Melania Trump Tries Her Southern Slav Magic on Russians and Ukrainians

First Lady Melania Trump steps into the spotlight of Russia-Ukraine peace talks this morning when she hosts Russian and Ukrainian envoys at the White House. The meeting is designed to celebrate an unprecedented local ceasefire that she forged last week. During the six-day break in fighting almost 800 Ukrainian civilians were evacuated by bus from the besieged city of Oleshky.The White House gathering comes amidst a renewed flurry of peace talks designed to end a conflict that has gone on longer than World War 1. Today, American, European and Ukrainian representatives wind up two days of talks in Brussels about security guarantees and post-war development assistance to Ukraine.Next Tuesday, White House envoys are to umpire talks in Abu Dhabi between Russia and Ukraine. These are the first such 3-way talks since February. The U.S.-Israel war against Iran interrupted the diplomatic process. Looking to next week, envoy Steve Witkoff posted on X: “Discussions will focus on post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian efforts.” At the same time, preparations are underway for an America-China-Russia heads of state meeting in China, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow yesterday. With Ukraine on the menu, the meeting is to take place in two weeks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese coastal city of Shenzhen.Fearing a modern version of the 1945 Yalta Conference that divided up post-World War II Europe, Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky warned: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”The talks — and the First Lady’s intervention — come after President Trump failed to make headway on a peace deal during the first half of his second term. The Democratic surge in Tuesday’s midterm election may narrow the President’s ability to maneuver after the new members of Congress take office on Jan. 3.Melania Trump is a native of Slovenia, a Central European nation, that literally means ‘land of the Slavs.’ A speaker of Slovenian and Serbian, the First Lady feels an affinity for the Eastern European peoples of Ukraine and Russia. The four Slavic languages are of the same language family.After several years of quietly mediating the return of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russian occupiers, Ms. Trump helped negotiate the ceasefire around the southern Ukrainian city of Oleshky. In recognition of her work, President Zelensky yesterday award her with the Order of Princess Olga, a Ukrainian decoration that honors women who have made exceptional contributions in such areas as education, culture and charitable work.“The mission was a success, delivering critical aid to the region and enabling the evacuation of nearly 800 people,” Melania Trump posted on X. She added that she hoped Oleshky “serves as a foundation for lasting peace between both nations.”The Oleshky ceasefire was the longest local pause in fighting since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. In recent days both German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Turkish President Erdoğan have separately hoped that the ceasefire could serve as a model for stopping attacks on ships in the Black Sea. Constant attacks on merchant ships in the Black Sea are blocking 100 million tons of grain from world export markets.Today’s White House event will be attended by two officials who helped carry out the ceasefire, Russia’s human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova and her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Lubinets. Also representing Ukraine will be David Arakhamia, head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People parliamentary faction. In the spring of 2022, at the start of Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, he was a lead negotiator in ceasefire talks.The Russian side will also include Kirill Dmitriev, a regular interlocutor with Trump envoys Witkoff and Jared Kushner. An alumnus of Stanford and a former Goldman Sachs banker, Mr. Dmitriev heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund.Russia press reaction to the wave of Democratic victories in the midterms is that Mr. Trump lost and that after January he will have less margin of maneuver. In that light, President Putin may push for a facesaving exit from the war. In a reflection of increasing financial pressure on the Kremlin, it is reported that payment of non-front line Russian soldiers will be delayed for two weeks around the time of Russia Orthodox Christmas, January 7.Publicly, Kremlin officials present a hardline. Mr. Putin shows no interested in ceasefires, local or theater-wide. On Monday, the day after the Oleshky ceasefire ended, Russian forces repeatedly bombed a food distribution center about 200 miles to the northeast. Civil defense workers put the toll at 40 dead and 59 missing.“It is important for Russia to finally engage in serious negotiations on a ceasefire and a subsequent peace agreement,” Chancellor Merz told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday. “I have not seen any sign of this so far.”Yesterday at a security conference in Minsk, Belarus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected localized ceasefires, asserting that the war will only end by “eliminating the root causes of the war unleashed by the West against us through the neo-Nazi regime it itself created.”Kremlin officials often call Ukrainians ‘Nazis’ because it dovetails with World War II movies, providing Russians with a ready-made enemy. In reality, President Zelensky is Jewish. His paternal grandparents and three great uncles were killed in the Holocaust.

Melania Trump Tries Her Southern Slav Magic on Russians and Ukrainians

Melania Trump Tries Her Southern Slav Magic on Russians and Ukrainians

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