Outside the dust and smoke of the fiery encounter US President Donald Trump and Ukraine counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky had in the Oval Office, which has unavoidably been serially screened on TV and reflected in newspaper headlines, is a revolution that most miss of what is happening in America.

Predictably, most readers of this diplomacy failure or lapse out of this Trump-Zelensky encounter have primarily apportioned it to rude Trump and cast him as having lost the manners of the Presidency to stay there. Trump stands guilty as charged in the gallery of those who have ruled him a write-off on the road in the exercise of public power.

Likewise, to the global North West countries’ consenting media, beloved Zelensky is cast as angelic David standing up to the bully Goliath Trump. By this scripted line punted by the US-led military alliance the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Trump is bad. Zelensky is good. And so should sympathies resonate according to this gospel. 

The revolution being missed in the incantation behind this gospel, as outlined by a former US weapons inspector and analyst, Scott Ritter, is in terms of primarily the dismantling of the Deep State in America.

The deep state is reputed to be the unshakable interests within governments dictating self-serving terms of engagement to any incoming and outgoing administration to call the shots to any US President, be s/he a Democrat or Republican. Thus far, for America, it has been a he. The deep state delights in seeing governments come and go and does not care a hoot about the will of the people.  

The will of the people does not rank supreme once presidents step into office. Nothing, it seems, Trump does in the direction ringing familiarity with the will of the people, would redeem him to be pardoned for his unpresidential demeanour to blameless Zelensky as a guest that came to the Oval Office on February 28, 2025.

Does it mean nothing that Trump does has any relationship to what he had promised he would do upon occupying the office of the President in the US? 

It is not so much the love or hate of Trump that should move admirers or outragees,  but more what he says and does that should meet the eye of the ringing changes that are more than of spectator value by the sheer audacity of confronting the untold malfeasance in the US political system.

That there would be uncelebrated persons of more than 150 years of age as recipients of social security defies understanding. Did this escape Trump in his first term as the 44th President of the United States? Did this keep repeating itself in two terms of predecessor Joe Biden as the 45th and 46th president? With clear answers yet to come from businessman Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in this area, in walks Zelensky as Trump’s guest.

Not to be missed in this unsavoury Trump-Zelensky encounter are the embedded open and hidden agendas of the European Union (EU), billing themselves as the wind beneath Zelensky’s heroic wings to fly a NATO flag in these warring geopolitical skies in which Russia is the villain raining on the EU’s eastward expansion parade.

Trump has made himself clear that both Ukraine and the EU have no convincing means to act tough on Russia without America. 

The unfolding reality is that intended sanctions on Russia have, in fact, seen Russia emerge economically more independent and stronger, while two of the EU’s lead countries, Germany and France, are showing signs of being weak on the knees to retain their postures as reputed industrial success stories. 

EU’s sanctions on Russia saw Germany figuratively and literally cutting itself off from affordable gas and oil from Moscow, negatively impacting its economic viability. The bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline supplies to Europe did not help, either. 

Opting for  America’s supplies proved more expensive for Germany, leading to strained operations in its motor industry and the consequence of closure to some. The unforeseen resurgence of anti-neo-colonial developments in the West African states cannot be said to be a bolt out of the blue to France. The pact for the continuation of colonialism between France and its former colonies has been under a big question for some time. 

Concerted efforts to isolate Russia have had the unintended consequence of bringing the country closer to China. Russia and China’s membership in the BRICS region opened the possibility of using their respective currencies to partially and increasingly eclipse the weaponization of the dollar. 

The revolution taking place in America is clearly not understood by the entrance of the Afrikaans-speaking whites (Afriforum being the leader of the pack) and the DA, which had thrown its eggs in the Ukrainian basket, contrary to SA’s non-aligned position in the Russia- Ukraine war.

By allowing for the draping of state buildings in the Western Cape with colours of the Ukrainian flag, as though another country to South Africa, was the DA’s inexplicable mark of allegiance.

From Trump’s standpoint, Putin and Russia mattered more to him than Zelensky and Ukraine in the post-war settlement prospects, for which Putin holds the aces. 

Having behaved as though it were in the EU orbit rather than SA, DA must be deeply contemplating how many chickens will hatch out of the eggs it had counted for safekeeping in the Ukrainian basket. 

The unrepentant Afrikaaner lobbyists have been riding the crest of success in their fight with the ANC for the preservation of white privilege. 

The anti-clockwise campaigners for the eradication of South Africa’s enduring legacy of racism nevertheless enjoy the audience of Musk, along with two other US-based former SA PayPal tech billionaires, Roelof Botha and David Sacks, who are clearly not motivated by the milk of human kindness to invest in the unfinished business of the liberation project. Heaven can wait rather than imperil white privileges.

Well positioned as earkeepers of what Trump hears, these expatriates are now buoyed to direct the course of SA politics and assured the US President’s lips will never be heard moving with messages spelling the liberation of black people.

This newfound power of SA expatriates in the US shall wither when the glue of racism melts against the sanitising sunlight of international awareness beaming of white privilege that deems actual material deliverance of the struggling majority as whites being treated badly.

Trump’s support for Israel puts him in the same boat as his predecessor, Biden. That support of Trump for Israel, though, is not Putin’s cup of tea to raise as an obstacle to US-Russia rapprochement. However, the denazification of Ukraine is one of the driving agenda items for Putin waging war in Ukraine. 

As former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter has outlined, it should be remembered that there were clear objectives that Russia had on the launch of its military operation in Ukraine:

1. Denazification

2. ⁠Demilitarisation in terms of putting NATO on notice to security concerns of Russia’s borders not to move further eastwards, 

3. ⁠non-membership of Ukraine into NATO

4. ⁠Protection and respect of Russian-speaking territories in Ukraine that this war rescued from Zelensky’s bombing massacres, that ultimately voted in a referendum to remain part of Russia.

⁠America’s undesirable co-operation of Russia with China is irreversible regarding China and Russia’s membership of BRICS. Russia says sanctions against it are a cause for the diminished use of the dollar by BRICS countries, of which it is a member.

⁠Against these stated objectives, for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, Trump’s bad mannered wrangling with Zelensky is no bone to chew on the part of Putin. 

Russia’s top five objectives appear firmly in Putin’s reach to bother what happens to Zelensky and the EU’s inconsequential status to the settlement of the Ukrainian war.

In dismantling America’s Deep State components (USAID/NED) that have been part of the arsenal in weakening Russia and propaganda, none holds as much sway as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is unearthing unaccountability largesses behind the runaway ‘regime change’ spending spree. 

If this projects Trump as against US ‘regime change’  programmes, war, and champion for normalisation of relations with Russia,  FF+’s extra parliamentary fellowship with Afriforum in the US and DA’s similar IRR crusade in the UK will not retain priority especially when Steve Bannon’s, another Trump fiery advisor, calls for SA ‘racist American billionaires based in the US to stop their nonsense or go back to South Africa’. 

Putin is saddened that his involvement in the Ukraine war has overstretched Russia’s capacity to save Syria from falling into ‘regime change’ schemes. 

Though America and Russia stand on opposite sides of Israel’s conduct in the Middle East, that is no obstacle to rapprochement between the two countries.  

In support of Israel, Trump has already seen to the announcement of sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC).

As far as the charges Israel is indicted for in The Hague, Putin appears to be deferring to the case brought to ICC, at SA’s initiative, to get to an adjudicative conclusion. 

Oupa Ngwenya is a Corporate Strategist, Writer and Freelance Journalist. He writes in his personal capacity.