During the long conflict in the Russian provinces in Ukraine, I have posted many reports on the ever-widening war. We are approaching the point where the conflict opens into a full-fledge war. The question is: Does anyone in the Western governments understand this?
It remains to be seen whether the successful Ukrainian attack on Russia’s strategic bombing fleet will finally wake Putin up to the cost of his ever-widening war. The cost is likely to rise as the Europeans have removed all limits on the weapons and on the range of the missiles that will be supplied to Ukraine. Is this a negotiating tactic to pressure Putin, or is it Europe’s entry into a war with Russia that European politicians have recently talked so much about? If it is the latter, why does Trump permit it as it undercuts the peace negotiations that Trump said would end the conflict?
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I have explained Putin’s patience with the conflict in terms of his hope that peace negotiations can be turned into a wider agreement that achieves mutual security and an end of the conflict between Russia and the West. Putin’s view of what these conditions are have gone without examination in the Western world. Instead, there have been absurd demands that Putin agree to an immediate cease fire before he knows what the agreement is, that Putin agree to give back some of the conquered territory, that Putin drop his demand for demilitarization of Ukraine, and so forth.
It is long past time for the West to come to terms with Putin’s conditions for peace. Putin’s principal condition is that NATO be rolled back from Russia’s borders to the position that existed in the late 1990s. In other words, the failure must be rectified of the Clinton regime to keep the promise made by Washington that in exchange for Soviet approval of the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East.
NATO must roll itself back from Russia’s borders. No more Poland, Finland, Romania in NATO.
If peace negotiations turn out not to be an opportunity for Putin to achieve a broad agreement that addresses Russia’s security requirements, a likely consequence is that Putin will find himself under pressure to drive NATO out of Ukraine as a demonstration that NATO can be defeated. If a mutual security agreement is not then forthcoming, will the Kremlin conclude that Russian security is impossible to obtain unless NATO is driven out of Europe?
I have emphasized from the beginning of this conflict that what originated as a low level conflict would, as a result of the restraint Putin put on Russia’s conduct of the conflict, widen and eventually spin out of control. It remains to be seen whether the successful Ukrainian attack on Russia’s strategic forces will wake Putin up to this fact.
Possibly Putin has not yet rid himself of his hopeful delusions, but Russia has. If Putin is again refused a mutual security agreement, as he was in the winter of 2021-2022, thereby forcing Russia’s entry into Donbas, the conflict in Ukraine could cease being limited to a military operation to protect the Russian occupied provinces now reincorporated into Russia. Putin will be pressured to take off his constraints on the conflict.
Russia intends to be sovereign, and Russia intends to survive, with or without Putin.
If you look at the data on Russian armament production, it has increased dramatically, and it is not deployed on the front in Ukraine. It seems that Russia is building a powerful military force that NATO cannot withstand, especially if Washington is preoccupied with Iran and China.
The real question is whether Europe and America are even capable of fighting. No European government has the support of its ethnic nationality. Are white European and American ethnicities willing to fight for governments that have intentionally overrun citizens with immigrant-invaders? In the United States discrimination against white American citizens is institutionalized. The Assistant Attorney General in the US Department of Justice has revealed the fact that it is the intent of the US Civil Service to make white heterosexual Americans second-class citizens. See here.
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In the Western world, the narrative is that it is Russia that is in the wrong and the US, NATO, and Ukraine that are in the right. This is nonsense, and the Russians know it.
The West used the Soviet collapse to break up Russia, turning former Russian and Soviet provinces into independent countries. Then the West financed and orchestrated “color revolutions” that overthrew Russian-friendly governments, installed Russian-hostile governments, and used them as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 to attack Russians and Russian interests. Similar attempts were unsuccessful in Belarus and in former Soviet Central Asian provinces. On top of these hostile Western moves against Russia, US missile bases are operative in Poland and Romania.
Is it possible that Western policymakers think that Russia does not see the hostility directed against them? If this hostility cannot be ended and rolled back with a Great Power Agreement, is Russia preparing for a wider war with the West?
For Russia this is an existential issue. It is a serious mistake for the West to continue its provocations of Russia. All of humanity is at risk.
Putin could not care less about a negotiated peace in Ukraine. He wants an end to the 75-year old East-West conflict, and that requires a rollback of NATO to its 20th century border, the end of sanctions, the end of Washington’s hegemony. This is the real issue, and no one is discussing it.
I think that Putin’s hope for a great power agreement is unrealistic. It exceeds the imagination of the American foreign policy community. The Western world is lost in its own false narratives. War will be the result. This time Russia won’t stop at the border with Western Europe
