Seine Rede am Dienstag, den 4. März, auf der Besuchertribüne des Senats über die Unterstützung der Ukraine und die Haltung von Donald Trump.
Indem er ihn als „Brandkaiser“ bezeichnete und die US-Regierung kritisierte, gelang es Claude Malhuret, die Aufmerksamkeit der Medien und der sozialen Netzwerke, insbesondere in den USA, auf sich zu ziehen (während seine Rede in den amerikanischen Sendern keine Schlagzeilen machte).
"Europa befindet sich an einem entscheidenden Punkt seiner Geschichte. Der amerikanische Schutzschild entgleitet, die Ukraine droht aufgegeben zu werden, und Russland wird gestärkt. Washington ist zum Hofstaat Neros geworden: ein aufbrausender Kaiser, unterwürfige Höflinge und ein Possenreißer auf Ketamin, der mit der Säuberung des öffentlichen Dienstes beauftragt ist.
Dies ist eine Tragödie für die freie Welt, aber in erster Linie eine Tragödie für die Vereinigten Staaten. Die Botschaft von Donald Trump lautet, dass es sinnlos ist, sein Verbündeter zu sein, denn er wird euch nicht verteidigen, er wird euch mehr Zölle auferlegen als seinen Feinden, und er wird damit drohen, eure Territorien zu beschlagnahmen, während er die Diktatoren unterstützt, die bei euch einmarschieren.
Der König des Deals zeigt, dass die Kunst des Deals auf dem Boden der Tatsachen liegt. Er glaubt, dass er China einschüchtern kann, indem er vor dem russischen Präsidenten Wladimir Putin kapituliert, aber Chinas Präsident Xi Jinping beschleunigt angesichts dieses Scheiterns zweifellos seine Pläne für eine Invasion Taiwans.
Noch nie in der Geschichte hat ein Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten vor dem Feind kapituliert.Noch nie hat er einen Aggressor gegen einen Verbündeten unterstützt, noch nie so viele illegale Dekrete erlassen und so viele Militärs auf einen Schlag gefeuert. Noch nie hat jemand die amerikanische Verfassung so mit Füßen getreten und gleichzeitig damit gedroht, Richter, die sich ihm in den Weg stellen, zu missachten, die Gegengewalt zu schwächen und die Kontrolle über die sozialen Medien zu übernehmen.
Das ist kein Abdriften in den Illiberalismus, das ist der Beginn der Eroberung der Demokratie. Erinnern wir uns daran, dass es nur einen Monat, drei Wochen und zwei Tage dauerte, um die Weimarer Republik und ihre Verfassung zu stürzen."
JD Vance and Donald Trump are “Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots”, the vice-president’s cousin has claimed, after the US suspended military aid to Ukraine.
Vance, a former U.S. Marine, defended Ukraine from 2022 to January 2025 as a member of the Da Vinci WolvesFirst Motorized Battalion, a volunteer unit.
"Being your family doesn't mean I'm going to accept you killing my comrades," Vance saidin an interview with Le Figaro published on March 9.
Vance's remarks come at a low point in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, as Washington has halted intelligence sharing and military aid to Kyiv. The freeze followed a contentious meeting in the Oval Office between U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President Vance, and President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Nate Vance said he was disappointed in how his cousin treated Zelensky during the meeting.
"When (JD Vance) criticized aid to Ukraine, I thought it was because he needed to appeal to his electorate, that it was part of the political game," Vance said.
"But what they did to Zelensky was an ambush of absolute dishonesty."
The vice president's continued distrust of Zelensky is unjustified, as are his views on Ukraine, Vance said.
"I thought I was going to choke ... His own cousin was on the front lines. I could have told him the truth, without pretense, without personal interest. He never tried to find out more."
Vance said he tried to get in touch with his cousin several times with no success.
"I left messages at his office. I never heard from him," he said.
Vance volunteered to fight in Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, but left shortly before the U.S. presidential inauguration out of fear of being captured by the Russian army.
"It had become complicated to stay. I couldn't take the risk of being captured," he said.
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The billionaire, who co-chairs the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was responding to an X post that called for US to “Exit NATO *now*!”
On March 2, Musk had responded a post on X which said,"It’s time to leave NATO and the UN".
“I agree,” the Tesla chief executive officer said.
Musk’s comments comes at a time when the future of the 32-member NATO, which will mark its 76th anniversary in April, hangs in the balance.
According to NBC, US President Donald Trump on March 6 discussed with aides calibrating US engagement with NATO in a way that favours members of the alliance that spend a certain percentage of their GDP on defense.
At the highest level of the EU, an 800 billion euro project has just been proposed to “rearm Europe”, but much of this money is likely to end up in American pockets, according to Jenny Raflik-Grenouilleau. "If Europeans want to buy weapons quickly, they're going to have to turn to those who can sell them quickly,” she warns. And I'm afraid that European sovereignty won't be strengthened at all.”
Jenny RAFLIK-GRENOUILLEAU University Professor University of Nantes Professor of the History of Contemporary International Relations at Nantes University Jenny Raflik-Grenouilleau is a specialist in security and defense issues. Her publications include Une République moderne: La IVè République, 1946-1958 (Le Seuil, 2018), Terrorisme et mondialisation, approches historiques (Gallimard, 2016), La Quatrième République et l'Alliance atlantique (PUR, 2013).
European NATO members have become even more dependent on U.S. weapons than before, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released Monday.
European arms imports shot up by 155 percent over 2020-2024 compared with 2015-2019 — a reaction to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
While the U.S. supplied 52 percent of European NATO members' military equipment between 2015 and 2019, the share rose to 64 percent in the subsequent five-year period.
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Trumps' efforts to befriend Putin and re-integrate Russia in the world community are yielding almost daily surprises. Today, defence minister Pete Hegseth said he would stop aggressive US cyber warfare against Russia.
Ukraine? Since the Ukrainian rare earth reserves that inspired Trump to launch one of his crazy projects turned out to be doubtful and difficult to extract, the project was abandoned by Trump and the responsibility for its termination cunningly blamed on Zelensky. Now the Trump administration lost all interest in Ukraine and left it up for grabs by Putin.
Even without US support, Ukraine is not about to lose the war because a new leader eentered the scene: British prime minister Keir Starmer. In the spirit of his historic predecessor Winston Churchill he promised to never abandon Ukraine and summoned all European actors to a crisis meeting in London.
The world is wondering: why is Trump pursuing his seemingly erratic course? There are three alternative memes:
-- Trump is a Russian agent who by chance, luck and Russian influence became twice placed in the White House;
-- Trump is a friend and admirer of poor Putin upon whom the Ukraine war has been foisted
-- Trump is a cunning politician who tries to decouple Putin from his allies, especially China and Iran
Trump wants the US to ‘partner’ with Russia to weaken China: Divide-and-conquer strategy. The US government’s talks with Russia are more about China than Ukraine. Donald Trump admitted he wants to “un-unite” Russia and China, in a reverse of the divide-and-conquer strategy used by Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s.
We, at Deutsche Rundschau, have offered a different meme: Trump tries to satisfy Putin's desire for victory in Ukraine and his re-instatement as a super power in order to stop him from helping his new friend Kim Yong-un of North Korea to produce nuclear-armed missiles which are able to reach and devastate mainland USA.
North Korea unveiled for the first time a nuclear-powered submarine under construction, a weapons system that can pose a major security threat to South Korea and the U.S. The state media agency on Saturday released photos showing what it called “a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” as it reported leader Kim Jong Un’s visits to major shipyards where warships are built. The naval vessel appears to be a 6,000-ton-class or 7,000-ton-class one which can carry about 10 missiles, said Moon Keun-sik, a South Korean submarine expert who teaches at Seoul’s Hanyang University. He said that the use of the term “the strategic guided missiles” meant it would carry nuclear-capable weapons. “It would be absolutely threatening to us and the U.S.,” Moon said. - AP
How would China react to this scenario? China has not yet commented on Trump's efforts to restore his friendship with Putin. China would most probably be unhappy if its crazy, small neighbor North Korea became owner of nuclear weapons enabling it to trigger World War III and Armageddon.
Whichever meme caused Trump's motivation: Putin's reaction to Trump's prodding remains unknown. He will gladly accept Ukraine as a gift; he will enjoy his renewed international standing and the expected lifting of all sanctions. But will he freeze his deals with North Korea and detach himself from China and Iran? Will he trust Trump and not be afraid of another possibly Democrat president four years down the road?
The answer might not be as positive as Trumpists expect.
Even if both gentlemen meet in person amid huggings, caviar and wodka, Putin will remain inscrutable. His ability to deceive others is legendary. Scores of western politicians can testify to it -- Merkel, Schröder, Trump, Orban, Salvini, yes: even Zelensky in the prewar days. Putin is a first class actor who would probably do very well as a Hollywood villain if he wasn't chained to his Kremlin throne.
In any case: Trump is turning much of the world order upside down, and the victims are desperately trying to adjust. Ukraine has no choice but to fight, no matter how many peace plans are hatched somewhere. Putin will continue resurrecting the Soviet Union jusqu'au bout du souffle. Europe will continue to groan, haggle and start wasting enormous moneys on armaments. Sigh!
Heinrich von Loesch
Update
After Trump stopped the delivery of arms to Ukraine, even mainstream American media now appear convinced that President Trump is a vicarious agent busy to achieve Putin's goals. Trump believes that Ukraine will now be forced to surrender because Europe will not be able to step in the breach and save its bulwark.
It seems the time has come for Europeans to visualize what a Russia would look like that owns all of Ukraine.
The image of a combined Russia+Ukraine looks daunting. Ukraine would help the large neighbor to achieve a salto di qualità, a quantum leap not only in economic terms and size but in the art of warfare. By adopting modern Ukrainian fighting skills and inheriting advanced Western equipment and software, the Russian military would become a formidable challenger to NATO and Europe, full of pride and the urge to expand.
Beyond Ukraine
If we assume that Trump is indeed a Russian "asset", why would he be acting on behalf of Putin only as regards Ukraine? Could Putin's playbook also mandate Trump to create global havoc by disrupting world trade and reversing migration patterns? This suspicion conjures up a disturbing image of Putin cheerfully sitting in the Kremlin and pulling his global strings.
Hotnews is annoyed by Trump's accusations against Zelensky:
“Ukraine was accused of risking a third world war. Not the country that has nuclear weapons, that frequently threatens with such a war, that attacked Ukraine and could end the slaughter whenever it chooses by simply stopping the invasion. Ukraine is being blamed for defending itself and paying for this with tens of thousands of lives. ... What Trump and JD Vance have essentially suggested is that Kyiv should shut up and swallow the terms of capitulation. Zelensky would have heard the same thing in the Kremlin.”
