It’s cold in Alaska – Zelensky’s invite gets lost in the post
The worst outcome that ‘president’ Zelensky and his camp followers in Britain, France, Germany and Poland have most feared in the latest talks aimed at ending the proxy war unfolding in Ukraine, the one scenario that has plagued this gentry in every waking moment and poisoned their dreams every night, has just happened. It is now official: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Alaska for talks, and Volodymr Zelensky was emphatically not invited. Putin was able to negotiate with the organ grinder, not the monkey. Zelensky’s greatest fear, that Trump might ‘make a deal’ behind his back, is being fully realised. As we go to press, Zelensky was on his way to the White House perhaps having at last got it into his thick skull that the West is running short of weaponry and is no longer able to keep up with the demand for further billion-dollars-worth for incineration in Ukraine. If so he will fully be expecting to have to give up the territories that Russia has liberated in the Donbass, as well as Crimea, but is hoping to sugar the pill by obtaining from America ‘security guarantees’ in return. These would be cheap at the price for the US since Russia has no interest in continuing to wage war on Ukraine.
Background
Right from the beginning, the yarn we have always been spun (evil bully Russia gratuitously attacks harmless neighbour Ukraine) has presented the conflict as pitting Russia against Ukraine, with the role of the US limited to that of helpful (if now a little irritated) bystander. This propaganda line is designed to hide the real nature of the conflict, which is that US imperialism and its running dogs in the collective West are engaged in an aggressive war against Russia, using the Ukraine as a battering ram with which to attack Russia, opening up a bridgehead for further Nato expansion and clearing the way for the balkanisation of the Russian homeland. In short, the essential adversaries in this conflict are not Ukraine versus Russia, but the US versus Russia. It makes sense therefore that the peace talks should be between the US and Russia, not the Ukraine and Russia.
What makes it harder and harder to conceal the real nature of the war is the simple fact that Russia is visibly winning it. It never sought a war with Ukraine but was obliged to defend itself, which it has done magnificently. And now that the proxy forces face defeat after defeat and the stooges of the fascist junta in Kiev are falling out with each other fighting like rats in a sack, the collective West’s propaganda lies are in shreds. Trump doesn’t even bother to conceal his impatience with Zelensky, openly pressurising him to get on and ‘negotiate’ the terms of Ukraine’s surrender so the US can wash its hands of the whole affair (whilst keeping a weather eye on lucrative reconstruction contracts and privileged access to precious earth metals).
The announcement of the Summit in Alaska, with the Russian and US presidents going head to head in a Zelensky-free zone, has broken the comforting diplomatic pattern of monthly talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine, where all that really happened was that Russia reaffirmed its opposition to an unconditional ceasefire and Ukraine likewise restated its opposition to any conditions at all. In short, Russia sensibly continued to decline any move to give the Kiev junta’s storm troops a breathing space to gather their wits, shore up their crumbling defences and pointlessly prolong a war which they cannot possibly win. Aside from some agreement on prisoner swaps, little if any progress was made. July’s session in Istanbul sputtered to a close with a grandiose proposal from Ukraine for a four-way get together of Putin, Trump, Zelensky and Erdogan. This quadrille was only the most recent of Kiev’s sad diplomatic tricks aimed at bouncing Putin into a bilateral with Zelensky. Kiev has been angling for such a ‘presidential’ meeting for some time, but Moscow has made it clear that any such theatrics would be pointless unless preceded by meaningful talks at a (much) lower diplomatic level.
The shock announcement by Trump that he was to meet Putin on 15 August in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine cut through the preceding diplomatic fog. According to Reuters, “Trump made the highly anticipated announcement on social media after he said that the parties, including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict, one that could require Ukraine to surrender significant territory. Addressing reporters at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land. ‘There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,’ the Republican president said” (Andrea Shalal, ‘Ukraine will not cede land, Zelenskiy says, as Trump, Putin plan meeting’, Reuters, 9 August 2025).
This latter casual aside did not go unremarked by Zelensky who claimed to be under oath not to violate the constitution on territorial issues (this is curious though coming from a ‘president’ who violated the constitution by remaining in that post without electoral mandate). Zelensky took to Telegram to protest that any decisions without Ukraine would be decisions against peace, asserting that “They will not achieve anything. These are stillborn decisions. They are unworkable decisions.”
Be that as it may, Bloomberg reports that US and Russian officials are indeed already working towards an agreement that would lock in Moscow’s occupation of territory seized during its military intervention. This approach sounds a lot like Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s proposal floated back in May, which included a full lifting of US economic sanctions on Russia, neutrality for Ukraine and recognition of the territory Russia had already seized in return for a freezing of the conflict at the current frontline.
The fear of a deal being done behind the backs of the Kiev junta and its little helpers in Europe sent German chancellor Friedrich Merz into a tailspin, convening an emergency virtual meeting before the Alaska summit. Starmer, Macron, Merz will be buzzing around like blue-arsed flies, trying to avert the threat of a peace coming down the line that is not to their liking.
Zelensky shuffles the pack and does a U turn on ‘fighting corruption’
In point of fact, in the absence of elections, Zelensky has no mandate to call himself the president of anything. He is null and void constitutionally, and is currently fighting for his political life as the liberation forces press on, shaking the ground under his feet. Perhaps responding to US General Keith Kellogg’s recent visit to Kiev and seeking to ingratiate himself with Washington, he has been hurriedly shuffling the pack. He has sacked the PM, Denys Shmyhal, instead choosing for his premier the former economy minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, whose main claim to fame appears to be her prowess in signing away her homeland’s rare earths and other natural resources to US monopoly capitalists, and setting up a reconstruction fund to make sure the juiciest contracts go to those who waged the proxy war in the first place.
If this frenetic exercise in switching key personnel had for purpose the bolstering up of Zelensky’s political base, it clearly has not done the trick, as evidenced by the farcical carry-on around his abortive attempt to clip the wings of two key agencies tasked with tackling corruption. Fearing that the two agencies (the national anti-corruption bureau of Ukraine – Nabu – and the specialised prosecutorial office that pursued its cases – Sapu) were starting to take their role too seriously, sniffing around a little too close to Zelensky’s own back yard, Zelensky flew into a blind panic. According to the New York Times, “Recently, the agencies have been looking into people in Mr. Zelensky’s circle. On 21 July, the country’s security services raided the agencies’ offices, saying they had been infiltrated by Russian intelligence. The security services also searched homes of investigators, accusing several of having ties to Russia” (Andrew E. Kramer, Facing outcry over corruption, Zelensky says he will reverse course, New York Times, 23 July 2025).
This blatant attempt to roll back the (supposed) autonomy of the twin agencies sparked a massive row, including some street demonstrations. Zelensky came out with a halfway reversal, pretending that the agencies’ autonomy would be respected but still whining that the agencies needed to be ‘cleansed’ of Russian influence.
“It was a fast about-face to a series of events that has brought Mr. Zelensky some of the harshest criticism of his leadership since the start of the war with Russia. To his critics, the move to assert control over the agencies appeared to be an effort to shore up his grip on political power at a perilous moment for Ukraine as Russian troops continued to advance on the battlefield. Instead, the move touched off the first street protests against Mr. Zelensky’s administration in more than three years of the full-scale war, breaking a wartime taboo on open political opposition. It also prompted a rebuke from allies and apparently caused divisions within his government, all worrying signs for Ukraine just as Mr. Zelensky had smoothed relations with the Trump administration. After their creation, the two agencies became centre pieces of Ukrainians’ aspirations to rid their country of corruption and join the European Union. They were intended partly to safeguard foreign aid and were strongly backed by countries providing financial assistance to Ukraine and by the International Monetary Fund” (ibid.).
Given that both Nabu and Sapu are both run straight from the US embassy, and are part of a network of NGOs whose primary role is to promote US policy objectives in Ukraine, the likelihood is that Zelensky’s cack-handed attempt to scare the investigators off has only succeeded in drawing attention to the growing divergence between the increasingly isolated Zelensky cabal and its colonial overlords.
POSTSCRIPT
Right up to Anchorage, Trump was still issuing insolent deadlines for Russia to agree to an immediate ceasefire and threats to impose secondary sanctions on purchases of Russian oil by India or China if it failed to comply. Yet all these threats evaporated like the morning dew after the Summit, with Trump now conceding that a peace deal with security agreements is what is needed, not a temporary ceasefire with no strings and no end to a pointlessly extended war that Kiev is never going to win.
When European leaders and Ukraine gathered in the White House to mull over the Anchorage Summit, the talk was more about practical land swaps and mutual security agreements than it was about the constitutional sanctity of borders and standing with Ukraine. Sooner or later, the US will steer Zelensky (or his successor as whipping boy) into negotiating the terms of Kiev’s surrender – in reality, of Washington’s own abject surrender.