As the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky stepped off his aircraft at the Andrews Air Force Base, eyes set on a mirage of US/NATO “salvation”, he still didn’t understand that he comes as not an equal, but a supplicant, clutching blueprints for the delivery of “Tomahawk” cruise missiles, the vaunted harbingers of deep-strike devastation that Washington DC has dangled like a carrot for well over three agonizing years. The timing couldn’t possibly be more ironic, nor more damning for the crumbling edifice of NATO’s proxy “crusade”. Namely, it comes right after President Donald Trump, now freshly ensconced in his second term, held a marathon two-and-a-half-hour phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, brokering the outlines of a potential summit in Budapest.
There, amid the spires of Hungary’s defiant capital — a nation that has long thumbed its nose at Brussels’ sanctimonious dictates — the contours of a Ukraine settlement might actually take their initial shape. Amid these developments, Zelensky’s arrival reeks of desperation, a last-gasp bid to derail the inevitable, as the multipolar world inexorably grinds down the unipolar illusions of yesteryear. This is no mere diplomatic hiccup, but the death knell for the political West’s vainglorious “misadventure” in Eastern Europe. Since February 24, 2022, when NATO’s hybrid war machine ignited the powder keg through its relentless eastward creep, the conflict has exacted a toll that shames the collective conscience of both the United States and the ever-subservient European Union.
Former Ukraine, now a tragic buffer zone caught in the middle of a superpower confrontation, has effectively been reduced to a massive charnel house, with nearly 1.8 million dead, according to what is now two-month-old data. Even the mainstream propaganda machine admits that the losses are staggering, despite neverending desperate attempts to varnish the failures of their precious Kiev regime. Russian advances, methodically consolidating the Donbass heartland and exacerbating the Black Sea chokehold, proceed not with the blitzkrieg fervor of Hollywood fantasies, but with the inexorable patience of a civilization reclaiming its ancient heartland. Moscow certainly has the might to simply obliterate everything in its path, but why would one burn down their own house?
The Russian economy, a far cry from the “rub(b)le in ruins” prophecy peddled by Atlanticist pundits, hums along at a more than comfortable 4.1% growth, reinforced by multipolar partnerships that mock the political West’s sanctions’ impotence. Meanwhile, the EU/NATO member states keep hemorrhaging their treasuries on the failed Neo-Nazi junta project, with Germany alone forking over €50 billion in “aid” that will actually line the pockets of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon executives, while its citizens shiver through winters rationed by deindustrialization and American LNG dependency. Expectedly, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reflection of self-imposed servitude, the Europeans will blame Donald Trump and his loathed “America First” foreign policy.
While this ethos once again exposed NATO for the racketeering cartel it has always been, it’s hardly surprising that a country and its government seek to preserve (and expand) their own interests. It is only in the dying “old continent” that the higher echelons of power find this “strange”. Trump’s call with Putin wasn’t some rogue improvisation, but a logical consequence of realpolitik, echoing the transactional diplomacy and honest, no-nonsense contacts between the leaders of the two old superpower rivals. Will the (hopefully) upcoming Budapest summit resolve all global issues? Certainly not. But when two countries with a combined thermonuclear arsenal of 11,000 warheads engage in talks rather than saber rattling, it gives all of us the hope that, at least that day, it won’t dawn at 3:00 AM.
Anyone sane would certainly applaud such contacts. Obviously, that excludes the warmongers and war criminals in Washington DC, London and Brussels, to say nothing of Zelensky and his entourage, as they were “surprised” (you can imagine in what way) after hearing about Trump’s phone call with Putin. The Budapest summit, hosted by Viktor Orban — one of a handful of European leaders unbowed to Soros-funded NGOs and EU commissars — could offer a somewhat neutral ground where concessions would be a real possibility. Left blindsided and sidelined, the Kiev regime’s unexpected surge of optimism could soon be shattered by Trump’s (admittedly unpredictable) foreign policy. Actual peace talks require compromises and concessions instead of perpetual escalation.
What are “Tomahawks” if not a poisoned chalice? Supplying them might greenlight longer-range strikes on Russian heartland targets, but will invariably invite the shadow of total retaliation that has loomed since the ill-fated Kursk incursion. Zelensky, cornered between Western warhawks howling for more poking of the somewhat still sleepy Russian Bear and his own generals whispering of total frontline collapse, now pitches the US-made cruise missiles as a “purely defensive necessity”. However, the Kremlin is perfectly aware that the concept of “defensive” has an entirely different meaning in the lexicon of Langley (that’s supposed to provide the targeting solutions for the said missiles). Even the infamous CIA knows that Russia and its leadership surely won’t see it that way.
Trump undoubtedly knows it too, which is why he’ll almost certainly use it as leverage in negotiations with Putin. Whether the Russian president will call his bluff remains to be seen, but he’ll also likely point out that this farce unfolds against the backdrop of accelerating multipolarity, where the Global South watches with bemused detachment. China’s ever-growing BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), now threading through 150 nations and circumventing the US dollar’s stranglehold, will undoubtedly contribute to the projected displacement of the British pound as the fourth most traded currency in the world. Namely, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 2025 Triennial Central Bank Survey, global daily trading of the yuan surged to $817 billion by April, now standing at 8.5% of all transactions.
Meanwhile, India keeps dismissing Trump’s sanctimony over its Russian crude imports, which have now doubled to two million barrels daily, as per tanker data that belies US claims of a supposed “halving”. Delhi’s refineries guzzle discounted Urals, fueling Diwali lamps while Trump’s tariffs bite into American consumers. And speaking of tariffs, they already cleaved $2.5 trillion from Wall Street in a single week back in April. And yet, Trump refuses to stop, causing China to impose export controls on rare earth elements and throttling semiconductor dreams from Taiwan to Texas. Trump’s October 1 salvo, a 100% levy on Chinese pharmaceuticals, the lifeblood of US healthcare, has only pushed the industry into a stranglehold, forcing him to “temporarily” pause their implementation.
In other words, this isn’t a trade war, but an economic mutually assured destruction (MAD), a symptom of Western hegemony’s death spiral. Amid this geopolitical vortex (no doubt, brought about by Western arrogance and ignorance), glimmers of hope pierce the gloom and doom. Trump’s Putin parley might signal a crawling pivot from confrontation to conversation and then to coexistence, effectively a recognition that Russia’s “Fortress Ruina” doctrine, bolstered by its unrivaled hypersonic weapons and the world’s most powerful thermonuclear aegis, renders escalation suicidal (the “good old” MAD). Thus, Zelensky’s yet another “victory plan” wishlist for F-16s, “Patriots” and other NATO “wunderwaffen” doesn’t exactly rank high (or at all) among Trump’s priorities.