As the mid-term elections in the United States approach, Donald Trump is making news by vigorously attacking his former opponent, President Joe Biden, for his handling of the war in Ukraine. The former U.S. president also criticised the Western community for its insincere attempts at peace.
At a campaign rally held in Arizona on Sunday, October 9th, Trump vigorously criticised the policy of his successor, whom he accuses—as he already did in September at a previous meeting in Pennsylvania—of not understanding the issues of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. He hammered at his supporters:
We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine or we will end up in WWIII. And there will be nothing left of our planet—all because stupid people didn’t have a clue.
Denouncing the unprecedented destructive capacity of modern weaponry, Donald Trump also criticised President Biden’s continued arms shipments to Ukraine. The U.S. government’s aid to Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine indeed amounts to tens of billions of dollars.
Trump’s repeated attacks on Biden come at a time when experts in the U.S. are beginning to voice concern about the depleted ammunition supplies needed by the U.S. military. U.S. stocks of some equipment are “reaching the minimum levels needed for planning and training,” and restocking to pre-invasion levels could take “several years,” according to Mark Cancian of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). This situation should incline the Americans to focus their deliveries to Ukraine using older equipment. Washington is “learning lessons” from the conflict about the amount of ammunition needed to carry out a great power war which is “far greater” than expected, a U.S. military official acknowledged on the condition of anonymity to France 24.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomed Trump’s statements, saying that in the current circumstances Trump was a voice for peace.
Donald Trump is not alone in calling for serious negotiations. A few days ago, entrepreneur Elon Musk made his own proposal, suggesting on his Twitter account a basis for negotiations to be submitted to Russia: genuine referendums under UN supervision in disputed areas to be evacuated by the Russian army, the retention of Crimea to Russia, and the neutrality of Ukraine.
Despite Musk’s apparent good faith, he only succeeded in provoking the fury of the Ukrainian authorities.
