Ukraine’s Defiance Amid Russia’s Advance and Trump’s Shift in Diplomacy

The ongo­ing Ukraine-Rus­sia war where Rus­sia is advanc­ing, claim­ing vic­to­ry, while Ukraine, led by Zelen­sky, resists yield­ing con­trol. Trump dis­tances him­self from UK and France, refus­ing to deploy U.S. troops in Ukraine, and focus­es on direct U.S.-Russia talks, with the next round sched­uled for April 10 in Istan­bul. Zelen­sky, assert­ing lever­age, rejects sign­ing a U.S.-proposed min­er­als deal at the Munich Secu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence and at the White House, then at Down­ing Street, defi­ant­ly sig­nal­ing frus­tra­tion with Trump while insist­ing on draft­ing his own terms. Russia’s mil­i­tary push con­tin­ues, yet its econ­o­my, reliant on oil and gas exports, faces pres­sure from col­laps­ing oil prices, as warned by its cen­tral bank. The U.S. explores restor­ing rela­tions with Rus­sia, includ­ing lift­ing sanc­tions and recon­nect­ing Russ­ian banks to SWIFT. Glob­al demand for Russ­ian ener­gy per­sists, but eco­nom­ic diver­si­fi­ca­tion may force Rus­sia to nego­ti­ate, ques­tion­ing the pur­pose of ongo­ing talks.

• Ukraine is claim­ing things. The war is still going, Rus­sia won and they are going fur­ther into Ukraine. Trump is not work­ing with the UK and France and putting troops in Ukraine. Zelen­sky goes to Munick secu­ri­ty coun­cil and doesn’t sign there and then goes to White House and doesn’t sign and goes to Down­ing Street to put the mid­dle fin­ger to Trump as he waves. Zelen­sky still thinks he has the cards to make a deal, say­ing he will write the min­er­als deal as Rus­sia con­tin­ues to march through their coun­try. Rus­sia and the US will hold the next round of talks in Istan­bul on April 10. If we do not have some kind of deal in the long run, why do we keep meet­ing? Even going as far as tak­ing down sanc­tions to allow their trea­sury sec­re­tary to come have talks at White House. Recon­nec­tion of Russ­ian banks to SWIFT depends on nego­ti­a­tions on Ukraine. It is a clear­ing house for all cur­ren­cy in the world. We are work­ing on restor­ing rela­tions with Rus­sia. The world wants to buy their oil. Rus­sia wants to sell their prod­ucts. Rus­si­a’s cen­tral bank warns falling oil prices could squeeze the bud­get.  The price of oil is col­laps­ing around the world.  The world con­tin­ued to buy Rus­sia oil and nat­ur­al gas which is the back­bone of their econ­o­my. Rus­sia will have to talk because they will need to grow their econ­o­my in dif­fer­ent ways.