Tag: russia

Zelensky Calls for NATO Troops in Ukraine at Last Ramstein Rally Before Trump Return

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which is essentially ‘NATO and Friends,’ convened at Ramstein Air Base on Thursday for its final meeting before Trump returns to the White House.

Zelensky used his speech to call for NATO to deploy troops to Ukraine, claiming it would “force Russia to peace,” when he and everyone else knows it would only serve to bring us to World War 3.

Glenn Diesen, a geopolitical analyst and professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, noted that while Trump’s talk of wanting to pursue peace in Ukraine is a step forward, he’s in for a wake-up call if he expects Russia to accept a deal that doesn’t address Putin’s long list of security concerns for the region.

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WINDS OF PEACE: Kremlin Welcomes Trump’s Readiness To Negotiate With Putin – Russians Have No Preconditions – Both Sides Are Now Preparing the Meeting

While the outgoing Joe Biden administration from hell is still trying to escalate the military conflict in the Ukraine, there’s already a lot of diplomatic work in progress, and a meeting between Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be an upcoming reality – confirmed by both Trump and by the Kremlin.

The Russian Government says it welcomes Trump’s readiness to meet with Putin, a senior Moscow official confirmed yesterday (10).

Associated Press reported:

“Russia attaches no conditions to the possibility of face-to-face talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call.

Trump said Thursday that ‘Putin wants to meet’ and that a meeting is being set up. He indicated that efforts to end the almost three-year war between Russia and Ukraine were behind the overtures for talks. ‘We have to get that war over with’, Trump said when referring to his possible meeting with Putin.”

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Getting Russia Right 

Thirty years ago, March 1994, E. Wayne Merry, a career Foreign Service officer, filed a dissent cable that remained firmly under wraps until last month, when the estimable National Security Archive at George Washington University published it on its website. Many are now comparing Merry’s cable to George F. Kennan’s Long Telegram in its scope and prescience. Merry tells me he finds such comparisons embarrassing—but they are, in my view, both unavoidable and well earned.

One big difference of course is that people in positions of influence listened (at first, anyway) to Kennan, but dismissed Merry—and with predictably disastrous results for the U.S.-Russia relationship. The Harvard-inspired economic policies that fell under the rubric of “shock therapy” (which sought to turn what had been a planned, socialist economy for the preceding 70 years into a free market system on Anglo-American lines overnight) contributed to the largest demographic and economic collapse of a modern industrialized country ever recorded in peacetime. Russian economists and scholars compared the economic and social consequences of the American-imposed austerity program on Russia to that which might have been expected from a “medium level nuclear attack.”

Merry, who served as chief political analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow 1990–1994, saw what so many within the Washington political establishment chose not to see, that the imposition of the set of foreign economic doctrines on Russia was destroying the lives of ordinary  people—as well as transforming U.S.–Russia relations for the worse. 

The story of Washington’s malfeasance toward Russia in the 1990s is not new. The Nobel winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted the folly of Washington’s meddling in the post-Soviet space in The Russia Question (1994); the Soviet dissident Andrei Sinyavsky castigated Russia’s Westernizers in The Russian Intelligentsia (1997); here at home, famed Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen railed against the incompetence of Clinton administration and the myopia of both the scholarly community and the media in Failed Crusade (2000).

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What Is the Russo–Ukrainian War About?

Peace was once the objective of American statesmen. Today, however, virtually everyone in Washington seems to favor war. So it is with the Russo–Ukrainian conflict. Donald Trump’s desire to end the fighting has caused barely suppressed horror. 

Unfortunately, if, as rumored, he hopes to achieve peace by threatening Russia with a massive increase in aid to Kiev, his effort is bound to fail. More support won’t remedy Ukraine’s greatest weakness: manpower. More money would, however, betray his supporters who believed they were voting for America First, not Kiev über alles.

The case for peace is clear. The U.S. risks its proxy war against Russia going hot, while pushing the latter into ever closer relationships with China, Iran, and North Korea. Moreover, Washington is heading toward insolvency, spending nearly trillion dollars annually to finance its rapidly escalating debt. All the while, Ukraine is being destroyed.

How does the Washington “Blob” justify Uncle Sam’s latest endless war? With a series of unconvincing and inconsistent arguments. 

Allowing Russia to prevail will undermine the “rules-based international order.” That order is a pious fraud, promoted by states that concocted rules for their benefit and break them when convenient. Indeed, the first Trump administration was infamous for using human rights as a weapon against adversaries while coddling more repressive friends. American policymakers should ask whether the order can survive the West’s multiple violations.

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The EU’s Need For Cheap Ukrainian Labor Imperils Ukraine’s Post-War Reconstruction

Forthcoming developments might lead to Germany and/or Poland, where over two million of them collectively reside, either encouraging their return or incentivizing them to stay.

Zelensky has finally begun to think about his country’s post-war reconstruction plans as suggested by what he said late last week with regard to the need for Ukrainian refugees to return once the conflict ends. The challenge though is that he also accused unnamed EU countries of exploiting his citizens as cheap labor, and if they allow them to remain there, then Ukraine will struggle to rebuild. Here are his exact words, which will then be analyzed in the larger context of this conflict’s rapidly evolving dynamics:

“Let’s be honest: There are many Ukrainians abroad. In some countries, they have been seen as a cheap labor force. And now, they realize Ukrainians are often more skilled than their own citizens. I say: ‘Look, give me a bit more air defense, and I’ll tell everyone to come back immediately. And they reply, ‘No, let those who work here stay, but the rest should return.”

For starters, the immediate context concerns the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ desertion rate, which the Associated Press estimated to be more than 100,000 since February 2022. Zelensky also acknowledged this problem late last week but downplayed it at the same time. Nevertheless, it’s clear that his generals must urgently replenish these losses as well as those from the battlefield, ergo the latest report from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) about how they might soon drop the draft age to 18.

These immediate military imperatives can be exploited by the EU as the humanitarian pretext for not deporting Ukrainian refugees in order to keep them in the bloc so that they can either remain as cheap labor or soon become it. Accordingly, it’s unlikely that any of them will make any serious moves to repatriate them so long as the conflict continues, but it’s also possible that it might end later this year. That’s because Trump campaigned on doing so and Zelensky just suggested that he thinks it’s possible.

Speculation about the timeframe and terms aside, the latter of which could include some of the two dozen compromises that were recently proposed at the end of this analysis here, the end of the conflict could then instantly lead to more grassroots pressure upon EU governments to encourage those refugees to return. The two countries where this might soon become a pressing issue are Germany and Poland, which have around 1.2 million and 988,000 Ukrainian refugees respectively.

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Macron urges Kiev to be realistic as French-trained Ukrainian soldiers desert

Ukraine must have “realistic” discussions on territorial issues, French President Emmanuel Macron said on January 6. According to him, the solution to the situation in Ukraine will not be “simple and quick,” a bitter realization he likely came to after it was revealed that French-trained Ukrainian troops were deserting the battlefield en masse, leaving the Kiev regime no chance of gaining the initiative.

“The Ukrainians need to hold a realistic discussion on the territorial questions and only they can do that, and the Europeans are counting on building security guarantees that will be their responsibility,” the French president said.

However, the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict should not happen without the participation of Kiev, just as the issue of ensuring European security should not be resolved without the participation of Europe itself, according to Macron.

At the same time, Macron shifted responsibility to Washington to “convince Russia” to come to the negotiating table to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.

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US Always Knew NATO Expansion Led to War

The present severed from the past is easily misunderstood. In discussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, not enough is made of the historical facts that, at the end of the Cold War, the newly independent Ukraine promised not to join NATO, and NATO promised not to expand to Ukraine.

Not enough is made of the fact that Article IX  of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, “External and Internal Security,” says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs….” That promise was later enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, which committed Ukraine to neutrality and prohibited it from joining any military alliance: that included NATO.

Nor is enough made of the fact that in 1990 and 1991, the Bush administration gave assurances to Gorbachev – assurances that arguably reached the level of a deal – that NATO would not expand east of Germany, including to Ukraine.

But even less is made of what the Clinton administration later promised Yeltsin nor of what the U.S. already knew at the time of where plans of NATO expansion to Ukraine would lead.

Recently declassified documents clearly show that, between 1993 and 2000, the U.S. already knew that a cornered Boris Yeltsin was distraught about NATO expansion and about the West’s broken promise, that expansion to Ukraine was a red line, and that if Russia ever enforced that red line, the U.S. would respond forcefully.

Though Czechia, Hungary and Poland were invited to begin accession talks in 1997 and joined NATO in 1999, a secret October 1994 policy paper, written by National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and entitled “Moving Toward NATO Expansion,” makes it clear that the decision to expand NATO had already been made by that time. The paper explicitly keeps “the membership door open for Ukraine.”

Interestingly, though Russia is always publicly painted as a predatorial nation with imperial ambitions, a confidential 1993 cable states that most Eastern European states seek NATO membership “not [because they] feel militarily threatened by Russia” but because they believe “that NATO membership can help stave off the return of authoritarian forces” in their own countries. Though the cable makes the exception that Ukraine and the Baltic states may feel threatened by Russia.

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Biden to Rush Final ‘Substantial’ Weapons Transfer to Ukraine

Before President Joe Biden exits the White House later this month, he is planning a massive final aid package for Ukraine. The Pentagon will attempt to rush the weapons to Kiev before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Two defense officials said the new package would be announced on Thursday during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at an American military base in Germany, the Associated Press reported. The sources added that the weapons will come directly from US military stockpiles, and will be fast-tracked to Ukraine before Trump’s second term begins in less than two weeks.

The rush to provide Kiev with a “substantial” arms shipment before Trump returns to power appears aimed at undermining the president-elect’s stated goal of bringing the war in Ukraine to an end.

Since the American people voted for Trump to be the next president, the current administration has significantly escalated support for Kiev, even allowing Ukrainian forces to use long-range American missiles against targets inside Russia. Biden has also signed off on billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since the war kicked off in early 2022.

The sources did not tell the AP how large the final package would be, though there is about $4 billion in congressionally authorized funding for Ukraine. The officials indicated that the Trump administration will have “more than a couple billion” in funding to send weapons to Ukraine.

While Trump pledged to bring the war to a close on the campaign trail, some incoming officials have stated that he intends to continue the arms shipments once he returns to power.

Since the start of the war, Washington has approved over $180 billion in aid to Ukraine; however, Kiev insists it has received only a fraction of that sum.

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Ukraine Launches New Offensive In Russia’s Kursk Region

As Ukrainian forces mount a new offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said that success in this region would improve Kyiv’s bargaining position in any future ceasefire negotiations. This new effort takes place as Donald Trump is set to return to the White House in two weeks, giving both sides an increasing sense of urgency to gain ground ahead of any future bargaining the new administration might undertake. Ukraine’s renewed effort in Kursk also comes as Russia, which claimed it captured a key village in eastern Ukraine, continues to gain ground there. 

“…the Ukrainians themselves are trying to make sure that they have that strong hand,” Blinken told reporters in Seoul, South Korea on Monday. “Their position in Kursk is an important one, because certainly it’s something that would factor into any negotiation that may come about in the coming year.”

His assessment mirrors what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said back in September about Kursk being a “bargaining chip.”

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US ‘Quietly’ Sent Heavy Weapons To Ukraine Well Before Invasion Started, Blinken Reveals

The United States is currently dealing with conflicts in multiple hot spots from Eastern Europe to Gaza to dealing with a collapsed Syrian state and continued standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.

But the Biden administration regrets nothing – so says Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a major end of term interview given to the NY Times and published this weekend. Among the more interesting pieces of new information from the interview is Blinken’s direct admission that Washington was covertly shipping heavy weapons to Ukraine even months before the Russian invasion of February 2022.

“We made sure that well before [Russia’s ‘special military operation’] happened, starting in September and then again in December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine,” he said in the interview published Saturday. “Things like Stingers, Javelins.”

The Kremlin at the time cited such covert transfers, which were perhaps an ‘open secret’, as justification for the invasion based on ‘demilitarizing’ Ukraine and keeping NATO military infrastructure out. Moscow had issued many warnings over its ‘red lines’ in the weeks and months leading up to the war.

Below is the full section from the NY Times interview transcript where Blinken boasts of the pre-invasion transfers:

QUESTION:  You made two early strategic decisions on Ukraine.  The first – because of that fear of direct conflict – was to restrict Ukraine’s use of American weapons within Russia.  The second was to support Ukraine’s military offensive without a parallel diplomatic track to try and end the conflict.  How do you look back on those decisions now?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  So first, if you look at the trajectory of the conflict, because we saw it coming, we were able to make sure that not only were we prepared, and allies and partners were prepared, but that Ukraine was prepared.  We made sure that well before the Russian aggression happened, starting in September – the Russian aggression happened in February.  Starting in September and then again in December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine to make sure that they had in hand what they needed to defended themselves – things like Stingers, Javelins that they could use that were instrumental in preventing Russia from taking Kyiv, from rolling over the country, erasing it from the map, and indeed pushing the Russians back.

Blinken claims elsewhere in the interview that the Biden White House kept diplomacy going the whole time, and tried to engage Moscow, but explains that this basically involved keeping the Western allies and backers of Kiev unified and on the same track.

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