Ole Asbjørn Fauske

Donald Trump has just posted on his own social media platform. He says Zelenskyy does not want peace and never has, because Europe keeps giving him money. He says he made the deal with Russia on diesel fuel because Russia wants to bring global prices down. At the beginning of his post, he justifies his decision. At the end, he says Ukraine has lost land territory, seas, and oceans. This statement marks the (public) beginning of the United States' shift toward Russia. In other words, it is the public beginning of the US transitioning into an ally of Russia. Until now, all the other statements, political decisions, and scandals have either taken place behind closed doors or been publicly denied as being beneficial to Russia. From now on, we will see a clear, openly acknowledged move toward closer relations with Russia. Trump needs to win a third term. Putin needs to win the war. Trump needs to achieve his objective to protect himself legally from everything that would follow if he lost power. Putin needs the war to continue, and preferably to win it, to physically protect himself from the death that would await him if he lost or if a just peace were reached. Trump will not relinquish power democratically. Anyone who believes otherwise is naive. His third term could come through himself, Don Jr., or someone else in his family. Putin cannot allow the war to end because he would meet the same fate as Gaddafi. Both are desperate, and both are being obstructed by two entities: Ukraine and the European Union. For those who have forgotten, let me remind you that Trump used to lecture us for buying Russian gas. Today, he is asking us to buy Russian gas. Trump used to accuse us of not paying enough for our own war. Today, he criticizes us for giving Ukraine money. Putin is bothered by European assistance because Europe is the last bastion of Western civilization still defending Western values. Europe, Canada, and the rest of the Coalition of the Willing, minus the United States. The midterm elections are on November 3. Everyone is expecting a Democratic tsunami. I expect the Democrats to win the House of Representatives and the Senate to end up evenly split. But that will not change US foreign policy overnight. Years from now, history will remind us that, starting in 2024, the United States took its first steps toward supporting the aggressor. And those who read about it, after having read, watched, or digitally experienced the horrors of Bucha, Borodyanka, Mariupol, Chernihiv, Izium, and so on, will wonder how we could all have been such idiots, how we continued to believe in the "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" when the evidence was right in front of us, screaming in our faces. At this moment, the United States has provided no financial aid for more than two years. Access to Starlink and StarShield is restricted. Military intelligence is provided intermittently. The ballistic missile early warning system is NOT functioning. The US has postponed the sanctions under the Graham law. The US has signed a diesel fuel deal with Russia. If it walks like betrayal and quacks like betrayal, then it is betrayal. The European Union has an adversary in the United States, one it will soon recognize as such. Soon, when Russia does something that would have been unimaginable back in 2022 or 2023, something that will shatter confidence in NATO, Article 5, and the entire North Atlantic security architecture. It may already be too late for some Eastern European countries. Or, in an alternative scenario, this Europe, plagued by internal divisions amplified by hundreds of thousands of Russian bots and coordinated through social media campaigns with the help of American algorithms, will manage to stay united. United for Ukraine and for its own security. In this scenario, Europe will accelerate the development of alternatives to Starlink, the F-35, American space technology, and anti-ballistic missile interceptors, and will punish social media platforms as they deserve. And then things will be much better. Romania must remain alongside the core of the European Union and positively influence this acceleration. Ukraine is not doing badly on the battlefield. For example, Kostyantynivka was supposed to have fallen into Russian hands back in May. Chances are it will not fall before 2027, which would make the Russian conquest of Donbas impossible, considering the situation up until the summer of 2026, when the US was STILL not openly acting as Russia's partner. If Ukraine loses the war, it will be because of the United States and because of Europe's slowness and failure to make firm decisions. And Ukraine's surrender would mean hell unleashed upon Eastern Europe and the European Union project as a whole. Still, let us not overlook the fact that, in Trump's eyes, Ukraine once had one or more oceans. And somehow lost them.