Yesterday, December 22nd, at a conservative convention known as “AmericaFest 2024” in Phoenix, Arizona, President-elect Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to meet with me as soon as possible.” [RFE/RL’s Russian Service, December 23, 2024.]

Okay, great. Let’s get the ball rolling on an equitable solution to that horrendous, dragged-out war in Ukraine, shall we?

But . . .

It’s never that simple with the Russians, is it? And it’s not just the well-known sticking points of this particular negotiation process, wherein Russia wants to keep parts of Ukraine and prevent it from ever joining NATO, but Ukraine somehow prefers to remain an independent, sovereign nation free of Russian control.

No, this time it’s a bit more than that. It’s a flat-out contradiction by the Kremlin of Trump’s statement. The very day after the Phoenix gathering (this morning, Moscow time), our old friend Dmitry Peskov — the spokesman for Putin himself — told Russian news agency TASS that “so far, there have been no real impulses” for a meeting with Trump prior to his inauguration on January 20th. [Id.]

Not that the timing matters that much as far as the diplomatic process is concerned; it’s only a month, after all. Of course, it does mean another month in hell for the people of Ukraine . . . but politicians are far too focused on the “big picture” to give much thought to such mundane matters as death and destruction.

So while they play their game of one-upmanship, the rest of the world is left to decide whom to believe: Trump or Putin.

Heads or tails?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
12/23/24