Even though the Russians have made clear that they are in an uncompromising mood about Ukraine, the US has been so thick about getting the message that the Russians have resorted to using a two by four. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have as their lead stories that the Russian have rejected the 30 day ceasefire scheme cooked up in Jeddah between the US and Ukraine as the way to get peace negotiations rolling. Mind you, this unofficial but really not so response may be a sign that Russia recognizes that it is dealing with an even more “gang that can’t shoot straight” bunch than the fabulously lightweight Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and does not see much point in coddling them. More on that angle in due course.
Here is what the much-broadcast “rejection” amounted to. The interviewee, Yuri Ushakov, is an aide to Putin and an adviser on the Ukraine negotiations. As you can see, he is senior enough to be an interlocutor to Mike Waltz:
Russia says it isn't interested in a temporary ceasefire but a permanent, long-term peaceful settlement with Ukraine. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/0Haf6xyHxM
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 13, 2025
Ushakov told the RT reporter that he told Waltz that the Russian position was no ceasefire. When he asked if his statement amounted to a Russian rejection, he demurred and said the two presidents would be talking. But Ushakov could have easily deflected the question had he wanted to or more importantly, had the Kremlin wanted to.
A similar fast-out-of-the-box reaction didn’t get as much play in the Western press:
⚡️ Temporary ceasefire is 'absolutely unacceptable' — Member of Russian Parliament’s Defense Committee Viktor Sobolev
In a personal statement, Sobolev says that such a truce would only 'play into the hands of Ukrainian fascists', allowing them to 'regroup and rearm' https://t.co/NBTbpbNoaD pic.twitter.com/7BXYOPVMdj
— RT (@RT_com) March 11, 2025
Notice Putin shortly after the US-Ukraine scheme was announced donned military fatigues during a visit to Kursk. Most readers know that Ukraine invaded Kursk, a Russian oblast, but didn’t get very far, and have been throwing men and material into Kursk as Russia has kept chewing away at their position. Hard-core military types have been upset that Russia did not dispatch the Kursk operation quickly, but I can see the logic of bleeding the Ukrainians there. Keeping a presence in Kursk became critical to Ukraine preserving appearances that it could keep up the fight against Russia, so they kept wasting soldiers and weapons to hold a strategically unimportant position.
Putin’s change in attire seems out of proportion to merely commemorating the imminent success of the clearing-Kursk operation (readers: did he ever suit up during the Chechen war?). So I put this in the category of yet-another over-the-top message to the very thick Americans. Some Americans took it that way:
🇷🇺 Putin in a military uniform?
❌ Guess he didn’t like the idea of a temporary ceasefire.
🇺🇦 UKRAINE IS FUCKED! pic.twitter.com/izyVLcueUN
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) March 12, 2025
Reader Safety First described the key points Putin made :
Putin, very, very uncharacteristically, donned a military field uniform, rolled down to the regional HQ in Kursk (Gerasimov was already there), and made a 5-minute on-camera statement, one of the two salient points of which is that he “strongly suggested” the military considers establishing a buffer zone around Russian borders after finishing clearing out the Kursk region. If that isn’t a signal to the Americans about any ceasefires, I do not know what is…
His second salient point, by the way, was to stress that any Ukrainians captured in the Kursk region were not actually POWs, but rather “terrorists”, i.e. persons who have violated Russia’s criminal anti-terrorism statutes.
Let’s return to Ushakov’s remarks. As indicated yesterday, I was highly confident the Russians would not entertain the US-Ukraine scheme, but I had assumed they would go through the diplomatic motions, of at least having a what I called a tea and cookies chat, and yet again restating Russia’s conditions before talks could begin. As readers pointed out in comments, Russia could also have gone for slow-walking to get expectations down: “We agreed in Riyadh that we needed to get the diplomatic machinery on both sides back in operation before we can entertain any proposal.”
So why a speedy and very public rebuff? One possibility is that it was important to reassure the Russian public that Putin was not going all wobbly in response to a US overtures, particularly after the important milestone of the Ukraine rout in Kursk.
But I can see at least two other motives. Ushakov pointed out that Putin and Trump will be talking. Getting the message out fast that the ceasefire was na ga happen would recalibrate Trump’s expectations for what he could accomplish in that talk. The alternative, that Trump was all pumped up on the mistaken belief that Putin would agree to the ceasefire, perhaps after wrangling some concessions from Trump, could result in an unpleasant conversation.
Another motive might be to discourage the US from attempting to engage in diplomacy via press release. Ushakov made his remark before Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff landed in Russia. In a recent talk on Nima’s Dialogue Works, John Helmer argued that Witkoff’s job was to talk business. I am dubious. Witkoff seems to be Trump’s favorite negotiator. He dispatched Witkoff to handle a diplomatic matter, that of browbeating Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire. If Witkoff was indeed traveling to Moscow to (along with other matters) to try to move the peace talks forward, he would find it embarrassing to have part of his agenda undercut before he landed on Russian TV.
The Financial Times write-up of the Ushakov remarks and other developments includes:
Russia’s rejection of the US proposal aligned with Putin’s hardline stance ahead of high-level talks later on Thursday in Moscow, where Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, has landed…
Ushakov said Witkoff, who spoke to Putin last month as the US began extraordinary attempts at a rapprochement with Russia, would not be the White House’s main envoy to Moscow.
The Russian adviser said Washington and Moscow had agreed that any future contacts would be “of a closed nature” and declined to name the envoy.
It could also be that the Russian side is even getting pissed and having to work to maintain its famous froideur. John Helmer, in the same talk with Nima, emphatically made the same point we did, that the US was siding with and backing Ukraine despite trying to pretend it was going to be a fair broker. He picked up that it included a demand based on ia debunked Ukraine propaganda claim: “…. return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.” He added that the US-Ukraine Joint Statement had it all backwards, in setting the objective as “negotiations toward an enduring peace that provides for Ukraine’s long-term security”. Putin has been talking since the 2007 Munich Security Conference about the West’s threat to Russian security, and the resulting need for a new European security architecture. This is yet more proof that the US pays no heed to Russian words or interests.
In his talk yesterday, Alexander Mercouris read the Joint Statement as indicating that the US and Ukraine would negotiate together with Russia. I don’t infer that, but if Mercouris has this right, this would be another show-stopper. The Ukrainians do not want peace. Or maybe this would not be so bad from the Russian vantage. I could see the Russians maneuvering with the Ukrainians to thwart any forward movement.
This raises a final big issue: it is extremely hard to negotiate with people who don’t know what they are doing, which is the Trump team and the Ukrainians in spades (remember that the Zelensky government is composed heavily of members of his old production team, which is why they are so good at PR and stunts and not much else). I’ve been in that position occasionally, and it is very hard to lead functionally incompetent people (as in they may be skilled at other matters, but not the task at hand), since you need to take charge without looking like you have done so. I can’t imagine either the Trump or Ukraine team to be tractable.
In the mean time, the Europeans are trying to escalate. From Axios:
Polish President Andrzej Duda has called on the U.S. to move some of its nuclear arsenal to Polish territory to deter potential future Russian aggression…
Duda told the Financial Times in an interview published Thursday that the U.S. could move nuclear weapons stored in Western Europe or the U.S. to Poland, and that he’d discussed the idea with U.S. envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.
Scholz is on his way out, but is still reaffirming the European commitment to prevent an end to the war, since on current trajectories, it will be on Russian terms:
Scholz said that Russia is striving to demilitarize Ukraine, but that this cannot be allowed.
He stressed that a strong army is "the most important guarantee of the country's security." pic.twitter.com/RSwPzaI0Mg— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) March 13, 2025
So despite the US and its mouthpieces saying the ball was in Russia’s court, it’s now back on the US side of the net. We’ll see what happens next.
The word “security” of Kiev’s Stalin drawn borders is same US offensive missile in Kiev.
Ceasefire would be Minsk III.
The battlefield will determine “security” outcomes, US is duplicitous
From an outsider view, US position, rather than duplicitous is basically incoherent. Wanting to impose conditions everywhere though unable to come to terms with the changing realities of the world. One day you have Rubio saying the world is no longer unipolar and the following day acting as if it is. The result is that diplomacy cannot work. Worse is Ukraine’s government which cannot discern between PR, war and diplomacy. Everything is PR. I read once this phrase here “The flip side of this, that everything is PR and thus cannot be trusted, is that everything communicates“, which implies that it is easy for the Russians manipulate the Ukrainians because they are always telegraphing their real intentions via PR.
Maybe Rubio is the problem and some of the other people surrounding Trump (yes you Jared)?
My takeaway FWIW is that Trump is ruled by vanity rather than greed or even power. And being the new Nixon goes to China (and maybe even going to China) would put him in the history books, big time. That doesn’t mean he knows what he is doing but it could mean he has an idea of where he is going. It’s still only March. There are years ahead for the situation to clarify.
Of course this rosy scenario seems way less certain re Israel. But let’s see what happens there as well. Maybe Trump will finally awaken the antiwar movement.
IMO.
I agree. Trump messaging is inconsistent.
Before Feb 28 Trump said things like we hear from Rubio and other neocons.
At the televised meltdown with Zelenski Trump said “you are losing”, “I don’t care for propaganda”, etc. Different from his statements earlier that week.
My main concern is world needs US and Russia using some level of routine communications at executive level. Stopping the US/UK/EU project to destroy Russia like Yugoslavia….. is secondary.
Russia is winning the operational scenario. On its terms.
The last time Putin wore camo is in 2022 during military exercises.
See 3:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlZJhIMXFmI
It could be a sign of a coming escalation.
The USA is losing control of world trade , countries have stopped using the dollar more wish to do so but are afraid of the tariffs and sanctions USA would impose , the way the USA intends to take a tighter grip on world trade is to tackle those that are easy such as their neighbours Canada and Mexico and the remainder of the middle east ,then those in the middle ground which are EU and UK and then the biggies one at a time Russia first then India then China , trouble ahead is that if the USA get this wrong Russia might find its BRICS partners getting involved , so far they have not but thats primarily be ause its still a so called “proxy” war played out in Ukraine , but that could change overnight and change unexpectedly considering the volotivitiy of the likes of Trump Zelensky Starmer Der Leyen.
Re BRICS partners:
Yes. The attitude of China and India (especially) were very important in the beginning of the SMO to defeat sanctions. One wonders what they (India especially) will do if the US begins to assert major pressure, like demanding they no longer buy Russian energy. We’ll see.
The US is already doing that major pressure thing.
It is just that after China told them to take a hike when the US expected China to harm itself without a quid pro they didn’t have to many options left. Then a some bright people realized the negative effects that completely stopping Russian energy would have on the world economy. So now they have settled on making it as painful and expensive as possible for Russia to export goods while trying to limit the amount of revenue generated by those exports.
But next to that they are still trying to coerce India and China into joining the group of nations that follow the US list of sanctions on Russia. It is a major reason that Putin keeps talking about wanting to negotiate since India and China expect Russia to end this was as soon as possible without capitulating to the West.
Wouldn’t the actually existing way for “Russia to end this as soon as possible without capitulating to the West” be/have been to unleash full military capacity with less regard for civilian casualties/world opinion? You, or ‘China and India’ are setting the bar too low. Also, both nations have been benefiting from cheaper oil the whole time, so (esp. in India’s case) I’m very dubious of these low key recurring rumblings about them ‘restraining’ Russia.
I think we’re seeing a significant amount of noise, which may or may not go anywhere. 8.5 hours of negotiation to produce that rather thin release seems excessive, so there may be things we haven’t heard about.
It’s also unclear whether they envision triangular talks or something more like shuttle diplomacy.
Time will tell!
” (remember that the Zelensky government is composed heavily of members of his old production team, which is why they are so good at PR and stunts and not much else)”
Thanks for putting this tidbit in. It’s the first time I’ve seen it (or the first time it stuck), and now a lot of things make more sense.
Anyway, the internet is awash in a meme called the Fell For It Again Award. It’s been getting a lot of use in the last year or two for this admin and the last.
FWIW, aleph, Alex Christoforou is one place you might have heard about Zelensky’s foreign minister being his former showrunner. I happen to think that their PR has mostly been lame, hamfisted 1980s era stuff, but then I’m an American apex consumer of media across 60 years.
Might be effective in most of the EU/worldwide.
When I first heard that the US & Ukraine had agreed on a cease fire I just about fell over laughing because it hadn’t included Russia. I’m now left wondering who sold this idea to the Trump team that this would be a good approach? Was this just intended to sidetrack the Trump team from actually having constructive negotiations or discussions about what needs to happen to end the conflict? I mean, if you even thought a cease fire might have been agreeable to Russia, I don’t see how that could have been a legitimate thought without including new elections within that cease fire window, otherwise why would Russia even give it the time of day to read.
This is just another cycle of the west ‘negotiating with itself’. I think there is an accidental truth in there: US and Ukraine have temporarily stopped fighting.
Much more literal in this case…
Media will say Putin does not want peace!
Propaganda stunt in Jeddah!
This is pretty much exactly how the State Department operated during the Gaza ceasefire. They kept proclaiming one even though the Israelis wouldn’t agree, then blamed Hamas even though they had accepted it. A similar tactical mindset seems to be prevailing with Ceasefires between Ukraine/Russia.
I think the State Department bellyfeels that Russians are some kind of northerly Palestinian.
Favorable factoids:
Keith Kellogg sidelined: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2025/03/11/what-happened-to-keith-kellogg-00223867
Ukraine out of ATACMS:
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-atacms-usa-military-aid-weapons-running-out-donald-trump-russia-peace-2043959
MSM finally admits Ukraine lost Kursk. Only interesting because imo the narrative has to reflect something roughly consistent with reality. Normies still think Ukraine is winning by ruining the Russian economy via inflation and in every battle because Russian meatwave tactics.
I don’t buy the brouhaha over Kellogg. Rubio and Waltz are senior to him. Them being sent says that the US felt the need to deploy representatives with authority, which Kellogg is not.
The second item is misleading. The US stopped shipping ATACMS mainly because they were a waste. Russia was downing pretty much all of them. And Russian sources point to past example where the US said it had stopped supplying certain weapons systems but in fact had not.
Thanks for this post. My first reaction is a personal reflection on a very bad boyfriend I dated a long, long, long time ago. Charming, funny, smart, attractive… and a jerk, (it took me a while to see that last bit). So, he’d be a jerk, I’d say “that’s it. goodbye.” Then sure as anything after a week or so he’d come wheedling back with the most charming excuses and sincere promises. Rinse and repeat a few times, until I finally figured out his game. Be gone, jerk! / ;)
For some reason the current US and EU treatment of Ukr and RU reminds me of that guy. ha.
Jerks.
That is the most lucid analogy about this war – as they say in the villages, “One that I could take to grandmother” – in the past three years and running!
That’s a great piece of writing. Hats off. Congratulations in equal measure with gratitude.
About that Root Cause thingy the Russians to their credit bring up. One might say the true root csuse of this conflict and so many others is The West and it’s seeming ingrained colonialist values. It might further be said that the only way to get rid of that root cause might be to get rid of The West. Forever.
Putin to Trump:
“Hmm, very interesting dead cat you have there. But his intestines are spilling out of his guts, and he’s starting to stink. Let’s bury him … I have a much nicer cat over here, and as a bonus, he’s still alive …”
“…This raises a final big issue: it is extremely hard to negotiate with people who don’t know what they are doing, which is the Trump team and the Ukrainians in spades…” Some of the things that the foreign policy crew of the DT2 regime have said is just as nutty, or even nuttier than the JB regime. It’s getting freakier every year. Kakistocracy on Parade
My understanding of the latest: Putin has listed the conditions required, and his doubts about a workable ceasefire., The US will almost certainly not accept the conditions. Putin suggested that DT call him to discuss. I guess we have to stay tuned for the next development. Does the US really believe Russia will acquiesce? or is this just another stunt?
If one believes that reports by the Russian Ministry of Defence are more or less accurate with regards to Ukrainian losses Kursk has been more or less as costly for Ukraine as Bakhmut/Artemisk was in its day with 67.000 casualties so far. I agree that the Russians have used Kursk as an attrition zone given the interest of Z and that is why it has gone for so long. Besides, the Russians have mostly lost phantom NK troops there, if one wilfully believes Western reports.
It was a smart move. The Russians used Kursk as a kill box and the Ukrainians sent their best formations and the best of their remaining equipment to try to keep it again and again and again. Even when the whole thing started to completely collapse a few days ago, Zelensky was still sending in more formations to keep it. Kursk has become the graveyard of Zelensky’s ambitions.
I grow suspicious. Were their best these Azov regiment ultras, or were they more traditional and loyal units who might have stood against the likes of Azov in a coup? Who did Ukraine send in to get slaughtered?
Yes, having killed the imaginary NK soldiers the combined might of NATO is now helping the Ukrainians to murder the specters of reason, commkn sense,, and peace.
So, no more spectres haunting Europe? They wish.
Its interesting to note that so many of the excellent commentators on Judge Nap – Sachs, Ray McG, Ritter – seem to believe that Trump is serious about peace and that he is playing some kind of 4D chess. They suggest ignoring what his underlings (or even Trump) say publicly about the proposed ceasefire and threats of sanction escalation. And more egregiously, they ignore his form vis-à-vis endorsing of genocide in Gaza (and concomitant restrictions on free speech at US universities), and increasing sabre-rattling against China.
I can’t see how Putin is going to get any meaningful (and sustainable) agreement on a long-term security architecture in place (esp given that the US is agreement incapable – let alone Europe). Therefore Putin will need to continue the SMO to its conclusion, whilst Europe will need to pick up the strain of supporting Ukraine, whilst the US pivots to West Asia and/or China.
2025 does not feel like a year of de-escalation!
“This raises a final big issue: it is extremely hard to negotiate with people who don’t know what they are doing, which is the Trump team and the Ukrainians in spades (remember that the Zelensky government is composed heavily of members of his old production team, which is why they are so good at PR and stunts and not much else).”
Where’s Paddy Chayefsky when you need him?
The satire of the satire of “Servant of the People” is long over due. Guess it would hit home too hard what a set up it was all along.
I don’t think Putin has gone back on one of his original requirements for a ceasefire – that the Ukraine withdraw its troops from the four currently contested oblasts. I would bet good money that if the Ukrainian troops let the Russians know that they’re running away, and all the troops, trucks, tanks, and whatnots are seen heading west, that the Russians would probably be agreeable to not shooting at them.
Though it does sound like some new terms and conditions may have been added to the newest edition of “Ceasefires for Dummies.”
As far as the uniform, it could be as simple as not wanting to mess up a (likely) spendy suit and shoes in the boonies. Not to mention uniforms are WAAAAAAY more comfortable than suit and tie.
The one thing that has me wondering – and I’d be interested in alternate points of view – is why UKR troops would be “terrorists” in their Russian incursion. Best guess – subject to revision – is that since there’s no “declared” war between the parties, the option to “invade the other guy,” very common during wartime, is not seen as being on the table. I haven’t seen (though I haven’t looked very hard) for the “how does THAT work?” on that issue.
PS: In case I hadn’t mentioned, many many thanks for turning Comments back on! I come for the articles, but stay for the thinkings!
The “terrorists” thing is rhetoric. There is a state of armed conflict in the Kursk region, and so the law of armed conflict applies. This says that combatants (ie uniformed members of a nation’s armed forces) should be treated as prescribed by the Geneva Convention if taken prisoner, and that non-combatants (everybody else) who have surrendered should still be protected and looked after, even if they don’t have all of the GC rights. That’s it. There is nothing about “terrorists”, though individual soldiers believed guilty of criminal acts in the context of an armed conflict could still be put on trial.
Makes sense, except …
Bearing in mind that Putin is a lawyer and supposedly a very meticulous and precise one, I still have to wonder. As a species, lawyers tend to be a tad less prone to mere rhetoric, particularly in legal contexts where we expect to be taken seriously. Or people may be relying on our language to guide their behavior. I’m fairly sure that the protections afforded to the military regarding POW status do NOT apply to “terrorists.” Though there may be criminal protections – not that seems to matter much on this side of the Atlantic Puddle.
That said, it could well be and, as I said, I’m not married to the position and am willing to learn. :-)
Putin was never a lawyer; he studied law for 5 years, but he was hired by KGB immediately after graduation, and served as a foreign intelligence officer between 1975 and 1990, including six years in Dresden, East Germany… To become a lawyer in the Soviet Union you had to have at least two years of legal practice with satisfactory performance after obtaining a law degree, and then pass the advocacy exam.
It all depends what you mean by the term “lawyer”. Practising law, ie, as a free agent touting for clients who may or may not have legal problems is one thing, and advocacy in a court of law is another. In the UK we used to have a clear distinction between the two, but no longer. If you are a lawyer who works for a principal from the moment of graduation, particularly if that principal is the KGB, you will develop both the specific knowledge and the practical skills – and you will have a degree of intellectual freedom in advising and acting for that principal that a mere touting agent or an advocate is highly unlikely to possess. This is why I do not think that President Putin plays legal games and does play with a straight bat. What he says he means, and what he means he says – much like Margaret Thatcher, another lawyer who qualified as a barrister but never practised law in your very limited sense.
Sorry, he was never a field officer but a bureaucrat/desk jockey. Eugene Luttwak dined with Putin more than occasionally so he was openly working for the KGB and not a spy. It is widely speculated that part of his job was in fact legal, like prisoner swaps.
That might be very true. His position was foreign intelligence officer, but it is likely that the KGB had a variety of roles for its officers aside from spying.
According to Wikipedia, ‘After training, he worked in the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence), before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where he monitored foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad.’ (The sources cited are Richard Sakwa’s book Putin: Russia’s choice and Washington Post.)
Politely disagree.
Taking me back to those lovely cafeteria discussions about the differences – and the far more important one of when I can use “Doctor” as a title, given that the degree is a “Juris Doctor.”
Lawyers study laws and rules, and generally make use of them to accomplish things. See further examples at “rules lawyer” in games.
Attorneys represent other persons in various settings. See further examples at “power of attorney” and (in Oregon at least) representing individuals in justice court.
While there can be much overlap between the two – professional attorneys do tend to be lawyers, but there are a lot of lawyers who are not attorneys – the two are not, public belief to the contrary, necessarily the same.
So Mr. Putin, with his law studies, is clearly a lawyer. His career path, like many other lawyers, did not take him into the practice of law as an attorney, nor did I claim him to be an attorney. Because language is important….
I did mention that lawyers (good ones, anyway) tend to be meticulous and precise in their language use, right? ;)
Original comment I saw in translation referenced mercenaries, and ‘advisers’ from NATO nation. Rules cited don’t apply to the former, the latter are from countries not parties to the armed conflict, as loudly proclaimed for three years, and almost never in their actual national uniforms, which renders them criminals/spies…or possible terrorists.
You probably read Russian or have access to better translations. But frankly, neither Russia’s current official opponent nor its de facto enemies have followed the law of war for decades.
The terrorist thing is an escalation warning to the US, same as putting on the uniform. Russia has 3 main wartime postures
SMO we see this daily. They are already attacking Basovka in Sumy today.
CTO as done in Chechnya , the warning is that no negotiations are possible by Russian law. People with guns in hand get no warnings. They worry that Ukraine will try a Hail Mary like blowing up a nuclear power station. They really want the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Complex at the end.
Full Scale War the big birds fly
It is entirely possible that Ukraine actors do something that gets this changed into a CTO with all the attendant consequences.
Kursk is counted as CTO, and not a part of SMO. Daily reports from SMO do not include Kursk front:
https://rutube.ru/video/875515e77fc5023f9ff35bf70f8515e8/
Fortunately all public pronouncements of the President of the Russian Federation are published in English on the website en.kremlin.ru President Putin’s remarks are (of course) falsely reported by western media. What he actually said:
Rule 108 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions clearly states:
We can straw-man Putin all day long, as Blinken and Sullivan did using their endless Rand Corporation game-theory. Or we can listen.
After I read your post, I googled the site in Chrome, sadly This site can’t be reached: en.kremlin.ru took too long to respond… In Brave, the site could be reached instantaneously. Then I repeated the test three times in each browser with the same results.
What would I do, with my feeble intellect, if Google didn’t protect me from injurious information?
IDK.
1. War crimes.
Russia is sentencing POW’s with war crimes convictions in Kursk, they especially like to sentence mercenaries to 19 years hard.
2. Kiev government after coup is illicit.
Any soldiers of a coup regime are terrorists. Putin has recently introduced the illegal coup in 2014.
3. Kiev is run by dictator, didn’t trump say that!
Just like Nazi Germany.
All will come up in negotiating with agreement incapable US.
‘I would bet good money that if the Ukrainian troops let the Russians know that they’re running away, and all the troops, trucks, tanks, and whatnots are seen heading west, that the Russians would probably be agreeable to not shooting at them.’
Putin has said that if they retreat from those four Oblasts, they they will be able to do so unhindered and would not be attacked. As for why he will declare those troops captured in Kursk as terrorists, it may be a legal thing. The Ukrainians committed quite a few war crimes against the civilians in this region so this way of stripping them of the Geneva Convention rights would be a way of making sure that they will have to pay for their crimes and not be simply released at war’s ends. Come to think of it, the US regarded Iraqis fighting the American occupation of their country as terrorists too.
Eggzactly!*
Having skimmed some downthread remarks I think I can safely add this bit:
The Ukraine, as best I can tell from a cursory googlation, has not officially declared war on Russia, much like Russia is conducting a “special military operation” rather than warmaking on the Ukraine. They would be even MORE foolish to do so, as war with Russia would give the Russians a lot more options, ones that Putin has been keeping off the table.
So without a declared war the armed Ukrainian troops-and-mercenaries incursioning (incurding?) into Russian territory are thus arguably nothing more than terrorists. Criminals. To be dealt with as terrorists and criminals generally are.
Lay down arms and visibly surrender? Off to prison after a fair trial.
Continue to bear arms against the victim? Risk a career change to Grass Root Inspector.
*using “eggz” to indicate a higher value of agreement rather than a mere “ex,” the price of eggs being what they are these days. :)
The kidnapped children are the basis of the icc warrant against Putin. Has it been debunked? Last thing I heard was something about it being based on a report from Yale using satellite fotos and not interviewing anyone. But has there been a thorough debunking somewhere? Any links?
I suggest you use a search engine. This was not hard to find.
No one has produced a single compliant from a parent about a missing child.
None other than CNN for starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWDkn7onw_M
And ICC’s Putin arrest warrant based on State Dept-funded report that debunked itself Grayzone
More detail:
https://twitter.com/Navsteva/status/1644424893738409989?t=T1EionL8Y5ZZmojlKlit3w&s=19
I mean no disrespect here. But it says in the gray zone article that “it appears” that the warrant was based on the report. So they don’t know. And the quotes about the statistics in Russia are from the woman who is also accused of the same crime from the ICC as Putin. Asking her if she is guilty of the crime she is accused of and her saying no, is not enough proof imho. Does this count as a thorough debunking? If this was Israel instead of Russia I don’t think anybody would accept this as authoritative. And a reporter speaking to some children in one institution is informative but surely not authoritative of the falseness of the accusation. I don’t know what’s happened in this issue, but it seems that the burden of proof to dismiss the ICC has so far not been lifted. And yes I used a search engine before I asked :) always a good starting point.
No disrespect meant, but don’t you think that if there were really any missing children that the Western media would be constantly interviewing sobbing and telegenic Ukrainian parents who want the evil Russians to return their kidnapped kids? It doesn’t pass the propaganda smell test.
Understood. But on the other hand there is a UN report saying it did happen, in an admittedly small scale, and that they reviewed 164 cases and they have the documentation for it and define it as a war crime. From march 2023. See page 14
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coiukraine/A_HRC_52_62_AUV_EN.pdf
When I first read the UN report back then I found it odd and still do.
Considering the scale of this war, what is at stake, the vicious nature of the fighting, the presence of mercenaries and neo-nazi units with the specific job to spread terror among civilians in areas where they are not being checked – all that makes it feel an extreme stretch to come to the conclusion to call their findings a war crime. How e.g. are families supposed to cross the contact line to reach their children? Do they seriously expect Russian special forces sneak into Ukrainian controlled territory, locate the families, deliver the children and return without getting killed.
Granted Red Cross could carry out such actions. But I have no clue – does Red Cross still cooperate with Russia? Do we know whether there were offers by the Russians to the Ukrainian officials to bring back children which the Ukrainians with bad intent declined knowing they could use the result as per UN Commission report? Especially if the parents/kids concerned are Russian by ethnicity? How many Russian Ukrainians fled to Russia permanently after 8 years of Civil War and now this war? There is not a single word mentioning the racist nature of the Kiev government. By design the UN assumes the government is benign and well-meaning towards parents despite them possibly being Russians. The entire war is taking place in the Russian part of the country. This matters but is not even hinted at.
I see so many strings attached to this issue which are not at all addressed in the report. Which as you say is very brief considering the significance of the allegations and their impact re: ICC. In fact I find it even more inadequate and even naive with the newly acquired knowledge since the report was published.
And as you point out: Just look at the numbers – the Ukrainians claim 16.000 children. Even UN says, very politely, that is way exaggerated. In order to then settle with 164??? That´s absurdly low and exact a number considering all the complications and the chaos in this war-torn country the report is stressing.
And among those 164 we do not know how many with certainty have been taken away without any urgency and against kids/parents will. Because that´s actually the charge that matters.
The Ukrainian government is responsible for conducting a war with 1,1 M dead. And the ICC is calling Putin a war criminal based on 164 children without knowing about the reasons why they are not at home?
Last point: I would like to see those testimonies by the parents and the kids. I remember reports which did question this statement.
The big problem: The UN is not a neutral party here. The leverage the Ukrainian authorities have here via US, F and GB cannot be overstated (e.g. compare Bucha investigations).
I watched the UN press conferences back then. It was insane. Since it was Geneva or New York the likelihood that Western press was present in overwhelming numbers and pushing the UN team with questions smearing Russia constantly was difficult to bear. At one point even the most astute UN officials will fold at some point.
As I wrote before, in Berlin alone 116 children were “discovered”. Are those 116 from the stated 164? I doubt it. But there is so much hidden, muddied or simply fabricated.
Please correct me if I have overlooked some major points. May be I have become weary of the incessant anti-Russian meddling everywhere and have developed too biased a perception.
No disrespect meant, but do you really think that there is a non-zero chance that Putin kindapped those kids?
If you define “kidnapped” as “evacuated to Russia without their families”, which seems to be the definition used, then I don’t doubt that it happened. I don’t see how leaving them in a warzone would’ve been better; if it is indeed necessary according to international law, then so much the worse for international law. That said, reuniting families would be a reasonable goal to pursue once the war is over.
When I looked into it when it was all new and sensational it turned out the Yale boys and girls did their research online and contacted parents in question online.
Everything. Virtual. Not. One. Single. On. Location. Visit.
Insane. And based on that they filed their case at ICC?
For instance – RT reported one year ago – April 18th 2024 – that 116 kids were “discovered” to be living happily with their parents in Germany:
Federal Criminal Police Office: Children allegedly abducted to Russia live with their parents in Germany
https://dert.site/inland/203069-bundeskriminalamt-angeblich-nach-russland-entfuehrte/
Use google translate
And I assume there are countless such cases due to the wave of refugees which were literally millions of people on the move claiming that Putin intends to kill them all.
I assume the PR agency with the assignement figured that in the wake of the war breaking out and the insane hysteria in the West you could well sell this bullshit and hide the truth.
Good comments guys. Thx
Hey, since I got a mention, I thought I’d come back…
Here is what Putin, now wearing his usual business suit, has just said during a joint presser with Lukashenko:
– “The idea of a ceasefire has merit,” however Russia’s “starting point is that such a ceasefire must lead to a long-term peace and removes the underlying causes of the crisis”.
– There are several “nuances” insofar as a ceasefire: the means of oversight that a ceasefire is being observed are not in place; the Ukrainians in the Kursk region are “surrounded and cut off”, and the Russians cannot just “let them out”, given the crimes they had committed against Russian civilians; most importantly, Ukraine continues to mobilize and train new formations, and receive new military aid.
– As a baseline, Russia wants “guarantees” that during any ceasefire, mobilization, training, and the flow of military aid to Ukraine must be stopped.
– It is also unclear how exactly to implement a ceasefire at a moment when Russian forces are advancing all along the 1k-kilometer frontline (actually, Putin used the term “2 thousand kilometers”; I guess I do not know my geography or my arithmetic, or I am missing something), and are in the process of surrounding groups of Ukrainian soldiers on various directions beyond the Kursk region.
– The question of “who will decide who is responsible” for any ceasefire violations was also asked aloud, and here Putin is calling back to the experience of 2015-2022, when Ukrainians routinely violated the ceasefire against DNR/LNR.
– Putin thanked Trump for his “attention” to resolving the crisis, called this a “noble mission”, and expressed willingness to discuss these questions personally.
Meanwhile, official channels are reporting combat slowly spreading into the Sumy region.
In other words, it more than seems like Putin’s answer is a “no – unless you meet all of our demands, which you will not”. Who’d have thought the man would become such a committed tightrope walker in his 70s…
If US somehow deploys nuclear weapons in Poland, will they insist that they are keeping “their” nukes like Ukraine “should” have?
I wonder if anyone in the US admin knows how to play chess well.
I wonder if anyone in the RU admin knows how to play poker well.
(This comment isn’t as silly as it sounds.)
Flora, your comment brought to mind the Star Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver. Spock thinks in terms of chess whereas Kirk plays poker ;-)
im a congenital introvert…compounded by being that weird kid reading books under a tree when i was supposed to be participating in PE,lol.
…made worse by being thrust into the role of pariah and outlaw and folk devil at 16(by my mom, no less)…and taking a long, long time to figger out that the vast majority of folks i encountered were incurious boobs who couldnt think their way out of a paper sack…and that my erudite ejaculations sent them into…variously…anticommie/anti-intellectual/anti-weirdness paroxysms.
(Swift: “one may know the genius by the crowd of angry rubes chasing after him”(pp))
so Tam was the Ambassadress for our hermit kingdom.
and it worked.
later, as eldest was in high school…he brought all his krewe out here to party…which we encouraged: safe place, i take the car keys, etc.
thats why we built this bar.
im perfectly happy to be out here in the middle of nowhere on a dead end dirt road….but that doesnt mean i enjoy being alone all the time.
(and yeah…i get the gay isolation thing. ive been Bi/prolly Pan my whole life(when ppl ask, my sexual ‘identity, i say “Sexfiend”,lol)…but heteroromantic.
even in our enlightened age(lol), its a hard row.
one of the surprises when i moved way out here, 30 years ago, was that there were more gay/lesbians out here…per capita…than in austin.
was interesting watching them come out and be accepted by this more or less fossil tribe…mostly because they were cousins, brothers , sisters, etc to extended families who found that it really didnt matter.
proud to have played a minor supporting role in all that)
that was supposed to go to Terry in links,lol.
but i am not tech-savvy enough to fix it, apparently.
Many thx Amfortas. Just now able to follow up on responses to my comments.
This is my first comment here on NC. Have been reading Yves’ insightful and pleasant “pamphlet” for quite some time.
Many thanks to Yves for yet another thoughtful update in this never-ending saga with as of yet difficult to predict consequences. As usual, the commenters have done a great job too. Two things I wanted to comment on. First, I cannot recall living through a time, and I have 40+ years of professional experience, when the cacophony of various, different press statements, news headlines as well as the number of parties i.e. states involved was this high. Hard to believe. Almost overwhelming. How does one discern through this endless tsunami of information almost on a 24-7 basis? What is real and what is fake? Are these often contradictory statements deliberate informational warfare i.e. by design? Or are they plain incompetence? Or panic? Or desperation? Or just plain chaos? My own take: they are a mixture of everything. There is no central script or “master” director. In addition, it’s best to stick to cold, hard analysis. This, however, requires a very large amount of analytical work, gigantic amounts of information and tons of patience and interest.
Second, living right smack in the middle of Europe (but not in the EU–I know, I’ve now given myself away), I have been absolutely appalled, extremely disappointed and even disgusted by the current menagerie of incompetent EU politicians, dishonest, disingenuous and misleading EU mainstream media and rotten to the core “EU elites” that are presently at work. They are sinking, drowning and flailing around helplessly. E.g. two days ago the Dutch parliament voted against “Queen” von der Leyen’s 750 billion EUR debt-financed rearmament plan. They correctly argued that they can’t afford it. And just today, the German Greens rejected to vote in favor of Germany’s Chancellor-in-waiting Merz’s 800 billion EUR “Sondervermögen” for rearming Germany and investing into its infrastructure. True, they will have another go at it next Tuesday. Let’s wait and see. He offered them only 20 billion EUR for Green investments. They want much more.
welcome home, quantum entanglement.
and welcome to the precariat expands to include you, party.
it can be a rough go, suddenly having such an epiphany.
Russia should plan for another round of missile barrage directed towards Ukraine to accompany Witkoff on his way out of the country, so there won’t be any confusion on the so called 30 days “peace”.
i named my tractor Rocinante.
“nombre, a su parecer, alto, sonoro y significativo de lo que había sido cuando fue rocín, antes de lo que ahora era, que era antes y primero de todos los rocines del mundo”
re: Rocinante.
Your tractor is Don Quixote’s horse? / ;)
First of all tractors in the world. ? /heh
i recently rewatched ‘the expanse’…
im a Belter.
i paid cash for it.
tractor.
follered the ladies for security to the bank.
(i was my own, formidable, self for my security, hauling $24k, in cash,to them)
and yes, Flora…i am that hard core,lol.
The Rocinante, also the name of the starship on the excellent series The Expanse – which I discovered via comments here on NC long ago. Great name!
my inspiration for naming it thusly.
Quixote is me, really…unless the empire falls apart soon,lol
thats the bidness plan…set it up for when just in time collapses.
i feed myself, and mine, in the interim.
btw: Most readers know that Ukraine invaded Kursk,
there was never an invasion of Kursk. Here like in many cases Euromerican medias twist facts. There is a Kursk oblast and there is a Kursk city. How does this work for Americans? when someone talks of New York, it is of the city or of the state? I have never traveled to USA but few times to Québec/Canada. Outside Montréal, on the ring motorway southern bank of Saint Laurent, some junction road signs point to New York the city, border some 40/50 km away, by New York state. New York state is just a bit outside Montréal outskirts. Yet when people talk of New York they mean the city, or?
Now to the point:
what strikes me is the fact that NATO decided to try hits on Moskva with a massive swarm of drones just before the USA-USA puppet in Saudi Arabia “peace” talks. I don’t get at this point how it works inside an American head.
Ukraine=USA puppet, the regime exists because USA puts it there in february 2014. What is unclear is the role of UK. London is the base for high ranking oligarchy that decided to sell itself to West©®, and for the Banderists. Poroshenko is there as well as Zaluzhhny among others.
Zelinsky was created under Trump 1st presidency in 2017-2021. In 2019 as a product of Kolomoisky ambitions it seems. At this point it is unclear how and why there was a conflict between Poroshenko and Kolomoisky, but for sure the Kvartal 95 Zelinsky character was adopted by USA. (Btw, under Trump 1st presidency, Medvedev once meant that himself Trump seemed to have nice ideas, but he was neutered by government higher circles around him.).
the war is run by a joint work of USA, UK with other main NATO dogs. Routes for drones are provided by USA, from its satellites. Routes that try to avoid detection are plotted from that. (some Russian war reporters still criticize laziness of high military management in patching low altitudes detection grids).
So they launch a tentative attack on Moskva just before the “peace” show ?
“there was never an invasion of Kursk.”
This has been bugging me in all of those news stories, thank you. But I’m not sure if it’s twisting facts. Maybe some of the reports about “Kursk” were written that way to make the incursion seem bigger than it was, I don’t know. But it is an English language norm to call it the Kursk oblast (and so on with all the other oblasts). Referring to it as Kurskaya oblast’, the way it is called in Russian, might’ve been better and less misleading, but that’s not the norm and I suppose their audience (which may at least have heard of the Battle of Kursk before) would have been more confused by it.
As for the point – Ukraine is dependent on America in a lot of ways, but I wouldn’t dismiss its own agency. I think the Ukrainian government can certainly make some decisions of its own and is helped in this by the divisions and flailing among the “puppetmasters”. They may just have decided to do this on their own to make peace less likely, or they may have been told to do this by a different “puppetmaster” faction, or it may have been a happy convergence of interests between different elite groups. “The West” is not a monolith, after all, even if its elites do try to coordinate their actions in their perceived mutual interest.
Please stop misinforming readers. I have very low tolerance for readers taking issue with a post on false grounds. You have done this sort of thing repeatedly, trying to one up the post author when you are all wet.
Kursk was invaded.
Anyone who knows anything about Russia and Ukraine knows that the capital cities of oblasts carry the same name as the oblast. Further, the general convention (though I agree it is not universally observed) is to distinguish the city from the oblast by indicating one is referring to the city. Hence shellings of Donetsk City are described that way.
Similarly, the Western press got in a lather about the Russian invasion of Kharkiv, which was most decidedly the oblast and not the city.
Very true. One “invades” a specific geographic region. One “attacks” or “besieges” a city.
Though to be fair I always have to take a moment to shift mental gears when I read something about “the invasion of Kursk,” but mostly because it always gets an initial rise out of my inner grammar nazi.*
*though, as the poster says, we do prefer the term “alt-write” these days. ;)
“reaffirming the European commitment to prevent an end to the war, since on current trajectories, it will be on Russian terms.”
I read that line as meaning that “Russian terms” was the plan all along.
Alternatively, The US and Ukraine set up a trap for Putin, and he walked straight into it. We have made a peace proposal — not a peace agreement. Putin will lay down his maximalist terms, which our side will reject, perhaps politely, and everyone will see that Russia wants war. At that point Trump can say “I tried to negotiate, but the Russians only want war” and ship Ukraine the available M113s ( about 1500 of them, give or take), the F-16s (flown by the Chenault brigade), much other stuff, lots of money to keep their drone builders working, and terminate Russian use of the SWIFT system and alternatives.
I have no information that would lead me to believe that my alternative is right, only that is is one not considered in the above.
If you think the West has meaningful stockpiles of weapons left to send, I have a bridge to sell you. The US and Collective West were already scraping the bottom of the barrel in the late Biden Admin. The West is not willing to have US or NATO operators officially fly F-16s (that = direct war with Russia). The Ukraine pilots (as predicted) have had a hard time learning to operate them (they can’t unlearn how Soviet planes worked and under pressure, they default to those routines; this is the suspected reason one Ukraine pilot promptly crashed a F-16). The US has also been reluctant to let Ukraine fly the F-16s all that close to the front lines since Russia can “see” and shoot them down from afar. On top of that, Ukraine has complained about the F-16s, saying they are inferior to the Sokhoi 57. See here for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9h_T3mv0F0
US does not need an excuse in order to “ship Ukraine the available M113s (about 1500 of them, give or take), the F-16s (flown by the Chenault brigade), much other stuff, …” The trap was set up only for propaganda purposes, and it does not add much to already present Putin-is-the-worst narrative.
This does seem to be happening now in official remarks from Putin, while others take a tougher line (although the bottom lines are typically the same, just the presentation is different).
I assume this is all in aid of managing messaging to different constituencies (Putin to the US and NATO, other officials to Russian domestic audiences).
No, this is not what I meant at all by a tea and cookies chat. “Tea and cookies” EXPLICITLY means in person. How else could tea and cookies be served?
In person conversations are not in the view of third parties, are interactive, allow for the possibility of forming personal relations and judging if there are any revelatory group dynamics (unlikely among the high disciplined Russian team but probable with a US team), and are pretty much always longer than even phone calls (my experience says ~50% longer due both to the need for ritual pleasantries but also participants feeling subtly pressured to elaborate more in person). “Tea and cookies” further means formal, polite, and pointedly non-committal. They can be a means of temporizing or faux politely rejecting a proposal.
Putin’s remarks were not even remotely that. Neither were Ushakov’s. They were a one-way communication in public.
I understand (report on mail.ru) that Witkoff did in fact meet with Putin, they talked, and Witkoff departed with information for Trump.
No other information given so no idea if tea and cookies were involved.
Fun factoid – in Russian the expression “stick and carrot” is rendered as “whip and cookie”.
Misleading header. Russia, the victor, will not accept an unconditional ceasefire. It wants the root causes of the ‘conflict’ addressed. Putin has clearly stated to be in favor of cessation of hostilities but not without agreements on issues such as the status of ukranian and other military personnel now alledgedly ‘trapped’ inside Russia, (re) implementation of previous agreements etc.
I expect russian leadership to be smart enough to ignore the ceasefire PR trap and continue the CBO until the bitter end.