The Trump, Zelensky, and Putin relationship is in play and changing hour by hour.
The President of the USA met with Vladimir Putin Friday, August 15th, in Alaska. President Trump went into a two and a half hour huddle with his “friend” Vladimir swearing that he would get a ceasefire, and that if no ceasefire was forthcoming, he’d know in the first five minutes, and the consequences would be severe.
But President Trump was bamboozled. Putin weaseled Trump into giving up on the ceasefire, forgetting the severe consequences, and going for what Putin wants, a negotiated peace.
There’s only one small problem. A negotiated peace to Vladimir Putin means a Ukrainian surrender. It means Ukraine gives up lands that Putin has not been able to take by force, lands that contain Ukraine’s primary fortifications.
A negotiated peace also means booting Ukraine’s President Zelensky from power, putting a Russian puppet in his place, and turning Ukraine into a vassal state of Russia.
The most important tell to Putin’s manipulation of our president was Trump’s off-mike comment to France’s Emanuel Macron on Monday that, “I think he wants to do this for me.” In other words, I think Putin wants to make peace for me. This hints at how Putin is using President Trump’s vanity, his drive for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the illusion of a close personal friendship to get Trump to do the very opposite of what Trump originally intended.
President Trump emerged from his summit in Alaska with a simple three point plan. First Trump would meet with Zelensky. Second Zelensky would meet with Putin. Third, Putin, Zelensky, and Trump would meet so Trump could work his art of the deal and finalize things.
But in reality, the odds are that Putin will never come to a summit with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And the odds are also that Putin is stringing Trump along. Why? To bide time. Time to kill Ukrainian civilians. Time to demolish Ukrainian apartment buildings and Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Time to continue an advance that is taking 3.6 square miles of Ukrainian territory a day.
Time to wear down the Ukrainian will to fight. And the Ukrainian will is being worn down. According to a poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 70% of Ukrainians now want to negotiate an end to the war. But 78% do not want to give up any Ukrainian territory that Russian troops do not yet possess.
Experts point out that to understand Trump’s illusion of a hold over Putin, we need to read Putin’s actions, not his words. What has Putin done for peace since his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska?
- Saturday, the day after the Alaska meeting, Putin presided over an attack on Ukraine with 270 drones and 10 missiles, an attack that killed fourteen people.
- The next day, Sunday, Russia launched 140 drones and four missiles, killing five people.
- Monday, the day of a White House meeting with seven top European leaders and of a Trump phone call to Putin, Russian drones and missiles hit a major Ukrainian gas transport facility and a Ukrainian oil refinery, setting them ablaze.
These were Putin’s real answers to Donald Trump.
But that’s not the end of it. Ukraine has the ability to hit Russia back. It has damaged as many as thirty Russian oil refineries and has wiped out as much as 15% of Russia’s gasoline production, denting Russia’s already troubled economy. Former member of Trump’s inner circle and Ukrainian insider Lev Parnas says that ordinary Russians are waiting hours to fill their gas tanks and are complaining of “a fuel apocalypse”.
That apocalypse could easily get worse. Ukraine is now producing 100 copies a day of its FP-1, a massive, 18-foot wingspan drone that travels a thousand miles, 67% farther than any drone in Ukraine’s past. The FP-1 evades Russia’s air defenses, and carries nearly twice as much explosive as any long-range drone Ukraine has had in the past. The FP-1 has even dodged Russia’s most advanced ground-to-air missiles to strike targets on the outskirts of Moscow — including the Krasnozavodsk Chemical Plant, a critical hub in Russia’s missile and artillery supply chain. Rude Baguette says Ukraine’s FP-1 shatters the boundaries of modern-warfare.
If Putin keeps punishing Ukraine, Ukraine will punish back.
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One more little thing. On Monday, the day of Russia’s 270-drone attack, top leaders from England, France, Germany, Italy, the European Commission, NATO, and Finland met in the East Room of the White House with President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky.
Europe’s leaders were there, in part, to protect Zelenskyy from a repeat of the vicious mauling Trump and J.D. Vance had inflicted on the Ukrainian president when he visited February 28th, nearly six months ago.
But these leaders of the Western World were also in the White House to get across a message: if Ukraine is swallowed by Putin, Putin’s appetite for the rest of Europe will only grow.
The seven European heads of state vowed that they would come to Ukraine’s defense if an unspecified line was breached. They would supply security guarantees. How would they defend Ukraine? That’s still up in the air.
Meanwhile, let’s get back to Trump’s main goal—getting Putin together with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The White House is leaking choices for a city in which the Putin-Zelenskyy summit could take place—Budapest, Hungary; Geneva, Switzerland; or an unspecified city in Austria.
But will Vladimir Putin ever show up? The signs are that he won’t. The Kremlin is calling for negotiations at the expert level—a way of stalling so Putin can make more war and devastate more of Ukraine.
What’s more, Putin is asking for veto power over Western security guarantees to Ukraine. This is like Hitler demanding the right to veto the Western alliance that finally drove him from power.
Putin is Europe’s enemy. There is no way in heaven or hell that he should hold veto power on what’s done to stop his advance.
Putin is a cancer. You do not give a cancer a veto over a cure.
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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
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References:
https://kyivinsider.com/ukraines-august-drone-strikes-disrupt-22-of-russias-refining-capacity/
https://people.com/donald-trump-caught-hot-mic-sharing-crazy-reason-putin-would-end-war-11794476
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-caught-on-hot-mic-bragging-how-much-putin-loves-him
https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-launches-largest-attack-august-ukraine-after-trump/story
https://thedeepdive.ca/major-russian-refineries-halt-operations-after-ukrainian-strikes/
https://www.dawn.com/news/1931796
https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/ukrainian-drone-attacks-russian-oil-2025-strategic-impact-global/
https://interestingengineering.com/military/ukraine-debuts-long-range-strike-drone
Dearnley, Francis, Dominic Nicholls, and James Kilner. “Ukraine ‘Offers Trump $100bn Arms Deal’ for Security Guarantees & Leaders Debate Venues for Putin-Zelensky Talks.” Ukraine: The Latest. Podcast audio, August 19, 2025. The Telegraph
Business Basics. “Putin FLEES Alaska after DISASTER Presser.” Business Basics. Podcast audio, August 20, 2025. Available on Spotify. Ukraine Can’t Believe What US Just Did – INSANE Support!
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Parnas, Lev. “Breaking: Ukraine Strikes Back – Moscow on the Brink.” LevRemembers and Voice From Ukraine, August 21, 2025. Email newsletter.