“According to NZZ citing sources in the German government, in January CIA Director Burns went to both Kiev and Moscow with a mission to seek out a peace deal.
The offer to Kiev was: peace for land, the offer to Moscow: land for peace. The “land” is said to have been about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory; That’s about the size of Donbass. Both sides, the two politicians report, refused. The Ukrainians, because they are not willing to cede their territory, the Russians, because they expect to win the war in the long run anyway.
According to the two German foreign politicians, Biden wanted to avoid a protracted war in Ukraine and was willing to sacrifice parts of the country. If this presentation is true, Biden would not be alone in his attitude in Washington. A new study by the Rand Corporation (”Avoiding a long war”), a renowned American think tank, concludes that “avoiding a long war is a higher priority for the United States” than allowing Ukraine to “control its entire territory.”
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Incredible, if true. Precisely what Putin announced in his speech would be accomplished.
This means Putin liberates and takes Donbass, keeps Crimea, routed the Azov Nazi attachment, exposed the biolabs (more to come on that), removed the UKR nuclear neighborhood threat, and we shall see how NATO enjoys tramping around the formerly scenic territories of UKR, now burnt crispy, just to poke the Bear.
Victoria Nuland is insane. Will she allow peace to an intact Russia? I think not. Someone has to put a sock in her trap, first.
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MarQ
I doubt the veracity of this report. With all the talk of this conflict evolving into WWIII, a nuclear war, it appears the Bitem crowd wishes to be cast as peace makers.
All prior reports have pictured the Bitem crowd as blocking any 'land for peace' deal.
Russia has demanded access to Crimea since at least the Prussian era. Russia is land locked, ironically, in relation to Europe and needs both the Baltic access to the North Sea and the Crimean access to the Black Sea. Even with the latter ports, Russian ships must depend on Turkey to allow passage through the Bosporus Strait into the Mediterranean.
The only road to peace is likely some shared arrangement between Russia and Ukraine of the Black Sea shoreline of Ukraine. Such a deal has reportedly been proposed a time or two and Washington has reportedly vetoed it.
By all appearances Washington is willing to push Russia - and Putin - to the brink of a much wider war. Apocalyptic talk of 'Putin must go' just adds fuel to the fires of war.
Let's face it; the only 'gravitas' that Ukraine's Zelensky has is the force of Washington and its NATO companions. So how does this pointless war (mass murder) continue?