Stop military aid to Ukraine. At least until – they let Washington know – Donald Trump will not have determined the good faith of Kyiv’s commitment to peace. A few days after the hard clash to the White House between American president and vice president on the one hand and the Ukrainian president on the other, the decision of the US administration has arrived. In front of the Annunciated Disengagement of America, the European Union for its part reaffirms full support for Ukraine, while Kyiv still declares itself available, at any time, to sign the agreement with the sale of the rare lands with the United States. To analyze and comment on the situation is Pier Francesco Zazountil July 2024 Ambassador of Italy in Ukraine, where he arrived for the first time in 1999 with the role of first councilor, and then returned in January 2021, a year before the Russian invasion and the beginning of the conflict on a large scale. In the first days of the war Zazo – who in the past was diplomatic also in Russia, at the Italian Embassy in Moscow – He distinguished himself for the extraordinary humanity and the sense of duty and responsibility shown in such a complicated and dramatic moment: The ambassador has rescued more than one hundred Italians including twenty children, also opening the doors of his residence to give refuge to his compatriots fleeing the bombs. And he remained in Kyiv until possible: the Italian diplomatic mission was the last of the European ones to be moved from the capital to Lopola.
Ambassador Zazo, how do you evaluate the clash between Donald Trump and JD Vance on one side and Zelensky on the other, which took place last Friday at the White House in front of American journalists and the world?
«What happened in the oval studio is very serious and unheard of. Zelensky was humiliated and even hunted by the White House. The most basic rules of the international protocol have been violated. What leaves you baffled is that it was known that there were divergences of positions. But then, in this case, a meeting had had to be reserved for Quattr’occhi between Zelensky and Trump to talk also with a hard muzzle, and only later the press conference. It is evident that Trump followed that way to put the Ukrainian president with his shoulders to the wall, as if to tell him: “or do as I say I or nothing”. But then in Mondovisiona a divergence of the positions emerged, when Zelensky insisted on the request for security guarantees, represented by the continuation of US military aid, and then when Trump warned on the risk of trusting Putin and opening a negotiation with him, reminding the US President that Putin has violated many times the agreements and which respects only the language of force. At that point Trump’s reaction was very hard and aggressive. The disconcerting thing is that however Zelesnky was ready to sign the agreement on the joint management of rare lands. But the Americans pulled back ».
And it is not clear why they made back.
«By now Trump’s trend has been imposed to lean on Zelensky the fault of wanting to sink the agreement. The message is very clear: the United States forwards independently of the signature or not of the agreement on rare earths with the aim of closing the war as soon as possible, negotiating peace with Putin ».
From the point of view of diplomatic practice, is it not strange that on the one hand there was the Ukrainian president alone and on the other the US president with his deputy? Is it not a imbalance?
«In reality, together with Zelensky there were other important figures of his government entourage, even if they didn’t talk. What is really very unbalanced is the role of Vance, the vice-presidents are usually much more “low-profile”. Vance in my opinion is a truly toxic figure. This was also seen in his speech at the Security Conference in Munich. Certainly Vance has contributed a lot to the escalation of the clash ».
In recent weeks we have witnessed Trump’s overturning of the historical narrative and the figures of the victim and the attacker. We saw the American president to blame Ukraine the fault of the war. Is all this not extremely dangerous?
«We are faced with the upheaval of truth, where the attacked is accused of being the attacker. Trump’s are absolutely false accusations, when he says that Ukraine is guilty and that Zelensky has done nothing to stop the war. Just as it is a false accusation when he says that the Ukrainian leader is a dictator for unpopular joint, also using inflated figures on the aid provided. I was ambassador to Kyiv and I can say that the support for Zelensky was absolutely not 4%. Popularity was falling, it’s true. But still today all surveys indicate that Zelensky – with a slightly above 50% consent – is still the most popular politician. The only one who could beat him is the former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Zaluzhny, who today is an ambassador in the United Kingdom. Ukraine is very grateful to the USA for the support provided, but it should be remembered that the first donor ever is the European Union, not America. It is not clear why there is this predisposition to differ from reality. It all seems absurd, almost Kafkian ».
It seems that, with Trump’s policy, a sort of new world order is being defined in which traditional rules – starting from international law – no longer exist.
«It is a very dangerous situation, based on an evident contempt for the rules of international law. We are returning to the rule of law of the strongest. Trump seems fascinated by the characters at the head of authoritarian systems, such as Putin. And this is evident. He does not hide his contempt for multilateralism, towards the UN, also of the European Union. We risk returning to the law of the jungle, to the “Homo Homini Lupus” (man is a wolf for man, ed). Trump has a materialistic vision: what matters is military power and money. This business approach almost borders on cynicism, in the logic of almost colonial exploitation, if we think, for example, of the understanding on the rare lands, which in its initial draft was configured almost like an agreement. On the other hand, we see a clear disinterest in the world of values, human rights, of the environment. Far from me being a moralist, but I am convinced that even in foreign policy there must be an ethics, there are values, respect for the rules of the United Nations Charter and the rules of international law, the red lines that cannot be and must not be overcome. And returning to the clash in the oval study, we also saw the total contempt of the international protocol, of the courtesy that regulates relations between the States. Not just Zelensky was humiliated, all Ukrainians were humiliated ».
The United States withdrew military aid to Kyiv. Now the defense of Ukraine belongs to Europe. What do you think?
«Europe has undergone a double shock: before it was climbed by the decision of Trump and Putin to start negotiations without involving it. Then what happened to the White House last Friday. The USA are disengaged from Ukraine, leaving to Europe the responsibility of defending the country. At this moment Europe is finally demonstrating united and compact in the awareness that now it must absolutely have a common defense policy and that, likes or do you not like it, it must strengthen the expenses in the military sector also in order to be a tomorrow to speak on par with the United States and face Russia. The point concerning the supply of forces of Peacekeeping in Ukraine I see it more complicated: Russia has already said that it will never accept forces of peace in the Ukrainian territory of European countries members of NATO. I believe this proposal can hardly go on. What you are baffled is that, according to Trump, now the Europeans must deal with the security guarantees to be provided to Ukraine and no longer the United States. And the US President asks for the sending of Europe’s forces of peace. But on this point it was not consulted first with Putin. It is clear that Trump does not have an articulated and planned plan, he is improvising. And Moscow will never accept a peace plan designed by the Europeans because it considers them subordinated to the United States. For the Kremlin, the only interlocutor is Washington, in the logic of the comparison between great powers. In fact, the goal of Russia in the long run is to agree with the United States a new security architecture on the European continent and to see its role as great power again with the restoration of its sphere of influence on Eastern European countries and the downsizing of the presence of NATO in the region “.
(Ansa photo: Pier Francesco Zazo, ambassador of Italy to Kyiv until 2024, with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on August 25, 2022)
