Trump Tries Again: Selling out Ukraine
By Carol J Williams
It’s been a rough few weeks for Ukraine. Russian bombardment of civilian housing has intensified, a corruption scandal took down President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, and the Trump administration has resumed back-door dealings with the Kremlin aimed at making money in Ukraine instead of peace.
A week ago, President Donald Trump demanded Ukraine accept a “peace plan” of suspect origin by Thanksgiving or risk losing U.S. military support and intelligence-sharing. As the holiday deadline passed, it became clear the ultimatum for Ukraine’s virtual surrender to Russian domination hadn’t been authored by U.S. diplomats, rather by the Kremlin and presented as a fait accompli to Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Bloomberg published the leaked transcript of a phone call in which Witkoff coached Russian foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov on how to flatter Trump and secure the territorial and sovereignty capitulations Russian President Vladimir Putin demands in exchange for ending his war in Ukraine.
Disclosure of the 28-point “peace plan” raised hackles across global political landscapes. The terms proposed U.S. recognition of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied and illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula as territory of Russia. Kyiv would be obliged to surrender four other provinces of Eastern Ukraine, including territory Putin’s forces failed to conquer in nearly 12 years of stealth invasions and full-scale war. Those spoils have come at a loss of a million dead and injured young Russian men.
https://www.postalley.org/2025/12/01/trump-tries-again-selling-out-ukraine/
The Coming Settlement in Ukraine
By Bruce Ramsey
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Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is remarkably similar to Josef Stalin’s war against Finland — the Winter War of 1939-1940 — which began on November 30, 1939, 86 years ago this week. Putin’s war is similar to Stalin’s war in why he started it, how it went and what the world thought of it.
It could also be similar in how it ends. After three and a half months of war, Finland gave up 11 percent of its territory and allowed the Russian navy to have a large base on the southwestern Finnish coast.
At the time, the settlement was denounced as a surrender. James A. Wood, associate editor of the Seattle Times, saw nothing good in it. “Finland was compelled to capitulate to Russia and accept terms of extraordinary severity,” he wrote in the March 15, 1940, paper. Finland, he wrote, is “at the mercy of Russia.”
In 1940, several countries found themselves at the mercy of Russia. For Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and eastern Poland, none of which had fought like the Finns, the attentions of Russia were deadly. For Finland it was not. The loss of territory was permanent: the frontiers established by Stalin are Finland’s frontiers today. The Soviet Union maintained the navy base in Finland until 1956, three years after Stalin died. And until 1989, Finland was neutral — “Finlandized.”
https://www.postalley.org/2025/11/30/the-coming-settlement-in-ukraine/