A Peace Settlement to the Ukraine War

[Stefan Kotsch]

8 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

The same Kremlin that directly banned RusArmy from removing yellow-blie flags from administrative buildings in citiers and removing pro-Ukr officials, as was willing to leave soon after negotiating more favorable surrender conditions?

The same! The same Kremlin, which sends its citizens in prison camps.  Because you hold up a sign of the inscription 'Peace'.
In addition, you don't think what you write. You yourself keep saying that the war is being conducted not relentless enough.

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

48 minutes ago, Olof Larsson said:

Yes, to get the most out of them, you need massed armour and the ability to operate with your own strike aircrafts close enough to the front line. Without full integration that is not going to happen. Not that Russia can mass armoured divisions eighter way, with their current ability seemingly limited to concentrate technical companies, dirtbikeplatoons, and crutchinfantrysquads at the same place. I could se the Brimstone being useful in the SEAD role, as well as engaging ships from USV's.

Yeah, and it was seemingly intended in an assault breaker role. It's a shame it wasn't available in 2022, it would have been spectacular against all that armour bunched up in towns.

[Roman Alymov]

5 hours ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

The same! The same Kremlin, which sends its citizens in prison camps.  Because you hold up a sign of the inscription 'Peace'.

To what "prison camps", the same ones where Strelkov (and not only him) is kept for demands to fight war, not imitate it? 

5 hours ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

In addition, you don't think what you write. You yourself keep saying that the war is being conducted not relentless enough

In what way providing here the picture of this husband of French citizen and father of US citizen is the proof i am wrong in that?

[Roman Alymov]

9 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

For the 10 millionth time, this is NOT about Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine was NEVER going to join NATO.

I'm sorry but even then-US Ambassador to Russia (CIA Director later) was not in agreement with you

It is hard to find Burns’s finger-prints on Biden’s Russia policy or on the conduct of NATO’s war in Ukraine, where U.S. policy has run headlong into precisely the dangers Burns warned his government about, in cables from Moscow spanning more than a decade. We cannot know what Burns tells the president behind closed doors. But he has not publicly called for peace talks, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley has done, although to do so would be highly unusual for a CIA director.
In the current environment of rigid pro-war, anti-Russian orthodoxy, if Bill Burns publicly voiced some of the concerns he expressed earlier in his career, he might be ostracized, or even fired, as a Putin apologist. But his dire warnings about the consequences of inviting Ukraine to join NATO have been quietly tucked in his back pocket, as he condemns Russia as the sole author of the catastrophic war in Ukraine, without mentioning the vital context that he has so vividly explained over the past 30 years.

In his memoir The Back Channel, published in 2019, Burns confirmed that, in 1990, Secretary of State James Baker had indeed assured Mikhail Gorbachev that there would be no expansion of the NATO alliance or forces “one inch to the east” of the borders of a reunified Germany. Burns wrote that, even though the pledge was never formalized and was made before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russians took Baker at his word and felt betrayed by NATO enlargement in the years that followed.

In the current environment of rigid pro-war, anti-Russian orthodoxy, if Bill Burns publicly voiced some of the concerns he expressed earlier in his career, he might be ostracized, or even fired, as a Putin apologist.

When he was political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1995, Burns reported that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” When in the late 1990s President Bill Clinton’s administration moved to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO, Burns called the decision premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst. “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage, a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades,” he wrote.

After serving various posts in the Middle East, including ambassador to Jordan, in 2005 Burns finally got the job he had been eyeing for years: U.S. ambassador to Russia. From thorny trade issues to the conflict in Kosovo and missile defense disputes, he had his hands full. But the issue of NATO expansion was a source of constant friction.

It came to a head in 2008, when officials in the Bush administration were pushing to extend a NATO invitation to Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest NATO Summit. Burns tried to head it off. Two months before the summit, he penned a no-holds-barred email to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, parts of which he quoted in his book.

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests,” Burns wrote. “At this stage, a MAP [Membership Action Plan] offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze…. It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.”

In addition to this personal email, he wrote a meticulous 12-point official cable to Secretary Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, which only came to light thanks to a WikiLeaks diplomatic cable dump in 2010.

Dated February 1, 2008, the memo’s subject line, all caps, could not have been more clear: NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES.

In no uncertain terms, Burns conveyed the intense opposition from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other senior officials, stressing that Russia would view further NATO eastward expansion as a potential military threat. He said that NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, was “an emotional and neuralgic” issue but also a strategic policy issue.

“Not only does Russia perceive encirclement and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene—a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”

Six years later, the U.S.-supported Maidan uprising provided the final trigger for the civil war that Russian experts had predicted.

Burns quoted Lavrov as saying that, while countries were free to make their own decisions about their security and which political-military structures to join, they needed to keep in mind the impact on their neighbors, and that Russia and Ukraine were bound by bilateral obligations set forth in the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, in which both parties undertook to “refrain from participation in or support of any actions capable of prejudicing the security of the other side.”

Burns said a Ukrainian move toward the Western sphere would hurt defense industry cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, including a number of factories where Russian weapons were made, and would have a negative impact on the thousands of Ukrainians living and working in Russia and vice versa. Burns quoted Aleksandr Konovalov, Director of the Institute for Strategic Assessment, predicting that this would become “a boiling cauldron of anger and resentment among the local population.”

Russian officials told Burns that NATO expansion would have repercussions throughout the region and into Central and Western Europe, and could even cause Russia to revisit its arms control agreements with the West.

In a rare personal meeting Burns had with Putin just before leaving his post as ambassador in 2008, Putin warned him that “no Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia. We would do all in our power to prevent it.”

A much better use of Burns’s expertise would be to shuttle back and forth to Moscow to help negotiate an end to this brutal and unwinnable war.

Despite all these warnings, the Bush administration plowed ahead at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest. Given objections from several key European countries, no date for membership was set, but NATO issued a provocative statement, saying “we agreed today that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO.”

Burns was not happy. “In many ways, Bucharest left us with the worst of both worlds—indulging the Ukrainians and Georgians in hopes of NATO membership on which we were unlikely to deliver, while reinforcing Putin’s sense that we were determined to pursue a course he saw as an existential threat,” he wrote.

While Ukraine still has hopes to formally enter NATO, Ukraine’s former defense minister Oleksii Reznikov says that Ukraine has already become a de facto member of the NATO alliance that receives NATO weapons, NATO training and all-round military and intelligence cooperation. 

  From Opinion | Is CIA Director Bill Burns a Biden Yes-Man, a Putin Apologist, or a Peacemaker? | Common Dreams

[seahawk]

Finally a fair assessment of the conflict by president Trump

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5151545-trump-ukraine-zelensky-war-russia/

[old_goat]

15 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

 

Vatnikism is never good for one's health. Just look what it did to @old_goat. Poor guy, worse condition than those people that can't discuss Russia-Ukraine without inserting Napoleon 3 times a sentence.

Yeah, says a deranged racist and pro-murderer... Then tell me, why didnt you join your nazi friends in azov? Surely they would gladly accept you in their ranks. But who cares. Take the L, ukraine lost this war.

A jew supporting these guys... hilarious at best

[Stuart Galbraith]

Can we please get back to the peace deal? We already have an open Ukraine thread for these kind of brickbat trading.

[Roman Alymov]

6 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Can we please get back to the peace deal? We already have an open Ukraine thread for these kind of brickbat trading.

What peace deal? Now we have Russian eite trying to negotiate conditional surrender under the terms they would try to sell to Russian population as victory, and US administration setting the scene to take all the benefits of this surrnder by sidelining Europeans (since US is in bad need for money, so no reasons to share the profits with EU)

[Mighty_Zuk]

2 hours ago, old_goat said:

Then tell me, why didnt you join your nazi friends in azov?

I'd rather do tech work, so Azov isn't a good option. I had nazi friends in the army though, so all's good.

[Stefan Kotsch]

2 hours ago, old_goat said:

A jew supporting these guys... hilarious at best

This picture is 10 years old.  When was the last presidential election? 😉

 

[Stefan Kotsch]

2 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

What peace deal? Now we have Russian eite trying to negotiate conditional surrender

Russia is already demanding Ukrainian territories that it has not yet occupied. Lavrov excludes any compromises. And so forth.

If the conditional surrender is, what conditions would Roman demand? 

[seahawk]

Unconditional surrender of the Ukraine, full denazification and integration into Russia.

[ink]

The US has thrown the Kurds under the bus multiple times since the end of the Cold War, and somehow everyone got over it. But if they betray the Ukrainians, will anybody ever forget that*?

 

* especially when considering whether to be a US ally or not.

[Roman Alymov]

31 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

Russia is already demanding Ukrainian territories that it has not yet occupied. Lavrov excludes any compromises. And so forth.

Official representatives of Russian Federation are willing to leave Russian cities like Kiev, Poltava, Kharkov, Odessa, Ekaterinoslav in the hands of some sort of separatists. In what way Kherson or Zaporozhye are more Russian than Odessa and Nikolaev? They were all founded in the same Russian Empire time, after this lands became safe from constant nomad threat. Why Kharkov is less Russian city then Belgorod? They were both of the same defence line against the same nomads. Kiev was second capital of Russia after Novgorod (later capital was moved to Vladimir and then Moscow). Any deal that is leaving Russians as devided nation, with South part of its historic centres out of Russia, is surrender.

[urbanoid]

On 2/14/2025 at 3:48 PM, LeeWalls said:

Seriously guys I have a real quandrary in my mind about this.

 

Russian pianists, composers, writers, artists, poets, etc. etc. but above all...WOMEN.. amazing!   Not "the"pinacle," but certainly "pinacles" of culture.   

 

Why and where does the feeling of inferiority come from?   Like U.S. black almost ?    Like they are some kind of special oppresed caste of whites kind of like blacks -- yet hey are among the cutest and most brilliant and talented of us all.   So where does this fatalistic, Muslim/black like atttude come from Roman?

You guys are GOOD-LOOKING (often), talented, smart, historically and poetically and musically gifted gang of whites, yet you go around acting like Shaka Zulu if he had discovered gunpowder before you did.

 

Why?

I'd say no real enlightenment period, its lack being a consequence of Mongol yoke during the medieval times.

Quote

Usually when Russians or others talk about the Russian state as the successor to the Mongol Golden Horde, they do so from the perspective of those who believe Moscow hasn’t but should escape from that “yoke” and become a modern state.  But there are exceptions, people who believe that Moscow deserves loyalty precisely because it hasn’t.

            An example of the former position is provided by Academician Yuri Pivovarov, a historian, who said on the “Kultura” channel of Russian television that “yes, we are heirs of the Golden Horde. Yes, to a large extent, contemporary Rus, Muscovite, then Petersburg, then Soviet and present-day is … an heir of the Golden Horde, although Kievan Rus was also*

      Such a state by virtue of its structure excludes “any ‘drift’ toward democracy,” he said, because it involves “the unbelievable concentration of power” in the hands of “one man.” This “Mongol type of power is one in which one man is everything and the rest are nothing,” Pivorvarov continued.

            Russian rulers have “willingly” adopted this “model” of rule even though they talk about “the liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke.” And as a result, “the culture of the Horde has put down deep roots in the Muscovite state.”

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/08/window-on-eurasia-turkic-peoples-should.html

Quote

The scientist was referring to the structure of the state apparatus, which excludes any “encrossment” in the direction of democracy.

“It was an incredible amount of power for one person ... Mongolian type of power, it is when one person – everyone, and the rest – nothing,” said Pivovarov.

The Mongolian version of the government denies any treaty, any convention, all cooperation and agreement between the two. The Mongolian government is exclusively the power of violence,” the academician said.

According to him, the Russian tsars willingly adopted this model of building the state apparatus. Pivovarov noted that, despite the liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the culture of the Horde took deep roots in the Moscow state. “The horde’s bet was transferred to the Kremlin,” the historian quoted the philosopher Georgy Fedotov, at the end of the story.

https://news.obozrevatel.com/society/62897-akademik-ran-nazval-rossiyu-naslednitsej-zolotoj-ordyi.htm

So it's not a race thing, as they are generally white, more of a fact that they got fucked in the head due to their history.

Edited February 19 by urbanoid

[Yama]

21 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Official representatives of Russian Federation are willing to leave Russian cities like Kiev, Poltava, Kharkov, Odessa, Ekaterinoslav in the hands of some sort of separatists. In what way Kherson or Zaporozhye are more Russian than Odessa and Nikolaev? They were all founded in the same Russian Empire time, after this lands became safe from constant nomad threat. Why Kharkov is less Russian city then Belgorod? They were both of the same defence line against the same nomads. Kiev was second capital of Russia after Novgorod (later capital was moved to Vladimir and then Moscow). Any deal that is leaving Russians as devided nation, with South part of its historic centres out of Russia, is surrender.

At that time, 'Finland' was just bunch of Estonian colonists living on other side of the sea. Nobody today is calling for 'Estonian city of Tampere' to be reintegrated into Great Viru. Why should be Russia treated any different? If we start backtracking 1000 year old ethnic ties and claims everywhere, whole world will become like Palestine.

[Stefan Kotsch]

33 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

In what way Kherson or Zaporozhye are more Russian than Odessa and Nikolaev?

But Odessa and Nikolaev are in Ukraine. An internationally recognized state. Since 1945 in the UN. For decades a republic within the USSR. With the constitutional right to leave the state union. The boundaries between Russia and Ukraine were fixed by Russia in a contract. With Putin's signature.

But Russia wipes all the contracts off the table. "The past can change. Only the future is secured."

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, seahawk said:

Unconditional surrender of the Ukraine, full denazification and integration into Russia.

Ah, why stop there. They once took Paris. Think big!

[Roman Alymov]

19 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

But Odessa and Nikolaev are in Ukraine. 

The same way as Kherson or Zaporozhye, so what?

20 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

But Odessa and Nikolaev are in Ukraine. An internationally recognized state. Since 1945 in the UN. For decades a republic within the USSR. With the constitutional right to leave the state union. 

USSR is gone - why can't "Ukraine" leave the same way? If it can't. then i want USSR, the country i was born, back (yes i know it was far from perfect  - but still WAY better then what we got now)

23 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

The boundaries between Russia and Ukraine were fixed by Russia in a contract. With Putin's signature.

First, so called "Big agreement" between RF iand UKR (taht fixed the border) was signed not by Putin but by Yeltsin, in 1997, with Kuchma signature from Ukr side. But it changes little - as i do not see in what way Putin's (or Yeltsin, or Obama, or Trump) signature is changing somethinng intro part of Holy Scripture. Do you remember Minsk agreements supervised by Western leaders, and ratified by UN? Now we know they were just a trick. Or Iran deal - it is gone. No reason for me to consider Putin's signature on something as God's own hand touch.

[Stefan Kotsch]

20 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

USSR is gone - why can't "Ukraine" leave the same way?

That is exactly the problem of Russia and the cause of the war. The Soviet Union itself saw itself as Russia with an additional colonial area. And that continues in today's Russia.
They are your imperial phantom pain. 

Edited February 19 by Stefan Kotsch

[MiGG0]

1 hour ago, Yama said:

At that time, 'Finland' was just bunch of Estonian colonists living on other side of the sea. Nobody today is calling for 'Estonian city of Tampere' to be reintegrated into Great Viru. Why should be Russia treated any different? If we start backtracking 1000 year old ethnic ties and claims everywhere, whole world will become like Palestine.

Current "Finns" (people living inside of current Finlands borders) are not just Estonian colonists, but consist of many historical tribes like Tavastians, Savonians, the Sami People, Karelians, etc.

That said, using Romans logic lake Lagoda area should belong finns also as it is traditional "Karelian" land and Finns should just make Karelian tribe whole again... also Ingrians. We cannot forget those aswell and should be incorporate to "greater Finland" also, 

Edited February 19 by MiGG0

[Roman Alymov]

9 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

That is exactly the problem of Russia and the cause of the war. The Soviet Union itself saw itself as Russia with an additional colonial area. They are your imperial phantom pain.

Actually, not. More over, Soviet Union was founded as strictly anti-Russian state (as "Russian nationalism" was considwered by Bolshevik leadership to be main threat for this new state, that was supposed to be temporary refuge area area before "real revolution" in advanced industrial countries of the West). But as the time went by, and especially when WWII hardships came, even this Bolshevik leadership was forced to slightly ease the grip on Russians , to ensure own survival. But it was never completely removed, and the Russians stayed the most oppressed nation of USSR till the very end of it. Still, Russian grassroots were considering this oppressive state to be of their own (the same way as Russian Empire, that was alsoi not exactly kind and was ruled by ethnic Germans and french-speaking elite that was treating grassroots slightly better then cattle, still was supported and defended by this grassroots as "our state"). It is historical norm for Russians since at least XVII century to hate own Government - and still defend the sate even at the price of own life. See the story of Azov siege for reference.

[Roman Alymov]

1 hour ago, Yama said:

At that time, 'Finland' was just bunch of Estonian colonists living on other side of the sea. Nobody today is calling for 'Estonian city of Tampere' to be reintegrated into Great Viru. Why should be Russia treated any different? If we start backtracking 1000 year old ethnic ties and claims everywhere, whole world will become like Palestine.

Actually, out of four tribes that founded what later became Russia, two were Finno-Ugric/Baltic, so one could safely consider Russia as "real Estonia" across 11 timezones, while Estonia to be just bunch of people whose prospects were ruined by centuries of German landlords domination.  Sort of Gaza strip on Baltics, unlucky part of big Arab land separated from mainland by bunch of foreigners from across the sea....

[Stefan Kotsch]

15 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Actually, not. More over, Soviet Union was founded as strictly anti-Russian state

I see the old Soviet 'Nomenklatura' and its direct children. And the result is war. Only war and unfriendly subordinate of the neighbors under the Kremlin. That is Russian imperialism.

Edited February 19 by Stefan Kotsch

[Roman Alymov]

6 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

I see the old Soviet 'Nomenklatura' and its direct children. And the result is war. Only war and unfriendly subordinate of the neighbors under the Kremlin. That is Russian imperialism.

I'm sorry but you are falling into Stuart's mistake of using the word you do not fully understand the meaning of. Do you understand that first amd second Presidents of Ukraine were very much Nomenklatura, and that Poroshenko and Zelensky are "direct children" of "nomenklatura" (members of Soviet rulling elite, in this cases "second tier" of it), while for example Putin and Lukashenko are both from Soviet "underclass"?  Another example, current President of AZ Aliev is the son of not just "Nomenklatura" but very top one, "tier zero" (his father was both the cairman of Soviet AZ Communist party and head of local KGB), educated in most elite univercity of USSR (usually reserved for "nomenklatura" children, except few "underclass" who got there almost by miracle). All Central Asia "independent states" were founded by local Nomenklatura (for example, Nazarbayev was former Communist boss of Soviet Kazakhstan). 

     Yes the result is war - but this war is posponed result of USSR breakup. Back in 1991, people were too shoked by what happened and active hostilities only errupted in few places that were actually unstable even before USSR (like AM/AZ or Georgia vs. Abkhaz and Ossetians). The rest of giant country was still living "by inertia", as if nothing happened  - Kharkov and Belgorod were, for example, de-facto staying the same urban aglomeratioin....