‘In Its Own Perverted Way, in Its Own Crooked World’ – Ukraine at War Update for Sept. 25

At one of his signature rallies, this time in the swing state of Georgia, on Tuesday, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told a crowd that America is “very close to World War III” and promised his followers that he would “get out of there,” meaning Ukraine. He blamed US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for “getting us into this war” and continuing to support Kyiv.

“Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Ukraine, and now they can’t get us out,” he said in his performance to his largely isolationist base. “They can’t get us out. I watched him: ‘We will win, we will…’ He's been saying that for three years,” Trump added.

The real estate heir, who could excuse himself from military service during the Vietnam War because of alleged bone spurs in his feet and went on to study business management, lectured the crowd on his perspective of the Kremlin’s modern military history.

“They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight, and it’s not pleasant,” said the former president, who many times has boasted about how he and the autocratic Russian leader are “good friends.”

Once again, he called President Volodymyr Zelensky the “greatest salesman on Earth,” claiming that “every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with a hundred billion”, a common refrain from Trump when addressing his typically Southern and Midwestern rural followers.

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Moscow is furious Russian sovereign territory has been violated and is rattling sabers. But the Kremlin probably also is lashing out against a more agile opponent.

“But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president. I’ll get it done. I’ll get it negotiated. I’ll get out. We gotta get out,” Trump said.

The candidate went on to claim that Washington has given Kyiv “close to $300 billion”, using an apparently arbitrary figure that might play well in an un-moderated setting, while Europe has given “a small fraction of that number.”

“Do you think Biden lies awake at night, thinking how do we get Europe to pay? No, he goes to sleep!” Trump concluded.

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), as of February of this year, America’s European, Asian, and NATO allies had committed more than $178 billion to support Ukraine. That amount was more than the US had committed at the time.

After a long partisan fight in Washington and a funding bill that Trump opposed, the US offered an additional $61 billion to Ukraine in April. Still, according to the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, Washington had committed a total of $175 billion to Ukraine, even after the controversial bill was passed.

The military aid funding the US provides to Ukraine is almost entirely spent within the States. In reality, these congressional funds pay American defense industry companies to produce new state-of-the-art munitions and weapons systems for the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps that will replace the stockpiles of older technology systems in the American arsenal, often at the end of their shelf lives and scheduled for destruction.

Zelensky tells UN Security Council that “Russia can only be forced to peace”

Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Zelensky repeated his position, already affirmed by an historic majority of the council’s members in 2022, that Russia has violated UN norms in its war crimes in Ukraine and cannot invoke the UN Charter to justify its aggression in Ukraine.

“In fact, in its own perverted way, in its own crooked world, [Russia] refers to the Charter. This is just crazy,” Zelensky said, referring to the full-scale invasion of the sovereign country as an international crime.

 “And that is why this war cannot simply calm down,” Zelensky told the Council. “That is why this war cannot be calmed down by talking. We need action,” he said.

On Monday, President Biden struck a similar tone in his address to the UN’s “Summit for the Future,” noting that the same seven UN members, led by Russia, were the sole opponents of the body’s “Pact for the Future,” a guideline aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.

Zelensky continued: “Russia can only be forced to peace. And this is exactly what is needed: to force Russia to peace as the only aggressor in this war, the only violator of the UN Charter,” he said.

“We don’t have different versions of the UN Charter for different parts of the world,” Zelensky said. “There is no separate UN Charter for the BRICS or for the G7. There is no separate Russian-Iranian UN Charter or separate Sino-Brazilian UN Charter. There is one UN Charter that unites everyone, and should unite everyone.”

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian president is slated to address the 79th Session of the General Assembly with all member nations scheduled to attend.

Accused of offering Kyiv official 10K in Bitcoin for reconstruction contracts, parliamentarian absconds to Romania

An anonymous source told AFP on Tuesday that a Ukrainian lawmaker accused of offering a bribe to a senior government official has fled to Romania.

A member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, parliament member Andrii Odarchenko was arrested in November 2023 on charges of offering $10,000 in Bitcoin crypto-currency to the head of the agency charged with securing funding for reconstruction, specifically at a university where the official is in charge. 

According to AFP’s source, Odarchenko crossed the border into Romania last week near Vicovu de Sus.

Odarchenko this month failed to appear for his court hearing, and previously had denied the charges, claiming that he was the victim of political persecution.

Romania remains a popular refuge for Ukrainian men dodging mandatory military service, AFP reported, saying that such men are spotted daily near the border after crossing the mountains or swimming across the Tysa River. Around 17,000 have made it to Romania since the beginning of the war, according to border police.