AND HE’S TRYING TO PREVENT THE MILITARISATION OF THE EU
Thanks to the wise diplomatic words of Biden at the NATO summit thwarting Putin’s plan to escalate with chemical weapons or worse and showing outside the summit very undiplomatically that he’s had it with Putin, this has either by design or per hap chance clearly worked. Until this point, the danger of a de-escalating nuclear strike, which Putin no doubt had planned for from the start, has become clear to Putin that this won’t work. Militarily Putin is at the end of his tether. That too makes Putin uncertain.
His own position is under great threat. The more so having have Biden speak out words to that effect. The Kremlin is a black box to everyone even to Putin.
The new okay by Putin with Ukraine being a neutral non-NATO EU country akin to Sweden and Austria is a way out when Ukraine would accept that Putin “gets” or better ‘liberates’ the Donbas and a route to Crimea.
Ukraine is also reaching the end of preferred weapons. The stockpiles of NATO aren’t limitless and how quickly production of these weapons can ramp up to meet demand is the question.
As I stated from the beginning the first casualty in war is the plan. And no one and clearly not even Putin knew for certain what would happen. The clown in the eyes of Putin stood firm and didn’t flee, as did his army stand firm. Western man-portable weapon systems wreaked havoc amongst Russian armored vehicles. These results were in part possible due to the excellent intell provided by western surveillance systems. This was against a Russian army that performed way more bad than anyone expected. Russian commanders were forced to use cell phones via the Ukrainian providers. And thus being able to be picked off by snipers. A complete logistical nightmare. Coupled with bad tactics. Resorting to blunt medieval slogging match tactics via the bashing of towns.
The elephant in the room is, however, when Putin using Stalinistic methods remains in power everyone knows that you can’t make a deal with this mobster. In a year or two, he’ll attack again.
To what end do we wish to use the sanctions?
The West would be wise to advise Erdogan, Zelenski, and Putin to have the latter including his KGB inner circle a way out via a golden bridge. That must entail a guaranteed immunity from all persecution of Putin and his gang of former KGB mobsters, provided they relinquish their hold on power. It’s very important to explain that the reason for us to keep that pledge is that this legal “button” would otherwise no longer work in the future. The proven to work historic solution is to make Putin Tsar yet as a modern monarch.
The trade-off is that the Donbas and landbridge to Crimea including Crimea should become a separate country under the protection of UN-mandated soldiers. Putin can claim to have successfully liberated it. And Zelenski knows they are still free, for not Russian.
Furthermore, a guarantee is essential that no future Russian president can maneuver into a position of only being surrounded by yesmen. Make a New Senate test part of the deal.
The problem with the latter is, that it’s taboo. Our leaders who are in power don’t want that either, immediately grasping that it will backfire on them as well. As long as the people don’t grasp this essential point being the reason our own system doesn’t work either, conflict and wars will remain. Until the inevitable WW3.
Via an enormous amount of luck, the West has blundered into a possible way out. Yet, it’s still a highly volatile situation.
We need to plug the holes in the nuclear umbrella of Europe and get our European military forces back into shape. Had they been so from the start Putin wouldn’t even of tried to grab Crimea in the first place.
Ultimately real peace is only possible when every human being in the world has a guaranteed decent income and is not pestered. Otherwise mounting tensions will in the long run lead to the thermodynamics of war as described by Dr. Ingo Piepers.
Overstressed people act strange. That’s normal but not desirable. Especially not when playing with nukes. Murphy’s law is very unforgiving.
The longer this shit in Ukraine lingers on or worse, the greater the chances of it really spiraling even further out of control.
A positive point out of all this is the clear unsuspected way the West has united with the harsh sanctions. This I guess will have the desired effect on Xi and his plans with Taiwan. Yet, that power struggle behind the scenes in China is even more of a black box than the Kremlin.