by Yves Smith
The reading that John Helmer highlights is so out of left field that it’s hard to know what to make of it. Aside from being a spook, David Ignatius of the Washington Post is too high profile a reporter to err in recounting a one-on-one interview with Blinken.
For the first time since the special military operation began last year, the war party in Washington is offering terms of concession to Russia’s security objectives explicitly and directly, without the Ukrainians in the way.
The terms Blinken has told Ignatius to print appeared in the January 25 edition of the Washington Post. The paywall can be avoided by reading on.
The territorial concessions Blinken is tabling include Crimea, the Donbass, and the Zaporozhe, Kherson “land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia”. West of the Dnieper River, north around Kharkov, and south around Odessa and Nikolaev, Blinken has tabled for the first time US acceptance of “a demilitarized status” for the Ukraine. Also, US agreement to restrict the deployment of HIMARS, US and NATO infantry fighting vehicles, and the Abrams and Leopard tanks to a point in western Ukraine from which they can “manoeuvre…as a deterrent against future Russian attacks.”
This is an offer for a tradeoff – partition through a demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the east of the Ukraine in exchange for a halt to the planned Russian offensive destroying the fortifications, rail hubs, troop cantonments, and airfields in the west, between the Polish and Romanian borders, Kiev and Lvov, and an outcome Blinken proposes for both sides to call “a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity”.
Also in the proposed Blinken deal there is the offer of a direct US-Russian agreement on “an eventual postwar military balance”; “no World War III”; and no Ukrainian membership of NATO with “security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5.”
Blinken has also told the Washington Post to announce the US will respect “Putin’s tripwire for nuclear escalation”, and accept the Russian “reserve force includ[ing] strategic bombers, certain precision-guided weapons and, of course, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.”Helmer takes this interview to be the US offering “terms of concession”. The problem is that if that is what it is meant to be, it is so procedurally irregular as to be an obvious red herring. If the US really wanted to talk, it would go through channels. And there is no evidence that has happened. Senior Russian officials have repeatedly said they have not only not gotten any proposals from the US, the Russians have made a point of stating that there has been virtually no senior level communication between the US and Russia for months. One of the sort of recent exceptions was the mid-November meeting in Istanbul between CIA chief William Burn and the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin. Russia later stated that Burns said nothing new with respect to Ukraine.
The second, as Helmer points out, isthat the collective West has shown itself to be not agreement capable and even proud of its cheatin’ ways.
But on top of that, if Blinken is actually willing to trade the Donbass, Crimea and Zaporzhizhia on a short-term basis for a cessation of hostilities, which the Washington Post piece does not say anywhere. If it’s coded, I can’t see where; perhaps some of Helmer’s Russian interlocutors discern that but again, I would like to know how exactly. It may be that the admission that Ukraine can’t take Crimea is so radical that Russian tea-leaf readers see that as signifying more.
But if that’s the point, Blinken underscores that any concession is not expected to be lasting. From the Washington Post:The administration shares Ukraine’s insistence that Crimea, which was seized by Russia in 2014, must eventually be returned.
In other words, in a piece meant to convince…somebody…the US is still admitting that it fully intends to retake the territory is claims it might be willing to admit it can’t have now. I don’t read this as a sweetener for the Ukraine government and the “on to Moscow” types like the Poles and Baltic states.
In any event, things have gone too far for Russia to stop and accept facts on the ground when it is clearly on the cusp of being able to greatly improve its position, first by further destroying Ukraine’s fight force and NATO weapons and then by taking further territory.
Helmer infers that the West is worried about the economic viability of Ukraine and does not want Russia taking the rich agricultural land east of the Dnieper. That presumably goes double for Odessa.
But this article nevertheless comes off as enshrining the view that US can dictate the end game in Ukraine, which is clearly nuts. And per the Crimea remark flagged above, Blinken signaling that territorial concessions are temporary makes even a supposedly limited offer a non-starter to Russia, and presumably allows for plausible deniability with allies.
So who is the audience for this piece? Is it to start lowering expectations in the US of the long-predicted Ukraine total victory? It can’t be Russia despite pretenses otherwise. China, India, Turkey, and the Global South, to show the West isn’t being unreasonable? The Poles and Balts, to signal they need to moderate their demands in light of Ukraine’s inability to perform?
A further comment: Helmer notes that:Highlighted in bold type in Blinken’s text is the phrase, “a strong, noncorrupt economy and membership in the European Union”…. It is also Blinken’s acknowledgement that Vladimir Zelensky’s move early this week to force the resignations and dismissals of senior officials means the US is calling the shots in Kiev and Lvov.
This is at best what the Biden Administration is trying to sell House Republicans. With Zelensky having been outed in the Panama Papers less than two years ago, his position at the helm belies any claims regarding a clean up. Ukraine is too fabulously corrupt for anyone in a position of influence to have clean hands.
But the US likely is making sure that some heads are rolling so as to be able to claim when it’s become undeniable that an awful lot of cash and goodies sent to Ukraine went astray that the perps were found and have been sent packing or worse. The purge at a minimum is meant to throw a great big blanket over that problem.
But the US is likely also of the belief that it can orchestrate a house-cleaning so as to get outcomes they desire. That is delusional. I sincerely doubt the US has remotely a good enough grip on what is happening within the Ukraine government so as not to be snookered. It’s not hard to see one faction successfully undermining another with cherry picked and fabricated evidence.
I doubt that many Americans — even the masses sunk in vaccine smuggery and obsessive Trump-o-phobia — believe that America’s Ukraine project is working out for us. Of course, to even begin thinking about this debacle, you must at least suspect that our government is lying about virtually everything it has its hand in. Name something it is not lying about, I dare you.
So, what was the Ukraine project? To use that sad-ass country as a vector to disable and destroy Russia. You can’t over-state the stupidity of that objective. And why did we want to do that? Because… reasons. Oh? And what were they? Well, Russia was… there. Oh? And what was it doing? Trying to take over the world? Uh, no. It was actually just trying to be a normal European nation again after its traumatic 75-year-long experiment with communism, which ended in 1991.
And then, after that, coming along pretty well under Mr. Putin. Did I say that? Yes, I did, because it is a fact. Russia wrote new private property laws, made commerce legal again, and allowed its citizens to do business. Russia wasn’t threatening any other nations, most particularly its former province, Ukraine. It had even invited Ukraine to be a sovereign member of its trade association, the customs union, with a bunch of other regional states who had rational interests in good regional relations. That’s what set off the maniacs at the US State Department — under Secretary John Kerry, a.k.a. the haircut-in-search-of a-brain — who, in 2014, decided to overthrow Ukraine’s government.
The project since then was to use the US-controlled Ukraine government to antagonize Russia and, finally, to draw Russia into a military operation intended, SecDef Lloyd Austin said more than once, “to weaken Russia.” Well, everything we’ve done there, from eight years of shelling the Donbas, to kicking Russia out of the West’s banking system, to pouring billions of US dollars into Ukraine’s corrupt government, has only strengthened Russia internally, earned the approbation of many other nations who object to US interference in their regions, and steered poor Ukraine into the graveyard of failed states.
We are losing this unnecessary proxy war about as steadily as possible, and actually making Russia look good in the process. Russia could have ended the war in five minutes by turning Kiev into an ashtray, but it spent the first eight months of the operation trying to avoid busting up Ukraine’s infrastructure, so as not to turn it into a failed state (that would present new and worse problems). Mr. Putin made many overtures to negotiate an end to the conflict, all rejected by Ukraine, the US, and its NATO “partners.”
So, now Russia is grinding on-the-ground to reduce Ukraine’s ability to continue making war by systematically killing the troops Ukraine foolishly throws into the battle line, and destroying Ukraine’s heavy weapons. Ukraine is about out of its own soldiers and weapons. Russia is maneuvering to roll over what’s left there and put an end to these pointless and needless hostilities. Contrary to US propaganda, Russia has no ambition to conquer NATO territory. Rather its aim is to restore order to a corner of the world that has been its legitimate sphere of influence for centuries — and more than once been used as a doormat for European armies to invade Russia.
Apparently, we can’t allow Russia to clean up this mess we made — or we pretend that we can’t, even though it’s happening anyway, whether we like it or not. So now, the US promises to send thirty-one M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. A bold move, you think? Not exactly. By the time these tanks get anywhere in the vicinity of Ukraine, this war is likely to be over. Never mind the difficult business of training the few remaining eligible Ukrainian men between sixteen and sixty how to operate the tanks, and train maintenance crews, and deliver inventories of spare parts — you see where this is going — not to mention the certainty that the Russians will simply blow them up as fast as they appear on the premises. Anyway, a measly thirty-one tanks that can barely be operated is meaningless compared to hundreds of T-72s backed by newer T-14 tanks the Russians can muster from just over their border with Ukraine.
The tank proffer is, sad to say (for the dignity of our country), a joke, kind of a last feeble pretense before the whole thing ends in ignominy for the “Joe Biden” team — whoever that actually is. The repercussions are liable to be ugly for our country, not necessarily more military trouble in other lands (which we probably lack the capacity to engage in now), but something more personal: the collapse of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and a vicious loss of purchasing power here at home. That would provoke a situation worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, and that’s probably where things are going.
The Ukraine misadventure will disappear from America’s collective consciousness in a New York minute and a Fourth Turning jamboree of serious domestic political disorder will commence in short order. If you think “Joe Biden’s” term in office has been a disaster so far, just wait. You ain’t seen nuttin yet.
It is time to de escalate the conflict in Ukraine. biden needs to stop his aggression causing senseless death.
It past time to de-escalate. Maybe they should ask the people in Crimea if they want to be part of corrupt criminal Ukraine who cut off their water before Moscow annexed them in 2014. Recently restored when Russian troops blew up the hate dam that cut off 85% of their fresh water.
If this doesn’t happen a full blown war between the NATO and Russia will break out. I am amused by the MSM’s distress at “War crimes.” War is hell.
I question rules of engagement that allow Russia to blow Ukraine to hell, while any retaliatory attack on Russian territory is strictly forbidden. Every effort should be made to kill Putin. Maybe offering a billion-dollar reward for his elimination, no questions asked, would be cost effective.
Im sure peace would be achieved with your retarded suggestions. You must be advising the negotiations to stop the senseless bloodshed.
Peace will be achieved when the man who is murdering Ukrainians on their own territory is dead or deposed.
You’re supposed to negotiate with a man who invades your home and begins murdering your family?
You don’t negotiate with such a man, as he moves from room to room. Nor do you listen to the idiots who tell you to do so.
We KNOW Putin can’t be trusted. We KNOW he only wants time to regroup and launch a new offensive. We KNOW if he takes Ukraine, his ambitions won’t stop there. We KNOW he doesn’t care how many he kills, or who he kills. His actions demonstrate this.
Perhaps Europe could defend itself, accepting more and more Nations into the alliance without collecting defense funds and expecting the US citizen tax dollar to pick up the tab. What disgusting leeches they are.