By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
The war to end all wars is a refrain which began with the British in 1914. It was a domestic political ploy to convince those who should pay and then die.
They paid, they died, and though the line was discredited within a decade, they still pay. Nowadays, the British (not only them) are persuaded that if they pay, the Russians will die.
When the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on Tuesday morning that the terms on which the Russian Army will stop advancing across the Ukraine must be “for many generations to come”, he was talking to the Russians, not to the Americans, Europeans or Ukrainians. “We highly appreciate the efforts of US President Trump and his administration,” Peskov added, “and we want to solve our security problems for many generations to come.”
Putin had explained the night before in Moscow. The Europeans (he included the British) “have no peace agenda; they are on the side of war. Even when they ostensibly attempt to introduce amendments to Trump’s proposals, we see this clearly – all their amendments are directed towards one single aim: to completely obstruct this entire peace process, to put forward demands that are utterly unacceptable to Russia (they understand this), and thereby subsequently to place the blame for the collapse of the peace process upon Russia. That is their objective. We see this plainly.”
The conclusion for Russians is obvious, Putin added. “If Europe wants to wage a war against us and suddenly starts a war with us, we are ready. There should be no doubt about that. The only question is if Europe suddenly starts a war against us, I think very quickly…Europe is not Ukraine. In Ukraine, we are acting with surgical precision. You see my point, don’t you? It is not a war in the direct, modern sense of the word. If Europe suddenly decides to go to war against us and actually follows through with it, then a situation may arise very quickly where we will be left with no one to negotiate with.”
Putin was making the same point for President Donald Trump and his generals to hear. The warning is nuclear war, or the Oreshnik, or both.
In point of fact, according to the latest opinion polls, Russians believe the US to be the far greater enemy to Russia than the European alliance; the Ukraine trails in third place. Also, the opinion polls reveal, public trust in the decision-making of President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the government and the parliament has begun to turn downwards. This is a caution that a temporary deal with the US, on terms paying cash rewards to the Trump family and to the Russian oligarchs, but do not end the economic warfare at once and restart the fighting within five years, will be unacceptable.
The picture of Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner smiling across the table at Putin, Yury Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev on Tuesday afternoon is understood by Russian voters to show the enemy’s money is doing the talking. The absence from the Kremlin table of the Russian generals with whom Putin was talking at their command post on Monday is not the reassurance Peskov intended to give.
Click to view the new discussion with Nima Alkhorshid of the precedents for peace-making and for continuing the war against Russia, which were first set at the Versailles conference after World War I, and then in the capitulation documents for the defeated Germans and Japanese in 1945. It is by these standards, and what we recognise of their failure to solve Russia’s “security problems for many generations to come”, that Russians are judging the latest round of table talks.
(more…)
