Russia says it cannot accept US peace plan for Ukraine ‘in its current form’ – The Guardian

The Russian Government explained that it expects more for a peace agreement. The US offer is insufficent.  This is what can be understood from the statement of the high ranking Russian negotiator Mr Rybakov. In particular, Russia, for a peace agreement, expects that the root causes of the Ukrainian conflict shall be eradicated.

Nevertheless, a ceasefire shall be possible, partially for sure, but in total under conditions set by the Russians. Russia would expect, during the ceasefire, no military or intelligence support of Ukraine to be provided by the Western powers, including the US.

It becomes clearer, also after the undisputed NYT article was published this Sunday, that the Ukrainian army is a prolongation of the US with support from European countries and that the US is guiding all activities on the battlefield. Therefore, it may not be correct to say that it is only a proxy war, but rather it is a direct confrontation between the US and Russia. Luckily, this conflict is still limited to Ukraine and the number of US/European soldiers directly involved is small. Therefore, it is correct that the US, as the directly involved and leading Western war party, is exclusively negotiating a ceasefire and peace deal with Russia – under exclusion of European states and also without Ukraine’s current leadership.

Donald Trump has acknowledged the fact that Russia has all the cards in its hands, meaning that Russia has prevailed on the battlefield and is economically strong enough to resist Western sanctions, and that Ukraine is steering towards collapse. Trump is willing to give up certain positions. He knows that the Biden Administration made a big mess out of the Ukrainian conflict and that some European leaders are on the same messy track. The Europeans still seems to hope for a victory against Russia. The corrupt leadership of Ukraine may follow the most profitable and life saving options for them, sometimes siding with Europe.

The current situation is difficult to resolve and none of the parties wants a nuclear escalation. At the same time, some of the European countries are suffering economically as much as Russia does while Europe as a whole is militarily weak. Still the UK and France are nuclear powers, but are they willing to start a nuclear war? For what? For a geostratigic amelioration of Europe’s power based on NATO?

Europe today feels that Project Ukraine, the forced NATO eastward expansion, was a failure. Russia has resisted and became militarily more powerful. Europe starts to feel threatened, also as the US reasonably would limit their engagement in case Europe and Russia would be directly in conflict. As consequence, Europe has decided to increase military spending dramatically. But the understanding and the will, and as well the motivation of the European people to raise arms against Russia is rather inexisting or low. The EU and the European leaders will need to walk a long way to convince their people.

The actual efforts of the Trump Administration to reach a larger ceasefire by very small steps leading towards peace are disturbed majorly by the Ukrainian side, obviously instigated by some European leaders. Evidently, the energy truce has been broken by Ukraine and not by Russia. Of course, the Russian side continues its operations outside of the partial ceasefire restrictions, but with increasing success. It will be necessary, to stop the war, to accept the most of Russia’s demands – otherwise, Russia will proceed as before, ready to follow any escalation, with terrible consequences for Ukraine and eventually also for Europe.