Tag: ukraine

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been rare since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of the blame falls on Europe and the mainstream media for attempting to suffocate diplomacy.

When the first bilateral talks occurred in the early weeks of the war, the West, led by the United States, Britain and Poland discouraged them and nudged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky off the promising path of peace and along the path of war with promises of whatever Ukraine needs for as long as they need it. An initialed draft of a peace plan yielded to three years of war.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and told Zelensky that Ukraine should “just fight.” The Americans, rather than encouraging diplomacy that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, prevented the poisoning of international relations and prevented the real risk of World War III, ramped up military aid and provided Ukraine with the most advanced weapons NATO had to offer.

Now there is hope of a resumption of those talks. Russian and Ukrainian delegations have met for the first time since those early talks for a first round of direct negotiations. And, once again, rather than nurturing them, Europe and the Western media are dismissing and suffocating them.

Rather than throwing their influential weight behind Ukraine negotiating with Russia, Europe has pushed Ukraine to adopt maximalist terms that they know will force Russia to go on fighting. They try to convince the Trump administration that Putin is bent on conquering Europe and is only faking interest in peace. They push for more sanctions on Russia and more military aid for Ukraine.

Instead of pushing for peace, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on May 26 that Germany had removed range restrictions on weapons sent to Ukraine, restrictions that his predecessor, like the United States, had insisted on to avoid crossing red lines that could draw NATO into war with Russia and into a third world war.

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The reported decision by Ukraine’s Western backers to lift restrictions on Kiev’s use of long-range weapons runs counter to Russia’s efforts to find a peaceful settlement of the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Peskov made the remarks in response to comments by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said Ukraine is no longer subject to range limitations on Western-supplied weaponry.

“If such decisions have indeed been made, they are entirely at odds with our aspirations for a political resolution and with the efforts currently being made toward a settlement,” Peskov stated.

“Quite dangerous decisions, again – if they were indeed made,” he stressed.

At the EuropaForum on Monday, Merz said “there are no longer any range restrictions” on Western-supplied weapons used by Ukraine against Russian military targets. “There are no restrictions from the UK, France, Germany, or the US,” he added, as quoted by Euronews.

Moscow has repeatedly warned Western countries against participating in the conflict by giving Kiev targeting data from NATO satellites to carry out long-range strikes against Russia.

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The Kremlin as well as Russian state media are alleging a huge, potentially conflict-altering incident which will surely escalate the war in Ukraine – an attempted attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

A high-ranking Russian military commander on Sunday described that last week, as Putin traveled to the Kursk region for the first time since is liberation after 6+ months of Ukrainian occupation, Ukraine tried to attack Putin’s helicopter mid-flight, sending a wave of drones to swarm the flight path of the chopper.

The presidential helicopter was caught in the “epicenter” of a massive Ukrainian drone attack, commander of an air defense division in Kursk, Yury Dashkin, told Russian media. The headline is the top featured story of English-language RT on Sunday, something which suggests the allegations are largely aimed at grabbing the attention of the West.

The incident is said to have happened Tuesday as the helicopter transported Putin to tour Kursk – a southern oblast which has suffered much destruction since the initial Ukrainian cross-border incursion of last August.

Commander Yury Dashkin told Russia 1 in an interview which aired Sunday said that Putin’s helicopter had found itself “in the epicenter of an operation to repel a massive drone attack by the enemy” in Kursk Region.

He went on to describe that this “unprecedented” attack was successfully repelled by anti-air defenses in the region. Air defense units in the area had to “simultaneously conduct anti-aircraft combat and ensure the safety of the president’s helicopter in the air. The task was accomplished,” Dashkin stated. “The attack of the enemy drones was repelled, with all aerial targets being hit.”

While this could just be a mid-level officer’s attempt to toot his own horn, given the world is just hearing about what’s tantamount to an ‘assassination attempt’ on one of the world’s most powerful leaders being alleged – and coming belatedly a number of days after the incident in question – this seems part of Moscow’s ongoing messaging that the UAV incursions are an attempt to derail the US-brokered peace talks between Moscow and Kiev. 

The drones are being launched on Russia in record numbers, with literally multiple hundreds sent over the past week, in some cases halting inbound and outbound flights at major airports, including in the Moscow area. Ukrainian officials have boasted that the operations is trying to disrupt and destabilize daily life in Russia, in hopes that the government could lose control.

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There’s been little progress in Russia-Ukraine talks, which the Trump administration has backed – the latest held in Istanbul a week ago – and by all appearances the war continues to heat up and possibly expand.

Russia’s defense ministry (MoD) has published battlefield footage which purports to show a Russian Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system destroying a US-supplied Patriot air defense system operated by the Ukrainian military.

A Thursday Telegram post by the MoD showed the strike on a position in Dnepropetrovsk region, which it says destroyed a multifunctional AN/MPQ-65 radar, a control unit, as well as two Patriot launchers.

Russian state media has touted that this amounts to a loss of advanced military hardware worth over $1 billion. President Zelensky has already for months been complaining US-supplied air defense systems

European allies, including Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Spain – have long worked to donate and transfer the anti-air system with Washington’s approval.

Greece has continued to refuse to send Ukraine any of its Patriot batteries, citing the need to defend its homeland, also given Turkey is an ever-present threat amid a spat over maritime rights and sovereignty. Likely Greece also realizes any Patriot it donates could just as quickly be destroyed by Russia’s superior aerial power.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is revisiting a strategy first proclaimed last year, but which appeared to be thwarted or put on hold by Ukraine’s Kursk invasion. But now with Kursk liberated from the over six-month Ukrainian troop occupation, Putin is talking a ‘buffer zone’ along the southern border once again.

Russian troops are seeking to carve out a large security buffer zone along the Russia-Ukraine border, Putin announced Thursday during a meeting with ministers and Kremlin officials. “We have approved the creation of a necessary security buffer zone along our borders. Our armed forces are actively working to accomplish this task,” the Russian leader stated.

Putin is fresh off his in-person tour of Kursk region, which happened Tuesday, which was a first since the August cross-border invasion by Ukraine. 

Yet the southern oblasts are still threatened by near-daily artillery and drone fire. A big part of the rationale for a buffer zone is for full stability to return to Russian border towns and villages, for example especially in Belgorod:

He emphasized that, given the recent developments in the Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk regions, immediate efforts are required to restore and rebuild areas affected by recent events. This includes assisting local residents in returning to their native villages, provided security conditions allow. Furthermore, it is essential to rehabilitate transportation networks and other infrastructure, ensure the smooth operation of industrial and agricultural enterprises, and support entrepreneurs and their employees.

This month alone has seen hundreds of drones launched from Ukraine onto southern oblasts, with some drones targeting as far as Moscow, which has resulted in commercial flight stoppages this week (not for the first time).

The timing of Putin’s buffer zone plan is very significant, as President Trump is currently being widely perceived as ‘stepping back’ from pursuit of a final peace settlement.

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