The Obama Administration has spent the last week making a big deal about its consideration of arming the Ukrainian military for its ongoing civil war with the east. Other NATO members seem to be undercutting that strategy by trying to actually negotiate an end to the war.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were in Kiev today talking with the Ukrainain government, and are now flying on to Moscow to try to get their report for a new ceasefire leading to a settlement of the conflict.
The Moscow portion of the trip should be halfway easy, with Russia pushing hard for the ceasefire and a settlement in Ukraine involving federalization. They’ll doubtless be on board for anything that doesn’t demand unconditional rebel surrender.
The US remains the biggest obstacle to such a deal, as they’ve opposed any deal that doesn’t include unconditional rebel surrender and disarmament, and so long as they continue talking up new arms shipments, the Poroshenko government can hold out hopes that US arms will turn the tide of battle and give them a military victory.
If you observe the civil war, you will see that separatists are not against truce.In the summer 2014 they even surrounded the ukrainian army and let them go ! But after that Kiev waited for new arms,equipment and men and then bombed a civilian transport saying that separatists are willing blood and reattacked again.After what west is shouting : Russia attack again and the ukrainian army bomb in order "to defend herself".Usually at that moment Poroshenko ask for additional money to the west to defend Ukraine from bad Russia.It is a vicious circle.Maybe it is better to give a max of money to Poroshenko in order to stop all his attacks ?
Do not put it past the US if in the face of the increasing possibility of peace, some event occurs to sway the recalcitrant DMs back to the dark side.
Only in the American cloudcuckooland would anyone see negotiations as "undercutting" military preparations! The two are complementary to each other. As with Mr Ditz's other article re the European defence ministers, the "division of labour" is becoming clear. The Europeans negotiate but if Putin continues his Israeli tactics, the US will deal with him militarily. The EU speaks softly, the US has the big stick.
There is no possibility of peace. This is the classic good cop/bad cop strategy. Russia should end all negotiating. It is showing weakness to the empire. The only thing the empire understands is force.