President Donald Trump's sharp turn away from the United States' defense of Ukraine toward a "peace" plan that one-sidedly gives concessions to Russia, while ranting on social media about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being a "dictator," is an embarrassment to the U.S. on the world stage, Michael Bociurkiw, former spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said on CNN Wednesday.
"I'm curious what this tells you about how the White House sees negotiations to end the war," asked anchor Boris Sanchez.
"I think it's amateur hour, with all due respect," said Borciurkiw. "The cheerleading show we saw yesterday in Riyadh — because I don't know how many times Mr. Rubio and company said Mr. Trump is the only person on earth who can solve this war. But I think what's happening here is you have all of these different so-called diplomatic lines working. General Kellogg here in Ukraine today. But at the end of the day, it's going to be Mr. Trump who decides what's going to happen.
"And God forbid, if he acts on what he said, is that if Mr. Zelenskyy doesn't have elections, which is impossible to do during a war, the country could be gone. Well, if Russia comes further into Ukraine, they won't stop. They will go into other neighboring countries for sure."
Sanchez agreed that "holding elections in the middle of this war, specifically, would be problematic and would amplify Russia's lethal abilities," adding, "I wonder what you think about why Trump and Putin are so aligned with their view, not just of Ukraine, but seemingly of Europe as well."
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"I guess the beauty of being Donald Trump is you come into position without any ideological baggage. So you don't care about the rules-based international order or other principles," said Borciurkiw.
He then emphasized, as someone who has observed elections around the world, that the reason this demand isn't possible is that the elections would "become targets for the Russians" to interfere and manufacture legitimacy for their invasion, as well as the fact that "there's no way that ... the U.S. embassies can handle that flow of voters for a credible election."
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