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Zelenski Changes His Peace Plan
Zelenski's 'peace summit' in Switzerland had failed:
The reviews of Zelenski's latest show ain't positive:
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The summit served warmed up bullshit without any significant nutritional value. The most important points weren't even discussed:
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The war will continue until the complete destruction of the Ukrainian forces can no longer be ignored.
The last point may have come earlier than anticipated.
On June 27 Zelenski had changed tact (machine translation):
During a speech in Brussels, the president said that Ukraine wants to start negotiations on ending the war in the near future.
"Ukraine does not want to prolong the war, we do not want it to last for years. We need to put a settlement plan on the table within a few months, " he said.
Zelensky said that in the near future it is planned to develop a plan for the second world summit.
On June 28 he gave more details (machine translation):
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine will present its detailed peace plan "this year".
The President announced this during a press conference in Kyiv.
"It is very important for us to show an end-of-war plan that will be supported by the majority of the world. This is the diplomatic path that we are working on. Not everything depends on us, our production of technology, drones, and artillery is really increasing, because we need to be strong on the battlefield. Because Russia understands nothing but force. These are two parallel processes: be strong and develop a detailed, clear plan, and it will be ready this year, " Zelensky said.
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Note that the Ukrainian peace plan has long been presented by Zelensky. It implies the withdrawal of Russian troops to the borders. However, many countries of the world (especially representatives of the "global South") consider it unrealistic.
In other words, a new plan will probably be prepared.
Earlier Russia's President Putin had announced his conditions for a permanent peace agreement. How many of them will Zelenski accept within his new 'peace plan'?
@Posted by: Honzo | Jun 29 2024 16:59 utc | 7
The most telling thing on the battlefield is the ease with which the Russians have broken the defence lines in front of Toretsk and are already in the local suburbs, Druzhba, Pivnichne and now Pivdenne and Zalizne. They are all of 2km from the centre of Toretsk. In addition, the Russians broke through the southern defence line of Niu York and have started moving toward the centre. This is a defensive stronghold that has held ever since the Russian intervention started, and where the emplacements have been reinforced for 10 years. The last of the major strongholds in the Donetsk-Horlivka area.
The Ukrainian daily losses have doubled (from 1,000 to 2,000 using the Russian military numbers) and the artillery losses have sky-rocketed. With these levels of losses (60,000+ a month) plus the movement of 10,000s of troops from the front lines to plug the holes north of Kharkov and the Ukrainian people’s mass resistance to the conscription press gangs, the Ukrainian army simply does not have enough men and equipment to hold the front line and it is starting to crumble at a slowly accelerating rate. The Russians are in no hurry, preferring to keep their casualties low and the Ukrainian losses as high as possible (through artillery, drone, helicopter, and bombing).
This reality is being reflected in Zelensky’s new much more realistic demeanour and words, together with the Western media which is becoming darker and darker. Here is a piece from the BBC ‘There was no preparation’: One marine’s story of defending Kharkiv. Some notable quotes:
“But there is a problem, a lot of men went abroad [to escape the draft]. No-one wants to come back, no-one wants to fight, and no-one wants to die.”
The BBC still have to lie in saying that Russian losses are the same as the Ukrainian, which of course is utter bullshit.
Moscow is currently on top in this industrialised conflict, with Kyiv struggling to counter its manpower, weaponry, and tactics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky concedes time is running out for a diplomatic solution which favours Ukraine, which is why he recently held a peace summit in Switzerland.
Or this from the Guardian ‘I am not made for war’: the men fleeing Ukraine to evade conscription
The autumn cannot arrive soon enough for Dmytro, when his handlers have promised to get him out of Ukraine. For the past month, the 31-year-old photographer from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has been holed up in his flat, rarely stepping outside, to avoid being conscripted into the army. “I want to leave the country. My mind can’t take being trapped here any more,” Dmytro said … “I am not made for war. I can’t kill people, even if they are Russians. I won’t last long on the front … I want to build a family and see the world. I am not ready to die,” he said. Dmytro was unsure if he could trust the handlers, who had recently raised their prices to meet the growing demand, but said he saw no other options. More than two years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s armed forces are desperately short of soldiers.
Even before the latest mobilisation drive, more than 20,000 men are believed to have fled the country to avoid service, some of them swimming and drowning in attempting to cross Ukraine’s border into Romania.
There are no exact figures for how many men are hiding or planning to leave, but in big cities Telegram channels with thousands of members have sprung up where users report sightings of state representatives to help others avoid them. Interviews with five men who were hiding at home to avoid conscription revealed a variety of reasons for doing it. Many voiced their dread of perishing in a battle marked by gruesome trench fighting and a brutal death rate. Others mentioned their resistance to conscription because of what they perceived as inadequate training before being sent to the frontlines. Some chose to avoid mobilisation on complex family grounds.
As like the BBC, the Guardian attempts to gloss over the true gravity of the situation (and of course does not report the immensity of the Ukrainian losses), but the allowance of this type of reporting points to a process of getting the Western public ready for (i) Ukrainian defeat/large areas given up through negotiation or (ii) the entry of Western troops to “rescue” Ukraine from the “bad” Russians. Given the state of public opinion in Europe and the US doing (ii) will be nearly impossible without a new level of authoritarian political control, so we will probably end up with (i). It still seems to me that the Western elites are not fully cognizant of how fast things could collapse in Ukraine, a reality that Zelensky seems to be waking up to.
Posted by: Roger | Jun 29 2024 17:38 utc | 22
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