Henry V or Hal9000?
JK, I appreciated the Shakespeare reference.
Zelensky invites Trump to Ukraine and says former president ‘can’t bring peace’ because of Putin
By Christian Edwards, CNN
Published 10:44 AM EST, Mon November 6, 2023
CNN — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited Donald Trump to visit Ukraine, after the former US president claimed he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine war within 24 hours if he wins reelection next year.
Zelensky questioned Trump’s claim in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, and invited him to visit Ukraine to see the scale of Russia’s invasion himself.
“If he can come here, I will need 24 minutes – yes, 24 minutes… to explain (to) President Trump that he can’t manage this war. He can’t bring peace because of Putin,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky also praised President Joe Biden for visiting Ukraine earlier this year, saying “I think he understood some details which you can understand only being here. So I invite President Trump.”
Trump claimed to CNN in May that the war would not have happened if he’d been president when Russia’s full-scale invasion began, and that he could settle the conflict in a day if he was reelected.
“If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours,” Trump told CNN. “I’ll meet with Putin. I’ll meet with Zelensky. They both have weaknesses and they both have strengths. And within 24 hours that war will be settled.”
Zelensky’s comments came after Ukraine’s top commander last week warned the war had entered a “stalemate,” and as he is fighting to maintain his hard-won support in a world distracted by conflict in the Middle East, and with US lawmakers divided over whether to continue funding Ukraine’s war effort.
Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, wrote in a long essay for The Economist that “just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that put us into a stalemate.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/06/euro ... index.html
Ukraine’s top general refuses request from Zelenskiy to step down
Personality clashes blamed for conflict between president and popular commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi
Dan Sabbagh, Artem Mazhulin and Luke Harding
Tue 30 Jan 2024 19.14 CET
Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his most senior military commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to step down on Monday but the popular general refused, triggering speculation that he will be dismissed instead.
Tensions between the two have been simmering for weeks amid the failure of Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive but the suggestion that Zaluzhnyi could be forced out nevertheless came as a shock to many.
Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.
He blamed personality clashes for the conflict. “Personally I think this is a bad idea. There are not fundamental issues between them but Zelenskiy’s office has been concerned that Zaluzhnyi has been making political not military statements,” Goncharenko said.
Expectations that Zaluzhnyi could be forced out imminently surfaced on social media on Monday afternoon. A couple of hours later, the defence ministry responded curtly: “Dear journalists, we immediately answer everyone: No, this is not true,” assuming that everybody reading understood what was being referred to.
It is not clear that the matter will end there. Goncharenko said Zelenskiy could dismiss Zaluzhnyi and replace him – a process that requires the support of the defence minister – after assessing the public and international reaction.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... he-refused