta against Zelensky.
He is awestruck by the Russian strongman, who he hailed as “savvy” and a “genius”.
He holds a grudge against Zelensky because he stood up to his bullying when Trump wanted dirt on Joe Biden.
It was Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in 2019 which led to his impeachment.
Wrong, Donald
The Sun Says…
DONALD Trump’s smearing of the Ukraine regime as scam artists who provoked a war using US taxpayers’ money is a rant beneath the dignity of his office.
Almost nothing in it is true.
It reads like a post on a forum for conspiracy theorists. It is an unprecedentedly shocking statement from the President of the United States.
Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his imperialist ambitions, nor his denial of his neighbour’s right to exist as a sovereign, free country.
He invaded Ukraine, butchered and raped its people, stole its children and bombed its cities.
President Zelensky — far from duping anyone or inviting the conflict, far from being a “dictator without elections” — has been a heroic wartime leader who needs Western aid to overcome staggering odds.
The idea he is riding a “gravy train” is laughable. And his people, with whom he remains highly popular whatever Trump claims, have resisted conquest with immense bravery.
It is troubling and short-sighted in the extreme for the so-called leader of the free world to have no interest in a war raging in Europe because he is separated from it by the Atlantic.
America is not a business where Trump, as CEO, has no task except to slash costs and maximise profits. It is the most powerful democracy on Earth with global responsibilities and — let’s be frank — a duty to discern right from wrong with absolute moral clarity.
Others in the White House should urgently point this out.
Boris Johnson claimed yesterday that Trump’s wild statements were “not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action”.
It is a very forgiving interpretation. I want to hope he’s right.
But I can’t forget how Trump betrayed America’s allies the last time he was in power.
In 2018 he ordered US special forces to abandon their Kurdish comrades in Syria, which paved the way for attacks by Turkey, who saw them as terrorist separatists.
Trump drove the disastrous peace deal in Afghanistan, which Biden foolishly accepted, that led to the shameful retreat from Kabul in August 2021.
Vladimir Putin has made no secret of the fact he thinks Ukraine has no right to exist. He thinks it rightfully part of Russia.
Peter JordanJerome in the bombed-out council offices in Kharkiv at the start of the Russian invasion[/caption]
AFPKeir Starmer shakes hands with Zelensky upon his arrival in Kyiv on January 16[/caption]
Peter JordanJerome stands beside a destroyed Red Cross depot on the outskirts of Odesa after a Russian missile attack[/caption]
He called the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest catastrophe” of the 20th century. (Forget the Holocaust or World War Two).
Putin wants to restore Russia’s empire.
But the simple fact is that Ukraine doesn’t want that. Most Ukrainian people do not want to be part of Russia. Who would?
They want to be Ukrainian.
At the moment Trump seems willing to give Putin everything he wants.
He has ruled out Ukraine joining Nato.
He has mocked Ukraine’s goal of recovering its stolen territory.
And he has said America won’t commit troops to hold the line against Russia.
So the question for Trump – and the question for us – is whose side is he on?
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