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As the Ukraine war winds down

It has been quite a while since I commented on the progression of the war in Ukraine. If you have been following the news, you know that President Trump has initiated peace talks with President Putin. Delegations from each side met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia earlier this week to begin negotiating the terms of peace.

So far it seems they have only publicized a “cease fire” proposal that is sure to be rejected by Russia—unless, of course, it includes a guarantee that Ukraine will be a neutral country that will not join NATO. At this point we do not know what was discussed in private, but the public statements from Secretary of State Marco Rubio said nothing about any neutrality arrangement.

US policy up to now has been to bring Ukraine into NATO so that it can place nuclear missiles just 5 minutes from Moscow itself. Then too, the US has claimed to be working to develop hypersonic missiles, which means that some time in the future NATO could put hypersonic missiles on the border with Russia. This would threaten Russia in an unacceptable way, because if a threat were perceived, Russia would have almost no time to determine if the threat was real or just a mistake.

As for the cease fire itself, Ukraine has agreed to a 30-day cease fire, because it is being driven out of the Kursk region. Recall that Ukraine invaded the Kursk region of Russia proper last summer, hoping to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant and to use it as a bargaining chip. They were unable to capture the nuclear plant, but they occupied a chunk of Russia itself.

NATO’s stated plan has been to try to gain some leverage over Russia, so that it might negotiate from a position of strength. This means, of course, that NATO officials are aware that Ukraine is now in a weak position, having no leverage in a peace negotiation, even though they continue to claim that Ukraine is winning the war.

Up until this past weekend, Russia has been content to let Ukraine remain in the Kursk region, because it was a way to double the Ukrainian losses in the war. Virtually all of Ukraine’s army reserves were being sent to Kursk where they were being killed in large numbers by Russian artillery and missiles.

But when the peace talks began to materialize, Russia decided to take back Kursk so that Ukraine could not use it as a bargaining chip. On March 8 Russia began its offensive, and within a few days it had pushed the Ukrainian army out of two-thirds of the occupied area. Russia sent 800 troops through a 16 km gas pipeline that had been shut down earlier. The troops came out on the other end behind enemy lines, surprising the Ukrainians and causing a disorganized retreat. Two thousand Ukrainian troops were killed in a single day.

For an update on the situation, you may want to listen to this 20-minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlXgsLrFZU

Russia is not interested in a 30-day cease fire. They want a more comprehensive peace plan that will normalize relations between Europe/America and Russia. This is the type of agreement that comes just once in a century or more. This type of arrangement was made at Westphalia in 1648, Vienna in 1815, and Yalta in 1945. Another should have been held in 1991 or 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the US warmongers wanted to expand the American empire and take advantage of Russia’s weakness and chaos instead of helping them integrate into Europe. Putin re-stabilized Russia and rebuilt its economy and military during the past 25 years.

In 2014 the US State Department sent Victoria Nuland to Ukraine with a war chest of $5 billion to overthrow the government and install a president of its own choice. This was the start of the Ukraine war, and while NATO was building and training the Ukrainian army to fight Russia, Russia made its own preparations to defend itself. The West began imposing sanctions on Russia, which forced Russia to develop its own products that it could no longer purchase from the West. What Russia could not produce, it bought from China. The result is that sanctions only strengthened Russia and made it largely self-sufficient.

When the West sanctioned Russian oil and gas, prices doubled, so Russia only had to sell half of its oil and gas to equal the income from previous years. But they made deals with China and India, so their exports remained about the same, while they doubled their income. In other words, the sanctions failed utterly. In fact, many in Russia thanked the West for imposing sanctions, because the higher prices paid for the war.

Meanwhile, Europe had to import oil and gas at two-to-four times the cost, and its economies were put under stress. Germany was largely de-industrialized, because the higher cost of energy made their products less competitive to export.

So now Russia is the one negotiating from a position of strength. NATO and Europe should have negotiated before Russia got involved in the Ukraine war in 2022. But they did not do so, because they failed to anticipate the failure of their own policies.

Last weekend, Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov invited a few American journalists to Moscow to interview him. Included were Judge Andrew Napolitano and Larry Johnson. They spent two hours with Lavrov who discussed the current situation (in English). Those of you who want to get a comprehensive understanding of the situation with Ukraine and the peace negotiations may want to listen to this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNJOUy_luDM