The Washington Post reported on Monday that Biden administration officials say they want to help Ukraine retake as much territory as it can from Russia over the next few months before they sit down at the negotiation table with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The report, which cited unnamed Biden administration officials, said that some “optimists” think Ukraine can stop Russian advances in the east, regain territory in the south, and negotiate a deal by the end of the year. But there are “skeptics” who recognize that Russia has been reinforcing its positions with hundreds of thousands of troops.
Russia has been making more gains around the eastern Donetsk city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian forces have been taking heavy casualties. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia has started its long-awaited offensive, but it’s not clear if Russia has launched a major push or the momentum is just on its side in Bakhmut, where Russian and Ukrainian forces have been locked in battle for months.
Ukraine’s Western backers, including those in the Biden administration, think Kyiv has been sinking too many resources in the battle of Bakhmut and want them to focus elsewhere. The Post report said that American military analysts and planners think it’s unrealistic for Ukraine to continue defending Bakhmut and launch a spring counteroffensive in another area.
The report said that the Biden administration conveyed to Ukraine that it might not be able to receive the massive amount of assistance Washington has provided indefinitely. “We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” an administration official said.
The message to Ukraine is that they face a pivotal moment in the war, and the recent weapons packages and ones that will soon be announced will give them their best chance to turn the tide. The US has recently pledged a series of massive arms packages to Ukraine that include longer-range missiles, Abrams tanks, and Bradley fighting vehicles, although some of the equipment could take years to deliver.
The report cited conservative Republicans who have said they want to stop providing aid and the fact that it’s not clear how long Europe can support the war as reasons why the assistance might not continue at these levels. This message comes despite constant pledges from the US and its allies that they will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
“‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict. It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance,” the administration official said.
There are other signs that the US is thinking about an end game for the war, including recent comments from Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the head of the House Armed Services Committee. Rogers suggested the US and NATO should pressure Ukraine on what victory will look like, which he said should help “drive Putin and Zelensky to the table to end this thing this summer.”
Ukrainian officials have maintained their goal is to drive Russia out of all the territory it controls, including Crimea. But officials in the US don’t think taking Crimea is a realistic goal.
Any deal that Russia and Ukraine reach in the future would likely involve Kyiv ceding more territory than it would have if an agreement was reached earlier in the war or if the Minsk agreements were implemented before the Russian invasion. The Minsk agreements were drawn up to end the Donbas war and would have involved Kyiv ceding autonomy to separatists in the east, but the region would have remained part of Ukraine.
The Minsk accords were brokered in 2014 and 2015 by France and Germany, but former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently said the deal was meant to buy Ukraine time for a war with Russia, suggesting they were never meant to be implemented.
The only time negotiations had a chance during the current conflict in Ukraine was in the early days of the war, but those efforts were impeded by the US and its allies. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently revealed his attempts to mediate a peace deal in March 2022 were “blocked” by the US.
Later in March 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul. They reportedly tentatively agreed on a deal around that time that would have involved Russia withdrawing to the pre-invasion lines in exchange for some form of Ukrainian neutrality with security guarantees. But former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kyiv and urged Zelensky not to negotiate, said the West didn’t want to sign a deal with Russia, and the talks ultimately failed.
In other words, the US is against negotiating for peace.
D.C. just recently marched Miley out to repeat the propaganda that ‘Russia is losing the war’. Considering that the U.S. hasn’t been part of war victory team since WW2, I would give it as much credence as the aliens are coming.
The fact that Washington is talking about conditions for a negotiated peace says to me that a faction in the administration is now looking for an off-ramp, and has a voice. Naturally, the maniac drivers who want to accelerate the war toward WW III take no interest in that idea.
As so often, the US is talking out of both sides of its mouth. At this point, I’d predict that anything and everything is possible.
Looking for an offramp they can sell as “Victory”…..!!!! The RUB is to whom they need to sell this negotiated peace? If they need to sell it to Zelensky, then it will require all Russians off “Ukraine land, and Russia will be using its nukes B4 they abandon all such land. So this negotiated peace “feeler” is in essence a ruse because there isn’t going to be any Ukie victory period.
My feeling is that they are looking for something they can sell to the American public. The administration has the public worked up into such a war lather against Russia that it now needs a plausible ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment before dumping Ukraine alongside Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here’s an interesting quote from General Mark Milley, reported today (16 Feb.)in The Guardian:
“It will be almost impossible for the Russians to achieve their political objectives by military means. It is unlikely that Russia is going to overrun Ukraine. It’s just not going to happen.
“It would also be very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to kick the Russians out of every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine”, he said, adding: “It’s not to say that it can’t happen … But it’s extraordinarily difficult. And it would require essentially the collapse of the Russian military.”
I read that to say that the US may claim “Victory!” if Ukraine accepts the loss of the four oblasts in contention, as well as Crimea.
The US/Ukraine/EU/NATO may be willing to “accept the loss” (into frozen conflict, not rhetorically) of the two oblasts which seceded in 2014 anyway.
There’s a slim possibility that they might even back off and not try to hard to retake the land corridor along the Azov coast through Zaporizhia oblast connecting those two oblasts to Crimea.
They’re not going to “accept the loss” of the other two oblasts, because there’s not any plausible military scenario under which they can’t prevent that “loss” for the foreseeable future.
The reality of the success of Russia’s counteroffensive is beginning to sink in. Washington must prepare the masses for significant losses without thoroughly rattling the thousands of AFU conscripts who will be sacrificed to retain key strongholds such as Bakhmut.
Biden doesn’t want to be blamed for their deaths. So, his mythmakers have quite a job before them.
I agree, anything and everything is possible as conditions become more and more desperate.
Who in America cares about AFU conscripts? Kiev regime also doesn’t care about them. Besides they can do nothing about that. Ukraine/NATO military forces are awfully outgunned and yet it is politically unacceptable for them to retreat and create a more efficient line of defense. Probably it is too late already; they wasted too many soldiers in Bakhmut.
Biden cares. His most important goal is to weaken Russia. The longer Ukraine holds out, the closer he gets to his goal. To him, and to Zelensky, AFU conscripts are necessary, but expendable, pawns.
That’s what I say, they are expendable and no one cares how many of them die.
Yes, it’s political, absolute necessity peace-posturing (regardless the patent absurdity) to the suckers while ramping up production in military industries, re-arming and recruiting.
It is remarkable how NATO politicians and NATO mass media are talking about this conflict; it is always about the territory and never about the people who are living there. Even when they say it is unrealistic to take Crimea from Russia, they mean it is unrealistic because of the balance of military forces and not because very few people in Crimea want be again a part of Ukraine. What about the democracy and what about the right of people for self determination?
8 years NATO politicians encouraged Kiev regime to carry on with the military attacks against people of Donbass. No one in NATO ever condemned the water blockade of Crimea. They never announced it openly but their acts are more eloquent than words, they are absolutely convinced that the basic human rights are not applicable for Russian people.
Hear hear.
There are two scenarios, one realistic and one surrealistic.
Realistic: the aliens will come from an other galaxy and solve our problems.
Surrealistic: we will solve our problems ourselves.
Absolutely concur.
*****
You hit the nail on the head.
It’s far, far away………………………..
that hit me too when I read Bolton’s book article about the failed regime change attempt in Venezuela. Not once were the Venezuelan people, their rights of the nation mentioned. In all the planning he describes they are not mentioned, they did not exist. And that is true for all the politicians in Washington, they don’t even know that the people on the other side feel pain and love their children and have desires like Americans do, they just don’t exist. I believe that is true for American people in general, people in other countries and cultures do not exist.
So amazing, they talk about unidentified objects 24/7 and in East Palestine OH, a terrible train wreck with 50 cars and 20% of them loaded with poisonous chemicals went up in flames, visible from outer space and they treat it like any normal train wreck. Not a word from Biden that I know of.
A caveat, I don’t watch MSM, maybe I missed it. The burning train traveled some 20 miles before the wreck happened.
Newsweek:https://www.newsweek.com/erin-brockovich-demands-joe-biden-step-now-ohio-train-derailment-1780950
MarketWatch: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ohios-dewine-says-he-has-not-taken-up-biden-on-offer-of-anything-you-need-in-wake-of-train-derailment-disaster-adf4c949
A couple of years ago NATO politicians started to use the phrase “World based on the rules” as their political credo. No one ever explained what are those rules but it looks they are trying to replace the international law by a set of rules known only to themselves. Presumably they themselves are acting according with those rules, we can say that those rules are based upon anti-Christian morality. So, this geopolitical conflict which some people describe as a world war is a religious conflict or, if you like, a religious war.
I think you are right. I think the first rule is that the rules do not apply USA American people. They are for all others and the USA leadership reserves the right to change them as needed to suit American needs.
Hollywood’s CIA script writers have worked the US public into simultaneous hatred of Russia, China and Iran. The fourth front is American citizens who don’t believe hate propaganda that Hollywood script writers prepare for US government decision makers.
“‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict. It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance,” the administration official said.
“Waffling” is how we described such talk when these military madness people wanted American youth to go kill commies for Christ in southeast Asia.
“Paper tiger” was a derisive term used to describe the US at the time. Paper tigers now want war against Russia, Iran and China. Its no wonder so many countries are cashing in their dollars for gold.
I always suspected that Hollywood is working for the military industrial complex.
Looking back, all the Cowboy movies were propaganda, strictly speaking.
Well, they certainly have during wartime, which it turns out, is pretty much all the time.
Unknowingly the producers were trained in grade school. The schools still are the best MIC support.
“US Wants to Help Ukraine Retake More Territory Before Negotiating With Putin The Washington Post reports that some ‘optimists’ think a deal to end the war could happen before the end of the year if Ukraine gains territory”
UFOs in US Airspace, Joey Biden is president of something, and Ukraine can take territory from Russia are the three most laughable fictions peddled by the US propaganda mainstream media.
US Wants to Help Ukraine Retake the planet Saturn Before Negotiating With Putin
That’s not far from the truth. Souless bastards who care nothing about the misery inflicted on Ukraine.
Kurt Vonnegut on line 7…..
This just in: “Zelensky Announces Plan to Economize on War Costs by Paying Orphans to Collect Unexploded Shells for Reuse”
“What victory will look like”
This VICTORY delusion just shows how dangerous and deluded this SENILE administrationi is. There will be no agreement that gives them their victory in Russian eyes. The Biden can try to whittle out a trunkated dopelanger freak effegy of “victory and sell it to Zekensky, but the Russians wont be buying nor the world. Maybe an armastice like in Korea. These dreams of victory that the Neocons are having will be answered by the Russian Military and pronably sooner now than later
On the ‘what victory will look like’ question:
a while back, someone on these pages wrote the US would settle on a version of the fever dreams of ‘Russian menace’ used to peddle war vs. negotiation to start with –
– ‘Ukraine was the first step of invading the whole world like Hitler, great god! Poland was next!’ –
– and, on that basis, declare victory because ‘And only Ukraine and NATO halted it!’
I don’t believe you could put together a more incompetent corrupt group of individuals than what you have in the current Biden administration, unless one believes that they are doing exactly what Biden’s handlers desire with Ukraine and the money spigot and from that perspective could be considered a smashing success.
Someone whose name I have forgotten compared the current war in Ukraine with Verdun. Numerous casualties for a few meters of advance.
Of course, the US is just suggesting this. Ukraine is still a sovereign independent country that will continue to make their own decisions. Do I need to say that was sarcasm?
Trick question? 😉
The Dream of the Week…!
May I suggest Ukraine take a bite out of Moldova… Ein bischen Lebensraum ….
May I suggest Ukraine take a bite out of Moldova… Ein bischen Lebensraum ….
Biden and his gang will insist to go on butchering the Ukrainian people until the unconditional surrender to Russia is the unavoidable end for the Ukrainian people and the clown and his neo-Nazi gang board their planes to fly to their French Riviera mansions.
Washington, a nest of war criminals, the orange plaster face in the lead.
Biden wants…., Zelensky wants…., Stoltenberg wants…., von der Leyen wants….,
Stoltenberg said NATO is at war with Russia since 2014,
A German asked in Germany if the Germans gave Biden the green light to blow up the pipelines?
Every Russian death is a blow to Russia, which is the main point for the U.S. in this war. Of course that Ukrainians have lost large numbers in their offensives is irrelevant. The U.S. would be fine to lose four Ukrainians to kill one Russian. And I’m betting when all is said and done and the history books are written, based on the way the two militaries have approached the conflict, that’s what we are looking at right now.
The biggest question is why is Joey Biden going to Warsaw, Poland on 20 February to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Voldomort Zelensky?
Is Poland going to attack Belarus?
Good question, maybe to thank him for all the help they provided to blow up the pipeline? He is thankful for any new friend after he lost all others. I heard is not liked by other heads of state and their people.
Joe Biden does not like to govern, campaigning is all he knows.
Even if the negotiation idea is real plan, which it isn’t, Russians have to be fools to fall for this.