Russia - Ukraine “peace negotiations”

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Think i am at a point where I need a break from the board. i can't handle this much Trump and he is everywhere these days, just oozing is stupid and fragile self-worth on everything.

I never though the fall of democracy would be so... moronic.
He has definitely taken all the oxygen and then some since Congress tucked tail a scurried home …
 
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🎁 —> https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-ukr...b?st=Sa3GxS&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

“… Russia wants the entire region of Donetsk, including the 25% that Ukraine still controls, an unoccupied swath larger than Delaware. A heavily reinforced defensive line, known as the fortress belt, has stopped the Russians from rolling deeper westward, and Ukraine has no plans to surrender the area.

Ukraine began strengthening the 31-mile belt more than a decade ago, and the Russians have lost men and weapons whenever they bashed themselves against it. Penetrating it by force would take years, according to the Institute for the Study of War—so Mr. Putin seeks to seize it through negotiations instead.

Ukraine knows the consequences of allowing itself to be stripped of its strength. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Kyiv surrendered its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S., U.K. and Russia. Those promises failed to deter Mr. Putin’s 2014 and 2022 invasions.

Mr. Putin has been ruthless in past dealings. In 2014, after he promised a “humanitarian corridor” to save surrounded Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern city of Ilovaisk, Ukrainian troops laid down their weapons—only to be ambushed and massacred.

… If Kyiv were to cede Donetsk, Ukrainian and European forces would be responsible for securing more than 2,000 miles of frontier, including the line of contact and the borders with Russia and Belarus.

… Deterrence would be further weakened if Russia gained full control of Donetsk, given that the loss of a fortress belt would put Ukrainian and European forces in a less defensible position. Russia would gain a prime outpost to threaten the neighboring regions of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia. The Ukrainians and their Western partners would have to rush to erect new fortifications, including on terrain that’s more vulnerable.

The next comparably advantageous defensive line would be the Dnipro River, much further west.

Mr. Putin pitches the surrender of Donetsk as a condition to end the war. Ukrainians know any such concession would enable Russian aggression, not end it.“
 
This can't end unless Putin can get something in return for the Russian blood he has spilled
Ukraine needs to figure out hot to give him something without giving him anything
 
The one thing the war is not about..........is land. Russia already has more then enough land over 11 time zones or something. So giving land away has no value for a permanent peace.

If you go back to the first weeks of the war, you know the war is not about land. When the invasion failed, Putin simple changed targets and the direction of the invasion in the hope of achieving his ultimate objective. Everyone knows all this, except perhaps the peacemaker in chief.
 
The one thing the war is not about..........is land. Russia already has more then enough land over 11 time zones or something. So giving land away has no value for a permanent peace.

If you go back to the first weeks of the war, you know the war is not about land. When the invasion failed, Putin simple changed targets and the direction of the invasion in the hope of achieving his ultimate objective. Everyone knows all this, except perhaps the peacemaker in chief.
Putin never thinks he has enough land.

Moreover, Russians moved to the border areas of all the republics during the Soviet period as part of the Russification of the USSR. As a result, Russians are now a significant minority in all the provinces that abut Russia -- not just in Ukraine but in almost all of the former Soviet republics. As a result, that gives Russia a motivation to interfere in the domestic politics of all the neighboring states -- under the guise of protecting the Russian minority.

Moreover, Russia has always wanted border states due to a millennium of invasions. It is deeply ingrained in Russian psychology. So, regardless how many time zones Russia spans, Russians are insecure about their Western border, and want servile client states to the west.
 
Putin never thinks he has enough land.

Moreover, Russians moved to the border areas of all the republics during the Soviet period as part of the Russification of the USSR. As a result, Russians are now a significant minority in all the provinces that abut Russia -- not just in Ukraine but in almost all of the former Soviet republics. As a result, that gives Russia a motivation to interfere in the domestic politics of all the neighboring states -- under the guise of protecting the Russian minority.

Moreover, Russia has always wanted border states due to a millennium of invasions. It is deeply ingrained in Russian psychology. So, regardless how many time zones Russia spans, Russians are insecure about their Western border, and want servile client states to the west.
Russians like the advantage of getting more land of course. And I am sure they enjoy having their enemies that much further away and such. Those are side motivations and we shouldn't be distracted by them.

The real motivation for this war has nothing to do with land and therefore negotiating land away won't lead to permanent peace. This war is about destroying the threat to Russia that a Democratic Ukraine and all its ramifications represents

Putin took the 2011 Russian protests really, really bad. So bad, he set about soon after to eliminate any place that the Russian people could get such ideas. Ukraine and its 2014 ouster of its pro Putin President soon landed in his cross hairs and Ukraine has been the center of his attention ever since. Heck, Putin was plenty satisfied just having a friendly Ukrainian government up to that point. He didn't care about their land up to then. .
 
“…What the two leaders didn’t say: Behind closed doors, their countries’ biggest energy companies had already sketched out a road map to going back into business, pumping oil-and-gas fields off Russia’s far-east coast.

In secret talks with Russia’s biggest state energy company this year, a senior Exxon Mobil executive discussed returning to the massive Sakhalin project if the two governments gave the green light as part of a Ukraine peace process, said people familiar with the discussions.

Such is the sensitivity that only a handful of people at Exxon knew the talks had taken place. One of the U.S. oil major’s top executives, Senior Vice President Neil Chapman, led the talks on the Exxon side.

Under the Biden and Trump administrations, Exxon and other companies have had U.S. permission and licenses from the Treasury Department to hold talks about stranded assets with Russian counterparts, one of the people familiar with the discussions said. The first round of negotiations took place shortly after Exxon’s exit from Russia in 2022.

In parallel, Exxon executives have asked the U.S. government for support if the company goes back to Russia, and received a sympathetic hearing, said a senior administration official. CEO Darren Woods discussed Exxon’s possible return with Trump at the White House in recent weeks.

Resuming business in Russia would mark a dramatic rapprochement after Exxon’s messy breakup with Moscow when Putin attacked Ukraine in 2022. The West’s biggest oil producer dived deeper into Russia than most other companies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Its retreat after the invasion was correspondingly more acrimonious.…”
 


Someone close to Trump must be tracking how often his cabinet members and advisors promote him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
 
Bill Browder made an interesting point today. That it was obvious that Trump went into the Putin meeting determined to give Putin everything to get a deal. Including Ukrainian land. But Putin wouldn't take it. Because it ain't about land. Its about getting control of Ukraine.
 
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