Zelensky, Who Wants to Make Peace, Gets Steamrolled By Trump, Who Wants to Make a Deal
We begin with Friday’s ambush in the White House by the Trump/Vance tag team, which was live streamed to the Kremlin via a plant in the Oval Office from TASS and in which Zelensky, who wants to make peace, got steamrolled by Trump, who wants to make a deal. We discuss how Trump is trying to remove Zelensky at Putin’s behest by forcing Ukraine to come up with a more compliant leader or face a cutoff of arms and intelligence from the U.S. Joining us is Angela Stent, the senior advisor and former Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Affairs and a Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; from 2004 to 2006, she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council; and from 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. She is the author of The Limits of Partnership: U.S.Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century and, most recently, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest.
Will Trump’s Capitulation to Putin Improve Ties or Give Putin a Second Wind to Cause More Mayhem?
Then we look into the history of how U.S./Russia relations went off the rails and assess whether Trump’s capitulation to Putin will improve ties or give Putin a second wind to cause more mayhem. Joining us is Stephen Crowley, professor in the Department of Politics at Oberlin University and a scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, with a focus on labor and the political economy of post-communist transformations. His teaching centers on Russia and Eastern Europe, peace and conflict studies, revolutions, and globalization. We discuss his article at The Nation, “No, Donald, The U.S. Owes Ukraine: Not the other way around.”
Can Ukraine’s NATO Allies Fill the Gap, as Trump Abandons Ukraine to Putin?
Then finally, we speak with Natalie Melnyczuk, a consultant on Euro-Atlantic security and a professor of political science at Wayne State University. She has served as NATO Representative to Ukraine, as the Head of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv, as a Political Officer in the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division at the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Section at NATO HQ in Brussels, as Manager of U.S.A.I.D.’s Parliamentary Development Project at the U.S.–Ukraine Foundation, and in various other academic and policy positions. We discuss whether Ukraine’s NATO allies can step up to fill the gap left by the U.S., as Trump abandons Ukraine to Putin.