US Looks To Korean Peninsula As Possible Strategy For Ukraine

Oh what happened? I thought Ukraine was winning!

Russia is obviously winning, it has met all of its goals and the regime is comfortable with its success. Almost as big a win as the 1905 conflict with japan.

Thats probably the biggest goalpost move ive ever seen. Lmao

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Something will need to be done, regardless, because Europe is about to melt down under debt and inflation from lack of Russian energy, food, and agricultural products.

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Well thank god millions and millions of Europeans froze to death this winter......without Russian oil and gas.

I got an email from Seymour Hersh's substack that some European countries are freaking out about their refugee crisis and want everything to end. Maybe word has gotten to Joe. If not, and this article is true, we are in a mess.

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One of the driving forces for the quiet European talks with Zelensky has been the more than five million Ukrainians fleeing from the war who have crossed the country’s borders and have registered with its neighbors under an EU agreement for temporary protection that includes residency rights, access to the labor market, housing, social welfare assistance, and medical care. An assessment published by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the estimate excludes roughly 3 million Ukrainian refugees who escaped from the war zone without a visa into any of the 27 European nations that have abolished border control between each other under the Schengen agreement. Ukraine, though not in the EU, now enjoys all the benefits of the Schengen pact. A few nations, exhausted by the 15-month war, have reintroduced some forms of border control, but the regional refugee crisis will not be resolved until there is a formal peace agreement.

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Weeks ago I learned that the American intelligence community was aware that some officials in Western Europe and the Baltic states want the war between Ukraine and Russia to end. These officials have concluded that it is time for Zelensky to “come around” and seek a settlement. A knowledgeable American official told me that some in the leadership in Hungary and Poland were among those working together to get Ukraine involved in serious talks with Moscow. “Hungary is a big player in this and so are Poland and Germany, and they are working to get Zelensky to come around,” the American official said. The European leaders have made it clear that “Zelensky can keep what he’s got”—a villa in Italy and interests in offshore bank accounts—“if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal.”

So far, the official said, Zelensky has rejected such advice and ignored offers of large sums of money to ease his retreat to an estate he owns in Italy. There is no support in the Biden Administration for any settlement that involves Zelensky’s departure, and the leadership in France and England “are too beholden” to Biden to contemplate such a scenario. There is a reality that some elements in the American intelligence community can’t ignore, the official said, even if the White House is ignoring it: “Ukraine is running out of money and it is known that the next four or months are critical. And Eastern Europeans are talking about a deal.” The issue for them, the official told me, “is how to get the United States to stop supporting Zelensky,” The White House support goes beyond the needs of the war: “We are paying all of the retirement funds—the 401k’s—for Ukraine.”

And Zelensky wants more, the official said. “Zelensky is telling us that if you want to win the war you’ve got to give me more money and more stuff. He tells us, ‘I’ve got to pay off the generals.’ He’s telling us”—if he is forced out of office—“he’s going to the highest bidder. He’d rather go to Italy than stay and possibly get killed by his own people.”

“All of this talk is being reported and is now flying around inside the American intelligence community, but, as usual,” the official said, “it’s not clear to the intelligence community what the president and his foreign policy aides in the White House know of the reality” of the European discussion about finding a way to end the war. “We are still training Ukrainians how to fly our F-16s that will be shot down by Russia as soon as they get into the war zone. The mainstream press is dedicated to Biden and the war and Biden is still talking about the Great Satan in Moscow while the Russian economy is doing great. Putin can stay where he is”—in power—“despite his failure to wipe Ukraine off the map as an independent state. And he thought he would win the war with just one airborne division”—a sardonic reference to Russia’s failed effort in the first days of the war to seize a vital airport by parachuting in an attack force.

“Europe’s problem,” the official said, in terms of getting a quick settlement to the war, “is that the White House wants Zelensky to survive while there are others”—in Russia and in some European capitals—“who say Zelensky has got to go, no matter what,”

It’s not clear that this understanding has gotten to the Oval Office. I have been told that some of the better intelligence about the war does not reach the president, through no fault of those who prepare the often contrary assessments. Biden is said to rely on briefings and other materials prepared by Avril Haines, director of National Intelligence, since the Biden Administration came into office. She has spent much of her career working for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, whose ties to Biden and agreement with him on matters pertaining to Russia and China go back decades.

The one saving grace for some in the community, I have been told, has been CIA Director William Burns. Burns was ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of State and is seen as someone “who has come around” in opposition to some of the White House’s foreign policy follies. “He doesn’t want to be a rat on a sinking ship,” the official told me.

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Thats probably the biggest goalpost move ive ever seen. Lmao

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How so? Russia has already taken more territory than they set out to. Right now the area they control produced over 80% of Ukraine's GDP. Ukraine started the war with the 2nd largest military in Europe and now they don't have much of a military at all left not to mention an entire generation (or two) of Ukrainian men wiped out. Russia will likely end up with control of everything East of the Dniper, The US has lit over $100 billion on fire for nothing and the other NATO countries are now totally screwed economically.

To top it off the entire thing could've easily been avoided.

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A permanent state of conflict wouldn’t be as costly? Given the time periods involved, it’s going to be more.

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A frozen state of conflict, analogous to the Korean situation, is less costly than a hot war. It’s all costly, of course, but an active war is incredibly costly in all aspects from money to human life to supplies to logistics to ammunition to equipment to medical etc etc etc.

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What? Wheat futures have been trending downwards for a while, as have gas and oil futures, to my recall.

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Europe is facing a very serious energy crunch, I think this is obvious and well known. Governments have been subsidizing energy costs, racking up enormous debt in the process, but the effects are still being felt by the people. Russia harvests over 150M tons of grain, 60M of which is export. Russia was also a regular provider of fish, meat, vegetables and vegetable oils. The last year before sanctions, 2021, Russia provided Europe with $40B of food produce.

Germany, Britain, Italy are facing serious economic hardship in the near future.

How do we dictate terms in a war “we” aren’t fighting in?

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How do we dictate terms in a war “we” aren’t fighting in?

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Right?