Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out four conditions for Ukraine that he said would lead to an immediate ceasefire and, ultimately, an end to the conflict. According to the Kremlin, Kiev’s neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear status and the lifting of all Western sanctions are necessary conditions for ending the conflict.
In a speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday, Putin said that if Ukraine withdraws its forces from the four regions annexed by Moscow – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – then he would order a halt to operations and begin negotiations to end the war.
As well as recognizing Russia’s territorial claims to the formerly Ukrainian regions, Putin demanded that Kiev never join NATO or obtain nuclear weapons and called for an end to Western sanctions on Moscow.
The offer is the second from the Kremlin in recent weeks and comes at a crucial time in the nearly two-and-a-half-year conflict, as Moscow’s forces make slow but steady gains in the Kharkiv region. To offset Russian advantages, Kiev’s Western backers have significantly escalated their support by allowing Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia, seizing frozen Russian funds to give to Ukraine, and preparing to deploy NATO trainers to Ukraine.
Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak quickly rejected the Russian offer in a post on X. “There are no new ‘peace proposals’ from Russia. Entity Putin has voiced only the ‘standard aggressor’s set,’ which has been heard many times already,” he wrote. “Its content is quite specific, highly offensive to international law, and speaks absolutely eloquently about the incapacity of the current Russian leadership to adequately assess realities.”
The offer is similar to what Russia demanded in the early months of the war. At that time, Moscow was only seeking to annex Crimea. However, Russian forces have made significant advances in the years since, and the Kremlin says it will not relinquish the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine annexed last year.
Kiev’s demands for ending the war include a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s post-USSR borders, Putin facing an international trial for war crimes, and reparations for war damages.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will push this format at an international summit hosted by Switzerland on Sunday and Monday. However, major world leaders are skipping the event, including President Joe Biden, who will instead host a campaign fundraising event.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
#1 Zelensky is no longer the elected leader of Ukraine.
#2 In 2022 the U.S. and the U.K. killed off two probable peace outcomes.
Even if Zelensky had surrendered in 2022 and NATO cut aid to the Ukrainian army, the Ukrainian people would have continued to resist the Russian invasion. It was not apparent in early 2022 whether the Ukrainian people would support a popular resistance against the Russian invasion. Now we know that this is an asymmetric war of national resistance that will continue until the Russians leave.
The only part of Ukraine where ethnic Russians are a majority is Crimea. Russia has no future as a permanent occupying power anywhere else.
Even if Zelensky had surrendered in 2022 and NATO cut aid to the Ukrainian army, the Ukrainian people would have continued to resist the Russian invasion. It was not apparent in early 2022 whether the Ukrainian people would support a popular resistance against the Russian invasion. Now we know that this is an asymmetric war of national resistance that will continue until the Russians leave.
The only part of Ukraine where ethnic Russians are a majority is Crimea. Russia has no future as a permanent occupying power anywhere else.
Or, Ukraine would be whole right now, their land intact and people in the east would have autonomy while still being a part of Ukraine. The Russians would have withdrawn so there would be nothing to resist. Why you liken this to Vietnam or Afghanistan is beyond me.
I draw a subjective distinction between national liberation wars(Vietnam) and national resistance wars (Afghanistan or Ukraine). But objectively both are instances of asymmetric warfare where the indigenous resistance relies on widespread popular support to defeat a stronger invader in a war of attrition that can take years, decades or even centuries (e.g., Ireland). I don't sympathize with the Taliban like I did with the Vietnamese national liberation front. But both movements relied on widespread support among the indigenous population to defeat stronger imperial powers. By contrast, al-Qaeda and ISIS were not able to retain territory against invading powers because they did not have widespread popular support. Even massive amounts of US military aid cannot motivate people to fight for an unpopular regime. If the Zelensky regime were the Nazis the Russian propagandists claim they are, the Ukrainian army would have disintegrated over two years ago. Consequently, I recognize that the Ukrainian resistance, like the Taliban, is a legitimate national resistance movement waging an asymmetric war of national resistance.
Victory where there is mass based resistance is determined by hearts and minds, not force of arms. This is a paradox for power mongers like Putin, Biden, Netanyahu, etc. Power mongers believe that force of arms determines victory when, in reality, every military success by the invader strengthens the will to resist until the invader gives up. Kinda like a bear swatting a porcupine. Eventually the bear gives up, but it can take a long time.
Finally, the benchmarks power mongers use to gauge success are illusory and inapplicable to wars of national resistance where the resistance has popular support. In Vietnam the Vietnamese had two million dead, including about a million combatants. Yet they defeated the US military that suffered only 58,000 casualties. In Algeria, the French killed between 500,000 and 1.5 million Algerians while the FLN killed only 25,000 French to achieve victory. As Tom Knapp pointed out months (or years?) ago, Putin had a very short window of opportunity to demonstrate Russia's ability to win this asymmetric war two years ago. But once the Ukrainians showed they would not fold, they won. In the same way the 1968 Tet offensive spelled the defeat of the US counterinsurgency in Vietnam, it may take years or longer for Russia to recognize that it can't win in Ukraine.
My comment was about the situation had it been resolved in the spring of 2022. Russia would have withdrawn and there would have been no need for resistance. I guess you missed that part.
First, there never was an actual agreement to end the war. Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality but Ukraine did not trust Russia to honor the agreement unless Ukraine received guarantees from NATO essentially equivalent to article 5 status. US/NATO was not willing to give those guarantees so the negotiations ended. There are three parties pursuing three separate agendas in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The US/NATO wants to encourage a war to weaken Russia. Russia wants a neutral Ukraine, an end to NATO expansion and security on its borders. Ukraine wants independence and credible guarantees that Russia will adhere to the 1994 treaty guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity. From Ukraine's standpoint, there can be no agreement with Russia unless the agreement is guaranteed by US/NATO. But US/NATO deliberately sabotaged the agreement to keep the war going. So they are bad. But US/NATO hostility to Russia does not justify Russia's pre-emptive war of aggression against Ukraine. The Russian rationale for invading Ukraine is similar to Hitler's rationale for invading Poland and threatening to invade Czechoslovakia . There were oppressed German minorities in those countries and UK and France made an alliance with Poland that made Germany feel surrounded.
As I have repeatedly said, the US/NATO deliberately provoked Russia to invade Ukraine just as the UK and France provoked Germany to invade Poland. But the responsibility for taking the bait rest with Putin. Russian chauvinists like Putin could not conceive of the level of resistance of common Ukrainians to an invasion by their former imperial overlords. In fact I believe that Zelensky and US/NATO were as surprised as the Russians by the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians in the battle of Kyiv. In February 2022 I expected the Russians to pulverize the Ukrainian army and destroy its air force in a few weeks. NATO was prepared to air-lift Zelensky out of the country to form a government in exile. But the Ukrainians resisted and turned the Russian column back. The Kremlin propagandists disingenuously claimed that the aborted advance on Kyiv was a "feint" and that everything was proceeding "according to plan." Two and a half years later, it is obvious that was a lie. The Russians drastically underestimated the will and capacity of the Ukrainians to resist. Putin stupidly led Russia into a forever war that won't end until the Russians withdraw.
Before the war, Russia was in a bad situation. But Putin's choice to invade Ukraine just made the things Putin feared become realities. NATO has expanded, Russia is isolated, Ukraine is closer to the West and instead of facing the threat of war on its Southern border, Putin led Russia into a forever war which Russia can't win.
Ukraine did not trust Russia ……. And you yourself know this to be true.
Your argument is full of shit. How many Ukrainians have you interviewed? In what parts of Ukraine did you travel to conduct said interviews? Or did you get your views from media sources?
I prefer to read/hear what the principals have to say for themselves. Everything else is an interpretation offered by third parties.
March 16, 2022. Russia and Ukraine announce significant progress towards a peace agreement mediated by Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. As reported in the press, the basis of the agreement includes: “a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces.
”March 28, 2022. President Zelensky publicly declares that Ukraine is ready for neutrality combined with security guarantees as part of a peace agreement with Russia. “Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state — we’re ready to do that. That’s the most important point … they started the war because of it.
”April 7, 2022. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accuses the West of trying to derail the peace talks, claiming that Ukraine had gone back on previously agreed proposals. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett later states (on February 5, 2023) that the U.S. had blocked the pending Russia-Ukraine peace agreement. When asked if the Western powers blocked the agreement, Bennett answered: “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.” At some point, says Bennett, the West decided “to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.”
We agree. US/NATO sabotaged the negotiations. Ukraine understandably would not agree to a deal without US.NATO security guarantees. The US and the UK wanted the war to continue and refused to give the guarantees. So there was no deal. I have no problem blaming the US, the UK and maybe the rest of NATO for that.
But Putin was wrong and foolish to continue a war that Russia can't win. Since the negotiations broke down tens of thousands of Russians have died fighting a hopeless war that won't end until Russia leaves Ukraine.
.
Your concern for Russia’s well being is truly touching.
But I recon they can endure and PREVAIL against NATO aggression a whole hell of a lot more than the West can endure the consequences of it’s folly.
Just how badly do you want to lose?
I respect the right of Ukrainians for self determination. US/NATO and Russia are both declining empires. I hope to live to see both replaced by a multipolar world order. But the Ukraine war is is not a war between US/NATO and Russia. It is a war between Ukraine and Russia, the former imperial overlord of Ukraine that Putin stupidly chose to fight on Ukrainian territory. US/NATO is supplying Ukraine with weapons and other aid. But despite hysterical accusations from Russia, US/NATO are not fighting in Ukraine. USA/NATO's role in Ukraine is similar to the USSR and China's role in the war between Vietnam and the USA, providing material support.
The Ukrainians are proving once again that wars of national resistance are determined by hearts and minds, not force of arms, when the natkional resistance forces have widespread popular support. The only way there will be peace in Ukraine is when Russia gets a leadership willing to withdraw across the international border. Who will be the last Russian to die for Putin's mistake?
I respect the right to secede.
Donbass rejected Ukrain.
Get over it.
A lot of people in Donbas want to stay part of Ukraine. The Russians should leave. The refugees should be given an opportunity to return. After a 10 to 15 year of reconciliation and reconstruction there should be an internationally supervised referendum to determine what the people of Donbas really want.
A “lot”… Like 10% or so.
Fuck ‘em.
The referendum cane and went with Russia.
Deal with it.
Russia can't lose. And I don't mean that in the sense they are unbeatable militarily. I'm saying it the sense that there is no turning back now. We either have a stalemate and the lines stay basically where they are, or we have WW3.
The Ukrainians won’t back down. Even if Russia defeats the Ukrainian army, Russia will be an occupying power fighting a hopeless guerrilla war in hostile territory. Even if US/NATO eventually abandons Ukraine, the Ukrainians will continue to resist the Russian invasion. The war is over. It is only a matter of time before Russia gets a political leadership that recognizes the futility of Putin’s invasion.
Russia will be an occupying power fighting a hopeless guerrilla war in hostile territory
Not in ALL of Ukraine. Ukraine will be less than whole from here on out. Unless the West is willing to do WW3 which means we're all dead. And you're dreaming if you think there is someone in the wings that is going to change course now. The best anyone can hope for is for someone who isn't more of a hardliner than Putin.
You mean the kind of "popular support" as evidenced by conscription gangs hauling men off the street.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk…
Just like Putin has been doing.
What’s your point? I am not a supporter of any state, they are all criminal enterprises. I was responding to the specious claim that the Ukrainian government was buoyed by some deep reservoir of popular support, a claim that is risible.
Given what you post, you support Putin’s regime. I did not make such a claim about Ukraine’s government. What that government has going for it is that the people have no desire to fall under Russia’s thumb again. The cultural memory of that experience is still raw.
A brief perusal of anything I have written will show that I have condemned Putin’s invasion and oppose all government. Your claim otherwise is demonstrably false.
Distinguishing between resistance to Russian domination and support for the current regime (a distinction which you are only now making) is largely irrelevant. The reality is that Ukraine is split between the heavily Russian parts of the eastern and southern parts of the country and the Ukrainian parts of the west. Which makes this in many respects a civil war between two parts of a “nation” that really want little to do with each other. The western heavily Ukrainian, (which would offer serous resistance to Russian domination) regions have little to fear as there was never an intention by Russia to conquer and reabsorb Ukraine, despite what NATO shills claim.
Calling for negotiations with an evil man who has shown that all he will accept is the peace of the grave, is support of evil. Eastern Ukraine was majority Ukrainian. Russian was the lingua franca of the area, but that does not change the facts about ethnicity.
Putin’s casus belli requires he take the entire country. His recent “offer” is nothing more than surrender terms, and he is also demanding that NATO leave eastern Europe. Basically, he is demanding a return to 1989, and that is not going to happen, and he knows that isn’t going to happen. Putin has no plan of stopping the war short of his own aims. That includes the complete reabsorption of Ukraine into the Russian Empire.
You need to listen what he has actually said, not what you want to hear.
Neocon tripe. What Putin offered in Istanbul was a real possibility of a peace that would see Ukraine keep its territory in exchange for neutrality. Even the NYT has finally admitted this.
Also it is clear that Russia's invasion was never about conquering all of Ukraine, but rather replacing its leadership with one amenable to Russian security interests.
What your fantasy ignores is that not only does Russia not want all of Ukraine, as it would be a hornets nest, their economy is the size of Italy's, which means they do not have the capacity for this kind of expansionism, either in Ukraine much less further west.
They are seeking what all powerful countries do, regional hegemony. This is not moral but it is the reality. The US would do the world a favor to reign in its drive for global hegemony and back off.
BTW, Ukraine as it existed in 1991 was a conglomerate of a "nation" to begin with:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bcbd79b44f9e66a39b7c2ea5c10b066635f1d799be14eddb0e9be520a54624cc.jpg
Call it what you will, and post historical maps all you like. Ukraine is a sovereign country and making excuses for Putin is simply evil. There is no excuse for Putin’s invasion, nor is there any excuse for your support of the man.
Even if the US had reached for global hegemony, that peaked in the 80s. The rest has been the result of momentum and decline.
You need to pay attention to what himself has said. His casus belli requires he take all of Ukraine to meet his war goals.
Putin offered nothing but surrender in Istanbul. Nothing changed in over 3 months of meetings and Ukraine could not tolerate what Putin was demanding without catastrophic results for the country. Frankly, you’re simply engaging in wishful thinking along the very lines Putin wants to go. he has lied from the beginning, and you have consistently swallowed those lies without a thought.
Of course there is never a justification for military violence-ever. International relations are a fundamentally criminal enterprise. The goal for rational people is simple harm reduction. While Russia was not justified, they were provoked. Was JFK “justified” in threatening to incinerate the planet over the Cuban missiles in 1962? Of course not. The US was, however, provoked. This is Russia’s Cuban missile crisis.
All your bleating about Ukrainian sovereignty ends up shilling for the US empire. Where was Ukrainian sovereignty in 2014, when the US flipped them into a US client state. Where is the stalwart defense of a moral government when the only regime more corrupt in Europe than Ukraine is Russia itself. All your shilling for the US empire is advocating for is a great power war, highly likely to end up in a nuclear holocaust.
Rationally recognizing the facts (Russia did offer a workable peace for Ukraine), and that this is an existential security issue for Russia should lead us to the harm reduction posture of advocating for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement before things truly do get out of hand. Oh, and that will stop the carnage amongst those Ukrainians (who do not wish to be drafted) that you seem to think of as so much cannon fodder. You immoral imperial Pharisee.
BS. when you are attacked, as Ukraine was, it is entirely justified. To say Russia was provoked is a lie.
You’re shilling for the evil Putin represents. Ukraine is a sovereign country and saying so is merely stating a fact.
The war sits on Putin’s shoulders. he had no legitimate reason to invade and the death and destruction is entirely on his shoulders. You don’t negotiate with an idiot who has sworn your destruction. The Ukrainians tried for 3 months after Putin invaded. It came to nothing because Putin would settle only for surrender. The Ukrainians were right to walk away.
The war became an existential problem because of the invasion. Putin made the same miscalculation Hitler did in 1941.
If you want to see an immoral Pharisee, go look in the mirror. You’re nothing but a peace at any price hypocrite.
Last post-go ahead and have the last "thought".
1). You fail consistently to make a reasonable argument for your position which is to push Ukraine into a meat grinder of a war that they cannot, and never could win.
2). Indeed Ukraine is a sovereign country, therefore they should go their sovereign way. If that had been the US position all along then none of this would have happened, as unstinting US support created a massive moral hazard, that has zero to do with legitimate US defense.
3). I offer this as it fits your "mentality". Have fun there:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
#1. I’m not the one that needs to come up with any sort of argument one way or the other. That is teh decision of the Ukrainians, and they have chosen to fight. I don’t blame them given their history with Russia. They can win, IF they get the support they need. You are all for cutting them off and surrendering them to the tender mercies of the Russians. That is a totally immoral position.
#2. BS. Putin started a war for his own imperial reasons. It had nothing to do with the US or NATO. The moral hazard is Putin, and those that support Putin’s position in Ukraine.
#3. Given your immorality, that’s more your speed.
Hey, tell you both what – for my money, if given the choice between a return of a capital-s Soviet Union steamrolling liberal neighbours, or a "free" Ukraine rife with neo-Nazis, Aryan supremacy, the ethnic cleansing of "undesirable" (in)visible minorities…hells, bring back the Red Army 1948-style.
ANYTHING is preferable to Naziism.
Well, looking at a decade or two of election results (back when Ukraine had them) it's clear Kiev had support. Just not from its eastern regions. All of which by weird coincidence are ethnic Russian and were targeted by Kiev leading up to the Russian Federation R2P invasion.
"But once the Ukrainians showed they would not fold, they won."
Hahahahahahahaha!!
You and quartermaster are completely disconnected from reality.
Putin had this war won before it ever started, for two overwhelmingly and indisputably obvious reasons:
First, Russia was bigger, badder, smarter, and right next door;
And 2, because Ukraine was backed up by the neocon-led United States, whose record of success, and whose record of actually sticking by their sacrificial bitch "for as long as it takes" is a perfect and unblemished "zero for-however many times they've tried it".
But kudos to the flag-draped "America, fuck yeah!" boosters who, shielded from reality by their colonic vistas, remain — and no doubt will continue to remain — forever faithful to the cause.
“Endeavor to persevere.”
How deranged do you have to be to believe: We were wrong on Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, and Korea, BUT we are totally correct on Ukraine?
Sacred lines on the map!
When a country is wrong 87.5% of the time, it HAS to be right 12.5% of the time, yeah ?
I think Shmi is projecting; it's a desire to give the Russian Federation its own military quagmire like the USA faced in both countries cited*.
*the Afghanistan one being a mirror of 00's Afghanistan, not the '79 one the USA engineered with future-Al-Qaeda to repay the Soviets for the Americans' own Vietnam.
Nonsense. Had Ukraine "surrendered" (agreed to a negotiated settlement as proposed in Turkey, which is a much more accurate term) Ukraine would face much less loss of territory, would have avoided hundreds of thousands of deaths and maiming, avoided the internal displacement of millions, the emigration of millions more, and the destruction of much of their key infrastructure. A HUGE missed opportunity and a tragedy for their people. Although the oligarchs would have missed out on the theft of the century, from all the "aid" they have stolen.
"Although the oligarchs would have missed out on the theft of the century, from all the "aid" they have stolen."
And the military industrial complex, who would have missed out on the gazillions of dollars in profits they have since made and the future prophets they are going to make from the "replenishment" contracts.
Is there any more to this than The simplest of explanations: money and corruption?
You don't seem to get that the "Ukrainian people" are not one people. For 2 decades, the ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Russians, ethic Hungarians, ethnic Tartars and other ethnic groups got along. Mostly, in elections, the non ethnic Ukrainian groups sided with the ethnic Russians.
You haven't bothered to look up the election maps of Ukraine prior to to the coup in 2014. They clearly show a divide between Western Ukraine versus Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
Zelansky, the now illegitimate ruler of Ukraine, was elected with a mandate to end the ethno state of Ukraine. He lied. He was a front for the US deep state and NATO to subjugate Russia and surround China with hostile countries that are under control of Washington DC.
It is up to the Ukrainian people, not Russians, to determine who the Ukrainian people are. They are standing strong against an invasion by their former imperial power. A clique of Nazis supplied and bankrolled by US/NATO imperialists could not have fought a war of attrition against the Russian army for over two years.
Why not? Clearly, many, many, many Ukrainians are refusing to fight; else the Ukrainian military would not have an acute manpower shortage. Even at a very reduced population of 28 million or so remaining under Zelensky's control, they should have a manpower pool of at least 5 million to draw on; yet they struggle to put 500,000 into the field. They probably have as many troops "guarding the western border" (i.e; preventing their own people from fleeing the country) and serving in press gangs as they do on the front lines. Doesn't seem like a movement with universal national appeal to me; but we'll never know, as that democratic icon zelensky has banned all opposition parties and silenced all dissenting media outlets (and he did THAT before the war started) as well as cancelling the elections.
I said the resistance needs mass support to succeed, not. unanimous support. The US and the Soviets never had a chance against the Taliban and the Mujahideen even though the vast majority of the Afghans did not want to fight. The indigenous fundamentalists had widespread popular support so they won without significant foreign sponsorship after 10 years fighting the Soviets and twenty years fighting the Americans. On the other hand, al-Qaeda and ISIS were not indigenous and could never hold territory. The Ukrainian resistance has survived because despite the fact that many Ukrainians don't want to fight, many do. And those that do are supported by the majority of Ukrainians who can't or won't fight. The Russians lost the war over two years ago. It always takes time for imperial powers to recognize they have been defeated.
You said this is an "asymmetric war of mass resistance", which it is not. It is a conventional war between two national militaries, both of which are resorting to conscription, and Ukraine is failing to keep up the pace. There is virtually NO "resistance" within the territories already held by Russia; what little there is, is almost certainly Ukrainian special forces operating behind the lines. Russia has "lost" nothing, to this point; they have essentially achieved their objectives; Ukraine as a powerful nation incorporated into NATO and hosting NATO troops on its soil is nothing but a pipe dream now; instead we have a shrunken, largely depopulated, economically ruined wreck that will be a welfare burden on the west, and likely never be part of NATO (see NATOs charter for conditions a nation must meet to be allowed to join; Ukraine fails several of them), and Russia has a buffer zone between' its borders and what is left. Russia has also, by the way, managed to capture much of what was economically viable in old Ukraine, including much of the industrial plant, the mines, the world's largest nuclear generating facility, the potential oil and gas reserves of the sea of Azov and the Black Sea around Crimea, the fisheries, and much of the best farmland. Ukraine has been crippled and depopulated. The ones who don't recognize THAT are NATO and the neoNZ fanboys.
If they have any sense at all (doubtful) they will take this deal; it's the best they will ever get.
How long will it take the Imperial U.S.A. to realize they have lost the war and losing credibility and support around the world? The BRIC'S expansion is an indication that countries want to be out from under the dictates of 'Sanction Nation'.
BRICS is a joke and it will never be what you wish it to be.
Provide TANGIBLE evidence Ukraine has “lost” the war. I’ll wait…
Bill, the Ukrainians have proven that they will not fold. They are fighting on their own territory like the Taliban or the VC. In the end Russia will have to leave. Who will be the last Russian to die for Putin's mistake?
The Taliban and the VC didn't have to worry about large portions of their population being American round eyes and they weren't located on the US' underbelly.
The British and the French lost in Ireland and Algeria. The Afrikaaners lost in South Africa. Putin was unable to break the Ukrainian resistance in two and a half years. That means that Ukraine will continue to resist until Russia gets a leadership that is willing to withdraw.
Not the same. Not even close. And they have a leadership that was willing to withdraw in the spring of 2022.
Like everyone else (including me) Zelensky underestimated the capacity of the Ukrainian army to resist the Russian invasion. The original Ukrainian strategy was to go to ground and fight a protracted behind the scenes guerrilla war which Russia could not win. The Russian debacle on the road to Kyiv and the setbacks the Russian invaders suffered elsewhere along with the belated promise of material aid from the West changed the strategic calculations. The Ukrainians believed that they could win quicker with a NATO-armed conventional military. Even now Russia may defeat the conventional Ukrainian army. I think the Ukrainian army is punching above its weight class. But Russia has still lost the war. To defeat the Ukrainian army Russia will have to become an occupying power fighting a hopeless guerrilla war in hostile territory. If you paid attention to the 800 year history of Russia’s attempts to subjugate Ukraine, you would understand that this is a war Ukraine will not lose. Wait and see.
And once more you ignored the fact that Russia had a leadership that was willing to withdraw when Ukraine was still whole and their land and infrastructure still intact.
[It is up to the Ukrainian people, not Russians……]
You keep on missing that the USA deep state overthrew the Ukrainian elected government in a coup in 2014. You say that the Ukrainian people decide. What part of an OUTSIDE power decided the future of Ukraine by funding and instigating that coup don’t you get? The people of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. Said “no”.
So much for your claim to let the people decide. Note: other Oblasks also tried to resist the coup government but were forcibly suppressed.
You seem to believe a ethno state is OK as long as the ethnic majority favored it. That is what the intention was by arch russophobe Victoria Nuland.
DC has been actively promoting ethno states along with ethnic cleansing in many countries. You seem myopic that was intended for Ukraine.
The U.S. and the West wanted to destroy Russia, they didn't. Russia is stronger today, militarily and economically. So much for U.S. plans. The U.S. is good at destroying countries and of course, losing wars.
How’s it going for Russia’s latest incursion?
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1801866601991454760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1801866601991454760%7Ctwgr%5E255df9c753b33000a1f195e8d892c1aa5d175abb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstories%2F2024%2F6%2F15%2F2246732%2F-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-Hundreds-of-Russians-reported-surrounded-in-Vovchansk
Russian reports say maybe 400 Russians are trapped.
You have no clue what you are talking about. Polling inside Ukraine, not including those who felt forced to leave to avoid war, indicates that almost 44% of Ukrainians want negotiations with Russia toward peace.
… and Zelensky campaigned on restoring good relations with Russia and won with the vote of the Donbas whereat he then proceeded to adopt the Banderaist program and ethnicly cleanse, killing 14k before, 8 yrs on, Putin put a stop.
He tried. Putin rendered his efforts moot.
No, Azov and Right Sektor did.
That’s just more of Putin’s spew.
What they want and what they is possible are two different things. You can not negotiate with a man that has sworn your destruction, and is exactly what Putin has done. The only peace one can get from Putin is the peace of the grave.
He has never sworn destruction except of the Nazi element. It’s clear from all of your uninformed opinions that your reading is incredibly narrow.
That's hilarious. You Putin tools are the same all over the net. Stupid and aggressively misinformed. Your entire info network is run by Putin and feeds people his lies like it's the gospel. You are one among thousands that have been duped.
Advocate for peace, and fools call you a Putin tool. Amazing.
Advocating for peace is fine, but in the process of doing that you are also advocating for Putin and surrender terms for Ukraine. When you do so, you are a Putin tool. Peace will come when Russia gets its troops out of Ukraine.
Putin just offered to fully exit.
Putin is also an inveterate liar and has been lying since he gained power in 1999. Anyone trusting Putin is a fool.
So, the US is honest?
Anyway, if the US just exits the world stage, the US wins everything. All we need to do is exit, and we foil Putin’s diabolical plan of keeping the US tangled up overseas.
The only way the US exists the world stage is as a wreck and shadow of what it was in 1900. If you think Putin is trying to keep us tied up, and so wreck us, you haven’t been paying attention to what he is doing to Russia with his idiotic war.
Calvin Coolidge knew how to exit.
Russia is struggling. But that doesn’t concern me.
When has he lied?
He has lied consistently about his war with Ukraine.
So you're claiming that peace is impossible? Sorry, but most of the world disagrees.
Even were that so, so what? With Putin, unless you give him what he demands, you will not get peace, and it will only be temporary.
Just exit. It’s not America’s business.
Putin losing is in the interest of every American.
Why would anyone here care at all about the conflict’s outcome?
The only people that don’t care are too ignorant to understand what will happen if Putin wins. The people that infest this place simply want peace at any price, as long as it doesn’t gore their ox.
Nothing will happen…
Famous, and ignorant, last words.
Not really. The US loses all the time, and it never ever matters.
The US just needs to exit. Peace is a good thing. The Ukraine conflict was never important to the US, and Ukraine should have just accepted Putin’s original request.
RFK wants to cut the military, but I want to cut it further than does he.
Peace is good, but peace at any price is a good name for stupidity. Putin’s war has geopolitical implications for all of us, and your inability to recognize the stakes does you no credit.
RFK is a moron.
It’s not peace at any price. It’s just exiting a morass. The geopolitics of it don’t matter even remotely. The way to win is to exit.
You want a war for profit, but the wars don’t benefit US citizens.
Call it what ever lie you like, it is peace at any price. Putin’s war has serious geopolitical consequences for us all.
By the by, if you can not come up with a Us order of battle, then you have no grounds to hold the US is involved in the war.
Pffft.
Believe any lie you like. If you don’t like the current lies, Putin has many others.
Why would anyone be a "Putin tool" around here? How does that even happen? I hate Putin. But I prefer to have realistic views about the world.
I think that the west has totally misrepresented Putin (and Xi) to their citizens. My advice is to listen to what they actually say and do, and don't pay any attention to what the western political establishment and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media say about them.
The views of the world are not realistic. Peace at any price types never have a realistic view of the world.
You may hate Putin, but wanting to stop a war to the advantage of an aggressor is beyond stupid.
"Your entire info network is run by Putin."
Yr canned meat is tainted and their hospitals up there are gummint-run. What a fix.
Nice non-sequitur.
"non-sequitur"
nah, yr just too retarded to git it
I get the nonsense you spew. Your last spew was a non-sequitor. You’re just too retarded to understand it.
Putin hasn’t sworn Ukraine’s destruction. He just offered peace.
You haven’t been listening. He said that his goal is teh destruction of Ukraine as a political entity and Ukrainians as an ethnicity. Ukrainians have been a thorn in the side of the Russian empire for centuries.
By the by, Putin did not offer peace. He offered surrender terms. The two are not the same thing.
He never said anything like the end of Ukrainians as an ethnicity and Ukraine as a political entity. The US will import millions of foreigners to replace the Ukrainians ethnically, and Russia might do the same.
Regardless, Putin offered peace in exchange for certain terms.
You have not been paying attention, and Putin has only offered surrender terms. There will never be peace with the Russian Empire.
Those terms are not so bad for Ukraine. Odessa and Kharkov according to this peace agreement remain Ukrainian.
This peace agreement, if accepted, would mean a defeat for neocons, not for Ukrainians.
They would be politically and militarily catastrophic for Ukraine.. They would also result in only a pause, not an end.
One thing not noticed is that Putin has also demanded the end of NATO. People like you are paying attention to only that which they want to hear, not the entire thing. Putin’s goal was the end of Ukraine. His entire casus belli requires it. Things only start there.
I have never heard Putin demand the end of NATO, but I would agree with him if he had. NATO should have either been disbanded soon after the USSR fell, or at least been restructured as an all Western European alliance, with the US winding down all commitments to it. Problem is, America doesn't know it's limitations, and is perhaps only now being taught that lesson. With the end of the petrodollar agreement on June 9, that lesson will soon become even more clear.
Putin has shown that disbanding NATO would have been a bad idea. The petrodollar agreement simply priced oil in dollars.
One of Putin’s major goals was the destruction of NATO. He made sure that won’t happen. Another was the destruction of the US. The US is in the process of doing that itself.
Yes, American military expansion creates problems for everyone including America.
End of Ukrainian neo-Nazi pro-neocon regime doesn't mean the end of Ukraine as a state.
So far Putin, and all other Russian leaders before him, demanded only that NATO must not move eastward. All of them were right about that; it made the world less safer.
That’s just funny. First, Ukraine is not neo-Nazi. Russia has far more neo-Nazis in Moscow than in all of Ukraine. If a sovereign country wants to join NATO they can apply if they wish. It is up to the rest of the membership to vote to accept them and it must be unanimous. Putin showed that NATO membership was wise. Putin made the world less safe. Given his goals, he has acted in a manner that can only be called self defeating. The man is an idiot.
Rejecting peace is a choice.
Israel took the Golan Heights. Why do you care about lines on the map in Ukraine? Serbia lost Kosovo.
<I>has sworn your destruction, and is exactly what Putin has done.</I>
[Citation Needed]
When did he say that? I've been asking the same question of you guys for years, and never have gotten any answer more coherent than swear words. Almost all of Putin's public pronouncements dating back to the '90s are available, in English, on the Russian government web site. Go ahead and search them, and let me know what you find. I'll wait…
You have not been paying attention. You’ll be waiting because I’m not doing your homework for you. It has been one of his goals for years.
Sure, if you believe the US State Department. Not so much if you actually read what he says.
I don’t believe the state department. That is what Putin has said. He declared the US an enemy, not the US Russia.
But it is also true that the ethnic and cultural Russians in Ukraine would themselves have continued to resist the Ukrainian oppression of their people and the NATO imperialists who took control of Kiev during the Maidan overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government.
Which Resistance would be legitimate, and which one not ?
Ethnic Russians are about 17% of Ukraine – about 2/3 of Crimea, less than 40% in Donesk and Luhansk and less than 10% everywhere else, including Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. It is a fallacy that ethnic Russians are all separatists. More importantly, every country in Europe has ethnic minorities. The status of ethnic minorities is an internal matter. Chicanos may be discriminated against in the USA. But that does not give Mexico the right to invade Texas. Ethnic Chinese face discrimination and oppression in Myramar. But that does not justify a Chinese invasion of a neighboring country. Ethnic Russians faced discrimination in the Donbas. But that does not justify a Russian invasion any more than the oppression of ethnic Germans in Silesia justified Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.
It is also a mistake to believe that US/NATO imperialists control Ukraine. The US instigated and influenced Maidan, but did not and does not control Ukraine. That is Russian propaganda.
But Comrade Z made speaking Russian illegal, so the ethnic Russians under his control obviously are set aside as "other than Ukrainian" already.
“But in my imagination, Comrade Z made speaking Russian illegal”
Fixed, no charge.
"'in my imagination, Comrade Z made speaking Russian illegal'"
Fixed, no charge? Simplistic, deceptive, lazy:
1/ "Made speaking Russian illegal" oversimplifies Ukrainian laws that have increasingly restricted Russian language use.
But your wholesale denial? Making "speaking Russian illegal" is purely "imagination"? That is simplistic and deceptive:
Because, under post-2019 Ukrainian law, it is now illegal to teach in Russian more than specific and decreasing percentages of instruction time in public middle & high school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Ukraine
2/ Yr also – as usual – a lazebag for failing to support yr claim vs a cliched lazebag 'witticism.'
Are you also a lazebag for failing to support yr claim in (1)?
Or does that street only run in one direction.
The Ukrainian regime has, over time, begun restricing the use of the Russian language for
1) use in official regime communications and
2) use in official regime schools
While I do not support the US regime requiring that only English be used on government forms and in government classrooms, I would not make the fuck-silly claim that doing so amounted to “making speaking Spanish illegal.”
"Are you also a lazebag for failing to support yr claim?"
1/ Besides a lazebag, yr an annoying quibbler:
I copied/pasted a link in last.
I often support my claims – you almost never support yours – piddling tit-for-tats fantastically witty inside yr brain are yr style. Lazebag.
2/ "The Ukrainian regime has, over time, begun restricting the use of the Russian language"
Duh. As you've no choice to admit now.
3/ Showing again that yr 'all in yr imagination' claim was actually more simplistic and misleading than what you responded to.
I don’t need a choice to “admit” what I’ve never denied.
As for supporting claims with evidence, I claim you’re not too bright. Here’s the supporting evidence.
"I don't need…to 'admit' what I've never denied."
Did you admit Ukraine "restrict[s] the use of the Russian language" in the first post?
ie – that Ukraine law now make teaching in Russian more than limited hours illegal?
The claim was:
“Comrade Z made speaking Russian illegal”
That claim was incorrect.
As I pointed out.
"That claim was incorrect. As I pointed out."
No you did not say the claim was "incorrect":
you labeled it "imagination" – only later admitting the 'true' part of the claim: that Ukraine has – by limiting Russian instruction in schools – illegalized formerly legal Russian speech.
Which was lazy. And – like yr scurrying – ethically sleazy. As I pointed out.
Yer biscuits ain’t quite done in the middle, are they?
You are seriously misinformed. There was a pause between the incursion into Kiev and the border crossings into the Donbass afterwards. In between there were negotiations. Did you miss that part, or are you just having a convenient lapse?
I see you're writing another tome. I'm going to block you now, as you can't seem to commit to a finite word count.
Two and a half years after their invasion the Russians are still fighting a war of attrition against a vastly inferior foe. Russia has not even conquered the territories it claims to have annexed. I believed that Russia would have destroyed the Ukrainian army by April 2022 and be an occupying power fighting a guerrilla war against the Ukrainian resistance. I doubt anyone in the Kremlin believed the Ukrainian army would still be in the field or its air force still in the air in June 2024. I doubt that Zelensky or US/NATO believed that. Putin made a terrible strategic blunder. Not surprising because Putin and the sycophants who advise him can't conceive of an independent Ukraine willing to fight against Russia for its independence. The debacle began in March 2022 at the battle of Kyiv. Nothing has gone "according to plan" for the Russians ever since.
Both are lies.
I've seen claim #1 quite a bit lately.
Any evidence for the claim? My understanding is that the Ukrainian constitution forbids elections under the current circumstances. Does it offer some other way of transitioning between presidents/administrations under those circumstances?
These are terms of surrender not a peace deal.
That's what happens when the closest thing to a peace deal disappeared in late March and early April 2022.
You always rock for truth Wars!
This how similarly the Palestinians viewed the unjust partition plan of Palestine that was imposed upon them without their input which give more than half of the area to jews who numbered less 13% of the population at time. The Ukrainians might end up like the Palestinians .
““No one asked the Arab Palestinians whether to accept or reject anything. If they had been asked, they would probably have rejected partition, since—in their view—it gave a large part of their historical homeland to foreigners. The governments of the Arab states rejected partition, but they certainly did not represent the Palestinian Arabs, who were at the time still under British rule (as were we).” Israeli writer and politician Uri Avnery
I agree with your analogy of the treatment of the Ukrainians by the Russians to the treatment of the Palestinians by the British. That is why I support the struggles for self determination by the Palestinians and the Ukrainians.
So the places that have been fighting a civil war against Kiev since 2014 leave and never come back?
Seems a lot better than the NATO plan of keep pumping weapons into Ukraine until they run out of Ukrainians.
Putin's "peace terms" are really an ultimatum reminiscent of Hitler's demand for part of Czechoslovakia because German nationals were persecuted by the Czechs in the Sudetenland. There is no chance the Ukrainian government will accept this demand to surrender its territory and its sovereignty. Nor is there any chance that Putin will realize that it is his own thuggish behavior since 2014 that forced Ukraine into the embrace of NATO.
Even if Zelensky accepted Putin's terms it would not end the war because the Ukrainian people have shown that they are determined to resist the invasion by their former Russian overlords. This is an asymmetric war of national resistance that the Russians lost two years ago when the Ukrainian nation rallied to resist the Russian invasion. In asymmetric wars of national resistance the indigenous defender is either quickly defeated or, if the resistance has widespread popular support the resistance will persist until the invader leaves. Like in Palestine, Vietnam, or Afghanistan the invader is stuck in a negative feedback loop where each military victory by the invader strengthens the resistance that persists until a political crisis in the invading power causes the invader to leave. The outcome of the Ukrainian war will be determined by hearts and minds, not force of arms or dollars and cents. US/NATO aid to the Ukrainians can help shorten the war, but even if the West cut aid to Ukraine and the Ukrainian army was defeated, Russia would be an occupying power in hostile territory fighting a guerrilla war that Russia can't win. Like Nixon, Brezhnev, Bush and Obama, Putin is a strongman who worships the use of conventional power who can't understand the dynamics of asymmetric warfare. Eventually the Russians will have to withdraw from Ukraine.
Putin's behavior did not force Ukraine into the embrace of NATO. Ukraine was already becoming a de facto NATO nation with the weapons being pumped into Ukraine and Ukraine's army being trained to NATO standards to fight Russia. Did you not see the video of Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and a host of other U.S. leaders in Ukraine, after the Maidan coup, giving them a pep talk with the promise of all kinds of military help from the U.S. so they could fight the Russians?
Say what you want about Putin, but the fact remains that he is light years ahead of Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan when it comes to intelligence. Biden and Blinken don't dare go into negotiations with Putin and Lavrov because they would have their asses handed to then on a platter.
[Ukraine was already becoming a de facto NATO nation with the weapons being pumped into Ukraine… "]
This, of course, was after the US funded and instigated coup in 2014 overthrew the legitimate elected government of Ukraine.
There was no coup in 2014. You need to give Putin's lies a rest.
You need to be better informed.
You need to quit swallowing lies like they are the truth. You seem to have little capacity for critical thinking. As a result, you are utterly misinformed.
Back at'cha. Anyone who can listen to the audiotape or read the transcript of Nuland's convo with the ambassador and not see she was planning a coup has cognitive issues.
Like most of you Putin supporters, you pick and choose the liars you wish to believe. On one hand you love Putin, than on the other hand you love the liars from the Biden admin. As I pointed out, you swallow lies as truth, then spew it as if it were the gospel.
By the by, there was no coup in Ukraine. I’ve covered that ground hundreds of time, but I will simply say that the people rose up against Yanukovych who betrayed his country, and he ran rather than stand trial for the killing he ordered on the Maidan. He ran. Deal with that fact. No one forced him to run, he was just much of a coward to face the music for his crime, and ran to Putin for asylum. He is still a fugitive from justice.
Why is it that, in your mind, people who don't agree with you also love what you hate, and hate what you love? That's the reasoning of a fanatic.
It is not what you disagree with. It is what you actually support. You tools simply don’t want to realize what you support. Dealing in unpleasant facts is not the reasoning of a “fanatic.” Refusing to deal with them, as you do, is the reasoning of a fanatic.
A legally elected government was forcibly removed from power. That's called a "coup."
Nope. As I have pointed out several times, Yanukovych ran rather than stand trial for his crimes on the Maidan.
Yanukovych was not forced to run, he went on his own. Call it what you will, but it is a lie to classify it as a coup.
Double alpha strongmen like Putin (or Biden) are blind to the dynamics of asymmetric war. Putin is not necessarily stupid. He is a classical Russian chauvinist who really believes that Ukrainians and Russians are one people. Lenin and Khrushchev had a much better understanding of Ukraine. Lenin recognized that Russian imperialism had given birth to a resilient Ukrainian nationalism that could not be forced to bend to the will of the majority Russian Bolsheviks. Lenin wisely understood that the only way Ukraine could be induced to join the Soviet Union was to give Ukraine, Finland and the other national minorities the right to secede.
In 2014 I was wrong to support Putin's annexation of Crimea. The annexation drove Ukraine closer to NATO and made rapprochement with Russia more difficult. Putin's invasion has made rapprochement impossible for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, Putin can't seem to understand that the use of force against Ukraine is just producing the outcome he is trying to avoid. He started a forever war that cannot end until the Russians leave Ukraine, no matter how long that takes.
What happened in Ukraine was decades of US money bribery. Then incitement of war through neoNazis. There is no Ukraine. There is a diaspora. The only ones still willing to fight are the Nazis and that is why the US gov’t pretends they are no longer Nazis. The western portion of Ukraine feels more aligned with Europe. The eastern portion does not. Putin is not looking to overtake all of Ukraine.
"What happened in Ukraine" was centuries of Russian oppression birthed a national identity opposed to Great Russian chauvinism. Despite Russian propaganda there are very few Nazis in Ukraine. Over 7 million Ukrainians fought the Nazis in the Red Army. The Nazis killed over four million Ukrainians. If the only Ukrainians resisting the Russians were Nazis, the war would have been over two years ago no matter how much aid NATO gave to the Nazis. Putin is spinning lies to justify his revanchist attempt to reverse the contraction of Russia's sphere of influence after the Soviet Union fell.
The Nazis have the power in the military. They didn’t change.
No, Ukraine is not all Nazis, and I never said that. But almost half of people inside Ukraine want negotiations. What don’t you understand about that?
They want good faith negotiations. That is not something anyone will get from Putin.
Right. The good faith comes from the west who blew up Nordstream and the Minsk agreements in order to further arm.
Gazprom blew Nord Stream, and Putin refused to abide by Minsk, making it a dead letter.
Nope, we blew up Nordstream, Russia certainly had no reason to. Ukraine refused to implement the Minsk agreements. Well, Zelensky did try, but Azov and Right Sektor wouldn't let him.
Nope, the US did not blow Nord Stream. Nord Stream was trying to avoid paying compensation for undelivered gas after Putin ordered the valves shut.
The Minsk agreements could not be implemented because Putin would not withdraw his troops, nor take his colonists home, nor allow those displaced to return home, and then turn the border back to Ukrainian control. without those things, Minsk could not be implemented. Putin made them a dead letter, which is why Zelensky said after Putin widened the war against Ukraine, he declared them a dead letter.
Azov and “Right Sektor,” have almost no influence in Ukraine. Such people have far more influence in Russia as Putin’s inner circle has an open neo-Nazi, and the Russian Army has several units that are openly neo-Nazi.
You have no idea. The most important part of the Minsk agreement was figuring out terms of the autonomy, which Kyiv refused to do, and even Merkel admitted they were to give Ukraine more time to arm themselves and there was never any intention of implementing them. Zelensky did try to get the Azovs to withdraw, but they refused. At the time they did have a lot of influence. It was Russia's pipeline, they had no reason to blow it up, but we were against it from the first and didn't like Germany doing business with Russia.
Like most of your type, you are willfully ignorant. Azov was the only thing standing between Putin and Ukraine.
Gazprom is the most likely one to have blown the lines. They had motive and opportunity. The scenarios people have published involving the US are utterly nonsensical.
Now you're just talking nonsense. If Nordstream didn't want to pay compensation for something, they simply didn't have to pay. No need to blow up the pipeline. And what is your evidence that Nordstream was ever paid for gas it didn't deliver, or that Russia turned off the valves? You are inventing your own reality.
That’s a hoot. You buy liars mental meanderings as truth, but refuse to think for yourself. Sorry, but life does not work that way. Inventing reality is what Putin does for you and you have swallowed it without thinking.
You are an idiot if you believe that Gazprom blew up its own pipeline. That defies all logic. What possible motive would Gazprom have to destroy it's own investment, and deprive itself of billions in revenue? Biden all but openly stated that the US would destroy the pipeline, saying that Nordstream would be ended one way or the other, or words to that effect. And you have the nerve to call ANYONE a propagandist?
You’re being an unthinking idiot Gazprom can not deal internationally and act as you say. The choices your ilk makes, choosing which liars to believe and selecting the one you like to hear, is utterly stupid. To listen to the mental meanderings of someone with the longer term fatal brain rot is another bit of stupidity. The scenario by which the US supposedly did the deed is massively complex and not something for a thinking man to accept.
I do have the “nerve” to call you and your ilk propagandists because that’s exactly what you are.
“What possible motive would Gazprom have to destroy it’s own investment, and deprive itself of billions in revenue?”
While I have no opinion on who blew up Nord Stream, that’s not a very difficult question.
The war starts.
The west imposes sanctions on Russian petroleum products.
Russia seeks other customers.
Russia needs to assure those other customers that if the war ends next week, it won’t drop them like hot potatoes and go back to selling its stuff to Germany, et al. at a higher price than it’s getting from those other customers.
And hey, whaaddayaknow, all of a sudden it CAN’T do that. The new customers are reassured that they’ll actually get what they’re being offered instead of getting stood up.
That’s not evidence. But it is plausible motive.
No. Read every goddam article prior to the war. There was no Ukrainian army. There were far right militias, some of them paid for by Zelensky’s benefactor, Kolomoisky.
They were racist against Russians and Jws. They were killing civilians in the eastern portion of Ukraine. They were the most motivated to fight, as extremists generally are. Ukrainians elected Zelensky to get peace. Not to attack Russia or remove Russia because of “chauvinism”.
Putin knows the US is using Ukraine as a proxy in an attempt to weaken it, balkanize it, separate it from inroads to Europe. That is why they blew up Nordstream. You don’t have to love Putin to understand the dynamics of the desperate empire clinging to hegemony. You consistently sound like you’ve had too much kool aid at the bar.
Skywalker acts like someone who only listens to NPR for international news.
Your ilk listen's to Putin's propaganda network for international news.
You tell a lot of lies. There was a Ukrainian army, it just wasn't effective. Militias stopped and rolled back Russian conquest in the Donbas in 2014.
To call Putin's war a proxy war requires a level of ignorance and stupidity that breathtaking.
You take the award for dumbest commenter on internet. Congrats, and goodbye, you waste of propaganda time.
Still spewing idiocy and propaganda I see. Typical of you Putin Tools.
BS. What happened in Ukraine was the result of centuries of Russian imperialism. To meet his supposed goals, he requires all of Ukraine.
No he doesn’t.
You obviously haven't read his casus belli and thought through things just a little bit. All of that requires all of Ukraine, not just the east.
Double Alpha strongmen? Jesus Christ, are you under the impression that it's amateur hour everywhere just because it's the way our shop is run?
Where I grew up, we gave up bullshit characterizations like Double Alpha strongmen when we grew older.
Given what you post, you did not give up any BS. You continue to spew it.
No, it’s about opening up a discussion.
Why do warmongering psychopaths always refer to the myth that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia? They then proceed to spread other historical myths.
You seem to be under the impression that Ukraine has a functioning government and that political decisions are emanating from Kiev.
Do you really believe the special military operation is proceeding according to plan?
You know that Russia is gonna win real soon now. /sarc
28 months into the war, and they are no closer than they were in Feb 2022.
They’re somewhat closer than in 2022. They’ve secured Luhansk and much of Donetsk, probably permanently, and have at least temporarily occupied large parts of Kherson and Zaporzhzhia.
It’s really about who gets tired first. And Putin’s western opponents outclass Russia’s productive capacity by a full order of magnitude. Continuing the war is cheap for them and expensive for him. Which is why he’s throwing out “peace” proposals. We’ll know he’s exhausted when those “peace” proposals don’t involve him getting to keep everything he’s been able to get his hands on over the last 28 months.
It is unlikely they will get much closer to victory than they are down now. Tings are heating up in the Levant, and too many of Putin’s “allies” are getting in trouble. Putin is going to be sending his military down there, and will be destroyed.
Putin is "throwing out peace proposals" that he knows are unacceptable to Kiev and to NATO . So, I think your speculation is unwarrented. Putin wants what he wanted in 2022: ….neutralization (including no de facto Natoization), demilitarization, and no nuclear weapsons (or other WMD) for the Ukraine. Now, Putin has added to his war aims the territory of the four oblasts that he has annexed and partially conquered. Doesn't sound all that desparate, to me. As of now, Russia is easily meeting and exceeding its enemies in the productive capacity department. I quite agree that, if NATO went on a real war footing, it could, in theory, outproduce Russia. But NATO has no desire to do so. The war, as being fought now, is indeed pretty cheap for NATO. And that's the way they are going to keep it.
I see no sign that Russia is even close to "exhaustion." Putin just won re election. It is increasing its production of everything needed on the battlefield (where it already appears to have a signficant advantage), it is doing OK or better in economic terms, the vast bulk of its people seem to support the war, and it is taking more territory, even if not a lot, almost every single day.
While NATO could pretty much go on forever at the current burn rate, the Kiev Entity itself is showing a lot more signs of exhaustion than Moscow.
Did you not notice that part of Putin's peace demands were the lifting of sanctions?
The truth is that the sanctions are hurting the Russians really badly – true they are not going to bring the war to an end not even by 2025.
But they are a death blow to the Russian economy and hence to Putin's desire for making Russia great again.
Put it in simple terms without getting the sanctions lifted the Russians may win the war in Ukraine, but they'll lose the peace.
Hence keeping any parts of Ukraine are only compatible with lasting peace if the sanctions are lifted and there is little chance of that.
Russia is now selling more gas in Europe than the US is, sanctions or no. And the sanctions actually helped the Russian economy by giving them two reliable customers, China and India. Of course Putin wants to end the sanctions, if he can. Lifting the sanctions would give him even more business. If they were a death blow, Russia would already have pulled out of Ukraine. Why is it that the Russian economy is the only economy in Europe that is actually growing?
You keep saying that the productive capacity of the western bloc outclasses Russia's by a full order of magnitude. But we don't see it manifesting itself on the battlefield. The western bloc can't even produce a single working hypersonic missile. The patriot missile defense systems have proven ineffective wherever they have been deployed. The western MICs do one thing very well, and that's generate profits for their shareholders, at the expense of taxpayers. They're getting their butts kicked against Russia on the battlefield.
“You keep saying that the productive capacity of the western bloc outclasses Russia’s by a full order of magnitude. But we don’t see it manifesting itself on the battlefield.”
I guess you’re right, if by “we don’t see it manifesting itself on the battlefield” you mean “after 28 months, the Russian objectives still remain unaccomplished.”
Yet Russia is winning and the NATO proxy army is losing. I'm confident that Russia will accomplish all of its objectives, in its own time and in its own way. Not in your time and way. NATO has failed to accomplish any of its objectives regarding Russia, and I predict that trend will continue. And it will be the same with China.
Russia may be winning in your imagination. I the real world, they've managed to go 28 months without achieving the first six weeks' plausible objectives, let alone the objectives publicly announced by Putin.
You're living in a world of false bravado, at least regarding the conflict between Russia and NATO.
The term "bravado" implies that I give a tinker's dam which regime ends up lording it over the people in the territory involved. I don't.
I have precisely zero investment in any kind in the survival or success of any of the involved regimes.
I'm simply noticing what has happened and what is happening, then projecting future happenings on the basis of the known facts.
Well, what is happening, in the real world, is that Russia is winning and the NATO proxy army is losing.
And if the productive capacity of the western bloc outclasses Russia by a full order of magnitude, then why hasn't their proxy army pushed Russia out of Ukraine by now?
Exactly what are these "six weeks plausible objectives" you speak of, and who uttered them? The Russians or Western spokespeople?
The six-weeks plausible objectives — theoretically, based on the notion that the Russian military was competently and honestly run — were securing Donetsk, Luhansk, and a corridor along the Azov coast to Crimea.
It’s not who uttered them, it’s what uttered them — reality.
It turned out, and not for the first time, that the Russian military was either as competently, or notas honestly, or neither, operated as the west had, as usual, scared itself into believing. Which is why it’s had its ass in a sling for more than two years now.
It is meaningless to speak of Russian objectives remaining unaccomplished if they are slowly taking more territory inside Ukraine, and Ukraine is losing more men and materiel than Russia. All goals are in the process of being accomplished. Only the end result will tell us what remains unaccomplished.
Production capacity might mean something if the West wasn't involved in so many other adventures. Who tires first might mean something if Ukraine wasn't located on Russia underbelly.
Then why is Ukraine short of 155mm shells? I don't think you have the slightest idea about Russia's productive capacity, anymore than Western analysts understood that the oil and gas sanctions would backfire so spectacularly.
"Then why is Ukraine short of 155mm shells?"
What makes you think they are?
You don't believe a damn thing the Ukrainian regime claims … until it claims it's short of something. Then all of a sudden the Ukrainian regime's claims are the gold standard of truth.
We've been here before. The "bomber gap" of the 1950s was bullshit. The "missile gap" of the 1960s was bullshit. Our regimes are ALWAYS claiming we're WAAAAAAAYYYY behind [insert enemy of the week here] on this or that important thing.
The US claims it can't produce enough ordnance to keep up with Ukrainian requirements … even as it runs constant live fire exercises around the globe, blowing massive amounts of ordnance just to show off. More bullshit.
You seem to be under the impression that Putin's Nazi regime is the font of all good.
Downvoted and blocked.
Silly.
It is silly, but that’s the impression you convey in your posts.
Next time Putin will be not so generous.
Ah, yes, how “generous” — he’s offering to settle for four oblasts, three of which he’s failed to secure after more than two years of trying.
The best he’s likely to get, if Zelenskyy is feeling “generous,” is the one he has secured (Luhansk) and the one he’s mostly secured (Donetsk).
It is exclusively American rhetoric that Putin is somehow against time. He is not.
His goal never was to secure any particular oblasts. He told it clear at the beginning and repeated it now in his peace deal proposition that denazification, demilitarization and neutral status of Ukraine are essential for any peace agreement. Those four administrative regions were mentioned this time because according to Russian constitution they are a part of Russian Federation. Unlike Ukrainian or American politicians, Putin would never violate his own constitution.
By the way, he also mentioned that Zelensky according to Ukrainian constitution is not a legitimate president. The current legal head of Ukrainian state, according to Putin, is the chairman of Rada Stefanchuk.
Of course Putin knew that Zelensky and his sponsors would never agree to this. He did it because he had to propose something. His opponents, and even his friends, are talking so much about a new peace deal, so he had to offer them something.
Putin has led a so-called superpower into a military stalemate after two and a half years of war against Ukraine. Do you really believe Putin's war is going "according to plan?"
He's trying to avoid a Nuclear conflict. People in his own country have criticized him for not ending the war sooner, but seeing that there's no way to have serious negotiations with Western Powers, it appears that they are gearing up for a wider war.
The Western powers are not engaged in Ukraine. It is a war between Russia and its former colonial subject. The role of US/NATO in the Ukraine war is similar to the role of the USSR in the war between Vietnam and the US. I still expect the Russians to defeat the Ukrainian army. But that will not end the Ukrainian war any more than the US victories and occupation of Vietnam and Afghanistan could defeat the Taliban or the Viet Cong. In the end the war will end when the Russians get a leadership willing to withdraw from Ukraine and return to diplomacy. Who will be the last Russian to die for Putin’s mistake?.
"Return to diplomacy" meaning what?
“Return to diplomacy” means recognizing that Ukraine is a sovereign country that has the samew right to choose it allies as Cuba does when it host Russian missile cruisers. “Return to diplomacy” means recognizing the alleged persecution of ethnic Russians in Ukraine is an internal Ukrainian matter that needs to be addressed through established diplomatic channels. Diplomatic channels are frustrating, but they are preferable to war. For example, the Chin people claim to be subjected to horrible oppression, even genocide, by the government of Myanmar. But China has no right to invade Myanmar. If Russia wants to live in a multipolar world, the need to demonstrate that they are willing to follow the rules, like China does. The fact that the US refuses to consistently follow the rules does not excuse Russian bullying of Ukraine.
In the end the war will end when the Russians get a leadership willing to withdraw from Ukraine and return to diplomacy.
You mean like they had agreed to do in the spring of 2022?
Are you referring to the draft agreement that was publicly rejected by (checks notes) Sergey Lavrov?
I replied to Skywalker saying Russia had to be willing to withdraw. They were in the spring of 2022.
And (checks notes), Lavrov didn't put an end to negotiations. There was an article here, by Ted Snider I believe, that was talking about what they were still negotiating. Number of troops ect ect. So, in principal, Ukraine had already agreed to neutrality and Russia had agreed to withdraw. Everything else could have been at least brought back to the table if Johnson hadn't brought the West's message that they weren't ready to negotiate with Putin.
The Ukrainians will not return to diplomacy until the Russians commit to withdrawing at least to the lines of February 2022 and the Ukrainians have credible guarantees to protect them from further Russian aggression. It is impossible to understand the Ukrainian resistance without understanding the centuries long history of Russian and Soviet imperialism.
And you completely left out Russia's security concerns which you acknowledged before the invasion and now it has morphed into simply being Russian "aggression". No provocations. And I don't have to understand the centuries long history of Soviet imperialism since this war is about the history form the end of the cold war.
Security concerns don’t justify a war. The US has legitimate a security with Cuba allowing a Russian flotilla with missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons arriving in Cuba. But that does not justify a war. Same with Ukraine.
Aside from being morally and legally wrong, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in the expansion of NATO, the start of a forever war of choice and undermined people who wanted detente with Russia and brought advanced weapons systems to Ukraine that would not have been in Ukraine threatening Russia if Putin had not invaded. Diplomacy sucks. But Putin has proved that bad diplomacy is almost always better than a good war.
My point wasn't that Russia's war was justified. My point was that you have completely ignored what got this war started, whether justified or not, and go back to irrelevant history.
You can’t have a one-way diplomacy. Russia has offered negotiations several times and just as with the last offer, the West(U.S) turned it down flat as it appears they want the war to continue to the last Ukrainian. Russia doesn’t really care any longer what the U.S. says and has plans in place for whatever comes its way. Ukraine would be smart to settle now, as the terms of negotiation will only get worse as time goes by. The point is, Russia holds the strong hand, and it will only get stronger as times passes.
Russian military industry made a great progress in the last two years. It couldn't be done quicker. At the moment, Russian military forces are much stronger than two years ago, and in next two years they will be much stronger than now. That's what is important. It is a conflict between Russia and NATO. If it would be only Russia/Ukraine war, it could be finished in spring 2022.
Also we are observing a great increase of support of Global South for Russian course. It also takes time.
The West is mobilizing for a big war. Russia/China/Iran alliance is mobilizing too. Global South is moving closer to Russia and China. The things are changing fast but not too fast. The war in Ukraine, important as it is, is only a part of the big civilizational confrontation. When Russian leadership decides something about Ukraine, it also has to consider the relations with China and other geopolitical players. The support of Global South is crucial for Russia. It allows Russian society to pass through those difficult times comfortably enough.
Yes, it is going according to the plan. The demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine is under way.
Thanks to Putin the Ukrainian army is stronger than it has ever been and the Azov battalion became national heroes after their tenacious defense of Mariupol.
How can the Ukrainian army possibly be stronger that it ever was? Their own rational people admit they don't have the manpower and when the aid that was maintaining the stalemate was held back, they were in danger of being overrun.
You are living in a propaganda fantasy. Ukraine is weaker than ever, with both manpower and ammunition shortages. You need to listen to Douglas MacGregor, not Victoria Nuland. They are fighting hard, but losing ground every day.
Which Douglas Macgregor should he listen to?
The Douglas Macgregor of February 27, 2022 (“the battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over”)?
Maybe the Douglas Macgregor of March 3, 2022 (“I would say another 10 days this should be completely over”)?
Or perhaps the Douglas Macgregor, July 8, 2002 (“the war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned is largely over”)?
Or is there some subsequent Douglas Macgregor who’s finally managed to get something right instead of continuously getting everything completely wrong?
Macgregor, as many other experts, couldn't believe that U.S. leadership can act so reckless and gamble so stupid.
Thomas, you sound like an angry old man. Might I suggest you take a deep breath and stand back. It strikes me as kind of weird to see a site moderator getting into so many petty arguments with the people who comment on this site. You've pretty much reduced yourself to slinging derision and insults. Your latest one aimed at Douglass Macgregor is a new low. Is this really the Thomas Knapp you want the world to see?
It was an honest question — has Macgregor stopped being absolutely and completely wrong about absolutely everything, and started being right about at least some things?
If so, I'd like to know.
And however "low" it might be to ask the question, there's nothing "new" about it — I've been asking it for at least a year whenever anyone bring Macgregor up.
It's not that odd that I'd sound like an angry old man — I am an angry old man.
I don't think you're being fair to Colonel Macgregor. He was making honest assessments based on the information he had available at the time. You might remember that at one time the western bloc said that they would not supply Ukraine with main battle tanks. That was a red line that they were not going to cross. They crossed it. Then it was providing Ukraine with the HIMARS system. Line crossed. And so on. Each escalation changed the situation on the battlefield. How could anyone on the outside of the decision making bodies have predicted all of those changes?
He made predictions, multiple times.
Those predictions were incorrect, every time, until I stopped bothering to pay attention to the guy.
I don’t consider it unfair to notice whether someone’s predictions are correct or incorrect.
When my initial incorrect prediction on this war (that the Russian forces would win quickly and decisively), I just admitted that I was wrong and re-thought the matter instead of continuing to make the same prediction over and over until the end of time, hoping that it would someday randomly come up correct.
And if my changed prediction turns out to be incorrect, I’ll admit I was wrong and re-think again.
How is it a "stalemate" if Russia keeps taking more territory? When did said "stalemate" begin? Before or after the fall of Bakhmut? Before or after the fall of Avdiivka? Slow conquest is still conquest, not stalemate.
After two and a half years Russia still has not taken the territory it claims to have annexed. It has lost tens of thousands of soldiers, maybe more. This is a stalemate. Maybe Russia will eventually break the Ukrainian army. But Russia can’t defeat the Ukrainian will to resist. In the end hearts and minds, not force of arms will determine the outcome. Russia lost the war two years ago.
Once again, you leave out the large portions of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts that comprise the land bridge to Crimea, that Russia has occupied since the begininng of the war (before its occupation of some of the two oblasts you named), that easily withstood the Ukraine's much ballyhooed 2023 "Counteroffensive," and that Russia has no intention of giving back. Sure, it's unlikely that the Ukraine will "give" Putin the portions of any oblast that Russia has not conquered and held. But it is perhaps only slightly less likely that Putin is going to "give" the Ukraine any significant portion of the territory that Russia has conquered. And that most certainly goes for the strategically critical land bridge portion of the Z and K oblasts. Russia has actually been busy building a secondary railroad across the land bridge.
"Once again, you leave out the large portions of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts that comprise the land bridge to Crimea"
As I've been saying since it became obvious in mid-2022 that the Russian war plan had failed, yes, there's a good chance that Putin can continue to hold a narrow land corridor along the Azov coast, along with almost certainly retaining Luhansk and possibly securing Donetsk.
Absent a change of western political will, he has about as much chance of keeping the bulk of Zaporzhzhia and Kherson oblasts as I have of succeeding Charless III as by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
So bizarre. Again, Putin’s holdings in K and Z oblasts EASILY withstood the Ukie counteroffensive. They aren’t particuarly “narrow.” And there is no reason in the world to expect Putin to give them up. Why would Putin agree to a retreat in these oblasts, when they ARE the landbridge to Crimea? “Bulk” is a loaded word. Do you expect Putin to pull back from where he is now, or not?
“Russian forces currently occupy 75 percent of the total area of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts, and Putin is effectively demanding that Ukraine cede 40 percent of Donetsk Oblast, 25 percent of Kherson Oblast, 25 percent of Zaporizhia oblasts, and one percent of Luhansk Oblast that Russian forces do not control…”
The above is the assessment of the pro Western, pro Ukie ISW, as of yesterday.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-14-2024#:~:text=Russian%20forces%20currently%20occupy%2075,Oblast%20that%20Russian%20forces%20do
IOW, Russia, today, controls 3/4 of both the K and Z oblasts. Which sounds pretty “bulky” to me!
“Do you expect Putin to pull back from where he is now, or not?”
Yes.
Your opinion does coincide with the opinion of neocons on this issue. They are also sure Russia will be defeated on the battlefield and retreats from the territories of former Ukraine including Crimea. Then U.S. navy can move in and other U.S. military infrastructure can be installed in Eastern Ukraine. To what purpose? Of course for the purpose of undermining Russian state further until it collapses and all Russian natural wealth can be appropriated by American corporations. Unfortunately for neocons and millions of their neo-Nazi fans it will never happen. Every next Russian proposition is going to be much worse for Ukraine until only one last proposition is left – unconditional surrender. The problem of The West is that both their elite and their people are living in a parallel world detached from the reality.
Feel free to quote me claiming that Russia will be defeated on the battlefield, or abandon Crimea.
No hurry. I'll wait.
I have no habit to quote neocon and neo-Nazi fans.
Well, I think it's likely that you have absolutely no chance have of succeeding Charless III as by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith….
But this does not refute Philadelphia Lawyer's point, AFAICS, as I would take your assessment of your chances pretty obvious when compared with the Russian army's chances in the former eastern Ukraine.
At the moment, Russian armed forces engaged in Ukraine are about 700K strong. In Feb 2022 it was about 150K. If necessary, Russia can double this number. NATO has no chance succeed in this war. Full NATO involvement in the war can only mean it is going to be nuclear, and still NATO has no chance to win.
They are not bad terms, all thing considered. Russia keeps what they have taken, Ukraine keeps Kharkov and Odessa, Ukraine agrees to neutrality. If I were Ukraine, I'd negotiate to retain those parts of the 4 oblasts I still hold, particularly the big cities near the river, but this is actually not terrible. Better than the continued destruction of what little is left of value in the country. And MUCH more reasonable than Zelensky's proposal.
American companies Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto own half of Ukraine. Also billions go to weapons makers. There will be no peace deal with Russia.
President 4 Life Zelenskiyy : Take the deal, you idiot.
Every time you've ignored an offer, the next one is even less favourable to you. This one leaves you sea-access, your life, and Kiev intact.
Don't let your pride or your delusions get more people killed.
Why would Zelansky take the deal? He obviously doesn't care about the people that live in Ukraine. He gets a cut of everything that is stolen from the American people via (DC) District of Criminals. 10 more years of grifting and grafting. He's not going to let that gravy train pass him by.
If things get much worse he can move to some where he stashed the ill gotten money.
"Pride, delusions," or Cocaine
I just had a wonderful flashback! Thank you, very much NA!
“And” more than “or”. But he can’t take the deal, not his decision.
He's like Biden, could care less about his own people. Just following the dictates of the powers behind the throne of the West.
Since you brought it up, Uncle Joe does everything for his people:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment-data/
Trump LITERALLY said he doesn’t care about his people:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-tells-rally-goers-not-215430076.html
Neither one of them care. If they did neither of them would be running. But it is probably because they are both in such decline that they think have they and they alone are the answer to what ails us.
I backed-up my assertion. Back yours up…
I just did. They're two senile old men well past the prime of their lives who care only about their inflated egos, and their over the top narcissism. Their main priority is the MIC and both have promised undying loyalty to a foreign country. I thought you were smart?
I think you only described one of them. The MIC is here to stay. I’d change it if I could but reality is a b**ch.
Are you fucking serious? Do you think you will be so god damned arrogant that you think you should be president when you are 86 (end of term) years old? Christ, he was 3 years past man's expiration date when he ran in 2020. If he cared about the American people, he'd ride his ass off into the sunset and allow someone else on the ballot. And I can't stand Trump any more than you.
The only guy that can beat Trump right now? Gotta save democracy from the cultists. Fix s**t later if we think we can.
Really? An 82 year old man who is a shell of a human being is the only guy who could beat Trump? And he'll be SAVING democracy no less? Hear that protesters??? Geez dude I really must have misjudged you.
No. You misjudged the situation.
How so? Biden won't be 82 and he isn't a shell of a human being? The saving of our democracy? Please tell me explicitly what I'm misjudging.
82 y/o people are still functional. Biden’s administration is solid and has accomplished a lot for the American people. (You just want to dismiss it and promote ageism.)
82 y/o people are still functional.
No there is a sound argument to argue for the position of the presidency if I ever heard one.
Biden’s administration is solid and has accomplished a lot for the American people.
And you actually think the things HE has accomplished wouldn't have been done under a democrat president with a functioning brain?
(You just want to dismiss it and promote ageism.)
But of course, that's what it must be. Would you like an 82 year old like Biden flying the plane you were on? Driving the bus you were on? Taxi? Doing a surgical procedure on you? How about even babysitting your children or grandchildren? Our life expectancy is in the mid 70's, why do you think that is? And I'll be 70 on my next birthday so I can only imagine what Biden's nightime is like. And if he had to drive himself anywhere what king of battles he'd have just remembering where he put the car keys. But sure, lets just say I'm promoting ageism. You've got nothing else.
Putin risks nothing making the offer, just like Hamas risks nothing by accepting the so-called "Israeli" offer. Both know that the other side will never agree, so it makes them look good by offering such spurious PR-based offers.
Of course, Putin might actually be dumb enough to think that Ukraine and the West would agree to any such deal, or adhere to it afterward, just as he was dumb enough to think that Minsk II was a viable agreement. His initial approach to the war seemed based on that, which is why he pushed for the agreement reached in Turkey in March-April, 2022. I have presumed he learned from that, as he's been saying he was "played" over Minsk.
So that's why I think this offer is just PR window-dressing and not a serious offer. What's irritating is that a pack of so-called "analysts", like Jeffrey Sachs and the like, will seize on it as a viable offer and babble about it for weeks or months.
If Putin is serious about this offer, then he's an idiot. Again, Pepe Escobar pointed out yesterday that Russia, from the Security Council on down to the media and the public mood, is already resigned to a war with NATO. So Putin probably is aware of that and he's possibly offering this as a last-ditch effort to avoid WWIII. But I hope he knows it will not be accepted by either Ukraine or the West.
"Russian forces have made significant advances " LOL What do they call that? "Damning with faint praise?" Russia has won the frickin' war.
Your characterizations of Putin make you look a bit idiotic. He is saying the correct things assuming he is resisting the alternatives proposed by the End Times crowd currently governing the lunatic West.
There might be a few of us here who applaud his attempts to forestall Armageddon.
Your characterizations of Putin make you look a bit idiotic. He is saying the correct things assuming he continues to resist the alternatives proposed by the End Times crowd currently governing the lunatic West.
There might be a few of us here who applaud his attempts to forestall Armageddon.
Touché ole!
He's not forestalling anything. He is setting Russia up for the exact things that will destroy Russia.
You are a blowhard without a scintilla of logic or evidence beyond your self-declared expertise.
Russia is no anywhere close to winning anything except its own destruction.
Your habitual characterizations of people as dumb rapidly become boring. Blocked.
Yes, it would probably be dumb to think the U.S. is going to adhere to any agreements they sign. Good to know you're fine with being all-in on Armegeddon.
See Andrei's Martyanov's take…
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/06/that-was-point.html
Zelensky rejected the offer, calling it "an ultimatum".
Ukraine rejects Putin’s cease-fire proposal of ceding land on eve of peace summit
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4722444-ukraine-rejects-putins-ceasefire-proposal-of-ceding-land-on-eve-of-peace-summit/
Peace summit? Nope, more like an anthill.
Ukraine does not make their own decisions. Whatever they do is always the same — follow US plan.
The problem is — who is in charge in Washington? It is not Biden for sure. He recently uttered a sentence nobody understood. His whole demenor in both Normandy and Italy at G-7 is worriesome. It is no longer cringe worthy — but calls for pity.
Israel is determined to ignore any US initiative. US initiated and got approval of UN SC resolution — which has been rejected by Israel UN rep shortly after US resolution being voted on and passed. Very embarrasing.
The problem with US foreign policy goes well beyond Gaza. Israel is actively pushing for ratcheting up pressure on Russia using the three people that make decisions — Blinken, Sullivan and Kirby. And some kind of “limited” warfare using European patsies — France and Germany, UK iwill just cheer them on.
From Israel’s point of view, a major distraction — a war in Europe involving Russia wiuld be ideal. In chaos, Israel can complete expulsion of Palestinians, get into Lebanon and even push into Syria along Euphrates where US already has bases.
Clearly, if Russia is not distracted, such an outcomee would not be possible. Russia has forcess in Syria, well positioned to defend Lebanon. However, as theory goes, with Russia busy in Eiurope. Middle East is ready for new “birth pangs”, as once Condoleeza Rice predicted.
These are deeply interconnected fronts., and, pains me to say that — who is in charge? What isbeing done to Biden is an abuse of elderly.
Ukraine has many times done what the US didn't want them to do. If the US were calling the shots, that would not happen.
Ignorance is bliss, or so I've read.
People that choose to be Putin’s useful idiots will know that in he future. Stalin’s useful idiots found out the hard way as they were frog marched to a wall.
Putin is not Stalin.
No, Stalin is just Putin’s hero, regardless of the smokescreen he has put up many times.
I don't pity those who only remain in their position because they want to be there.
He's there because he has been consumed by his lust for power. That's on him.
I don't think Israel is "ratcheting up pressure on Russia". And I don't think you're a native English speaker, so I'm not sure what your agenda is.
Russia is asking for the implementation of the Misnk Agreement, nothing more. Instead of "autonomy" for the eastern regions within Ukraine, Russia is demanding that the eastern Ukraine regions be part of Russia, for their own protection, rather than part of Ukraine, which is now ruled by an anti-Russian post-Maidan government. That is the only difference. Autonomy would have meant the east could deal freely with Russia as a neighbor instead of being subject to the imposed anti-Russia rules of the "EU Association Agreement", which Russia could not accept for perfectly understandable reasons.
Though, like Mykhailo Podolyak, our 'leaders' will cant the "Russian aggression" line, the rest of the world will see the sanity of Putin's proposal.
The rest of the world will channel surf.
Putin is a fool and a weakling. Russia needs to crush Ukraine and install a government in kiev. Putin said the Kiev government is illegitimate, so why would he negotiate with it? What an idiot!
There are some well-placed people in Russia who think along those lines. Fortunately they have a sensible, rational, calculating, some would say excessively patient and prudent, unnecessary risk-taking averse President in Putin.
What happens when these traits are taken as signs of weakness, indecisiveness, leave alone foolishness is perhaps best described as tragic.
The lack of seriousness by which this is peace proposal is being disregarded, or just ignored is just another example of that kind of actual foolishness that can only result in tragedy.
Wow! I can’t wait for Putin to really start trying to win his SMO!
Taking place right now. Perhaps the Russians don't see much reason to prioritize curing Western audiences of their self-deception. I'm sure the Russians are acutely aware that however difficult and costly, grinding on to realize the current objectives with the SMO are much more realistic.
You keep telling yourself that — if it helps you cope.
Nothing of the sort is taking place.
You should interview the dead and wounded to see how they're viewing nothing of the sort.
Just because there are dead and wounded does not men that Putin is winning. In fact, he is not. All he is doing is wasting men and material, the future of his country.
The world according to someone who demonstrates nothing beyond a mouth.
Bye.
In war everybody loses. That's why peace negotiations make more sense.
Sure, but a precondition for that is reliability and trustworthiness. And the US have proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be possessing none of the necessary integrity for the Russians to not seek de facto guarantees for their security needs. So there's that dilemma.
Putin does not negotiate in good faith. When the war started in 2022, Putin insisted on surrender. Take it or elave it. The “talks” went on for about 3 months, with no change from the Russian side, so Ukraine left because there was nothing to negotiate.
Putin insisted on the peace of the grave. He hasn’t changed a whit. You don’t negotiate your own destruction.
That is a complete load of bullshit and proves you don't kkow what you are talking about. There was an initialed draft of a peace agreement by BOTH PARTIES shortly after the war started. Three months my ass. You're a clown.
NOTHING had been initialed. The talks went on for about 3 months and the parties were too far apart, with Russia being utterly recalcitrant. Ukraine walked as a result.
What you posted is simply another of list of lies Putin has told. Your a clown that has unthinkingly swallowed Putin’s lies.
“NOTHING had been initialed.”
Incorrect.
The draft agreement was initialed by each side’s negotiators in Istanbul.
What DIDN’T happen was either of the principals (Zelenskyy or Putin) signing the draft.
Zelenskyy modified the draft to remove absolute Russian veto power over Ukrainian military operations, and to change some other language regarding the particulars ceasefire lines.
The head Russian negotiator, Sergey Lavrov (presumably on the orders of Putin) publicly rejected the modified draft but proposed continuing negotiations. This happened the day before Johnson arrived in Kyiv. After Johnson arrived, Zelenskyy announced that negotiations would not be continued.
You keep spewing the same BS. Ukraine has repeatedly denied that anything was agreed to, and that the talks went for three months with nothing agreed to. This has been known for more than 2 years. If you want to believe Putin’s lies, have a ball, but I’m not accepting the Russian lies you have swallowed.
The negotiations were not continued because they had reached a dead end. The Ukrainians were not going to surrender their sovereignty to a country that had mistreated them for years.
Yeah, the New York Times is noted for its pro-Russian bias.
“The Times is publishing the documents it obtained in full. They are treaty drafts dated March 17 and April 15, 2022, showing the two sides’ competing proposals and points of agreement; and a private ‘communiqué’ at in-person talks in Istanbul on March 29 that summarized the proposed deal. The documents were provided by Ukrainian, Russian and European sources, and confirmed as authentic by participants in the talks and other people close to them. Some aspects of these documents have emerged, but most of the material has not been previously disclosed.”
You’re the first person I’ve run into who claims to have “known” for more than two years that what clearly, unambiguously, and provably happened didn’t happen.
The Russians have lied about everything. Why would this be any different. I am not the first person that ha said what I have said. In interviews I have seen with the Ukrainians involved in the talks, they deny anything of the sort.
Lets see who supplied the docs. I’m betting Putin’s regime did. The news I have consistently see for the last two years is that the Ukrainians walked, and walked for good reason.
I linked you to the docs.
While all regimes lie, this is one of those rare cases where the Russian regime, the Ukrainian regime, and the US regime all agree on a few basic facts:
1) There was a draft
2) initialed by the negotiators, which was subequently
3) amended by Zelenskyy and
4) rejected by Lavrov, after which
5) negotiations ceased.
I suppose all three regimes could be lying about all five things, and the reasons for (4) and (5) are certainly disputed, but the basic framework of those facts isn't something I've seen disputed before.
No biggie, but it's strange that you seem to mistake me for some kind of "pro-Russian" type.
Most people in this forum who mistake me here have convinced themselves I'm "pro-Ukrainian."
It's over on Twitter that I get called a "vatnik," "Putin dupe," etc. — for holding exactly the same positions, and making exactly the same claims of fact, as I make here.
In reality, I don't support any of the involved regimes. My sympathies are reserved for the non-combatants and conscripts caught up in the fight between murder gangs.
Base on reports from people tat were in the negotiations, if such could be called that, The conditions kept changing . After 3 months the Ukrainians knew that those talks were a dead end, and stopped.
Ukraine is fighting an existential war for its life as country as Putin means to take them back under the thumb of Moscow, which means death for Ukraine this time around. Putin has said on several occasions that he means to destroy Ukraine as a political entity and Ukrainians as an ethnicity. I don’t care for any government, but I have taken Ukraine’s side because they are the poeple that have been invaded, and invaded without provocation (no matter the lies otherwise) and the people do not deserve to be back under Moscow’s tender grasp. Ukraine is not fighting because she wants to fight, but because she must. Peace at any price is the same as death for Ukraine, and that is what Putin has demanded.
I can understand why people would use those terms on you. I have seen that frame work before, but the ultimate source, every time I’ve been able to trace it has been Putin’s agitprop network. That bunch has done little more than lie, and unless it can be proven otherwise, which is rarely, I take everything that bunch says as a lie. I have as yet to get my fingers burned.
Up until quite recently, politicians and pundits in the West were quite willing to dismiss even the existence of the Istanbul Communiqué and the signed draft agreement. Some officials even insisted that if Putin really had a draft agreement, then he would have published it.
Well, The New York Times just did. Suddenly, The Times can produce the original document, immediately following Putin’s insistence that a new peace proposal can be reasonably built upon it, in order to ridicule the details of Putin’s claim and insist that the Istanbul talks “fizzled” instead of proving that the grounds for peace could be agreed upon.
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2024/06/17/encouraging-war-in-ukraine-new-york-times-misses-the-point/
The NYT is a hot bed of lies and long has been. That includes Putin’s war. Frankly, Antiwar is not a reliable source either. When Justin was still a round, it was not a peace at any price cabal of fools. It’s a different place now.
Bluntly, Putin has offered only surrender terms, and nothing else. Ukraine was right to walk.
“Bluntly, Putin has offered only surrender terms, and nothing else.”
Mostly.
The current offer doesn’t even pass the laugh test — “give me everything I’ve been trying and failing to take for more than two years and we’ll call it peace.”
The offer as of the “initialed draft” time frame was better, but militarily it did require that Ukraine return to being a Russian imperial satrapy, with the Kremlin exercising absolute veto power over all Ukrainian military activities, which seems to have been the major sticking point for Zelenskyy. He wasn’t going to do that, and Putin still thought he had the winning hand if the war dragged on.
He’s still unwilling to lose face as the price of getting his teat out of the Ukraine wringer.
And maybe he just can’t do that without suffering an accidental fall from a window or whatever.
He’s probably willing to continue throwing away Russian blood and treasure in perpetuity rather than be the one who has to publicly slink out of Kherson/Zaporzhzhia with his tail between his legs.
Putin has been beyond stupid in his invasion of Ukraine. Peter Zeihan has told of the massive corruption in the Putin dictatorship. Putin himself is reputed to have stolen upwards of 100 billion, with Shoigu and associates having stolen at least one third of the military budget, with others having stolen another one third.
Putin was naïve to think his associates would be unable to keep their sticky fingers out of the til. That was money that was supposed to have gone for equipping and training the military. Instead, many senior officers were not feeding their men properly (the stories of dog food are plausible, but I still have a hard time crediting Russian officers with stupidity to that extent), and much of the “training” was what we in the west would call demonstrations or parades.
Putin’s unwillingness to get out while he has a military to withdraw is tempered by the fact that the Russian people have wrecked regimes when they wasted people and resources to the extent Putin has. His life is probably on the line. Putin’s real problem is that he has nothing like what Stalin had when the Germans came calling in 1941. Putin started a war, and he is wasting his men for having no reason to invade in the first place. The Russian people are starting to get restive.
Everything that doesn't fit your idiotic narrative is a lie to you. Israel didn't drop hundreds odf 2000 lb. bombs either. At least according to you. And you're such a dumb ass you didn't even realize that the New York times article was something you would agree with. And you of all people SHOULDN'T be invoking Justin Raimondo's name. He just rolled over.
Whatever Putin was offering was , in principle, acceptable to Ukraine until the West put a kibosh to negotiations.
You are so funny. You swallow Putin’s lies without a thought, but I have the idiotic “narrative.”
The west put the “kibosh” on nothing. That’s your fantasy. Simply put, you’re pathetic.
Anti-war is far different than it was under him. I did not “invoke” anything. I simply made an observation. Such idiocy on your apart is like the rest of Putin’s narrative that you mindlessly spew.
I gave you a link. There is no question there is/was a signed document and yet you resort to accusing everyone believing Putin lies as your seemingly only response. And I'm pathetic?
I posted this earlier. But I'm sure it's just more Putin lies.
When asked if the Western powers blocked the agreement, Bennett answered: “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.” At some point, says Bennett, the West decided “to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.”
You invoked Justin's name to deflect away from you looking like a clueless fool. And you topped it off by sliding Putin in there again. I think you're one of those who has a poster of a shirtless Putin on horseback on your bedroom ceiling. You seemed quite obsessed with him.
Yeah, “no question.” You have no idea what a deflection is. I made a comment about this place because there are far more rabid “peace at any price” here now than before.
You have nothing but swallow Putin’s lies. yes, you are pathetic because you have no capacity for critical thought. Bennet has an opinion, and they are like mouths, every one has one. Only Ukraine could reject your alleged agreement, not the west.
I know full well what deflection is and what invoke means. You obviously don't. And then you went and proved it by doing it again. PUTIN LIES.
Bennet WAS THERE. There is no question there was a signed document. I could say the sun sets in the west and you'd say that was a Putin lie. Your replies are almost exclusively that, and only that. But that must be that "critical thinking" you were talking about. Now why don't you go back to the MSM and swallow the real lies if this place has got you so upset.
You obviously have no idea what it means. You have a poor command of the language not to realize that the name was mentioned as a point of comparison. As such, it was not a deflection.
You keep believing the lies, and I’ll stay with the facts.
You mentioned his name as a point of comparison to deflect from your clueless comments. They aren't mutually exclusive. You invoked his name to deflect from what an absolute moron you are.
I gave you facts with links proving them. There is no question there was an initialed draft of a peace agreement. Your facts consist of "Putin lies" It was only "Bennet's opinion" and the NYT is a "hotbed of lies". Brilliant.
Rave at yourself. I have no time for an idiot that swallows lies uncritically.
You're like a broken record. I went back and read your comments and that's all you do is call people liars and Putin stooges. It's pointless talking to you and I see others just decided to give up and ignore you.
Well, you should stop and smell the roses — that is, take more time for yourself.
Patient for what? The more restraint Russia shows, the more aggressive NATO becomes. The only reason for NATO’s escalation is that they know there will be no retaliation from Russia, only complaints. I have no doubt that Putin’s deliberate slow war will allow NATO troops to enter Ukraine and take over much of the country. Putin saying he wants to negotiate with a government he just said is illegitimate makes him look foolish and weak.
" The more restraint Russia shows, the more aggressive NATO becomes…."
Biden wants the war. Putin is trying to avoid one. Which do you think is the rational player in that game?
Do you fear looking foolish and weak? Just wondering. Personally, I only care that a small number of people care how I appear, maybe two or three. The rest of humanity? I could give a shit.
Slow by what measure? The point for the US and several West and East European countries if we go by what they themselves stated the goal of the war was, was weakening Russia, impose defacto regime change and break up Russia in smaller seperate states, ready to be played off against eachother. And oh yeah, promoting democracy against the threat of authoritarianism, for those gullible enough to buy that shite, but then it turned out Ukriane defeated itself mercilessly on that front.
The Russians need not be in a hurry in this war of attrition. Time is on their side. They have the initiative and have no need to be provoked into giving that away. All indicators point in their favor. Not only are they disarming Ukraine, in the process they are disarming NATO. And with time it seems the cohesiveness of NATO itself is being weakened too. Admittedly this is much less attributable to Russian efforts or extremely clever strategic thinking than to the absolute mindboggling stupidity, or toward Turkey more specifically latent or less than latent racism, of the Western leadership.
If NATO countries sans Turkey will be stupid enough to forget they started from the premisse that Ukraine is an expendable proxy as a means to an end, and enter the groundwar, they either will be defeated or we all will be reduced to our constituent atoms. This war might have been a failed gamble for the US, it is not a game to the Russians.
You wrote “If NATO countries sans Turkey will be stupid enough to forget they started from the premisse that Ukraine is an expendable proxy as a means to an end, and enter the groundwar, they either will be defeated or we all will be reduced to our constituent atoms”.
This is exactly why I keep stating that Russia needed a quick victory. Putin showing restraint only makes NATO more aggressive. Putin making peace proposals just makes him look weak, especially letting Ukraine/NATO keep Odessa, a historically Russia city. NATO can then put bases in Odessa, close to the Russian border.
Russia should have mobilized 2 million troops, tens of thousands of tanks and heavy guns, and crushed Ukraine. The border should have been sealed, and the government and neo nazi groups executed. Quick and brutal. Instead, Putin chose a half ass war that enabled NATO to get more and more involved. Russia is obviously winning on the battlefield, but the big picture is that the longer this drags on, the more NATO escalates with the result being a world war, possibly a nuclear one.
Need in one hand, sh*t in the other. Note which hand gets full first.
A step in the right direction for Putin.
The Russian government and military leadership are very well aware that the US would with about as near certainty as possible reject the peace proposal. As was conclusively shown in earlier, much better, peace deals it doesn't really matter what Ukraine, their elite, much less their people want. The US decides. Can't blame Zelensky personally, he'd probably would lose his life to some CIA or SBU operative if he answered the wrong way, so expect him to make a spectacle of his njet, just to be sure.
Timed with the Swiss 'peace' conference (not serious enough for Robocop of the World-Police to cancel a cocktail party with a famous actor) which will be about how to conduct war and all the ways to escalate the war, this all demonstrates to the world, not entirely blinded by Western propaganda, that the West has decided already on continuing the war, leaving Russia with no other option than to carry on with their special military operation to achieve their objectives. And those objectives, as we have seen, can be adapted to new realities on the ground. And those new realities do not favor Urkainian prospects and point decisively in the direction of that diminishing sharply with time.
Next proposal is going to be much, much worse still. And many more Ukrainian still, now younger and older than the depleted categories in between, are going to be dead who could have been alive. Could have attributed to a future of a Ukraine that's perhaps worth some amount less than 10 trillion dollar to Lindsay Graham. But then as many Ukrainian recruiters spend their talents, sometimes violently, proving, it's not their choice to make. That's made for them in Washington.
And risking nuclear war.
Zelensky could have stepped off the Merry Go Round at any time. He's addicted to power. I don't feel sorry for such a one.
Zelensky should secretly get his family out of the country, and then himself.
Is Washington’s plan now to march on Moscow ?
Sine we aren't involved in the war, why should they have such a plan?
US is involved up to its neck in this war….!
Sure seems like the Ukes are the ones who want to continue this war to save their homes and families. It’s too bad Russians are too obedient to see Putin’s land/power grab and are willing to die for Russian oligarchs.
The Ukes can save their homes and families by acccpting Putin's terms.
Is that how it works? Why didn’t the Soviets just accept Germany’s “terms” during the Nazi invasion of the USSR in WWII?
What "terms" did they propose?
Give Hitler all of the Soviet Union.
And way back in late March and early April of 2022 they could have had that. And if Putin's sole goal was a "land/power grab" why was he willing to do that back then? Or before the invasion when Blinken dismissed any negotiations with Russia saying their demands were "out of hand"? Even Zelensky didn't think that:
“Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state — we’re ready to do that. That’s the most important point … they started the war because of it."
And the Ukes declined.
I see you ignored what Zelensky said. The West declined.
From the NYT:
“The April 2022 draft shows that Ukraine rejected Russia’s proposal but does not show a Ukrainian counteroffer. Instead, Ukrainian officials pointed out that Russia could stop fighting at any time. A note inserted by Ukrainian officials into the March 2022 treaty draft says: “The Russian side has ignored Ukraine’s numerous requests for a ceasefire.”
5. Ukrainian national identity
When Mr. Putin announced his invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, he described one of his goals as the “denazification” of Ukraine. The term was widely interpreted as referring to the Kremlin’s goal of toppling Mr. Zelensky’s government and replacing it with a puppet regime.”
The April 2022 draft shows that Ukraine rejected Russia’s proposal but does not show a Ukrainian counteroffer.
Of course not. The negotiations ended when Johnson delivered the message that the West wasn't ready to negotiate with Putin.
I'll post Zelensky's words one more time and remember they are from March 28th, 2022:
“Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state — we’re ready to do that. That’s the most important point … they started the war because of it."
So, Zelensky already agreed in principal about neutrality. Any Ukrainian counteroffer that takes into account what Zelensky said on March 28th, would have kept negotiations going and this war would be over.
And you would be wrong.
Ah, just ignore what Zelensky SAID. I get it. That way you can't be wrong. "WE'RE READY TO DO THAT." How wouldn't the war be over if he had kept his word?
Leaders can’t change their mind? And no, Putin would’ve re-armed and tried to take the rest of Ukraine. The war would’ve resumed.
I didn't say they couldn't. But in this case, I posted what would have happened if Zelensky had kept those words. Negotiations would have continued. The war would be over. It had barely begun. And your MSM Putin brainwashing is showing again. The peace agreement was being negotiated in the spring of 2022. There was no need for Putin to rearm. And Ukraine would be as whole as it was in 2014. But it always goes back to the Putin wanting to take over Europe nonsense when inconvenient truths are pointed out.
Putin definitely wanted all of Ukraine. You’re just in denial.
One think you got correct.
Ukraine is ours.
We want all of it. That’s the only goal.
Im tired of the soft and polite posture of my people.
It’s everything or nothing and we will soon take it by any means necessary.
Your warmongering kind is over.
Hahaha. Half-assed Russian military. Couldn’t find its ass with both hands!
In the spring of 2022 he was willing to withdraw without annexing any more Ukrainian territory. Even his latest peace proposal has the lines staying where they are presently. Doesn't look like ALL of Ukraine to me. There is no basis for what you are saying other than you being a believer in the incessant US propaganda machine
“Even his latest peace proposal has the lines staying where they are presently. ”
No, it doesn’t. It requires Ukraine to withdraw from Donetsk (which Russian forces haven’t conquered yet), Kherson (which Russian forces haven’t conquered yet), and Zaporizhzhia (which Russian forces havenb’t conquered yet).
His latest proposal basically amounts to “give me everything I’ve tried and failed to take for the last 28 months and then I’ll pinky promise to not get stupid again.”
Fine. I stand corrected. Still not close to all of Ukraine.
It’s information warfare.
We confuse them with information then hit them hard and retake our land.
It’s time to finish what we started.
It’s time to reconnect Ukraine to our motherland by all means necessary.
If Americans are not careful, they will be speaking my language very soon.
List the US units in the order of battle. If there are none, then we are not involved.
You're not very subtle. Career military?
I’m an Engineer and I deal in facts, not fantasies. There are times to be blunt, and this is one of those times.
He doesn’t understand the term “sheep dipped” NATO troops. Hence his bewilderment
LOL – betcha there are 100,000 sheep dipped NATO troops already fighting
You are living in an ocean of lies.
It's not a plan… rather a propaganda…!
That will never happen but Moscow can easily march on Washington Red Dawn style.
By offering this peace plan Russia putting on table a diplomacy route to give Ukraine the last chance of being independent of US agenda…!
Putin’s keeps everything and Ukraine gets nothing. Sounds like a deal anyone would take!
It's de facto the way it is right now.
I think I know what you were trying to say but that’s not how you use “de facto”. So, you’re wrong about the situation and the grammar.
"de facto" : actual
especially : being such in effect though not formally recognized. So, reflecting the facts on the ground.
Correct on the definition but your sentence structure was incorrect.
Chay Bowes ® @BowesChay
Sergei Lavrov, regarding Putins Peace offer.
Translation.
20h
"Putin is patient. Those with ears will hear, those with brains will understand"
And the MSM calls it "demands," not terms.
Zelensky dithering while Ukraine burns.
I hope Russia will take Odessa before the end of this Special Military Operation.
The Russians can’t even take Vovchansk! Right next to the Russian border! Would you like me to show you a map of where Odessa is?
Putin is an incredibly intelligent leader. He know what he is doing.
Very soon he will send his real army and take all of Ukraine. Ukrainians will have to find a new land elsewhere
Hahaha. OK. Get back to me when that happens.
It will happen and you and i will have free land and apartment by the beach in Odessa and few more in Kiev.
By holding a peace conference in Switzerland without inviting Russia, an attempt was made to create the impression that the West is united in its views of what must be done to secure peace. So, Putin put his own ideas on the table without an invitation. In doing so, he probably spoiled the conference. If nothing else, he sobered them up a bit.
That was not a peace plan. That was war preparation and exit strategy for a dictator.
It just looks like they want to be seen to be making some sort of running…
Funny how the mainstream media makes such a big deal of Russian warships close to the USA while at the same time the USA is facilitating attacking Russia. What utter hypocrisy! It's almost like the USA thinks no laws apply to it.
almost?