In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll explain the context of the upcoming Budapest Blunder, and how it follows the infamous Alaska Fiasco from two months ago and Trump’s absurd delaying of serious aid to Ukraine and effective sanctions on Russia for the past nine months.
1/20
Two months ago, Trump embarrassed the United States by rolling out the red carpet for war criminal dictator Putin and overall acting like a pathetic servant eager to meet his master. Of course, the Alaska Fiasco didn’t bring peace any closer.
2/20
Worse, the main outcome of the humiliation was to delay serious sanctions, which the US Congress, in rare bipartisan unity against Russia, was on the verge of passing. Two weeks by two weeks, Trump Always Chickens Out, postponing any real pressure on Putin for 9 months now.
3/20
In the latest instance, Trump had been promising Tomahawks to Ukraine, but decided to check with the aggressor first. After a 2-hour phone call with him, Trump announced Ukraine won’t be getting Tomahawks after all, since — would you believe it — Putin didn’t like the idea.
4/20
The other announcement was a planned meeting with Putin in Budapest, of all places. In 1994, the UK, US, Ukraine and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum there, with Russia fully recognizing Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty. Yes, that includes Crimea, and Putin knows it.
5/20
Under heavy US pressure, Ukraine in exchange handed over all of its nuclear weapons — the world’s third-largest nuclear stockpile at the time — to Russia, allowing Putin to invade Ukraine and do his regular nuclear blackmail on the whole world.
6/20
vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-thr…
Conventional arms were destroyed as well, in particular strategic bombers were either dismantled or given to Russia. Yes, that’s the bombers that Russia uses against Ukrainian civilians and that Ukraine destroyed in the daring “Spiderweb” operation.
7/20
Alaska was a great choice - for Putin, as the US state was once part of the Russian Empire, sold to the US by a previous Tsar. Russians have been pushing disinformation on this to their children to promote their imperialist goal of Alaska returning under Moscow’s rule.
8/20
Budapest Memorandum aside, Orbán’s Hungary is again an excellent choice — for Putin and Orbán. Conveniently, the White House refused to answer whose idea it was. From his call with Trump, Putin once again got more time to keep bombing Ukraine, without giving up anything.
9/20
Putin has been testing the EU’s and NATO’s resolve in various ways for years: invading Europe without becoming a pariah, waging hybrid war on the EU itself, and lately regularly violating NATO airspace. More and more aggressive, encountering little protest or response.
10/20
Flaunting his impunity by landing in Budapest, Putin will keep on testing how far he can go in defying international law. Despite having notified its withdrawal, Hungary is still bound by the Rome Statute to arrest him for his genocidal kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
11/20
Putin should already have been arrested in Mongolia, but this is a war over Europe and Hungary is an EU member, making the provocation much worse. And the EU was neither consulted on this, nor invited, further straining European unity. A weaker EU: all to Putin’s benefit.
12/20
Remember that Putin started this war in 2014 after the Euromaidan, when Ukrainians protested against Yanukovych because they wanted to be part of Europe and the EU, not another impoverished and oppressed Russian-puppet-state-dictatorship like Belarus.13/20
For Orbán, a corrupt authoritarian ruining Hungary in the Yanukovych tradition, hosting the meeting is supposed to boost his popularity ahead of upcoming challenging elections. Orbán and Putin helping each other makes perfect sense.
14/20
But for some reason, Trump’s “MAGA” entourage are also big fans of the authoritarianism-corruption-poverty governance model. They are connected to Orbán in particular through the Carlson family, the Heritage Foundation, and CPAC.
15/20
After the call with Putin, Trump met Zelenskyy, with “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth wearing… a Russian flag tie. Hegseth’s department had previously posted Russian flags on US Flag Day, spelling errors (“nations” and “makes”) included (did a Russian write this?).
16/20
It’s not even clear what Trump expects Ukraine to accept — handing key territories to Russia? A ceasefire? But it’s Putin that’s refused. He started this war and still hopes to achieve his genocidal goals.
17/20
Even with a ceasefire, atrocities under Russian occupation would continue, and war would resume once Russia rearms and regroups. When one side is determined to conquer, murder and enslave the other, there’s really not much left to negotiate outside the battlefield.
18/20
And indeed, while Zelenskyy offered to join the talks as well, the Russian side has already made it clear they don’t want to give up anything, possibly even canceling the whole thing. Trump is bending over backwards to help them, and the Russians are laughing at him for it.
19/20
In conclusion, no good can be expected from Budapest. If Trump really wanted to budge Putin, he could have done it over the phone — before he even became President. Instead, nothing but an endless cycle of empty words and broken deadlines. And war and occupation continue.
20/20
The 2nd edition of “Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation” is officially out!
You can order your copy here:
vatniksoup.com/en/books/
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