Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Sistema project released an investigation on November 4 detailing Russia’s initial 2022 demands for Ukraine’s total capitulation, further supporting ISW’s long-standing assessment that Russia has never been willing to engage in good-faith negotiations with Ukraine on any terms but its own. RFE/RL reported on November 4 that it obtained a draft of the treaty that Russia offered to Ukraine on March 7, 2022, entitled “Treaty on the Settlement of the Situation in Ukraine and the Neutrality of Ukraine.” The draft document includes seven provisions, all of which amount to Ukraine’s complete surrender and disarmament and the abandonment of its sovereignty, lands, and people. The document calls for Ukraine to reduce its army from nearly 197,000 personnel to 50,000 personnel, which RFE/RL notes would have meant that the Ukrainian army would be smaller than the Belarusian army, despite the fact that the Belarusian population in 2022 was one-fifth of the Ukrainian population. The document also states that Ukraine would not be able to develop, produce, buy, or deploy missile systems with a range of more than 250 kilometers; that Ukraine would have to recognize occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as independent Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) and cede parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that Ukraine still controlled in March 2022; that Ukraine would have to commit to the financial costs of rebuilding parts of the Donbas that Russia had destroyed following its initial 2014 invasion; that Ukraine and the international community would lift all sanctions and cancel all lawsuits that had been levied against Russian since 2014; that Ukraine would grant the Russian language the status of a “state language” and restore all property rights of the Kremlin-controlled Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate; and that Ukraine would re-legalize Soviet and communist symbols. In essence, Moscow was asking Ukraine to willingly give up its military, its offensive and defensive capabilities, its land, a significant portion of its population and economic capacity, and cease protecting its language, history, and culture.
The Kremlin has been incessant in its claims that it set out to negotiate in March 2022 (after illegally invading Ukraine) but that it was Ukraine and the collective West that destroyed the prospect of negotiations. The RFE/RL investigation supports ISW’s long-standing assessment that this was never the case, however, and that Russia never intended to negotiate in good faith with Ukraine. Russia presented outrageous demands calling for Ukraine to surrender its security and sovereignty, knowing that Ukraine would (rightly) refuse to do so, and then blamed Ukraine for the supposed “failure” of negotiations. ISW continues to assess that Russia has constructed a narrative around the concept of negotiations that it is using in an effort to encourage the West to make concessions on Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the RFE/RL investigation emphasizes that Russia’s “diplomatic” engagements with Ukraine and the West since the full-scale invasion have always been oriented around this destructive objective.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-4-2024
Comment: So this was the Kremlin’s peace plan back in March 2022. It was a demand for total capitulation. But it doesn’t end there. Recently Lavrov made this statement at a conference:
“Stability in [Europe] as part of Eurasia continent will only be achieved under condition of providing reliable long term security guarantees. Well for example as they were presented in our December 2021 initiatives.”
What was in that December 2021 initiative? It was an ultimatum to the West demanding that NATO give up on all countries that joined it after 1997, which is the entirety of Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States, and they demanded the West leave Ukraine and Georgia to Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence.
None of this surprises me. I had a ringside seat to the collapse of the Soviet Union and what happened in the Kremlin in the days after that collapse. Initially, the communist apparatchiki running the government vanished. Academics from the Soviet and Russian Academy of Sciences immediately filled the void to keep things running. They knew their stuff, but they were new to arts of political warfare. Within weeks, many of the old communist apparatchiki started filtering back displacing the academics. Along with the apparatchiki, came some of the siloviki from the old communist regime. Putin was among them. So the Soviet Union collapsed, but the same old reds were left running the store. Thus my title. The Russian Federation is nothing new. It’s remnant Soviet Union. Even the leaders are the same, just the next generation. And they long for what the Soviet Union once had.
TTG
Russia made its position clear. It will not allow Ukraine to become a NATO member and it is willing to fight for this goal.
The more Russians have to die in this fight, the more it will cost Ukraine in people and territory lost.
If the Ukrainian nationalists had honored the agreement signed in February 2014, they would still have their 1991 borders and peace.
Every agreement since, is increasingly more difficult to swallow for the uncompromising, Bandera worshiping crowd.
The bottom line is, Ukraine as a state will fail completely in the next year or two without massive infusions of money, men and arms.
How far is the West willing to go to force their conditions on Russia ?
Nigel –
Russia refused to sign that 2014 agreement you mention.
Viktor Yanukovych, Putin’s puppet in Ukraine, would not sign that agreement either. Instead he fled to Russia where he bought a mansion in Rublevka where real-estate prices are among the highest in the world. The $50 plus million he paid for it was stolen from Ukraine.
The reason that neither Putin nor Yanukovych signed was because the agreement included the Ukrainian Parliament’s vote to return Ukraine to the 2004 Constitution. That vote was overwhelming, 402 voted in favor and 21 against, with 19 abstentions. Even MPs from Yanukovych’s own party in the Donbas voted for that bill.
leith
The agreement was between Yanukovich and the opposition as parties in the conflict. I don’t know where you get your information that Yanukovich did not sign the agreement.
https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-deal-with-ukraine-opposition/
The agreement was a path to de escalation but the Right sector and the rest of the crazies would have none of it.
Nigel –
The most important part of the agreement was the passing by Parliament of the return to the 2004 Constitution, which Yanukovych had squashed in 2010 as a favor to Putin. The vote was 386 to zero, all in favor. So Yanukovych had 24 hours to sign this legislation, after which the protesters would stand down and de-escalate. Instead of signing he left Kyiv and eventually was smuggled to Moscow in a flight from Crimea. That was after he had been stopped by border guards when he tried to fly to Moscow on a charter flight from Donetsk.
After that, even members of Yanukovych’s own political party voted in favor of legislation removing him from office and establishing a new government.
“Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk.”
John Milton
leith
That is a nice collection of alternative facts you have there. First you falsely claim Yanukovich hasn’t signed the Feb ’14 agreement. Then he apparently chose to go to Moscow because I guess he is a Putin puppet.
The fact that he was in mortal danger from the “protesters that wanted to de escalate” and was fleeing to save his life, does not even enter your consideration.
You even mention how his own party voted against him. You don’t mention the armed men in masks that were overseeing the voting process in the days and weeks following the coup.
In those days, the least that could happen to you if you voted “incorrectly” was to be thrown into a garbage container by the “democratic opposition activists”.
Nigel –
Election terrorism by pro-Russian thugs was rampant in the Donbas. Their masked gunmen took over ballot boxes and government buildings throughout the area. 80% of Donbas polling locations were closed for voting due to violence and threats. District election commissioners and their families received death threats as did pro-Ukrainian candidates. Twenty of the thirty-four election commissions in the Donbas were stopped fully or partially by the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Those are facts despite Kremlin dezinformatsiya.
Meanwhile in Free-Ukraine there were several thousand international election observers. None reported anywhere near the violence that was happening in areas under Russian control. I’m sure there may have been someone there dumped in a trash bin because of his perceived vote or the way he spoke. But not many.
Back to Yanukovych: Yes, he did sign the 21 September Agreement. My bad, a thousand xin lỗi. But within 48 hours he immediately and publicly refused to sign the law on the renewal of the 2004 Constitution when it got approved by Parliament. Thereby he walked away from the Agreement since that 2004 Constitutional commitment was the first and most important article in the agreement. Perhaps he thought that Parliament would never pass that law? More likely, a Kremlin whisperer told him not to.
Was his life in danger? Of course it was. All collaborationnistes regardless of country get targets painted on their backs. Many of them since the dawn of time have gone into exile to avoid imprisonment, re-education camps, or being hanged from lampposts, or worse. Yanukovych got off easy and while doing it pocketed a huge chunk of Ukraine’s Treasury. A slick and slippery guy!
I don’t myself believe that Putin was playing 4 dimensional chess in February 2022.
Seemed obvious from the start that he was faced with a simple problem on the Donbass border. Zelensky had earlier declared he intended to recover the lost regions of Ukraine. Minsk 2 was dead. Artillery fire across the border was increasing and most was coming from the Ukrainian side. Kiev had assembled forces on the border very much more powerful than anything the self-declared Republics could muster.
The situation obviously required a decision and though I know little of the Russian power structure, I believe it was Vladimir Putin who was in the position of having to make that decision.
His Generals had obviously put together plans for just this scenario. Should Putin let them put those plans into operation?. Or should he wait until the Kiev forces had attacked?
From the point of view of world opinion Putin would have done far better to wait. I thought that at the time. He would have been so obviously in the right had he responded to a Kiev attack rather than pre-empting it.
I was wrong. The later fighting in Mariupol showed how very difficult it would have been to get the Kiev forces out of the Donbass once they had entered it. Had the Kiev forces got into the Donbass we would have seen atrocities mirroring those they had committed in the earlier phase of the war. Had the Russians not intervened at all we would have seen ethnic cleansing on a large scale.
So if they were to intervene at all, the Russians would do better to intervene earlier rather than later. That is for me a simple and valid explanation for the SMO.
…………………………….
I found later that the Russians had been working to this reasoning from the beginning. Various statements show that, the latest only this year:-
“In late 2021 and early 2022, the Minsk process was finally buried by Kiev and its Western handlers. Another large-scale attack was planned on Donbass. A large group of the Ukrainian armed forces was preparing to start a new offensive against Lugansk and Donetsk, which obviously entailed ethnic cleansing campaigns, numerous casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees. We were obliged to prevent that catastrophe and to protect the people. We saw no other solution.”
https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1957107/
Of course there’s always the four dimensional chess interpretation. That Putin could foresee how the situation would develop and used that situation as an excuse for starting to re-establish the old Soviet Empire. Theoretically possible except for what is for me a determining countervailing argument.
Who would want to take over Europe? The place is heading for dereliction, has no useful natural resources to speak off, and is crammed full of Russophobes. Why would the Russians want to fuel and feed a hostile Europe? Just for the fun of it?
EO, if you haven’t seen this,
you might find it of interest:
“EU’s opening bid to avoid Trump’s tariffs:
We could buy more American gas.
Brussels hopes to avoid trade war with the Republican president-elect.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-european-union-gas-lng-united-states-export-tariffs-trade-election-biden-harris/
Mr Harbaugh – Europe is still buying Russian LNG and sanctions or no will continue to do so for a while yet.
It’s more expensive than piped natural gas because of liquefaction and regasification costs. If Europe were to take Russian natural gas through the NS2 pipeline they would therefore get it more cheaply. Putin has stated Gazprom’s ready to supply through the one remaining NS2 pipeline any time the Germans want.
So Russian natural gas is OK if it comes expensively by ship but not OK if it comes more cheaply through a pipeline. Same with the Russian oil the Europeans are buying. That’s OK if it comes via India with middleman costs added, but not OK if it comes direct.
Same with a lot else. The Europeans devote much time and energy to devising sanctions packages . They’re on the 14th now. They then devote more time and energy, and money, getting round them.
UvdL and Scholz need their heads examining. But that has been apparent for some time.
EO,
A plan being bandied about is for the EU to import more LNG from the US in exchange for lowering or dropping Trump’s tariffs on EU goods. With Scholz soon to be gone, the EU may really push that approach. Trump may be amenable to that in order to push LNG exports. He won’t be amenable to Russia taking market share and lowering prices, especially with Putin’s recent answer to Trump’s desire to end the war in Ukraine. Putin told him he has to come crawling to him if he wants a settlement of that war. I thought Putin knew how to talk to Trump. I guess he’s getting overly cocky in his old age.
Trump’s plans for Iran will also fly in the face of Putin. Trump plans on restarting his maximum pressure approach against Putin’s new ally. That’s not going to help the Trump-Putin bromance.
On the European sanctions it’s just the logic of it, TTG.
Our trade war with Russia wasn’t just the “normal” attempt to gain a trading advantage by using trade weight. We see countries shoving each other around like that all the time whether the countries involved are allies or not. This trade war with Russia was different. It was a serious attempt to cripple another country and thus defeat it. We’re looking, in effect, at something attempted that was nearer the scale of the intention behind the Battle of the Atlantic, or of Napoleon’s failed Continental System.
Such trade wars only work if you can really damage the enemy’s economy. Enough to at least impede the enemy war effort and preferably to the extent of making the enemy population suffer enough to make them turn against their own government. That last the stated rationale behind the sanctions on Iran and Syria.
But in their trade war with Russia Berlin/Brussels failed to take into account the strength of the Russian economy. They were never going to be able to damage the Russian economy enough to get the Russian people to throw out the Putin administration.
They weren’t even going to damage the Russian economy enough to hamper the Russian war effort. On the contrary, those European trade sanctions had a markedly beneficial effect on the Russian economy. That’s in contrast to the mainly American financial sanctions, which I reckon must have given Mrs Nabiullina a few sleepless nights. The European trade sanctions didn’t. So fail all round on that score.
In addition, trade wars also only work if they don’t damage the sanctioner too much. The EU economy was going downhill fast well before 2022 and what the trade war did was push it downhill faster. Fail on that as well.
But if you’re going to sanction, at least make sure the sanctions work. Buying stuff from Russia through third parties doesn’t damage the Russians. It just means you pay more for the stuff.
So fail on all counts indeed. I recollect writing in well before 2022 arguing that it was impracticable for the Europeans to attempt a trade war with the Russians. All we’ve done is accelerate the Russian move away from trade with Europe. We have in fact accelerated their move towards trading with less hostile and more reliable trade partners. And we have damaged ourselves in the process.
“The world’s splitting into two halves and you’ve landed yourself in the wrong one, you fools!” I was writing to Germans in 2022. That applies, I think, given that Germany is at once the paymaster and the economic superpower of Europe, to the entirety of the European continent.
………………………………..
This leaves the Germans in a difficult position. The mainstream German politicians are solidly anti-Russian. Not only the politicians. In my own circle in Germany I find a general fear and dislike of the Russians and great dislike of Putin. That’s mainly a left wing circle, mine, but the CDU, to judge from Merz’s speeches and actions, is even more anti-Russian. The Greens are off the scale and the FDP, for what it’s worth, not that far behind if we are to take Lindner seriously.
So in contrast to the US, where the politicians will be able to walk away from the Ukrainian debacle worried only about losing face, the German politicians, and their supporters, can’t. At best they’ll accede to some sort of sullen rapprochement if Trump cares to push them that way.
But even if Trump himself were prepared to lift all sanctions – that “prerequisite” to a stable settlement of the Ukrainian conflict mentioned earlier – he’d find it very difficult to take Europe along with him on that.
……………………….
As for Putin himself, his recent statements give us the outlines of the Russian goals. He speaks admiringly of Trump’s courage during the assassination attempt and states he’s maybe going to talk to him. He’s obviously not looking for a scrap with the US if he can avoid it.
In the case of the future of remnant Ukraine what Putin says is not explicit. It’s entirely consistent, however, with the likely future of remnant Ukraine. If the war continues much of the old Party of Regions arc will get to choose whether to unite with Russia. Possibly more of remnant Ukraine if other regions so choose. We know almost nothing of the current population mix in Ukraine after all the recent population movements, nor much of the popular mood within Ukraine itself, so that’s still up in the air.
I think, particularly from the the Valdai speech and discussions, we can now see the outlines of the final settlement of the war. And of the future of Ukraine.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75521
I looked for a full transcript of the Q&A but couldn’t find a reliable one.
EO –
Putin never accepted Minsk 2 premise, so it ended up dead on arrival. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that Russia was “not a party to the Minsk agreements”. They hated it from the start. The separatists and the Russian Army continued to shell Ukrainian positions; and they continued their attacks at Debaltseve and Mariupol. Alexander Zakharchenko, a war criminal and leader of the the Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed the ceasefire did not apply in those regions.
Meanwhile in Kyiv, Parliament approved a law on “special status” for the Donbas, as specified by Minsk 2. But even so the Kremlin’s forces in the Donbas kept violating the agreement with skirmishes and shelling averaging a thousand times per month.
By the way, that’s “Donbas” with just one “s”, and “Kyiv” with a “yi”. Please stop with the bastardization of Ukrainian place names.
Leith – those names.
They’re often different for the Napoleonic war. Then again for WW2. They shift a bit for the early civil war (Goodbye Stalino) and sometimes a bit more now.
I should take more care to change to whatever they are at present but I’m afraid I don’t. Nothing political intended.
When referring to the EU, lots political intended. Once called the Prison of Nations, the EU changed its name to Castle Dracula during Brexit in recognition of the fine work it did in subduing one of the outlying satrapies. Us.
Not sure what it’s called now. Probably Nowheresville, in recognition of the fine work Scholz and UvdL did in reducing it to political irrelevance.
EO –
Prison of Nations was the USSR and its predecessor, currently that name fits the Russian Federation.
Castle Dracula is the Kremlin in Moscow. Murdering, kidnapping and torturing the citizens of their former satrapy for having the temerity to dare a Ukrexit.
Your Brexit was a piece of cake, not a drop of blood was shed.
Leith – don’t get an Englishman started on the EU. We wuz robbed! They pinched our fish, left us still subject in practice to their crazy regs, and stirred up the Irish.
Not that the Irish need a lot of stirring up at the best of times. In truth, however, we’d have walked it if we’d just been up against Brussels. It was the scoundrels in Westminster did for us.
As they are still. And no way of getting rid of them. Things look equally glum over your way except at least for a few days you can cherish the illusion that Trump’ll turn it round.
Maybe more than a few days? Keeping my fingers crossed for you. Best of luck!
Leith (again) – that was a little uncivil, ignoring the substance of your comment and going off on the side issue of nomenclature.
Nothing uncivil meant. I read your comment with great attention and thought, yes, with a bit of shoehorning we can fit the events following the Maidan coup into the scenario you portray. It requires us to believe that Putin has been preternaturally devious throughout and was, in fact, playing four dimensional chess for decades.
But I don’t think it was like that. Putin is by common consent exceptionally able, but no one can predict how things will go in such circumstances as prevailed after the Maidan. As said above he wasn’t playing four dimensional chess. Just responding as best he could to events as they occurred.
“We’ve got Putin cornered at last!” Strobe Talbot is reputed to have emailed at the time of the SMO. So we had. Either he was going to do nothing and risk letting the Kiev forces over-run the Donbass. Or he was going to intervene and come up against those “Sanctions from Hell”.
Those sanctions now look obviously ineffectual. But the intention was to cause a bank run and wreck the Russian currency and thus economy. If the secondary sanctions had worked as well as hoped we’d have isolated the Russian economy and caused chaos within Russia. Easy enough now to say those sanctions were dumb. But they didn’t look that dumb at the time.
In truth, though, we left the Russians little choice in the matter. Had the Russians not intervened in the Donbass the risk was that the Kiev forces would invade. Not a risk anyone in Russia could possibly take. This was, as I’ve said so often, the FAFO war. We fooled around on the borders of a militarily superior major power. We’re now finding out the results.
……………………………..
Just a correction to my comment above. There’s a brilliant comment further down from a German contributor. Points out a problem that the Russians share with all advanced economies – the sucking in of cheap labour with the resultant stresses. Also pours a much needed dash of cold water on the Brics stuff. Had I read it before I submitted my own comment above, I’d have written “We have in fact accelerated their move towards trading with (they hope!) less hostile and more reliable trade partners.”
TTG,
According to my recollection and Paul Klebnikov’s book ‘Godfather of the Kremlin’ it was the US backed Boris Yeltsin, his so called young reformers, and his oligarch/mafia allies like Berezovsky who illegally rewrote the constitution to place almost all power in the hands of the president – which the US totally supported because the president was Yeltsin and Yeltin was their man.
After the US helped Yeltsin rig his second election, Yeltsin asked Bill Clinton for permission to hand the keys to the kingdom over to Putin and Clinton gave him a thumbs up.
The average Russian insists that they wanted to move beyond a cold war relationship with the US, but the US had no intention of giving up their cold war foe.
James,
Even during Gorbachev’s time, many Russians and their leaders wanted to move beyond the Cold War with the West. Relations were thawing to the point that 10th SFG(A) and the 45th Spetsnaz held exchange training in 2012. But the new old guard was coalescing around Putin for many years and included many of the new robber baron class during much of that superficial thaw.
Yeltsin was never “our man” but, like Gorbachev, was genuinely interested in ending the Cold War.
TTG…I Like The Part here Where People know Their History..Who..What..Where..When…Several of You Nkow Your Data and History are Educating Those of Us who Went
V Day School with Kronkeit..on tv..
So..Russia…Ah Yes…Boy TTG …You Put things about the
Yeltsin..Putin…Gorby..Clinton….Regan Days in Focus..even..
Now…All those Gold Bars and Diamonds..The High Roller Gamblers…The Thrill of Victory….Eh
Oh…The Bush Days….Ow..Damn..Medal of Freedom for That Guy..who So loyal…He Kept His mouth shut..Damn…Iraq..Oh Sure Saddam,,You can loot Kuwait,,No Problem..What a Turkey shoot.. Even Walz could have hit a target…HANG Saddam..Shia Holiday..Surrender Afghanistan…Persian Empire..Eh..Tpo the SEA..
Wars..Smores..Red..White ..Blue Tracers..Nam Bomb…Walz Wife.;;Open The Window..Smell Milwaukee Burn…”I Love the Smell of Progress”..
Yes..Go Ahead Vlad…Kamala Urged..No Problem..More Progress..The Traffic Light Coalition is Burned Out..
The German Police shot a AfD member in Saxon today..
All is Well…Ukraine is no longer Chinas gateway to Europe..
I Know one Thing..My Hampster is Safe..Yes..”Alfi”..is A
Swiss Hampster…I Gave him Asylum..Isnt Freedom Sweet..
Jim
n y
Putin was not part of soliviki who came ” within weeks ” .
He came to work to Moscou year 1996.
Seven years after USSR collapse.
And before, working with Anatoli Sobtchak in Saint Petersbourg, he was not a siloviki either.
They would never have accepted a podpolkovnik ( Lieutenant-colonel) as one of them.
Within weeks, many of the old communist apparatchiki started filtering back displacing the academics. Along with the apparatchiki, came some of the siloviki from the old communist regime. Putin was among them.
The Nuland audio of of her saying, “f#$% the EU” and then directing who was going to run Ukraine solidified for me there was never going to be any mutual understanding. It was going to be US rules based order or broke and not just for Ukraine, all of NATO and anyone else who had a problem with it.
There were a couple checkpoints where it almost looked like her and her wrecking crew were going to pull it off but unfortunately it was not meant to be. It would be nice to put a face on the defeat like a Napoleon or a Hitler one day but I’m not sure what good it would do since nobody seems to want to read a history book.
Neocon radio is repeating the story from the days before the ghost of kiev’s great victories. No surprise. I doubt that president elect Hitler is going along with those, or the neocons, demands.
I seem to recall from comments here not so long ago that the “shock therapy ” to the economy after the collapse of the USSR was a good thing. Apparently that has changed.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s making projects which support ISW’s long-standing assessments…
If you call me a duke, I’ll call you a baron.
Jovan P,
They’re reporting what Putin and Lavrov said.
TTG…All I ever Heard From Agents..for many ..many Years Was Russian Phobia…They Were Every Where..In America…Controlling Weather in Space the Minute Sputnik started Pinging…( Morse Code Naturally..Encrypted),,And Arming Half the World…
….You were in Germany..Major..until Putin and His Wife Loaded a Washing Machine on thier Ratta Roof..and Drove Home…But Sleepers were under every feather Bed…
and Those Bugs were not Roaches…You Know..The USA was Covert Arming…Supplying and Recruiting …as Much as State Would allow…just dont Lock..Load or Shoot..( Lebanon..such a bad..bad ..Mess) Always..The Messes..
Anyhow..You Know …The Russian Empire…Ukraine..History..Centurys..Not
Recent..You Know we ..THe USA Had Operators all over Ukraine..Building..Arming..
Plotting..Before and During The Chinese…Operators took Every thing Ukraine had…Even the Pigs…
I Just Think Russia Had No Idea..How Much..Under Cover..and Covertly..The
USA Was Arming Ukraine With Many,,Anti Tank..Anti Armored..Anti Aircraft
Material…When Russia Got Donbas ..Ukraine could Defend..
When Putin Lined up To Drive Forty Miles of Bad Road To Kiev..and waited..
They were the Mice..in a CAT Game..Pre Planned..By Those Who HATED every thing Russian….Including Germany..and NATO… Things went to Stage 5..Bad for Everyone.
So..TTG Since you Still had a Brilliant Mind,,I Nominate you for Director on the
NSA..Big Leather Chair..Big Screen..Back on the Inside..Smile..Best Regards
Jim
Jim.,
I already have a big leather chair and a comfy couch to match. The last thing I want is to be back on the inside.
Why are you relying on the ISW paraphrasing of the Systema “investigation”, when you can go to the source itself, Radio Free Europe?
Seems…. sloppy….
What if the original RFE report reads as cheap propaganda?
You’d never know if you only relied on ISW’s “reporting” of RFE’s “investigation”.
Yeah, Right,
You can look at the ISW article yourself. I provided the link. That particular section relied on three sources listed in the footnotes. If ISW offends your sensibilities that much, read those sources.
https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/rfe-rl-rosija-ukrajina-dohovir-myr-kapitulyatsiya/33185063.html
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/11/04/journalists-obtain-russia-s-initial-proposals-from-march-2022-negotiations-revealing-putin-s-plans-for-post-war-ukraine
https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCU-Journal/JAMS-vol-14-no-2/Russias-War-in-Ukraine/
Here’s a fourth article, an RFE/RL article from “Current Time” which has a SCRIBD reproduction of the treaty proposal in question. From the RFE/RL “Current Time” article: “Sistema received the project from a Ukrainian source familiar with the negotiations, and a Russian source close to the negotiations confirmed its authenticity. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.”
https://www.currenttime.tv/a/dogovor-project-systema/33185521.html
TTG,
“And they long for what the Soviet Union once had.”
That generation thought the Soviet Empire was stupid, and waste of Russian Rubles. And it’s why the Soviet Union collapsed. Russian nationalism had reemerged, despite all the structural barriers that the Bolsheviks had created, and the increasingly Russian leadership thought that financing people who hated you, like the Balts, was insane.
– Eliot
Eliot,
Yet they still long for the “good old days” when Mother Russia was a much feared and respected superpower.
TTG, I am interested to hear your expert opinion as to why Biden won’t allow Ukraine to hit the Russian terrorists deep within Russia, using American weapons. We learned just this morning that the Russian terrorists attacked Estonia, nearly killing Estonia’s ambassador to Ukraine.
The genocidal terrorist leading Russia will now be emboldened by having his lapdog Trump back in the Oval Office.
The sentiment among the radical right is that by allowing terrorist Putin to steal Ukrainian territory the war will end in 24 hours. Terrorist Putin is not interested
in a settlement, he wants to go much further. There never was a threat to Russia by Ukraine. Terrorist Putin hates Ukraine because it favors freedom and liberty. That is something completely unacceptable to the genocidal dictator of Russia. He is steeped in the old KGB, cold war mentality, and will be supported by Trump.
Trump has proven over and over again that he is an empty suit with no intellectual curiosity. We have heard nothing about his plan to finish the border wall. Was there really anyone naive enough to believe that that clueless buffoon was going to build a wall across a nearly two-thousand-mile border? What will the cost be to complete the wall and give a trillion-dollar tax cut to his fat-cat donors. Not to mention the cost of expelling millions of people from America. There is also the fact that he wants to eliminate health care for millions of Americans and eliminate health care for millions more for having pre-existing conditions. And what will the cost be to “rebuild our military,” and the cost of a trade war with China? This clown is going to bust the budget with his out-of-control spending.
Trump was a failed businessman and a failed president. Round two will most likely be even worse. Trump is a misogynist bigot. Can anyone name one single thing he did that benefited America? I wouldn’t go as far as his VP, eyeliner JD, in calling Trump “America’s Hitler,” but eyeliner JD said that.
Unfortunately, the deep state stole this election from Harris. I know, I know, see how absurd that sounds. Trump and his cultists still believe that the deep state stole the election. They have gone through a whole litany of reasons, all debunked. Now they have come up with the stupid, idiotic excuse that the election was stolen by algorithms. You can’t make this stuff up.
Biden, Harris and Walz all were very magnanimous in defeat, and spoke of the importance of accepting the results of the election. If only cadet bonespurs had done the same thing, instead of trashing America with his pathological lying and egocentrism, we would be much better off now.
It is unprecedented in American history for so many former cabinet heads to leave and state how absolutely unqualified this empty suit really is.
Now he will put unqualified suck-ups in charge. He wants to have Herschel Walker help him to build a missile defense shield. Did you notice that wife number three was absent from the family photo? She was replaced by Elon Musk, geesh…
David Kissinger,
In short, the Biden administration is pursuing a strategy of escalation management. You probably heard about it. It’s meant to not antagonize the Kremlin into resorting to tactical nuclear weapons and, more importantly, leave the door open for eventual better relations with Russia. I personally think it’s trying to appease an aggressive bully hoping he will befriend you. It’s a shame because Biden’s leadership and initial handling of keeping the NATO coalition together and acting together was masterful.
TTG,
As masterful as his withdrawal from Kabul.
Fred,
Biden’s withdrawal from Kabul was terribly and fatally executed. He followed through on Trump’s capitulation to the Taliban. He could have reversed that withdrawal, but he could not reverse the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters or the final collapse of the Afghan government and military set in motion by Trump’s capitulation.
TTG,
“Biden’s withdrawal from Kabul was terribly and fatally executed.”
To paraphrase Churchill, that’s the end of the end of the story.
When did we conquer that tribal confederation called a country? Who decided to put the guy in the nice hat in charge back then? What did the ‘experts’ with the credentials, degrees, or stars on their shoulders tell us for more than a decade about the government they helped create? Spare me the revisionist history.
The Taliban took over the central government that the neocons and elitists created because none of the people they put in power was loyal to anyone or anything other than their own and to money. Trump had zero to do with the integrity and loyalty to Afghanistan those ‘fine people’ showed. Trump wasn’t around to curb-stomp the killers when they did what they did. Joseph Rabbinate Biden was in charge. And Kamala, by her own admission, was right there in the room with him. A lot of forgotten, except when they were needed to endorse Kamala and/or condemn Trump, generals, are no where to be seen.
Fred,
Trump cut the Kabul government out of withdrawal talks and went directly to the Taliban. where he forced Kabul to free the 5,000 Taliban fighters. He exchanged US troop withdrawals for a cessation of Taliban attacks. The Taliban never ceased their attacks on US troops and Trump kept withdrawing US troops.
TTG,
So you are saying that during two decades of war the generals had been feeding us b.s. the whole time? I agree.
Biden was Inaugurated in January; we left in August. How ‘ffn long does it take a CIC to change orders to a few generals? Over to you sir.
Fred,
Biden could have reneged on everything Trump promised the Taliban. He could have sent more troops back in and designed a better withdrawal. He didn’t have the political will to do so, just like now he doesn’t have the political will to go all in on Ukraine. That’s a failing on both fronts.
TTG,
He’s not willing to go to war with a nuclear armed power to fulfill the desires of the Borg? Well he’s at least right on that one.
“The Taliban took over the central government that the neocons and elitists created because none of the people they put in power was loyal to anyone or anything other than their own and to money. ”
Spot on, Fred
An easy way of looking at it was the production of opium in Afghanistan.
Under the Western installed government opium production did well, but now under the Taliban it’s gone.
All it took was some local Taliban officials out in the countryside willing to enforced the law. As simple as that.
Poul –
Per the United Nations: “Since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021, opium cultivation increased by 32%, or 56,000 hectares, compared to the previous year. This represents the third largest area under cultivation since the beginning of systematic monitoring.”
The Mullahs might have banned it, but their local reps seem to be looking the other way.
No link, leith. Perhaps your data was a bit outdated.
From 2023 & 2024
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65787391
https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/
https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/340-trouble-afghanistans-opium-fields-taliban-war-drugs
Oh, leith
Now I see why you didn’t include the link. It’s all from 2022.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Opium_cultivation_Afghanistan_2022.pdf
“Since the takeover by the Taliban in August 2021:
1 Opium cultivation in Afghanistan increased by 32% over the pre-
vious year to 233,000 hectares – making the 2022 crop the third
largest area under opium cultivation since monitoring began.
2 Opium prices have soared following the announcement of the
cultivation ban in April 2022.
3 The income made by farmers from opium sales tripled from USD
425 million in 2021 to USD1.4 billion 2022 – the equivalent of 29%
of the 2021 agricultural sector value. The sum still represents only
a fraction of the income made from production and trafficking
within the country. Increasingly larger sums are further accrued
along the illicit drug supply chain outside the country.
4 Seizures of opiates around Afghanistan indicate that trafficking of
Afghan opium and heroin has not stopped. Afghanistan supplies
80% of global opiate demand.
5 Most of the 2023 opium crop must be sowed by early November;
farmers will take decisions on whether and how much opium pop-
py to plant amid severe economic disruption and humanitarian
crisis, continued high prices for opium and uncertainty about how
the de facto authorities will enforce the cultivation ban”
Poul –
Here is another from six days ago:
“Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation grew in 2024 despite a Taliban-imposed ban, according to a United Nations report.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/6/afghan-opium-cultivation-bouncing-back-amid-taliban-clampdown
But if you prefer the BS from Mullah-in-Chief Hibatullah, then why not go live in Kabul? I wouldn’t recommend bringing along your womenfolk.
But leith from what level did the production increase?
The same UN source you used but now their 2023 report.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghanistan_opium_survey_2023.pdf
Quote
“In 2023 opium poppy cultivation and opium production dramatically declined after the ban
prohibiting “Poppy Cultivation and All types of Narcotics” was announced by the de-facto
authorities (DfA) in April 2022
Opium poppy cultivation dramatically declined across all parts of the country and almost entirely
in some provinces where opium poppy was illicitly cultivated for many years. Nationally, area under
cultivation declined by 95% to a total of just 10,800 ha, indicating that farmers were adhering to the
ban that was announced in April 2022.
Consequently, this has reduced the supply of opium and export quality heroin coming out of the
2023 harvest. Opium production saw a similar 95% decline from 6,200 tons produced in 2022 to
333 tons in 2023. The total 2023 opium harvest could be converted into 24-38 tons heroin of export
quality (50 – 70% purity). In 2022 that amount was 350-580 tons.”
A 95% reduction in the area used for opium production in 2023.
How many Latin American countries would love such a reduction in coca leaves? Would the US love a 95% reduction in land use for coca?
So leith, if we assume that we can use the 19% increase (from al Jazeera) in opium production as a guide for how much land is used. then we can take the 5% and multiply with 1,19 which will give us 5,95%.
So in 2024 only 6% of the area used in 2022 is still used for opium.
So leith, is that a policy failure on Talibans part?
Poul –
In the latest UNODC report, June 2024, opium harvest was still happening and it was not possible to estimate the total size of the 2024 harvest, but preliminary observations indicate that in 2024 opium production in Afghanistan may have increased slightly from 2023.
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) still lists Afghanistan as a major illicit drug producing country. Not only opium, but additionally hashish and they branched out into methamphetamines (The UNODC, which you cite, also states Afghanistan is a large-scale manufacturer of synthetic drugs.) Per the INCB, Afghanistan remains the world’s second largest supplier of opiates.
The 95% decline you claim is a bit mushy. UNODC also states that in 2023 Afghanistan still accounted for 17 per cent of world opium production. So that 95% ’estimate’ is closer to 80%. And the percentages are unverifiable. My understanding is that UNODC gets it info via geospatial imaging from satellite with the use of AI that is subject to false positives and other errors. It needs a major monitoring effort in-country, which the Talibs will never allow. And with the withdrawal of ISAF military forces, the closure of the many embassies, and the Taliban takeover it is currently not possible to monitor the situation reliably.
With the exception of a period extending from July 2000 through late 2001 and now since the 2022 ban, the Taliban has historically been quite comfortable with taxing and otherwise profiting from the opium trade. They taxed poppy farmers, provided protection services for traffickers, and some even participated in trafficking itself. It was how they financed their insurgency. When ISAF was still there prior to 2021 they launched airstrikes on poppy fields, burned opium stocks, conducted raids on drug laboratories and ended up spending billions of dollars to try to eradicate the opium economy there. Didn’t work. The Taliban is more ruthless and if they hang a few poor farmers, they may get better results. Especially in the south, which is largely ethnic Pashtun like the Talibs themselves. But in Badakshan and other northern provinces there has already been violent pushback by farm families to protect their crop.
leith, you are grasping at straws.
If you think that the UN 2023 survey is mushy. Why did you then used the 2022 survey. Same survey same mushiness.
Facts are the Taliban’s policy has had a massiv effect. On a scale the US would dream about if it where coca production in Latin America.
If the EU and US were smart they would cooperate with the Taliban to ensure that Afghan farmers could find other alternatives to opium poppies. Less land use for opium is a win for Afghanistan AND the EU & US.
Instead we have sanctions because we are butthurt over the fall of our Warlord regime.
Poul –
The US does provide funds for Afghan farmers to find other alternatives for opium poppies. We’ve done it since August 2021, via the United Nations, the Colombo Plan, and other international organizations. I have no clue about whether the EU does also, but I bet they also do through the UN.
From the US Department of State:
“This funding focuses on alternative livelihoods, drug demand reduction and treatment, and anti-narcotics public information programs. U.S. support for alternative livelihoods includes the development of licit, high-value crop production as an economically viable alternative to poppy cultivation and includes vital efforts to connect farmers and agribusinesses with domestic and international markets for sustainable food crops such as orchard fruits, nuts, and spices. In the first nine months of 2023, the program supported farmers and agribusinesses to secure direct sales valued at over $23.3 million for 4,498 metric tons (MT) of high-value agricultural products to domestic and international markets. The program continues to secure valuable contracts for farmers and agribusinesses, including female farmers and female-owned businesses, to sell their agricultural products at domestic and international agricultural trade fairs.”
BTW – You neglected to respond to the claims by both the UNODC and the INCB that Afghanistan is now producing and exporting tons of methamphetamines.
TTG,
It’s thinking like that, from you, that makes me feel better about myself when I advocate for ruthlessly wiping out Hamas, even if it means collateral damage, including in the form of dead human shields, as well as pulverizing Iran.
Aggressive bullies are more easily managed than corrupt, psycho, religious fanatics. And Iran doesn’t yet have nuclear weapons that, under your coddling policy, they would attain soon and that Russia does have.
Thank you for that TTG, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It has always puzzled me as to why Biden was knee capping Zelenskyy in his righteous fight against Russian state sponsored terrorism.
David the Bot,
Did Estonian declare war on Russia because of a Russian terrorist? What response did they have, demand Ukraine attack Russia? Haven’t we been told for a couple of years that Russia attacks Ukrainian apartments on purpose? What on earth is a brilliant diplomat with almost 3 decades of experience doing renting an apartment. Besides living in a penthouse of the top floor of ‘war ravaged’ Kiev. No a good look that. Unless she’s willingly being bait.
Speaking of Ukraine, what will they be doing with those millions Estonia pledged their government, paying back London banks that are obligated to pay off the Ukrainian bonds they are on the hook for? You know, the ones Ukraine defaulted on earlier this year?
“Unfortunately, the deep state stole this election from Harris. I know, I know, see how absurd that sounds. Trump and his cultists still believe that the deep state stole the election.”
So we’ve gone from there is no deep state and our elections are safe and secure to yes, there is a deep state. And, surprise, the now existing deep state stole the election. From Harris. Wonderful.
I must have missed the magnanimous Harris on election night as she left her supporters out these waiting, waiting, waiting – for hours. Then sent a subordinate to say go home. Then early the next morning turned to noon, afternoon tea-time, dinner time, then, finally, something off the teleprompter that didn’t sound very magnanimous to me.
“Can anyone name one single thing he did that benefited America? ”
Yes, yes we can.
““Unfortunately, the deep state stole this election from Harris. I know, I know, see how absurd that sounds. Trump and his cultists still believe that the deep state stole the election.”
Fred, the bot, I was being facetious. There never was a “Deep State” trying to ruin Trump. The “Deep State” is a fiction created by radical right crackpots.
“Can anyone name one single thing he did that benefited America? ”
Yes, yes we can.
You didn’t name a single one.
I don´t know how that is possible, but your website is the only one I found where completely contrarian positions are amicably discussed in good faith. Congrats to you all! I am German by the way and once upon a time worked as a roving correspondent in Russia.
An addendum to EO and the German position: there´s a huge rift in German society between the mass media, polite society and the “common people”. The further down you get in the Totem pole and the further East the more people don´t buy the official line regarding the Ukraine war. The cleavage more or less overlaps with woke vs. nonwoke; for or against the vaxx; college educated vs. vocational training; engineering vs. humanities a.s.o. I am 57 years old and never in my life seen such dissatisfaction and such politisation in (West) Germany. Merz and his ilk can continue Merkel´s and Scholz´s policies for a while longer but not forever. We are heading for a complete breakdown in trust in government, mass media a.s.o. The cleavage between reality and propaganda is mind boggling. Trump was vilified and Harris made into a goddess. People here were made to believe that Trump didn´t stand a chance. Just like they (for now) still believe that the West will win the war.
A word about Russia: she is in a much more dificult position than people in the West realise. Chinese pressure is great and growing. Witness the end of the pipeline project through Mongolia that was supposed to deliver the West Siberian gas to China that had heretofore gone to Europe. China posed completely impossible conditions. They basically amounted to ceding Mongolia to China. After the talks broke down China restricted banking relations with Russia. Forget all the bromides about “eternal friendship”.
Furthermore Russia has – at least in the big cities – become a consumer society like ours. People need cars, trinkets, smart phones and lot´s of more or less useless stuff like in the West. The Ivan who walked from Moscow to Berlin with a bag of sun flower seed as nourishment is no more. There´s a huge and growing Muslim underclass in the big cities doing all the dirty work just like in Western Europe. Putin had to make concessions to these Muslims that angered Russian nationalists. Chechnya is internally already independent. The personal relationship between Kadyrow and Putin plus huge subsidies hold Chechnya in line. For now. The same holds to a lesser extent for all the Muslims in the Caucasus.
Russia neither has the manpower nor the necessary institutions (the FSB is a Kindergarden compared to Stalins NKVD) to bloodily subdue all of Ukraine. For all these reasons Russia will be quite amenable to any solution that neither entails the occupation of all of Ukraine nor the induction of Ukraine into a western alliance. Basically a Ukrainian Petain would suit the Kremlin just fine. To achieve that the West has to play along and stop supporting Ukraine. Whether that is in the national interest of the US is above my pay grade.
TTG – came in this evening and looked around the press and the sites. Strange sense of everyone looking in the wrong direction.
On Ukraine, all the Western talk is a waste of time. It’s not a question of whether we’re going to back Ukraine. Or of how much we should do so. That’s delusional.
NATO has nowhere near the military clout required for this theatre. Unless NATO goes nuclear – and that it won’t do – the Ukrainian war is lost and has been from the start. Or at least since the failure of the sanctions war, for those who think the sanctions war was ever winnable.
Those who say “If only we’d done more we would not have lost” are merely positioning themselves for the post-war blame game. They will wish to deflect the blame for the defeat from themselves by blaming Biden, or Trump, or Scholz, for not supplying more arms or sending in troops. And the realists who point out that NATO as a whole didn’t have much useful to supply or send in in this theatre will be lost in the noise.
So most of the Ukrainian debate in the West is merely various parties positioning themselves for the PR conflict to follow. My guess, incidentally, is that in England, those who say we lost because our allies didn’t try hard enough will go to their graves believing just that, and most in England with them; ever ignoring the fact that there was no trying could have been done that would have made any difference.
So in England at least we’re witnessing the formation of an enduring national myth. We could have won in Ukraine but the Americans or the Continentals let us down. It’ll be like the national myth that we in Great Britain won World War II that lasted for so long and is still, for some, embedded in our national consciousness.
But unless there’s a sudden unlikely peace there’s nothing any Western politician or general can do except continue to cheer the Ukrainian PBI into the killing fields until the end. Trump, even before inauguration, might be able to avoid more fighting to the last Ukrainian; but nor he nor Biden nor anyone else ever had any intention of risking our fighting alongside them so our shameful betrayal of Ukraine will likely run its course.
No less shameful because it was always inevitable.
And while that fruitless blame game gathers pace the genocide in the Middle East the West supplies the bombs and weapons for proceeds unhindered.
Genocide is such an easy word. It distances us from the reality of bodies crushed beneath the rubble or the reality of the daily torture and killing endured by the Palestinians. Can we expect Trump to throw his weight behind stopping that? We couldn’t expect Biden to. America, and the West with it, is on trial right now amidst the ruins of Gaza. No blame game will evade the verdict there.
Tom…76 ,,,,I am Glad you Wrote..;;It Was Fresh Material…Interesting…Bones to Chew On..(But I Love,,,,( Schnitzels..Jager),,,,,,Meister..Prost..And Your Comments were
Thoughtful…Ring True…and Civilized…
Yes…Lot of Mix ..in the Details…More Spices…Magi…..Flavor…The Muslim
Agenda..Yes..Fastest Growing Religion in Germany…Infiltration..Always..
Prophecys..Eh…Ever Trump Was Manipulated…That Why General Flynn Was
the First to Go…and Trump..Began…In In Afghanistan…Where Hillary Left off
with the Brotherhood….Prophecys..Disguised as Policy Eh…Machs Gut..
Jim
TTG here is something called an original source https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790803/?lang=en
But instead, you give us Neocon articles from Jack Keane’s ISW and Radio Free Europe that tell us what to think and hide original statements. What explanation do you have for this?
Christian J Chuba,
The source you provided has nothing to do with the ISW article or the RFE/RL released treaty proposal between Moscow and Kyiv. RFE/RL provided the Russian language copy of that treaty proposal in its “Current Time” magazine. I linked to that in an earlier comment to Yeah, Right. Here it is again.
https://www.currenttime.tv/a/dogovor-project-systema/33185521.html
The treaty proposal you linked to was well publicized and discussed back in December 2021. It was often referred to as Putin’s ultimatum seeking a return to the status quo of pre-1997.
If I might go off topic, there is an article at foreignpolicy.com that asserts that Russia is providing targeting data to the Houthis:
https://t.co/Q1I8gGLfea
(The direct link hits a paywall but the above link that I got off twitter allowed me to read the article.)
It has seemed to me for some time that the Russians were well motivated to, from their point of view, retaliate against the US “in kind” by helping foes of the US. I found it hard to believe that the Houthis, or even the Houthis+Iran, were suddenly so good at Long Range Precision Strike.
The authors Peter Reddaway and Dimitri Glinski,
on the second page of the preface to
The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms https://g.co/kgs/CfcHzm4 ,
attempt to categorize Russian politicians and political movements:
My reading of that book suggests it is anything but clear that “[after] the Soviet Union collapsed … the same old reds were left running the store.”
Reddaway and Glinski spend hundreds of pages discussing the factions that vied for power after the fall of the Soviet Union, a very interesting account.
As to the document ISW and RFE/RL discuss, let us recall it was merely a draft.
They do not claim it was what was actually presented to the Ukrainians.