While the western propaganda about the Russian objective in Ukraine remains at a fever pitch, most intellectually honest observers have always held that liberation of eastern Ukraine was the goal of Russia and western Ukraine was never part of the objective.
With a decade-long civil war in eastern Ukraine preceding the current Russian operations, and with western forces supporting one side while Russia supported the other, it was always presumed -prior to the Russian military operations- that Vladimir Putin’s central goal was removing the NATO influence from eastern Ukraine.
That objective has seemingly remained visible throughout the conflict with Russian activity in western Ukraine limited in scope to targeting inbound NATO weapons and material support.
We might remember the 20-mile-long armored convoy that sat in place for weeks north of Kyiv while the media narrative was ‘any day now’. Those troops never moved on Kyiv, and in hindsight looked more like a strategic positioning of resources to keep western Ukraine in check while the more important goal of clearing eastern Ukraine was the ongoing operation.
It seems a little silly to point out the obvious, but everything Putin said about what he was doing in Ukraine is factually what has taken place. The western media narrative spinning his ‘true intents’ to be much more significant than his open statements, has never played out when reviewing the actual military operations. In short, Putin was then (as he said), and continues now, to be carving out eastern Ukraine and the Donbas region.
As the Russian operations in eastern Ukraine enter the clean-up and finalization stage, this report about the shift in Russian operations near Kyiv and western Ukraine makes a great deal of sense. The Reuters spin is that Putin was losing western Ukraine, ergo he is reducing activity. However, it never appeared that western Ukraine was part of the objective.
ISTANBUL/KYIV OUTSKIRTS/MARIUPOL, Ukraine, March 29 (Reuters) – Russia promised on Tuesday to scale down military operations around Ukraine’s capital and north, while Kyiv proposed adopting neutral status, in confidence-building steps that were the first signs of progress towards negotiating peace.
Their talks took place in an Istanbul palace more than a month into the largest attack on a European nation since World War Two. Russia’s invasion has been halted on most fronts by stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces who have recaptured territory even as civilians are trapped in besieged cities.
He made no mention of other areas that have seen heavy fighting, including around Mariupol in the southeast, Sumy and Kharkiv in the east and Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south.
Some analysts noted that Russia’s promise to reduce fighting mostly covered areas where it has been losing ground.
[…] Ukrainian negotiators said that under their proposals, Kyiv would agree not to join alliances or host bases of foreign troops, but would have security guaranteed in terms similar to “Article 5”, the collective defence clause of the transatlantic NATO military alliance.
They named Israel and NATO members Canada, Poland and Turkey as countries that may give such guarantees. Russia, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy could also be involved.
The proposals, which would require a referendum in Ukraine, mentioned a 15-year consultation period on the status of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. The fate of the southeastern Donbas region, which Russia demands Ukraine cede to separatists, would be discussed by the Ukrainian and Russian leaders.
Kyiv’s proposals also included one that Moscow would not oppose Ukraine joining the European Union, Russia’s lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said. Russia has previously opposed Ukrainian membership of the EU and especially of NATO. (read more)
Putin’s objectives have been obvious from the beginning, and it’s been equally obvious that Russia has been attaining them. I don’t believe anything being reported by the MSM or anything coming out of Kiev. Zelensky has been exaggerating and outright lying from the day he started posting made-up videos on Instagram and Tik-Tok. US analysts, who are nothing but guessers, either have rocks in their heads or are telling us what they think we want to know. It’s all BS, but that’s what government is – propaganda.
Putin has also most likely gathered a lot evidence about the activities of the US biolabs as well as evidence of corruption and the involvement of western politicians and the WEF in Ukraine.
I believe a lot of it will be dripped out in the coming days, weeks and months.
The warmongering hysteria from the MSM is a reflection of the state of mind of the globalist crime syndicate and it’s members.
Zelensky had better have a Houdini act ready because he’ll soon outlive his usefulness and will die in an event which will be used to further the agenda of the DS.
The “Biolabs Solution” will become a massive sticking point that will take a LONG TIME to “RESOLVE IRREVERSIBLY”.
Not if they’re part of the collateral damage… LOL. Now THAT would be “acceptable” losses…
Looking at what happened in Afghanistan and the comments of the US government, I have no reason to believe anything they have said about Ukraine. What I feel pretty certain about is that the US government has contributed significantly to the mess in both countries.
Afghanistan–Russia at its best. 15,000 dead in less than ten years and could never pacify the population. More than ten times the casualties the US had over 20 years. Might want to think about that. Or those 500 russian special forces/Wagner dudes in Syria that got hammered by a total of 45 US marines. Yeah–Trump ordered the pounding.
Say what? He tried to encircle Kharkov and Kiev and failed–miserably. He still hasn’t taken Mariupol. You people crack me up–as bad as the Russian trolls on Zerohedge. He can’t even take Kharkov and it is only 30miles from the Russian border and was in the main of frontal attack. Clearly Putin intended a giant pincers movement ala the Wehrmacht in 1941. They failed miserably.
Agreed it’s much harder to do house to house fighting if limiting casualties is a primary goal!!!
Russia is going to have a “Southern Region” problem soon via US Allies Qatar and the $4 Trillion Dollar Muslim Brotherhood-ISIS Operational Base formerly known as Afghanistan. With the exception of Georgia and Armenia, the other “republics” bordering Southern Russia and touching Afghanistan and Iran are Islamic, with high US CIA content left over from the war in Afghanistan.
In 2018, Iran hosted a summit where the various Islamic sects and factions agreed to postpone killing each other until the infidels and apostates were handled and under control. The Muslim Brotherhood may be the vehicle Obama unwittingly or purposely put in place for this purpose. Now that Qatar is open and it will become the “Hong Kong” of the Islamic world where Bankers and Islam can legally converge.
Keep an eye on China Inc. diplomacy on-going in Afghanistan
Putin’s goal is, and has always been, the reintegration the former Russian Empire of the Tsars and the Soviet Union, and he has never wavered in his dedication to this. In fact, Putin has been chipping away at Ukraine for over 2o years, in brazen defiance of international law.
People still come up with this myth after Putin himself saying over and over again that it is not his intention to reunite the old USSR. The Russian Federation is already so large and diverse that it is difficult enough to govern.
Yes–and he said he wasn’t going to invade and it was just a military exercise and then it wasn’t war but a “special operation” and then it wasn’t Russia’s bombs, artillery, etc, leveling cities (just like Grozny and Allepo), it was “Nazis”.
It’s still a “special military operation.” What do you call a nation with no air forces to speak of? A helpless country, like Ukraine is now; and is destined to lose this battle. Big Zee the komedian in Keeve could have surrendered the Eastern Territories in dispute a long time ago and avoided a lot of pain and suffering. Now expect Russia to annex the southeastern 1/4 of Ukraine soon and Keeve can go back to being the weapons smuggling capitol of the planet with a whole lot of new NATO goods to sell.
You understand little of the dynamics of Ukraine’s aggression of native Russians in eastern Ukraine. The Ukraine government has ignored and blatantly resisted agreements since 2014 when they staged the color revolution resulting the coup of the pro-Russian leader, with the help and backing of the U.S.
LOL–so, its okay for Vlad to campaign for and install his puppets? And then when the people who hate Russia for past crimes get upset and throw him out, that’s bad? And then its good for Putin to stage a “break away” region so he can swallow up Crimea? And then its bad when Ukraine fights back and takes back its port city of Mariupol? Those “dissidents” in the DPR were fully funded and backed by Putin and his special ops dudes–problem was, was they weren’t tough enough to take back Mariupol. Still can’t take it.
Yours is not a serious comment.
The size of the Russian economy alone, makes any such ambitions problematic, to put it mildly.
I agree with you and have watched it closely while almost no one else–including those on this site, was. Putin made clear from the beginning he was all about being a modern day Czar and has, over 20 years, taken for himself and his fellow KGB comrades, most of Russia’s wealth leaving the people just as poor as they were under the bolsheviks. Putin has slowly but surely gone backwards with the economy and is, really, nothing more than a gas station and soon to be China’s vassal.
“Putin made clear from the beginning he was all about being a modern day Czar”
Imperial Russia at its apex was amongst the wealthiest and most powerful monarchies on earth.
Modern Russias GDP is around 3.8 trillion.
To give some perspective, the US GDP is in excess of 19 trillion.
There is nothing there to build an empire with, and SaS nobody’s going to lend it to them for an empire building adventure.
Enough with the childish corporate media talking points.
Who writes this drivel for you?
Do you have permission to use their computer?
… so …
if Ukraine joins the EU, that means the Clintons, Bidens, Romneys, et al, are shut out of their corrupting schemes.
But Klaus Schwab and his WEF goons can swoop in to fill the vacuum – until Vlad swats them down.
vlad can’t even take Kharkov, NATO would end this in one week. The only thing saving Vlad is his nukes. The US should have let Russia starve in the ’70s unless they gave up their nukes. Russia will starve again when the solar minimum gets under way.
If NATO even “thinks” of intervening, then it is the end for everyone. If you think for one minute that Putin is going to sit back and try to tangle with NATO conventionally, then you are beyond delusional. If NATO intervenes, then Putin will escalate, and that will assuredly end in nuclear annihilation for everyone (i.e. you and I).
Yea. I have said it before: this is a depopulation program and the EU is all in on it behind the back of Zelenskyy.
The EU sees this as their best chance to access oil and gas in the Donbas. SEE HUNTER BIDEN AND BURISMA.
And I fervently wish Putin gains control over the rest of the Donbas that is not currently Russian territory.
Why would that be? So Vlad and his pals can rape it? Why not let Ukrainians have their own resources to deal with as they see fit, huh?
Pentagon dubious of Russian ‘withdrawal’ north of Kyiv, expects troops will move to eastern Ukraine
Excerpt:
The Pentagon is seeing “small numbers” of Russian troops repositioning to the north of Kyiv but is not labeling it a withdrawal as Russia has characterized it. Instead, it believes the troops might be used in an offensive elsewhere in Ukraine, possibly into the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
_snip_
“We’re seeing a small number now that appears to be moving away from Kyiv,” John Kirby, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, told reporters Tuesday. “This on the same day that the Russians say they’re withdrawing, but we’re not prepared to call this a retreat, or even a withdrawal. What they probably have in mind is a repositioning to prioritize elsewhere.”
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/pentagon-dubious-russian-withdrawal-north-kyiv-expects-troops/story?id=83740519
US satellites can see everything Russia is doing. If not for his nukes, his invasion would have been over with–along with his armies, in about a week–just like Iraq’s.
Well, yes, because NATO includes 30 countries, including the US.
Eight of the former Soviet bloc countries are already NATO members and Putin really did nothing about it… so clearly Putin is not attempting to resurrect the USSR because it’s not even possible to do that, right?
So why is our media telling us that is Putin’s intention? He certainly has no intention of going to war with 30 nations.
It makes all the breathless corporate media propaganda about Russian “Empire expansion” all the more ridiculous.
It’s right there in his own words. He(Putin) referred to it as a “Special Military Operation”.
It never had the ring of an open ended, complete annexation of Ukraine.
Putin will take Odessa. He made a big point in a speech to stress the need for justice against the NAZI criminals who committed mass murder against pro-Russian demonstrators there in 2014. Taking Odessa will cut what is left of Ukraine off from the sea, making it much more dependent on good relations with Russia. This will also increase Russian trade with its friends and make its naval power more effective. The capture of Odessa will make Putin a god in Russia, and put fear in the hearts of his enemies. Putin is working hard to get a naval base in Port Sudan also, right across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia. The neocons are fighting hard against this. If Sudan allows a Russian base, expect the Saudis to accept Russia as their new Daddy, just as Iran and Syria and the Palestinians have done. This will put our most important ally, Israel, in greater peril, at the mercy of Russia. Remember why Nixon put our nuclear missiles on Red Alert in 1973. We may now have scoundrels worse than Putin in charge of our nation, but if you love America, do not wish Putin well.
You mean like he’s taken Kharkov and Mariupol? No doubt Mariupol will eventually fall as there is no way to reinforce it. That is not true for Odessa and they have had a month to prepare. Vlad assembled his marines and ships for Odessa weeks ago and then aborted because they needed those troops to take Mariupol which is still under UKR control.
Sorry–I’ve read your site for many years, off and on. Right now you’re beginning to sound like the Russian trolls over at zerohedge. Putin did not intend to leave Kiev alone, his soldiers and his mostly 1970s military equipment cannot even take Kharkov which is only 30 miles from Russia. Being a genuine student of history, I know that Russia has never won a battle, let alone a war, without the aid of numerous allies. Its military’s main function is to stomp on the faces of its people. russia did not beat back the Mongol Horde–that was mostly the Polish Commonwealth along with Ukraine. The only time they beat Napoleon was when they had FOUR other armies from four other nations fighting with them. Naploeon’s retreat from Moscow was Napoleon defeating himself. First Prussia and then imperialist Germany crushed the Czar’s armies and Hitler’s armies destroyed the Russian military. If not for US aid (Roosevelt being a closet communist, picked a fight with Japan in order to save the Soviet Union), Russia would have collapsed. Even Zhukov admitted to this–he himself stated they could not even make bullets when the American aid started arriving–300,000 ford trucks alone to tow artillery and troops. hundreds of thousands of jeeps, millions of tons of steel and aluminum, etc.
All of Russia’s tech was stolen from the US over time by those in the employ of the KGB. Russia cannot even make its own silicon chips and was busy stealing them from US children’s toys in the ’80s. Vlad intended to take all of Ukraine–everyone said it would be over in 48 hours. Vlad is doing just what he did in Georgia and Chechnya, it just isn’t working so well this time. Better weapons for defense, better training since 2014, etc. The Russian military was, is and always has been a paper tiger. When Truman ordered Stalin’s armies out of Iran in 1946, they went as they knew they could not defeat the US army in a head on conflict–hence Korea and Vietnam.
Cheerleading Putin is not a fight for conservative values. Since when do conservatives cheer on dictators? Trump like Zelenski and Zelenski tried to help Trump, remember?
We remember Zeelenskyy alright. He was silent as the liars in massmedia lit their hair on fire and the crooks in Congress impeached President Trump over a perfect good phone call.
For the Putinphiles:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/24/putin-goes-all-in-beyond-eastern-ukraine-tactically-appearing-to-advance-for-all-ukraine/
Uhh no, he is not getting what he wanted. He did not count on a better trained army since 2014 nor the western weapons, etc. What we are seeing is the true Russian military–it has always been a paper tiger that cannot win without the aid of allies.
If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.
I always find it intriguing when protesters are shocked by tooled up Police in riot gear moving up on them, its as if they(R Squad) were there for display purposes only. Frequently, if protesters are a little too peaceful, they will be baited into action, giving LE a “valid” reason to
respond with overwhelming force.
The take away should be the following.
Riot Police don’t go through the hassle of gearing up in full regalia, for s#!£§ and giggles, they show up to rock and roll. Prepare accordingly.
The belabored point I’m trying to make is this.
If Putin won’t voluntarily stumble into a protracted multi front regional conflict with a US led NATO, then the puppet in the WH will be instructed to attempt to trip Russia into one.
Congress approved billions of visible dollars for Ukraine. Simultaneously the invisible shadow dollar amount sent over, will be at least two to three times that. The Pentagon knows what Putins goals are, it’s no mystery to informed people.
The publics Anxiety levels were intentionally hiked up to frenzied levels, with the aim of appropriating huge funds.
It will be used in a planned protracted asymmetric, overt and clandestine war. It’s being done in concert with attempts to collapse Russias economy.
The takeaway here.
Our puppet masters are all dressed up, and flush with US taxpayer cash. There is no way they are not going to have their BOOM-BOOM, whether we, and the Ukrainian population like it, or not.
Any peace agreement will not be worth the paper its inked on.
We have no reason to trust Russia.
And as Putin(and we) have learned, he has no reason to trust us.
I’m kinda surprised that Sundance didn’t mention that the Russians also wanted to rid the area of the Nazi Azov Battalion. Everything I’ve read about them indicates that they have been attacking, raping civilians there because they wanted to be with the Russian Federation, plus I don’t blame Putin one bit for going in there and taking out those Bio-Labs. WE wouldn’t tolerate them close to our borders like that. THIS article though makes Absolute sense of this whole affair…
Remember when Brandon said: “It’s one thing if it’s a ‘minor incursion’”? Now, Russia appears to be trying to “save face”, by negotiating the parameters of the “minor incursion”.
The problem was, apparently, the Ukrainian citizens were not in on the planning for Ron Klain’s War.
Yes, it was a brilliant gambit. Roll into Ukraine, lost ten thousand troops killed and three times that many wounded; tanks, aircraft, and vehicles destroyed by the dozen. It was the PLAN all along, you see! Yeah, that’s the ticket! It was all a BRILLIANT FAKE!
Sure, Jan.
Incidentally – that doesn’t mean Russia WON’T end up getting what Putin wants. But this was a shitshow for the Russians, and they really embarrassed themselves. Make no mistake.
How do you know any of this? Have you been to Ukraine and saw for your self?