Three years ago, at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I wrote a blog saying that since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1989, the USA had been baiting the Russian bear and now, under its appalling despot, Putin, the bear was biting back and the cost was being borne by Ukraine.

When NATO was founded in 1949, it was a pact between 12 states, dominated by its one super-power member, the USA. NATO was intended to provide north Atlantic countries with collective defence against the Soviet Union, but it has been dragged into whatever dispute the USA was inclined to engage in, ranging from Afghanistan to Syria, Libya, Iraq and Serbia.

At the time of German reunification  in 1990, when the political map of Europe was being re-drawn, the NATO member states gave assurances to Yeltsin and Gorbachov, successive presidents of the new Russian Federation,  that there would be no eastward expansion of NATO beyond the eastern border of Germany. Telling lies comes easily to most politicians and there have been numerous denials that any such assurances were given, but the record is clear.

At first there were approaches from Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Iceland, Portugal, Norway, Turkey, Greece and the Baltic states seeking membership, but they were rebuffed until Clinton (dim enough and misogynistic enough to be a US president) stepped in and the rest of the NATO members caved in. NATO now has 30 member states.

This has left Russia completely encircled to the west. Were the NATO states so naive as to think there would be no reaction from Russia?

Trump, whose cognitive powers are very limited and whose grasp of history, even recent history, is clouded by his restricted concentration span, recently blamed Ukraine for starting the current war.

In fact, the proximal guilty party is Putin, but the distal guilt is owned by Trump’s predecessor, Bill Clinton.

By 2014, the baited bear was readying for war like a wound-up spring, led by a murderous autocrat who models himself on Peter the Great and Stalin. It was the emergence of a distinctly democratic and pro-western government in Kyiv which brought the bear-baiting to a head. Intent on embodying Ukraine within Russia, Putin launched his war.

Russian forces now occupy 20 per cent of Ukraine, with as many as 3.5 million Ukrainians living under occupation.

Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced within Ukraine or to other countries. Much of the country’s infrastructure and housing has been blasted to smithereens. Ukraine has suffered up to 130,000 military casualties and over 12,000 civilian deaths.

When this bloody war is over, who is to be responsible for reparation?

I would argue that Russia, as the proximal guilty party, should bear a major part of the burden, but so should the NATO states, as the distal guilty party.

In Trump’s world of make-believe, in which Britain has chosen to join him, the USA is at least as deserving of reparation as Ukraine. In compensation for the armaments supplied to the Ukrainian army, Trump demands $500million of reparations from war-ravaged and bankrupted Ukraine.

Accordingly, the US would get 50 per cent of the revenues from Ukraine’s oil and gas reserves and 50 per cent of the money made from its mineral resources, including its lithium, uranium, heavy metals and rare earth elements, in all valued at something like $11.5 trillion.

This raid on Ukraine’s natural resources by US big business, represented by Trump, makes Ukraine virtually a colony of the USA, exploited as colonies usually are and left to rehabilitate itself on whatever money Trump is prepared to dole out.

During his recent sycophantic visit to Washington, our pathetic prime Minister gave his blessing to this rape of Ukraine.

We, the British people, will have opportunity to show our displeasure at this Trumpian robbery plan during the orange Donald’s projected State Visit, when we can show how even more blisteringly unwelcome he is than last time he darkened our door.

This blog was written on 2nd March, 2025, a few hours before the memorable televised argument between presidents Trump and Zelensky and US Vice President Vance.

Vice President, J D Vance, once likened Trump to Hitler. However, they are now bosom pals and Vance is clearly shaping himself to be the next Republican candidate for the Presidency.

Trump promised the world that, with his wonderful diplomatic skills, he could bring about peace between Russia and Ukraine within days of taking Office.

In a long telephone conversation with Putin, having not first conferred with his NATO allies or Zelensky, Trump offered Ukraine on a plate. Putin must have thought his Christmas had come early. In exchange for a ceasefire, Trump offered him all the territory currently occupied by Russian forces and Ukraine permanently blocked from NATO membership.

This is not the first time trump has sold out Ukraine. Back in July 2018, Trump and Putin  had a summit meeting in Helsinki. Much to the consternation of his entourage of advisers, Trump insisted on meeting Putin alone, but for an interpreter. Trump bragged that nobody could “butter up” a tough  opponent like he could. Well, he came out of the long meeting looking like a “beaten dog”, according to some of his party. He refused to give an account of the meeting, but there were leaks about it in Russia, which bizarrely included an offer from Trump that there could be a plebiscite in eastern Ukraine offering the population a vote to stay in Ukraine or to be annexed to Russia.

Such a sell-out led to speculation that perhaps the Russians had some kind of hold over Trump, information so hot that it could bring about his downfall in the run-up to his first Presidential bid.

In his book, Siege, Trump Under Fire (2019) |Michael Wolff, American columnist, gives an account of rumours circulating in Washington in 2017, shortly before |trump’s first presidential Inauguration. The story goes that video and audio tapes existed of scandalous scenes in Trump’s room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013. Trump was there for the Miss Universe Pageant, as owner of the Miss Universe organisation. On the evening of his arrival, the story runs, a group of prostitutes was sent up to his room, where he watched them performing ‘golden showers’, urinating on the king-size bed. This met with flat denial from Trump. He had not spent that night at the hotel. He claimed that he and his security aide had gone from the airport on Saturday morning to the hotel merely so that he could change his clothes before going to the pageant and then dinner and back to the airport. Wolff uncovered another version, which had Trump arriving in Moscow a day earlier, on Friday and making use of his room throughout the day. So Trump was caught out telling another whopper, just like his denial of having spent a night with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, although he paid her a large sum to keep quiet.

The so-called pee-tapes may surface one day. Rumours of his urolagnia, or urophilia, “watersports or pissing fetish are not as serious as the certainty of his instigation of the 6th January 2021 storming of  the capitol and that did his presidential prospects no harm. If the Russians hold those sordid tapes, they have him at their mercy and this might  explain his betrayal of Ukraine.