Is There a Peace Deal Putin and Zelensky Can Accept?

If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?… Where would that leave the West?

In an interview with Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman for decades, made a startling offer. Moscow could end the Ukraine war immediately, said Peskov, if four conditions were met.

Ukraine should cease all military action, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, accept the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist enclaves, and enact a constitutional commitment to “neutrality,” which would prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO.

Were this to be done, said Peskov, the war “will stop in a moment.”

As this would restore the situation in Ukraine to the “status quo ante” that existed before Putin ordered the invasion, Peskov’s offer seemed not to be believable.

Yet, according to The New York Times, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “seemed surprisingly open to the idea.”

Zelensky “said he had ‘cooled down’ on joining NATO, saying it was clear the western alliance ‘is not prepared to accept Ukraine.’”

As for Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, said Zelensky, “We can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on.”

Monday, Ukraine and Russia held a fourth session of peace talks, and expressions of optimism were heard from both sides.

Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak volunteered that Russia is beginning to talk constructively. “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”

Yet, Russia’s strategic goals, manifest in its unfolding military action, seem to go far beyond the moderate demands of Peskov.

Three weeks into this war, what do Russia’s goals appear to be?

First, besiege and bring down the Kyiv government of Zelensky and replace it with a Russian client regime.

Second, divide Ukraine along the lines of the Dnieper River, which bisects the country north to south, and create an East Ukraine as a pro-Russian state.

Third, seize and occupy the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, turn it into a Russian lake, and capture all of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast from the Donbas to Mariupol, Crimea, Kherson, Odessa and Transnistria, the last a slice of seceded Moldovan land Moscow now controls.

This would leave a landlocked rump state of west Ukraine, which would be a buffer between NATO nations Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — and Russia-backed East Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Russia’s realization of these goals would be tantamount to victory in Putin’s war:

“A Ukraine divided in two, with Russia in control of the east, and a rump, Western Ukraine cut off from the coast might look like a victory to Mr. Putin — especially if sanctions are removed in some cease-fire agreement.”

With this kind of peace in hand, Putin could then warn the NATO nations that if they attacked East Ukraine directly, or indirectly by arming insurgents, they would face “consequences you have never seen.”

As no NATO nation risked war to save Georgia from Russia in 2008, or to save Ukraine from the Crimean and Donbas amputations of 2014, it is not likely NATO would risk war with Russia, and a potential third world war, if Russia declared a truce once it got full control of eastern Ukraine.

Where would that leave the West?

The Americans and British would likely treat Putin as a pariah and never meet with him again. But would President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany cut off all communication with Russia, when they have been making daily phone calls to Putin and regular visits to Moscow, even as Putin’s war of aggression was raging?

If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?

If Kyiv falls to a Russian strategy of encirclement and strangulation, capitulation and conquest, how long would it be before EU nations seek an end to Russia’s isolation and a new era of detente?

Or would the continued existence of a regime headed by Putin mean permanent hostility?

Three years after Nikita Khrushchev sent Soviet tanks into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Soviet premier was riding up Pennsylvania Avenue in an open convertible with Dwight Eisenhower to spend the night at Blair House before a 12-day tour as the guest of the president of the United States.

As of now, the winner of this Russia-Ukraine war appears to be China.

Given the severity of U.S. sanctions and the ostracism of Russia from the West, China is the only partner nation and economy to which Moscow can turn to recoup its losses.

If this war continues to unfold in a manner that is slow, painful and ugly, China and Russia are likely to establish far better relations with each other than either has with the United States.

But how is China, which is engaged in cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority of 10 million, a racial and ethnic persecution featuring reeducation camps, rapes, forced abortions and sterilizations, a morally superior regime to Putin’s?

6 replies
  1. Emicho
    Emicho says:

    “But how is China, which is engaged in cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority of 10 million, a racial and ethnic persecution featuring reeducation camps, rapes, forced abortions and sterilizations, a morally superior regime to Putin’s?”
    You wonder if Pat just puts this stuff in because it’s written into the small print of his syndicated column contract.
    What is a “cultural genocide”? Is that like what the Jews are doing to us? Is it like what Thatcher did to the miners?
    I’ve never liked the word ‘genocide’, it’s a Jewish word from like 1950 or something, if civilizations rose and fell for thousands of years without it, what do we need it for? And like all modern Jewish linguistic inventions, it’s one and only purpose is to serve Jewish interests, by invoking hysteria in the goys to make them easier to manage.
    As to the rest of the accusations above against China, what proof is there of these except the word of the CIA? No doubt China’s Muslims don’t live in Shangri-la, but who does? And when was the last time some weeger stabbed-up a bunch of chinks? Seems the Chinese have this worked out. British Muslims go on stabbing rampage every six months, intersped with periodic suicide bombs.
    But the biggest clue it’s all gibberish is the way the entire Muslim world don’t seem at all concerned for their cousins.
    “But that’s because they simp to China!”
    But don’t they, or used to, simp to America? That never stopped them.

    • Carolyn Yeager
      Carolyn Yeager says:

      “I’ve never liked the word ‘genocide’, it’s a Jewish word from like 1950 or something,”

      It would be nice if you ever chose to look things up so that you could be said to know what you’re talking about. Genocide is not a “Jewish word” but an English word invented (coined) by a Jew.

      “Warsaw Jew Raphael Lemkin, inventor of word “genocide,” rises to become advisor to American Judge Robert Jackson at Nuremberg IMT.” …https://carolynyeager.net/heretics-hour-jews-and-nuremberg-part-one

      Lemkin ‘invented’ a lot more than just the word, he invented the entire legal foundation for the concept of “genocide” as a crime in 1943-44, in time for the Nuremberg Tribunals and the punishment of top leaders of the German National Socialist government.

  2. Pip
    Pip says:

    ISRAEL – RUSSIA – UKRAINE
    These 3 seem to be doing a lot of talking!
    Maybe the Zionists want to move to Ukraine, seeing the Arabs are beginning to support the Palestinians!
    Just a thought!

  3. Lucius Vanini
    Lucius Vanini says:

    With America inching toward brinkmanship—if not also a stone-stupid war hysteria—I do hope this dirty conflict ends as soon as possible! I don’t know about the rest of you, but the more I tune into the Corporate news media, the more I sweat.

    Governmental Judas-goats want to risk World War for the sake of a vile globalist Soros-puppet. WORLD WAR—almost sure to involve nuclear weapons! And the longer the conflict in Ukraine lasts, the greater the likelihood that they’ll get their WW3….

    Might the survival of civilization as we know it depend on the Russian Army? On last evening’s Tucker Carlson, about the only FNC show that’s appreciably sane, there appeared again that sagacious Colonel Douglas MacGregor, who said that despite all the talk of Ukrainian martial prowess the Russians are very near success–that the Ukrainian forces are all but shredded. May he be right! May the Russian Army quickly end all resistance with as few casualties, on either side, as possible.

    That this Zelensky clown is said to have responded not unfavorably to Putin’s demands seems to bolster MacGregor’s assessment. Unless belligerents see the writing on the wall, they repulse enemy demands.

    The best outcome, to my mind, is that Ukraine is freed from having a globalist tribesman of Soros as leader; that the Russian enclaves in east Ukraine join Russia; that Ukraine is somehow obliged, forever, to repudiate the option of NATO membership; that it becomes an unequivocally neutral buffer state, friendlier than not to Russia but not allied against anybody. That’s what I’m pulling for. But may it be achieved SOON, or the Empire which eviscerated Iraq twice will self-righteously provoke a war capable of eviscerating the planet.

    Meanwhile I’m scared enough to do the unthinkable: ask the pretender to the throne, Dementia Joe for whom my contempt is bottomless, to please ignore the media jackals and miscreants like Graham who clamor that he do provocative things like give jets to Ukraine. My fear has been that, to mitigate domestic political damage, D.J. will do something foolish even for him; and I fear that his restraint can’t last forever. True, I’m not a ZOGist billionaire donor and my voice will be faintly heard, if at all; but I don’t know what else to do (I’ve already called and emailed the major media, asking them to tone down their russophobic rhetoric), and I feel I have to do something–to at least try.

    It’s bad enough that Western military aid will, at the very least, prolong the war and end still more precious European lives, which would otherwise be spared.

    DAMN: while the war was yet only a danger, I said that the neo-Marxist hijackers of D.C. welcomed the distraction from the ruination of America, also that the American sheeple would “get behind the president” against a demonized foreign leader. It’s a sad state of affairs in which one grieves over being too right. The sheeple have been and are almost perfectly distracted, and, as Ann Coulter reports, Dementia Joe’s approval rating has gone up a couple of points. This is almost as tragic as the death and dismemberment of beautiful White people in the war—European siblings!

    An early end of hostilities will both spare those precious European, White lives AND return the public mind to what’s happening at home, causing toleration of the neo-Marxist traitors to resume its slide downward.

    .

    • Lucius Vanini
      Lucius Vanini says:

      I saw yesterday that some female, war-hysterical reporter indignantly asked Psaki why the Administration hasn’t sent planes to Ukraine, and that Psaki said—zounds!—that the risk-benefit trade-off isn’t acceptable, inasmuch as the doubtful benefit to Ukraine wouldn’t be worth risking a disastrously wider war…. LOL, there’s apparently a limit to the folly of the foolish. May the limit hold firm!

      I’m hoping that more and more people see how clearly the Zelensky side of the conflict doesn’t represent the interests of Western Civ. Vlad the Bad is no mahatma; but Zelensky & Co. are distinctly globalist—on Soros’ team—and therefore antipodal to us lovers of European heritage. My impression is that a great many Conservatives, persons more than halfway to White Advocacy, aren’t thus aware.

      How I wish we were abler to get the message out (our reach is so shortened by being locked out of Corporate Media and censored in Social Media). But as that servant says in GONE WITH THE WIND, “Wishin’ ain’t gettin’.”

  4. The Infant Phenomenon
    The Infant Phenomenon says:

    “As this would restore the situation in Ukraine to the “status quo ante” that existed before Putin ordered the invasion, Peskov’s offer seemed not to be believable.”

    This is plain and simply not true. At all.

    This is now the third, I think, article by “Buchanan” that seems not to have been written by Pat Buchanan or even by anybody pushing a pen at his behest.

    He has either become senile, or these articles are not being written by him at all.

    This article reads like somebody who has NO idea whatsoever of events in the Ukraine now or at any time since the (((West))) overthrew the lawful government there in 2014.

    What does this mean? How is this happening? Why do these pitiful articles appear in TOO?

    It’s embarrassing.

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