Kyiv, Ukraine – On Friday, Zynaida Shepenko is still in shock from what happened in the White House.
“They cornered Zelenskyy as two bandits, like two mafiosi who want your money and your humiliation,” said the 52-year-old bank clerk to Al Jazeera, referring to the meeting of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the vice-president JD Vance.
Consequently, Shelepenko said that she was not surprised at Trump’s decision on Monday evening to freeze military aid to Ukraine after Zelenskyy refused to apologize for spit and said that his abandoned visit to Washington, DC, “brought nothing positive”.
The Ukrainian president and his American counterpart have since struck more conciliatory tones, but for Shepenko, there is a clear winner of these tensions between Washington and kyiv, who until Trump came to power was close allies.
“Guess who applauds now?” The vampire, the Kremlin children’s killer, “she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We have seen the most shameful moment in American history.”
If help in the United States is completely stopped, this decision will lead to “major financial and legal problems” for American weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed who have been responsible for producing weapons for kyiv, said military analyst Mykhailo Zhirokhov, who is based in the Ukrainian city in the north of Chernihiv.
Washington could also stop providing intelligence data to Ukraine, including crucial and real-time information from military satellites, and stop training Ukrainian pilots and other soldiers to exploit F-16 and advanced weapons, he said.
“It would be the worst case,” Zhirokhov told Al Jazeera.
The best of cases would be a diplomatic solution achieved in several months before kyiv lacks weapons and ammunition which have already been delivered, he said.
The judgment will considerably affect the air defense capacities of Ukraine, in particular in large cities such as kyiv and Odesa, where advanced patriotic systems of American manufacturing are stationed.
Even if the systems and missiles have been provided by Germany and Israel, the missiles are only manufactured in the United States and each cost several million dollars.
The Patriots have proven to be the most effective and highest weapon against most Russian cruise and ballistic missiles – even those that Putin qualified as indestructible.
There will also be a disastrous missile shortage for Multiple Himars Roquette launchers and F-16 jets provided by the West, said Zhirokhov.
Despite Trump’s reputation to be chaotic and unpredictable, his decision has an underlying geopolitical motive.
Trump considers Ukraine as an obstacle to a confrontation of brewing with ascending China over world domination.
By cajolizing Moscow and lifting the American sanctions imposed on Russia on Ukraine, Trump wants Putin to put himself on the side of Washington and “drag [Moscow] As far as possible, “of China, said Tyshkevych.
“Trump thinks he must do it quickly,” he told Al Jazeera. “For him, it is of paramount importance to finish putting pressure on Ukraine so that it accepts the concessions of Russia and a cease-fire.”
Ukraine has spent “too much time” in debates
To a professor of history who has become a soldier, Trump’s plan resembles Poland 18th century partitions between Russia, Austria and Prussia.
At the time, Poland included most of what is now west and center of Ukraine and was in an alliance with Lithuania. The scores were partly caused by the heaviness of the Polish parliament, where each aristocrat had a veto right and could stall decisions on the most problematic issues for months.
“Their parliament spent too much time on the debates, while Russia and the Germans improved their armies,” a 37 -year -old soldier who recovers in a hospital in the center of kyiv told Al Jazeera.
“Unfortunately, Ukraine has also devoted too much time to debates, on the destruction of [Soviet-era] weapons and on the minimization of the armed forces, while [expletive] Putin waged wars in Chechnya and Georgia and restructured her army, “said Anatoly, who held her family name in accordance with the war in wartime.
In the early 1990s, kyiv abandoned all of its nuclear arsenal from the Soviet era, the third more, in exchange for security guarantees of four nuclear powers-Russia, the United States, France and the United Kingdom.
Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, the West also funded the destruction of conventional weapons from the Soviet era such as tanks, artillery and shells, while kyiv transferred its heavy bombers to Moscow as payment for natural gas supplies.
However, the spit in Washington, DC benefits all parties, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, researcher at the German University of Bremen.
Trump gets rid of the commitments worth tens of billions of dollars and will potentially help us weapons manufacturers to earn billions of weapons that the European Union will put into service for kyiv, he said.
“Trump paid for this by being called names in the northern hemisphere. Well, he got used to this, “Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.
Zelenskyy won the most by rekindling his clearing image of a tireless and intrepid hero, Mitrokhin said.
Zelenskyy will get much more western military aid -mainly European -, while what seems to be a Gordian node has in fact contributed to moving the EU position towards the defense of Ukraine instead of empty declarations, he said.
“In addition, Zelenskyy does not have to sign the agreement on the real American control over the funds to arm and rebuild Ukraine, and a total lack of external control over his work is what all the best official Ukrainian dreams,” said Mitrokhin.
Zelenskyy will not have to lead a presidential vote while his armed forces have managed to prevent the fall of the eastern key of Pokrovsk and even counterattacked on the eastern front, he said.
Meanwhile, anti-Trump politicians in the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Germany in search of a stronger NATO without feeling embittered.
“This scandal is a political gift to them,” said Mitrokhin.
Even Putin will harvest political gains because “Trump will be a more active friend without being overwhelmed by Ukraine,” he said.
But the global perspective is pessimistic.
“The whole painting recalls the start of the start of the First World War, when everyone wanted to fight and everyone was building alliances,” he concluded.
