Since when does a client state tell its sponsor state whom to elect?

Seems we have that right now with Ukraine telling us what kind of president we need to elect in 2024.

According to Newsweek:

A top Ukrainian diplomat has said Kyiv is hoping for "reasonable" candidates in the 2024 United States presidential election, adding that Ukrainian leaders believe American bipartisan support is strong enough that the race will not undermine vital financial and military support for the war-torn nation.

Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko—Kyiv's envoy to the United Kingdom who previously served as Ukraine's foreign minister—told Newsweek in an interview at the nation's embassy in London that Kyiv's priority is to avoid the politicization of its defensive fight against Moscow.

"If we can avoid this, it would be great," Prystaiko said. "If we can have somebody pro-Ukrainian, it would be perfect. I wouldn't expect us to have a pro-Ukrainian president; that's the way we want to describe them each and every time, as would any nation. No, I would expect them just to be reasonable."

 

The subtext is that any candidate who isn't onboard for a full blank check to Ukraine, whatever it costs and however long it takes to expel invading Russia, is somehow "unreasonable."

And what exactly is he going to do if we don't elect this sort of candidate? Americans tend to react very badly when foreigners tell them how to vote, which John Kerry learned the hard way, when British voters began sending letters to Ohio voters to vote for Kerry. Obviously, he doesn't know this, but it should be common sense.

He used Ron DeSantis's unfortunate walkback of his arguments about not supporting, and then supporting, Ukraine, as his proof. DeSantis was, you see, reasonable.

Trump was the one who bothered him:

Prystaiko, though, told Newsweek that Ukraine is confident of deep and bipartisan backing.

"It suggests only that they are coming up to the moment when they have to say everything and anything against what the Democrats are saying," he said of DeSantis' recent remarks. "He is saying something that will resonate with voters because the other side of the political spectrum is saying the opposite."

"You always have to be radically opposed if you want to be seen, if you want to stand out from the crowd," Prystaiko added. "He changed his position realizing, and his team realizing, that he went too far."

Trump's statements are more troubling. The former president has repeatedly echoed Kremlin talking points, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity in March: "The key is the war has to stop now because Ukraine is being obliterated."

Trump also said he would have prevented Putin's invasion, though on terms entirely unacceptable to Kyiv.

"At worst, I could've made a deal to take over something, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could've worked a deal," the former president said.

Prystaiko—who was serving as Ukraine's foreign minister while Trump was in office—said he agreed that the former president's rhetoric is more worrying: "I still believe that so much can be done."

So that's "unreasonable"? Seems he forgot that President Trump sent Ukraine lethal aid during his presidency in striking contrast to the Obama-Biden administration before it, in the run-up to the invasion. Ukraine failed to arm up in the interim and got caught by surprise when Russia invaded.

Even as he was sure of bipartisan backing, he also suggested that a 'reasonable' president would probably have to be Democrat. He grasped that supporting the Ukraine war, no matter how badly it bogged down the U.S., left it without ammo for its own defense needs, and left it powerless against a rising China, was a Democrat issue, and hastened to insist that it really wasn't.

Ukraine will not choose sides, Prystaiko said.

"If Ukraine wants to play a particular political party—and I believe that many nations try it in the U.S.—my only advice as the former minister of foreign affairs is don't. Just don't," he said.

"First of all, it's much more complicated than anybody can imagine. It's too complicated to play any games. Second, give yourselves a chance to actually believe in the democratic process. What is wrong with that? Let them elect their own leaders...They naturally have their own interests and foreign interests. And this interest, generally, works in our favor."

"The picture some have in their minds that Ukraine is somehow aligned with Democrats is wrong," he said.

The constant visits of prominent American lawmakers from both parties, Prystaiko said, signifies that disputes on Ukraine do not represent "a core problem," but rather "their internal debate."

Such visits are highly important, he added.

 Those visits conducted for partisan purposes are "highly important"? Really? Why does he say that?

He also had an extremely skewed view of what's going on in the states, in claiming that there was bipartisan support for the war in Ukraine, -- and then listed all the reasons why there wasn't, citing the fact that most of the billions in aid was going to consultant contracts. Maybe that's a problem for a lot of us in the states on the Republican side?

He also surreally argued that the impeachment of President Trump, and Ukraine's failure to come to his defense over that phone call, was something he was sure Trump wouldn't hold a grudge against Ukraine on.

Get a load of this:

Prystaiko said he does not think that Trump will retain any ill will towards Kyiv.

"Ukraine has nothing to do with that," he said of the first impeachment of the former president. "Nobody could prove, reasonably, that actually he was pressuring Zelensky," he added.

"Everybody was attributing it to pressure on a particular issue," the diplomat said, referring to the supposed investigation into Biden. But, he added, the focus of the call was actually about "something else which I'm not going to reveal, for our own Ukrainian reasons."

Really? Why shouldn't he reveal the truth and let the chips fall where they may? The whole specter of that impeachment was based on false claims and slimey bureaucrats and phony whistleblowers. Had that effort succeeded, and it might have, Ukraine would have carried on in its merry way? It sounds like Trump might have been onto something with their corrupt involvement of Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukrainian oligarch affairs. Perhaps there was more to it than just deep state malice towards Trump, given that Ukraine failed to step up with the truth of the matter. We'd like to know what they were hiding.

But rest assured, Trump won't care that they passively tried to let Democrats have their way, basically interfering with American leadership by default. 

And all this, after assuring us that Trump was "unreasonable"?

He didn't seem to grasp that Trump acts in the U.S. interest and whether it's in the U.S. interest to get bogged down in an unwinnable war without negotiating some kind of deal with the Russians, and yes, Ukraine can't have it all, not when they depend almost entirely on us for their war effort. The guy who writes the checks, writes the terms, as human affairs go, but like an ungrateful welfare recipient, he's still telling us what to do.

Unlimited funding. Total victory. NATO membership. And full autonomy for Ukraine to act like a medieval fiefdom complete with a corrupt overclass instead of a contributing western democracy.

It's amazing chutzpah, in more ways than one, and cripes, this guy is a diplomat.

It echoes the amazing rudeness of another of Ukraine's top diplomats, the jerk who insulted Elon Musk who bailed out their internet system in record time after the Russians blew it out, and then got called a Russian agent for merely suggesting a negotiated solution to get the war over with.

Remember him?

WASHINGTON — American tech billionaire Elon Musk drew the public ire of Ukraine’s top officials Monday after the Tesla CEO tweeted what he claimed was the most likely outcome of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

“F--- off is my very diplomatic reply to you,” Ukraine’s outgoing ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, wrote in response to Musk’s tweet. “The only outcome is that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f…ing tesla crap. So good luck to you.”

This is amazing stuff. First they insult Musk, now they insult American voters. Who are these bounders and why are we giving them money? If they want help, maybe it's time for another government in Ukraine. We know that Obama and Biden have meddled in Ukraine this way. Apparently, it's all these characters know of democracy now, because they are feeling high and mighty with all that American money -- and acting just like them, throwing it back to the states.

Image: Immanuelle, CDJP1, Bacon Noodles & Physeters, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0