The conflict between Ukraine and Russia has been going on for damn near 3 years. The US and NATO has done everything it can to keep the conflict going but now there will soon be a new president that has a desire for the war to end.
My guess this bold statement by Zelensky has something to do with our past election.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has conceded that Ukraine does not have the ability to drive Russian forces out of the territory Russia has captured since the 2022 invasion, as well as Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014.
“We cannot give up our territories. The Ukrainian constitution forbids us to do so. De facto, these territories are now controlled by the Russians. We do not have the strength to recover them,” Zelensky told the French newspaper Le Parisien.
“We can only count on diplomatic pressure from the international community to force Putin to sit down at the negotiating table,” the Ukrainian leader added.
Zelensky has long maintained that his war goals include driving Russian troops out of Russian-controlled Ukraine, which includes about 80% of the eastern Donbas region and parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. A “peace formula” pushed by Zelensky called for a full Russian withdrawal before peace talks could even happen.
A potential peace deal that was on the table in March and April of 2022 would have involved a Russian withdrawal from the territory it had captured following the invasion in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. But the deal was discouraged by the US and its allies and fell apart. Later that year, Moscow formally annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, and it now considers all of the oblasts, even the Ukrainian-controlled areas, a part of Russia.
Back in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out Moscow’s conditions for peace, which included a Ukrainian withdrawal from the oblasts he considers part of Russia.
(antiwar.com)
Let’s say this comes to be how will the Ukrainian people react to the knowledge that this conflict could have ended much earlier and spared all those lives and destruction?
After months of promoting Ukraine’s excursion into Russia….things have changed….
The Joe Biden administration believes that Ukrainian forces are on the verge of a total loss in Russia’s Kursk Oblast and is now advising Kiev to pull its troops back. Reporting on Kiev’s losses in Kursk, the AP reports the Ukrainian forces have become “demoralized.”
In August, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops stormed across the Russian border and seized a large swath of lightly defended territory in the Kursk Oblast. Since then, Moscow has slowly won back over half the territory. Now, the White House says Ukraine must abandon its foothold in Russia before its troops become encircled.
Discussing the situation facing Ukrainian forces in Kursk, one US official told Bloomberg, “it was a question of time whether Russian forces could envelop it, creating a dilemma for Ukrainian forces to either retreat or surrender.”
Two officials confirmed to the outlet that the White House believes that the Kremlin is now pushing into the Kursk battlefield, and Ukrainian forces will be defeated within months. This assessment has the White House telling Kiev to pull its remaining forces out of Russia.
The strategy behind the Kursk offensive was always in question. Many of the proponents of the attack argued it would give Kiev additional bargaining chips at the negotiating table. However, it now appears Ukraine will lose the territory before talks begin.
This situation will be interesting to see how the US will handle this and the reaction of the Ukrainian people.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Russian losses are still huge, but they have the larger population to absorb them, and also mercenaries and North Koreans to use as replacements. Ukriane plays down its losses, but they are now so high that recruiting teams are literally kidnapping men off the streets and forcing them into the army. Neither side can win decisively, in my opinion, and sooner or later Zelensky is going to be asked to show where all the billions of dollars have been spent. I doubt Trump and Musk will keep giving him the money after January.
Best wishes, Pete.
You know I will be watching this closely….all the rhetoric from Trump just may have been chest thumping. chuq
It’s such a tremendous waste, I hate to see it go on.
I agree….a waste to people and money to accomplish something that could have been done a year or so ago. chuq
Why does anyone believe that a lasting peace will occur ? Ceding any territory to Russia will never satisfy Putin’s geographic lust. Will the loss of equipment and death of soldiers ever wear out his ability to continue ? Does any Russian believe that Putin’s war is against Nazism and that he is their savior ?
If the Donbas stays with Ukraine it will never be at peace….NO leader gives a fig about the soldiers just how they appear to the living….chuq