Quote (Norlander @ 21 Jul 2024 23:21)
https://files.catbox.moe/1ueupe.mp4
A quote from Twitter:
Biden’s presidency is inextricably linked with Russia’s full-out aggression in Ukraine. His arrival in White House coincided with Zelensky’s U-turn on peace settlement (preceded by Honcharuk’s mission in the US) and a whole series of simultaneous moves that couldn’t but provoke Putin’s harsh reaction.
Russia started placing troops at the Ukrainian border two months later. Then there was the policy of loudly calling Putin’s bluff until it was bluff no longer. And then after Putin invaded, there was the rejection of Istanbul agreements which could have stopped the war soon after it started.
Biden declared on a number of occasions that Russia would not prevail in Ukraine, but any viable framework of peace settlement today looks far worse for Ukraine than what it had under Minsk or Istanbul. That’s even disregarding the terrible demographic and economic costs incurred on Ukraine by Russian aggression with no reparations in sight.
And that has been the point of Putin’s brutal punitive action all the way - not to conquer the world, but to punish for intransigence. If anything, Biden’s policy made Putin’s rule much stronger and allowed it to effectively cleanse the opposition.
It was impossible to predict I guess, but Biden’s presidency turned out to be worse for Europe than Trump’s. And it ended up in a miserable Yeltsin-style show when the “family” and close aides were in denial about his state of mind for purely egoistic reasons.
There is a lot of dark legacy, but there is also hope that with Biden gone, the war in Ukraine will go away, too. At least Zelensky is making a fresh U-turn on peace settlement as we speak.