Now it’s Putin’s turn
Once Zelensky got onboard – which he sorta kinda is – the ball was in Putin’s court. So this could be the start of a big story or it could end up meaning nothing at all.
How’s that for clarity on my part? How’s that for going out on a limb with a prediction?
Here’s the news from earlier this afternoon:
In his first public remarks on the proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Russia is “for it” but that he wants his own security guarantees.
Putin raised questions regarding a 30-day ceasefire during a press briefing in Moscow on Thursday, as President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff landed in the city to discuss the proposal.
“It seems to me, it would be very good for the Ukrainian side to reach a truce for at least 30 days. And we are for it. But there is a nuance,” Putin said, highlighting concerns regarding Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces pushed into last year in a surprise offensive but in recent weeks have seen Russian forces retake significant ground.
“If we stop the hostilities for 30 days, what does it mean? Does it mean that everyone who is there will leave without a fight?” Putin said. “Or the Ukrainian leadership will give them an order to lay down their arms and just surrender? How will it be? It is not clear.”
That’s what talks are for.
Witkoff certainly has his hands full, as of course does Trump.
The man on the pony suggests that Ukrainians in the Kursk salient should surrender and become Russian POWs (aka hostages)? Russia needs security gaurentees? Another insight into Russo Mir?
One for you,
One, two for me.
Two for you,
One, two, three for me.
How Russia plays the game.
A new video is out, let’s see what comes of it.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6369984053112
Fox News: “NATO chief praises Trump: ‘You broke the deadlock’ on Ukraine
President Donald Trump meets with NATO Sec. Gen. Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, where the two discussed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.”
It’s going to be a long back and forth. And the Democrats will try everything in their power to derail it. They are that insane now. I already see it in the left posts of former friends. It’s not just the upper levels of the Ds, but reaches down to the grassroots.
Putin may be playing into Trump’s hands.
Kind of like the Dems.
SHIREHOME:
Couldn’t happen to a better pair.
Not Wiley Coyote.
Beep! Beep! Wiley Negotiator?
Rhetorical question; What possible benefit is there for Russia in this ceasefire proposal? Which would allow Ukraine to regroup its forces. Require Russia to cease its military advances, while allowing Ukraine to receive more arms shipments from the US. And allow Ukraine to make unhindered repairs to its electrical infrastructure…
What possible benefit is there for Russia in this ceasefire proposal?
I asked myself the same question.
Possible answer: Russia is hurting worse than we know, than Putin has let on.
That is my position, Russia is spent. Putin needs an exit ramp that lets him claim enough of a victory to “justify” the wreck he has made.
Rhetorical question:
What benefit is it to Europe (much less Ukraine) to allow an expansionist empowered Russian Empire to advance farther into the Black Sea, to strengthen its ties to Iran, and to encroach into the Baltic States?
Oh, I forget, Geoffrey sees no downsides with The Man on the Pony. Clarity and myopia don’t go together Geoffrey.
I agree with Chases Eagles. I just hope Putin realizes that.
There are a couple of factors.
Regardless of what Putin wants, there are the Russian mothers. The losses have been heavy, but the argument can be made that Ukrainian’s were to defend the home land. How long are Russians willing to send their sons to die for what? Putin? Putin may or may not feel the heat. But I imagine that the Tsar felt pretty secure at one time. To paraphrase a truism, ‘cataclysmic change happens slowly, then suddenly’.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, Trump waved a stick at Putin, and suggested that there are a lot of economic arrows in his quiver. (How is that for mixing metaphors?) I don’t know if that was just Trumpian bombast, or whether he does have strong options, and the will to use them. We all know that Trump badly wants to bring this to a close.
I should think that along the way, someone will respond to Putin’s security demands by pointing out that no one was threatening Russia antebellum. I know, that he would discount that but it should be stated in the public domain..
Geoffrey:
Yeah repair that electrical infrastructure, apartment buildings, hospitals, totally obliterated towns such as Bakmut, Avdivka, parts of Kherson, parts of Kharkhiv, parts of the port of Odessa, but that will take a lot longer to repair. All those military targets of your Man on the Pony.
Yes Geoffrey that electrical infrastructure necessary for generally speaking civilized life, or considering that they are just Ukrainians, at a minimum drinking water and treatment of sewage, heat in the winter? Or even safe shutdown of nuclear power plants? Yep, your Man on the Pony has put all those things and more under threat in the last three years.
– The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
Evidence that Russia is a spent force; even after cutting off US intelligence and temporarily (?) halting arms deliveries the mighty Russian military with their massive advantages in population haven’t been able to crush those invaders of the Holy Motherland (for Geoffrey and Boned Looser) in Kursk. Feet of clay, they have.
Kursk isn’t essential to Ukraine, but it is existential (IMO) to the Man on the Pony.
• 100% made me laugh & smile – nice work.
I wish I could follow Om’s line of thinking because I am sure that it is relevant. Alas.
Sometimes, in war, it is simply essential, for both sides, to get it over with and take the best deal that they can negotiate.
I think that is where this war is now.
Kind of like where WWI was by 1916; only there was no Trump to tell them. Eh, Tuttler?
I think, for the next couple of years, it will have been important how Putin is able to sell the enterprise in Russia.
Win? Lose? Draw? What he says versus what the Russians understand.
“Worth it?” Also depends.
Whatever the cost of WW II, it ended, for Russia, in an advance to and past Berlin the suicide of Hitler as Russian troops moved in, the total defeat of Germany and the Allied admission of how great a sacrifice Russia made, and occupied Eastern Europe. Horrible, but admirable.
This time….
In addition Russians have more access to outside opinion than in Stalin’s time.
IMO, the result is going to have to be just good enough–in the sales brochure, anyway–that Putin stands a chance of retiring peacefully and has a fully vested pension.
Too favorable…might try again, and if not Putin maybe a successor. Too unfavorable and Putin can’t afford it, but can afford whatever comes next even less but…worth a shot.
Again, Putin’s formula will include land, useful or repairable infrastructure, resources, handy borders with the next potential victim, transportation nodes, and some other items he might like, mixed according to his formula and with the weighting of various factors according to him…not anyone else.
@Geoffrey Britain
It’s not a rhetorical question, though I am starting to lose any possible belief you are honest or aware enough to know that, let alone admit it. But for the benefit of the audience, I’ll answer.
Firstly: Allow (blank) to make unhindered repairs to (blank) infrastructure goes both ways. One thing Trump has not held the Ukrainians back from are strikes on Russian targets in internationally recognized Russian territory, hence a number of the exploding ammo dumps and oil refineries. There’s a very real cost to those being offline or worse to Russia’s government and work force. So the ability to work unhindered in restoring those and – say- redirecting one or two dozen SAM launchers and maybe an EW unit or two so a repeat performance is not so likely would be quite valuable, especially for hydrocarbon power and employment.
Other forms of infrastructure also apply. It is also worth noting that in many ways the “repair infrastructure unhindered” thing is somewhat uneven and in favor of Russia if applied to both, since there is far greater plausible deniability for a paramilitary group operating in Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin to – say – cut cables or blow up trucks around Kharkiv but the Kremlin to say “That’s not us” than for Ukraine to finance those to do similar in – say – Novgorod.
It isn’t entirely one sided and there are still Ukrainian, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Kremlin, or at least anti-war operators going about in Russia doing things like bombing enlistment offices or redirecting trains, but they’re far less organized or capable of large scale operations than the Novorossiya gang operating in Ukraine.
Secondly: it would allow both sides to regroup their forces and catch a breather. Which both are in need of even if the Ukrainians probably need it more.
Thirdly: It allows Putin the prospect of gaining what he could not gain (yet) by force.
Fourth: knowledge and reorganization. The Kremlin can cycle things like the training instructors it put onto the front back to train new soldiers with their knowledge, and to rebuild its training cadres. This will particularly benefit the Kremlin over Ukraine since it has more troops overall but if anything is suffering from a shallower per capita knowledge pool due to how costly the early days were and how it disproportionately hit the Kremlin’s old guard.
And fifth: there is the prospect of Trump’s good will, or at least lack of adversary. What that is worth in this context is iffy but should not be understated, as Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians found out.
And there’s the question of how much in the way of arms shipments the Ukrainians will get.
So it’s a gamble for Putin on whether or not he thinks he will gain more than he loses from a truce. But it is far from an obvious all downsides.
I saw this when it dropped last night just as the clock tolled over to today.
It may have figured in Putin’s calculations to maybe kind of sorta suggest he might consider a ceasefire and some haggling.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/03/13/new-trump-just-dropped-the-hammer-on-russia-as-negotiations-loom-n2186614
I was not too surprised to learn recently that the Europeans were paying to arm Ukraine with one hand, and paying Russia for energy imports with the other, but that they can do it with a straight face while dissing Trump and America still makes my jaw drop.
PS America is supporting both sides of the Israel/Hamas war, and has done the same in other conflicts. Kind of makes a mockery of the Rules of Engagement the politicians force on the troops.
I like the Trump doctrine better: speak nicely, but carry a yuge stick and use it bigly.
If Putin agrees to a cease-fire, it will only be because he thinks it benefits him more than Ukraine. Trump wants the killing to stop. That, however, will not be the only outcome of a cease-fire. Russia will also re-supply and cycle in new troops. Ukraine will do the same, of course, but they don’t have the troops and materiel to benefit as much as Russia.
Is Trump’s pressure on Zelensky benefiting Russia disproportionally? Peter Ziehan thinks so, and he has a large audience. In today’s broadcast he makes a strong argument that Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are both Russian agents. I don’t believe that, but I would like to have that irrefutably disproven.
I used to watch Ziehan. His stuff is professional-grade in production. Lots of stock footage of whatever he’s talking about, big maps, arrows going in convenient directions.
Assertions about this or that, and the results are absolutely indisputable.
But it is, for me, creepily too good.
It doesn’t take much, in the sense of short-term actions, to make the case that Churchill, FDR, and Truman were Russian agents. Up until the “iron curtain” speech. And then no effort to shove it back with only a draw in Korea.
Now, nobody actually believes that, I hope, but making the case that allies of convenience or desperate necessity are considerably more than that…is do-able if you frame it right.
The question is whether, in the shorter term, it’s better to have a draw, more or less, in Ukraine with ground gained ground kept. Or to keep fighting until….maybe a draw?
How far toward the status quo ante can Putin be driven without fighting?
I wonder how much faith Putin has in his launch officers….
Current (allowing for time zone) Willy OAM talks about potential cease fire, and the situation in Kursk.
Desperate Retreat – ‘Until The Last Ukrainian’ – Situation More DIRE Than Reported | Map Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m1Eyr00HnU
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I rather think that Vladimir Trump is starting to see what his immoral policies and pretensions (*) have wrought and the way they are backfiring to him and the usa and is backtracking while trying to save face. Meanwhile the ‘humanitarian’ got a lot of Ukrainians killed extra (a repeat of the beginning of 2024 but by speaker-Q). We’ll see.
(*) Which include calling Zelensky a dictator, blaming Ukraine for starting the war, trying to force on the victim an unjust ‘peace’ (on Putler’s terms, aka for Ukraine to commit national suicide) without any justice and act as if Ukraine is just USA property to be disposed at will.
Ps. I’m not an american but if I were I would have voted for Trump (and I would have felt pretty rotten about it now of course). I consider the cultural wars as essential. And compared to Obama the Flexible’s and Biden’s administrations Trump’s first administration was pretty good for Ukraine. As far as I can see Putler got nothing new out of it.
Now? Alas for Vladimir trump and Co I consider NOT betraying Ukraine is a part of those cultural wars. If you act as a, or simply are a quisling than pretending supporting ‘conservative values’ means absolutely nothing.
Pps. As for Geoffrey Britain? I called started calling him Geoffrey ‘Haw Haw’ Britain in 2022 before I basically stopped following American ‘on the ‘right’ blogs (and I never followed left wing blogs and still don’t).