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Well, at least one can say that Donald Trump is talking about ending the conflict in Ukraine. The Republican candidate for the United States presidency has lately been calling for the “horrible war” to end.

With his trademark brashness, Trump promises American voters that if elected on November 5, he can mediate a peace deal “within 24 hours”.

As for Joe Biden, the Democrat White House incumbent, he has repeatedly said he has no intention of seeking a diplomatic settlement, vowing to support the Kiev regime “until the last Ukrainian” in what is a futile war against Russia.

This week, the Biden administration pledged another $2.3 billion in military aid to the hopelessly corrupt Zelensky regime to keep fighting NATO’s proxy war. A war that has cost over 500,000 Ukrainian military deaths.

Biden is at one with the U.S. and European political establishments in his relentless warmongering. On both sides of the Atlantic, the dominant policy in Washington and Brussels – the U.S.-EU-NATO axis – is simply war, war, war. The militarist money racket and Russophobia are entrenched and incorrigible, overriding any common sense or moral decision-making.

Hillary Clinton, the former Democrat presidential candidate who embodies the U.S. deep state, this week urged Ukrainians to keep on fighting to get Biden re-elected.

Meanwhile, in Europe, there was alarm and apoplexy among various leaders when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban flew to Moscow in an unscheduled visit to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the prospects of a peaceful settlement. Orban was roundly condemned for daring to reach out to Putin.

So, against this background of inveterate warmongering it seems rather refreshing that Trump should at least be contemplating an end to the violence in Ukraine – the worst conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War and one that risks escalating to all-out nuclear conflagration.

Asked about Trump’s peacemaking offer, President Putin responded politely this week, saying that he believed the American was sincere, but pointed out the lack of detail in Trump’s proposal.

That’s the rub. Donald Trump is not known for coherent details. His style is bluster and braggadocio. Taken with a large pinch of salt.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, was not convinced by Trump’s peace musings. Nebenzia indicated that the Republican candidate lacked the necessary understanding to resolve the conflict. That would involve an intelligent appreciation of history: the relentless expansionism of NATO, the treacherous backsliding by Washington over past security agreements, and the inherent workings of U.S. imperialism as an insatiable aggressor going back to the foundation of NATO 75 years ago.

There is more than a suspicion that “the Donald” is merely motivated by superficial electioneering. The former real estate magnate has acumen for tapping popular sentiment. The two American presidential contenders are neck and neck in the polls with less than four months until election day. Even after Biden’s disastrous TV debate performance last week, Trump has not capitalized on a decisive lead – which reflects how poorly both candidates are perceived by American voters.

Polls show that a clear majority of American citizens want the conflict in Ukraine settled by diplomacy. There is widespread misgiving over the enormous amounts of taxpayer money thrown at a regime notorious for its corruption, as well as the visceral fear that the conflict could spiral out of control into a nuclear World War Three.

Trump’s talk about brokering a peace deal before he is inaugurated on January 20, 2025, seems to be nothing more than an expedient bet that such a position might be enough to garner a winning edge among undecided voters and get him back to the White House.

Nothing wrong with that, one might say. After all, surely some attempt at peaceful diplomacy is better than none, no matter how cack-handed that attempt might be.

The trouble is Trump has no credibility. The last time he was in the White House (2016-20), he proved useless at standing up to the deep state despite his promises to normalize relations with Russia. Admittedly, his presidency was assailed by the baseless Russia-gate hysteria promoted by the U.S. establishment and its servile media to undermine him.

Nevertheless, on key issues, Trump showed himself to be a willing instrument for U.S. imperialist interests.

A major sign of weakness was Trump’s approval of sending lethal weapons to the Kiev regime. He broke a crucial taboo. Even his predecessor, the Democrat President Barack Obama, had refused to go that far. Obama and his then Vice President Joe Biden oversaw the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 ushering in a NeoNazi Russia-hating regime. But the sending of lethal U.S. weaponry to that regime was off the cards – so provocative was it deemed. Trump broke that taboo in 2019 when he ordered the supply of $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to the NeoNazis.

That move emboldened the Kiev regime to ramp up its aggression against the ethnic Russian population in the Donbass region. That genocidal offensive eventually led to Russia intervening in February 2022 and safeguarding the region as a new part of the Russian Federation.

Moreover, it was Trump who scrapped two key arms control measures with Russia, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Open-Skies Treaty. We can be sure that Trump did not personally initiate those provocative moves. He was obeying the deep state planners and their agenda of pushing confrontation with Russia.

By revoking the INF, the United States has found a legal way to supply medium-range ballistic missiles to Ukraine which are being used to strike Russia’s territory.

In that way, arguably, Trump played a pivotal and baleful role in stoking the proxy war in Ukraine that was primed in 2014 under Obama and eventually erupted in 2022 under Biden.

It should also be borne in mind that Trump gave his support to the massive $61 billion military supplement to Ukraine passed by the U.S. Congress in April this year. Trump caved in after making earlier gripes about the aid. That aid has prolonged the war unnecessarily.

Granted, Trump has at other times bickered about U.S. money being squandered on the Kiev regime. He has also repeatedly moaned about European members of NATO not spending enough, threatening to withdraw the U.S. from the military alliance if they don’t cough up more. This is typical Trump haggling and egoism that has nothing to do with questioning the principle of NATO as an instrument of U.S. imperialism. Trump just wants to do it more on the cheap and, like a Mafia don, get the European lackeys to pay more for the American protection racket.

Trump is an unscrupulous loose cannon who will do nothing to end the conflict in Ukraine. Besides, the U.S. and NATO planners are talking about “Trump proofing” their plans for aggression against Russia so that if he somehow gets back into the White House, he won’t deflect their bellicose policy.

Biden is decrepit and Trump is pathetic. Both are operatives of the deep state who only differ in their foul-mouthed style.

Peace in Ukraine will come when the U.S. imperialist rulers realize that Russia’s terms are the only acceptable option, as reiterated this week by Putin. Russia’s territorial gains from the artificial statelet that is Ukraine and the latter’s non-membership of NATO are non-negotiable.

Then diplomacy can begin. But it won’t be initiated by either Biden or Trump. It’s the unelected deep state in the U.S. that needs to come to its senses under the duress of defeat in Ukraine.