The Russians are winning; they don’t have to negotiate. From Connor O’keeffe at mises.org:
As President Trump wrestles to deliver on his campaign promise to end the war on Ukraine by helping to bring about a negotiated peace deal, the effort has, in part, been undermined by an escalating exchange of kamikaze drones by both sides.
The last week especially saw a sharp escalation, with Ukraine launching thousands of drones deep into Russia—most of which the Russians claim to have intercepted—and Russia, in turn, stepping up its drone attacks in Ukraine. The Russian strikes over the weekend got a lot of coverage in the American media, especially an aerial assault on Saturday night where parts of some of the largest drone swarms launched in the war so far hit residential buildings around the Ukrainian armament factories Russia claimed to be targeting.
That series of strikes led Trump to issue his sharpest rebuke of Vladamir Putin to date. He called the Russian president crazy and voiced frustration with how Putin has changed since their phone call together—after which Trump had characterized Putin as reasonable and interested in a ceasefire.
The establishment press gleefully seized on Trump’s comments to argue that even he is now waking up to what they’ve been saying this whole time: that Putin is an unhinged maniac who cannot be reasoned with because he is motivated solely by bloodlust and delusions of conquering Europe. They then, predictably, bring it back to their broader argument that Trump’s “naïve” effort to “appease” Putin with a peace agreement and then “retreat from Europe” to usher in a new age of American isolationism is futile and dangerous and that he ought to instead recommit to the establishment’s preferred strategy of heavy-handed interventionism.
