With the world’s attention squarely fixed on the Israel-Gaza war — while baseless hope for a Ukrainian expulsion of the Russian army has evaporated — US and European officials have started quietly conferring with Ukraine on potential concessions that could bring the war to an end, NBC News was first to report Friday evening.
These discussions aren’t about a new counteroffensive — they’re about what concessions Ukraine could live with pursuant to a peace agreement. Some of the conversations, which officials describe as delicate, happened during an October meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, an affiliation of more than 50 governments siding with Ukraine.
In eyebrow-raising comments to the The Economist this week, Ukraine’s top commander admitted there will be no breakthrough and the battlefield situation is in a stalemate. The New York Times characterized his remarks as “the first time a top Ukrainian commander said the fighting had reached an impasse.”
In September, the Times itself splashed cold water on anyone who still believed Ukraine had any hope of pushing the Russian army out of eastern and southeastern Ukraine, much less Crimea. Its detailed analysis found that, in the wake of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, “Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year.”
Russia’s territorial gains are close to matching the goals President Vladimir Putin outlined at the start of what he calls a “special military operation.” He said Russia sought to secure Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), which he recognized as republics shortly before the invasion. Russian forces now control nearly all of those areas, which are together called the Donbas.
Russia also controls most of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, giving Russia a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014 after a Western-aided overthrow of a democratically elected president and the installation of an anti-Russia government in Kiev. Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine have heavily ethnic-Russian populations.
The front lines have moved little in recent months. In anticipation of Ukraine’s highly-hyped 2023 counteroffensive, Russia was content to install formidable defensive fortifications and allow the Ukrainian army to degrade itself and achieve nothing.
In its match-up with a far larger country, Ukraine’s ability to refresh its military ranks is vanishing fast. “Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” an official told NBC. The West can keep sending them weapons, “but if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good.” Even the most optimistic western warmongers must acknowledge the coming winter guarantees Ukraine won’t accomplish anything for months.
In the wake of Ukraine’s costly and futile counteroffensive, Washington’s proxy war with Russia is facing strong headwinds at home:
- The war between Hamas and Israel has diverted public attention and sapped the war state’s ability to propagandize voters. Indeed, Biden’s Oval Office address appealing for aid for Ukraine and Israel was originally planned to focus solely on Ukraine, NBC reports.
- The US public’s pro-Ukraine fervor has cooled: A new Gallup poll found 41% say the US is doing too much for Ukraine — a big leap from the 29% who said that in June. Many Americans think that money should be used to improve conditions at home.
- A growing number of congressional Republicans have put away their rubber stamp for Ukraine aid, and have thus far thwarted Biden’s request for $61 billion in additional funding for the war. Biden’s ploy of a joint funding request that combines controversial Ukraine aid with Israel aid is in grave jeopardy, as House Republicans demand separate votes.
Washington’s blank-check support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza is further straining an already Ukraine-sapped American arsenal. Tens of thousands of artillery shells that had been earmarked for Ukraine are being redirected to the IDF. Even before Hamas attacked Israel, an increasingly severe shortage of conventional shells for the artillery-heavy war in Ukraine led Biden to give Zelensky toxic, depleted uranium shells, stirring an international outcry.
As for what it would take for Zelensky to surrender the international spotlight and agree to peace, we’re guessing a big deposit to a Swiss bank account would do just fine. However, officials are pondering some type of Western security guarantee that stops short of NATO membership. The specter of Ukraine become a NATO member played heavily in Moscow’s motivation for invading. The war has been a crisp illustration of Richard Sakwa’s brilliant assertion that “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
Just weeks after Russia’s 2022 invasion, Russia and Ukraine had reportedly tentatively agreed to a peace deal in which Russia would withdraw to an extent that it would still control portions of the Donbas, in exchange for Ukraine forswearing its NATO ambitions while having security deals with several states. Via a visit from then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Western war machine, eager for a proxy war, seems to have pressured Zelensky to break off the talks. Months of misery ensued, with only the military-industrial complex and Ukraine’s aid-scraping bureaucrats better off for it.
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The Ukraine war is no where near being over. The reason for that is that the the US government is far less rational than people understand. They actually believe their own bullshit.
They may admit that they cannot win the war, but they fully believe they are in a stalemate and that Russia will be willing to make concessions to end the war. They will not. This war will only end on Russia’s terms, and the US is a long way from understanding that.
As time goes on, the Russian victories will become more decisive and come at a faster rate as they diminish what is left of the Ukraine forces. At some point in the future, the US will panic as the Ukraine military collapses altogether, and finally realize they have been completely and soundly defeated.
You have no idea what’s going on.
He is entirely correct, on this one.
Jdog is rarely correct.
And just how do you know if he’s correct or not?
Well how do you know otherwise?
“This war will only end on Russia’s terms” is the central point.
I realized in late March 2022 that this Ukraine thingy is ‘a tale of two unconditional surrenders’ (first one was the entire EU surrendering to US’ sanction demands).
Which I unfortunately had to upgrade to ‘a tale of three unconditional surrenders’ after the NATO summit in June ’22, as then NATO decided they also want to get fully demilitarized, respectively just disband their organization.
I don’t know otherwise. No one does. Especially Jdog who is a proven idiot. This is called the process of deduction. Eliminating opinions from those who have proven to be idiots…and lie, like ALL media.
Tell me, which media source aided in your conclusions? Gonzalo, toothpick boy? 😂
By process of deduction, you can’t have PMS – so did your cat die?
Oh, so I’m right, am I? Gonzalo! Your go-to source!!
😂😂😂😂
You’re too easy to figure out. 😂😂
Come on, toothpick catlady, you “know” me.
You’ll have to dig much deeper in the sewer to try to figure me out, your mind reading skills know that! 😂 🤣
Ritter and Macgreggor for me
Media sources? Talk about being a complete idiot. Look fuckface, Ukraine has had the holy shit kicked out of it. So have the US forces and Polish forces that have been put in to see how they can do. Russia has wiped out all the NATO and US wonder weapons that turned out to be crap . The US and NATO have financed 4 separate Army’s and Russia has destroyed them all. They have wiped out 600K troops, they laughed at the Patriot System as they destroyed it with hypersonic missiles, they laughed at the Leopard Tanks, they laughed at the Bradly’s, they laughed at the HYMARS. They turned the sanctions back on Europe and the US and it is now the west facing economic crisis, as the Russian economy grows by 3%. When Russia is finished destroying the Nazi Ukraine military it will dictate terms of surrender, and the US and NATO will accept because they have no choice. Russia will take a piece of the lucrative drug money laundering operation the CIA runs in Kiev, and take the valuable mining and farming territory in the east. The idiots in Washington DC will tell you we won, and you are so fucking stupid you will believe them.
It is not the ‘Nazi Ukraine’ it is the jewish-led Ukraine.
You’re buying the hopium about that fiasco. Face it, neither side is fighting to win. Things may be warming up a bit at the moment (or maybe not, I’m just checking a map), but the lines have basically not changed in the last year. When Russia retreated and just sat there for most of it. But muh attrition, right?
If you are talking about weapons systems, you are ignoring The System of both sides. It’s like talking about players’ skills when the fix is in.
I am always correct, you are simply too ignorant to understand what is actually happening.
” . . . a top Ukrainian commander said the fighting had reached an impasse.”
The only “impasse” is the lack of Russian desire to reduce the Mother City of the Rus to a smoldering pile.
Well, looks like the Khazar Khaganate project is on hold.
people can’t find a map
Oh yay! It’s over. Taking down my Ukraine flag as we speak. Hoisting Israel’s now.
So glad I didn’t waste my time on this bullshit lie they called an active war.
Drama, drama, drama
Don’t hold yer breath . . .
Congress embraces debt to give away U.S. weapons, cash for foreign wars
War hawks say better to spend money than American lives in Ukraine, Israel
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/nov/3/congress-embraces-debt-give-away-us-weapons-cash-f/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=LirR3r97Cv0jRtsHGqGpkTsIyKnjM7u99K9k1Yc2Q1TetqcsWTnHWG6oP9Cop1ly&bt_ts=1699035518128
.
Israel War Season begins October.
Ukraine War Season ends November.
October?
Surprise!
Does this mean they’ll take the toothpicks out of Gonzalo’s eyes & release him?? 🤔
What will he do next, I wonder?
Gonzalo is an idiot. Nobody with a brain opposes a warring power while inside their jurisdiction.
He’s a sensational idiot. But, shhhhh!!! He has a lot of worshippers here.
Next tell us that Douglas MacGregor is a sensational idiot, too.
The war will go on a while longer, the US money cow is not milked dry… yet.
This is all BS. The USA and EU are running out of resources. They are telling Zelensky ro get thebest deal he can. USA will say it is up to the Ukrainians to decide.
Yeah the election is only a year away and getting reelected is more important than standing with Ukraine and sending them more money. A lot of Americans are sick of this waste with no goal.