Posted on 11/29/2025 7:34:44 AM PST by Navy Patriot
The United States is reportedly prepared to recognize Russia's control over Crimea and other Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russian forces as part of a proposed peace deal to end the nearly four-year war.
The move would mark a major shift in longstanding U.S. policy and break with Washington's refusal since 2014 to legitimize Russia's territorial claims, The Telegraph reported Friday.
The report says President Donald Trump has dispatched peace envoy Steve Witkoff and adviser Jared Kushner to Moscow to present the offer directly to Vladimir Putin. Moscow confirmed Friday it had received a revised U.S. strategy after emergency talks with Ukrainian and American officials in Geneva last weekend.
While a 28-point plan drafted earlier by Witkoff included "de facto" U.S. recognition of Crimea and the Donbas regions, sources told The Telegraph that American offers of recognition remain part of the latest 19-point proposal.
Putin has publicly signaled that U.S. legal recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk as Russian territory is a key condition for any agreement.
Kyiv, however, continues to reject territorial concessions outright, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff Andriy Yermak reiterating that "not a single sane person" would sign away Ukrainian land and that the constitution prohibits ceding territory without a national referendum.
European allies have raised alarm over the reported American offer, stressing after a meeting this week that "borders must not be changed by force."
A European counter-proposal makes no mention of recognizing Russian control and insists territorial issues be resolved only after a full ceasefire.
The latest negotiations leave several core disputes unresolved, including the status of Russian-held regions in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
There is not usually a lot of merit to predicting a future attack by Russia of Europe. History is not very informative in a general sense. Perhaps particularly concerning Europe’s invasion of Russia as they sent 100K+ armies to join with the Germans invading and leading up to their nearly total 100% casualties at Stalingrad.
Here is the wiki for Stalingrad and a layout of European troops that invaded Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad
Romania casualties from loss 200K, Italy 130K, Hungary 143K, and that is just at Stalingrad. More invaded and died to the north. This is the history of European invasion of Russia in the most recent war of significance.
AND IT MEANS NOTHING.
History usually does mean nothing.
What matters now is the only thing that matters. Oil. Europe has none. Norway’s / UK’s North Sea is dying. Spain, nothing. France, nothing. Italy, nothing.
Oil is going to get scarce. It is inevitable. What did Europe plan to do for the only thing that matters? Why would Russia want to occupy a place that has none of the only thing that matters?
Here are the countries of the world seeing, right now, declines in oil output. When you go empty, it tends to be gradual. Frantic drilling goes on trying to find pockets between previous wells. They can’t stem the down escalator.
Mexico, down 6% last year. Peaked 2004
Norway down 9% last year. Peaked 2001
UK down 8% last year. Peaked 1999
Kazhkstan down 2% last year. Peaked 2010
Azerbaijan down 3% last year. Peaked 2009
I will exclude OPEC+ countries that reduced output for reasons other than geology (But Russia and Saudi Arabia were both down last year about 3%).
Algeria -6% peak 2007
there are others of lower totals
The overall world increased oil output 0.5% last year, with Guyana’s initial flow, plus a few hundred K bpd in the US and China with a 1% uptick serving to offset the above declines, but the US is predicted by the Permian guys to end its rise next year (with the Permian the bulk of US production).
Consumption continues to rise. All those people in Africa (the fast growing population area) want to use gasoline. Total world consumption rose 0.7%.
That is the meaning of scarcity. Europe will feel it first. Why would Russia want to ease their pain? No matter how much they are begged, why would they want to? When oil’s scarcity renders things like money somewhat pointless, what can Europe offer?
And often by force of steel and gunpowder.
That comment is beyond stupid.
It's NATO that has been expanding toward Russia's for decades. We fomented an illegal coup in Ukraine that threated Russia's naval base in Crimea and setoff a civil war in Ukraine.
It's our actions under Biden and Obama that resemble Soviet Union.
Long-term I am more worried about the Turks than the Russians.
For an invasion of Europe to succeed, you need a lot of help from fifth-columnists. Russia simply cannot get that.
Now, all of those Muslims now living in Europe, would fight to establish a Caliphate in Europe and complete the dream of the Ottomans.
Wars can end expeditiously when parties are not getting paid to continue them.
DJTrump does not even collect a Pres salary. Bribe offers from Zylynskyy and other scum mean nothing to him.
Europe has no oil. It is attractive to Muslim refugees because
1) It’s close and the doors are open
2) They have Muslim communities there to join
3) They have a good chance at population growth/dominance
As oil gets scarce, these 3 factors will lose all value, along with everything else other than food.
No, they aren’t. They hired Mark Halperin one of the biggest lefty loon reporters there is.
Stalin and the Red Army pretty much pissed away any Russian *rights* by committing mass murder of millions of people there.
The fact that Putin turned down Zelensky’s offer of neutrality and no NATO in return for Russian withdrawal shows that everything that you said is false.
It isn’t bizarre; that is the founding principle of the UN Charter as pitched by the Allies after World War 2.
Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
The United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China were among the first to sign. Two Soviet republics - the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR, also signed the UN Charter in 1945.
The UN is pretty toothless, because at least one of Russia/China/USA will veto any censure of their own behaviour of the behaviour of their allies. But there’s one thing that’d kill off any pretence of there being an internationally agreed framework for peace - if the original signatories start actively violating this principle in each others’ direction AND endorsing other signatories doing it.
Iraq and Kuwait aren’t in that bucket. Nor are North/South Korea. Nor was Serbia/Kosovo. The rules were broken but they didn’t fundamentally undermine the purpose of having a UN Security Council.
North Korea’s attack on South Korea in 1950, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990-1991, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which turned out to be down to George Bush having “unfinished business” rather than it being linked to 9/11), all violated that clause of the agreement.
Here’s the problem. Putin has serially attacked a founding signatory (Ukraine) to the UN Charter clause despite everybody knowing Ukraine had no beef with Russia. He’s been doing it for far longer than the vatniks admit - Russia’s attempted assassination of Yuschenko was years before Maidan and Putin was blackmailing the Ukrainian government and president for over a year before Euro Maidan.
On top of that, Putin has spent over 20 years orchestrating cyber attacks on two other founding signatories (UK and USA) to the point where you can barely point at a hospital, police station or government department in either country that hasn’t experienced significant damage.
Belarus has become a client state of Russia after Putin bailed out Lukashenko - after his people voted him out of office.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also violates multiple other signed memorandums of understanding, border treaties, and even Putin’s multiple assurances on the record that Russia had no claim to Crimea or the Donbas.
The big risk with where Trump is headed is, he isn’t just at risk of normalising past violations of this clause of the UN Charter - actively rewarding Russia for breaking it so egregiously puts Russia and the USA both in the camp of telling over 100 countries around the world that no peace treaty, no memorandum of understanding, and no ground rules for multinational conduct with the “great powers” is ever going to be worth the ink.
What’s the point of Ukraine joining EU-NATO if the USA is walking away from EU-NATO?
Putin’s biggest win so far appears to be Trump openly declaring, in effect, that if USA invokes Article 50 then it’s expected that the other NATO members and partners (which included Ukraine) should assist - but if THEY invoke it, the USA will probably not get involved.
At which point EU-NATO might as well ask, what is the point of the USA being in NATO.
Putin won't agree at this point because he wants far more than the international recognition of Crimea.
If we’re willing to participate in and then recognize the FORCEFUL DISMEMBERMENT of Yugoslavia and then Serbia, then it only makes sense that we do the same for Ukraine.
Either borders mean something, or they don’t, and Yugoslavia/Serbia proved that borders don’t mean anything, at least to Western countries.
“End the war and then Putin will invade another country”
Hopefully Latvia, since they’re virtually DARING Russian to invade.
“Crimea and other Ukrainian territories “
“There’s certainly evidence that this neocon cabal worked hard at driving a wedge between Ukraine and Russia. They may even have wanted the war to start. Most of us weren’t paying any attention to what was going on there.”
The Neocons had figured that they had a no-lose situation, as Russia could either sit back and watch Ukraine become a NATO forward operating base, complete with huge bases in Crimea, or Russia could attack and then be driven to their knees with ‘killer sanctions’ - thereby allowing the Neocons to install another puppet regime.
Obviously Russia chose Option 2, but to the surprise of Neocons (who have about a 20% success rate, by the way), Russia didn’t collapse, or even come close to that, but instead outproduced the COMBINED West in hardware at least according the US government (not having to beg China for raw materials and piece parts like the West does certainly helped out Russia).
So Trump is ready to put this Neocon TOTAL FAILURE to bed, with the result being a far stronger Russia than it was 5 years ago, and, ironically, a Russian populace that wants nothing to do with the ongoing self-immolation of Europe, when Russia HAD BEEN open to working with them prior to the Neocon Ukraine Adventure.
“The fact that Putin turned down Zelensky’s offer of neutrality and no NATO in return for Russian withdrawal shows that everything that you said is false.”
Nice try, but that was Boris Johnson.
Do you feel the same way about, California, where the Indians were killed en masse or forced to relocate to desert wastelands? California has recognized that as a genocide, so should we give it back?
I'm not advocating turning over Crimea to Russia, but pretending it's cut and dry because of a map drawn 34 years ago and past atrocities is kind of simplifying the history.
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