Ukraine: Another Peace Offer from Russia
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Published: 2024-05-15
An Offer
Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has made yet another offer to end the war which the US with NATO allies provoked to "weaken Russia" while "fighting to the last Ukrainian" using neo-Nazis. The latest peace offer is detailed, describing Russia's core demands.
A Recap
The US ran a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and chose the new, unelected government. Not only did the US not stop the neo-Nazi backed civil war, a "counter-terrorist" operation against its own citizens, which started only months after the coup, but has since armed and trained the Armed Forces of Ukraine while the 8 year long civil war killed over 14 000 Ukrainians. The unanimously approved UN Security Council political solution to the civil war, the Minsk II Accords, were used by the US through allies France and Germany as a ruse to facilitate the arming and training from which the US/NATO military industrial complex profited hugely. Since the international phase of the war has begun, the US has undermined, through proxies, every potential settlement of the war.
Russia's latest peace offer follows this recent history.
That is preceded by the 2007 Munich Security Conference speech from Vladimir Putin which was ignored by the US. It instead, at the Budapest NATO meeting of 2008, declared that it would invite both Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. That was quickly followed a NATO provoked war in Georgia. This was the continued expansion of NATO which the US swore to the USSR it would not do, to allow the re-unification of Germany.
Representations
In the Western imperial media Russia's peace offer will be given limited attention because these media are not interested in peace. They are motivated to continue to project the power of the West, even as it wanes. They may characterize the offer as grandiose, or they may hint that Russia is losing and fearful. They may also issue lines about wishing for Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength while not acknowledging the obvious corollary of this position; that Ukraine is in a position of weakness.
There is another way to read the announcement by Russia's President at their Foreign Ministry. It is a genuine offer and a strategic ploy, at once.
A Strategem
Russia is near to achieving one of its stated objectives: Ukraine's demilitarization. Denazification is a multi-generational project and cannot be achieved by war alone. The West would do well to notice where they are providing support to Nazi ideologists.
Ukraine's neutral and non-nuclear status is an nonnegotiable Russian condition for any settlement. Over 50 000 Russian soldiers have sacrificed their lives for this dual condition.
In the last few weeks, the US and its NATO vehicle have seriously elevated the stakes into the nuclear realm. There were attacks facilitated by NATO forces in Ukraine on two of Russia's nuclear defense radars. The US, France, UK and Germany have all declared war on Russia by issuing public permission for their NATO stooge and term-ended Ukrainian President to attack Russia within its 1991 borders. This has brought the CSTO, Russia's common security organisation, into the war. WW3 has just started. NATO is, at the time of this article's composition, considering redefining their nuclear doctrine.
In Russian foreign policy circles, and with popular support, suggestions are being made for Russia to make a decisive strike to end the war.
The peace offer, or set of conditions to begin a negotiation, is designed to avert the threat of this nuclear spiral and to calm more bellicose rhetoric from within Russia.
Any decent military analyst who cares about their reputation among their peers has already acknowledged that Ukraine, and thus NATO, have lost this war. Colonels Macgregor and Davis are on record, as is former Marine intelligence officer Ritter.
Over the last two weeks, Dima from Military Summary, who has been documenting the war in fine detail for almost its entirety, has noted that two Ukrainian Brigades (each is a 4000 person unit) have been withdrawn from the new northern fronts around Kharkiv because they were degraded to the point of no longer being battle capable. At least twice in the same period in the eastern fronts of Donetsk, Ukrainian units have abandoned their positions without informing other units beside them, causing minor collapses. At least once, a Ukrainian unit has refused to relieve another which had been on the front line for a year and was so degraded it needed to rest and refit. All of this followed the rout of Avdiivka in which it was discovered that corrupt Ukrainians had pilfered the funds to build defensive works behind the conquered stronghold. The same corruption has recently been revealed exposing the same lack of defensive works around Kharkiv in the north.
The US Congress has just removed its restriction on arming Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, an overtly neo-Nazi unit. While this signifies a horrid betrayal of the US forces which fought the German Nazis in WW2, it is also another declaration of just how pitiful Ukraine's reserves are. The US is arming Nazi's to bolster Ukraine's failing army.
This is the military background for the peace offer. Russia is not in a position of weakness at all. The peace offer is a component of Russia's psychological war on the Ukrainian military. It is also places pressure on the Ukrainian people, who are being forcefully conscripted into the lost war. They are only getting power for a few hours a day in many regions as Russia continues to destroy Ukraine's renewable power generation infrastructure, and non-renewable power storage facilities.
The offer from Vladimir Putin is honest. It is also a masterful stratagem. Historically, it is likely to be added to the negotiation in Istanbul, very early in the war, as the second major chance for Ukraine to have ended the war. We know that the US via their British messenger and Prime Minister Boris Johnson convinced then-valid President Zelensky to refuse the detailed, negotiated settlement from Istanbul. It is entirely reasonable to expect that the US will also, if required, pressure now expired-President Zelensky to refuse this one.
What will be the political consequences in Kiev for Zelensky and his collapsing regime when he refuses peace negotiations? How treacherous will he look in Switzerland at the upcoming talk-fest about the war? Recall one of the warring parties (Russia) was not invited and the political attendees from Europe have just lost support in the recent EU elections, or are second string ministers from further abroad. Zelensky is a buffoon and will increasing look so.
Russia is not negotiating from weakness. It is trying to avert a nuclear war, calm its people, undermine the morale of its enemy and cause a political implosion in Kiev.
Over to you, Biden.
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Sources
Putin Makes Public Peace Offer to Ukraine, Kyle Anzalone, Antiwar, 2024-06-14
Ukraine Targets Radars That Are Part of Russia's Nuclear Warning System, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-05-28
Vladimir Putin Puts West on Notice, Larry Johnson, A Son of the New American Revolution, 2024-06-14
Johnson’s comments on the Russian offer. It also links to his discussion with McGovern on JudgingFreedom.
[US] NATO v Russia: 2014 - 2024, YesXorNo, 2024-03-09
West Sleepingwalking into Major Wars - Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen, The Duran, 2024-06-15
Culture
“Peggy Lee , Sarah Vaughan , Aretha Franklin, [and] Roberta Flack”, Rocks in my bed, uploaded by Gareth Miller on 2007-12-11
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