From Cactus Flower:
This BBC article says it all:
"London talks aimed at securing a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia have been downgraded and will no longer include US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
The meeting on Wednesday will instead take place among senior officials from the UK, France, Germany, Ukraine, and the US, while UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy will host a bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart.
Trump's Ukraine envoy, Gen Keith Kellogg, is attending the talks instead of Witkoff and Rubio, who referred to Wednesday's talks as "technical meetings".
The US secretary of state will instead focus on talks in Moscow this week..."
This is such a loss of honour for the US. Rubio has tried to negotiate with Russia and to ignore Ukraine and Europe. With the result that he is promoting a deal that no one but Russia wants. And so he's taking his toys and going back to the US to have a wah wah wah conversation with Trump.
It's sadly a good thing that the US has a peer in China, which is whacking it over tariffs. It needs allies, but it has none in this trade war. It is also very vulnerable to lost military procurement right now. Who knows? Maybe the deal the US wishes to strike with Russia will involve the sale of US weapons to Putin in exchange for cheap oil and gas!!!
Russia is now our problem. And by our, I mean Ukraine, Norway, the UK, Canada, and the EU, and to a lesser extent, South Korea, Japan and Australia. We have to make ourselves far stronger than we have done, with no dependency whatsoever on the US.
Do something positive.
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