Tag: Russia

Is He A Russian Asset?

This post is NOT an endorsement of this ever trending meme.

Let me say here and now that I am not saying he is only that some things that are being done could lead people into believing this conspiracy.

One of my favorite movies is the original “Manchurian Candidate”….and when I saw this article and all the memes going around about Trump I had to include it in my post….

Almost overnight, Washington under Trump has turned against its post-war Western allies, threatened to end Nato, halted aid to Ukraine and publicly humiliated its leader, adopted the Russian version of the cause of the war, stopped the Pentagon from operating psy and cyber ops against Russia, and started talks to end US sanctions and to relaunch Nord Stream pipelines moving natural gas between Russia and Europe.

Whether Trump is a card-carrying Russian agent, an asset or merely a useful idiot is immaterial. The end result is that he is threatening to end the whole transatlantic alliance that has roughly defined what we call “the West” since 1945, and potentially realigning the United States with Russia. This may not be as shocking as many people seem to think.

Let’s not forget that the two countries were allies during the second world war. And shortly after their historic rapprochement with Mao’s China, Henry Kissinger told Richard Nixon that in the decades ahead, the US might have to realign with Russia to balance geopolitical power against a resurgent China. Now I am not criticising or applauding any of these developments, but merely observing with a great deal of trepidation and also some amusement.

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3301172/donald-trump-real-life-manchurian-candidate

But I will admit that some of the actions taken by the Trump Administration is somewhat suspect.

Trump’s War Department has been told to stand down….

Russia has been pretty happy with the United States lately, and the latest news out of the Pentagon will likely continue that streak. US officials tell CBS News that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has issued an order to US Cyber Command to suspend planning against Russia for now, including any offensive digital initiatives. It’s not clear what spurred the directive, and the New York Times notes that the “precise scope and duration of the Defense Department order is not clear, as the line between offensive and defensive cyberoperations is often a blurry one.”

But the paper adds that Hegseth’s move is a “huge gamble” for the Trump administration, with US officials warning that Russia continues to try to infiltrate US networks, including via ramped-up ransomware attacks. “The order could derail some of the command’s most high-profile missions involving a top US digital adversary, including in Ukraine,” the Record notes. On Sunday, national security adviser Mike Waltz told CNN’s State of the Union that he’d been previously unaware of Hegseth’s order, but he insisted that “there will be all kinds of carrots and sticks to get this war [in Ukraine] to an end,” per CBS.

Why then the order?

Plus Russia is smiling ear to ear on the dust up between Trump and Zelenskyy….made Putin happy….

Now those Ukrainian refugees are about to lose their status here under Trump….

Under the Biden administration, more than 1.8 million migrants from various nations were allowed into the US via temporary humanitarian parole programs. Now, the newest White House occupants seem further intent on undoing that initiative: A senior Trump official and three other sources tell Reuters that the Trump administration plans to yank legal status for 240,000 Ukrainian refugees who fled the Russian invasion to come to the US, with an internal email from Immigration and Customs Enforcement showing those refugees could then be possibly fast-tracked for deportation.

The Telegraph calls the anticipated move, which could come as soon as April, an “extraordinary reversal” of President Biden’s open arms to refugees from the war-torn country. The report comes amid increasing tensions between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which worsened last week during Zelensky’s visit to the White House to discuss a peace plan involving Ukraine and Russia. Reuters notes, however, that this planned move on the refugees was in the works before Friday’s tense meeting, and that it’s just part of Trump’s desire to take away legal status from the full range of immigrants who came into the US under the Biden parole programs.

That includes 70,000 Afghans here after fleeing the Taliban, as well as 530,000 or so Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans; the latter group could see their legal status pulled as soon as this month, say Reuters’ sources. During his campaign, Trump had vowed to undo the programs, saying they crossed the boundaries of US law. The Kyiv Independent notes that about 5.2 million Ukrainians have taken shelter abroad, most settling in countries in the EU, as the war in Ukraine wages on. A Homeland Security official tells Reuters that the department has no comment at this time. The White House didn’t respond to the news agency’s request for comment.

Sorry but this sound like he has something special going on with Russia.

But the meme that has been flying around social media that in 1987 Trump was recruited by the KGB….

In the last few days, several U.S. media outlets have been reporting that three former KGB agents of the old Soviet Union now allege that it began grooming Donald Trump as their deceived asset in the 1980s. The KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), established in 1954, thus near the beginning of the Cold War, was the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence and domestic security agency. (Of course, those Communists tried to do that with other people.)

These former KGB agents claim this happened mostly for two reasons: (1) Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana, was a modeling immigrant from Czechoslovakia, an Eastern European nation then a satellite of the Soviet Union, and (2) Donald’s father Fred was a very successful real estate tycoon in the greater New York City area. Then, according to these former agents, the KGB learned from its data gathered on Donald that he is a classic narcissist susceptible to flattery. That’s what the Soviets, and later, the Russians, seized upon when Donald was trying to build a big Trump hotel in Moscow. By various means they impacted Donald to favor Russia, hate NATO, and question the USA’s opposition to Russia.

The Hill reported last Wednesday (“Was 40-year old Trump recruited by the KGB?“), “The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed in a Facebook post that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987, when the 40-year-old real-estate mogul first visited Moscow.” Mussayev provides no documentary evidence” because “he alleged that Trump’s file is in Vladimir Putin’s hands.”

The Hill further reports, “Several years ago, Yuri Shvets, a former KGB major now resident in Washington, D.C., served as one of the key sources for Craig Unger’s best-selling book, American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery.”

The Hill continues, “Just after Mussayev made his claim, another ex-KGB officer living in France, Sergei Zhyrnov, categorically endorsed the allegations in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist. According to Zhyrnov, Trump would have been surrounded 24/7 by KGB operatives, including everyone from his cab driver to the maid servicing his hotel room. Zhyrnov said that Trump’s every move would have been recorded and documented, and that he could have been either caught in a “honey trap” (“All foreign-currency prostitutes were KGB — one hundred percent,” he said) or perhaps recorded bribing Moscow city officials in order to promote his idea of building a hotel in the Soviet capital.”

(patheos.com)

Again please do not assume that I believe any of these accusations all I am doing is pointing out there is some evidence that could lead one into the mind set.

If you have a point make it without going too damn nuts.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trumpian Ignorance Of International Affairs

I have been saying this person is a ninny for at least a decade….but he fires off his mouth before his brain is loaded….his most recent stupidity came when talking about Ukraine….

President Trump on Tuesday appeared to blame Ukraine for starting its war with Russia, despite the fact that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Responding to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s anger that Ukraine was not invited to Tuesday’s US-Russia talks, and his assertion that Ukraine won’t agree to any peace deal it wasn’t a part of negotiating, Trump said, per CNN:

  • “I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going well. But today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.”

Trump also falsely claimed Zelensky has just a 4% approval rating, Axios reports. As for the supposed “deal” Ukraine could have made, Trump said, per the BBC, that it “would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land—and no people would have (been) killed, and no city would have been demolished.” He said Russia wants “to stop the savage barbarianism.” As for whether Ukraine is an equal member of peace negotiations, he wouldn’t answer the question directly, the Hill reports, but only said, “Their people are being killed, and I think they have to make peace. I said that was not a good war to go into, and I think they have to make peace. That’s what I think.”

His lack of knowledge is troubling and a bit clown-like.

How can anyone with half a brain take this babbling buffoon seriously?

Then there is wannabe dictator calling someone a dictator….(god I love this stuff)….

The war of words is heating up between Donald the Orange and Ukraine’s Zelensky….Trump’s newest attack is a personal one….

President Trump doubled down on his attacks on Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, a day after he blamed Ukraine for starting a war that began with Russia’s invasion. In a Truth Social post, Trump accused Zelensky of talking the US into spending $350 billion “to go into a War that couldn’t be won.” Trump called Zelensky a “Dictator without Elections” and said he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.” The president described the war as one that Zelensky, “without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Politico reports.

“He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle,'” Trump said of Zelensky. Earlier Wednesday, Zelensky pushed back against Trump’s remarks about Ukraine starting the war, saying the president is in a “disinformation bubble” influenced by Russia. Vladimir Putin has called for Ukraine to hold elections, which are not allowed during wartime under Ukrainian law, the Wall Street Journal reports.”

This situation is getting interesting but calling Zelensky a dictator is pot calling the kettle black.

Trump will keep up the pressure or at least the verbal pressure for as long as possible….

President Donald Trump continued to attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, asserting in a social media post that the U.S. was duped into spending billions to help Ukraine defend itself following Russia’s 2022 invasion — and himself seemingly threatening the country’s existence.

“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/19/trump-attacks-zelenskyy-as-a-dictator-without-elections-who-duped-us-00204881

I love it a moderately successful business man and calling Z-Man a modestly successful comedian….who writes his stuff?

Where will this battle go from here?

More words or will someone find some action to be had?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine Peace Talks

Ukraine news and the Little Marco show.

It is more talks for a ceasefire that could turn into something good….if you believe that then I think you are delusional….

The US and Russia to meet and discuss the conflict in Ukraine….

Top Trump administration officials are set to travel to Saudi Arabia next week to hold talks with Russian officials to discuss bringing the war in Ukraine to an end, multiple media outlets reported on Sunday.

The delegation is expected to include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy.

Rubio spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in a phone call on Saturday, following up on President Trump’s recent call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Secretary re-affirmed President Trump’s commitment to finding an end to the conflict in Ukraine. In addition, they discussed the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues,” the State Department said in a readout of the Rubio-Lavrov call.

Ukrainian officials said they were not invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview that aired Sunday that he will “never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine” if Ukrainian officials don’t participate in the negotiations.

While it’s still unclear how the war will end, the Trump administration’s policy toward Russia is a dramatic shift from the Biden administration. After Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden refused to speak with Putin despite acknowledging the risk of nuclear was at its highest point at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also refused to engage in any meaningful diplomacy with Lavrov, holding only brief conversations with him about prisoner exchanges after the invasion.

(antiwar.com)

Say what?

The US and Russia to meet to discuss Ukraine?

Not a fan of this conflict but would it not be good idea to include the country most effected….in this case Ukraine?

I have a problem excluding the very nation that is dealing with the ravishes of war.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz discussed some of the core issues for Donald Trump in the upcoming talks on ending the war in Ukraine. He did not confirm that Ukraine would be involved in the talks. 

On Fox News Sunday, Waltz explained, “Number one, it has to be a permanent end to the war, not a temporary end to the war. Number two, this can’t be ended on the battlefield. This has turned into a World War I-style meat grinder of human beings.” He continued, “Number three, I talked about how the structure of our aid has to change. Then number four, we’re talking about economic integration going forward as the best arbiter of peace.”

(libertarian institute.org)

Anyone that has been interested in the war and following the progress….can they see Ukraine agreeing to any of this?

Of course not.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Ukraine will “not recognize” upcoming talks between the US and Russia and denied that his country was invited to participate.

“Ukraine will not accept. Ukraine knew nothing about this. And Ukraine regards any negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine as having no results,” Zelensky told reporters while visiting the UAE.

…

Zelensky denied claims from US officials that Ukraine was invited. “Ukraine will not take part in the negotiations. Ukraine did not know they were planned. And the visit to the region was planned long before the US decided to meet Russia there,” he said.

…

Zelensky has said that European countries should be involved in the talks, but that idea has been rejected by both the US and Russia. Lavrov said Monday that most European leaders aren’t interested in peace.

(antiwar.com)

Just another waste of time and energy.

Ukraine needs a seat at this ‘shit show’

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine, What Say You?

Back when this whole Ukraine/Russia debacle started many of us, including myself, called for there to be some sort of ceasefire to avoid all the death and destruction of a beautiful country…but right on cue the US put the whammy on any such occurrence.

Most of the war hawks did not like the idea that the East of Ukraine would remain in Russian hands….and then Trump came to town and proposed his brand of diplomacy which is now the War Department’s stand as well.

And now we know where the Trump Admin is coming from…..Howdy Doody tries to make it clear….

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday dismissed the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine as part of a peace deal with Russia and said the goal to restore Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders was “unrealistic.”

Hegseth made the comments while addressing a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels. “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome for a negotiated settlement,” he said.

Hegseth said the Trump administration’s goal is to end the war through diplomacy, which he said must start “by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has been a war goal of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, although there have been signs in recent months that he’s accepted that’s unrealistic. But he is still calling for strong security guarantees from the US that involve the deployment of troops, which Hegseth also dismissed.

“Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said.

“There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” Hegseth added.

…

Hegseth said that the US wanted to reduce involvement in Ukraine to focus on the border and a military buildup in the Asia Pacific aimed at China and claimed Beijing was a threat to the US homeland.

“The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must, and we are focusing on the security of our own borders. We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland,” he said.

(antiwar.com)

An ambitious plan but we will see just how serious these people are when the arms industry kicks in to high gear.

For all those that we against the earlier ceasefire conditions…..I ask….whay say you now?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Will This End The War?

On the campaign trail Trump promised that he would end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and now we have a ‘leaked’ Trump plan to do just that….

Now this is a ‘leaked’ peace proposal from the Trump side and has not been authenticated…..but for the sake of argument I post it….

The Ukrainian news outlet Strana has published leaked details of President Trump’s alleged plan to end the war in Ukraine in 100 days.

According to Newsweek, which said it couldn’t verify if the details were accurate, the plan starts with holding a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in late January or early February, followed by meetings with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February or March.

The leaked plan calls for a ceasefire to be declared by Easter, which falls on April 20. The truce would involve Ukraine withdrawing troops from Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Once the ceasefire comes into effect, a peace conference will begin hammering out the details of a lasting agreement. The plan calls for a deal to be reached by May 9.

Once the details of the agreement are released, Ukraine will be instructed to end martial law and mobilization. That would mean Zelensky could lose power since his presidential term expired in May 2024, and he used martial law as the justification for not holding new elections. The plan would require allowing parties who oppose continuing the war with Russia to run for office.

Some of the proposed ideas under the plan for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal include barring Ukraine from joining NATO, an agreement for Ukraine to join the EU by 2030, and the EU facilitating Ukraine’s construction. Ukraine would also be able to keep its military and continue receiving military aid from the US, which could be a non-starter for Moscow.

The proposal would also require Ukraine to cede the territory Russia has captured. Ukraine would have to “refuse military and diplomatic attempts to return the occupied territories” and “officially recognize the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over them.”

Zelensky’s office has denied that the peace plan is authentic, although other media reports have said that Trump tasked his envoy to the conflict, Keith Kellog, with ending the war within the first 100 days of the Trump administration. If the plan is legitimate, leaking it could have been an attempt to sabotage it from moving forward.

Trump has said he wants to speak with Putin, but the Kremlin said on Monday that it hasn’t heard anything from the US about setting up a potential call.

(antiwar.com)

Is this a way to end this thing?

If accurate I do not see this actually working as the conflict stands today……do you?

On a side note:  I agree that Biden should have to tell is what the Ukraine war was all about….

It is no longer easy to tell what the Ukraine War was for. Very early on, U.S. goals got grafted onto Ukrainian goals, and the hybrid braid became hard to disentangle. “This is a war that is in many ways… bigger than Ukraine,” the State Department announced in the first weeks of the war. But, whatever those goals, few of them remain: There will be no NATO membership for Ukraine, there will be no recovery of all of its territory, and there will be no weakening of Russia.

Former President Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do, as does Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky will need to explain to his exhausted nation why choosing the path of war over the path of diplomacy after the Istanbul talks in March and April of 2022 was worth the cost. At that time, what still seemed to be the Ukrainian goals—continued sovereignty and the withdrawal of Russian troops to pre-war boundaries—might have been met. Zelensky must explain why he succumbed to Western pressure to pursue wider ones.

He is going to have to explain why pursuing those wider goals was worth the loss of so much life, limb and land. And, if he is to survive politically and, perhaps, even physically, he is going to have to find someone to blame.

Biden Must Explain What the Ukraine War Was For

Probably got ever going to happen but those idiots in Congress have investigated many lame things….why not one more?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

It Was Never About The Win

We enter into a new (for lack of a better word) world Biden has left the building and Donald has arrived doing what he does best….make nothing into some sort of filet…..but that is for others who care to write about I want to write about Biden’s waste of taxpayers money (he will not be last)…..

The US pissed away billions on its support for Ukraine in its struggle with Russia….was Ukraine ever gonna win this conflict?

Nope!

It was never about a Ukraine win.

President Biden spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, but according to a report from Time Magazine, a Ukrainian victory was never his goal.

Throughout the nearly three-year proxy war, the Biden administration never set any clear goals and only repeated mantras, such as the promise to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Eric Green, who was on Biden’s National Security Council at the time of the invasion, told Time that the administration never gave any promises to help Ukraine take back the land Russian forces had captured.

“We were deliberately not talking about the territorial parameters,” Green said. “That was not going to be a success story ultimately. The more important objective was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.”

The report said Biden set three objectives for the war: ensure Ukraine would survive as a sovereign state, keep the US and its allies united, and avoid a direct war with Russia.

However, there was another goal not mentioned in the report: weakening Russia, something then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged back in April 2022 after his first trip to Ukraine during the war. Austin’s trip came after the US and its allies discouraged peace talks between Russia and Ukraine even though there was a deal on the table that could have led to a Russian withdrawal in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality.

On their way out, Biden administration officials claimed the proxy war was a success despite Ukraine’s lack of a path toward victory. “It’s unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” Green told Time. “Because there is so much suffering for Ukraine and so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.”

The Time report noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who defined victory as expelling Russian forces and taking Crimea, recently complained about Biden despite the massive amount of aid he provided.

“With all due respect to the United States and the administration,” Zelensky told podcast host Lex Fridman, “I don’t want the same situation like we had with Biden. I ask for sanctions now, please, and weapons now.”

(antiwar.com)

There you have it….it is what I have been saying for these many years….it is not about the win but rather keeping the CEOs in bonuses and stock prices high….

Let’s see how the kakistocracy handles this and other of our proxy wars….

I am not looking for much to be different.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Nukes In Space

Does anyone remember the movie Meteor starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood?

There was a huge meteor headed toward Earth and the USSR and the US had to combine their nukes in space to thwart an ELE.

Well that was fiction there were no nukes in space or so we are told…..but that just may not be the case….

A Russian spacecraft launched higher than most satellites has long had the Pentagon worried — and new revelations about what it contains have made those concerns all the greater.

Launched in February 2022 just a few weeks before Ukraine was invaded, Russia’s Cosmos 2553 spacecraft is nominally built to test out “newly developed onboard instruments and systems.” According to new reporting from the New York Times, however, the mysterious satellite system contains a “dummy warhead” — a precursor of what could come should the Russians decide to arm the craft for real.

As scary as the concept of a space nuke sounds, it wouldn’t necessarily harm life on Earth — unless you consider eliminating all satellites in its vicinity harm, in which case the people down on the planet below would be seriously screwed.

Back in 1962, the US military actually did detonate a nuclear weapon in space, though the damage from the electromagnetic pulse it emanated seems mostly to have been limited to streetlights dimming in Hawaii, which was below the test.

Scientists learned from that formerly-classified test that doing so was probably a pretty bad idea, and in 1967, both Russia and the United States signed the Outer Space Treaty to prevent, essentially, space warfare. In the years since, however, concerns have grown that Russia may violate the treaty — especially as more and more communications satellites began littering our planet’s orbit.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/russian-space-nuke-revelations

Because of the test in 1962 the Outer Space Treaty was born…..in case the reader is not up on this thingy…..

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967

The treaty was aimed at preventing the militarization of space but that has fallen by the wayside….with the US Space Force and now this Russian news things could get a bit testy in space.

How long before the US side steps the treaty and launches its nukes into space?

Or is it possible they are already out there?

Something else to worry about in the coming year.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Russia, What Went Wrong?

+++I start my infusion today and I do not know how it will go so this may be my only post for the day….sorry about that+++

In the mid-90s there was a lot of optimism that Russia would join the world with market economy and our wealthy would have new regions to hunt.

But something went wrong and instead we got Putin and his band of thugees.

While I was out there reading I found a declassified document that could answer some of the question being asked.

Once in a great while, a diplomatic memorandum—the outline of a proposed change in policy sent from a foreign service officer to his political masters back in Washington—has momentous impact. The most famous of these is George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” of February 1946, which urged “a long-term patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

…

Now a similarly long memo, written nearly 50 years later, in the early days of the post–Cold War era and post-Soviet Russia, raises questions about how the world today might be different if Bill Clinton had heeded it as much as Harry Truman heeded Kennan’s.

The newly discovered memo, written in March 1994 by Wayne Merry, chief of the U.S. Embassy’s internal politics division at the time, didn’t make the same impact as Kennan’s for two reasons. First, Merry did not go public. Second, unlike Kennan’s memo, Merry’s was at odds with U.S. policy and was ignored, then buried, and its author was blackballed, by the policymakers at the time. In fact, it was buried so deeply that it was declassified just last week as the result of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a private research firm at George Washington University.

Looking at it today, more than 30 years after the fact, it’s a remarkably prescient document that should prompt several lessons about how to run foreign policy.

Merry’s memo, titled “Whose Russia Is It Anyway: Toward a Policy of Benign Respect,” was written as Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s experiment with democracy and free-market economics was in heightened turmoil. The party of his prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, the architect of his economics policy, had recently lost an election—the result of popular discontent with the policy’s extreme inflation and displacement. Yeltsin mobilized tanks in downtown Moscow to put down an attempted putsch—launched for a variety of motives—in Russia’s Parliament. Yet, to the frustration of specialists in the U.S. Embassy, including Merry, many senior officials back in Washington saw Yeltsin as a still-strong figure and his “shock therapy” economics—which they had been pushing, along with a bevy of academic advisers, many of them from Harvard—as a success.

Merry stressed the urgent need for a course correction:

https://slate.com/_pages/cm51dbke8005qx9l0xtr1litr.html

It reads like ‘greed’ played a part in the rise of the Putin clan….maybe ambition should be tabled in favor of critical thinking….but that is not what big business pays the Congress to do….critically think.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukrainian Realization

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.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/white-house-tells-ukraine-to-pull-its-demoralized-forces-from-russia/

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”

More Ukraine News

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia and the whole NATO apparatus is not reported as it once was…..so it falls to me to keep the news flowing.

Now Ukraine is saying it is willing to cede some territory to Russia to end this long conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was willing to temporarily cede territory to Russia to bring an end to the war in exchange for NATO protection over Ukraine.

“If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under [the] NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” Zelensky told Sky News. “That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.”

Zelensky’s suggestion is almost certainly a non-starter for Russia since the invasion was launched to keep Ukraine out of NATO, but it does reflect a shift in his position. Zelensky previously maintained that his war goals included driving Russia out of all of the territory it has captured since February 2022, as well as Crimea.

In a recent conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to a speech he made earlier this year that outlines his conditions for peace, which include a Ukrainian withdrawal from all territory Russia has annexed, Ukrainian neutrality, and the lifting of all Western sanctions on Russia.

Ukrainian neutrality was Russia’s main demand during short-lived negotiations that took place in the early days of the invasion. Ukrainian and Russian officials held talks in March and April of 2022, but the negotiations were discouraged by the US and its allies.

In the interview with Sky News, Zelensky said Ukraine wouldn’t agree to a ceasefire without guarantees of NATO protection. “We need [NATO protection] very much, otherwise [Putin] will come back. Otherwise, how are we going to go to a ceasefire? So for us, it’s very dangerous,” he said.

While Zelensky and Putin’s terms are extremely far apart, the Ukrainian side could be forced to make more concessions if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his campaign promise to end the war and pressures Zelensky to negotiate.

(antiwar.com)

But I thought there was no way Ukraine would cede territory to Russia….if the US had applied pressure 2 years ago along these lines then maybe there would not have been so many deaths on both sides.

Is Zelensky just hedging his bets for 2025?

Recently the US has said that Ukraine should start drafting 18 year olds…..

The White House is pressuring Ukraine to increase the size of its military by lowering the minimum age of conscription from 25 to 18, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

A senior Biden administration official said the outgoing administration wants Ukraine to start drafting 18-year-olds to expand the current pool of fighting-age males. The pressure from the US comes as polling shows the majority of Ukrainians want peace talks with Russia to end the war.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently hinted that the US was pressuring Ukraine to expand conscription, saying Ukraine’s biggest problem in the war was the lack of manpower.

“Our view has been that there’s not one weapon system that makes a difference in this battle. It’s about manpower, and Ukraine needs to do more, in our view, to firm up its lines in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines,” Sullivan said on PBS News Hour last week.

The Biden administration’s push for Ukraine to draft younger men comes as it is doing everything it can to escalate the proxy war before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20. President Biden is seeking another $24 billion to spend on the conflict even though it’s clear there’s no path to a Ukrainian military victory.

(antiwar.com)

Has Ukraine lost that many young to this war…..or could it be the massive amounts of desertions.

Ukrainian soldiers refusing to report for duty or walking away from their front-line positions are becoming an increasing problem for Kiev. One Ukrainian lawmaker said that there have been as many as 200,000 desertions. 

Ukrainian officials and soldiers told the AP that “Facing every imaginable shortage, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, tired and bereft, have walked away from combat and front-line positions to slide into anonymity.” The report adds, “Entire units have abandoned their posts, leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses, according to military commanders and soldiers.”

Soldiers failing to report to their posts are a rapidly worsening problem for Kiev. In 2022, only 9,000 Ukrainians were prosecuted for desertion. That number increased to 24,000 in 2023. Ukrainian government data showed prosecutions skyrocketed to 50,000 during the first nine months of 2024. 

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/as-many-as-200000-ukrainian-soldiers-have-deserted/

But not to worry Biden made sure that Ukraine got another money dump before the end of his term….

The Biden administration on Monday announced a new $725 million weapons package for Ukraine, which includes anti-personnel mines, ammunition for the HIMARS rocket systems, and other equipment.

President Biden just recently approved the provision of anti-personnel mines for Ukraine, a step that goes against his own policy meant to limit the use of the indiscriminate weapon. In 2022, Biden re-implemented an Obama-era policy that prohibited the transfer and use of US anti-personnel mines outside of the Korean Peninsula.

Biden’s decision to send the mines has been condemned by arms control groups and many countries that are signatories to a treaty banning the weapon. The mines, which are designed to kill or maim people, have been banned by 164 countries under the Ottawa Treaty. The US and Russia are not signatories, but Ukraine is and has been in violation of the treaty.

(antiwar.com)

Treaty violation?  The US is famous for treaty violations….just ask a Native American.

That is all I have for now but I will continue to report the unreported news as I see it.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”