US Troops Already Dying

I don’t know if there is a connection between the news that four US soldiers in a vehicle died near the Lithuanian-Belorussian border and the announcement that the Baltic states were starting to mine their borders, but a connection might explain the incident.

Four American soldiers and a tracked transport vehicle went missing yesterday during military exercises near the Belarusian border in Lithuania. Today, they were found dead, reports Delfi. The circumstances and cause of their deaths are currently under investigation.

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India Will Not Fight Russia

It’s becoming clear that India has no intention of becoming the Arsenal of Clown World:

Indian journalist Manish Jha, Editor at TV9 Network, spoke to RT following his recent trip to the Zaporozhye region, including a visit to the embattled Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). Drawing on months of on-the-ground reporting in Donbass, Jha offered a critical take on how major global media outlets have covered the conflict in Ukraine.

“Most mainstream media – be it CNN, The Washington Post, or Reuters – are treated like the Bible,” Jha said. “But when I came here, when I visited places in Donbass, Zaporozhye, Kherson – I started realizing how they lie to the entire world.”

Recalling one particularly harrowing incident, Jha said: “I was in Donetsk when it was heavily shelled. A rocket hit a bus right in front of me, and eight people were burned alive. I witnessed it while doing live reporting for my network. The next morning, I checked international media to see what they reported – and not a single line. That moment I realized we need to be independent and tell the truth to the world.”

Jha also commented on NATO’s role in the ongoing conflict: “For the last three years, we’ve seen how 30 countries led by the US have tried to destroy Russia – but they haven’t succeeded. As a war reporter, I can tell you: NATO is exhausted. They need time to rebuild themselves.”

Despite onging pressure from Western powers to distance itself from Moscow, India has refused to take sides. The Indian leadership has argued that New Delhi’s strong diplomatic ties with both Russia and Ukraine place it in a unique position to act as a mediator in future peace efforts.

If the God-Emperor 2.0 is unsuccessful in forcing the Kiev regime and the Brussels regime to give up their futile attempts to draw the US military into fighting their war with Russia for them, the fake democracies are going to need an industrial power on their side to account for the mass production of drones that is now as important as manufacturing artillery tubes, artillery shells, and armored fighting vehicles.

Russia has China, Korea, and Iran on its side. The Kiev-Brussels alliance has the USA, Japan, and possibly Turkey. But it won’t have India; I suspect India will choose the Russians over putting themselves into direct opposition to China.

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Last Chance to Keep Odessa

At this point, I have to assume that Putin and his advisors are quite cheerfully assuming that the Kiev regime and its EU supporters don’t have the brains or the courage to quit when they’re behind.

In return for recognition and if it happened “in the near future”, Kommersant said Putin would undertake not to lay claim to the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and other Ukrainian territory.

Keep in mind Kommersant is not a ‘tabloid’ or rag, but one of Russia’s most respected publications. So, if we are to believe the claim above, Putin is essentially giving the West and Ukraine a short window of time to accept the current territories, or risk having Odessa be included in the official demands.

This obviously fully goes along with Putin’s previous more ‘vague’ statements, echoed by the likes of Lavrov et al, about how Ukraine’s terms would progressively worsen over time, should they refuse to accept Russia’s current ‘generous’ ones. But recall that in the last report, we’ve already mentioned how Ukraine is getting increasingly antsy over potential ‘secret talks’ between Putin and Trump on the Odessa bargaining chip:

As Forbes further notes, the Kommersant journalist claims Putin said “and other regions” besides Odessa, which could obviously point to Kharkov and the like. But Russia could change its mind and decide to close this window short:

However, the point at which Russia is ready to abandon its claims to Odessa and other territories with the recognition of the Crimea, the LPR, DPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions may also move, the correspondent notes. “They don’t have time to dig in,” Putin said at the meeting.

I suspect this is just Russia being polite in a diplomatic context. While Kiev and Brussels are still posturing about recovering the Crimea and the four liberated republics, and the USA is hoping to keep the new borders more or less where they are, Russia has been preparing a spring offensive that will almost certainly acquire Odessa and Eastern Ukraine. The statement strikes me as the sort of fair warning that you give a ranting lunatic, not for his sake, but in order to demonstrate to everyone after the fact that you gave him the opportunity to avoid the inevitable consequences.

And, of course, you do so with confidence that he’s going to ignore it and continue pursuing the conflict.

There is absolutely no chance that the Ukro-European alliance is going to prevent Russia from doing whatever Putin believes to be necessary. The increasing importance of drone warfare, which is increasingly replacing artillery as the queen of the battlefield, is making industrial capacity even more important, so much so that it has almost certainly changed the balance of power in Asia in the infantry context; the USA will not be able to match China on either the ground or the sea now.

Furthermore, most analysts seem to stubbornly ignore that in addition to the USA is stepping back from propping up Europe’s militaries, Russia has the ability to vastly expand its already-formidable military resources by calling on China, Iran, and North Korea for manufacturing support at any time. This is not an option that is open to Europe, with the possible exception of India.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, the absolute best strategy at this juncture is for the Kiev regime to surrender unconditionally and appeal to the mercy of a man who has proven himself to be considerably more far-sighted than any of the European or US leaders. Putin knows from the declining power of the USA and the collapse of the Soviet Union that a hostile occupation of Western Ukraine or Eastern Europe is not in Russia’s interest.

But I very much doubt anyone in Kiev, Brussels, or Washington DC has the sense to accept the brutal mathematics of war. Which is why I expect Odessa to be in Russian hands before the end of the year.

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You and Him Fight Won’t Fly

But Macron and Starmer are probably going to get a lot of young French and British soldiers killed trying to draw the US military into the war in Ukraine:

  • U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that European defense and military leaders will meet in London on Thursday, as planning for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine enter an “operational phase” with over a dozen countries having agreed to participate in such a mission.
  • European countries that agree to send a military contingent to Ukraine, allegedly for an observation mission, can do so without Russia’s consent, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with Le Parisien. “Ukraine is a sovereign country. If it asks for allied troops to be present on its territory, it is not up to Russia to decide whether to agree or not,” he said. According to the newspaper, the Franco-British plan to send so-called peacekeepers to Ukraine is in the final stages of being agreed upon.

It’s the same old classic “fake it til you make it” act: they are merely trying to turn the ‘prophecy’ into a self-fulfilling one by treating it as if it were real. But there is no real consensus, and their plan has little chance of conjuring it from thin air, particularly given that the US has already counted itself out of any troop involvement.

Both the French and British know how politically risky the move is—if their troops begin coming home in body bags from Russian strikes, and there’s no Mommy US to back them up, their fragile political regimes would crumble from public outrage, especially since they’re already hanging on by a tenuous thread.

The West has a Sunk Cost problem: they’ve invested everything not only into the Ukraine war itself, but now into the image of their own strength and ability to manifest peace at will. In other words, they told the world Russia was weak, and that they had the global clout to bring Putin to the table anytime they saw fit.

Instead, the rampaging bear has not slowed, and Western puppet leaders are panickedly fighting the narrative current, pushing inertia for its own sake to signal faux-strength and leadership on global issues.

First, you don’t get to send in “peacekeepers” when you are one of the belligerent parties, which both France and Great Britain absolutely are. Second, it’s not 1940 anymore. Not only do most Americans not care about Europe, a substantial minority of US citizens aren’t even European and never had any historical connection to, or affection for, the European countries. They have absolutely no interest in “saving Europe” again, especially not a European Union that was quite literally created in order to harm American business interests and create an economic counterweight to the US market.

And third, the God-Emperor 2.0 has already made it very clear that the US will not send troops to fight Russia, not even if the French and the British are dumb enough to stick their collective heads in the jaws of the Russian bear.

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No Deal

Ukraine rejects Russia’s conditions for a 30-day ceasefire:

Ukraine has just released their own ‘red lines’, which contravene virtually every one of Russia’s most important demands.

  • No restrictions on the size of the army;
  • No restrictions on Ukraine’s participation in the EU and NATO;
  • Russia should not have a veto over Ukraine’s participation in international organizations.

What exactly, then, is the point of giving Ukraine a 30-day ceasefire, when they are expressly rejecting Russia’s core conditions?

It’s interesting that Kiev would implicitly accept the Russian territorial demands, but considering that its forces are a) probably less than 30 days from retreating from the remainder of those four regions, and, b) Russia has already entered a fifth region, the Oblast of Sumy, in force, that is little more than refusing to deny an effective fait accompli.

But as Simplicius points out, the strangest thing is that the US is now threatening to do something Russia hasn’t even been accused of doing by anyone, which is to invade a NATO signatory.

The Chairman of Denmark’s Defense Committee, Rasmus Jarlov responds to today’s statement by U.S. President Donald J. Trump while meeting with the Secretary-General of NATO, in which he said that he believed the U.S. annexation of Greenland would happen, with Jarlov stating, “It would mean war between two NATO countries. Greenland has just voted against immediate independence from Denmark and does not want to be American ever.”

What Jarlov references above is the new polls that show 85% of Greenlanders do not want to become a part of the US. What makes the hypocrisy even more outrageous is that in the video above, Trump even hints at a potential referendum for Greenland to join the US. So, referenda are “not democracy” when it comes to Russia in Crimea, Donbass, and elsewhere—but are fine when the US does it?

At this point, anyone who claims to know what’s going on is posturing, because the rhetoric is now so far beyond the dialectic it’s not even possible to make any coherent sense of it all. Best just to ignore all the words and pay attention to the actual facts on the ground. However, it’s becoming apparent that Russia expects Odessa and Nikolaev to peacefully come under its control, as its demand for self-determination on the part of the Ukrainian-controlled territories obviously anticipates.

In addition to the fact that all our constitutional territories are unequivocally not subject to any revision, and the organization and conduct of a Tribunal on the facts of war crimes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, our interests also extend to the entire left-bank Ukraine, where there should be no Ukrainian troops, and the territories themselves should be under our protectorate. The same applies to the Odessa and Nikolaev regions, where our monitoring missions will operate. This effectively means the establishment of our bases there. The administration of these regions should be appointed from representatives loyal to us. And, of course, these regions, like the regions of left-bank Ukraine, should have the right to self-determination.

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Putin’s Ceasefire Terms

Vladimir Putin provides Russia’s requirements for a ceasefire.

  • Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk and Lunhansk People’s Republics, the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. This means the administrative borders that existed at the time of their entry into Ukraine.
  • Official notice of Ukraine’s abandonment of plans to join NATO.

At first, that struck me as remarkably easy terms, but then, this is just for a ceasefire, they are not the final Russian demands for a lasting peace settlement. And they make sense from the Russian perspective, because even if Ukraine uses the ceasefire to rearm, refit, and repurpose its defenses, Russia will have acquired control over the remaining territory in the four Novyrussian republics without have to fight for it.

And if Ukraine won’t concede that territory voluntarily in return for a ceasefire, there is no point in negotiations anyhow.

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Free Trade and Strategic Crisis

Big Serge has an excellent post on the history of naval warfare that happens to touch lightly on the strategic crisis facing the USA today with regards to the production of steel and the post-WWII lack of industrial capacity that has weakened the US military.

At the core of the great naval developments occurring around the turn of the 20th Century was a systematic erosion of Great Britain’s strategic position. This strategic decay was of course a multivariate process which included the emergence of new great powers like Germany, Japan, and the United States, and the evolving industrial dynamics of the world. At its heart, however, the problem was very simple: in the latter half of the 19th Century, industrial technologies began to diffuse from Great Britain to the rest of the great powers, to the effect that British supremacy in industry and critical military technologies became an open question.

A brief perusal of the relevant economic statistics betrays a clear and sustained erosion of British supremacy. In 1880, Britain still accounted for nearly a quarter of global manufacturing output and was by far the leading industrial nation of the world. By 1913, it had fallen in absolute terms well behind Germany and especially the United States, which now boasted nearly 2.5 times Britain’s output. Already by 1910, Britain (formerly the world’s premiere steelmaking nation) produced only half as much steel as Germany and barely a quarter of American steel output.

The immense economic advantages enjoyed by the United States need little enumeration. America occupies a uniquely providential economic geography, being blessed with a pair of accommodating seaboards saturated with natural harbors, an internal Mississippi waterway that is both dense and far reaching to accommodate internal trade, superb growing regions, peaceful borders, and ample deposits of virtually every mineral resource thinkable. In short, it is a country with bountiful mineral and agricultural resources, internal waterways for moving them about, harbors for exporting them abroad, and no meaningful security threats.

The German case, however, bears closer scrutiny. Whereas the United States was characterized by boundless space, free of meaningful external security threats, Germany was intensely bounded in the middle of Europe, birthed into a firestorm of potential enemies all around it. German economic might was little like the American story, characterized by the uninterrupted exploitation of a vast geographic bounty, and more the product of powerful and aggressive German institutions – both of corporations and the state.

The German population grew rapidly into the 20th Century (German birthrates were forever a point of hand wringing for the French). The German population grew from some 49 million in 1890 to 65 million by 1910 – an increase of 32%, compared to an increase of just 3% in France (from 38.3 to 39.5 million) and 20% in Britain (37.3 to 44.9 million). Simultaneously, the consolidation of an impressive educational apparatus ensured that this growing population was highly literate and productive. Around the turn of the century, many European armies still reported high levels of illiteracy among recruits. In Italy, some 33% of recruits were deemed illiterate: the corresponding figure was 22% in Austria-Hungary and 6.8% in France, but a mere 0.1% in Germany. The rapid growth of such a young and educated population benefited not just the German army, but also the burgeoning roster of German industrial enterprises like Krupp, Siemens, AEG, Bayer, and Hoechst. Such firms dominated the emerging 20th Century industries like chemicals, optics, and electrics, and the intensive adoption of agricultural modernization and chemical fertilizers made German agriculture the most productive in Europe on a per-hectare basis.

The explosion of two industrial powers who could not only compete but even outstrip Britain (and one of them right in the heart of Europe) could have no effect other than directly undermining Britain’s strategic position. Matters were made worse, however, but the proliferation of advanced naval technology around the world – in many cases directly abetted by British firms.

In 1864, British military leadership had made the fateful decision to keep artillery production in the hands of the state-owned Woolwich arsenal, despite the emergence of private industrial firms, like the Armstrong company, who were capable of making state of the art naval artillery. Cut out of British government contracts, this let manufacturers like Armstrong with no choice but to seek foreign buyers. When Armstrong built an armored cruiser – the O’Higgins – for the Chilean government, it set off serious alarm bells about the basis of British naval supremacy. The O’Higgins was fast enough to easily outrun any capital ship of the day, but her powerful 8 inch guns made her more than capable of sinking targets in the lower weight class. This suggested a distinctive use case as a commercial raider, able to evade enemy battleships while preying on merchants. Chile, of course, was hardly a rival to Great Britain, but Armstrong’s exploits did not end there. All told, Armstrong would build 84 warships for twelve different foreign governments between 1884 and 1914, and frequently supplied technical systems more advanced than those in use by the Royal Navy at the time – for example, the powerful main battery of the Russian cruiser Rurik, launched in 1890.

The prospect of fast cruisers – optimized for speed and striking power at the expense of armor – was particularly alarming to Britain owing to emerging patterns of agricultural production. The advent of efficient steamships had drastically lowered seaborne transportation costs – a fact that was of the first importance for Britain, as it allowed for the mass import of cheap grain from places like North America, Australia, and Argentina, at costs far below the levels at which British farms could compete. As a result, between 1872 and the end of the century wheat acreage in Great Britain dropped by about 50 percent, and already by the 1880’s some 65 percent of Britain’s grain was imported from overseas. The prospect of swift enemy cruisers capable of intercepting grain shipments while evading the British battle fleets now assumed a potentially existential importance, as for the first time in history London contemplated the possibility that the interdiction of its trade could bring the island to the brink of starvation.

This raised the possibility of a dangerous asymmetry: might it be possible to nullify Britain’s centuries-old naval supremacy without building competing battleships at all? French naval theorists certainly thought so, and it was proposed that France could out-lever Britain on the seas with a fleet comprised entirely of fast cruisers and torpedo boats. Such a program had the additional advantage of being very cheap, with dozens of torpedo boats available at the cost of a single armored battleship. This financial calculus was particularly important to France: after the disastrous defeat at the hands of the Prusso-Germans in 1870-71, it was natural that building out the army should be Paris’s primary concern. Therefore, a naval program that promised to outmaneuver the British without eating into funds for the army had irresistible allure. In 1881, the French allocated funds for 70 torpedo boats (halting the construction of armored battleships), and in 1886 the new Minister of Marine, Admiral Aube, launched a new building program for 100 additional torpedo boats and 14 swift cruisers designed to raid enemy shipping.

Taken together, the decay of Britain’s naval supremacy is easy to sketch out. Great Britain had become uniquely vulnerable to asymmetrical warfare at sea, owing to its growing dependence on imported grain, at the same time that technical changes in the form of the torpedo and the fast cruiser gave her enemies the potential to exploit this vulnerability. To make matters worse, the diffusion of the industrial revolution to continental Europe and the United States raised the prospect that Great Britain might no longer be able to simply out-build her enemies. In a sense, the comforting and familiar dynamic of the blockade was now reversed: instead of a powerful British battlefleet insulating the home islands from invasion and blockading enemy ports, the home islands now faced starvation at the hands of fast and cheap enemy raiding vessels armed with torpedoes and modern naval artillery.

The parallels of British decline and the subsequent US decline should be fairly obvious. As Admiral Mahan wrote in The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution, “we may profitably note that like conditions lead to like results.”

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Canada Folds

Sanity prevailed, as someone appears to have explained the tariff math to the Premier of Ontario:

Canada folded to President Donald Trump after he vowed the nation would pay a historically big ‘financial price’ for the electricity tariff it imposed on the United States. Hours later, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would cancel the 25% tariff on Canadian electricity to Michigan, New York and Minnesota that he put in place on Monday.

That move was an escalation in response to earlier tariffs from Trump as the trade war between the two countries has intensified.

The Premier said he spoke with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the situation and they agreed to meet on Thursday to discuss reciprocal tariffs that Trump wants to put in place on April 2. ‘In response, Ontario agreed to suspend its 25 per cent surcharge on exports of electricity to Michigan, New York and Minnesota,’ Ford said. Trump, in response, agreed not to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium to 50%. They will stay at 25%.

In the meantime, the God-Emperor 2.0 has moved on to the EU and the UK. The UK is being smart about it.

Keir Starmer is resisting pressure to retaliate today after failing in his bid to persuade Donald Trump to spare Britain from brutal tariffs on steel. The US president has pushed ahead with the 25 per cent levy on steel and aluminium imports despite desperate pleas for an exemption. Britain exported 166,433 tonnes of steel to the US in 2023, the last full year for which figures are available.

The EU, not so much:

Brussels said counter-measures to the tariffs, which would affect around 26 billion euros (around £22 billion) of EU exports, will be introduced in April ‘to defend European interests’.

I am beginning to conclude that these particular tariffs aren’t about economics at all. This is about the US President attempting to rebuild the US industrial capacity that presently renders the USA unable to fight a war with either China or Russia. Which the USA simply cannot do when its steel industry is so susceptible to foreign competition and steel suppliers that will be inaccessible and useless in times of war.

The various foreign countries should accept these tariffs on industrial materials without demur, because the USA really doesn’t have any choice in the matter if it is going to remain one of the top three global military powers.

CORRECTION: Canada has not learned.

Canada announced $21 billion in new tariffs on Wednesday targeting imports of U.S. computers and sports gear. It is the latest escalation of the increasingly bitter and costly trade war engulfing Washington and Ottawa. The latest move comes hours after President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum went into effect.

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They’re Not Stopping

RUMOR: Russian forces are reportedly attempting to cross the Dnipro river, aiming to establish footholds on the west (right) bank at four locations to allow them a clear run at the strategically important port city of Kherson.

RUMOR: The Russian Army is entering the Dnipro Region of Ukraine, in force, in multiple points of entry. This was unexpected by Ukraine (and its Western Cohorts). This is the first indication that Russia may be planning to take all portions of Ukraine that are East of the Dnipier River; basically the entire eastern half of Ukraine; but that is just speculation at this point.

My expectation is that the Russians will simply keep going until a) the Kiev regime surrenders unconditionally or b) they control the entire territory of Ukraine. Once the Dnieper is crossed, I expect the UFA will quickly collapse since there aren’t much in the way of fortifications in the western plains. It’s now evident that there is no one with whom the Russians can reasonably negotiate a surrender given the fact that Zelensky is not a legitimate head of state, the USA refuses to unilaterally end all support prior to any ceasefire, and the European leaders actually prefer the war to continue.

UPDATE: This, combined with being driven out of Kursk, may be why the Ukrainians have theoretically agreed to US proposals for a ceasefire. I see no reason why the Russians would accept it, though.

Ukraine has agreed to a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia as President Donald Trump lifts a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing to the country. The agreement, under intense pressure from the U.S. side, now puts the ball in Moscow’s court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the conclusion of a day of talks with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.

UPDATE: The Russians will not accept the ceasefire.

In a significant setback to peace efforts, Russia has rejected the proposed 30-day ceasefire deal with Ukraine. The ceasefire agreement, which was contingent on Russia’s acceptance, aimed to provide a temporary halt to hostilities and create a foundation for a long-term peace deal. However, Russian officials have deemed the proposal unacceptable, citing concerns that it would allow Ukraine to strengthen its armed forces.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that firm agreements on a final settlement are needed, and a temporary ceasefire is unacceptable. She emphasized that Ukraine would use the pause to strengthen its military potential with the help of its allies. Russian officials have also ruled out ceding captured Ukrainian territory and have reiterated their desire to roll back NATO’s presence across Europe.

As others have pointed out, Ukraine has repeatedly offered ceasefires after losing a significant battle, then going right back on the offensive.

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The Collapse Begins

In the aftermath of the daring strike through a 12-km tunnel march that reads more like military science fiction than military history, the Russians have precipitated the collapse of the Kursk incursion into Russia by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as Simplicius reports:


The AFU lost about 33% of their Kursk holdings in a day:

Ukrainian forces now “control” less than 230km² of Kursk Oblast, down from 360km² just 24 hours ago.

Everything was getting in on the action, including Ka-52s and, as claimed, even Russian UCAV drones. This video is purported to show the Forpost dropping laser-guided Kab-20 bombs on retreating AFU vehicles and infantry. This makes sense as Kursk is the one region where Russian UCAVs can operate without fearing a Ukrainian AD presence.

Rada MP Goncharenko showed panic:

We now have three options:

  1. Peace
  2. Losing
  3. Defeat and surrender

Unfortunately, the government is leading us to the second and third options.

As he mentions, Ukraine is now trying to make up with Trump, with the two set for a conciliatory Saudi Arabia meeting this week. The purpose of it, from the Trump side, is to “gauge” how amenable Zelensky now is to peace—i.e. whether he’s changed his tune after being given a slap on the wrist. And a slap it was, because word has it Trump has now implied that the intelligence pause may soon be overturned:

Trump says US has ‘almost’ ended pause in sharing intelligence on Ukraine — Bloomberg

▪️The publication reports that when asked by media representatives whether Trump intends to lift the suspension, he replied: “We almost did it.”

▪️The lifting of the ban on intelligence sharing comes as talks in Saudi Arabia are underway to determine, in part, whether Ukraine is willing to make significant concessions to Russia to end the war.

▪️In addition to peace talks, the fate of the mineral deal between Washington and Kiev also hangs in Jeddah.

▪️The US President also expressed optimism about the talks. “I believe we will make great progress this week,” he said.

This makes an important point: how can Russia possibly trust its most dire and existential security guarantees to such a flip-flopping administration, which can promise one thing and deliver another moments later? It only goes to show that Russia should ignore all overtures and flourishes from Trump and his team, and continue prosecuting the campaign to its finish. There is simply no fool-proof deals to be had with an exceptionalist, schizophrenic US at the terminal stage of its Imperial arc. And perhaps that is precisely what Russia is doing, as we continue to see evidence Russia may be preparing for further expansions of its military objectives. 


As I have repeatedly stated since February 2022, Ukraine must surrender unconditionally or the tragedy will proceed to its inevitable end with the unnecessary loss of far more lives. The Russians have proven their limited demands will be considerably more reasonable than both the Europeans and the neocons, and everything they demand used to be theirs anyhow. Ukraine doesn’t need Odessa to survive and thrive as the eastern border of continental Europe, but it does need to exist if it wishes to do so.

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