From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"JD Vance says Russia is making concessions. Is America being strung along?
Vladimir Putin is being held up by Donald Trump’s administration as a reasonable wartime leader who is ready for peace.
In a wide-ranging interview, JD Vance, the US vice-president, cited a number of “concessions” that he claimed showed the Kremlin was serious about ending its invasion of Ukraine.
However, these concessions, as envisaged by Mr Vance, are more of a mirage to hoodwink the White House than a genuine compromise.
Putin’s apparent compromises, Mr Vance said, had not been offered by Moscow in the last three-and-a-half years of fighting, and were only made possible by Mr Trump.
“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” the vice-president told NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday.
“I didn’t say they conceded on everything. But what they have conceded is the recognition that Ukraine will have territorial integrity after the war. They’ve recognised that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv... and importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
These could have sounded like reasonable and well-thought-out ideas when presented by Putin to Mr Trump during their summit in Alaska.
By all accounts, the Russian despot claims he no longer harbours his maximalist war aims of toppling Volodymyr Zelensky’s government in Kyiv and replacing it with an administration more sympathetic to Moscow.
And then there is the Kremlin’s sudden claim that it is prepared to allow “security guarantees” to shore up Ukraine’s territorial integrity as part of any post-war settlement.
But the reality is that Putin hasn’t suddenly dropped his desire to remove Kyiv’s Western-leaning government, nor has he discovered a newfound belief that Ukraine exists as a state.
The truth lies in what the Russian president can or can’t do. Seizing the entirety of Ukraine was a pipe dream that Putin was forced to give up after his initial invasion force failed to capture Kyiv within the original three-day schedule.
Russia currently controls just shy of 20 per cent of Ukraine’s entire territory, as recognised under its 1991 borders after its split from the Soviet Union.
Putin dropped his original ambitions to conquer all of Ukraine in July 2022, five months after launching the invasion, instead opting to focus on the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
This was a fact omitted from Mr Vance’s commentary on the potential concessions on the table.
The other omission is the reality on the ground.
A recent intelligence assessment by the Ministry of Defence suggested it would take Russian forces 4.4 years to advance far enough to have captured those four oblasts in their entirety.
And even if Moscow was able to seize Zaporizhzhia, the southern region, it is around another 300 miles as the crow flies from the region capital by the same name to reach Kyiv.
While the assessments don’t exist in concrete terms, it is unlikely that Russia, given its resources, would be able to carry out such an offensive operation that could take decades to achieve.
Moscow’s armed forces are already lacking in quality and the Russian economy is showing real signs of faltering, as demonstrated by rising fuel costs.
It begs the question whether the “concessions” presented by Putin in Alaska were genuine or rather a cleverly prepared answer to convince the Americans that he is ready for peace.
As for the idea of “security guarantees”, the Kremlin has, itself, already got to work on debunking what the US, Ukraine and its European allies have claimed is a concession.
Just last week, while Admiral Tony Radakin, the Chief of the Defence Staff, was in Washington querying his American counterparts on how they could participate in a post-war peacekeeping operation, Russian officials were busy ruling out Western boots on the ground.
Ukraine will not agree to end its war with Russia if it does not have the necessary security guarantees.
And that means Kyiv not engaging with Putin’s idea that he could act as a guarantor, including by holding a veto over future assistance provided by Western governments should he invade again.
Suddenly, Mr Vance’s claimed concessions don’t amount to much of a compromise, but more of a demonstration that Putin is succeeding in stringing the Americans along while he continues to grind away at Ukrainian defences."
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