Russia Rejects Trump's Freeze Of The War In Ukraine

The details of the ceasefire negotiations between the U.S., Europe and Ukraine continue to make headlines despite being largely irrelevant for an end of the conflict in Ukraine.

In an interview with Brazilian paper O Globo (in Portuguese) Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again repeated the Russian demands for peace in Ukraine.

It requires:

• an end of Ukraine's ban on negotiations with Russia,
• for Ukraine to go back to the status of a neutral and non-aligned country in accordance with the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in the 1990's,
• an end of the policies of legally and physically destroy everything Russian: the language, media, culture, traditions, and Russian orthodoxy
• the international recognition of Russia's ownership of Crimea, the DPR, LPR and the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.

There must also be measures to legal fix those positions, to make them permanent and to have enforcement mechanisms.

Also required is, says Lavrov, (edited machine translation):

.. a schedule for the task of de-and desnazifiction in Ukraine, and the lifting of the sanctions, actions, lawsuits and arrest warrants, and the transfer of assets to Russia which are 'frozen' in the West. Also, we will look for reliable warranties for the security of the Russian Federation, and against the threats created by the hostile activity of Nato, the European Union and its individual member states on the country's borders in the west.

There is then no change in the Russian position since its President Vladimir Putin explained it at length on June 14 2024.

Meanwhile the U.S. is very publicly negotiating with Ukraine and Europe about some ceasefire conditions along the lines the pro-Ukrainian (and neo-conservative?) General Kellogg has long promoted (also here):

Cont. reading: Russia Rejects Trump's Freeze Of The War In Ukraine

Palestine Open Thread 2025-091

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Ukraine Open Thread 2025-090

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The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-089

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Apr 21 - RIP Pope Francis
  Related:
  - Pope Francis Obits Omit Focus on Palestine - FAIR
  - Pope Francis Called for Peace in Gaza in His Final Public Address - Antiwar

• Apr 21 - Phase 1: Impose Tariffs - Phase 2: ? - Phase 3: Profit
• Apr 26 - Poisonous Tariff Uncertainty
  Related:
  - A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System - Hudson Bay Capital
  - Making sense of Scott Bessent's critique of the IMF and World Bank - Africa Watch
  - As Trump Administration Considers Retreat on Tariffs, Will It Resort to Usual US Fallback Option? - Naked Capitalism
  - Trump Wants World to Subsidise US Empire - Naked Capitalism

• Apr 23 - Setback For U.S. 'Ceasefire' Deal In Ukraine
  Related:
  - Exclusive-Documents expose differences over U.S. peace drive for Ukraine - Reuters
  - Zelensky and Trump hold ‘productive’ first meeting since Oval Office bust-up - Telegraph
  - Ukraine fails to reach deal on restructuring $2.6 billion debt, faces default - Kyiv Independent
  - Ukraine Encroaches on ‘Friendly’ Moldova - Consortiumnews

• Apr 27 - Virginia Giuffre 'Quiteted'
  Related:
  - After Virginia Giuffre’s reported "suicide", other Epstein survivors are stepping forward, making it clear to the world that they are not suicidal. - Shadow of Ezra

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-089

Virginia Giuffre 'Quiteted'

Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli agent tasked with blackmailing U.S. politicians and business people by providing them with under-age girls. Virginia Giuffre, then 17, was on of those victims.

Epstein was jailed and, on August 10 2019, found dead in his cell. I headlined:

Epstein Suicided

Unsurprisingly Jeffrey Epstein was found dead, presumably by suicide, as that is what 'officials' claim:

Jailed multimillionaire financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has died by suicide, according to two law enforcement sources. ...

Just yesterday a court released the first 2,000 pages of a civil case against Epstein's madame, Ghislaine Maxwell:

[Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre], who turned 36 on Friday, names a number of other men in politics, academia and business that she says she was directed to have sex with. In a 2017 interview with the Miami Herald, Giuffre said that Epstein wanted her to please various influential people then so that he could learn about their sexual peccadilloes and use them as leverage if he needed to.

While there’s no direct evidence contained in the court record substantiating her accounts with prominent men, Giuffre did provide testimony and evidence to corroborate her claims of exploitation at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell through photographs, plane logs and even a medical record from Presbyterian Hospital in New York where Giuffre was taken by Epstein after a particularly abusive sex episode.

I concluded the post with this:

Some of those influential people who Epstein, or the organization behind him, blackmailed, will be quite happy that he is gone. They will now try to bury the rest of the case. Giuffre and other witnesses better watch their backs.

Today we learn that Virginia Giuffre is dead (archived):

Cont. reading: Virginia Giuffre 'Quiteted'

Poisonous Tariff Uncertainty

Uncertainty (or volatility) is the live-blood of financial markets. If financial actors were certain about the development and strength of the underlying factors the markets would be predictable. There would be no need to hedge risks and no profits were to be made through speculation. Uncertainty is what keeps financial markets alive.

For those dealing with real products in the real economy uncertainty is a poison. When the prices of products become too volatile the risk of dealing with them and of investing in their production becomes too high. When volatility prevails real markets will falter.

This is where Trump's tariff mania hits.

As a recent NY Times piece highlights (archived):

Businesses are rushing to cancel factory orders or halt shipping containers before they leave China, unable to afford the tariff when the ships arrive in America. They are pausing capital investments and new hiring, and scaling back spending to only the bare necessities. Future products are being scrapped, because they are no longer financially viable.

The Federal Reserve Bank St. Louis produces hundreds of economic statistics. It includes several which are measuring uncertainty:

bigger

Cont. reading: Poisonous Tariff Uncertainty

Palestine Open Thread 2025-088

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine Open Thread 2025-087

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Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-086

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Setback For U.S. 'Ceasefire' Deal In Ukraine

Secretary of State Marko Rubio, presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, several foreign ministers from Europe and the Ukrainian President Zelenski were supposed to meet in London today.

The Trump administration had planned this to be a final meeting over a ceasefire in Ukraine. A U.S. proposal for the ceasefire were to be discussed and accepted.

But Zelenski bailed out and the proposed meeting fell apart. According to the Independent Zelenski had feared to be "ambushed":

Actor turned statesman Volodymyr Zelensky may have only ever played a soldier, but as a war time leader he knows an ambush when he sees one.

Having been trapped in the Oval Office and eviscerated by Donald Trump and JD Vance, he has avoided an enfilade from a crack team of American diplomats in the London kill zone by not turning up at all.

Tipped off that his intended target was not going to wander into his sights, the US team leader, secretary of state Marco Rubio, called off the operation altogether and stayed in Washington along with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to Vladimir Putin.

Keith Kellog, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, who was already in London, has been left to observe peering through the privet while foreign secretary David Lammy squires the Ukrainian foreign minister for much downgraded “talks”.

At least the British hosts were not saddled with what could have been an historic mess in which Zelensky was presented with a US-Russian ultimatum and then painted as a rejectionist war monger when he said “nemaye” (no).

Other media are vague about the reasons to downgrade the talks. There is generally no common line in the media reporting of the issue. Axios claims that Ukraine rejected to negotiate a longer term ceasefire and instead only offered a shorter term:

A U.S. official involved in the discussions said Rubio and Witkoff worked together "to develop a framework to get us closer to reaching an end to the war."

• However, the official said that over the last 24 hours there had been indications from the Ukrainians that they wanted to discuss a 30-day ceasefire during Wednesday's meetings in London rather than Trump's peace plan framework.
• "The decision was made for the secretary to not travel to London. Instead, the U.S. delegation will continue to engage in conversations with U.K. and Ukrainian counterparts," the official said.

The U.S. ceasefire plan includes several points which either the Ukrainians, the Europeans or the Russians were certain to reject.

The Telegraph seems to have the most complete list of its points:

Cont. reading: Setback For U.S. 'Ceasefire' Deal In Ukraine