Donald Trump made clear that his personal grudge with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t abated during a phone interview with NBC News.
Speaking with Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker on Saturday, the president knocked Zelensky for offering assistance to the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries, the latter of which the Ukrainian president said on Friday were seeking his aid in sharing drone detection technology.
The “last person we need help from is Zelensky,” Trump told Welker.
I think Zelensky is probably looking for some quid pro quo.
From Trump??!!
Obviously. It’s also meant as a “thank you for the support US have given Ukraine, allow us to share what we’ve learned in our drone warfare.”
But Trumps pride cannot handle that Zelensky might have something to teach the US when it comes to warfare.
No, they’ve been actively making this offer to all their allies for a while now. This isn’t recent. Everyone else took them up on it. Not a quid pro quo so much as just being a good friend to their good friends. The US could have been working with them on this for over a year IIRC, but they were too damn proud to accept any help from anyone else.
Most of the NATO countries training Ukrainians have been doing this since Day 1 (Mostly UK, Germany and Spain afaik). It’s one of the main reasons to offer continuous training at local bases rather than ‘just’ sending officers to Ukraine.
This is the first conflict between two modern militaries since the Falklands. And that wasn’t broadly applicable for many many reasons. From a pragmatic point of view, militaries have been absolutely desperate to ingest lessons learned from the moment we started sending our materiel.
I know for a fact that Canada has been paying very, very close attention.
Elbows up, eh?