[Salon] Pelosi makes unannounced trip to Kyiv ...

FM: John Whitbeck

As noted in the CNN news report at the link transmitted below, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proclaimed at a news confererence after meeting with President Zelensky in Kyiv: "America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won."

Prior to January 24, the U.S. government contemptuously dismissed President Putin's calls for implementation of the Minsk Agreements, which, endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution, had envisioned regional autonomy for the Donbas region under Ukrainian sovereignty, and for serious negotiations toward a new mutual security structure under which all European states could and would feel secure and unthreatened, effectively daring him to invade Ukraine.

He did so.

More recently, the U.S. government has been publicly promising massive transfers of armaments to the Ukrainian government and publicly proclaiming that Russia must be defeated, permanently weakened and isolated and that President Putin must be removed from power and tried as a war criminal, effectively daring him to use his nuclear arsenal if the U.S. government's proclaimed war aims were ever to appear close to realization.

How wise and responsible is it to publicly announce positions and objectives which it make it virtually impossible for the political leaders of either of the world's two major nuclear powers to accept anything less than "victory" in the current conflict?

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/01/politics/pelosi-zelensky-kyiv-ukraine-intl/index.html