These men just played Trump...
[insert photo of Zelensky and 4 top European leaders, all smiling]
They found a way to try and drive a wedge between him and Putin.
Yesterday, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland, and the UK gathered in a room with Zelensky. They then made an unscheduled phone call to Trump.
In that call, they disclosed a plan to give Putin an ultimatum: agree to a 30-day ceasefire and begin negotiations for peace, or they would supply Ukraine with overwhelming military support and coordinate additional sanctions that could suffocate a Russian economy finally beginning to show the mortal wounds of economic isolation.
In this call, they convinced Trump that this threat alone would force Putin to the negotiating table.
And they convinced Trump that if this worked... he would get the plaudits.
The truth is, they know Putin doesn't want peace. As I've explained countless times, anyone who actually understands Putin and his geopolitical priorities knows he doesn't want a democratic Ukraine to survive.
Trump, evidently, has failed to grasp this. He still sees everything as a real estate deal and fails to appreciate the deeper ideological aspirations at play.
He is also notoriously easy to persuade, especially by someone like Macron. Starmer, meanwhile, is Trump's new best friend after he went along with his charade of a bilateral trade agreement. They've been buttering him up for this whole time.
Macron, Starmer, Merz, Tusk, and Zelensky appealed to Trump's vanity and his ignorance... and it looks like it worked.
They managed to get his verbal approval for the ultimatum during the call. And before anyone had the chance to explain the implications to Trump... they announced it. One by one, they gave speeches to the media where they made it absolutely clear that Trump was in on the deal. The USA was party to the ultimatum.
Putin then had to either accept an immediate ceasefire by Monday... or defy Trump.
As expected, before the deadline even came close, Putin rejected the offer outright. Because he does not want peace.
Trump has now effectively sanctioned the European plan for complete and unrestricted support of the Ukrainian military and agreed to cooperate on additional economic sanctions on Russia.
Just like that, the USA appears to be back on Ukraine's side, and it's all thanks to an unscheduled phone call.
I don't know whose plan it was, but it was brilliant.
