Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Experts, such as Britain’s MI6 intelligence agents, have observed President Obama’s policies toward Russia in 2014 sowed the seeds for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Democrats like Obama and Biden have championed the war in Ukraine, and have instilled fear in the minds of Europeans, that they will be next if Russia should win.
President Trump recognizes the war in Ukraine as a failed project by the Democrats which must be stopped while he “drains the swamp”. Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Donald Courter, a news correspondent covering Russian and Ukrainian issues.
1. Steven Sahiounie (SS): It would appear that US President Trump will not continue new funding of the war in Ukraine. In your opinion, what are the options that President Zelensky has?
Donald Courter (DC): Zelensky has two paths he can go down. Firstly, accept the outcome of Trump’s negotiations with Putin. He will have little to no input in these negotiations but it will be better than nothing for Zelensky. Or, secondly, reject the outcome of US-Russian negotiations and suffer an unconditional defeat against Russia, following the cessation of US military aid to Kiev.
We have seen Zelensky do everything in his power to break out of this unavoidable dilemma, such as trying to scare the West with stories of a Russian invasion of Europe, publicly claiming that he will not accept the results of negotiations in which he is not a participant, and causing a fiasco at in the Oval Office, but it is only causing him to make the second of two choices by default.
For its part, the European Union will be free to continue sending aid to Ukraine, but the US has been Kiev’s single largest donor since the beginning of Russia’s military operation in February 2022. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that Ukraine will be able to continue fighting without US support, especially with Ukrainian forces already facing defeat after defeat on the battlefield. Moreover, who is to say that Trump will not use tariffs or other mechanisms to pressure Brussels into aligning its foreign policy with that of Washington’s?
Because of the fact that the Ukraine conflict has been entirely a Democratic Party project from the beginning, with the US sponsoring regime change in Kiev under the Obama Administration and provoking Russia into entering the conflict under the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration sees little to gain from continuing the war and much to benefit from its swift-end. This is because the White House now represents the interests of a different faction of America’s ruling class, which is much more concerned with countering the influence of China primarily in Latin America, but also on the world stage more generally.
2. SS: After the contentious meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office, most of the Western and European allies of the US came out with strong support of Zelensky and Ukraine. In your opinion, can Europe alone support Ukraine in the war with Russia?
DC: As I mentioned, the withdrawal of US-aid to Ukraine at a time when Russian forces are advancing on the battlefield would be a catastrophic blow to the Ukrainian war effort. According to conservative estimates by a German-based think tank called The Kiel Institute, Washington has provided Kiev with $119.7 billion between January 2022 and December 2024, while the combined contributions of all European Union member-states amounted to $138.7 billion during that same period.
Subtracting around half of Kiev’s total foreign aid, along with considering how US political pressure on its European patron states might lead to a further reduction in assistance, paints a very bleak picture for the future of Ukraine’s war effort. It is likely that Western leaders very well understand this reality already, as the cooling of relations between the US and Russia has caused a number of said leaders to lash out with suggestions of drastic measures. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and his so-called “coalition of the willing”, is promising to send troops from NATO countries to Ukraine, while French President Emmanuel Macron has both called Russia a threat to the European Union, and said that France must be ready to use nuclear weapons against threats to Europe’s security!
These threats, however, will likely not materialize, amounting to little more than the death throes of Western imperialism’s latest adventure.
3. SS: Many European leaders repeat a narrative that President Putin has an ultimate goal of invading other European countries after Ukraine. In your opinion, is this accusation a way to keep European support to Ukraine going?
DC: Absolutely – this narrative is a typical fear-mongering tactic that Vladimir Zelensky is using to try to get out of the desperate situation in which he has found himself.
The idea that Russia is interested in attacking Europe and provoking NATO for no reason is absurd, and does not correspond to the way geopolitical events have transpired over the past decade. Moscow’s opponents have long claimed that “Russia attacked Ukraine and therefore would not have any problem attacking Europe,” but this argument is based on a false premise.
Conversely, it was Kiev which began this conflict by attacking its former citizens when it launched a so-called “anti-terrorist operation” on former Ukrainian provinces that declared independence, following the US-sponsored 2014 Euromaidan coup d’etat carried out by neo-Nazis in Ukraine. The only crime those people committed was that they no longer wanted to live in a country taken over by fascist maniacs. Moscow even tried to mediate the conflict alongside European leaders by means of the Minsk Agreements, which turned out to be a ploy to use Ukraine as a staging ground for a larger war with Russia – something we know through the admissions of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Russia’s special military operation did not amount to an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was a military intervention in defense of the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk which had, by that time, fought to defend their homeland for eight years.
Therefore, Russia’s geopolitical behavior has not at all suggested that it might be interested in attacking Europe.
4. SS: Iran has supported Russia in the war with Ukraine. The relationship between Trump and Putin is increasing. In your opinion, if Trump succeeds in brokering a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and eventually a peace deal, will Putin attempt to broker a normalization deal between Iran and the US?
DC: According to Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russia is already willing-and-able to broker talks between the US and Iran, while media reports suggest that Trump expressed interest in dialogue with Iran during his phone call with Vladimir Putin last month. Considering Iran’s new strategic partnership agreement with Russia, future talks with the United States regarding Iran’s nuclear program, mediated by Moscow, will likely yield a more effective agreement than the failed 2015 JCPOA.
Furthermore, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, also stated that Iran was discussed during the recent Russian-American negotiations in Saudi Arabia, and that both parties had agreed to hold separate discussions on the matter.
5. SS: France’s President Emmanuel Macron and UK’s Prime Minister Starmer have both been actively working to garner European support for Ukraine. In your opinion, will Trump accept a European-led peace process?
DC: There is little to no chance that Trump will accept a European-led peace process because, as the US-president told Vladimir Zelensky in the oval office, they “don’t have the cards” – meaning they have no leverage in the conflict!
The Trump Administration is finally openly stating what the Russians have been saying all along – that the Ukraine conflict is an American project and, therefore, the Americans must be negotiated with to end it. This is because the US has the power to make or break Ukraine’s war-effort with its contribution, or withdrawal of military aid. We have already seen European leaders try to preemptively avert Kiev’s collapse in the forecasted cessation of US military aid, which has birthed unrealistic cries to send NATO troops to Ukraine. In case the US truly does cut off aid to Kiev, European attempts to increase their contributions to the Kiev government will likely be met with the same pressure tactics Canada and Mexico have faced – wild tariffs and threats.
The equation is simple – if the US continues to support Kiev, the war continues; if it decides to stop, then there will be peace. The peace process must, therefore, be conducted by the United States and the Kiev government’s enemy, Russia.
The Trump administration’s way of doing business has turned out to be much more honest than anything we have seen for a long time in American politics, in that Washington is no longer hiding the fact that the rest of the West is a collection of its patron states that can be bossed around.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist
