The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said that a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin resulted in an agreement to work towards a ceasefire in Ukraine. Fighting has escalated in the separatist Donbas region over the past week with hundreds of explosions reported.
The coming talks will come under the Normandy Format. In 2015, Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine developed the Minsk Protocols conducted within the Normandy Format. Minsk II has been mostly successful in keeping fighting in Ukraine’s civil war to a minimum.
Recent talks between the four parties took place in Berlin, without any progress. At that time, the next meeting was planned for March.
It seems the pace of that diplomacy will now rapidly accelerate. Macron planned to speak with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz shortly after his call with Putin. The French statement said, “intense diplomatic work will take place in the coming days.”
The Kremlin confirmed Elysee’s statement. The Russian press release said that Putin raised the issue of “pumping of modern weapons and ammunition by NATO countries into Ukraine, which pushes Kiev to a military solution to the so-called Donbass problem.”
The potential Paris-Moscow breakthrough comes as the US government is adamant that a Russian invasion will occur. On Sunday, CBS News reported, “The U.S. has intelligence that Russian commanders have received orders to proceed with an invasion of Ukraine.”
While Biden says he is convinced that Putin has decided on invasion, Macron has continued to say Putin has made no such decision. After a meeting with Macron earlier this month, Putin said that a proposal from Paris laid the basis for a potential resolution.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
What clever boys are these Western leaders. One says Putin decided to invade Ukraine. Another — he did not. Same Bs. It keeps up the narrative that Russia will unvade eventually, even though all that is hapening is staging a military assault on Donbas.
ONLY ehen I hear Macron and Scholtz say firmly that Ukraine cannot declare all citizens of Donbas terrorists and is NOT justified to take it by force. And when they say in no uncertain terms that Minsk avreement implementation is the ONLY choice.
But that will not happen.
Biden has given green light for Ukraine to attack Donbas. Russia knows it, so population is evacuating to safety. This will give Donbas armed forces freedom to ooerate without exposing civilians to dsnger.
It does look like Biden is having jitters — some information/disinformation surfaced, and his clique needs time to assess.
Voila Macron!
We are now serious, cross our hearts! France and Germany saw the light! Let is talk Normandy. Burgundy, Rwanda Burundi and Burkina Faso.
Buying time and fishing for clues what Russia will do.
Russia is blessed with better advisers in China. BoJo, Macron and helpless Scholtz are no match.
Well said!
Or perhaps Scholz and Macron are realizing they are the US’s sacrificial lambs and are looking for ways to throw some sand into the gears of the planned war/sanctions machine. One can only hope …
Agreed. I was tracking with you until I remembered you’re talking about Macron (neoliberal pro-war track record), Olaf (first decision he made after becoming chancellor was continue to host 20 nuclear bombs in Germany), and Baerbock (a new kind of “green” neocon monster who insists we die in a nuclear holocaust rather than from clim8 change). I’m sorry to say all hope died abruptly.
You’re most likely to be right, NA. But I’m hoping against hope. These European leaders do have to deal with more pressures than just the US though and I’m hoping those pressures will cause them to seek peace here.
This won’t turn out well. If Ukraine wanted a ceasefire they would not have started the shelling. If one blames Russia for the escalation, as some do, same deal. Whoever started the shelling is the one to end it. If people don’t want to fight, people don’t fight. Q.E.D.
Also, Ukraine is under the control of the US CIA and the neocons. France and Germany have no say except under Minsk. The US is calling the shots. Therefore there will be no ceasefire (unless it looks like Ukraine is losing.)
Bianca has it right. Biden gave a green light for a new offensive on Donbass. There’s no other interpretation possible. The only possible question is how intense that offensive will be. Is it intended to be intense enough to draw Russia in? That is the goal I and others say is intended.
It is likely the conflict will intensify in coming days. There’s still an excellent chance for a false flag. In some cases, when preparing a false flag, you need an intensification of the conflict to “justify” the claim that one side engaged in a false flag in order to get a strategic advantage. So the more the fighing goes on, the more likely a false flag.
Syria is a clear example. The White Helmets engaged in false flags in order to get the US more directly involved in the war. In fact, since the White Helmets were financed to the tune of $100 million from the US and UK, clearly it was the US and UK who were conducting the false flags The same will apply in Ukraine.
The US has nothing to say, will make no offer, on the things Putin has said are so important to Russia that nothing else will matter.
This is just stalling for time.
Who benefits?
Russia might think that Ukraine’s government or NATO’s agreements will fall apart if given time to stew. It is time in which to leave it all under pressure, to see what if anything will fail under prolonged pressure.
Why would Russia invade the Donbas region? It does not make one iota of sense. It would not be in Russia’s interests to start a war right on its own doorstep some 500 km from Moscow. It would be in US interests as Biden can then impose his “massive sanctions” including the closure of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline on which he is hell bend to torpedo. Also Germany’s (as well as the whole of Europe) huge economic ties with China’s Eurasian B&R project are reasons for the declining hegemon to throw some massive “spanners in the works”. I remember Biden saying when interviewed on TV : “We will find a way”. That tell us enough.
This is all about the US $ losing fiat currency status if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline goes ahead (trade will be in Euros and/or Rubles and not US $ ) and the EU growing closer to Russia and China negating the “need” for NATO, the US $ crashing in value against other currencies, the US debt held by other countries coming due, and the resulting crash of the US economy.
I remember Biden saying that. Fortunately, the man is an incompetent idiot…
The Saker pretty much agrees with me that this is going no where, but Putin has every reason to go along with Macron.
What are Putin and Macron up to?
https://thesaker.is/what-are-putin-and-macron-up-to/
Why do they call Ukrainian forces Banderites? In 1943 Stepan Bandera’s followers massacred 70,000 Poles the majority of whom were unarmed men, women, and children. This mass killing took place in Volyn, Western Ukraine. In the spring and summer of 1943 peasants of Volyn under the leadership of the Galician intelligentsia using bullets, axes and other improvised means assassinated tens of thousands of Poles living in the villages and towns of the region. The political leadership of the OUN had suddenly realised that the Germans might lose the war. So because of the presence of the Polish population the political leadership had simply decided to get rid of that population to prevent Poland’s claim to Volyn. By 1945 the OUN had, in Eastern Galicia, killed 130,000. Many people had their eyes gouged out and were then hacked to death. After WWII the OUN kept fighting against the forces of the USSR and People’s Poland until 1949.
“To initiate a war of aggression,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
From the historical reference in Volyn we can clearly see that Obama / Biden in Ukraine were using the supreme international crime as a means of preventing Russia’s claims to the Donbass. And Poroshenko as one of Obama’s missives gives a speech where for the first time in history a Western leader boasts about targeting woman and children. Poroshenko stated….“We will have our jobs, they will not. We will have our pensions, they will not. We will have care for children, for people and retirees, they will not. Our children will go to schools and kindergartens… theirs will hole up in the basements. Because they are not able to do a thing. This is exactly how we will win this war!” Keep in mind he is talking about Ukrainians, his fellow countrymen. He openly flouts international law, his militia’s use cluster and phospherous munitions against all conventions. He terrorises civilian populations. This was Obama’s/Biden’s strategy to win this civil war, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
What followed were fraudulent elections where ethnic cleansing and genocide predictably yielded a pro US and pro EU client regime. One can perhaps understand why many Russian speakers in the eastern Ukraine took up arms in 2014 when they saw the flags of the OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists) proudly displayed in Kiev after the violent overthrow of the elected government.
Excellent historical oversight. You are very well informed !
Good post and information! (I do not blow kisses though, like your other responder…)
🙂
The pattern of history says the main protagonists cannot untangle their core interests. That is only possible if the motive of power is accepted by all sides. But that is very remote.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
What is Macron offering Putin? Another meeting with Biden? Y’all should be thankful I’m not Putin. I’m vehemently antiwar but after 5 minutes of listening to Biden’s drivel (reading from a statement prepared by the likes of Nuland), even I would start fiddling with that nuclear button hidden under the table.
Looks like French President Macron has literally elbowed Biden out of the room.
About time someone put Biden in his own echo chamber considering the demented fool has no idea of the fire he is playing with.
So we go from an Orange Moron to a Demented Incompetent. I can no longer determine which is worse but it looks like the US federal government is on the verge of a political collapse…
I just wish that Europe kicks the U.S. out for good and deals with it’s security problems on it’s own. I am, though, not in favour of military expansion in the continent as I think said concerns are, at the moment, rather minimal, except for climate change, but that should not be adressed with the military.