If you were Putin, would you have shown up in Istanbul? 'Just' because Ukraine, Europe and cheerleading pundits are trying to goat you to? The likely loser: Ukraine. Again.
President Zelensky has all the understanding he needs to justify telling trump, Putin and Witkoff they can all piss up a rope and go to Hell. None of them has any goal other than to steal everything they can. The U.S. under Trump is salivating to do business with Russia, and this little war is in the way, so they want it over regardless of how unjust the process and results are for Ukraine. President Zelensky is forced to follow whatever diplomatic path is most likely to net the least justification for trump to terminate sanctions, or deny Patriots and F-16 spare parts.
In a way, the washout of bullshit negotiations in Istanbul is not totally a negative. It was never likely to yield a real cease fire, and Ukraine is not limited in any way from pursuing its effective drone / missile deep strikes against Russian oil facilities and military targets. They can still win this war if their allies donβt force them to surrender.
"Crimea is Ukraine"??? It was an ethnic Russian territory that was arbitrarily attached to Ukraine by Kruschev in the 1950s. I give my assessment of what happened in Crimea as part of a longer Twitter thread: https://x.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1921887667802763278
It was majority Tartar before 1945 when it was ethnically cleansed by Stalin in a cultural genocide in the previous year. Anyone with a brain knows that Crimea was not "...arbitrarily attached to Ukraine by Krushchev in the 1950s" (you don't even know the actual date it was 1954). It was made part of Ukraine because it is physically, geographically, connected to Ukraine and all the utilities - water, power and gas was provided by the Ukrainian SSR, NOT the russian SFSR. It was done to increase administrative efficiency between inter republic Soviets. Crimea has been part of Ukraine before russia stole it in 2014 (60 years) almost as long as the USSR existed (69 years). It had nothing to do with anything "arbitrary" (i.e. Krushchev was "drunk" or it was a "gift" etc), the typical trope peddled by pro-russian clowns and clueless useful idiots.
But, you just contradicted yourself, you said and I quote "...arbitrarily ....attached to Ukraine...", But now it's not "arbitrary" ? Try harder clown. You are full of shit. It had nothing to do with increasing "russian speakers" in Ukraine, you just made that up. The USSR was always undergoing gradual russification and was just one monolithic "russian" Soviet state in regards to "russian" I.e. you could only get jobs in the government at any level of the Soviets from Supreme to Local, if you spoke "russian". It was the language of empire much like English (are you an Englander just because you speak "English" ? Nope). But you lack this understanding of "russian speakers" as with "English speakers". The number of "russian speakers" in Ukraine was never more than about 30%. Also "russian speaking" does not mean "is russian". The Crimean Tartars speak russian but wanted to be part of Ukraine NOT russia. Your absurd logic demonstrates what a monumental lack of understanding you have about us here. My wife and I spoke Russian in Donbas but never wanted russia. Your infatile over simplifications about "russian speakers" is very telling. Just go away, you are a complete and utter clueless moron, a Kremlinite troll and general pest and a complete and utter waste of time and space.
I have to agree with Grumpy that Trump has no carrot or stick with which to bend Putin's will toward a cease-fire. Right now, an unconditional cease-fire benefits Ukraine at Russia's expense. The two countries are locked in a war of attrition, where territorial gains aren't the primary goal: It's a question of whose army will be exhausted sooner, and the Russians have a big advantage.
However, I am reminded of how Germany snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at the end of World War I, after the Germans knocked Russia out of the war (giving birth to a fleeting independent Ukraine). Suddenly, Germany had a lot of military assets to transfer to the western front. However, the German war machine ground to a halt (literally) because they ran out of oil, and they had to sue for an armistice that led to humiliating peace conditions.
Just a note of pedantry on my part, but did you know that Schmekl is Yiddish for little putz (shmuck)? Is it also the case that you are not serious? Trolling these sympatiques ukrainians?
Replying to Alexander Martin, you might not have gotten that quite right. I am well aware that my family name is easily mocked. In another Jewish connection, my initials (J.S.S.) spell out the anglicized name of an ancient Hebrew prophet (Yeshua). However, my Y-DNA is clearly Norse, although the origin of my family name (long before European Jews had family names) is Swiss. I posted the detailed ancestry of my innigrant ancestor Gottlieb Schmeeckle here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schm%C3%BCckle-36
The backing into the corner was never about the idea that Putin would come. Everybody knew he wouldn't. The idea was that the _rhetorical_ structure of Putin's counterargument against the ceasefire was called out and thus his predictable non-coming would destroy his argument about how he's supposedly looking for peace.
I am IDP with my Ukrainian wife in a part of West Ukraine that hardly ever see's any strikes, but this morning we got bombed in two separate strikes. So instead of turning up in Istanbul, which of course he never would, he instructed his war criminals to bomb us even more than usual in places they don't usually bomb that much. This is very revealing of what a dangerously, sick and twisted, depraved, degenerate Czar putin is.
Putin is offering peace, but not "looking for it". Peace will be on Russia's terms, end of story, or, as they said, "we are prepared to fight forever". In international relations, there is a concept of the Balance of Resolve, and in this case, the balance lays with Russia. USA and Europe ultimately care less about Ukraine than Russia does.
Last I checked, GDP had slowed, but still growing. Far more important is the low debt to GDP ratio. At any rate, DPRK has promised to provide whatever is needed in terms of munitions and manpower.
Last I checked, its growth is fueled by funneling previously-civilian resources into military, and there's a limited supply of those. As for North Korea... don't make me laugh.
You can laugh all you like, but 200,000 DPRK troops coming at Kiev from Belarus would be unstoppable, and you know it. Putin was clear, take the deal, or FAFO.
The Russian economy largely runs on oil, in the long term, and the demand isn't going anywhere. Russia can borrow indefinitely from China, if need be. You seem to lack an appreciation for the statements made by Xi and Kim, and what depth of support is on offer. Ukraine has all of NATO at it's back, and it's still losing ground every day, and soon Russia will pass the last of the Eastern defences of 2014..what then? Have you read the reports in Ukrainian media about the corruption regarding defences? Billions of hrvyna missing?
The Pentagon states that the RF is growing by 30k troops per month due to Russia's generous sign up bonuses, and that they are standing up RESERVE armies, not desperately rushing men to the front by kidnapping them in white vans..
Corruption is much worse on Russian side, as in "not even bother _trying_" in many cases, as the Kursk counterincursion showed. As for 200K offensive from Belarus by North Korea... again, don't make me laugh, this ain't happening. Putin is self-confident because 1)he, famously, only reads the reports brought to him, which are rosy because no one wants to be the messenger of bad news; 2)he did get a huge diplomatic victory by Trump election, which neutered much of US support.
If you want my irresponsible-because-amateurish military analysis (why?!), Russia has no chance of crossing Dnieper, which is the natural limit of their offense on South (they had only managed it at Kherson in the first days of war, before artillery was in place), and virtually no chance of a successful invasion from the northern border without losing hard-won ground in the east. They failed to take Kiev _by surprise_ in 2022, their taking it now, when the attack is expected...
...So, straight into repeating Russian talking points, which are generally either (mostly) false outright or (more rarely) gross exaggerations. Not surprised but still disgusted.
I suggest you all look to the brilliant "Events In Ukraine" Substack for a breakdown of neo-nazi organizations linked in Ukraine and Russia under the observance of the SBU. It's a literal "who's who" of Ukronazi culture and ambition.
Funny, if you weren't such a halfwit (wait, do the two of you add up to a full wit?) you'd have noted that the relevant links and info all.comes from Ukrainian media sources. But, nevermind, you go on with your bad little selves and read your comics ;)
So you block me again, immediately after unloading a shovel-load of insults, as if you were practicing to be a fascist bully boy. You give a fake history lesson, ignoring the fact that Novorossiya, roughly half of present-day Ukraine (west and south, including the land that Russia has seized) was a Russian (not Ukrainian) territory, depopulated by Crimean Tatar SLAVe raiders, and opened for settlement by Catherine the Great, who repopulatef "New Russia" (Novorossiya) with farmers from wherever who got a seven-year tax break.
Maybe in high school, instead of going to history class, you were out back smoking cigarettes.
One, there are many obvious pathways for a rogue actor to inject propaganda in sources located in any country. The fact that some Russian claims were non-critically repeated in the West doesn't make them any less of a propaganda.
Two, even more crucially, there is a lot of cherry-picking at work, where isolated incidents are drawn into a larger picture while obvious counterexamples are deliberately ignored.
It sounds like you're speaking from experience, retailing dishonest Ukrainian talking points without any specific discussion of my western sources. Here's a key quote from that article I linked on that Twitter thread, with a link to the original article:
"These stories of Ukraineβs dark nationalism arenβt coming out of Moscow; theyβre being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
"as far-right gangs operate with impunity." - What far right gangs ? I have been here 11 years and yet to see these mythical far-right gangs anywhere. Take a look at Germany where 1/5 of the population voted for the Nazi AFD. Far-right here have NEVER gotten more than 3%. You're like a clueless septic tank, no clue and full of s**t.
I'm not particularly interested in engaging with such "sources" point-by-point (as this would be legitimizing spurious worries), I'll just note as an example that much of it concerns Azov, which had undergone a serious anti-Nazi purge between its founding and being accepted in the National Guard, on which the so-called "source" is suspiciously silent.
I have seen it. I do not believe it to hold, but, as you can guess from my not engaging with it at its original posting despite having seen it, I do not particularly want to have that conversation, either.
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must be furious. Ukrainians must feel humiliated. By Putin. And by their western partners."
It is such a bizarre thing to say. No, our President is not furious. If anything he looks much more collected and confident than when he was meeting Pr. Trump. No, we are not humiliated by Putin or our Western partners because they, except, the USA, stood by us once more and are preparing to issue new sanctions. Surely, it would be magnificent to have sanctions implemented last Friday but such is the way of politics. Thank you for your support of Ukraine. Much appreciated.
Zelenskyy didn't even attend, he flew to the wrong city and spoke from Ankara, not Istanbul. It was farcical. Secondly, Zelenskyy passed a law precluding ANY negotiations with Putin, personally,,so more bullshit to complain that Putin didn't aattend.Thirdly, Zelenskyy has gone way past his limit of two terms in office and now rules by martial law..any agreement with his name on it is a worthless piece of paper, as demonstrated at Minsk.
*****This week, the EU will finalize yet another sanctions package against Russia. It will be package number 17. I think that says all about the impact of our sanctions so far - that we are on package number 17.*****
.
I do not know what impact this 17th round of EU sanctions will have. Neither do I know what impact a more stringent set of EU sanctions might have. Likewise, I do not know what impact additional U.S. sanctions might have.
Note with regard to prospective U.S. sanctions both (1) that the president of the United States spoke yesterday of the possibility of applying secondary sanctions and (2) that secondary sanctions are listed as a component of "Trumpβs Russia Sanctions Toolkit" in a memo that the Foundation for Defense of Democracies published yesterday. Below is a link to that memo and beneath it I have pasted the concluding passage.
I am no expert, but some who are appear to believe that effective tools are available to the West, should it muster the will to deploy them.
The Trump administration has a unique opportunity to maximize American leverage and leave Putin with a stark choice: agree to a ceasefire and negotiate on acceptable terms or face intensified economic pressure. By cutting off Russiaβs energy revenues, exposing and punishing third-country sanctions evasion, expanding the scope of designations to strategic state entities, and moving toward comprehensive financial isolation, the United States can intensify the economic toll on Moscow while limiting the resources available for continued aggression.
By applying pressure systematically and signaling a credible pathway for relief, the United States can raise the cost of delay and force Moscow to weigh its options. The choice will be Putinβs β but the longer he resists a negotiated settlement, the worse his alternatives will become.*****
I read not long ago the explanation that the Biden administration declined to take more aggressive actions β both in terms of military support for Ukraine and with regard to sanctions β on account of Russia having rattled its nuclear saber. Well short of armageddon, the possibility that Russia would deploy from its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons surely was and is a legitimate concern. Who really can assess that risk with perfect confidence?
And so we have muddled and will continue to muddle on, apparently.
I agree that the USA has a lot of very effective tools that could force/make Russia (to) lose the war completely. However, I'm afraid that Trump won't use them.
That's BS, and they know it perfectly well. There were already so many "nuclear red lines" by Putin from giving Patriot or western MBTs to Ukraine to attacking officially Russian land, but none of them triggered a nuclear strike so far - and with good reason.
Everyone, including Putin knows that when the first nuke launches, there will be a counterattack, and no one wins a nuclear war. Therefore that is an option reserved for when the miniscule chance of surviving the nuclear war is larger than the chance of the survival of the country without its use - and even that is questionable if it's worth it.
So if Putin showed reason at least in this one subject (at least in practice, even if not in speech), I think we are safe to assume that he wouldn't try to start a nuclear war against the USA even if they were to decide to for example bomb the Russian army back to Russia from Ukraine.
1. There was no reason for Putin to show up willy-nilly for a summit. Summits generally happen after lower-ranking officials have hammered out common ground so the leaders can close the deal. Zelensky knows this, which means his sudden offer to meet Putin was not serious, and everybody in diplomatic circles knows this.
2. Zelensky's insincere summit offer (everybody knows that he is forbidden by law from negotiating with Putin) was designed to take the wind out of the sails of Russia's offer to re-start the 2022 peace negotiations that were derailed by Boris Johnson.
3. Pro-Ukrainian partisans may be reluctant to remind their readers about important background details.
4. It would appear that Zelensky is motivated by the dictatorial urge to stay in power at all costs. This means prolonging the war, which means perpetually delaying elections, which means that Ukraine's de facto one-party police state continues to make a mockery of those who bleat about fweedom and democwacy.
Your "alternative assessments" are a complete and utter farce. They remind me of Trump spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conways "Alternative facts",regarding Sean Spicers lies at a White House presser. It was Czar putin, the indicted war criminal, who put out the offer for talks in Istanbul live on russian state tv. There was no "willy nilly" as you childishly put it.
Point 4 is complete and utter nonsense, there is a saying here in Ukraine that clowns like you are not ware of - If russia stops fighting, there will be no war, if Ukraine stops fighting there will be no Ukraine.
President Zelensky has all the understanding he needs to justify telling trump, Putin and Witkoff they can all piss up a rope and go to Hell. None of them has any goal other than to steal everything they can. The U.S. under Trump is salivating to do business with Russia, and this little war is in the way, so they want it over regardless of how unjust the process and results are for Ukraine. President Zelensky is forced to follow whatever diplomatic path is most likely to net the least justification for trump to terminate sanctions, or deny Patriots and F-16 spare parts.
In a way, the washout of bullshit negotiations in Istanbul is not totally a negative. It was never likely to yield a real cease fire, and Ukraine is not limited in any way from pursuing its effective drone / missile deep strikes against Russian oil facilities and military targets. They can still win this war if their allies donβt force them to surrender.
Crimea is Ukraine !!
"Crimea is Ukraine"??? It was an ethnic Russian territory that was arbitrarily attached to Ukraine by Kruschev in the 1950s. I give my assessment of what happened in Crimea as part of a longer Twitter thread: https://x.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1921887667802763278
It was majority Tartar before 1945 when it was ethnically cleansed by Stalin in a cultural genocide in the previous year. Anyone with a brain knows that Crimea was not "...arbitrarily attached to Ukraine by Krushchev in the 1950s" (you don't even know the actual date it was 1954). It was made part of Ukraine because it is physically, geographically, connected to Ukraine and all the utilities - water, power and gas was provided by the Ukrainian SSR, NOT the russian SFSR. It was done to increase administrative efficiency between inter republic Soviets. Crimea has been part of Ukraine before russia stole it in 2014 (60 years) almost as long as the USSR existed (69 years). It had nothing to do with anything "arbitrary" (i.e. Krushchev was "drunk" or it was a "gift" etc), the typical trope peddled by pro-russian clowns and clueless useful idiots.
No, not arbitrary, but calculated to bring the number of Russian speakers in Ukraine over 50%.
But, you just contradicted yourself, you said and I quote "...arbitrarily ....attached to Ukraine...", But now it's not "arbitrary" ? Try harder clown. You are full of shit. It had nothing to do with increasing "russian speakers" in Ukraine, you just made that up. The USSR was always undergoing gradual russification and was just one monolithic "russian" Soviet state in regards to "russian" I.e. you could only get jobs in the government at any level of the Soviets from Supreme to Local, if you spoke "russian". It was the language of empire much like English (are you an Englander just because you speak "English" ? Nope). But you lack this understanding of "russian speakers" as with "English speakers". The number of "russian speakers" in Ukraine was never more than about 30%. Also "russian speaking" does not mean "is russian". The Crimean Tartars speak russian but wanted to be part of Ukraine NOT russia. Your absurd logic demonstrates what a monumental lack of understanding you have about us here. My wife and I spoke Russian in Donbas but never wanted russia. Your infatile over simplifications about "russian speakers" is very telling. Just go away, you are a complete and utter clueless moron, a Kremlinite troll and general pest and a complete and utter waste of time and space.
Michael, I think your assessment is accurate and correct.
I have to agree with Grumpy that Trump has no carrot or stick with which to bend Putin's will toward a cease-fire. Right now, an unconditional cease-fire benefits Ukraine at Russia's expense. The two countries are locked in a war of attrition, where territorial gains aren't the primary goal: It's a question of whose army will be exhausted sooner, and the Russians have a big advantage.
However, I am reminded of how Germany snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at the end of World War I, after the Germans knocked Russia out of the war (giving birth to a fleeting independent Ukraine). Suddenly, Germany had a lot of military assets to transfer to the western front. However, the German war machine ground to a halt (literally) because they ran out of oil, and they had to sue for an armistice that led to humiliating peace conditions.
Just a note of pedantry on my part, but did you know that Schmekl is Yiddish for little putz (shmuck)? Is it also the case that you are not serious? Trolling these sympatiques ukrainians?
Replying to Alexander Martin, you might not have gotten that quite right. I am well aware that my family name is easily mocked. In another Jewish connection, my initials (J.S.S.) spell out the anglicized name of an ancient Hebrew prophet (Yeshua). However, my Y-DNA is clearly Norse, although the origin of my family name (long before European Jews had family names) is Swiss. I posted the detailed ancestry of my innigrant ancestor Gottlieb Schmeeckle here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schm%C3%BCckle-36
The backing into the corner was never about the idea that Putin would come. Everybody knew he wouldn't. The idea was that the _rhetorical_ structure of Putin's counterargument against the ceasefire was called out and thus his predictable non-coming would destroy his argument about how he's supposedly looking for peace.
I am IDP with my Ukrainian wife in a part of West Ukraine that hardly ever see's any strikes, but this morning we got bombed in two separate strikes. So instead of turning up in Istanbul, which of course he never would, he instructed his war criminals to bomb us even more than usual in places they don't usually bomb that much. This is very revealing of what a dangerously, sick and twisted, depraved, degenerate Czar putin is.
Putin is offering peace, but not "looking for it". Peace will be on Russia's terms, end of story, or, as they said, "we are prepared to fight forever". In international relations, there is a concept of the Balance of Resolve, and in this case, the balance lays with Russia. USA and Europe ultimately care less about Ukraine than Russia does.
The question is whether Russian economy croaks before that
Last I checked, GDP had slowed, but still growing. Far more important is the low debt to GDP ratio. At any rate, DPRK has promised to provide whatever is needed in terms of munitions and manpower.
Last I checked, its growth is fueled by funneling previously-civilian resources into military, and there's a limited supply of those. As for North Korea... don't make me laugh.
You can laugh all you like, but 200,000 DPRK troops coming at Kiev from Belarus would be unstoppable, and you know it. Putin was clear, take the deal, or FAFO.
The Russian economy largely runs on oil, in the long term, and the demand isn't going anywhere. Russia can borrow indefinitely from China, if need be. You seem to lack an appreciation for the statements made by Xi and Kim, and what depth of support is on offer. Ukraine has all of NATO at it's back, and it's still losing ground every day, and soon Russia will pass the last of the Eastern defences of 2014..what then? Have you read the reports in Ukrainian media about the corruption regarding defences? Billions of hrvyna missing?
The Pentagon states that the RF is growing by 30k troops per month due to Russia's generous sign up bonuses, and that they are standing up RESERVE armies, not desperately rushing men to the front by kidnapping them in white vans..
Corruption is much worse on Russian side, as in "not even bother _trying_" in many cases, as the Kursk counterincursion showed. As for 200K offensive from Belarus by North Korea... again, don't make me laugh, this ain't happening. Putin is self-confident because 1)he, famously, only reads the reports brought to him, which are rosy because no one wants to be the messenger of bad news; 2)he did get a huge diplomatic victory by Trump election, which neutered much of US support.
If you want my irresponsible-because-amateurish military analysis (why?!), Russia has no chance of crossing Dnieper, which is the natural limit of their offense on South (they had only managed it at Kherson in the first days of war, before artillery was in place), and virtually no chance of a successful invasion from the northern border without losing hard-won ground in the east. They failed to take Kiev _by surprise_ in 2022, their taking it now, when the attack is expected...
And I gave an extended rebuttal of Pope Leo's unfortunate remarks on Ukraine on this Twitter thread:
https://x.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1921875382887743983
...So, straight into repeating Russian talking points, which are generally either (mostly) false outright or (more rarely) gross exaggerations. Not surprised but still disgusted.
I suggest you all look to the brilliant "Events In Ukraine" Substack for a breakdown of neo-nazi organizations linked in Ukraine and Russia under the observance of the SBU. It's a literal "who's who" of Ukronazi culture and ambition.
I suggest that you maybe forego watching Russian propaganda just for, say, 24 hoursβ¦.?
Funny, if you weren't such a halfwit (wait, do the two of you add up to a full wit?) you'd have noted that the relevant links and info all.comes from Ukrainian media sources. But, nevermind, you go on with your bad little selves and read your comics ;)
Replying to Ivan Vucko:
So you block me again, immediately after unloading a shovel-load of insults, as if you were practicing to be a fascist bully boy. You give a fake history lesson, ignoring the fact that Novorossiya, roughly half of present-day Ukraine (west and south, including the land that Russia has seized) was a Russian (not Ukrainian) territory, depopulated by Crimean Tatar SLAVe raiders, and opened for settlement by Catherine the Great, who repopulatef "New Russia" (Novorossiya) with farmers from wherever who got a seven-year tax break.
Maybe in high school, instead of going to history class, you were out back smoking cigarettes.
Your neo-McCarthyist smear ignores my western, non-Russian sources.
One, there are many obvious pathways for a rogue actor to inject propaganda in sources located in any country. The fact that some Russian claims were non-critically repeated in the West doesn't make them any less of a propaganda.
Two, even more crucially, there is a lot of cherry-picking at work, where isolated incidents are drawn into a larger picture while obvious counterexamples are deliberately ignored.
It sounds like you're speaking from experience, retailing dishonest Ukrainian talking points without any specific discussion of my western sources. Here's a key quote from that article I linked on that Twitter thread, with a link to the original article:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
"These stories of Ukraineβs dark nationalism arenβt coming out of Moscow; theyβre being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
"as far-right gangs operate with impunity." - What far right gangs ? I have been here 11 years and yet to see these mythical far-right gangs anywhere. Take a look at Germany where 1/5 of the population voted for the Nazi AFD. Far-right here have NEVER gotten more than 3%. You're like a clueless septic tank, no clue and full of s**t.
I'm not particularly interested in engaging with such "sources" point-by-point (as this would be legitimizing spurious worries), I'll just note as an example that much of it concerns Azov, which had undergone a serious anti-Nazi purge between its founding and being accepted in the National Guard, on which the so-called "source" is suspiciously silent.
@Dmitrii Zelenskii,
I presented an alternative assessment here: https://twogrumpyoldmenonukraine.substack.com/p/rant-putin-was-never-going-to-come/comment/117316468?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1epo4c
I have seen it. I do not believe it to hold, but, as you can guess from my not engaging with it at its original posting despite having seen it, I do not particularly want to have that conversation, either.
I think the point was to make Putin decline in front of everyone, right?
The stick is supporting Chinaβs ambitions towards the Russian territories in far east
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must be furious. Ukrainians must feel humiliated. By Putin. And by their western partners."
It is such a bizarre thing to say. No, our President is not furious. If anything he looks much more collected and confident than when he was meeting Pr. Trump. No, we are not humiliated by Putin or our Western partners because they, except, the USA, stood by us once more and are preparing to issue new sanctions. Surely, it would be magnificent to have sanctions implemented last Friday but such is the way of politics. Thank you for your support of Ukraine. Much appreciated.
https://open.substack.com/pub/azovlobby/p/the-experts-lied-to-us?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1pungh
https://open.substack.com/pub/azovlobby/p/the-experts-lied-to-us?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1pungh
Zelenskyy didn't even attend, he flew to the wrong city and spoke from Ankara, not Istanbul. It was farcical. Secondly, Zelenskyy passed a law precluding ANY negotiations with Putin, personally,,so more bullshit to complain that Putin didn't aattend.Thirdly, Zelenskyy has gone way past his limit of two terms in office and now rules by martial law..any agreement with his name on it is a worthless piece of paper, as demonstrated at Minsk.
Michael Andersen wrote:
*****This week, the EU will finalize yet another sanctions package against Russia. It will be package number 17. I think that says all about the impact of our sanctions so far - that we are on package number 17.*****
.
I do not know what impact this 17th round of EU sanctions will have. Neither do I know what impact a more stringent set of EU sanctions might have. Likewise, I do not know what impact additional U.S. sanctions might have.
Note with regard to prospective U.S. sanctions both (1) that the president of the United States spoke yesterday of the possibility of applying secondary sanctions and (2) that secondary sanctions are listed as a component of "Trumpβs Russia Sanctions Toolkit" in a memo that the Foundation for Defense of Democracies published yesterday. Below is a link to that memo and beneath it I have pasted the concluding passage.
I am no expert, but some who are appear to believe that effective tools are available to the West, should it muster the will to deploy them.
.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/05/14/trumps-russia-sanctions-toolkit/
*****Conclusion
The Trump administration has a unique opportunity to maximize American leverage and leave Putin with a stark choice: agree to a ceasefire and negotiate on acceptable terms or face intensified economic pressure. By cutting off Russiaβs energy revenues, exposing and punishing third-country sanctions evasion, expanding the scope of designations to strategic state entities, and moving toward comprehensive financial isolation, the United States can intensify the economic toll on Moscow while limiting the resources available for continued aggression.
By applying pressure systematically and signaling a credible pathway for relief, the United States can raise the cost of delay and force Moscow to weigh its options. The choice will be Putinβs β but the longer he resists a negotiated settlement, the worse his alternatives will become.*****
Eric, there is zero doubt that, as you put it, the West has "a tool kit" of potential sanctions.... potentially even an efficient one.
That's not the question.
The question is why they are not working - more than three years down the line?
Political will.....
Indeed.
I read not long ago the explanation that the Biden administration declined to take more aggressive actions β both in terms of military support for Ukraine and with regard to sanctions β on account of Russia having rattled its nuclear saber. Well short of armageddon, the possibility that Russia would deploy from its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons surely was and is a legitimate concern. Who really can assess that risk with perfect confidence?
And so we have muddled and will continue to muddle on, apparently.
I agree that the USA has a lot of very effective tools that could force/make Russia (to) lose the war completely. However, I'm afraid that Trump won't use them.
Agree.
Trump won't use them because they could precipitate a nuclear confrontation.
That's BS, and they know it perfectly well. There were already so many "nuclear red lines" by Putin from giving Patriot or western MBTs to Ukraine to attacking officially Russian land, but none of them triggered a nuclear strike so far - and with good reason.
Everyone, including Putin knows that when the first nuke launches, there will be a counterattack, and no one wins a nuclear war. Therefore that is an option reserved for when the miniscule chance of surviving the nuclear war is larger than the chance of the survival of the country without its use - and even that is questionable if it's worth it.
So if Putin showed reason at least in this one subject (at least in practice, even if not in speech), I think we are safe to assume that he wouldn't try to start a nuclear war against the USA even if they were to decide to for example bomb the Russian army back to Russia from Ukraine.
"I don't subscribe to that point of view. I hope the Russians love their children too."
https://youtu.be/wHylQRVN2Qs?si=wLo49JnXMD9jRklw
An alternative assessment:
1. There was no reason for Putin to show up willy-nilly for a summit. Summits generally happen after lower-ranking officials have hammered out common ground so the leaders can close the deal. Zelensky knows this, which means his sudden offer to meet Putin was not serious, and everybody in diplomatic circles knows this.
2. Zelensky's insincere summit offer (everybody knows that he is forbidden by law from negotiating with Putin) was designed to take the wind out of the sails of Russia's offer to re-start the 2022 peace negotiations that were derailed by Boris Johnson.
3. Pro-Ukrainian partisans may be reluctant to remind their readers about important background details.
4. It would appear that Zelensky is motivated by the dictatorial urge to stay in power at all costs. This means prolonging the war, which means perpetually delaying elections, which means that Ukraine's de facto one-party police state continues to make a mockery of those who bleat about fweedom and democwacy.
Your "alternative assessments" are a complete and utter farce. They remind me of Trump spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conways "Alternative facts",regarding Sean Spicers lies at a White House presser. It was Czar putin, the indicted war criminal, who put out the offer for talks in Istanbul live on russian state tv. There was no "willy nilly" as you childishly put it.
Point 4 is complete and utter nonsense, there is a saying here in Ukraine that clowns like you are not ware of - If russia stops fighting, there will be no war, if Ukraine stops fighting there will be no Ukraine.
You are a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a moron who thinks he knows better than people actually on the ground. Pathetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DunningβKruger_effect