(Source)
Monday, August 18, 2025
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Hector's funeral and Ukraine's resistance
By Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov, translated from NewsMe:
"Hector's Funeral, or Faith in Ukraine Leaves Trump and Putin Powerless
If you ask a reader who has not been very interested in classical literature, but has known ancient myths since childhood, how Homer's Iliad ends, in most cases he will answer that this famous poem ends with the destruction of Troy. Odysseus' trick, "Fear the Danaans who bring gifts," the Trojan horse, the final battle for the city, which is already taking place within its walls...
However, Homer has nothing like that. The reader of the Iliad does not learn from its content what happened to Troy – but can easily guess. Because the Iliad ends with the death and funeral of Hector – the son of the Trojan king Priam and the main defender of the city.
Why did the death of Hector mean for the author of the Iliad that the city was no more? After all, Troy was still holding out, the enemies were able to get inside its walls only thanks to cunning, and not due to their own strength. Theoretically, even after the death of the prince, Troy could have remained intact. But no!
Hector in Homer symbolizes, first of all, love for the Motherland, readiness to defend it and give his life for it. And this love is higher than the will of the gods, who consider themselves the main participants in the Trojan War.
If we carefully read the Iliad, we will not see in its heroes almost any hint of their own will. Paris, whose act became the main reason for the Trojan War, kidnapped the beautiful Helen not because he himself wanted to, but because Aphrodite promised her to him. Achilles, who became the main hero of this war on the side of the Achaeans, did not want to fight at all, but was forced to submit to the will of the gods. Each battle is discussed on Olympus, Zeus consults with other gods about military assistance to Troy or its destruction - as world leaders do today in their offices.
Nobody pays attention to the Trojans, their task is to come to the temples and make sacrifices to the greedy inhabitants of the supreme mountain. And it is good that in those days the gods did not know about minerals and there were no nuclear power plants - you could buy off with livestock. But even in this case there was no certainty that the gods would accept such a sacrifice and would not start to put forward new conditions. The Trojan War is not about people, it is about the gods, their intricate relationships and millennial intrigues.
The only person who does not want to put up with this is Hector. The son of Priam believes in his mission, strives to protect his hometown, is ready to sacrifice himself for it, even against the will of the gods. The gods can deceive him, but they cannot break him, because Hector has a system of values that is beyond their control.
It is almost impossible to explain the value system of his enemies. Some are fighting because Paris violated the law of hospitality by kidnapping another man's wife. Some simply want to be famous on the battlefield. Some are trying to survive in the circumstances. But everyone understands that their fate depends on the whim of Zeus, and not on their own intentions. Everyone - both in Troy and outside its walls. Everyone, except Hector.
That is why his death is the finale. Only those who want to destroy the hated city and return home, and those who simply want to survive, remain. From now on, everything depends only on the will of the gods, who have long since doomed Troy to destruction. Therefore, it does not matter to Homer what kind of destruction this will be. He understands: after the death of Hector, it is inevitable.
This is the main lesson of the Iliad, which we all must learn. After all, since antiquity, humanity has not invented any new plots. All stories are repeated in one variation or another. And now we are in exactly the same plot, only with new technologies, new weapons and a new economy.
But the essence remains the same: a country can survive only if it is defended by people who have an interest in its existence. People who believe in their homeland, not in the will of the strong. People who do not cower before those who consider themselves gods and are able to thwart their plans, even when dealing with much stronger states.
Of course, the vast majority of people always want to survive, and one cannot blame Ukrainians for their instinct for self-preservation. Of course, it is not surprising that the vast majority of Russians want victory for their country and the destruction of the hated "Troy" only because this Troy did not submit to the invaders from day one. And, of course, if the new US president has decided that he is a thunderbolt, one should not be surprised by his confidence that it is he who decides who will win and who will obey.
But Hector's life teaches us that all this is a complete delusion. If there is love for the Motherland, the gods are powerless in their intrigues and intentions. In order for fate or force to win, it is necessary to destroy this feeling, to make people indifferent to their own country, to convince them that the only way to survive is to submit. And then to destroy those who have submitted.
This plot has been repeated thousands of times in history. But those who surrendered could not leave behind a memory of their defeat - there was no one to tell the truth. Because history is written by the one who destroys, not the one who was destroyed.
So there is no need to be afraid. As long as there are those among us who believe in Ukraine, Trump and Putin will remain powerless in their political and business calculations. They will lose shamefully, whatever their intentions.
People without feelings and ideals always lose to those who have them, even if they lead great countries. In small Troy, Hector was the only one who challenged the gods - and that is why he was so feared on Olympus. But for Homer, Hector became a true symbol of invincibility."
Friday, August 15, 2025
More photos from the protests in Alaska
The protests against Putin in Alaska
Yesterday I posted about the preparations for protests against the Trump - Putin summit in Alaska. The photos below are from the protests themselves, in Anchorage (source: Obozrevatel).
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
Vance: We want to bring about a peaceful settlement in Ukraine by withholding all support from the victim of aggression
From the Hill:
"Vance: ‘We’re done with the funding of the Ukraine war business’
The meeting in Alaska is another gift from Trump to Putin
From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Putin has received yet another gift from Trump
David Blair
Instead, far from being punished, Putin has received yet another gift from Mr Trump: a bilateral summit, without any other party present.
The agreement to hold this meeting was the only public outcome of the talks between Putin and Steve Witkoff, the US envoy, in the Kremlin on Wednesday.
At first, White House officials had been cited as saying that the Russian leader would have to meet Volodymyr Zelensky for talks with Mr Trump to go ahead – a gracious gesture given that the whole future of the Ukrainian president’s beleaguered country will be the main subject of discussion.
Yet, within 24 hours, this condition had been vetoed by Mr Trump, who said he would happily meet Putin regardless. With the fate of Ukraine on the table, no Ukrainian should be allowed to get in the way.
Mr Trump could have set another condition: a ceasefire on the front line or at least a moratorium on Russia’s missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Instead, he has set no price for the summit and gained nothing in return. When it comes to handling Putin, all the rules of the “art of the deal” seem to go out the window.
Why does Putin place such store on occasions of this kind? In his mind, the ideal outcome of the war would be a replay of the Yalta conference of February 1945, when Stalin secured the acquiescence of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to Soviet dominance over central Europe.
In the same way, Putin wants to win Mr Trump’s approval for Russian dominance of Ukraine. He believes that his best chance lies in dealing with the US president on equal terms, as one great power to another, solving problems by deciding the fate of a smaller country, which must simply obey whatever the big men agree on.
In Putin’s mythology, Ukraine is not a sovereign state that makes its own decisions but rather a helpless plaything of the Western alliance, by which he means the US, resisting his invading forces only on the orders of its masters.
Sergei Karaganov, who combines the roles of Russian foreign policy thinker and frothing demagogue, expressed this view by saying: “We are at war not with Ukraine and the unfortunate and stupefied Ukrainians, who have been thrown by their corrupt elites and their masters into the meat grinder: we are at war with the West.”
Such a war, in Putin’s view, can only be resolved by dealing directly with the leader of the West, and the less that “stupefied” Ukrainians like Mr Zelensky have to do with proceedings, the better.
So it was entirely logical that as soon as Mr Witkoff had finished his meeting with Putin, Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser, should have roundly dismissed the idea of a trilateral meeting.
“As for a three-way meeting which, for some reason, Washington was talking about,” said Mr Ushakov, “this was just something mentioned by the American side during the meeting in the Kremlin. This was not discussed. The Russian side left this option completely without comment.”
You bet they did...
Putin will turn to Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a former Goldman Sachs banker who studied at Harvard. Mr Dmitriev specialises in tempting Americans like Mr Witkoff with vast schemes to develop Russia’s natural resources and exploit its critical minerals, which would yield enough riches to pave Washington in gold if only small problems like Ukraine and the security of Europe could be disposed of.
Putin will probably arrive at the summit with grand plans for America and Russia to join hands in the noble task of making money from nature’s munificence.
He will present Ukraine as being an irritating obstacle to the appealing goal of the US and Russia burying their differences and prospering together.
In Putin’s dream scenario, Mr Trump will then agree to a Kremlin-drafted peace plan, whereupon Russia and America could begin their new era of co-operation by ruthlessly imposing that plan on Ukraine and stuffing it down Mr Zelensky’s throat, perhaps literally..."
Rubio: Macron ruined the chance for peace in Gaza
From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"US blames Macron for collapsed Gaza peace talks
Iona Cleave
he US has blamed France
for the collapse of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas because it
agreed to recognise Palestine as a state.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said the Palestinian terror group was “emboldened” by Emmanuel Macron’s decision last month, leading to a breakdown in talks that might have ended the 22-month war.
Mr Rubio told the Catholic Eternal Word TV network: “Talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognise the Palestinian state.”
On July 24, France said it would recognise the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September, becoming the first G7 country or member of the UN Security Council to do so.
Mr Rubio at the time said the US “strongly rejects” the “reckless” decision and called it a “slap in the face” to the victims of Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct 7 2023.
Also on July 24, Israel withdrew its negotiations from the Doha talks after receiving Hamas’s latest response to its ceasefire proposal, bringing to an end the longest round of negotiations since the war started...
Following France’s announcement, Sir Keir Starmer said Britain would recognise Palestine in September unless Israel made peace in Gaza, which Israel condemned as a “reward for Hamas”.
Canada also pledged to recognise Palestinian statehood and several other Western countries indicating they were considering following suit. Most UN members already recognise the State of Palestine.
On Friday, Mr Rubio accused such countries of offering Hamas a chance to claim victory.
He said: “And then you have other people come forward, other countries say: ‘Well, if there is not a ceasefire by September, we’re going to recognise a Palestinian state.’ If I’m Hamas, I’d basically conclude: ‘Let’s not do a ceasefire, we can be rewarded, we can claim it as a victory.’
“So those messages, while largely symbolic in their minds, actually have made it harder to get peace and harder to achieve a deal with Hamas. [Hamas] feel emboldened.”..."
***
Follies such as what Macron and Starmer are doing are a logical consequences of filling once enlightened countries with millions of Hamas-loving immigrants.
Charles Moore: Trump never tried to stop Putin, and admitted he wanted to make peace by giving Russia what it wanted
From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Trump has never tried to stop Putin, but with our help Kyiv can hold off Moscow
Charles Moore
Before he came into office, Donald Trump said he could stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now he has had more than 24 weeks, but the fighting continues unabated.
Today the possibility looms of a meeting between President Trump and President Putin, so people are excited. They say Trump has hardened against Russia; America has threatened Russia with tougher sanctions. Might something actually happen?
If you look at Trump’s presentation of the issue since coming into office, you will certainly observe some alteration.
Before he came into office, Donald Trump said he could stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now he has had more than 24 weeks, but the fighting continues unabated.
Today the possibility looms of a meeting between President Trump and President Putin, so people are excited. They say Trump has hardened against Russia; America has threatened Russia with tougher sanctions. Might something actually happen?
If you look at Trump’s presentation of the issue since coming into office, you will certainly observe some alteration.
In the early months, he spoke almost as if using Russian talking points, and badmouthed President Zelensky of Ukraine. But he probably registered that the disgusting scene in the Oval Office in February in which he and Vice-President Vance tried publicly to humiliate Zelensky had not been such a brilliant idea.
Trump also became annoyed with Putin for not accepting his ludicrously favourable offer to Russia just like that. This burst out in his telling tweet on May 27: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of bad things would already have happened to Russia and I mean REALLY BAD.”
He was accidentally admitting that his idea of peace in Ukraine was to give Russia most of what it wanted, and he had been working hard to that end. Why was friend Vlad not grateful? He felt personally affronted that Putin would often (as he still does) kill some more civilians shortly after one of the two men’s friendly phone calls: “He’ll talk so beautifully, and then he’ll bomb people at night.”
Occasional Trump expressions of outrage have continued. But so have his deadlines that pass unnoticed. He has never come through with a major deterrent against Russia. The latest trip to the Kremlin of the president’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, seems to have effaced the sanctions deadline against Russia which Trump claimed, a few days earlier, to have brought forward. One senses that Trump, not Putin, is the one begging for a deal.
Imagine it from Putin’s point of view. Certainly, he wants to keep on the right side of Trump, but he has very different priorities. His quarter of a century in power has been shaped by wishing to rebuild the Russian empire and, in the process, destroy European security as established with the fall of the Soviet Union. In the words of James Sherr, the veteran British-Estonian Russia watcher, Putin sees Ukraine simply as an “amputated vassal” to be subdued. He does not want peace before that work is finished.
Conceivably, Putin might want the sort of ceasefire that Trump advocates, but only if he could extract immediate advantage. He is not currently under enormous pressure to stop fighting. He has enough cash and arms (Russia now gets more shells from North Korea than Ukraine gets from the whole of the EU) and, despite losing about 1,000 a day, enough men whom that money can buy.
At the back of his mind is the long-standing Russian belief that the United States is its permanent enemy: so three more years of the Russophile Trump may seem of little account.
Putin will also sense the danger of losing momentum. Like Macbeth, he is “in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Without the joy of victory or the tension of continued combat, Russians will start asking difficult questions of a leader who has demanded so much of them with so little to show for it and has ceded economic and political power to China.
Strange to say, the psychological position of Ukraine is not so dissimilar. It is true that it has far fewer men and resources than Russia. If the issue comes down to attrition alone, it will eventually lose; but the fashion in the West for saying the Ukraine has lost is not borne out by the facts.
More than two years ago, I helped deliver a field ambulance to a stabilisation point near the Bakhmut front. I was told this week that, despite continuous fighting, the total Russian advance in that area since then has been three miles. A year ago, we were all reporting that Pokrovsk was about to fall. Today, despite the Russian 2025 offensive, we are reporting the same thing. Ukrainian advances in drone warfare in that time have been spectacular – though Russia catches up with technology fast. The raids at the end of May which knocked out Russian UAVs, some of them in Russian bases thousands of miles away, were astonishing.
The Ukrainians long for respite, of course. The strain on their troops is enormous, but there is virtual unanimity in the country that they must keep as much territory as possible and remain independent and sovereign.
I expect they would concede some things – de facto loss of Crimea, perhaps – but only as part of a policed settlement. They fear – indeed they know, because Trump has said as much – that America is not prepared to protect any deal it may broker. So how much use is anything it may propose?...
So when either side looks at Trump, neither sees an all-powerful saviour or wise mediator. They see someone who does not understand or share their modes of thought. He cannot grasp what an existential war means, and therefore how a lasting peace could be arrived at. For discreditable reasons, he is pro-Russia, and never admits the evil of Russia’s aggression, but the main point is that he can hustle but not deliver.
Obviously, he is a very powerful man, and so must be humoured, but if either Russia or Ukraine accepts a ceasefire, each will be doing so only to weaken the other side, militarily or diplomatically. No ceasefire will last.
The other aspect of the situation which Trump seems not to understand is the threat to European security and global order, and NATO’s role in protecting the post-1945 peace that guarantees these things. This makes him dangerous, but also, in a sense, marginal.
This is where Europe has benefited from Ukraine’s courage and tenacity. With the honourable exception of Britain’s quick-acting military support, led by Boris Johnson in February 2022, the main European powers were flummoxed by Putin’s invasion. If Ukraine had not so successfully resisted, European security today would be broken, north, south and east. Ukraine has bought us time, and with it, a greater toughness and realism about collective defence.
The EU plus Britain have a GDP 12 times the size of Russia. We are getting better, though much too slowly, in helping to supply Ukraine and giving it a freer hand to make much more of its own defence equipment. It is preparing new generations of weapons. And now, as part of fairer burden-sharing, the United States is selling us, through NATO means much less bureaucratic than EU ones, kit we can then supply to Ukraine.
It is well within our power and rights to create a situation in which Russia cannot win in Ukraine and cannot achieve the wider destabilisation which it is attempting from Estonia to the Balkans. We should not be deflected by Trump’s sound and fury, signifying not all that much."
Meaghan Mobbs about Trump's crossroads
From Meaghan Mobbs' X, Aug. 9:
"It is increasingly clear President Trump stands at a Churchill–Chamberlain crossroads.
You cannot trade another nation’s sovereignty for the illusion of stability.
His choice will decide not only Ukraine’s fate, but the future security of the United States and the free world."
Zelensky: Putin's only card is his ability to kill
Translating from an Aug 9 statement by Zelensky in the Obozrevatel:
"Ukraine and all partners equally perceive the need for a ceasefire, an end to the killings. Only one subject opposes this - Putin. His only card in hand is the ability to kill, and he is trying to sell the end of deaths at the highest possible price. It is important that this does not deceive anyone. What is needed is not a pause in killings, but a real, long-term peace...
Putin's tactics are clearly visible to everyone. He is afraid of sanctions and is doing everything to get rid of them. He wants to exchange a pause in the war, in the killings for the legalization of the occupation of our land - he wants to get territorial spoils for the second time. He was allowed to take Crimea, and this led to the occupation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. He did not receive preventive punishment when he gathered a contingent on our borders. This led to a full-scale war and the occupation of more parts of Ukraine. Now Putin wants to be forgiven for the seizure of the south of our Kherson region, Zaporozhye, the entire territory of Luhansk, Donetsk, Crimea. We will not allow Russia to make this second attempt to divide Ukraine. Knowing Russia - where there is a second, there is a third. Therefore, we stand firm, on clear Ukrainian positions..."
Putin uses migrants as a weapon against Europe
From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Putin’s warlord ally flying migrants into Europe
Joe Barnes
Vladimir Putin appears to have teamed up with a Libyan warlord to trigger a fresh migrant crisis in the European Union.
The European Commission has tracked an increased number of flights between the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi and Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Officials said the pattern suggested possible co-ordination with Gen Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman who controls much of eastern Libya, to facilitate a wave of illegal migration into the bloc.
It could mark a repeat of the summer of 2021, when tens of thousands of would-be asylum seekers were helped across the borders of Belarus in what officials warned was a Russian-orchestrated attempt to destabilise the EU.
“We are monitoring recent Minsk-Benghazi flights operated by Belavia Airlines,” a commission official told The Telegraph.
“The frequency and nature of these flights, particularly within a short timeframe, raise questions about potential co-ordination or facilitation of irregular migration flows.”
Open-source data reviewed by The Telegraph shows a spike in flights between the Libyan city and the Belarusian capital on the flag-carrying airline in recent months.
Vladimir Putin appears to have teamed up with a Libyan warlord to trigger a fresh migrant crisis in the European Union.
The European Commission has tracked an increased number of flights between the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi and Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Officials said the pattern suggested possible co-ordination with Gen Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman who controls much of eastern Libya, to facilitate a wave of illegal migration into the bloc.
It could mark a repeat of the summer of 2021, when tens of thousands of would-be asylum seekers were helped across the borders of Belarus in what officials warned was a Russian-orchestrated attempt to destabilise the EU.
In
2021, ahead of Putin’s Ukraine invasion, tens of thousands of migrants
arrived at Belarus’s borders with eastern Europe - Leonid Shcheglov/AFP
“We are monitoring recent Minsk-Benghazi flights operated by Belavia Airlines,” a commission official told The Telegraph.
“The frequency and nature of these flights, particularly within a short timeframe, raise questions about potential co-ordination or facilitation of irregular migration flows.”
Open-source data reviewed by The Telegraph shows a spike in flights between the Libyan city and the Belarusian capital on the flag-carrying airline in recent months.
In May, there were just two flights between the cities, jumping to five in June and four in July.
In the past, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, had been accused of allowing migrants to land in Minsk on similar flights before helping transport them to makeshift camps on the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
From the camps, the migrants were said to have been advised by Belarusian officials on how to cross the frontier without being detected.
Analysts have since said this was done in co-ordination with Putin to distract from his forces massed on the borders with Ukraine before his invasion in February 2022.
After launching the bloodiest conflict since the Second World War, the Russian president has ordered a series of hybrid attacks on Nato and EU nations supporting Kyiv’s defence.
In the first seven months of this year, the EU has recorded around 5,000 illegal crossings at its eastern land borders.
While this is down from last year, the few flights between Libya and Belarus could lead to a new influx of arrivals across the frontier.
Some in Europe say Putin could use his growing influence in Libya to once again target the continent.
The Russian president has invested efforts in building a presence in the North African country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
As Russia evacuated its Syrian bases, there was evidence equipment was being moved from the port of Tartus to Libya.
When Haftar held a parade of his Libyan Arab Armed Force last month, it showcased hundreds of Russian armoured vehicles and air defence systems.
He is known to control a small army of people smugglers operating out of Libya, one of the main crossing points from Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean.
“The fact that Russia is increasing its influence in Libya is precisely our concern, and that’s why we must also engage with Libya,” Magnus Brunner, the EU’s migration commissioner, told Politico last month.
“There is certainly a danger that Russia will use migrants and the migration issue as a whole as a weapon against Europe. This weaponisation is taking place, and of course we also fear that Russia intends to do the same with Libya.”
Mr Brunner was one of a group of high-ranking EU officials on an ill-fated visit to Benghazi last month, which was abruptly scrapped after the delegation landed at the city’s Benina airport before being told they were persona non grata.
Belarus has been identified by Frontex, the agency that polices the EU’s external border, as one of the main challenges the bloc faces in its fight against illegal migration this year.
The evidence suggests that Lukashenko, Putin and Haftar have teamed up to exploit the frontier once again.
“Migrants are used as an instrument by the regime to put pressure on the European Union’s borders, and our neighbours are really suffering from this,” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’s exiled opposition leader, told The Telegraph.
“This is all the actions of Lukashenko and just business for his regime and a tool to put pressure on the EU for the principled and strong position in supporting democracy.”"
***
The EU should take care that migrants do not reach its territory, or if they do, that they stay briefly and do not have good memories of that period.
CNN: Trump intends to eviscerate Ukraine
From the CNN / Yahoo!News:
"Trump-Putin summit in Alaska resembles a slow defeat for Ukraine
Analysis by Nick Paton Walsh
Location matters, former real estate mogul US President Donald Trump said. Moments later he announced Alaska, a place sold by Russia to the United States 158 years ago for $7.2 million, would be where Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to sell his land deal of the century, getting Kyiv to hand over chunks of land he’s not yet been able to occupy.
The conditions around Friday’s summit so wildly favor Moscow, it is obvious why Putin leapt at the chance, after months of fake negotiation, and it is hard to see how a deal emerges from the bilateral that does not eviscerate Ukraine. Kyiv and its European allies have reacted with understandable horror at the early ideas of Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, that Ukraine cede the remainders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for a ceasefire.
Naturally, the Kremlin head has promoted the idea of taking ground without a fight, and found a willing recipient in the form of Witkoff, who has in the past exhibited a relaxed grasp of Ukrainian sovereignty and the complexity of asking a country, in the fourth year of its invasion, to simply walk out of towns it’s lost thousands of men defending.
It is worth pausing and reflecting on what Witkoff’s proposal would look like. Russia is close to encircling two key Donetsk towns, Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, and may effectively put Ukrainian troops defending these two hubs under siege in the coming weeks. Ceding these two towns might be something Kyiv does anyway to conserve manpower in the months ahead.
The rest of Donetsk – principally the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – is a much nastier prospect. Thousands of civilians live there now, and Moscow would delight at scenes where the towns evacuate, and Russian troops walk in without a shot fired...
What could Ukraine get back in the “swapping” Trump referred to? Perhaps the tiny slivers of border areas occupied by Russia in Sumy and Kharkiv regions – part of Putin’s purported “buffer zone” – but not much else, realistically.
The main goal is a ceasefire, and that itself is a stretch. Putin has long held that the immediate ceasefire demanded by the United States, Europe and Ukraine for months, is impossible as technical work about monitoring and logistics must take place first. He is unlikely to have changed his mind now his troops are in the ascendancy across the eastern frontline.
Europe is also wary of mirroring the failure of former UK Foreign Secretary Neville Chamberlain to stand up to Nazi Germany in 1938 – of the worthlessness of a “piece of paper” signed by a Kremlin that has repeatedly agreed to deals in Ukraine and then simply used the pause to regroup before invading again.
To his credit, Putin has made it clear what he wants from the start: all of Ukraine subjugated or occupied and a strategic reset with the US that involves it dropping Kyiv like a stone. His aide, Yury Ushakov, spoke of Alaska being a great place to talk economic cooperation between Washington and Moscow, and suggested a return summit in Russia had already been proposed.
There is a risk we see bonhomie between Trump and Putin that allows the US president to tolerate more technical meetings between their staffers on the what and when of any ceasefire deal. A plan about land swaps or grabs that is wholly in Moscow’s favor, might then be presented to Kyiv, with the old US ultimatums about aid and intelligence sharing being contingent on their accepting the deal that we have seen before. Cue French President Emmanuel Macron on the phone to Trump again, and around we go. Putin needs more time to continue to conquer and he is about to get it...
Trump claims his thinking around Putin has evolved. “Disappointed,” “disgusting,” “tapping me along” are all newcomers to his lexicon about the Kremlin head. While Trump appears effortlessly able to stop himself causing genuine pain to Moscow, allowing threats and deadlines to fall lifeless around him, he is surrounded by allies and Republicans who will remind him of how far down these roads he has gone before.
Much could go right. But the stage is set for something more sinister. Consider Putin’s mindset for a moment. The third Trump threat of sanctions has evaporated, and his forces are moving into a period of strategic gain on the frontlines. He’s got his first invitation to the US in a decade to talk peace about Ukraine without Ukraine, discussing a deal where he doesn’t even have to fight to get some of the rest of the land he wants. And this is before the former KGB spy gets to work his apparent magic on Trump.
Friday is six days away, but even at this distance resembles slow defeat for Kyiv."
What the Russian elite wants from the negotiations
Translating from DonPress, Aug. 9:
"Defense Ministry source admits what he wants from negotiations on the "Ukrainian crisis"
A high-ranking Russian military man told what he expects from the meeting between Putin and Donald Trump on the Ukrainian issue. This was reported by the Russian Telegram channel "Kremlin Snuffbox".
A source from the military department expects from this process, first of all, an end to the shelling of Moscow, the Moscow region, Sochi and other cities and regions "that should not be shelled".
"The enemy knows where we all live, this information cannot be hidden from him. Therefore, to be honest, I constantly expect him to strike, missiles and drones at my house in the Moscow region. Of course, I made myself a bomb shelter, but it is still impossible to live like this. I hope that as a result of the negotiations, this shelling will stop," the channel's interlocutor said.
He also complained that he recently went with his family to [the resort of] Sochi, where it was previously calm, and drones also began flying there. He considers this situation "unacceptable"."
Trump already made the world more dangerous
From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Trump has betrayed Ukraine, making the world immeasurably more dangerous
Daniel Hannan
This is a straightforward defeat. A defeat, not just for Ukraine, but for the values which the Anglosphere and its allies have upheld since 1941, to the immense benefit of the human race. Aggression is being rewarded. Borders are being changed by force. A brittle dictatorship has defeated a Western alliance with a combined economy forty times larger than its own. The prestige of the democracies is suffering a Suez-level hit.
As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska – a venue surely proposed by the Kremlin, both to demonstrate that Putin is again welcome in the United States and to suggest that there is nothing terribly new about ceding territory – all the momentum is with the Russian leader.
From the moment he took office, Trump has been wheedling and conciliatory with Putin, aggressive and bullying with Volodymyr Zelensky. Who can say what animates him? Perhaps he can’t forgive Zelensky for his cameo role in l’affaire Hunter Biden; perhaps, as conspiracy theorists claim, Putin has kompromat on him; or perhaps it is simply Trump’s customary deference towards dictators.
Frankly, it doesn’t much matter. Whatever his motives, Trump has behaved exactly as a Russian asset would, not only vis-Ã -vis Ukraine, but also by making aggressive territorial claims against Denmark and threatening Canada with annexation. His tariff policies have caused as much disruption to Western economies as his sanctions have to Russia. Putin could not have wished for more.
We do not know how much has already been settled, and there are still details to be hammered out. But the broad outlines of the proposed ceasefire deal can be glimpsed in leaks to both American and Russian media.
Putin will hang on to most of what he has seized – not just the territories he occupied in 2014, but many of the lands he has conquered since 2022 and even, according to some briefings, those parts of Donetsk that are currently under Ukrainian control. Sanctions will be eased, and we might even see more economic collaboration between the US and Russia than before 2014. In any event, the US will stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.
These concessions constitute a colossal Russian victory, regardless of what is decided on Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, formal recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea or precisely where the lines are frozen.
To understand the scale of the West’s defeat, we need to remember why we were backing Ukraine in the first place. Not because we thought that Zelensky was brave or handsome or even particularly democratic. Not because we believed that Ukrainians were kinder or more amusing than their Russian cousins. Not even because, long before 2022, Russia had been buzzing our airspace and overseeing cyberattacks against our infrastructure and had, on two occasions, committed acts of war against us when it ordered its operatives to carry out lethal attacks on British soil (against Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and, unsuccessfully, against Sergei Skripal in 2018).
No, we are backing Ukraine because it is the wronged party. We are sending it weapons because it was attacked without provocation by a neighbour to whom it presented no threat. We are training its soldiers because, when Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear arsenal in 1994, it did so in exchange for an explicit promise that its independence would be respected within its existing borders – a promise guaranteed by Britain, the United States and (never forget) Russia.
The idea that countries should not help themselves to slices of territory is not some ancient and immutable principle. On the contrary, it dates in its current form from exactly 84 years ago, August 1941, when Churchill and Roosevelt met in Newfoundland and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a set of rules that they wanted to shape the post-war world. Land should not be annexed by force, nor borders altered without the consent of local people. Aggression should not be rewarded. Raw materials should be accessible on world markets and sea-lanes kept open, so that there would be less incentive to invade a neighbour. Democracy and self-determination should be encouraged over autocracy.
When these ideals were proclaimed, the United States was still neutral. Four months later, after Pearl Harbor, the Atlantic Charter informed the war aims of the Allies. Its principles went on to shape the UN Charter and the Nato alliance. It is true that they were sometimes violated, for we live in an imperfect world. But they at least remained the aspiration. Until now.
It cannot be sufficiently stressed that our interest in Ukraine was to uphold the international order under which mankind had flourished since 1945. It was never about Zelensky, however gallant his initial response to the invasion.
Trumpians like to point to corruption and illiberalism in Ukraine as though they invalidate the premise of our assistance. But our 1994 guarantee was never conditional on who was in government, or what kind of government it was.
There is nothing new here. Poland was hardly a model democracy when Britain guaranteed its sovereignty in March 1939. Józef Pilstroksudski’s 1926 coup had created an autocratic regime which, while it stopped well short of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany or the USSR, none the less harassed dissidents and censored media.
In much the same way, Ukraine today, while nowhere near Russian levels of despotism, is far from being a free country... None of this should make the slightest difference to our policy. But I fear that it will, because support for Ukraine has been presented as a goodies-and-baddies issue rather than a question of defending territorial integrity and national sovereignty. We somehow seem to find those aims sterile, dull and inadequate.
Just as Tony Blair once claimed in a party conference speech that we had joined the Second World War to end Nazism (when in fact we joined to defend Poland), so we now imagine that we came to the aid of Ukraine because Zelensky is nicer than Putin...
We were backing and supplying Ukraine because the world order that was born after 1945 lifted our species to unprecedented heights of peace and prosperity.
When Putin gets to keep the better part of his spoils, and furious Ukrainians eject their regime, every tinpot dictator in the world will get the message. NATO, the most powerful alliance on the planet, would not protect one of its friends. The old order is over. The world of the Atlantic Charter has gone. Something altogether colder and darker is on its way."
Trump wants Ukraine to give Russia a vast swath of land for nothing
Translating from the blog "Byt ili" (To be or):
"Bloomberg: The US and Russia are discussing a deal that would require Ukraine to completely leave the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for stopping the Russian offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
Transferring the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Putin will give him complete control over Donbass, something he has been unable to achieve militarily in 3.5 years of fighting.
The deal does not even mention a complete ceasefire. That is, Putin will simply stop advancing in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, but there is nothing about stopping air strikes, for example. It is also unclear what will happen with the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, where Putin is also advancing.
The transfer of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions should "open the way to a ceasefire and the start of technical negotiations on a peace agreement."
The US is trying to secure support from Ukraine and Europe, but so far it is far from guaranteed. Zelensky risks being in a take-it-or-leave-it situation, while Europe fears that the US will simply force it to monitor the ceasefire and watch Putin rearm.
It is not a fact that Putin will agree to a trilateral meeting with Trump and Zelensky even if an agreement is reached with the United States.
***
Here is your "deal". Perhaps some details are missing, some are not accurately conveyed. If the deal is really in this form, then Ukraine and Europe will never agree to it.
Moreover, Putin does not even guarantee anything to Trump. It is simply, like, "give up Donbass, and only then we will talk about a ceasefire."
As we discussed in the post above, Putin is simply using Trump for his personal interests to achieve his goal - control over ALL of Ukraine, and if you can try to take advantage of Trump's naivety and take Donbass with little bloodshed, then why not try.
Ukraine is being offered to give up Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Pokrovsk, Konstantinovka, Druzhkovka, Seversk, Liman in exchange for... well, for nothing, essentially. Like "Putin will be more accommodating."
Well, Trump has repeatedly complained that Crimea was given away in 2014 without a single shot being fired. So, now he himself is ready to give away 33% of Donetsk Oblast without a single shot being fired (+1% of Luhansk Oblast, which Putin still hasn’t managed to capture entirely)?"
ISW: Ukraine must not abandon its fortress belt in Donbass
From the Institute for the Study of War:
"Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 8, 2025
Kremlin officials are reportedly demanding that Ukraine cede to Russia strategically vital unoccupied territory in Donetsk Oblast and freeze the frontline in other areas as part of a ceasefire agreement. Unnamed sources told Bloomberg on August 8 that Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that Ukraine cede the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, along with Crimea, as part of ceasefire negotiations.[1] Bloomberg reported that this demand would require Ukraine to withdraw troops from Ukrainian-controlled territory in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that Russian forces have been trying and failing to capture since February 2022, after having failed to take it during Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Bloomberg reported that the terms stipulate that Russian forces would also halt offensives in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts while Ukraine and Russia negotiate a ceasefire and subsequent peace deal. Bloomberg reported that it is not clear whether Russia is willing to give up any land that it currently occupies...
The reported settlement notably does not include any mention of a Russian withdrawal from the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) or from positions in Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts. Two European officials told the Wall Street Journal that US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff stated that the Russian proposal included two phases: the first in which Ukraine would withdraw from Donetsk Oblast and Russia and Ukraine would freeze the frontline, followed by a second phase in which Putin and US President Donald Trump would agree on a peace plan that they would later negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky...
Putin may be offering this proposal in an attempt to delay the sanctions that Trump threatened to impose by August 8 if Putin did not begin to negotiate with Ukraine to end the war.[5] Putin’s proposal demands the surrender of Ukrainian-held territory before a ceasefire, a sequence at odds with Trump's and Zelensky’s stipulation that a ceasefire must precede any peace negotiations.[6] US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on August 6 that a ceasefire is an important part of the negotiation process because it is difficult to negotiate a permanent peace deal while under fire — reiterating Trump's preferred timeline of establishing a ceasefire in Ukraine before starting formal peace negotiations to end the war.[7] The Wall Street Journal noted that European and Ukrainian officials worry that Putin is simply using the offer as a ploy to avoid new US sanctions while continuing the war.[8] Putin is likely deliberately offering a proposal designed to be unacceptable to Ukraine in order to delay sanctions as well as meaningful ceasefire negotiations and place the blame for the failure of negotiations on Ukraine.
The surrender of the rest of Donetsk Oblast as the prerequisite of a ceasefire with no commitment to a final peace settlement ending the war would position Russian forces extremely well to renew their attacks on much more favorable terms, having avoided a long and bloody struggle for the ground. Conceding such a demand would force Ukraine to abandon its "fortress belt," the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014 — with no guarantee that fighting will not resume. Ukraine's fortress belt has served as a major obstacle to the Kremlin's territorial ambitions in Ukraine over the last 11 years. The fortress belt is made up of four large cities and several towns and settlements that run north to south along the H-20 Kostyantynivka-Slovyansk highway, with a total pre-war population of over 380,537 people.[9] The line is 50 kilometers long (roughly 31 miles, about the distance between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland). Slovyansk and Kramatorsk form the northern half of the fortress belt and serve as significant logistics hubs for Ukrainian forces defending in Donetsk Oblast. Kramatorsk currently serves as Donetsk Oblast's provisional administrative center (because Russian forces occupy the regional center of Donetsk City) and is a major industrial city.[10] Druzhkivka, Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka, and Kostyantynivka serve as the southern half of the fortress belt. Ukrainian forces first began building up defensive positions in and around these cities after retaking them from pro-Russian proxy forces who attacked and seized Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostyantynivka in April 2014.[11] Ukrainian forces have maintained control of these cities since July 2014.[12] Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure in and around these cities.
Russia's failure to seize Slovyansk in 2022 and ongoing struggles to envelop the fortress belt underscore the success of Ukraine's long-term efforts to reinforce the fortress belt cities... Putin's reported proposal reportedly demands that Ukraine concede this critical defensive position, which Russian forces currently have no means of rapidly enveloping or penetrating, apparently in exchange for nothing.
Ceding Ukrainian-held parts of Donetsk Oblast will place Russian forces on the borders of Donetsk Oblast, a position that is significantly less defensible than the current line... Russian positions along the Donetsk-Kharkiv and Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border areas would provide a more advantageous launching point for a future Russian offensive into nearby areas of Kharkiv or Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. ISW continues to assess that Russian forces will almost certainly violate any future ceasefire or peace agreement and renew military aggression against Ukraine in the future unless a peace agreement includes robust monitoring mechanisms and security guarantees for Ukraine.[23] Forcing Ukraine to concede the remainder of western Donetsk Oblast to Russia would bring Russian forces 82 kilometers further west in Ukraine...
Putin's reported proposal once again underscores that he maintains his uncompromising demands for Ukraine's capitulation and remains disinterested in good-faith negotiations. Putin stated on August 1 that the conditions laid out in his June 2024 speech “certainly” remain the same.[25] Putin demanded in June 2024 that any peace agreement must address the “root causes” of the war and provide for Ukraine's demilitarization, denazification, and alliance neutrality. Putin effectively demanded the removal of the current legitimate Ukrainian government and the establishment of a pro-Russian proxy government in Kyiv.[26] Putin has since consistently demanded that Ukraine concede all of Donbas and “Novorossiya,” referring to occupied and non-occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts as a prerequisite for any sort of negotiations with Ukraine.[27] Kremlin officials often invoke the term “Novorossiya” — an amorphous invented region in Ukraine — as an “integral” part of Russia in order to lay claims to territory beyond the four partially occupied oblasts and include all of southern and eastern Ukraine, including Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Odesa Oblasts.[28] Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov previously stated that there are “no secrets” about Russia’s demands and reiterated the importance of addressing the “root causes” of the war in a future peace agreement.[29] Putin stated on August 7, following his meeting with Witkoff, that, while not opposed to meeting with Zelensky, certain conditions must be “created” before Putin will meet with Zelensky, and that these conditions are still far away.[30] Putin’s efforts to posture himself as amenable to US peace proposals and meaningful negotiations while continuing to make the same demands and refusing to make any concessions are attempts to obfuscate the fact that Putin himself remains uninterested in ending his war on terms short of full victory. Putin and other Kremlin officials have also intentionally cultivated Russian society’s commitment to Putin’s stated war aims and have not set conditions to take any off-ramps to accept a peace settlement that falls short — in contradiction with Putin’s claims that he is interested in peace.[31]...
Key Takeaways:
- Kremlin officials are reportedly demanding that Ukraine cede to Russia strategically vital unoccupied territory in Donetsk Oblast and freeze the frontline in other areas as part of a ceasefire agreement.
- The surrender of the rest of Donetsk Oblast as the prerequisite of a ceasefire with no commitment to a final peace settlement ending the war would position Russian forces extremely well to renew their attacks on much more favorable terms, having avoided a long and bloody struggle for the ground. Conceding such a demand would force Ukraine to abandon its "fortress belt," the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014 — with no guarantee that fighting will not resume.
- Russia's failure to seize Slovyansk in 2022 and ongoing struggles to envelop the fortress belt underscore the success of Ukraine's long-term efforts to reinforce the fortress belt cities.
- Russian forces are currently still attempting to envelop the fortress belt from the southwest and are engaged in an effort to seize it that would likely take several years to complete.
- Ceding Ukrainian-held parts of Donetsk Oblast will place Russian forces on the borders of Donetsk Oblast, a position that is significantly less defensible than the current line.
- Russian positions along the Donetsk-Kharkiv and Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border areas would provide a more advantageous launching point for a future Russian offensive into nearby areas of Kharkiv or Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. ISW continues to assess that Russian forces will almost certainly violate any future ceasefire or peace agreement and renew military aggression against Ukraine in the future unless a peace agreement includes robust monitoring mechanisms and security guarantees for Ukraine.
- Putin's reported proposal once again underscores that he maintains his uncompromising demands for Ukraine's capitulation and remains disinterested in good-faith negotiations."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)