NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claimed in an interview published Friday that the quickest path to peace in Ukraine is through NATO countries sending more weapons to Kyiv.
“It may sound like a paradox, but military support for Ukraine is the fastest way to peace,” Stoltenberg told the German news agency DPA. “We know that most wars end at the negotiating table – probably this war too – but we know that what Ukraine can achieve in these negotiations depends inextricably on the military situation.”
Stoltenberg’s comments come as there is no indication that Ukraine and Russia will come to the negotiating table. Kyiv maintains that its goal is to push Russia out of all the territory it has captured, including Crimea, while Moscow vows it’s not leaving the areas it has annexed.
Ukrainian officials are also demanding that Russia face war crimes tribunals before talks can even begin. While Stoltenberg said arming Ukraine is the fastest way toward peace, the support from the West has emboldened Ukraine to make such demands, and its hardline positions are unlikely to change as long as the aid keeps flowing.
The NATO chief recently acknowledged the dangers of supporting a proxy war against Moscow, warning that it could lead to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. But Stoltenberg insists the West must continue arming Ukraine despite the risks.
In another interview over the weekend, Stoltenberg said NATO countries need to step up weapons production to support Ukraine. “For the artillery, we need an enormous amount of ammunition, we need spare parts, we need maintenance,” he said. “This is a huge undertaking. We need to ramp up production, and that is exactly what the NATO allies are doing.”
“But Stoltenberg insists the West must continue arming Ukraine despite the risks.” – Stoltenberg will be in his deep underground bunker when the nukes fall. We are mired in the same round of personal delusion, desire to prop up assorted post-empires (UK) and empires (US and NATO), would-be empires (Turkey), and the inhumane belief that arms production will cure economic woes as precipitated WWI.
It’s the same approach Russia is using.
Full scale invasion will bring peace.
So Ukraine is on a full scale defense in the name of peace and territorial integrity.
And you should change you avatar name.
Im pretty sure Agnieszka Pilchowa would’ve supported Ukraine like most Polish.
Way to dishonor her character.
“And you should change you avatar name…
Way to dishonor her character.”
Change yr Hispanic handle, ya freakin’ disgrace to Latin America.
I have a strong suspicion that the chief of NATO has been mainlining lead in vast quantities. Based on his drool, I would say that virtually all his frontal cortex has been reduced to mush.
What kind of logic is this? It’s like your dentist saying more candy will keep the cavities out.
Along with the wishful thinking and hopeful talk looms the hour when Russia tires of this game they are playing of mister nice guy. With their deadliest on the planet arsenal of nunclear bombs, Russia can crush Ukraiine like an elephant crushes a grape, and lay waste half of NATO in almost no time.
Do you really believe Russia can win a nuclear war with US/NATO? Ever heard of MAD?
Who said a nuclear war against NATO? The OP said nuclear crushing of Ukraine … it would be NATO’s choice to involve itself and end the world under that unforeseen but possible eventuality.
Every capital of the major countries involved in this mess are withing minutes of a Russian missile. Minutes. The U.S. is vulnerable to Russian subs.
And Russia’s cities, military bases and surface fleets are magically invulnerable to attack because Patriarch Kirill proclaimed that Putin was sent by God on a divine mission to restore Russia’s greatness.
Without completely taking all NATO forces out including submarines you are talking about a suicide, are you seriously suggesting that the Russians are so mad/evil/insane as to prefer suicide over not being able to annex parts of Ukraine, areas that have not been part of Russia for between 20 and 30 plus years?
Moscow is not going to nuke anyone. Its called MAD for a reason. With the SMO going so well why would Moscow need to nuke anyone?
Thanks for reminding me how evil Putin could be.
This war was a big mistake for Russia.I hate seeing NATO exploit Putin’s stupidity. But there is no way out for Russia except withdrawal or holocaust level genocide. Russia will probably have to get new leadership that realizes the sooner Russia ends Putin’s forever war the better it will be for Russia as well as Ukraine.
Mistake for Russia? Sure. Holocaust? No
Can people stop with the Nazi/Hitler analogies? This isn’t anywhere near the same situation.
The war has not reached a holocaust level. But there is a danger that the escalation could lead to millions of Ukrainian casualties unless Russia gets a leadership that puts an end to Putin’s madness.
Ahem. Speaking of madness. Was it clear thinking to refuse to negotiate with Putin a years ago? Was it clear thinking to refuse to negotiate with Putin in April of this year? Was clear thinking to accept more countries into NATO, moving further East, arming those nations? It was madness.
If you read Purin’s conditions for “peace” you would realize that resistance was a better option over slavery.
Slavery? Comical. I suppose next it will sexist and racist, too?
spare me that stupid freedom/democracy bull shit. That is propaganda and good for selling the slaughter of other people’s sons. War is big business all about profits and power, wake up.
And now Putin should pull them out of the horse manure they jumped in. That is hilarious.
Putin held up the winning lottery # for them, neutrality and peace and prosperity, they said no, don’t want it, because Washington promised more and told the fools to turn it down.
Ukraine has serious problems. But the Russian invasion is just making things worse for Ukraine, Russia and the world. War is almost always worse than the casus belli.
An invasion by Ukraine’s former imperial overlord will only galvanize the Ukrainian people into an anti-Russian resistance front.
BULL SH*T, the Americans and the neo-Nazis in Kiev caused the war, they provoked and wanted the war, there is no doubt about it.
Biden could stop all this if he only wanted to, start negotiating. Boris stopped Zelensky from negotiating in Springtime, he told Zelensky Biden is not ready.
Biden dictates Zelensky, Biden has never said in a formal way, he wants Regime change and weal Russia. That is unconditional surrender.
Please explain that and what will the price for unconditional surrender be? How many more young men will have to die to serve the senile old man in the WH?
Is it total annihilation of Ukraine and Europe and Russia, how many more people should get killed to get the unconditional surrender?
Is that what the NATO MEMBERS AGREED TO THEIR ANNIHILATION FOR BIDEN and the neocons? That is where it stands now. Putin’s door to negotiate has ALWAYS been open.
Biden has no more power to dictate peace terms to Ukraine than Reagan had to tell the mujahideen what to do in Afghanistan. Zelenskyy is leading a national resistance movement that Russia can’t defeat. Even if NATO cut off all aid to Ukraine, the Ukrainians would continue fighting for their independence. It will take a long time for Russia to get a leadership that recognizes that the only way to end the war in Ukraine is to withdraw. NATO is exploiting the war. But NATO does not set the agenda for the Ukrainian resistance.
What is this war about? I would like to know why the USA is involved in Ukraine another continent, what is the issue, Does Biden bear responsibility for his actions or not? Does he own the American taxpayers an explanation why he signs a check for Zelensky without asking him to account what he did with all the moneyZelenskys wife spend $40 000 on a weekend in Paris who paid for all that, we do know how corrupt Ukrainian government is. Remember Afghanistan? I hold Biden responsible for the billions of tax payer $$$. He is an adult, he must be held responsible for the war he started.
“What is this war about?”
I. USA
This war is about different things for the US, Putin, the Russian people and Ukraine.
The US instigated the war and sees the war as an replay of the Afghan war that unraveled the USSR. The US sees the war as a cost-effective opportunity to weaken and bleed Russia and degrade its military without committing US or NATO troops. The war also makes profits for the MIC. The US doesn’t care about the people of Ukraine or the EU and only cares about the American people to the extent that their tacit consent is necessary to continue the sham of American democracy.
For Biden the war is a necessary distraction that gives him an excuse to blame inflation on Russia and divert attention from the failings of his administration and his broken promises to the people who voted for him.
II. PUTIN
For Putin this war is an existential test of the will of the Russian nation to reset the strategic balance that shifted against Russia after the Soviet Union disbanded and NATO expanded. Putin’s October 2021 demands were not only for guarantees of a neutral Ukraine, but he demanded that NATO withdraw its troops to the 1997 pre-expansion positions.
III. RUSSIAN PEOPLE
Putin is popular with the Russian people, but they are not willing to fight a protracted war with a general mobilization. The Russian people are invincible when they fight to defend their homeland. But Russians are terrible fighting imperial wars of conquest and lost every imperialist war since Crimea (1856); Japan (1905), WWI (1917) and Afghanistan (1979-1989). In fact, imperial wars of conquest tend to bring on revolutions and regime changes in Russia. This is an existential war for Putin, not for the Russian people.
IV. UKRAINE
For the United States, this is a proxy war. But for Ukraine, this is a war of national liberation. There are some bad elements in Ukraine. But the good elements are uniting to fight against the traditional colonial overlord. That is how Ukrainians see the war. They are grateful for aid from the west,but their resentment of Russian oppression goes back centuries before there even was a United States or a United Kingdom. Even if the West abandons them, the Ukrainians, like the Irish or the Afghans or the Vietnamese or the Algerians, will continue fighting until the Russian invaders leave.
V. SKYWALKER
I supported Putin when he supported national liberation and self determination. I recognize that US/NATO imperialism is worse than Russian imperialism and that the US usually is on the side of the dark forces. But I don’t support Putin’s war of revanchist imperial conquest. My sympathies are with the Ukrainian people who are effectively and courageously fighting back against their former colonial overlord.
I agree with most of what you post about the USA intention, were you are wrong are the issues and motivation of Russia and Ukraine and I can’t follow your conclusion.
A little European history.
The industrialization area started the economic competition between UK and the Bismarck German Reich and the rising USA. The UK colonial empire was ending while Germany was rising WWI was a way to eliminate Germany, making sure Germany and Russia would not become allies, the Versailles unconditional surrender did that, it broke the German middle class, they lost all their savings when the money lost all value due to unreasonable war reparation’s, then came Hitler and the second WW, and another unconditional surrender, but the fear of Russia saved Germany, it was needed to fight against Russia, so the Morgenthau plane could not be used. the war booty for the USA were about 500 000 patents, mostly international patents, and some 60% of the German industry.
Now the USA is deindustrializing Germany, an ally. Deindustrializing Germany, will destroy the EU competition. That is why they blew up the LG pipelines. After Russia, comes China if all works out.
The people want peace, the people oppose NATO, and NATO soldiers are mostly mercenaries, the big nations have no draft, war has been privatized, war is business, taxpayer paid.
Come on, Biden is holding the purse strings, the weapons are mostly made in USA, without NATO funding and arming and intel info, all wheels would stand still instantly, that is where the power is. He could stop the war immediately and start negotiating. Unless you are in a deep coma you know it and you understand it.
The outcomes of asymmetric wars of national resistance are determined by hearts and minds not force of arms or dollars and cents. The Russian invasion failed because the resistance is a genuine popular movement based on the people of the Ukraine. US/NATO is opportunistically helping the Ukrainians. But if the US/NATO cut its aid the Ukrainians would continue to fight a guerrilla war until the Russians leave.
Zelenskyy is effectively leading the Ukrainian resistance. But if Zelenskyy agreed to a peace that gave Ukrainian territory to Russia, the Resistance would continue under new leadership. Putin has lost because he is fighting a nation that he doesn’t believe exists.
I fully agree with your first sentence. Then in your second sentence you speak for all Ukrainians, that is a geographic problem since many Russian speaking people live in east Ukraine, and many Ukrainians in the west are also opposed to the war and dare not say so, because taking some food from a Russian soldier can get them killed, being called collaborators. without US/NATO the majority of people would have voted in support of peace as they did when they voted for Zelensky, peace was his promise based on the Minsk agreements. He won with more than 70% and then broke his promise joining the neo-Nazis which are a minority but control the government. Russia did not want territory, only autonomy for the Russian speaking Ukrainians, a guaranty border security from Kiev, no NATO membership and no nuclear missiles on Russia’s border in return Russia and the Europeans would guaranty Ukrainian neutrality like Austria. Ukraine had nothing to lose and everything to win, peace and prosperity. Zelensky has become very wealthy selling the nation to US/NATO. He has millions of $$$ in bank accounts and several million $$$ properties outside Ukraine. Ukrainian oligarchs are living it up in Monaco with their yachts on Anker in the French Riviera. He may join his friends there if he does not get killed. Azov is in charge in Ukraine, not Zelensky, he is nothing but a hand puppet.
What makes you think the Russian invasion, as you call it, has failed? There are lots of reports and evidence of brutal war crimes against the Ukrainian people by the infamous brutal Azov battalions.
Was Kennedy “mad” when he risked nuclear destruction to stop offensive weaponry based in Cuba to threaten the US. ?
Yes. Kennedy was wrong.
Cuba had the right to choose its allies. Following the Bay of Pigs and the US attempts to overthrow the regime, Cuba had good reason to want Soviet protection for the US.
Disagree – The Soviet Union’s planned or actual insertion of nuclear weapons into Cuba was an immediate, actual existential threat to the US. He was correct in his actions and negotiations and give and take concessions overcame the threat. Just like Russia faced/faces an existential threat with the expansion of armaments, NATO membership and Zelensky talking about getting nukes. Russia was backed into a corner just like Kennedy was.
Cuba had a right to choose their allies but massive firepower in the form of nuclear missiles and the proximity of that threat to the US, made it untenable.
As long as Russia held Crimea there was no chance of Ukraine joining NATO. An US/NATO would never give Ukraine a nuke nor permit Ukraine to develop a nuke. US/NATO are evil. But not irrational. They aim to destroy Russia, not the world (which includes the MIC).
Then why all that fuzz, Russia wanted assurance of no USA nuclear weapons on its border with Ukraine. Ukraine was no danger, the USA/NATO is, why did the US push for Ukraine NATO membership starting in 2008, regime change in Kiev in 2014 and immediately the arming and training of the Ukrainian military, encircling Russia? That amounted to actual threats, not just words. Hitler and Napoleon invaded Russia crossing Ukraine. That would NATO along the Russian borders from the Baltic in the north to Ukraine in the south.
What about the Ukrainian so-called head of state Zelensky, can’t he ask to negotiate and put an end to the slaughter? Putin’s madness? What a stupid thing to say, what about the madness of Biden and the cabal of criminal neocons in Washington, don’t they have something to say too? Only Putin can do it, right? The nobodies in Kiev and D.C. are incapable to do anything right. Putin has to do it for them, only he can do it, he is God Almighty.
Yes, either Zelenskyy or Putin could offer to negotiate and put an end to the slaughter.
So far, both of them are defining “negotiation” as “the starting conditions are, we get everything you want and you get whatever we deign to give you.”
Until one of the parties is willing to put something on the table that the other side wants, there’s no basis for negotiation.
There are, however, other ways in which the war could end.
The most unlikely is a complete, devastating military defeat of the Russian forces by the Ukrainian forces.
The second most unlikely is a complete, devastating military defeat of the Ukrainian forces by the Russian forces, followed by a successful counterinsurgency campaign.
The most likely is that the Russian forces will eventually secure LPR, DPR, and a land corridor to Crimea along a defensible line of control, declare “victory” and a unilateral ceasefire, and see if the Ukrainian regime and the US/EU/NATO regimes want to keep at it.
The Ukrainians are not going to concede territory to Russia. And they will not stop fighting even if NATO cuts all aid and the resistance is forced to go underground. Russia will never pacify any part of Ukraine except perhaps Crimea. And thanks to Putin’s folly, they may lose that as well.
The Ukrainian resistance is like virtually all other anti-colonial resistance movements. They will not negotiate with the invaders until they get a commitment that the invaders will leave.
The most likely end to the war is that after Putin leaves office a new leadership will negotiate a withdrawal from all of Ukraine except perhaps Crimea and possibly parts of Donbas..
It would have been far easier for the West to at least consider Russia’s (not Putin, but Russia) plea for Ukrainian neutrality, no NATO membership, and self-determination for those who wanted it in eastern Ukraine. But no, the Ukrainian installed regime had to start killing their own people.
That “not one inch” beyond a unified Germany, even after all of Russia’s efforts to come to an accommodation with the US/NATO for decades, finally made Russia realize believing, or trusting the West, was a fool’s endeavor.
I agree that a peaceful Ukraine would have been in everyone’s best interest except the US/NATO warlords. But Putin’s folly has made a neutral Ukraine impossible now. He strengthened NATO and weakened his own country while wrecking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Putin’s fall is like a Shakespearean tragedy. He should have known better.
You know that Putin has offered negotiations before he used military power, and you also know that in March Zelensky walked away from negotiations because Boris from London told him so. Now the clown sets conditions that equals an unconditional surrender negotiation. Putin is a statesman, Zelensky is a clown and Biden a senile old man with dementia.
The NATO members are not about to go to war against Russia just so Ukraine becomes a NATO member. That is true for average Ukrainians, no American with a brain would do that either.
That price to pay for NATO membership is insane. Only war criminals come up with that shit. Oh, I forgot, it is all about freedom and Democracy, not about the profits the profiteers make. To serve them the war must go on, if it kills every Ukrainian and European, as long as it is not an Ameican boy.
Before any military action Ukraine had the option to be neutral and live in peace in return for Russian border security and autonomy for Russian speaking Ukrainians. But the USA opposed it, Biden demands regime change, Putin must go, he also wants a weakened Russia, he wants the American way, UNCONDITONAL SURRENDER and who needs negotiations, not Biden. We give nothing, we want it all. American like Apple Pie.
Remember, Biden and Zelensky said they would not talk to Putin, Putin never said anything like it. Putin’s door was always open for serious negotiations, not a pretense like demands of an unconditional Russian surrender. Zelensky’s 10 point offer is exactly that. Putin is the only mature adult in the room.
“Putin has to do it for them, only he can do it, he is God Almighty.”
Archbishop Kirill would agree with that.
Seriously, Putin is the leader who has lost touch with reality because he can’t believe Ukraine can win. He doesn’t even believe Ukraine is a separate nation. This denial is a stage in imperial wars and often leads to escalation until the invading power realizes that it can’t defeat the indigenous resistance.
I think you lost touch with reality.
Well wouldn’t the Rabbis agree with Israel bombing Syria AGAIN!
Not all rabbis support Israel attacking Syria and not all orthodox clergy support Kirill’s cult of Putin.
We need regime change badly, the neocons are irrational people, only mature people are rational and able to negotiate. Rational people would have avoided this war. Russia presented very rational grievances, border security and autonomy for the Russian speaking Ukrainians. Minsk agreements were the solution, Ukraine was offered guarantied neutrality like Austria, peace and prosperity, but the criminal immature people in Kiev said no, they need to be NATO members, Washington wanted that if it kills’ the Ukrainians so be it.
Oh no, not stopping. The similarities are many, just modern day ones.
Russia has this SMO under control, Putin is slowly but surely dissarming and deNazifying the golden billion which was the objective of the SMO. Its a production based war of attrition which is devastating to NATO. I think Putin and the Russian Duma want this to go for as long as it takes, until all the aggressors collapse. Dont be sorry for Putin, be sorry for the US and Europe, the golden billion are in big trouble. THEY POKED THE BEAR.
Speaking of genocide i notice no reference to the US Rand Corporation plan which proposed the ethnic cleansing of the Donbass prior to the events in 2014. This Rand Corporation plan included concentration camps and re-education camps, ie the Nazi’s are back in Europe.
I know who Stepan Bandera was, this is why the NATO forces are called Banderites. Obama gave 5 billion US to Nazi’s (Banderites) so he could overthrow the government of Ukraine.
It all goes back to the OUN Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the holocaust in WW2. The ethnic Russians in the Donbass held the balance of power and Obama had to remove them. Its not that Obama wanted to kill them all, if they fled to Russia it achieved the same goal.
Obama needed to remove several million ethnic Russians (subhumans) in the Donbass who voted for Yanukovych to ensure that his rabidly anti democratic Nazi Junta could stay in power.
Russia has no control or any coherent strategy for Putin’s war against Ukraine. Please google Makiivika and explain how that was part of Putin’s master plan. How many more Russian will have to die for Putin’s mistake before Russia withdraws from Ukraine?
Please go to the site Moon of Alabama.
Pffff
Lol
Was that a fart, fartface? lol
How many died for the two Bushes, the Clinton co-Presidency, Obama, Trump and now Obama.
….and on the other side of that coin, is the West’s choice to negotiate with Russia on Ukraine’s neutrality, no NATO membership and recognition of self-determination for those parts of the former Ukraine that have opted to be free of the Ukrainian dictatorial ethnic cleansers, and alignment with Russia, to match their language and customs. Either that or as you state, “holocaust level genocide” or MAD as it was formerly referred to.
No part of Ukraine has opted to be part of Russia except perhaps Crimea. Putin’s phony referendums don’t count. The secession of Donestk and Luhansk is an internal Ukrainian matter. I believe there should be real plebisites conducted by neutral international peacekeepers. But if Ukraine does not want to permit plebisites, that is an internal Ukrainian matter, not a justification for war. Russia has no right to go to war over secession in a foreign country.
How come all our phony Bush referendums in Iraq while we were occupying it, counted. Remember all those purple thumbs? Or is that just OUR rules based order?
Wars of conques and regime change are illegitimate in Iraq or Ukraine.
The facts on the ground dictate what will happen, Ukraine already is destroyed, it is a lot of rubble, it has no competent government, Zelenky is the clown, the hand puppet for senile President Biden. Many Ukrainians left the country, much of the prime aged male population was KIA, many are ill and invalids, the economy has been destroyed, it is already a failed state, that is all that is left. In the end, there is no EU or NATO left to join, Europe will be a mess and if they are lucky they can barely function. All much like Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, look around, war leaves destruction and nothing else behind. The whole continent will end up in rubble, the USA has left a visible trail of destruction all over the ME and Latin America, where ever you look. Their destruction can be seen on almost every continent. The Antarctica and Australia and N. America* are the exceptions as far as I can tell.
*N. America with reservations.
The genocide of American Indians and the killing of the Buffalo destroyed the Indian nations.
Peace through superior firepower
Sending even more weapons to Ukraine?… Isn’t there anybody running interference? Anybody calling for talks?… There just seems to be so many different ways for this situation to turn into something else… They seem to treat this like some kind of game but it’s not. There is an awful lot at risk.
Up is Down, Black is White, Inside is Outside etc etc etc. Its all big lies after big lies.
The risk is there, but also a huge benefit. Let’s hope, the rulers of US will not go too far in this business.
Ya CAN’T FIX THE STUPID! sorry.
… by the way, Happy New Year!
Same to you OB1. 🙂
As Will Rogers once said, “Stupidity got us into this mess, will stupidity get us out?”
You should talk to your boy Putin. He has been non stop sending troops and weapons into Ukraine since February 2022.
Do you see an issue with that too?
Does Putin care about the risk of invading a neighbor country. ?
Is it only the West responsibility to encourage peace?
DJ:
Putin is not my “boy”. I’ve been a peace activist for most of my adult life. I’ve put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I do not believe in ‘effing’ around with any of it.
Yes – seeing they are the ones that threatened Russia with NATO on their borders. See Kennedy/Cuba/Khruschev on how we acted when the now-defunct Soviet Union attempted to install offensive weapons in Cuba.
The West set this whole train of events in motion with the 2014 coup. And their refusal to negotiate sealed the deal….. “Game ON”!!!!!!
“NATO countries need to step up weapons production to support Ukraine.”
“We need to ramp up production, and that is exactly what the NATO allies are doing.”
2023 is going to be very good for American MIC. American exporters of LNG are also doing very well. The price for American LNG in Europe is 4 times higher than the price of the same LNG inside US. The business is going fantastically well. If we add to this the huge European investments into US in year 2022 (over one trillion dollars), one may say that US government is working very well.
Yup, a few are doing great … what do Europeans get of being such good little satraps?
“2023 is going to be very good for American [Military Industrial Complex].”
Like 2022…
Barron’s “War…Escalating…It’s Time to Buy Defense Stocks”
Forbes, “Three Defense Stocks To Watch As Global Tensions Rise”
Forbes, “War Stocks Are Surging As Russia-Ukraine Conflict Rages On”
Pick Either Lockheed Martin Stock Or Its Industry Peer – Forbes
Forbes, Why Lockheed Martin Stock Offers A Good Buying Opportunity
Good Time To Get Into War Machine Stocks – Forbes
Investors, “The Best Defense Stocks For Today — And The Future”
Yahoo, 11 Best Defensive Defense Stocks to Buy Heading Into 2023
7 Defense Stocks to Buy as Geopolitical Risks Rise – Kiplinger
Investorplace, The 7 Hottest Defense Stocks to Own for 2023 and Beyond
Peace. It is never easy. Blessed be the peacemakers. Why? Because there seems to be so few of them.it is easier to shout and get angry then to simply hug . thousands dead .Sons husbands fathers dead. Sorry life is short and you only get one chance. Talk end it and get back to supporting your families and children as they get older
The “path to peace” is actually the road to nuclear Armageddon. Those bringing us to world war do not see this. Even if they did, could they stop it?
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
Wasn’t the Minsk Agreement meant to help Ukraine build up their forces? Peace didn’t happen then. It ain’t happening now.
Yes. Merkel blurted out that one. Confirmation.
And the former French President Hollande confirmed it. Both were there, the heads of their nations.
Russia needs to win and make them settle for a reasonable surrender, not the insanely, criminal, humiliating unconditional surrender the ignorant Americans, like always, want.
i love living 1984 over and over and over again, don’t you?. Its almost like, dare i say, we’re hogtied within a loop thats spinning faster and faster. Its getting smaller too. Yep, 1984, what a great New Year again, and again and again…Idiots!
Oh yeah, “War is Peace”. He is nuts! Absolutely nuts!
Hopefully Stoltenberg is just lying to keep the money spigot open and the hate flowing because otherwise he’s dangerously delusional. Being a con man is one thing, but if these clowns actually believe what they’re saying we may really be in trouble when the Russians bitch slap them.
I fear they do believe what they are saying, they are real psychopaths’.
Yeah, I worry their feeble mindedness isn’t an act.
Weapons=Peace…NATO has some interesting arithmetic.
They went to school in an asylum, right?
The Western USA/NATO NATIONS are cursed with governments in control by gangs of criminal lunatics running amok.
That is scary, the adults are on the other side and have no sane party to negotiate with.
I do not think there is a single thing you could add Renate…
And the little guy sitting alone at the end of the big table in the Kremlin has broken under the strain.
Putin is not alone, he could never have accomplished all he did without the help of a competent administration and a congress, the Duma, working together. He has the backing of the Russian nation and has earned the respect of all thinking people on earth. He will have an outstanding place in the history books. Yes, he is human and makes mistakes, but for his nation he has accomplished a lot already.
Stoltenberg talks like a gun lobbyist when he says more guns will bring peace, the merchants of death always claim that more guns will prevent American school massacres. Same logic , or not?
The merchants gang of death, knows what is good for them, don’t they? They are making record profits and like Reagan’s Col. said, the war is good, a lot of troops get killed, it is their blood and our bullets.
Yes, specializing in proxy wars is great, their blood and our bullets. Morally they equal Hitler, to say the least.
Alleluia, praise your lord, Putin.
What a fluffer you are.
Well, Don, it is called objectivity which you don’t have, you keep repeating government propaganda, Iraq taught you nothing.
Nuclear war is even better, no one will be around to disrupt the peace afterwards.
+++++
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense. Poland has called up 200,000 reserves, Ukraine is collapsing and Poland/Romania are now being called up to die for empire. What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final NATO war against Russia.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
354 Aircraft, 194 helicopters, 2741 UAV’s, 399 Anti Aircraft systems, 7296 tanks inc. APC’s, 953 multiple rocket launchers, 3742 rocket launchers and 7810 military automotive equipment.
In the past year we have seen the Rules Based Order act in a state of criminal insanity. They blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will deindustrialise Europe. The shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident. The planning of a false flag nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!! This is the actions of criminally insane psychopaths.
Um… Doom, those are pretty fantastic figures for NATO losses. Do you have a link to a source? You never do.
Jens doesn’t talk about how many lives will have to be sacrificed, but I bet he thinks it will be “worth it”. Albright lives on.
Someone needs to dig down to her casket, then put a steel stake through it at heart level to make sure the vampire is dead.
My view Putin a lot like my view of Saddam Hussein. Both were brutal dictators who sometimes opposed US imperialism. But both were pursuing their own imperialist agendas.
Putin and Saddam were like gangsters who tried to join the syndicate. When the big boys who ran the syndicate froze them out, Putin and Saddam went rogue and sometimes even went to war with the syndicate. But neither was ever a good guy. And Putin’s war against Ukraine is a classic war of aggression by a declining imperial power trying to regain control over a country that was once part its empire. Ukraine has serious political problems. But the Russian invasion is not a solution for Ukraine, for Russia or for the rest of the world.
But this is after you have said Russia was indeed being provoked by US/NATO and Putin ‘took the bait”. So, instead of just saying it was a bad decision to invade you go on to talk as though Putin was a reincarnation of Saddam and was nothing but a brutal dictator with imperialistic motives all along.
American presidents liked Saddam very much, they could use him to fight a proxy war against Iran, 8 years of brutal killings plus the Gulf war and the butchery of the retreating Iraqi army, H. W. Bush, Clinton continued with bloody sanctions, killing thousands of Iraqi children. W. Bush attacked Iraq destroyed the country and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and when Bush was done he had Saddam killed.
Yes, American presidents are killers, no better than Hitler, worse than Saddam and Ghadaffy.
I supported Saddam when he supported the Palestinians. And I supported Putin when he backed Syria and Russian troops fought ISIS. I would have preferred if Ukraine built closer ties to Russia, not NATO/EU. But just because diplomacy failed, that does not justify a war of aggression. I wanted peace between Ukraine and Russia. Not a war to restore Ukraine to Russia’s imperial sphere of influence.
Also, US encouraged and planned this war. It was a trap and Putin should not have taken the bait. The US doesn’t care about the Ukrainian people. But US intelligence saw the war as a way to weaken Russia by getting involved in a war that Russia can’t win against their former colony.
I didn’t say it justified an invasion. I’m only saying that the reasons for the invasion didn’t change. It didn’t go from a bad choice to a quest for world domination.
Putin is a ruthless dictator who imprisons his enemies, controls the media and presides over a regime where defectors or renegades sometimes turn up dead. His goal has always been to stop Russia’s decline by restoring the power of the Soviet Union and the glory of the empire of the Czars. He even tolerates and encourages Archbishop Kirill to make support for Putin a state religion. You ought to google Putin with Anton Denikin and Ivan Ilyin. Denikin was one of the anti-Bolshevik Czarist military leaders responsible for f the “White Terror” in Ukraine during the civil war after the Bolshevik revolution. This is not ancient history. In 2009 Putin dedicated a memorial to the “White Warriors” who terrorized the Ukraine and urged Russians to read Denikin’s racist diary. Putin allied with China only after he tried to join NATO and the G7/G8 in an anti-China alliance and wanted Russia to be part of a Euro-Centric imperial world order. After he was rejected by the West, Putin sought to align with China.
US/NATO is the source of most evil in the world today. I generally support Putin when he opposed NATO’s imperialistic expansion eastward. But I draw a sharp distinction between Putin’s goal of restoring the Russian empire and instances where Putin’s Russia supports struggles for self determination, like the fight of Syria and other African countries against jihadists.
I am against NATO. I supported Putin’s demand for a neutral Ukraine because I believed that would build but trust and encourage peace between Russia and Ukraine and weaken NATO. But war between Russia and Ukraine only drove Ukraine closer to NATO, revitalized NATO and became an anti-colonial forever war that Russia can’t win. The war brought out the worst in Putin and things are only going to get worse for everyone until Russia withdraws from Ukraine.
LOL, see what the US and Zelensky do to enemies. You call Putin ruthless, where is your evidence of anything that justifies that allegation?
Putin is the elected president of Russia, he has been reelected several times and has an above 80% approval rating. That is not what you call a dictator. Calling him a dictator is meant to defame him to justify an illegal regime change. Regime change of elected heads of states is a common thing for the mighty USA to do, to serve corporate American interests to the detriment of the effected nations, there is list of dozens of such regime changes. The Monroe doctrine for Latin America alone justifies dozens of such regime changes.
The USA is NOT what you think it is, it is a criminal rogue nation.
“Putin is a ruthless dictator who imprisons his enemies, controls the media and presides over a regime where defectors or renegades sometimes turn up dead.”
“I am against NATO. I supported Putin’s demand for a neutral Ukraine because I believed that would build but trust and encourage peace between Russia and Ukraine and weaken NATO.”
You run the gamut again. First you say Putin is a ruthless dictator, and you list some of his atrocities. Then you agree with one of his demands, which was for a neutral Ukraine. That demand was made long after Putin was that dictator you described in your first paragraph. And yet for some reason that demand became something different after the invasion. Same dictator but different motive for some unexplainable reason. Even though the invasion came from “bait” left by the US/NATO.
It did justify the invasion, not so much because it was confrontational, but because it left Putin NO way to protect his people from an encroaching peer nuclear power. They gave him no reasonable or face saving choice. The reasonable choice was to foreclose that problem then and there………. and in a way that will not allow it to recur again later… Smash their state…!!!!!!! They asked for it and now they’ve got it. Sad…..!!!!!!!!
What choice….. To let that train leave the station would have been even worse, harder to get back to the quid pro quo ante.. Then choice was to let U.S. NATO roll Russia in an ever deepening crisis toward NATO nukes on Ukraine’s border or to stop the whole challenge in its tracks, i.e. invade and foreclose Ukraine’s ability to invite NATO in. End of NATO problem, but many new ones, none as existentially threatening as NATO first strike nukes on their border….. What other choice did he have that did not endanger Russia and its people…?????? Remember the Cuban missile crisis B4 YOU REPLY!
Putin was acting in the interest of his nation, and hindsight confirms him. Russia was provoked. Putin knew about NATO’s arming and training Ukrainians for one purpose only, to start a war with Russia, for regime change and control of Russian natural mineral resources. Merkel and Hollande confirmed it.
I don’t believe that the US intel saw this war as an opportunity to weaken Russia. I doubt they knew the outcome. If anything, they did so a month or two after the invasion went South for the Russians therefore i disagree with the “trap/bait” premise.
That is nonsense. Any war is a drain. This was an opportunity, and it was the goal for many years.
Nonsense? How?
The US intelligence community was convinced the 2nd largest Army in the world would take Ukraine within the first week. How could the US arm the remnants of the Army/insurgency if Russia controls all the borders and seaports?
It would be a trap if the US knew in advance that Russia’s invasion would fail.
I get it you want to blame the US for everything. That’s you.
Claptrap – we just pushed that narrative so we could then say, “Oh what a wonderful defense the Dictatorial Ukrainian regime was putting up.l
Nonsense because Russia would be facing punishment from their invasion from the international community whether the war lasted two weeks or two years. You think the attempt to destroy them economically would have been different if Russia had rolled over Ukraine? And Biden saying Nord Stream 2 would no longer exist if Russia invaded wasn’t indicative of what would be forthcoming? So, yes, the US knew damn well that Russia would be weakened regardless of whether they were able to meet their objectives or not. But, of course, I must be anti-US even though the US President and the US Secretary of Defense said it out loud.
The CIA encouraged nationalists movements aimed at destabilizing the USSR as far back as the 1980’s. Since the breakup of ther Soviet Union the US has sought to destabilize and isolate Russia. The Nuland tape revealed that the US was deeply involved in encouraging anti-Russian nationalists before, during and after the Maidan coup. I agree that no one, including the Ukrainians, believed that the Ukrainian army would fight as effectively as it has. The US was planning to evacuate Zelenskyy to an out of country sanctuary when Russia invaded. But we all underestimated the depth of the Ukrainian people’s commitment to defending their nation from aggression by their former colonial overlord. The US saw war between Russia and Ukraine as an opportunity to weaken Russia and worked to encourage it for many years.
So pray tell, what would you have done if you had been Putin?
If I were Putin (i) I would have worked with China (Ukraine’s largest trade partner) to develop a carrot and stick approach to Kyiv – in return for a friendship treaty and Ukrainian non alignment China would divert the Northern Branch of China’s Belt and Road project linking Asia with Europe from Russia to Ukraine and giving Ukraine preferred access and most favored nation status with China and Russia. If Ukraine aligned with the West, Ukraine would be sanctioned and frozen outof the Belt and Road initiative;
(ii) I would have pulled Russian troops back from the Ukrainian border, reaffirmed the Budapest compact and assure the Ukrainians that Russia respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and that Russia recognized that the grievances of Russian ethnic Ukrainian citizens was an internal matter while reserving the right to support Ukrainian citizens who sought redress in international forums like the ICC if their rights were violated,
(iii) If the Ukrainian government would not engage with me, I would have initiated and encouraged people to people exchanges with Ukrainians who were open to friendship with Russia
(iv) I would have supported a Ukrainian political opposition to the pro-EU pro-NATO political parties.
These initiatives may not work. But this war is a strategic disaster for Russia and only accelerating Russia’s decline as a world power. Russia has lost much in this war and will lose more the more it escalates.
Well maybe you could replace Antony Blinken as Secretary of State.
OOOOOooooo. but Russia CAN win & is winning with control over 20% of the most productive of Ukie land. Russia has the biggest and baddest nukes on the planet & unstoppable hypersonic delivery. NOT a welfare beggar like our latest billions dollar leach. They are going to crush them.
“They are going to crush them.”
You’ve been saying that for more than ten months now. Can they not find their car keys or something?
Stunning Bullshit. Was JFK a gangster because he would not allow Russian ones in Cuba much farther away than Ukraine ones on their border in Ukraine? No responsible leader would allow such aggression. When Stoltentburg said “No Negotiations” it was a direct existential threat to Russia. Putin took the trap and is now shoving it down their throats..What was Putin supposed to do, get on his knees and beg…????? What do you think was the plan when they overthrew Poroshenko and brought all the Nazis into the post coup government and started killing their Russian speaking fellow citizens???? All done by our Nobel Peace Prize winner and his harpies, Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland. An EVIL and brazen slap in the face to Russia and Putin. All involved should suffer grievous loss. It was a vast brain dead over reach.
Does the Kremlin talk about the many Russians that are being forced to fight and sacrificed?
No – you and the western State-affiliated media do that.
Maybe if this article was about what the Kremlin said, that might be relevant. I guess you just can’t grasp the idea of each article having a comment section and people commenting are commenting about THAT particular article.
Can you say, “Double Speak”?
“But I won’t cry for yesterday
There’s an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.”
“NATO Chief Says Sending More Weapons to Ukraine Is Quickest Path to Peace Jens Stoltenberg called on NATO members to ramp up weapons production”
The quickest way to put out a house fire is to throw a truck load of kerosene on the fire so the house burns down faster!
Sick and twisted!
I think he knows that all the previous bad faith has precluded negotiations. All NATO can do is fight to the death.
IF NATO succeedes in angering Putin enough to unleash his Super Nukes which have 4000 times the blast the bombs that ended WWII produced, YES….. There will be 100s of 1000s of dead Ukies. I feel bad for them, but what were they thinking, getting involved in a U.S. Neocon plot to weaken Russia…?????? Did they really think the scheme was a safe one for them to play enemy villain… It had to be too little thinking, too many drugs or too much hubris. Putin will want a pound of flesh, if not a few tons and Zelenski flesh will get first priority..!!
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense. Poland has called up 200,000 reserves, Ukraine is collapsing and Poland/Romania are now being called up to die for empire. What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final NATO war against Russia.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
355 Aircraft, 199 helicopters, 2794 UAV’s, 399 Anti Aircraft systems, 7366 tanks inc. APC’s, 957 multiple rocket launchers, 3742 rocket launchers and 7876 military automotive equipment.
In the past year we have seen the Rules Based Order act in a state of criminal insanity. They blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will deindustrialise Europe. The shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident. The planning of a false flag nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!! This is the actions of criminally insane psychopaths.
It looks very doubtful that Putin will end up victorious. The ideologues of Woke neoliberalism and Christian-Nationalist fascism are determined to stop any multi polarity at all costs. Russia thought it would all be easy. The average American (Liberal and Conservative) is too narcissistic too care about what goes on across the world. Unfortunately, i predict game over for Putin, Assad, China, and more hegemony for America and a greater Israel in the Middle East. PNAC is being implemented.
How did the United States ever ever survive without sticking our nose into one of the most corrupt regimes in the world – the Ukrainian installed regime. Our sponsorship of the violent coup did not end the massive corruption of money laundering of that basket case of a regime in Kiev.
As The New Atlas on YouTube points out whenever we hear the “more arms” argument, Ukraine had far more of everything when the war broke out. They had a far bigger air force and far more air defenses. Russia destroyed most of them. Ukraine’s tanks were destroyed, and when Biden sends more Russia destroyed those too after a while. At best more arms prolong the process, but the process is always the same.
Patriot air defense? It takes half a year to train the 90-man crew for a system, and it’s a one-spot system. It defends only one spot on the map. It fires some counter-missiles, but after that it is overwhelmed. As ALWAYS, Russia has more and can fire more. No matter what arms are mentioned.
What’s not counted in the “more arms” argument is how many more Ukrainian conscripts will die because of it.
The sh-t is going to hit the fan. I feel a potential World War is in the making… Forgive me for saying, perhaps we deserve it…
It started in 2014 when Obama overthrew the government in Ukraine. Moscow took it as a declaration of war.
And the quickest way for Nato chief Stoltenberg to shut his mouth is if he hangs himself!