https://korybko.substack.com/p/did-trump-just-drop-some-hints-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=835783&post_id=155336015&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=54f23l&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email (https://korybko.substack.com/p/did-trump-just-drop-some-hints-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=835783&post_id=155336015&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=54f23l&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email) Мнение на американски наблюдател, пишещ от Москва ....
Did Trump Just Drop Some Hints About His Peace Plan?
Andrew Korybko
Jan 21, 2025
Trump’s known for his capriciousness, however, so it might be that he either didn’t mean to hint at anything at all in his latest remarks about Russia or he might unexpectedly change his mind about the compromises that he considers to be acceptable for each party during his upcoming call with Putin.
Trump said a few words about Russia shortly after his reinauguration while signing Executive Orders in the Oval Office. They’re important to interpret since they might hint at his peace plan, which he’s yet to officially reveal, but reports have circulated claiming that he’ll “escalate to de-escalate” through more sanctions against Russia and armed aid to Ukraine if Putin rejects whatever deal he offers.
He’ll likewise allegedly cut Ukraine off if Zelensky rejects the same deal. Here’s what he said on Monday afternoon:
“Zelenskyy told me he wants to make a deal, I don’t know if Putin does ... He might not. I think he should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal. I think, Russia is kinda in big trouble. You take a look at their economy, you take a look at their inflation in Russia. I got along with [Putin] great, I would hope he wants to make a deal.
He’s grinding it out. Most people thought it would last about one week and now you’re into three years. It is not making him look good. We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed. About 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia’s bigger, they have more soldiers to lose but that’s no way to run a country.”
Starting from the beginning, his claim that Zelensky “wants to make a deal” coupled with his uncertainty about Putin’s willingness might be meant to portray the latter as an obstacle to peace, thus possibly setting the stage for the previously mentioned punitive measures.
As for his opinion that Putin is “destroying Russia”, that’s hyperbole but frames his counterpart as the weaker of the two, especially when contrasted with Trump’s declaration earlier that day about the start of an American Golden Age.
He then elaborated by pointing to Russia’s inflation rate, which is implied to be the result of the West’s unprecedented sanctions and correspondingly hinting at the possibility of some relief in exchange for Putin agreeing to compromise instead of continuing to pursue his maximum goals.
Building upon that, citing Ukraine’s grossly inflated estimate of Russian losses might belie ignorance of the facts if he truly believes their numbers, but it could also reaffirm his expectation that Putin must compromise.
To explain, Trump seems to believe that Western sanctions’ effect on the Russian economy and the battlefield losses that Russia has suffered (both of which are exaggerated in the context that he referred to them) justify proposing compromises from Putin, not giving into his demands. For this reason, it’s likely that the earlier reports about him planning to propose something less than what his counterpart signaled would be acceptable are true, after which he’ll “escalate to de-escalate” if it’s rejected.
Observers can only speculate about the substance of his envisaged proposal, but it might look something like what was suggested at the end of this analysis here, particularly with regards to the proverbial carrots that Trump might offer Putin with regard to Ukraine’s neutrality and phased sanctions relief.
As for the compromises that might be requested of Russia, these could include freezing the Line of Contact while being asked to accept only the partial demilitarization of Ukraine and practically no denazification.
Trump’s known for his capriciousness, however, so it might be that he either didn’t mean to hint at anything at all in his latest remarks about Russia or he might unexpectedly change his mind about the compromises that he considers to be acceptable for each party during his upcoming call with Putin. Nobody can therefore say with certainty what he had in mind, let alone what he’ll ultimately do, but this analysis is premised on the assumption that he might have even subconsciously let part of his plan slip.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/01/18/zelensky-desperately-trying-provoke-pearl-harbour-moment/ (https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/01/18/zelensky-desperately-trying-provoke-pearl-harbour-moment/)
Весело - Зеленски втори Чърчил, остава да го предложат за нобеловка, нихната...
Zelensky is desperately trying to provoke a Pearl Harbour moment
Ian Proud
January 18, 2025
[/b]относно автора - Ian Proud was a member of HM Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. From July 2014 to February 2019 Ian was posted to the British Embassy in Moscow. He was also Director of the Diplomatic Academy for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Anglo-American School of Moscow.
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There has been much reporting of Ukraine’s aerial attack on Russia over recent days that struck as far as Tatarstan. Western media has been quick to point out the use of western ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles in these attacks and six of each appear to have been used.
What does this all mean?
As talk increases of a possible meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin to discuss ending the war, Volodymyr Zelensky is grasping for a Pearl Harbour moment. Specifically, he wants to provoke Russia into a retaliatory strike against NATO that would be so strategically damaging that NATO would be drawn into Ukraine’s war with Russia.
In that regard, Zelensky is trying to position himself as a modern-day Winston Churchill.
Churchill famously said in a radio broadcast on 9 February 1941 addressing President Roosevelt, ‘Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.’
In April 2024, Zelensky said, ‘We will have a chance for victory if Ukraine really gets the weapon system which we need.’
He has used a different form of the same Churchillian entreaty several times.
In truth, Churchill knew that Britain could only defeat Nazi Germany in western Europe with the industrial might of the United States. So too, Zelensky has always wanted a more direct NATO role in the war, because it has always been clear that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on its own.
History will record that the outcome of World War II was sealed by events far from Europe, but rather in the Pacific, namely the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, on 7 December 1941. That so enraged the United States that they had no choice but to enter the war.
By attacking targets deep inside of Russia using western supplied weapons, Zelensky’s gamble is that Russia will retaliate by striking a significant NATO target inside of Europe.
The Oreshnik strike on an underground weapons facility in Dnipropetrovsk of 21 November offered a glimpse into the battle-changing munitions Russia has at its disposal.
But President Putin has always sought to avoid dramatic escalation that would constitute a direct attack on NATO and, so, trigger an Alliance response under Article 5.
Despite his apparent willingness to negotiate with President Putin, we should nonetheless expect that the escalation risk will rise with Donald Trump as U.S. President.
He was famously gung-ho after becoming President for the first time in January 2017, launching a major cruise missile strike against a Syrian airbase after an alleged chemical weapons’ use in Khan Shaykhun.
The U.S. and UK governments have tied Zelensky’s hands so far, in not allowing him to use western munitions to strike further afield in Russia, precisely out of a fear of a Russian retaliation.
With only twelve western rockets fired into Russia this weeks, at sites in close proximity to the war zone, it seems clear that that position has not changed.
Long-range drone attacks against Tatarstan are nothing new. On 22 December 2024 a Ukrainian drone hit an apartment block in Kazan. Tatarstan is a strategically important region because of its oil and gas wealth. It is also location to a Shahed drone facility that was attacked by long-range Ukrainian drones in April 2024.
Ukrainian drones also attacked a gas compressor station on the Black Sea coast. The station is integral to the functioning of the Turkstream pipeline that over the past year has been running at its maximum capacity (31.5bcm per year) as other routes for natural gas into Europe have been cut.
None of these attacks has struck a strategic blow to Russia’s war effort which continues to grind out small chunks of territory in the Donbass each day.
For now, further escalation looks unlikely, even though Russia will mount retaliatory missile strikes inside of Ukraine which are already happening.
Most people in the west would consider direct NATO involvement in the war to be a bad idea and I suspect a quiet majority would prefer there to be a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is dreadful, destructive and bloody, with over a million people killed or injured so far. Even the Washington Post – one of the most aggressively pro-war American papers – said the official estimate of 400,000 Ukrainians dead or injured is considered ‘a vast undercount’. But the war has been fought exclusively within the territory of Ukraine with Russia seemingly sticking to clear rules of engagement.
Neither Biden nor, now, the more combustible Trump, want to drag the United States into another European war, just as FD Roosevelt didn’t want to commit to World War II.
That leaves Zelensky waiting in the wings, hoping desperately for a Pearl Harbour moment to turn the tide in his favour.
Netflix recently released a documentary about British wartime leader Winston Churchill, with guest appearances by such luminaries as Boris Johnson and, rather bizarrely, Barack Obama’s former speechwriter.
Despite its title, the documentary was a vehicle to compare Winston Churchill’s stoic refusal to give in to Nazi Germany with Volodymyr Zelensky struggle in Ukraine. Even though the latter’s name was not mentioned, the implication was glaring.
Viewers were invited to consider the huge pressure Churchill was under to end his resistance to Hitler. The so-called aerial ‘Battle of Britain’ was a failed bid to keep the United Kingdom out of the war either through a peace treaty or forcing Britain to declare neutrality.
So too, viewers may then think about the blizzard of western media reporting that Zelensky should not be forced against his will into making peace with Russia.
Britain fought Germany alone until the Soviet Union joined the war on 22 June 1941, just like Ukraine is fighting alone now.
But, of course, the likeness is entirely false.
The oft-quoted Munich analogy is false precisely because western powers tried to co-exist with the psychopath Hitler in letting him annex the Sudeten Lands. War in Ukraine started because western powers including Britain actively discouraged both Poroshenko and Zelensky from seeking to coexist with Russian speaking separatists in the Donbas, to keep Ukraine intact.
War in Ukraine would not have happened had Ukraine continued to seek a negotiated settlement allowing devolution in the Donbass and agreed to repudiate its aspiration to join NATO.
The cold truth is that Ukraine is not Great Britain and Zelensky is not Winston Churchill.
Rather than trying to provoke a Pearl Harbour moment that isn’t likely to happen, Zelensky should, for the first time, strike to peace.