By MoA
The Swiss paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung published a piece today (in German) which claimed that CIA boss William Burns had offered 20% of Ukraine to Russia in exchange for peace in Ukraine.
As Newsweek summarizes:NZZ reported on Thursday, citing high-ranking German foreign politicians, that in mid-January, Burns presented Kyiv and Moscow with a peace plan that would put an end to the war, which began when Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.According to the newspaper, the proposal offered “around 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory”—about the size of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
The Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov, the White House and the CIA rejected the claim:
A CIA official told Newsweek that claims in the NZZ report that Burns took a secret trip to Moscow in January and that there was a peace proposal put forward by the director on behalf of the White House were “completely false.”Last month, Burns traveled in secret to meet and brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, the Washington Post reported.
The Neue Züricher says that Kiev as well as Moscow had rejected the U.S. plan.
That everyone is denying that this happened means that the Züricher claims are likely true.
We know that talks between Washington and Kiev are ongoing.
On January 30 Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was in Egypt and met with its Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. A day later Shourky flew to Russia and met its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Egyptian media reported that Shoukry carried a letter from Blinken:The Egyptian state-owned news outlet Al-Ahram reported that Shoukry delivered a message to Lavrov from Blinken. The message appears to be in reference urging a halt to Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.
“Russia should stop these actions in order for negotiations to succeed,” was the message, according to Al-Ahram.
…A State Department spokesperson told Al-Monitor that Blinken has had a consistent message that Russia should stop the war in Ukraine and remove its forces from the country for the sake of peace. The message he gave to Shoukry did not differ from this, according to the spokesperson.Lavrov described the proposal as “incomplete.” Lavrov also praised Egypt’s “balanced” approach to the war in Ukraine. Lavrov further said Russia would continue to engage with Egypt on the Ukraine issue, Al-Ahram reported, citing the press conference.
“We will stay in touch. And I trust that this will be in the interest of the friendship between the two countries,” said Lavrov.In sum: Russia has accepted Shourkry’s role as a middleman in the negotiations but wants a better offer from Washington.
We will see what will comes from this.
The U.S. knows that Ukraine’s army is not able to hold the current defense line in its east. The fear is that it will run away when the line is breached.
Ukraine has already pulled several brigades from the Bakhmut/Artyomovsk line to plug holes in other defense lines (Ugledar, Kremmina). On January 17, using the deployment map by Military Land, I counted 27 Ukrainian brigade equivalents in that area. The map now shows only 18 Ukrainian brigade equivalents on the Soledar-Bakhmut line.
January 17 – 27 Ukrainian Brigade equivalents
Source: Military Land Deployment Map – bigger
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February 3 – 18 Ukrainian Brigade equivalents
Source: Military Land Deployment Map – bigger
Ukraine will soon give up on the city.
The Ukrainian death toll in the city must be extremely high:[Mykola] Bielieskov, [a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies,] Bielieskov said that Ukraine compensates for its lack of heavy equipment with people who are ready to stand to the last.“Lightly armed, without sufficient artillery support, which they cannot always be provided, they stand and hold off attacks as long as possible,” he said.
The result is that the battle is believed to have produced horrific troop losses for both Ukraine and Russia. Quite how deadly isn’t known: Neither side is saying.
…Along the front line on the Ukrainian side, emergency medical units provide urgent care to battlefield casualties. From 50 to 170 wounded Ukrainian soldiers pass daily through just one of the several stabilization points along the Donetsk front line, according to Tetiana Ivanchenko, who has volunteered in eastern Ukraine since a Russia-backed separatist conflict started there in 2014.Russia has increased the intensity of the fight:
Russian artillery barrages had risen from an average of about 60 per day four weeks ago to more than 90 per day last week. On one day alone, 111 Ukrainian locations were targeted.
…On Tuesday, Russian forces hit Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut with short-range artillery 197 times, and the two sides clashed some 42 times, Ukraine’s military said, significantly more than a month ago. Ukrainian forces beat back Russian soldiers, assaulting their lines time and again, the military said.The above confirms the artillery engagement numbers given in the daily reports of the Russia Defense Ministry. It also confirms that Russia has no lack of artillery ammunition.
But despite that the New York Times is again stenographing implausible claims of high Russian casualties:
Congress having not been informed on a regular 90 basis on the presidential war powers can and should begin the process of recalling all advisers currently in Eastern Europe. biden is in violation of his responsibilities under the war powers act and unless he addresses Congress to give specifics, Congress should act to remove our participation in the Slavic blood feud.
How the GLSDB long range weapons system could change the war in Ukraine I DW News
All Russian military targets inside the borders of Ukraine would be within the weapon system’s operational range.
Obviously reality escapes you that there’s some new “game changer” weapon shipped into Ukraine every week… But nothing changes.
Putin has mobilized his half million soldiers.
Tactical nukes are inevitable, and if America thinks that gives them the green light to Nuke Moscow, Washington will be a radioactive ruin along with it.
We don’t know who caused this war, but responsible Americans are soundly against it.
Russia has the most sanctions on it of any country in history, but STILL has a higher GDP than Germany.
Fewer of them will die if they kill their officers, and then go home and kill Putin.
Not everyone in the world is a traitorous piece of garbage like you, I suppose.
Killing Putin achieves nothing. Soon, you people are going to be revealed.
Putin is a top level murderous bastard. Becoming a traitor to the likes of him would be a righteous act.
Hundreds of millions of Americans feel the same about unelected Biden, watching the deep state rig an election and install a sun-downing puppet who can’t handle a “balloon”…even for the media-smoke story it is, hiding what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s definitely a righteous act to resist and depose a dictator trying to replace our democracy with autocracy.
No, pig. You have no clue what righteousness is.
Hundreds is not a lot.
Trump tried to remain in office after being voted out, by using a mob of people that think like you do to stop a constitutional process. He endangered the safety and life of his own Vice President in the process.
That is a traitorous act.
Hundreds of millions is definitely a lot, son. I’m sorry you don’t understand the gravity of that number.
Given there’s video proof that exonerates this FBI/Deep State invented farce, we’ll just ignore your intentional ignorance on this…as we always do.
America is suffering an installed dictatorship, but I have hope this too will pass.
Our armed population guarantees it will, and unelected Biden and the rest will fade into infamy, as they should.
History ALWAYS marks traitors for what they are.
You need to take a headcount outside of the cult disinformation bubble, Bucko.
You need to cut the bombastic bull crap and eject all fantasies that sound like that backstory of a B-level first-person-shooter video game, because you’re building yourself an alternate reality that will crash headlong into the real one, doing a lot of serious, real-world damage to a lot of good people when it does.
That’s what happened on January 6. Fortunately, that has been properly addressed in courtrooms, where the deluded and misled were protected by the very system they were trying to break.
A couple of days ago I saw an online opinion that we should not “let history be the judge” of people like Trump; that we should “Judge them now, with judges.” I totally agree. I hope Trump and his crew are all dragged into courtrooms in the run-up to 2024. As it stands, the people they led astray took all the heat, while they walked off unchastised, to prepare to try it all again.
I hope the legal system is successfully used to defend the Constitution and rule of law from the dangerous assholes who tried to destroy, it in the name of “protecting the Constitution.”
Failing that, you might get what you want, but you won’t like the results if you do.
I think you, whoever you are (you’re not the normal “greg” poster…) needs to understand that WE are not looking for results.
YOU people most certainly are, and are currently engaged in the replacement of our democratic Constitutional Republic with a form of tyranny you don’t understand yourself.
And you yourself and the other traitors who don’t understand you’ve become the authoritarian swine you struggle to cast Trump and other normal Americans as. YOU attacked our government. WE did not.
You people have eroded the rule of Law, used our systems to attack political opposition while not holding your own to the same standard, become fascistic while you collude with media and tech, and overall have become the bad guys that we good guys are ALWAYS watching out for.
J6th was a scripted way of flipping the truth: the Left had just attacked local, state, and Federal governments for a year or so. They needed to quell the connection between the Right and supporting law-enforcement/rule of law. They also rigged an election, and everyone knew it.
It was a classic, and shoddy, false-flag that installed an unelected Joe Biden while surrounding him with 21,000 troops, banana republic style.
You know this.
There has been no courtroom justice: just traitors who have pledged allegiance to a dictatorship who gives them identity.
Ever has it been so, historically.
The Founders’ dream of making sure we citizens are armed and can resist tyrannical vermin like you really is a problem for you, and one you people are facing head on.
You’re the aggressor. You’re the destroyer. You’re the enemy.
The mantra of “accuse them of what we are doing publicly” has played itself out, son.
The situation is much more complex than you understand, even given your job, and honestly…we free Americans don’t have anything to fear from you.
So install you Bidens and Fettermans. Lie about things we watched you do. Start wars and launder money. Just stay out of our houses.
WE are too busy getting on with working, raising healthy, non-LGBT families, and overall making the world a better place. Your paycheck is a paid by us, and while we know you are a parasite, we have a heart and care about you.
We don’t need to convince you that the alternate, virtual reality you embrace isn’t real. You’ll learn it yourself.
WE the People are this country. And that won’t change.
Siezing our Federal Government wasn’t quite the big “win” you thought it would be, is it?
Make better decisions. We’ll be watching.
Why do you lie? Do you seriously think anyone gives a hairy rat’s a$$ what you say?
Carry on being this sites biggest idiot.
The insane Zelensky calling for again for first strike, what a complete madman, Cokehead Nazi freak that hates his people enough to get a retaliatory strike.