It would be extremely difficult for me to accept a simple explanation of how Ukraine ended up at war with Russia. And, I believe, anyone who summarizes the conflict in a one liner is just being lazy in my opinion.

The first stone

It's important to know who attacked first, because if we don't start from this verifiable fact, we can't really expect to operate in reality.

It's also important to know that the invasion that began Feb 24, 2022, was also not the first time Russia had invaded Ukraine in recent history. And, because we have precedent of how Putin operates and thinks, this also has to be taken into consideration in order for us to form a cogent opinion about this whole thing.

About Zelensky

We can have personal opinions about the man, about his qualifications, and God knows I have my reservations about the man too. The way he came into power was also very unusual, but to make everything that happened, and that is happening about the man, is to miss the forest for the trees.

The relationship that the US has developed with Ukraine, with Zelensky can be scrutinized, and arguably should be, but all the propaganda that is being created to muddy the waters is distorting everything and rotting people's minds.

I've seen people attack Zelensky for being a Nazi and also a Zionist, and I would not be surprised if some people held both ideas in their heads at the same time.

Also, the idea that Zelensky is some sort of dictator seems rather ridiculous as well. It's easy to verify that the law in Ukraine states that if they are under war, under martial law, elections are postponed until they are not. But again, today we prefer narrative over facts, and that is how the propaganda war works.

America's interests

Granted I'm neither an expert nor a prophet to predict what could happen if America decided to change the way it's being doing things for decades. We know now, without a doubt, that America's international policy has more to do with selling weapons than diplomacy and that is by design.

So when I hear that the US has to foot the bill for a War across the pond, what I truly understand is: "We gotta make our monies here"

Aside from the fact or should I say, the possibility that most Americans don't want a single penny to go to Ukraine, we can't say that what America has been doing is beyond reproach, above the tentacles of corruption either. To put it plainly, the "help" we are giving Ukraine is not entirely for the love of democracy.

That being said...

The ramp off, Negotiations

Trump said in his campaign plenty of times that he would end the conflict in one day. It was one of those promises that made people cheer as if everyone had a relative in Ukraine, but alas the snippet of undefinable action was effective at rallying troops at least.

Now, we know that he was being hyperbolic at best, but at least most of us hoped that the war would end, and that US would stop spending money fixing other countries, without addressing the blatant problems we are facing domestically.

Because we should be living in reality, we assumed, or at least I assumed, that when Trump was back in the chair, he would have conversations with Putin and Zelensky. I hoped that a compromise would be met, and that we could finally put this whole thing behind us, but things are not looking that great.

I'm having a hard time grasping, understanding how our current situation even came to be. We have Trump, the president of the US negotiating peace with Putin, without having Zelensky being part of said conversation.

What am I to conclude here?

I guess if we lived in the times of Monarchies what we are witnessing would make a lot of sense. Two kings negotiating the future of a small kingdom, without the "weak puny king" being part of said negotiation was probably how things worked back then, but I thought we were past that point. I guess, I was wrong.