The West's plan was laid out by the RAND Corporation and linked here sixteen days before Russia invaded and then with added commentary a month after the invasion in "The U.S. Is Implementing The RAND Corporation Strategy To Cripple Russia":
First up, a refresher, from February 8:
The RAND Corporation Blueprint For Forcing Putin To Over-Extend Himself
I hope that the U.S. or NATO or whoever commissioned this study didn't pay a lot for it, it's basically the strategy that Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came up with in the early 1980's although the details do differ. The tactical components of the RAND plan are:
1. Arming Ukraine ;
2. Increase support for jihadists in Syria;
3. Promoting regime change in Belarus;
4. Exploiting tensions in the South Caucasus;
5. Reducing Russian influence in Central Asia;
6. Rivaling the Russian presence in Transnistria.
....MUCH MORE
The study is from 2019, its basic idea is to get Russia to overextend itself both militarily and more especially financially.
On January 12 Victoria Nuland showed this approach is top-of-mind in the Biden Administration. From Interfax Ukraine:
Nuland: I'm going to let Russians speak for themselves how long they can financially back placement of troops near Ukraine
U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland did not make assumptions about how long the Russian Federation can afford to keep a large grouping of forces near Ukraine.
"I am going to let the Russians speak for themselves," she said, answering a question at a State Department briefing about "how long you think Russia can financially back the placement of troops along the Russia-Ukrainian border."
Nuland also said the transfer of a large group of forces to the border with Ukraine was not a cheap operation.
"These kind of deployments, hundred thousand troops out of barracks and on the Ukrainian border are extremely expensive, as is the deployment of this kind of weaponry in the cold winter," she said.
The U.S. goal is not peace in Ukraine.
The U.S. goal is regime change in Moscow, and in furtherance of that objective the U.S. is ready to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Emphasis in the original.
And from the radicals at Brave New Europe, November 10, 2023:
Peace For Ukraine
The disastrous derailment of early peace efforts to end the war in Ukraine
Michael von der Schulenburg is a former UN Assistant Secretary-General, who worked for over 34 years for the United Nations, and shortly for the OSCE, in many countries in war or internal armed conflicts often involving fragile governments and armed non-state actors
Hajo Funke is Professor Emeritus for political sciences of the Otto-Suhr-Institute/ Freie University Berlin
General (ret.) Harald Kujat was the highest ranging German officer of the Bundeswehr and at NATOSie können die deutsche Fassung HIER lesen
The British Prime Minister’s fateful visit to Kiev on 9 April 2022
This is a detailed reconstruction of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in March 2022 and the associated mediation attempts by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, supported by President Erdogan and former German Chancellor Schröder. It was drawn up by retired General H. Kujat and Professor Emeritus H. Funke, two of the initiators of the recently presented peace plan for Ukraine. And it is also in connection with their peace plan that this reconstruction is so extremely important. It reminds us that we cannot afford to delay ceasefire and peace negotiations again. The human and military situation in Ukraine deteriorates dramatically, with the added danger that it could lead to a further escalation of the war. We need a diplomatic solution to this cruel war for Europe and the Ukraine – and we need it now!
From the detailed reconstruction of the March peace efforts 6 conclusions emerge:
1. Just one month after the start of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had come very close to an agreement for a ceasefire and to an outline for a comprehensive peace solution to the conflict.
2) In contrast to today, President Zelensky and his government had made great efforts to negotiate peace with Russia and bring the war to a quick end.
3) Contrary to Western interpretations, Ukraine and Russia agreed at the time that the planned NATO expansion was the reason for the war. They therefore focused their peace negotiations on Ukraine’s neutrality and its renunciation of NATO membership. In return, Ukraine would have retained its territorial integrity except for Crimea.
4) There is little doubt that these peace negotiations failed due to resistance from NATO and in particular from the USA and the UK. The reasons is that such a peace agreement would have been tantamount to a defeat for NATO, an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and thus an end to the dream of a unipolar world dominated by the USA.
5. The failure of the peace negotiations in March 2022 led to dangerous intensification of the war that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, especially young people, deeply traumatized a young generation and inflicted the most severe mental and physical wounds on them. Ukraine has been exposed to enormous destruction, internal displacements, and mass impoverishment. This si accompanied by a large-scale depopulation of the country. Not only Russia, but also NATO and the West bear a heavy share of the blame for this disaster.
6) Ukraine’s negotiating position today is far worse than it was in March 2022. Ukraine will now lose large parts of its territory.
7. The blocking of the peace negotiations at that time has harmed everyone: Russia and Europe – but above all the people of Ukraine, who are paying with their blood the price for the ambitions of the major powers and will probably get nothing in return.
Michael von der Schulenburg
HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR
AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD
A detailed reconstruction of events in March 2022
Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat
Berlin, October 2023
In March 2022, direct peace negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations and mediation efforts by the then Israeli Prime Minster, Naftali Bennet created a genuine chance for ending the war peacefully only four to five weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine. However, instead of ending the war through negotiations as Ukrainian President Zelensky and his government appeared to have wanted, he ultimately bowed to pressures from some Western powers to abandon a negotiated solution. Western powers wanted this war to continue in the hope to break Russia. Ukraine’s decision to abandon negotiations may been taken before the discovery of a massacre of civilians in the town of Bucha near Kiev.
In the following is an attempt of a step-by-step reconstruction of the events that led to the peace negotiations in March and their collapse in early April 2022.
IN EARLY MARCH 2022, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER NAFTALI BENNETT UNDERTOOK MEDIATION EFFORTS …
Naftali Bennett had undertaken mediation efforts beginning in the first week of March 2022. In a video interview with Israeli journalist Hanoch Daum on February 4, 2023, he spoke for the first time in detail about the process and the end of the negotiations. This video interview is the basis of a detailed report in the Berliner Zeitung of February 6, 2023: “Naftali Bennett wanted peace between Ukraine and Russia: who blocked? Israeli ex-premier spoke for the first time about his negotiations with Putin and Zelensky. The ceasefire was reportedly within reach.” (Berliner Zeitung, Feb. 06, 2023).
Soon after the war broke out, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had asked Bennett to help open a channel of communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin responded by inviting Bennett to Moscow: “On March 5, 2022, at Putin’s invitation, Bennett had flown to Moscow in a private jet provided by Israeli intelligence. In the conversation in the Kremlin, Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO – a position he also repeated publicly a short time later. This removed one of the decisive obstacles to a ceasefire ….”. According to the Berliner Zeitung, other issues, such as the future of the Donbass and Crimea, as well as security guarantees for Ukraine, had also been the subject of intensive talks during these days. (Ibid)
In the interview, Bennett explained further: “I had the impression at the time that both sides were very interested in a ceasefire (…). According to Bennett, a cease-fire was within reach at that time, and both sides were prepared to make considerable concessions…. But Britain and the U.S., in particular, wanted this peace process to end and set their sights on a continuation of the war.” (Ibid)
In early March 2022, President Zelensky contacted not only Naftali Bennett, but also former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and asked him to use his close personal ties to Putin to mediate between Ukraine and Russia in hope to find ways to end this war quickly. In an interview published in the weekly edition of the Berliner Zeitung on October 21/22 of this year, Schröder spoke publicly for the first time about his role in the efforts that led to the peace negotiations in Istanbul on March 29, 2022. Like Bennet, also he came to the conclusion that the reason why these peace negotiations were abandoned was because the Americans obstructed them. He said: “At the peace negotiations in March 2022 in Istanbul with Rustem Umerov (then security advisor to Zelensky, now Ukrainian defense minister), the Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed,” and continued: “But at the end (of the peace negotiations) nothing happened. My impression was that nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington. That was fatal.”
The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who organized the Istanbul meeting at the time, had previously made similar comments. In an interview with CNN Turk on April 20, 2022, he said: “Some NATO states wanted the Ukraine conflict to continue in order to weaken Russia.”
… WHILE PARALLEL PEACE NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN NEGOCIATORS WERE UNDERWAY
Direct negotiations between a Ukrainian and a Russian delegation had already been underway since late February 2022, and in the third week of March, “only a month after the outbreak of the war, they (had) agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.” (Cf. Michael von der Schulenburg: UN Charter: Negotiations! In: Emma of March 6, 2023)....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also September 25's:Ukraine Running Out Of Cannon Fodder
Anyone who has looked at the demographics knows this.
Putting it bluntly in a July 1 post:
The war seems to come down to the question of who runs out first. Does Russia run out of money or does Ukraine run out of soldiers?
The ruble was approaching 90 to the dollar last I saw, an indication that there are deep changes going on in the Russian economy.
Ukraine is on its third army, the first two having been destroyed, and they are press-ganging 50-year-old insurance salesmen to fill the gaps left by the dead and wounded.
And the U.S. powers-that-be, through their media mouthpieces have dramatically shifted the story arc they wish to convey.
Two things about the headline:
1) There are Western commentators, including general officers (ret.), who are either flat out lying about the situation on the ground or are so incompetent that they don't understand what they are seeing. Either way, they should be stripped of their pensions and have their security clearances, if any, revoked.
2) We tried to raise the alarm within a day of the "counteroffensive" beginning:
Oh My God, What Are The Ukrainian Generals Doing?
They are ordering their men to attack defense-in-depth without air cover and 1/10th the artillery the troops need....
More after the jump....
