Try, try again: Ukraine peace talks
I take this as a hopeful sign. I’ll take any hopeful signs I can get:
Senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials are planning to meet next week to discuss the first steps of a deal to end the war.
Both President Trump’s team and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine confirmed the meeting, which is expected to take place in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia? Hey, why ever not.
More:
President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also confirmed the meeting, saying the purpose was “to get down a framework for a peace agreement and an initial cease-fire as well.”
Witkoff indicated that Zelensky had bent the knee trying to repair the damage.
““President Zelensky has demonstrated that he’s intent on that good-faith path back. He’s apologized. He’s said he’s grateful. He said he wants to work toward peace.” Mr. Witkoff added that he believed Mr. Zelensky was willing to sign a minerals deal to create a U.S.-controlled fund that would receive revenue from Ukraine’s natural resources.” …
[Trump] said U.S. negotiators had “made a lot of progress with Ukraine and a lot of progress with Russia over the last couple of days” and showed optimism about a peace agreement.
He said Ukraine “wants to make a deal because I don’t think they have a choice.” But he also said in another way, Russia had no choice either.
Time will tell whether this is just a lot of blah-blah-blah or whether it will lead to something. I’m glad to know that talks are continuing, which I had assumed anyway. Witkoff is certainly a busy guy.
ADDENDUM: Here’s an interesting development: “Trump Threatens Russia With Sanctions, Tariffs Until Putin Agrees to Ceasefire.”
““President Zelensky has demonstrated that he’s intent on that good-faith path back. He’s apologized. He’s said he’s grateful. He said he wants to work toward peace.”
Well, sometimes it helps to prod those who need prodding.
So much for Trump being a Putin puppet, if the reports about threatened sanctions and tariffs are true (and I have no reason to think they’re not).
Saudi arabia was the middleman for prisoner exchanges
MBS/SA had good relations with Trump. Of course Biden destroyed that relationship instead of making use of it.
Sadly, on this issue Witkoff is a bit of a fool. pResident Zelensky is pretending that he wants to work toward peace. Zelensky has simply been told by his oligarch masters that this is what its now going to take to keep Ukraine’s black arms market up and running. He’s indeed a puppet dictator, having cancelled elections and whose term of office long ago expired.
“Trump Threatens Russia With Sanctions, Tariffs Until Putin Agrees to Ceasefire.”
Stupid and counterproductive. You don’t start a process of reestablishing a working relationship with empty and counterproductive threats. Tariffs? The only major commodity that Russia sells to the US is the uranium we need for our nuclear reactors. The West has imposed somewhere around 20,000 sanctions upon Russia to nearly zero effect. “Russia’s GDP experienced a significant expansion in 2024, reaching 4.1%”
When Sec Def Hegseth recently told the Europeans that US policy must henceforth “reflect hard realities on the ground” he was mainly referring to the hard reality that Russia is within sight of winning its war of attrition with Ukraine and its Western backers. The brutal truth is that Trump has “no cards” left to play in dealing with Putin. The Biden administration and the Deep State have left Trump with “a busted flush” for a hand.
“Trump Threatens Russia With Sanctions, Tariffs Until Putin Agrees to Ceasefire.”
It’s a pointless threat. The Russians are all-in on Ukraine. They don’t care about sanctions or tariffs.
“Trump Threatens Russia With Sanctions, Tariffs Until Putin Agrees to Ceasefire.”
The USA hasn’t been sanctioning ruSSia since 2/2022? How did I miss that (/s).
“an initial cease-fire as well”
ruSSia has enormous problems qua logistics. It’s good that Vladimir Trump is willing to help him out with an ‘initial cease-fire’ to put things in order. Btw, one of Putler’s ‘peace offerings’ of last year was saying he would instantly order a ‘cease-fire’ as soon as Ukraine evacuated the 4 9/2022 annexed oblasts (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson), that is, Ukraine giving up to ruSSia the parts ruSSia’s army hadn’t managed to conquer or had lost in the 2022 counter offensives.
As for the rest, BS. ”Zelensky had bent the knee”, “Zelensky has demonstrated that he’s intent on that good-faith path” (Putler’s good faith’ is of course a given) “U.S.-controlled fund .. receive revenue from Ukraine’s natural resources” (USA’s part of the loot), look, the ‘master’ putting his underling in his place. No doubt one of those ‘American Values’ bully boy Vance wants us to emulate.
“Ukraine “wants to make a deal because I don’t think they have a choice.” But he also said in another way, Russia had no choice either.”
Ukraine has no choice in making a ‘deal’ (not worth the paper it is written on) that will emasculate them.
Poor, poor ruSSia has no choice in making a ‘deal’ that doesn’t give them everything for now (my heart bleeds for them) but will still reward them for their crimes (breaking treaties, invading without any justification, war-crimes, ethnic cleansing, targeting civilians, ‘creative’ new International ‘law’ like annexing on basis of bogus (Stalinist) referenda during war-time, lie and lie and lie again, etc).
And that’s supposed to be positive?
”He’s indeed a puppet dictator, having cancelled elections and whose term of office long ago expired.”
This is a lie. It is the Ukrainian constitution, not Zelensky, that suspends elections in a time of war. Good thing too, because free and fair elections are impossible in Ukraine as long as Russia occupies 20% of the country and bombs civilian infrastructure left and right.
”The West has imposed somewhere around 20,000 sanctions upon Russia to nearly zero effect.”
Oh, BS. The sanctions have ground Russian war production nearly to a halt. As a result of the sanctions the Russians can only build about 80 new tanks a year. They lose more than that in Ukraine every month. They can only build four Ka-52 helicopters (roughly an Apache equivalent) a year. Ukraine has already destroyed over 50. Russia now can’t build Ka or Ku-band comsats at all. Their existing sats are wearing out.
Similarly their civilian airliners are as well, to such an extent that several neutral countries have banned them from their airspace due to the increased accident rate. That also applies to their oil infrastructure. Besides being systematically destroyed by Ukrainian drones, it also is grinding into disrepair from the lack of Western spare parts, engineers, and technicians.
When Trump says he wants to lift sanctions against Russia, these are the things it will let Russia rebuild. Rebuild for the next invasion.
”…he was mainly referring to the hard reality that Russia is within sight of winning its war of attrition with Ukraine and its Western backers.”
This is not reality at all, just a delusion in his head.
Geoffrey is all in on defending Putin, even beyond his bullshit wailings that we were Only 13 minutes from Armageddon in 2022.
Geoffrey yearns for his own special Reset with the Russian dictator?
Pathetic Geoffrey.
As throwing Ukraine under the bus is not enough, Trump is now blowing up the entire Western alliance.
Trump has now cut Ukraine off from all satellite imagery. This is not spysat imagery but instead the commercial imagery available to any country, business, or individual in the Western world. Maxar, Planet Labs, Blacksky, Umbra, Capella, and Iceye had all been providing commercial imagery to Ukraine, but the Dept. of State has added Ukraine to the sanctions list making it illegal to export imagery to that country.
Iceye, in particular, demonstrates the madness of this edict. Iceye is not an American company. It is Finnish. However it, like a lot of non-American Western space companies, operates under an American license. What’s more, Iceye had already given Ukraine control of one of their radar satellites so Ukraine could collect imagery without losing time to go through any bureaucracy. I believe Iceye also had another satellite for Ukraine under construction.
It remains to be seen whether Finland will honor this edict. Seeing as they are preparing for war against Russia, they may just ignore it. In fact, most non-American companies may just ignore it.
But either way American control of low Earth orbit is now dead. There are over 8,000 satellites in LEO with another 100,000 or so slated to launch in the next ten years. Up until now almost all of the non-Chinese satellites were to be licensed through America, allowing us to coordinate orbits, communications frequencies, etc. It also gives us insight into what everyone else is doing, allowing us to determine who is evading sanctions and things like that. We had developed an entire space ecosystem that everyone — even nonaligned countries such as Botswana and Mongolia — wanted to play in.
No more. Our Western allies are pulling much of that back and are spinning up non-American alternatives to American capability. Do not be surprised if many of them now side with China.
I cannot think of any American president who has done more harm to America’s place in the world than this one, including the last one to invade Canada.
That remark about invading Canada was not an idle one. Trump is threatening to kick Canada out of NORAD and Five Eyes and to take full control of the Great Lakes, in violation of several treaties with Canada. But wait — there’s more!
Trump has reportedly told Trudeau personally that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. Trudeau was then overheard saying on a hot mic that “Trump came armed with a list of trade and other irritants, and pointed to a 1908 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that established the 49th parallel as the boundary between the U.S. and the then-Dominion of Canada, suggesting it could be erased.”
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick then told Canadian finance minister Dominic LeBlanc that Trump “had come to realize that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon.”
What the holy fuck???? Canada is our closest ally. The border between our two countries is the longest undefended border in the world. And yet Trump threatens them with war. And for what? Better tariffs? Water for California? This is madness! Who wins fighting a war over water?
And that will be a nuclear war, by the way. Britain has reportedly already offered Canada nuclear weapons to defend itself from the United States until Canada can build its own! It won’t take them long.
Trump may have been right about the Democrats, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Democrats were right about Trump.
Who let the Sock Puppets out tonight?
And if destroying our relations with Europe and Canada weren’t enough, Trump also wants to destroy our relation with Japan and the rest of the Asian alliance.
In other news today, Trump has announced that he wants to tear up our defense pact with Japan. That pact is the centerpiece of a series of agreements protecting the western Pacific from Russia and China. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Singapore and the United States have created a NATO-like alliance for defense of the Pacific. Malaysia and the Philippines have a looser set of agreements with the alliance. Trump wants to tear it all up.
Without a coordinated response, fighting off the modern Chinese military is near impossible with conventional weapons. As a result, without the United States at the core of this alliance, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will all almost certainly acquire nuclear weapons.
Japan has already agreed to come to the defense of Taiwan if China attacks it. China has said that it will nuke Japan out of existence if it does so. It has also said that it will outright conquer Australia and the Philippines in the aftermath. Without the certainty of American intervention, the Chinese conquest of Taiwan is all but certain. And without protection from America’s nuclear umbrella, that war will go nuclear with local nuclear weapons.
Trump’s actions are making world war highly likely. They are also making it almost certain that that war will go nuclear. We will not be able to sit this one out, folks. We couldn’t sit out World War I or World War II when we were a minor power half a world away. We sure as heck won’t be able to sit out World War III when we’re at the center of the whole Western world.
Prepare for war.
Oh, by the way, that idea of his to kick Canada out of NORAD is some first-class idiocy. All of the forward operating bases from which jet fighters are launched to protect us from Russian and Chinese bombers coming over the pole (the most direct route) and most of the distant early warning radars detecting and tracking those bombers and also the ICBMs are in Canada! Kicking Canada out of NORAD does nothing but blind us to our biggest existential threat.
It also makes establishing a so-called Iron Dome over America nearly impossible. Again, most of the radars and missiles for such a system would have to be in Canada for it to work.
[bangs head against the wall repeatedly] If Trump really were in the pay of Russia, what would he be doing differently?
Well mkent, the beauty of any kind of talk about the US stepping back from any previous defense agreement is that the other nations involved might just increase their own military development. WW2,has been over for almost 80 years. It’s time for Japan, Australia, Philippines and Western Europe to man up.
Mkent,
Why should the US continue defending nations that will not develop their OWN militaries to match the growing Chinese military?
”Why should the US continue defending nations that will not develop their OWN militaries to match the growing Chinese military?”
Because the world that will exist in the absence of American defense will be a horrific bloody mess that will kill Americans by the shipload. Here, at home, in America.
And those countries *are* developing their own militaries to face the Chinese threat, but China is a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people and has by far the largest military on Earth. Only America has the size and technology to hold them back. Both size and technology are needed now. Neither one nor the other will work alone.
In the absence of American military might every country in the world with either the technology or the cash to acquire nuclear weapons will do so. Do you really believe that once World War III starts and the nukes start flying we’ll be able to sit it out here in America all safe and sound?
That’s preposterous. We couldn’t sit out the War on Terror without being attacked. We couldn’t sit out World War II without being attacked. We couldn’t even sit out World War I. When the nukes start flying, we will be attacked.
Russia is genociding the Ukraine. The people of Eastern Europe have already lived through the Holodomor and Soviet occupation. They will not give Russia another chance.
Think I’m being hyperbolic? Zelensky has already publicly stated that one of three things will happen: 1) The United States will sign a security guarantee with tens of thousands of boots on the ground. 2) Ukraine will join NATO complete with Article V obligations on the rest of the alliance. or 3) Ukraine will acquire nuclear weapons.
Which will it be? Trump has already ruled out door numbers 1 and 2, so it looks like door number 3 is it. Ukraine will acquire nuclear weapons. Do you really believe *America* will be safer if Russia and Ukraine fight a nuclear war?
And it won’t be just Ukraine. Previously I said it will also be Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, probably along with Denmark, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and possibly Qatar.
Well, today the next shoe dropped. Polish prime minister Tusk has said that Poland is pursuing nuclear weapons and other advanced weapons. “Poland must pursue the most advanced capabilities, including nuclear and modern unconventional weapons,” Tusk told the Polish parliament. Poland won’t be the last on my list to do so.
Is *America* safer with every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world armed with nuclear weapons? Can you really not see how such a situation could go horribly, horribly wrong? Or is devotion to your messiah blinding you to the obvious?
In six short weeks Trump has destabilized the world more than any person since Nikita Krushchev. I didn’t believe the Democrats when they said Trump would start World War III. Unless Trump does an abrupt about-face, they have a good chance of being right.
Jon baker:
Telling Austraila to “man-up” is one thing even President Trump would be sensitive enough not to say.
There are other non-nuclear defense industry costs that are comming down the line based on the somewhat abrupt and ham-handed policies (suspension of armaments and military intelligence data). Nations that have bought US weapons systems will now be reconsidering if it is worth risking their own national defence with US kit; stuff that can be denied or turned off on impulse by someone who boasts can end a war in 24 hours. US weapons systems have been bought for NATO compatibility and interoperability, just don’t try to use them against The Russian Federation? Remember the F-35 or the F-16, or the M-1A, or M-2 (Bradley)? Nations must be thinking how reliable is the US as a supplier for these systems (hardware, software, parts, upgrades, maintenance)?
The Australians entered into an agreement with the US and Great Britain to get nuclear submarines and nuclear submarine construction technology. The French lost in that bid. Billions of dollars, 20 years of work (?). The Australians have already “manned-up” about that, but can they trust the US not to be foolish?
Australian governments are elected by Australians, words matter, Jon baker.
And just like that Putin tells President Trump what he thinks of the peace process.
Russia Just Spit in Trump’s Face, and It’s Time They Reap the Whirldwind – Bonchie at RedState.com
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/03/08/russia-spit-in-donald-trumps-face-after-he-threatened-action-time-to-make-them-pay-n2186420
Yes Putin is worse than Emmanuel Goldstein.
At the core of the fraught issue of the U.S. relationship with Russia, China, Ukraine, et al is the simple fact that the majority of Democrats and the media have worked to harm those relationships over the years, as a way to deny success to their political rivals, and in some cases for actual monetary gain.
A simple example is President Barack Obama’s abrupt pivot from mocking rival Mitt Romney for expressing distrust of Russia, to accusing rival Trump of being in league with Russia, using fake evidence concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign and supplied to corrupt leaders in the FBI.
The American voters’ distrust of government is rooted in the corrupt abuse of power by Democrats in the last several decades.
The clintons were too busy handing 20% of the uranium stockpile to Russias russatom because that never goes wrong clinton panetta et al in their capacity in the cabinet
Om,
Australia has about 26.6 million people.
A total military, active and reserve of 89,000
The US has about 330,000,000 million people.
Total active and reserve military ( not counting civilian DOD) of 2,100,000.
On a rough per capita basis, if Australia had the same population as the US at 330 million, it’s military size extrapolated from its current size would only be about 1.1 Million men. Slightly more than half of the US military.
So yes. They need to man up.
Jon baker:
You do understand the difference between statistics and inference? Citing population numbers is IMO foolish. Why not cite population vs surface area or population vs habitable area? You can get any bogus argument and claim the numbers back you up.
Where is the threat to Australia likely to come from? China, D.A., across that thing called the Pacific Ocean. Why is Australia modernizing its submarines and going with nuclear US/British submarine technology at great expense? Because they see the threat. China did live fire exercises in the Tasman Sea, reported last week. Clue for you, that is between Australia and New Zealand. See cdrsalamander for some basics about the subject.
China is making inroads in the South Pacific (Solomon Islands).That is called a line of communication; Australia is long, long way from their nearest ally, the US. Do you know about Guadalcanal or New Guinea, you know that last century military stuff? That was when Australia was threatened by another rising power in Asia.
Telling the Australians to man-up is particularlly stupid. They have been threatened by the CCP in the COVID era and post COVID. Don’t insult your allies and assume they will forgive your ignorance.
IIRC the relationship between Australia and the US in military matters is stronger than that of the US and Great Britain. Do you know that either?