As was publicised by Vladimir Putin in his recent meeting with the leaders of African nations who were seeking to broker a peace settlement, there was already one nearing completion in Istanbul in March of last year. Already in document form and merely needing a few days or weeks more work it was thrown into the trash bin of history by none other than Boris Johnson with assistance from a certain Mr Joe Biden. These men, either through some demented ambition, arrant stupidity or mean-spirited mendacity diverted the path to peace to one of war.
This near-agreement was thrashed out only weeks after the beginning of Russia’s special military operation with Johnson and Biden throwing not only the possibility of a peace treaty into the garbage, with it tens of thousands of lives. This should torture both men for the rest of their lives and ensure their names live in infamy in all history books to come. Johnson is such an arrogant and mindless buffoon that the likelihood of him giving a damn is non-existent. Biden is merely mindless at this point though his thuggish nature, so evident during his entire career is clear to all.
This was the main chance. It was thrown away. And since that time there have been other chances, all laid at the West’s door by Vladimir Putin and the Russian military. It would have been normal for Russia to simply declare war on the Ukrainian regime. After all, it was completely illegal having taken power after an ultra-violent coup cheered on by the political and media elites of the USA, UK and EU. The new Ukraine had become infested with the same sadistic form of violence that gave birth to it. It had become a monster with no brain but only claws and with those claws it tore at the civilian population of the Donbass who feared and loathed it.
The other chances that Russia gave the western powers to turn toward peace instead of war have been constant in the desire of Russia to minimise casualties at every turn, to keep its targeting to strictly military targets, even when it was obvious that the Kiev regime was enticing Russia to kill civilians by placing its troops among them as human shields. Yet Russia did everything possible to minimise civilian deaths and restricted its use of weaponry and kept the number of targets down. In the first year of the campaign this was the constant approach of the Russian military, even withdrawing completely from their positions in the vicinity of the Ukrainian capital.
The withdrawal of Russian troops from the environs of Kiev was in response to the significant progress toward a peaceful resolution that took place in Istanbul in March 2022. Progress that was spurned in favour of more war by the U.S. and UK leadership. The approach to Kiev was the very first opportunity given to the Ukrainian leadership and its western sponsors to recognise the grievances Russia had in terms of a growing threat to its security. Vladimir Putin, feeling a close kinship to the Ukrainian people wished to do everything possible to avoid violent conflict and so tried this opening gambit.
Most probably Russia ought to have realised at this point in time with Istanbul being spurned that the West would NEVER allow any peace agreement to be negotiated and had only ever wanted war and to use Ukraine and the Ukrainian people to forward its geopolitical ambitions, to shore up its weakening grip on the world and damage a rising nation that would not submit to its command. Vladimir Putin had said as much at the Munich security conference in February of 2007. This had made him and the entire Russian political elite enemies to be undermined, weakened, eliminated and replaced. This was the goal and the genesis of the entire tragedy that now encompasses Ukraine.
Russia brought its power to bear incrementally, always seeking to ask if the others would come to the negotiating table now… or now… or now. But despite a few semantic signals that the western powers might do so early on this soon changed. It changed into rhetoric that it wasn’t time for peace talks and that the Ukrainian military must gain a better bargaining position through a continuance of its attacks upon the Russian forces. Alongside this they talked in insulting terms regarding the Russian military and claimed that the Ukrainian military could beat them with their help.
As the western powers escalated instead of seeking peace Russia was left little choice but to return the “favour” and increase the level of its weaponry and sharpen its attacks on an expanded number of targets. Like a black belt jujitsu master, Russia used only those weapons and abilities necessary at any one time, always looking for signs that the opponent was ready to signal an end to the fight. That signal, though feinted in the mid-period of the conflict, eventually faded and died, never to rise again. The conflict became a fight to the death. Even so Russia still did not apply its most powerful weapons.
The most powerful weapons Russia has are only now coming to the fore. The hope of any negotiations with those clearly seeking the collapse and end of the Russian Federation and its breaking up into pieces, has ended. Patience on the Russian side has all but ended. Those institutions and those who run them in Ukraine are now becoming major targets. Russia never wanted to decapitate this snake, it needed a superstructure in Ukraine to negotiate with, a political cadre of officials to sign the ultimate peace settlement. But now, with almost every iota of patience rapidly draining away in Russia it appears still that the Ukrainian regime and the puppet-masters who fund, run, advise and arm it are tone deaf to all reason.
This leaves the West open to a situation where the full might of Russian power is unleashed with the reluctant knowledge that nothing can be done about these savagely mindless political beasts infesting Ukraine but to put them out of their misery once and for all and damn the West to cope with the absolute chaos and nationwide anarchy that will inevitably follow.
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