Bigger Disasters Await Ukraine
Al-Ahram, Egypt, February 27
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has positioned himself between two starkly different narratives on the global stage: he is either fully complicit in maneuvering his country into a military entanglement designed to exhaust Russia, seemingly indifferent to the immense peril this poses to Ukraine, or he is profoundly naive, believing in the possibility of defeating Russia without comprehending the full scope of risks involved in such a conflict.
Furthermore, following the immediate catastrophes that befell Ukraine in this war, Zelenskyy appears to think he can outmaneuver the United States into achieving gains, with no certainty that Ukraine will ultimately benefit.
In his most recent predicament with the Trump administration, it was revealed that Zelenskyy himself proposed leveraging Ukraine’s wealth of rare minerals through a joint investment venture with the United States, committing half of its output to this partnership, and presented this idea to the Biden administration in September, mere weeks before the US elections, even as the prospect of excluding Biden from the race was determined.
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Assuming Zelenskyy’s intentions were well-meaning, he aimed to engage the forthcoming US president in actualizing this proposal, assuming it would secure approval from both the administration and Congress within those few weeks—a highly unlikely scenario. However, upon Trump’s entry into the White House, he encountered this nascent idea and repurposed it, exploiting America’s dominance to essentially seize Ukraine’s resources without cost.
Trump introduced a novel justification for this strategy, claiming it would offset what America had spent supporting Ukraine in the conflict, initially estimating this support at $350 billion, and later increasing it to $500 billion. At this juncture, Zelenskyy protested, asserting that the aid was intended as a non-repayable grant, its value merely about 10% of what Trump proposed, and that America taking half of Ukraine’s production meant the repayment obligation would span ten generations, a term he outright rejected.
Meanwhile, some of his allies, America’s longstanding partners, counseled him against engaging in a confrontation where he would have to respond to Trump’s deeply personal insults, suggesting instead that he show some flexibility toward Trump’s proposal. Should he not listen to their advice, it is likely that bigger disasters await Ukraine.
Ahmed Abdel-Tawwab (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)
