Photo: Atlantic Council
EA-Times Radio VideoCast: Trump’s Epstein Problem; Ukraine’s European Lifeline
I joined Times Radio’s Frontline on Monday for a 32-minute analysis of the latest resistance by Ukraine and its European partners of Russia’s 47-month full-scale invasion.
Host Louis Sykes and I begin with Monday morning’s killing of Maj. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, the Russian military’s head of combat training and readiness, in Moscow — the third assassination of a general in the past year.
I consider Ukraine’s counter-attacks on vital facilities for the invasion and economic pressure on the Kremlin. But I note that this is unlikely to stop the quest of Vladimir Putin — who dismissed negotiations while insulting Europeans as “Nazi piglets” — to conquer Ukraine in the near-future.
After 1.4 million casualties, you’re going to tell the Russian people, “We didn’t get all of it. We got part of it, but we didn’t even get all of Donetsk”?
You think Putin is going to sell that to the Russian people?
He’s got a lot who have taken economic hardship, who have lost friends, who have lost family on the idea that this is for a “Greater Russia”.
And it’s an incomplete job.
Thus it is essential that Europe and the international community maintain support for Ukraine, including the key decision by the European Union last Friday to provide a €90 billion loan to cover Kyiv’s financial needs.
Meanwhile, we are stuck in the never-ending question: will the US “adults in the room” also put pressure on Russia? Or will an unpredictable Donald Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kusher, his real estate developer Steve Witkoff, and — maybe most importantly — J.D. Vance abandon Kyiv for ego and economic partnerships with the Kremlin?
