It seems that Russia is desperate to distract public attention away from its economic and internal domestic issues.
Posted on 02/20/2026 4:35:40 AM PST by MtnClimber
ith all eyes on the U.S. military buildup around Iran right now, the Russia-Ukraine War has been temporarily upstaged. It will not play second fiddle for long. The recent trilateral talks in Geneva involving the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United States have been unable to resolve a principal issue of disagreement: Ukraine’s martial-law-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s refusal to cede any land and Russia’s insistence that the Donbas region — specifically the four eastern territories that have already held a referendum in support of becoming part of the Russian Federation — be acknowledged as sovereign Russian territory.
As the war heads into its fifth year, dangers mount for Europe. While President Trump wants to end the bloodshed before the violent conflict transforms into something even more catastrophic, too many parties seem committed to ratcheting up the butcher’s bill a while longer. Unfortunately, there are numerous reasons for prolonging the war that have nothing to do with protecting civilian lives or securing Ukrainian territory.
There is the political reality that a growing embezzlement scandal is taking down high-ranking Ukrainian officials with close relationships to Zelenskyy and the prospect that general peace would mean not only an end to the hold-over-president’s power but also an end to his legal immunity. There is the dogged determination of the European Commission and certain European nations — particularly the United Kingdom and its Ukraine-obsessed MI6 — to drag the fighting out as long as possible as part of a larger effort to weaken President Vladimir Putin’s control over the Russian Federation. There is the long-term European Union goal of absorbing Ukraine into the continental federation and eventually welcoming it into NATO — or at least to use the present war as an excuse for positioning European troops close enough to Ukraine’s current battle lines to trigger
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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It seems the EU is desperate to distract public attention away from economic and immigration issues.
Maybe Europe could go nuclear and we wouldn’t have to hear about them any more
The sky is falling.
Maybe those in the media are influenced by these unknown idiots, but those with the power to use nuclear weapons are not.
Vlad would have to go first. Their subways are 200 feet below the surface according to me Russian friend. Good bomb shelters.
>> Maybe Europe could go nuclear and we wouldn’t have to hear about them any more
Can we throw in Minneapolistan? They’re kinda Yurpean...
This is a very real possibility if this war keeps dragging on and it’s almost a certainty if NATO intervenes
NATO is a toothless tiger. How do I know? I know because no nation other than the USA wants to pay for it. People pay for things they feel is necessary and useful and they intend to use. NATO is nothing more than a money laundering scheme. No one is serious about its military use.
The US pays for every single nation to be part of NATO through various payments we make to those nations. Do a trace of the payments of every NATO nation and you will find we give them around the exact amount of their NATO payment.
“Ukraine’s martial-law-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s refusal to cede any land and Russia’s insistence that the Donbas region — specifically the four eastern territories that have already held a referendum in support of becoming part of the Russian Federation — be acknowledged as sovereign Russian territory.”
The Constitution of Ukraine doesn’t allow for that.
At best there can be an armistice.
[From my peace plan posted many times here]
Zelensky might insist that:
1. the agreement should state that it is a long-term armistice meant to preserve human life and property and that no territory is to be considered as ceded or any claim to territory relinquished,
2. Ukraine be allowed to have an unlimited number of trained military personnel of Ukrainian citizenship, artillery pieces, artillery shells, anti-aircraft guns, anti-aircraft missiles of types now in its service and future equivalents, tanks and drones of a range of less than a certain number of kilometers,
3. monetary aid from the US and EU to enable Ukraine to retain in military service its battle-hardened military personnel,
[I suggest up to $12 billion/year, up to a total of $200 billion.]
4. the Ukrainian right to buy for source country money listed weapons [Patriots, anti-aircraft weapons, artillery shells, missiles] from the US, EU and possibly the UK at prices in line with what the source entity government(s) would pay, subject to such restrictions as the law of the EU itself may impose,
[That’s a security guarantee that I think EU citizens and Americans can live with.]
5. sanctions on Russia to be removed only after a certain period of Russian good behavior.
Note what I consider the key demand of Ukraine.
It seems that Russia is desperate to distract public attention away from its economic and internal domestic issues.
The toughest issue is the remnant of Ukrainian-held Donbas.
Putin wants it, but since he wants it so bad the Ukrainians can make the Russians pay dearly for gains there.
The price Russia would almost certainly pay is almost certainly higher than any possible benefit to Putin.
It simply doesn’t pay to lose 50,000 Russian soldiers so ~20,000 pro-Putin people can live under Putin rather than Kiev. Putin can give the ~20,000 pro-Putin people new housing and new workplaces for less than the financial cost of winning the rest of Donbas. Most of the pro-Putin people have probably already fled to RF held areas.
Making that clear to Putin is going to be part of “The Art of the Deal” IMO.
Peace is the cheaper path forward in terms of money and lives for both sides.
I love how England still pretends it's a 1st world nation. It's cute. Like watching an elderly man in a wheelchair showing off to the nursing home ladies by eating his entire cup of pudding.
One way or another, the 2030 crowd is determined to try and kill most of us in pursuit of its neo-feudalist technosurveillance state.
Whether it’s one of Bill Gates’ “vaccination,” sky-blotting or other schemes, a true world pandemic, or just direct war they are trying every angle.
Whatever your opinion on Putin and Z etc. is (and please don’t rehash here, everyone already knows which handles support what kthx) try and remember for many mass extermination is the goal, not the catastrophe to be avoided.
Bkmk
Remember the charge of the Light Brigade!
That's pretty much the way it worked and it was a good deal that maintained the peace since WWII.
The war in Ukraine has pretty much destroyed that working model because it relied upon peace and stability and US military deterrence to succeed. No wars meant we only had to maintain weapons stockpiles and pay for readiness training of troops to face a not too formidable Russian adversary
This model was already breaking down when Trump took office in his first term and he worked hard to rationalize the system with a more sustainable system.
Then Biden came in and completely crashed the system.
His military defeats, his appeasement of enemies, his deconstruction of the US military as an effective force combined with his insane foreign policy completely destroyed the concept of American military deterrence
Biden's irrational and feckless Ukraine polices that threatened both Russians living in the Ukraine and Russia's national security combined with Biden's perceived loss of military deterrence resulted in the disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine
However once Russia did invade, Biden flipped.
He torpedoed a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that would have seen Russia withdraw it's troops from Ukraine and initiated a US led and financed a proxy war to degrade Russia's military and weaken Putin's hold on Russia.
Now we had a hot war in Europe with Russia that depleted US and NATO weapons stockpiles to critically low levels plus a hot war in the Middle East that further depleted US stockpiles to worse than critical levels
We now have a very expensive forever war that nobody on either side can afford to sustain, depleted weapons stockpiles that took 60 years and trillions of dollars and euros to build up and which now must be replaced in a very short time and an emerging hostile and re arming Russian threat to deal with.
This does not even begin to account for the vast amount of money it will take to rebuild the post war Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is an epic disaster that just keeps getting worse and worse the longer it continues even with the current stalemate status quo.
If this thing in Ukraine continues to escalate we are all going to have a lot of regrets. Even if the war ended today, NATO and the US are both faced with a massive and very expensive re arming that it's member states are hard pressed to afford to maintain it's credibility as a fighting force and the US cannot afford to finance NATO the way we used to.
The damage that Biden Administration did to US and NATO is massive and potentially beyond repair.
” it was a good deal that maintained the peace since WWII.”
Except NATO didn’t maintain the peace. Not at all. The Berlin Airlift, Vietnam, Korea, etc.
We had massive escalations the MIC used NATO as a backbone of their sending.
Drivel
Bombastic journo malpractice
Very true, but NATO has prevented an major nuclear war for 80 years.
And now we seem to have a new generation of irresponsible leaders who are leading NATO down the path towards the use of nuclear weapons at a time when they can least afford any kind of war , much less a nuclear war.
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