re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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The Ruble was at 105 just yesterday

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Russian officials continue to demonstrate that the Kremlin aims to seize more territory in Ukraine than it currently occupies and is unwilling to accept compromises or engage in good faith negotiations, no matter who mediates such talks.

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Putin will not negotiate until he believes his advantage is gone.

He is ok will killing off his minorities for the east and prisoners while gaining a few meters a day.

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How does a country buy foreign currency on a domestic market?

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What Donald Trump's Ukraine Strategy Could Look Like

Far from abandoning Ukraine, a second Trump administration would lift restrictions on Ukrainian military aid in order to force a peace settlement.

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Let us start by recognizing that Biden’s Ukraine strategy leaves much room for improvement. His weaknesses encouraged Putin to launch the invasion in the first place. Biden’s own Supreme Allied Commander in Europe assessed that Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan led to Putin’s decision to re-attack Ukraine. Biden’s feeble attempts at “integrated deterrence,” threatening sanctions and aid to Ukraine, failed in their intended purpose of deterring Putin’s aggression.

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Putin invaded Ukraine under both Obama and Biden, but he did not attack while Trump was president. Trump has stated that the Russia-Ukraine war would “never have happened” under his watch.

Following Putin’s invasion, Biden pursued an overly cautious wartime strategy. Instead of clearly defining a goal of victory, Biden vowed to help Ukraine “as long as it takes.” But this only raises the question: as long as it takes to do what? Biden should have provided Ukraine with the weapons it needed to win quickly, but instead, he was afraid of potential Russian “escalation” and provided a cautious IV-drip of arms. Biden opposed providing many major weapons systems, like tanks, aircraft, and long-range artillery before changing his mind. The result is that Ukraine has had enough weapons to fight but not enough to win.

Biden’s revealed wartime strategy was to spend billions of dollars only to produce a bloody and inconclusive stalemate.

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While in office, Trump showed that he was willing to push boundaries, lifting Obama-era restrictions on the rules of engagement in the fight against ISIS and killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. If Putin refuses to negotiate, Trump might very well remove the Biden-eras constraints on arms transfers and give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win, including long-range weapons to strike within Crimea and Russia. If faced with the prospect of a costly military defeat, Putin may very well prefer negotiations.

To bring Kyiv to the table, Trump said, “I would tell Zelenskyy, ‘no more.’ You got to make a deal.” Ukraine can only sustain the war effort due to large-scale Western support, and the prospect of losing aid would be a strong inducement to negotiation.

A ceasefire along the current lines and subsequent negotiations would preserve a sovereign, democratic Ukraine anchored in the West and capable of defending itself. Kyiv would maintain its internationally-recognized claims to sovereignty over all of Ukraine. A halt to hostilities would also facilitate the provision of reliable security guarantees, including possible NATO and EU membership, to deter Russia from resuming the conflict. While less satisfying than (what increasingly appears to be an unachievable) total military victory, this outcome would represent a strategic defeat for Russia and a strengthening of American national security and the Western alliance.

Some Republicans argue that the Ukraine conflict is a European matter of no consequence to the United States. Strategically, as his public comments reinforce, Trump disagrees. He sees ending the war as a major foreign policy issue—one that he plans to accomplish on day one.

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The Ukraine strategy was published back in May by AFPI as part of their An America First Approach to U.S. National Security, edited by Fred Fleitz, who also served as chief of staff at the National Security Council during Trump's presidency and co-wrote with Kellogg the chapter on the Russia-Ukraine war.

It suggests that the U.S. should begin a formal policy "to seek a cease-fire and negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict." The U.S. would continue to arm Ukraine to deter Russia from attacking during or after a deal is reached, but under the condition that Kyiv agrees to enter into peace talks with Russia.

To persuade Russia to participate in the negotiations, the U.S. and other NATO partners would delay Ukraine's membership in the alliance for an extended period in exchange for a "comprehensive and verifiable deal with security guarantees."

They write that Ukraine will not be asked to give up its ambition to regain all land seized by Russia, but Kyiv should agree to use diplomatic means only and realize that it might take a long time to regain all the territories. The strategy proposes to use the partial lifting of sanctions on Russia to encourage the Kremlin to take steps toward peace and establish levies on Russian energy imports to fund Ukraine's reconstruction.

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Retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg: We've said very clearly in our paper that Ukraine has fought valiantly. They are very well led. We think the Russians did clearly an unwarranted invasion of a sovereign state and this must be addressed. President Trump, to his credit, said in the very first debate when he was asked by one of the commentators, Dana Bash, do the Russians basically get to keep the territories? He said no, not at all. He said not once, he did it twice.

So, there's a negotiation, you are going to figure out what your starting points are going to be. You want to make sure that Ukrainians are not put at the position when they're operating from weaknesses, but from strength. So, the question is how do you do that? And how you put all the pieces and parts in place? Nobody is ever saying that: "Oh, we just have to make Ukrainians to give up land and give it to Russia." Look when you look at your losses, the losses in Ukraine alone, depending on who you talk to, you're talking between 100,000 and 130,000 deaths. That's enormous because when I look at [Russia’s losses] they have had three times that. The United States of America lost 60,000 in the Vietnam war. That was a 20-year war we went away from. The Russians, then the Soviets, lost 15,000 in Afghanistan and walked away from it.

If the Ukrainians say no and the Russians say no, then they can do it in a different way. But I think you started to ask yourself questions is this what's best for Ukraine as a nation? I don't care about Russia. I care about Ukraine.

Let’s say a year and a half ago the Russians turn their heels and if the West had provided the equipment that [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy asked for, then you probably could have finished the job. You could have gotten into the Sea of Azov through Kherson, splitting them in half, and that is what you wanted to do. So, I blame this administration and the West to a degree for not supporting Ukraine when they should have.

VOA: The Biden administration is saying that they want to put Ukraine in the position of strength before it can negotiate with Russia. You are suggesting pretty much the same, right?

Kellogg: No, that’s a false statement. Have the United States given Ukraine a support of F-16s? No. Did we provide long-range fires early for the Ukrainians to shoot in Russians? No. Did we provide permission for them to shoot deep into Russia? No. Did the United States provide them the armored capabilities they needed? We gave 31 tanks. Thirty-one tanks is not even a battalion in the United States army. So, they talk about it, but it didn't really happen.

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VOA: Ukraine already tried that signing the Minsk agreements with Russia.

Kellogg: Minsk agreements worked very well, didn't they? They're lousy. They didn't do anything because nobody trusted anybody, and nobody worked together. You had Minsk 1, failed; Minsk 2, failed. Budapest memorandum, failed. So, you have to have some kind of degree of confidence and security.

VOA: One of the reasons why the negotiations in Istanbul broke down was that Russians demanded Ukraine’s demilitarization, a smaller army.

Kellogg: Yes. And this is an unacceptable demand. And you don't walk into negotiating with unacceptable demands. But you have to have an ability, we call it an interlocutor. An interlocutor is somebody who can sit down and actually negotiate with both parties. It can be Trump, President Trump believes he can do it, but you also have to look at who else is out there. President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan of Turkey, do you think he could do it? No, he's not going to do it. [Chancellor Olaf] Scholz from Germany, you think he will do it? No, he is not going to do it. [President Emmanuel] Macron from France, he tried but hasn't done it. Well, now they had a change in government in Britain. So that's gone away. You know, I don't know maybe [Klaus] Iohannis, [the president] of Romania. Maybe he could do it, but you have to have somebody that both sides could talk to.

President Trump is talking to both parties. And President Biden is not. Now the option is quite clear: If Ukraine doesn't want to negotiate, fine, but then accept the fact that you can have enormous losses in your cities and accept the fact that you will have your children killed, accept the fact that you don't have 130,000 dead, you will have 230,000–250,000. Demographically, what does that do to the country?

You have to accept the fact that maybe the threat will remain on Kyiv, you have to accept the fact that Kharkiv will have more damage or do you want to say this is time maybe we take a pause and figure out how to push the Russians out of there so that they don't get territorial gain. And how do you have a long-term peace agreement?

Let's use NATO as an example. NATO has already said they're not going to support Ukraine going into NATO until the war is over. That's the reality and that's where you need somebody to stand as a negotiator and say no, this is where we want to go.

The size of this war is not appreciated in the West. That is the largest war in Europe since World War II, it is between the two largest countries in Europe. The losses have been horrific.

It is too great of a country, and I've been there. I have been to Izyum, I've been to Kharkiv and I've seen what Russians did to it. There's no love for Russians. There's a support for sovereignty. Figure out a way does not mean we say give up land.

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