The conflict in Ukraine has reached a decisive moment with the Russian army breaking through crumbling Ukrainian lines. Zelensky has played for the highest possible stakes & will now lose everything.
In the first few days of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky recognised the full might of the Russian military and got scared. He apparently called out for help in negotiating peace. Russia had finally, after almost a decade of being pressured into mounting its operation by the West, lost all patience recognising that the Ukrainian military was poised to attack the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine.
Almost immediately it was agreed between the two sides that peace negotiations should take place. These began in Gomel, Belarus and later moved to Istanbul, Turkey. The Ukrainian negotiators were surprised during the discussions with the Russians in Istanbul that their demands were surprisingly modest. In order for the fighting to stop Russia wanted an assurance that Ukraine would not join NATO. All other issues were to be discussed at a later date, some of them between the two leaders themselves.
The documents regarding these agreements were signed by both sides. More work needed to be done but the areas of agreement already established boded very well for the cessation of the conflict. Russia had never wanted this conflict and had worked, through the Minsk process in conjunction with the then leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine to find a way through to peace and reconciliation regarding the Russian-speaking majority. As we now know from statements made by Angela Merkel and the then president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko the entire process was a sham.
The western powers, along with the post-coup Ukrainian leadership were only using the Minsk process as a stalling tactic to give them time to build the Ukrainian military and its siege defences against the Donbass region where the Russian-speaking majority had their villages, towns and cities. The intent was clearly to, at a future date, continue the attacks against them even more ferociously than in the preceding years since 2014. Approximately 15,000 had died since that year when the Ukrainian military began their siege of the region.
In Istanbul in March of 2022 Russia hoped that agreements made with the Ukrainians would be made to stick where the Minsk Accords had not. Merkel and Poroshenko would not make their confessions about the sham nature of their approach to the Minsk Accords for another decade. Hopes were high that the surprising progress made in Istanbul would be fully firmed up to become a basis for a permanent ceasefire. However, it was not to be.
Soon after the hopeful signs in Istanbul emerged Boris Johnson, the then British prime minister arrived in the Ukrainian capital to meet with Zelensky. The precise details of what transpired are not known however, several prominent officials including the chief Ukrainian negotiator in Istanbul and Naftali Bennet, ex-prime minister of Israel.
From ‘Meduza’:
‘Davyd Arakhamia, leader of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament), who headed the Ukrainian delegation in spring 2022 negotiations with Russia, said that at the time, the Russian delegation had offered to end the war if Ukraine relinquished its aspirations to join NATO.’
‘Arakhamia added that Boris Johnson, U.K. prime minister at the time, arrived in Kyiv shortly after the delegation had returned from negotiations and encouraged Ukraine to keep fighting.’
From ‘Foreign Affairs’:
‘Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.’
From ‘The European Conservative’:
‘Former Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennet, who led the country for the first several months of the Russo-Ukrainian war, has said the United States and its closest Western allies “blocked” his attempts to broker a peace agreement between the two East Slavic nations. ‘
‘Boris Johnson visited Kyiv in April 2022, urging Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia. According to a report from Ukrainska Pravda, he said even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, Kyiv’s Western backers were not.’
From ‘Ukrainska Pravda’:
‘Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to "press him."’
Thus an opportunity to move the peace negotiations forward was lost and Russia, left with no other option, continued its campaign. Subsequently Zelensky went further, passing a law expressly forbidding any negotiations with Russia. This has presented the main barrier to talks ever since despite the Russian side expressing a willingness to engage in them.
Since Boris Johnson’s visit to the Ukrainian capital to call a halt to negotiations almost half a million Ukrainian troops have left the battlefield either dead or wounded.
Now, over two years later it is becoming clear and even admitted across the western legacy media that Zelensky’s gamble to continue fighting Russia rather than agree to its modest terms established right at the start of the conflict, has ended in abject failure. The idea that the Ukrainian regime would take back all territory lost has been abandoned with Zelensky saying he would accept the loss of Crimea and the two breakaway republics. The secondary justification for fighting on, to gain a better negotiating position in whatever peace negotiations take place is also now seen to be a failure. Russia is steadily taking more territory with the Ukrainian army steadily weakening.
Zelensky’s gamble in 2022 and of course his love affair with the western powers that started years earlier as he began his presidency have failed entirely to pay off. The blood and treasure that his gamble has cost Ukraine have been enormous. With virtually half a million dead, millions who have flown the country, an economy in ruins and with a dependency on outsiders to pay for almost all governmental costs Ukraine is in the direst of straits. Any new money arriving now will arrive too late to save Zelensky or the benighted,much reduced population he now presides over.
Zelensky handed Ukraine’s sovereignty over to outsiders in the USA, UK and EU and there appears to be little prospect it will ever be retrieved. Even now, with a Russian offensive seemingly imminent and the Russian army making ever greater progress taking more and more territory each day, there could still be a call made to Vladimir Putin asking for negotiations to take place. Putin has repeatedly said he is open to this. However, Ukraine’s sponsors across the western world continue to say that now is not the time for negotiations but that the Ukrainian army must fight on.
Increasingly, officers and men within the Ukrainian army are stating unequivocally that there is no way they can win against overwhelmingly stronger and better equipped Russian forces. Yet the rhetoric from the West remains the same, “Fight on” even as the number of casualties among the Ukrainians triples from this time last year reaching a new average of around 1,000 dead and injured per day. Meanwhile, Russians are volunteering to join the Russian army at a rate around 1,400 per day. Ukraine has no hope of achieving ANY of the goals its regime set for it. The final outcome is clear, the Ukrainian regime with Zelensky at its head, along with the western politicians who have continually promoted war at the expense of peace plus an ever-belligerent NATO are all going down to utter humiliation.
ZELENSKY GAMBLED ON THE WEST’S PLAN FOR RUSSIA, NOW HE & THEY MUST COUNT THE COST
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