Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine concluded on Monday, and the two sides agreed to hold more talks in the coming days. It was the first round of talks since the Russian assault on Ukraine began.
The talks lasted about five hours and were held in Belarus near the borders of Ukraine and Russia. “We agreed to keep the negotiations going,” said Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, as quoted by Russia’s RIA news agency.
According to the US’s RFE/RFL, Ukraine’s presidential press service said the two sides “discussed in detail a number of key topics on which they have prospects of finding mutually acceptable solutions.”
According to RT, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the two sides identified a number of priority topics on which “certain solutions have been outlined.”
Medinsky said that the two delegations found points they could agree on. He said the next round of talks will take place between the borders of Poland and Belarus.
Ahead of the talks, Zelensky’s office said the Ukrainian side would demand an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops. The Russians have made clear that they want Ukraine to declare its neutrality and pledge not to host strategic weapons that can target Moscow.
While the talks were being held, Zelensky formally submitted an application for Ukraine to join the EU. The move is largely symbolic since joining the EU takes time, and it’s unlikely all 27 EU states would support Ukraine’s membership while the country is fighting Russia, but it signals Zelensky is not ready to declare neutrality.
Fighting has continued across Ukraine, and the US and its European allies are pledging to send more weapons into the country. On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on “special” alert in response to sanctions and threats from the West.
All smoke and mirrors. What good would it do Russia to stop everything now? They’ve risked so much already they might as well go all in
If Putin doesn’t want defeat, he needs to act now. Time is not on his side as “volunteers” from all over the world are flying into Ukraine to fight for Ukraine’s “freedom”. At the same time huge amounts of weapons are also flying in to Ukraine from around the world. The Ukrainians have made it clear that they will “not give one inch of Ukraine to Russia” (and that includes Crimea – despite Crimea being Russia’s naval base since the time of the Czars and the Crimean’s being 90% ethnic Russian). Vladimir, it’s now or never.
West must make it clear that all sanctions will continue and will be increased until Putin pulls out (no matter the outcome of the invasion). Russian people will not tolerate this. Putin has miscalculated badly. Now even the Germans will arm to the teeth. Finland and Sweden will join NATO. If he’s sane, he will climb down from the tree and try to save face
Peace is absolutely saying ‘yes’ to the conditions Russia has laid out. Regardless of how bad “it makes us look” to accept this fact.
Putin aspires to absorb Ukraine, and move on from there. Acceding to his conditions will only encourage him to go further. Ukraine is a sovereign country. His view of history is warped and unacceptable to the rest of the civilized world. He will lose this in the long run unless he pulls back. He will not have the support of his people
“Putin aspires to absorb Ukraine, and move on from there.”
No, he does not. NATO desires that.
Putin has made his demands clear, and it is not what this projects from the ambitions of NATO.
But yes, he does mean to keep Crimea.
He literally said that his aim was to absorb Ukraine into Russia. What are you smoking?
Putin doesn’t want to absorb the failed and corrupt state of Ukraine. He just doesn’t want NATO/US to turn it into a battering ram against Russia.
well said Mary.
What he wants is a Ukraine which is pro-Russia (or at least neutral) and out of NATO, as Scott Ritter points out. And he’s going to get that, one way or the other.
i disagree. Russia has been invaded 3 times by the west (twice by Germany and once by France) and millions of Russians were lost because of it. Putin does not want a hostile NATO on his border no different than the U.S. not wanting Chinese troops along the Canadian border pointing missiles at us. Crimea has been the main Russian naval base since the time of the Czars before communism ever came to Russia. And the Crimeans who are 90% ethnic Russian want _no_ part of the west. But _you_ think forcing them to become part of the west is ethical?
Putin will lose this but not because he is wrong; he will lose this because the violent globalist one-world government western mob will win and sadly swallow up yet another culturally distinct country that will now become part of the blob. Very sad day for the world.
Hitler made the same claim to the Sudetenland because the majority were ethnic Germans. I doubt that you would have agreed with his claim to this part of Czechoslovakia. Putin’s fears are the reason that Nato never accepted the Ukraine. But this was not enough for him because he has imperial claims on the Ukraine. Finland and Sweden, who border on Russia and had not been part of Nato will now join in order to seek its protection…and with good reason
Yep, Putin is an imperialist, plain and simple, and the brain-dead commenters on this website who think they can reconcile being “anti-war” with demanding the mass destruction of a sovereign nation are beyond deluded
You are projecting again.
I don’t hear anyone demanding the mass destruction of Ukraine. You sound like our media. Just making shit up.
Anybody who knows anything about history knows the obscene Treaty of Versailles was the _reason_ world war 2 started. And with good reason. That land was part of Germany and was _stolen_ from Germany after the Treaty of Versailles. Germanic peoples lived on those lands since the Middle Ages! They were Germanic lands. Also, the German people were literally starving to death and dying in the streets because of the western embargo on their country after ww1.
When Poland was killing Germans inside the newly partitioned formerly German areas of what became Poland after Versailles, Hitler kept demanding they stop.. but they didn’t – Danzing Massacres – he invaded Poland, Poland had a treaty with UK, and bang, WW II.
Hitler had every right to protect those Germans just like Putin has every right to protect the people of the Donbass and Crimea who are overwhelmingly ethnic Russians, who have lived on those lands for hundreds of years and who want nothing to do with the West.
I am not surprised that people who defend Putin are also defending Hitler. Can you not find some historical revisionism site to troll?
I am defending the self determination and sovereignty of different cultures and ethnicities. No one, including one-world government globalists as yourself, has any right to _force_ your will and your culture on people who want no part of it. Be gone troll!
I’m certainly not what you think I am. Ukrainians have a right to live their lives in peace without the threat of violence and conquest from an imperialist warmonger who has never been able to overcome the loss of the Soviet empire.
People of the Donbass are majority ethnic Russians whose families have lived there for hundreds of years. Over 90% of people in Crimea are ethnic Russians.
Putin never asked for all of Ukraine. Minsk agreement (which Ukraine agreed on and never followed) asked for autonomy for the Donbass. That was it.
Ethnic Russians whose families have lived in these areas for hundreds of years have a right to live their lives in peace without the threat of constant violence they have endured in an 8 year civil war perpetrated by a U.S. installed Nazi puppet government.
Did Hitler ask the Sudetenland’s people if they wanted his will forced on them?
The people of Sudetenland supported Hitler and wanted autonomy from Czechoslovakia: the Treaty of Versailles forced them to be part of a culture and country that did not reflect who they were:
““The Czechs thus rejected the aspirations of the German Bohemians and demanded the inclusion of the lands inhabited by ethnic Germans in their state, despite the presence of more than 90% (as of 1921) ethnic Germans (which led to the presence of 23.4% of Germans in all of Czechoslovakia), on the grounds they had always been part of lands of the Bohemian Crown. The Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within Czechoslovakia. Over the next two decades, some Germans in the Sudetenland continued to strive for a separation of the German-inhabited regions from Czechoslovakia.
According to the February 1921 census, 3,123,000 native German speakers lived in Czechoslovakia—23.4% of the total population. The controversies between the Czechs and the German-speaking minority lingered on throughout the 1920s, and intensified in the 1930s.
During the Great Depression the mostly mountainous regions populated by the German minority, together with other peripheral regions of Czechoslovakia, were hurt by the economic depression more than the interior of the country. Unlike the less developed regions (Ruthenia, Moravian Wallachia), the Sudetenland had a high concentration of vulnerable export-dependent industries (such as glass works, textile industry, paper-making, and toy-making industry). Sixty percent of the bijouterie and glass-making industry were located in the Sudetenland, 69% of employees in this sector were German-speaking according to mother tongue, and 95% of bijouterie and 78% of other glassware was produced for export. The glass-making sector was affected by decreased spending power and also by protective measures in other countries and many German workers lost their work.[6]
The high unemployment, as well as the imposition of Czech in schools and all public spaces, made people more open to populist and extremist movements such as fascism, communism, and German irredentism. In these years, the parties of German nationalists and later the Sudeten German National Socialist Party (SdP) with its radical demands gained immense popularity among Germans in Czechoslovakia.
The increasing aggressiveness of Hitler prompted the Czechoslovak military to build extensive border fortifications starting in 1936 to defend the troubled border region. Immediately after the Anschluß of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938, Hitler made himself the advocate of ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia, triggering the “Sudeten Crisis”. The following month, Sudeten Nazis, led by Konrad Henlein, agitated for autonomy.
On 4 December 1938 there were elections in Reichsgau Sudetenland, in which 97.32% of the adult population voted for NSDAP (the Nazi Party). About a half million Sudeten Germans joined the Nazi Party which was 17.34% of the total German population in the Sudetenland (the average NSDAP membership participation in Germany was merely 7.85% in 1944). This means the Sudetenland was one of the most pro-Nazi regions of Nazi Germany.[14
Shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945, the use of the term Sudety (Sudetenland) in official communications was banned and replaced by the term pohraniční území (border territory).[15]
After World War II in the summer of 1945 the Potsdam Conference decided that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II). As a consequence of the immense hostility against all Germans that had grown within Czechoslovakia due to Nazi behavior, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled (while the relevant Czechoslovak legislation provided for the remaining Germans who were able to prove their anti-Nazi affiliation).
The number of expelled Germans in the early phase (spring-summer 1945) is estimated to be around 500,000 people. Following the Beneš decrees and starting in 1946, the majority of the Germans were expelled and in 1950 only 159,938 (from 3,149,820 in 1930) still lived in the Czech Republic. The remaining Germans, proven anti-fascists and skilled laborers, were allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia, but were later forcefully dispersed within the country.[16] Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft.
Many of the Germans who stayed in Czechoslovakia later emigrated to West Germany (more than 100,000). As the German population was transferred out of the country, the former Sudetenland was resettled, mostly by Czechs but also by other nationalities of Czechoslovakia: Slovaks, Greeks (arriving in the wake of the Greek Civil War 1946–49), Carpathian Ruthenians, Romani people and Jews who had survived the Holocaust, and Hungarians (though the Hungarians were forced into this and later returned home—see Hungarians in Slovakia: Population exchanges).”
In the 2001 census, approximately 40,000 people in the Czech Republic claimed German ethnicity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland#:~:text=The%20Sudetenland%20(%2Fsu%CB%90%CB%88,inhabited%20primarily%20by%20Sudeten%20Germans.
“On 4 December 1938 there were elections in Reichsgau Sudetenland, in which 97.32% of the adult population voted for NSDAP (the Nazi Party)”
I’m shocked — shocked! — that two months after Nazi troops marched into the Sudetenland and established a Nazi dictatorship, 97% of the population would mark “Ja” rather than “Nein” on the only party and slate of candidates on a ballot. Especially since the “Ja” circle on the ballot was only twice as large as the “Nein” circle, clearly not indicating any … suggested … vote.
“On 4 December 1938 there were elections in Reichsgau Sudetenland, in which 97.32% of the adult population voted for NSDAP (the Nazi Party). About a half million Sudeten Germans joined the Nazi Party which was 17.34% of the total German population in the Sudetenland (the average NSDAP membership participation in Germany was merely 7.85% in 1944). This means the Sudetenland was one of the most pro-Nazi regions of Nazi Germany.”
Stealing people’s land and then forcing those people to become part of a country and a culture that is not their own and that they don’t want is the _best_ way to start a war. It is for this reason and an embargo after ww1 that literally had Germans starving to death in the streets that Hitler rose in power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland#:~:text=The%20Sudetenland%20(%2Fsu%CB%90%CB%88,inhabited%20primarily%20by%20Sudeten%20Germans.
Thanks for clearing that up. Now I feel even better about the expulsion of the
Sudeten Germans after WW2
Because stealing people’s land and forcing another culture on them is the right thing. Gotcha. It’s this kind of thinking that started ww2 in Europe and allowed Hitler to rise in the first place.
Well said. best-donna
Do you even know the history that has led up to this crisis? How would you like it if nuclear missiles were aimed at your country’s cities? Would you take that lying down?
As I said above, NATO was reluctant to accept Ukraine for this reason. They understood that it would be provocative. But Putin wants the territory. He has demonstrated this in the past. He needs to be stopped
NATO has not kept its promises before. Why do you suppose NATO has been surrounding Russia lo these many years? Why has the U.S., which is NATO been funneling $Billions in expensive war materiel and CIA paid mercenaries into Ukraine. Why did the U.S. spend $5 Billion destabilizing Ukraine to set things up for the 2014 coup? Putin would be a very poor leader for Russia if he couldn’t see the signs of what was coming.
He does have the support of the Russian people – or at least the understanding. The Russians don’t want war, like most populations, but they understand the threat of NATO. In any event, like most states, including the US, what the population wants is irrelevant.
As I like to say, “That ain’t gonna happen.”
Absent massive direct military intervention by the west — and possibly even then — the Donbass republics, Crimea, and a land route connecting the two are and will almost certainly remain under Russian control.
I hope you’re right Thomas. The people in those areas are ethnic Russians. Forcing them to become part of something they don’t want is just plain unethical. Back in 2014 Lew Rockwell wrote an article on his web page saying that since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Crimea voted every single year for autonomy from Ukraine. They _never_ wanted to be part of Ukraine.
I am afraid you are right.
Time is on his side. None of these additions to the conflict will stop Russia from winning this. Russia has only committed perhaps 20% of its resources so far, and they are doing so in a very “soft” manner. If they have to, they can annihilate Ukraine. But that would cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, which they are trying to avoid. As Thomas says, absent direct military intervention by the west, Russia can’t lose this.
He obviously has the ability to win this war. But the toll will be heavy. And if the sanctions continue, the Russian economy will crumble…and along with it any support that Putin had
That’s not at all certain. Mercouris has argued for a year that it’s not going to work out that way. Russia will take an economic hit, but it will survive it – and it’s likely Putin will, too. Besides, if Putin gets ousted, the next guy in is likely to be an even more hard liner. The West won’t like that, either.
That’s not what I said.
What I said is that absent direct military intervention by the west, Putin will create and enforce a new de facto border including the LPR/DPR and a land corridor connecting them to Crimea.
If he insists on more, the remainder of his political career, and possibly of his life, is likely to be measured in low- to mid-double-digit weeks. He got where he is by picking a particular set of crony oligarchs to serve. That kind of basis for power has to be continually bought, and every day this thing stretches on is a day that he’s further in arrears.
Bullcrap. It’s not going to just be a “corridor”. Putin is taking Ukraine off the board for NATO. Period. End of story.
Kiev is about to be encircled. Then Russia will sit back and wait for supplies to run out and the chaos in the city to cause it to collapse. This will demoralize the one quarter to one half of the Ukrainian army which is outside the LDR resulting in their surrender – or their annihilation if they don’t. I expect the former, not the latter.
Russia will get everything it wants from Ukraine in negotiations or it will create those conditions on the ground. This will include a new government in Ukraine with new elections, recognition of Donbass independence, a legally binding refusal of NATO membership, and possibly other concessions I haven’t thought of.
None of this is going to harm Putin seriously politically in Russia. Due to the impact of sanctions on the Central Bank, we can expect some high inflation in Russia, and no doubt Russians will be unhappy. But they’ve seen that before, notable in the ’90s. Putin will ride it out – he’s in his last term, anyway, IIRC.
Russia can not lose this militarily. Any economic hits will be compensated for, as Mercouris has been arguing for the past year. As far as the “propaganda war”, Russia no longer cares what the West thinks of it, as Martyanov has been arguing for months. Neither will all the countries Russia still deals with and which are refusing to support the sanctions or abstaining from commenting on them, which includes 160 countries so far (that may go down, but probably not by much.)
“Bullcrap. It’s not going to just be a ‘corridor’. Putin is taking Ukraine off the board for NATO. Period. End of story.”
Not sure what you mean by “taking Ukraine off the board for NATO.”
If you mean conquering Ukraine and installing a new, pro-Russian regime, that’s not in the cards.
The question is whether Putin has gone so completely off his rocker as to believe it’s possible — in which case his oligarch controllers probably won’t wait long before deciding to retire him — or whether he’s setting up things he’s willing to negotiate away to protect the only gains he is going to get and probably the only gains he cares about (LPR/DPR/corridor to Crimea) — in which case he’s likely to survive for the moment.
Nonsense. Putin has no intention of “occupying” Ukraine. As Lira says, he intends to “capture” Ukraine – intact. Which is why Russia is proceeding in a “soft” manner, to minimize both civilian and military casualties.
Putin’s goal seems to be to eliminate the existing Ukraine regime, and clean out the neo-Nazi elements that have the power to influence the government – namely the neo-Nazi political parties and their militias – and then set up a new government with new elections. That government will either recognize Donbass as either independent states or reabsorb them as autonomous states. I don’t know which one Putin requires – previously in 2014 he wanted them to remain in Ukraine as autonomous. He only recognized them as independent to get the legal basis to intervene directly. But I suspect he’ll accept it either way, as it really doesn’t matter to Russia.
The new government will be required to abjure NATO membership in its Constitution. The military will be limited to basic arm – nothing strategic that could threaten Russia. No military cooperation with NATO in any form. That will take Ukraine off the board for NATO.
Russia will set all this up, then go home. Then if Scott Ritter is right, they will negotiate with the new Ukrainian government to install Russian bases with strategic weapons inside Ukraine – much like Kaliningrad. Belarus will likely also host Russian strategic weapons to counter the NATO weapons in Poland and Romania. This is part of the “military-technical measures” Russia promised if the US and NATO ignored its treaty demands.
The rest of your comment about Putin is speculation. Cite some evidence or forget about responding since I won’t care.
Putin has never asked for more than this; as far as territory, all he wants is the LPR/DPR and Crimea which are majority ethnic Russian territories. He’s been consistent for years on this. He doesn’t want all of Ukraine.
It’s been the West and the Nazi puppet government the U.S. installed who have refused him this.
It’s not a question of “wanting all of Ukraine.” As Lira stated in his video yesterday, what Russia wants is to “capture” Ukraine – not occupy it.
I’ve been saying that for a long time. Russia is going to “re-orient” Ukraine’s political structure, then ignore it. If that doesn’t work over time and Ukraine becomes a problem again, rinse and repeat.
Scott Ritter thinks so, too. He thinks Russia will put strategic weapons in Ukraine and Belarus to offset the weapons NATO are placing in Poland and Romania. So Russia needs a “cooperative” government in Ukraine, whether it’s a “puppet regime” or just pro-Russian doesn’t really matter.
Whether this “new Ukraine” comprises all of existing Ukraine – minus the Donbass – or without the Galicia region – doesn’t really matter. As long as it doesn’t cause any more trouble for Russia, Russia doesn’t care.
Putin has proved himself to be a man of his word, even with those that are ganging up and attempting to strangle him he keeps the gas flowing, keeps their families warm in a cold winter. I don’t think even one of those that are against Russia have any idea what the bigger picture is all about, the way the US has played this thing forcing Russia to defend herself.
Well said Bellah.
Being ignorant of what went on behind the scenes, and so take as you may, but wondering why these two weren’t meeting prior to the invasion with Russia making it clear it wasn’t bluffing. Seems Russia wasn’t even bothering to deal with Zelensky, perhaps knowing he wasn’t actually the guy to talk to and other Western leaders were calling the Ukraine’s moves for them.
Russia wouldn’t talk to Zelensky before the war because that was what Zelensky was angling for – trying to get Russia involved in the resolution of the Donbass problem, instead of adhering to the Minsk agreements and talking to the Donbass leaders themselves. Russia didn’t fall for that trick.
Shouldn’t the people of the West and Ukrainians be informed with a little history and prefatory statements. Is it true that Russia has supplied needed oil and gas to the Ukrainian people? Russians and Ukrainians are cousins and love each other. Most Ukrainians speak Russian.
This must be the only “war” where the opponent still gives free energy supplies to the country they are fighting. Why can the rest of the World not see this?
Zelensky needs to be waterboarded.
Torture is always wrong. Always.
I agree, but with the U.S. doing it to our prisoners, I thought maybe Russia could do it too.
God, tell me we aren’t going to sit around and talk for a year like the stupid JCPOA talks. At least Russia hasn’t stopped the operation, so clearly things will be decided by events on the ground, not these pointless “talks.”
Russia has presented its surrender terms to Ukraine. All Ukraine can do is accept them. Otherwise these talks are meaningless.
The problem with these talks is that Ukraine was meant to be Vassal state not an independent one. Any negotiations with Russia will have to resort to that status or its game over for Ukraine.