OMNI
UKRAINE WAR ANTHLOGY #38
September 12, 2026
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, Ecology,
and Democracy
https://omnicenter.org/donate/
What’s at Stake: In these 38 anthologies this one war provides
a rich mine of studies of the causes and
solutions of wars. Preventing and stopping wars have been the great
themes of the United Nations, and these anthologies provide their
substance. A
sub-set of the subject, particularly well-illustrated by this war, is the
question of when the war began. Once
that is established, numerous other topics are clarified. But what if the two sides disagree, as they
often do, over the starting date, and as they do dramatically in this war? Then you witness a clash over etiology that conditions
the whole debate on both sides. If you
believe, as these authors do, that the war began in 2014 (and even earlier) when
ultra-nationalist, Russo-phobic Ukrainians overthrew by a coup the elected
pro-Russian government of President Viktor Yanukovich, then you sympathise with
the Ukrainian resistance movement centered in the southeastern, culturally Russian
Donbas region, and with their Russian defenders. If you believe the war began in 2022, then Russia
invaded without cause other than imperial expansion, and you side with the
Ukrainian government. The opening
article summarizes this conflict from the rebel/Russian perspective. Three books expand on this contextual interpretation
of the war and proposals for peace. The
remaining articles examine aspects of the war and the search for peace.
CONTENTS
Introduction
“War clouds over
Europe?” by Johann Rossouw, presenting
enemies as they see themselves, with main sympathy for the rebel perspective. (A brief but comprehensive narrative
that counters the US/NATO perspective.)
Substantiation THREE Books also support the rebel/Russian
way of seeing the war:
Aaron Maté. Their Blood, Our Bullets: The Hidden Story of the US–Russia War for Ukraine.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies. War
in Ukraine.
Jacques Baud. Operation
Z.
WAR
Grumette. “Retribution.”
Russ Bellant. Old Nazis, the New Right, and the
Republican Party.
Joe
Lauria. “On Neo-Nazi Influence in Ukraine.”
Snider and Hill. “Escalation in Ukraine and the Continued
Danger of a Wider War.”
Craig
Murray. “Nonsense Drones &
Novichok.” (Russophobia).
Anatol Lieven.
“Verdun in the Donbas.”
Andrew Day. “Zelensky’s Top Man
Is a Big Problem.”
Ted Galen Carpenter.
“NATO Must Say No to Ukraine No-Fly Zone.”
PEACE
Three articles on
Sept. 6, 2026 Witkoff and Kushner Peace Negotiations.
Yanis
Varoufakis. “Why I went to Moscow.”
Geoffrey Roberts. “What Would
George Kennan Say about Ukraine?”
Patrick Lawrence. “What? Peace in Our
Times?” (Trump’s peace proposal).
“Ukraine Agrees to US-sponsored Deal to End war with Russia.”
Matt Bivens, MD.
“America could still end the war in Ukraine.”
“John
Mearsheimer. “Why Sanctions Will Not
Work.”
Ted Snider. “Why
Is There Still No Peace in Ukraine? The Unusual Suspects.”
TEXTS
WAR AND PEACE:
KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY, CONTEXTS,
including study of the way political opponents view the world.
“War
clouds over Europe?” by Johann Rossouw.
A
response to Jan-Jan Joubert Via Emmanuel Todd. .Dec 13, 2025<emmanueltodd@substack.com> [I have inked key words and phrases
(a pinkie Index) more than usual to
enable myself and readers to review the essay quickly. If it is not helpful to you, delete all the
bold by the touch of a key. –D]
Johann Rossouw is a polyglot South
African philosophy professor, who regularly comments geopolitical events in
various outlets including Le Monde Diplomatique. We have been exchanging
a lot, and he kindly translated many of my articles. He would be part of what I like to envision
as a kind of Western intellectual coalition for reason and peace, along
with Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer (Americans), Anatol Lieven (British)
and Pierre Lellouche, and myself (French).
War
clouds over Europe? A response to Jan-Jan Joubert By
Johann Rossouw.
The
journalist and historian, Jan-Jan Joubert, rightly voices his
concern over clouds of war currently gathering over Europe
(the national Afrikaans South African Sunday paper, Rapport newspaper,
2025/11/30; paywalled). The grounds on which he bases his concern do, however,
raise questions.
Joubert’s article
follows the arguments of Western European liberal mainstream media and
politicians such as Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, and Ursula von der
Leyen.
It is all very well to
offer this perspective like Joubert does, but anybody who would like to see
peace in Ukraine should at least also take the Russian perspective on the
conflict into account – as well as those of authoritative Western critics of
the mainstream liberal European perspective.
The first problem
with Joubert’s argument is that he – rather inexplicably for a historian –
writes on the behaviour of Russia under President Vladimir Putin without the
merest reference to the historical context within which the conflict in Ukraine
emerged.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
of Columbia University is probably the world’s pre-eminent development
economist, who advises or has advised governments across the world – including
those of Russia and Ukraine. In a speech that he gave on 21
January 2025 to the European parliament he discusses the contribution that the
American-led West made between the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the
Biden Administration end 2024 to the stoking of the conflict.
The most important
facts that Sachs highlights are the following. While the Warsaw Pact was
disbanded under the initiative of Russia in 1991, the USA decided to expand
NATO further to the East with the aim of weakening Russia and to exclude them
from a possible multi-polar world order.
[See the extensive, ongoing controversy over the US motives for bombing
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: save US soldiers’ lives or threaten Soviet Union. –Dick]
In 1997 the
influential former national security adviser of President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew
Bzersinski, publishes a book in which he
explicitly advocates, as part of this strategy, turning Ukraine against Russia
and bringing it under Western influence.
This strategy is
subsequently followed by one US administration after the other, amongst
others by destabilising various Ukrainian governments, first in the so-called Orange
Revolution of 2004/5, and then in the so-called Maidan Revolution of
2014. Sachs refers to the latter as a coup, and this on the basis of
the self-avowed role that high-ranking US officials such as Victoria Nuland
played in the overthrow of the then democratically elected pro-Russian
government of President Viktor Yanukovich. Shortly afterwards the new
ultra-nationalist Ukrainian government prohibits Russian as official language –
including in schools in the East of Ukraine, that is the Donbass, which is
overwhelmingly ethnically Russian or Russian-speaking. Undoubtedly this
contributes to the establishment of resistance movements in the Donbass against
the Ukrainian government, which leads to a conflict in which more than 15 000
residents of the Donbass lose their lives by early 2022.
From the Russian
perspective it is also in reaction to more than 25 years’ American-led Western
aggression against Russia that Russia in 2014 annexes Crimea, which was
Russian from 1783 to 1954.
Subsequently the Minsk
agreements are negotiated, which, amongst other things recognise the rights
of the ethnically Russian/ Russian-speaking minority in the Donbass. From the
Western side France and Germany were supposed to ensure that the stipulations
of the treaties were applied, but this did not happen.
In 2021 Russia asks
for negotiations with the Biden Administration. Russia demands at the end of
2021 that
Ukraine not be granted membership of NATO; demands as part of a proposed new
security pact with the West certain limits on NATO activities; and requests a
new security treaty with the USA. The Biden Administration rejects these
proposals.
The philosophical
anthropologist, René Girard explains in his 2007 book on the mimetic
rivalry between Europe’s two great powers between 1800 and 1950, France and
Germany, that in conflict between two rivalrous countries there is often an
escalation of tension in which both countries consider the other as the
aggressor.
This is precisely what
happens in the build-up of both the Ukrainian and Russian armies between
2014 and 2022, where both parties accuse each other of being the aggressor.
From the Russian perspective the final spark to set off the powder keg
was according to Prof.
Beom-sik Shin of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies of
Seoul National University, in the weeks before President Putin recognised the
independence of the ethnically Russian/ Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk
republics of the Donbas and invaded Ukraine, the fact that the region was
targeted by about 130, 000 Ukrainian government soldiers. From the Russian
perspective the invasion of Ukraine was thus to protect Russian sovereignty
against the West, as well as to protect the ethnically Russian/
Russian-speaking minority against the Ukrainian government.
Joubert repeats
another claim of the liberal Western European mainstream, namely that there
exists a parallel between the concessions of Britain and France to Hitler in
1938, and that which is taking place today between Putin and Europe.
It is generally
accepted that Hitler’s motivation for invading some European countries was to
create a so-called Lebensraum for Germans in Eastern Europe,
and to create a “racially pure” dispensation under German leadership for the
“Germanic nations” of The Netherlands, Flanders and the Nordic countries.
Joubert, however,
prefers to ascribe Hitler’s motivation to economic considerations, that is, a
German shortage of resources, labour and minerals – and he speculates that
Russia will in future attack Europe to obtain “assets and minerals”. This is
truly a strange idea since Russia is rich in oil and several
different types of minerals, including strategically important rare earth minerals.
Macron, Merz and Von
der Leyen do not pass up any opportunity to claim that Russia will in due
course attack Europe, but without ever providing verifiable evidence for this –
or making clear what motives Russia would have for such an action. Moreover,
after more than three and a half years (and not two and a half as Joubert
states), Russia has not yet been able to reach its military goals in Ukraine –
and this while Russia has the fifth largest army in the world. Estimations of
Russian mortalities in the conflict with Ukraine vary from 600 000 to 1 million
– how on earth would Russia be able to demographically afford attacking Europe?
The world’s leading
thinker on realism in geopolitics, Prof. John Mearsheimer, as well as
many others, point to the actual reason for claims from within European ranks
that Russia plans to attack Europe, which is that they thus hope to keep the
USA involved in the defence of Europe. The price at which this comes is the demonisation
of Russia in Europe and the stoking of fear amongst European populations.
The leftwing German
politician, Sahra Wagenknecht, warned at the end of August in an interview against a further
serious risk of the European demonisation of Russia: while Europe and a
European security architecture have always been important to Putin, the
European alienation of Russia may lead to Putin one day being succeeded by a
president that is much more hostile towards Europe, finally writes Europe off,
and aligns Russia completely with China against Europe. Putin is undoubtedly
already doing this to an extent, which does not predict anything good for the
West.
This article was opened
by agreeing with Joubert that clouds of war are indeed gathering over
Europe. It is, however, for very different reasons than those argued by
Joubert.
To begin with, the
centre-left anthropologist, historian and geopolitical expert, Emmanuel
Todd writes as follows about
contemporary European Russophobia: “The construction of a post-national
Europe is a delusional project when one considers the diversity of the
continent. It has led to the expansion of the European Union, cobbled together
and unstable, into the former Soviet space. The EU is now Russophobic and
warmongering, with its aggression renewed by its economic defeat at the
hands of Russia [due to the costs of European sanctions against Russia - Johann
Rossouw]. The EU is trying to drag the British, French, German and many other
peoples into a real war. But what a strange war it would be, in which the
Western elites have adopted of destroying Russia!”
Further to this a
conservative veteran of the French parliamentary standing committee for foreign
affairs and former French minister, Pierre Lellouche, in a recent interview also questions the
comparison with 1938, and argues that the comparison should rather be made with
1914, that is, the eve of the First World War when “a group of states that did
not want a world war was through an error of judgment by one of them together
with an architecture of mutual alliances dragged into a series of events that
led to war. I say again: the longer this war lasts, the more it carries the
seed of an escalation.”
In conclusion: the
war in Ukraine is a classical example of how one great power, namely the USA,
takes on another great power, namely Russia, by misusing a weaker state for
this, namely Ukraine. In a sober analysis of the peace plan
that is currently under negotiation between the USA, Russia and Ukraine, Anatol
Lieven explains why it is now Ukraine’s best chance to emerge from the conflict
as a relatively sovereign state with relatively good security guarantees.
If this does not
happen, it is predictable that Ukraine will be worse and worse off, while
avoidable clouds of war will be gathering over Europe. 2025 Emmanuel Todd
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Four SCHOLARLY BOOKS on WAR AND PEACE in the Ukraine
[UAF’s Mullins Library owns or has ordered all 4. –D]
Aaron Maté. Their Blood, Our Bullets. The Hidden Story of the US–Russia War for
Ukraine. OR BOOKS, 2026. 370.
Publisher’s
description:
The hotly anticipated debut from an award-winning journalist reveals the hidden
story of the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine.
“One
hell of a reporter who knows how to get at the truth.” —Seymour Hersh
“Exposes
wars and crimes and corruption—Maté, a courageous, independent journalist, has
done a great service.” —Katrina vanden Heuvel
“A
must-read for anyone hoping to transcend Western propaganda about the Ukraine
War.” —John J. Mearsheimer
In this bombshell
investigation, years in the making, Aaron Maté exposes Washington’s
professed support for Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy as a sham.
Building on the rigorous,
fearless reporting that has established him as a leading independent
journalist, Maté irrefutably documents how the US and its NATO allies have
meddled in Ukraine with the real aim of weakening and destabilizing Russia. In pursuit of this aggressive geopolitical
design, successive US administrations exploited Ukraine’s internal divisions
and sabotaged every chance for compromise while relentlessly backing Russia
into a corner. Gambling with the global economy and risking nuclear war,
US planners then provoked and prolonged an illegal Russian invasion that has
had catastrophic consequences—for the Ukrainian people above all.
Washington’s cynical
foreign policy did not just detonate peace in Europe but also deranged politics
at home. Controversies around Russia and Ukraine played a pivotal role in three
consecutive US presidential campaigns, driving the national hysteria known as
“Russiagate” as well as the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
With Trump’s re-election
pledge to broker peace still elusive, Maté presents a groundbreaking account
of how the Russia–Ukraine conflict came to be, and how a brutal proxy war with
existential stakes for humanity can finally be
resolved.
Aaron Maté is an independent journalist and co-host of
the podcast Useful Idiots. He has reported and produced for outlets
including The Grayzone, The Nation, The Real News,
Al Jazeera, and Real Clear Investigations. He won a 2019 Izzy Award
for outstanding achievement in independent media and was previously a longtime
producer at Democracy Now!
Richard
Sakwa. The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies
of Empire. Lynne
Rienner, 2026.
The number of casualties in the
ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war is rapidly approaching 1.5 million, with no
resolution in sight … a staggering reality. Seeking to make what sense is
possible of this catastrophic conflict, Richard Sakwa meticulously explores the
origins, course, and consequences of the war in the sweeping context of
global and domestic politics since 1945.
Sakwa's balanced analysis centers on what he perceives as the five levels of
the conflict: the dynamics of Ukrainian politics, the evolution of
Russo-Ukrainian relations, the relationship between Russia and the West, broad
changes in international politics, and the prospects for a viable and
sustainable peace. In explaining—without endorsing—the logic behind actions on
all sides, his goal is to contribute to a path toward that peace.
Richard Sakwa is professor emeritus of
politics at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
“The
U.S.'s Catastrophic Role in Ukraine.”
WAR IN UKRAINE by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies. 2022.
Revised and Expanded 2025. OR
Books <info@orbooks.com>
[I haven’t compared the 1st
with the revised edition, but the first is excellent, so the 2nd
promises to be even better. Some of you
might remember Medea from her two visits to OMNI, and she is famous for
co-founding CODEPINK. –D]
NOTE
FROM THE AUTHORS
Our book explains why
Russia's aggression does not exonerate the United States for its own
catastrophic role in the disintegration and destruction of Ukraine. Trump must
own up to this reality when he meets Putin in Alaska if he hopes to make peace
with Russia and save Ukraine.
This
careful, informed, judicious study is an invaluable guide to understanding
Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine, and most crucially, how we can act to
help bring this terrible tragedy to an end.”—Noam Chomsky
“This book is an important antidote to the war propaganda about Ukraine that so
many in the West are caught up in.”
—Mairead Maguire
Jacques Baud’s Operation Z (2022,
English ed. 2023) is a distinguished scholarly book
published the same year as Benjamin’s and Davies’. Baud uses Ukrainian and Western sources to
discover the truth about the so-called “Russian invasion” by examining the
validity of those sources. It is both a
history of the war from its inception in the 2014 coup and a criticism of
Western mainstream media reporting of that history. Baud doesn’t refer to George Orwell’s 1984,
but the book provides a doublespeak analysis of the contradictions permeating
US-Western-Ukraine pronouncements. It
is also organized with diagrammatic order.
--Dick
The latter 2 books were reviewed in earlier anthologies.
THE WAR (IN CONTRAST TO THE PRECEDING ANTHOLOGIES,
#12 REFLECTS THE INCREASING ATTENTION TO
A PEACEFUL FUTURE)
A Reflection on RETRIBUTION and REVENGE? These 2 articles examine an important context
of the Ukraine War. Steve
Grumette. “Retribution: A Defense of the
Indefensible.” Christo Roberts. “Response to Steve Grumette.” Free Inquiry (Aug./Sept. 2026).
Ukraine Nazi History
Russ
Bellant. Old Nazis, the New Right,
and the Republican Party. South End
P, 1988. A PRA Book.
History
of “Ukrainian Nationalism and Nazi Collaboration” [and anti-communism, their
extension into the US] pp. 67-73.
Critical Thinking, Historical Knowledge, Etiology,
Context
Joe Lauria. “On Neo-Nazi Influence in
Ukraine.” April 20, 2025. Consortium News (5-13-25). A short history of
neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
Ted Snider and Alexander Hill. “Escalation in Ukraine and the Continued
Danger of a Wider War.” ACURA (JulY 24, 2026).
The Russo-Ukrainian war has featured a
parade of escalations on both sides.
Read in browser »
Craig Murray. “Nonsense
Drones & Novichok.” (9-9-26).
The
notion that nuclear war should be fought over who is mayor of Lugansk has so
little public support that Russophobia is being assiduously stoked by Western
governments and the E.U. itself. Read here...
Anatol Lieven.
“Verdun in the Donbas.” ACURA (Oct 29, 2025).
The future of Ukraine and Russia, of European
security, and of US-Russian relations now all hang on a few small half-ruined
towns in the northwestern part of Donetsk province. Indeed, given the continued
risk of a radical escalation leading to actual conflict between NATO and
Russia, the stakes may be higher even than that. Read in
browser »
Andrew Day.
“Zelensky’s Top Man Is a Big Problem.”
The American Conservative (October 28, 2025). ACURA (Oct 29, 2025).
Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff and
right-hand man has become as powerful as the Ukrainian president, if not more
so. Read in browser »
Ted Galen Carpenter.
“NATO Must Say No to Ukraine No-Fly Zone.”
ACURA (Oct 06, 2025).
NATO leaders and their supporters in the news
media are responding to the rising tensions by reviving an idea from the
earliest days of the Kremlin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine:
imposing a no-fly zone over that country. It is an especially provocative and
dangerous scheme that carries a serious risk of triggering World War […]
Read in
browser »
ENDING THE WAR, PEACEMAKING
3 Articles on Peace Negotiations Sept. 6
“Responsible Statecraft: U.S. envoys
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner reportedly travel to Moscow and Kyiv.” ACURA (Sep 06, 2026).
“It is unclear
whether the Americans are bringing new proposals to the two presidents, or are
pushing them to close the gap on the remaining issues, which include who will
ultimately control the Donbas, Ukrainian territory that is partly occupied by
Russia,” according to a New York Times report. Read in browser »
AXIOS.
“ Witkoff and Kushner make first Kyiv visit for peace talks.” ACURA (Sep 06, 2026).
President Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff
and Jared Kushner arrived in Kyiv on Sunday for diplomatic talks aimed at
resuming negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Read in browser »
Politico. “Putin signs off on 72-hour
ceasefire with Kyiv as US envoys visit. ACURA (Sep 06, 2026) .
Russian President Vladimir Putin on
Saturday ordered a three-day halt to strikes on Kyiv as U.S. special envoys
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow hoping to restart stalled
negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
Yanis Varoufakis.
“Why I went to Moscow.” Unherd (April 8, 2026). ACURA (Apr 12, 2026).
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Europe has had
only two options regarding its stance toward Russia: forever war or offering
Russia a sensible peace and security pact. Read in browser »
The Ukraine War is Not
Containment
Geoffrey
Roberts. “What Would George Kennan Say About Ukraine?” (2014). ACURA (Nov 26, 2025). Read in
browser »
. . .The original
architect of containment was George F. Kennan, a hitherto obscure diplomat in
the US embassy in Moscow who captured the public imagination when, in 1947, he
published an article in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Sources
of Soviet Conduct.” . . . .
Kennan saw containment
as fundamentally a political strategy. Military power should be reserved for
protection not projection. The Soviet foe would be vanquished in a contest of
values and ideas. In the late 1940s Kennan was disturbed by what he saw as
the militarisation of his concept of containment – the establishment of NATO,
the division of Germany and the ever-deepening cold war divide in Europe.
Kennan opposed the 1950s
version of today’s regime-change policy, the so-called liberation strategy of
Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. Kennan argued the
communist bloc would change as a result of internal processes not through the
force of external threats or intrigues. Liberationist rhetoric would only
entrench Soviet hardliners. “We must be gardeners and not mechanics in our
approach to world affairs,” urged Kennan in his lectures on The
Realities of American Foreign Policy at Princeton University in 1954.
Kennan was particularly irked
by the western failure to understand Soviet anxiety about NATO and the rearming
of West Germany in the 1950s – it was, after all, less than a decade since
the end of a war in which millions of Soviet citizens had been massacred by the
Germans. While Soviet perceptions of a western military threat were
exaggerated, their underlying fears were genuine. Western leaders seemed
unable to grasp how their own fears were being mirrored by those of the
Soviets. . . . [In several ways Cold War SU=US and vice versa. -D]
An
expert on Soviet and Russian military and foreign policy, Professor Geoffrey
Roberts is Head of the School of History at University College Cork, Ireland.
The author of "Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov" (Random
House 2012), which won the Society of Military History’s Distinguished Book
Award for Biograph.,
What?
Peace In Our Time? by Patrick Lawrence. History
News Network. Consortium News.
Popular Resistance.org (11-26-25).
[I
recommend reading this entire analysis of Trump’s Ukraine peace proposal
much from Russia’s perspective. Here’s
a hunk of it from the middle, especially on the Minsk Accords. –D] “
. . .There are numerous on-the-ground provisions among its 28 clauses. No. 19
specifies that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant along the Dnieper River,
controlled by Russian forces since March 2022, less than a month into the war,
will be restarted under the authority of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the electricity it generates will go equally to Russia and Ukraine.
Russia is to allow Ukrainians to use the Dnieper ‘for commercial activities’.”
(No. 23).
There is
to be a prisoner swap (No. 24a) and, a family reunion program (24c). A general
amnesty will extend to “all parties involved in the conflict” (No. 26).
“Measures will be taken,” No. 24d states, “to alleviate the suffering of
victims of the conflict.”
These
clauses, boilerplate humanitarian provisions and low-hanging fruit, are worthy
enough, but read to me as greeting-card niceties next to the weightier items in
this plan.
There is
the much-discussed, much-disputed question of territory. Crimea and the Donbas
— Luhansk and Donetsk — will be recognized as Russian territory, but de
facto as against de jure. Why this distinction, the
Russians would be perfectly right to ask.
The land
from which Ukrainian forces will be required to withdraw will be designated a
demilitarized zone that belongs to Russia, but the Russians will not be
permitted to enter it. Again, what is this all about? As to Kherson and
Zaporizhzhia, the southerly provinces Russia and Ukraine each partially
control, they are to be divided and fixed at the current line of contact.
No. 22:
“After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, the Russian Federation and
Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force.”
It is
hard to say how either side will view these proposed divisions of territory.
They award Moscow much of what it has demanded for some time, but in qualified
fashion, and take away from Kiev much of what it has long said it will never
surrender. So: Not enough for the Russians? Too much for the Ukrainians?
In my
read the drafters’ intent here is to set down working language on the territory
question as the basis of a lot of horse-trading. If I am correct, the U.S. side
is not saying Kiev must accept or reject these terms as written so much as Kiev
must agree finally to stop striking poses and do serious business at the
mahogany table.
To be
noted in this connection: It is long past time to dismiss all the rubbish of
the past three years to the effect that Moscow’s intent has been to seize and
occupy all of Ukraine. It is as ridiculous as the Europeans’ preposterous
assertions — more cynical than paranoiac —that if the Russians are not stopped
in Ukraine they will soon be in London and Lisbon.
In my
view the Russians have never been interested in taking land so much as in
buffering their borders against the West’s incessant threats. The evidence here begins
with President Vladimir Putin’s active support of the Minsk Protocols of
September 2014 and February 2015. They were to give the Donbas —
Russian-speaking, Eastward-facing — autonomy in a federalized Ukraine.
It was when Kiev and the Minsk accords’ treacherous
European backers, the French and the Germans, betrayed the Protocols (and, so,
Putin personally and altogether the integrity of the diplomatic process) that
the course was set. As Kiev shelled its own citizens daily for the next seven
years, Moscow concluded that the federalization project would never work
and taking the Donbas militarily was its only alternative.
Whatever
territory the Kiev regime will now have to give up, in other words, this
outcome owes only to its own reckless miscalculations and those of its
supporters in Europe and in the Washington of the Biden years. . . . -more-
[Contrast Lawrence’s analysis to the following
report of US and Ukraine wishful thinking. –D]
Ukraine
Agrees To US-Sponsored Deal To End War With Russia by “News Desk”, The Cradle. Popular Resistance.org
(11-26-25). The Ukrainian government has “agreed to a peace deal” to end the
nearly three-year war between Moscow and Kiev, a US official told CBS News on
25 November. “The Ukrainians have agreed to the peace deal. There are some
minor details to be sorted out, but they have agreed to a peace deal,” the US
official said. Ukrainian National Security Advisor Rustem Umerov also said that
an understanding has been reached, expressing optimism that Ukraine's President
Volodymyr Zelensky would travel to the US by the end of November in order to
finalize the deal. -more-
Matt Bivens, MD. “America could still end the war in Ukraine.” ACURA (Oct 06, 2025). But doing so would
involve recognizing we helped create and sustain this tragedy, and ought to
reexamine NATO (and the CIA). Official Washington would fly into a rage at
anyone who tried this. . . .
Hundreds
of physicians from around the world have gathered in Nagasaki, Japan, this
week, to discuss our shared belief that we can and should abolish all nuclear
weapons. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has
won a past Nobel Peace Prize for this sort of work. . . . Read in
browser »
[VFP-all]
VIDEO. “John Mearsheimer on US/NATO
Reaction to Losing War in Ukraine; Why Sanctions Will Not Work (20 min). Forwarded by Gerry Condon via uark.onmicrosoft.com
‘John Mearsheimer
and Dan Davis discuss US/NATO reaction to losing the war in Ukraine.” Talk of more
sanctions and "secondary sanctions" is just talk, as they cannot and
will not work, says Mearsheimer. https://youtu.be/zzSbFzmv1v4?si=wM_exUNSjD6XmNSw
Ted Snider. “Why Is There Still No Peace in Ukraine? The
Unusual Suspects.” ACURA (Sept. 12, 2025).
While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised he could end
the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of being elected and before he even arrives
in office. Peace has proven more difficult. Blame has frequently shifted from
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Russian President Vladimir Putin and
back. But as a settlement has become more and more elusive, blame has begun to
fall on more unusual suspects.
[A fascinating look at the obstacles to peace from
NATO to Russia but mainly within Ukraine, particularly the great power exerted
by the ultranationalists.
–Dick]
Ted
Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible
Statecraft and The
American Conservative as
well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation
requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
Ted Galen Carpenter: “Giving Ukraine a US Security Guarantee Risks
National Suicide.” ACURA (Aug 28, 2025). Too much of the talk about the recent Alaska summit
meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin
focuses on the wrong issue. The key question is not whether an eventual
peace accord ending the fighting in Ukraine will require Kyiv to accept
Moscow’s continued possession of Crimea and at least a portion of Donbas. Anyone with a modicum of realism understands that such territorial concessions are unavoidable if the bloody war of attrition is to end.
The real issue involves the demand of Ukraine and of its fan club in NATO
that Kyiv be given “security guarantees” in exchange for accepting that
reality. Agreeing to such an open-ended commitment could ultimately prove
fatal to the United States. . . . Read in browser »
#36: https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/10/omni-ukraine-war-anthology-36-october.html
END UKRAINE WAR ANTHOLOGY #38
