News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Nov 17 – Ukraine Is Buying Fighter Jets With Money It Does Not Have?
• Nov 19 – Ukraine SitRep – Power Play In Kiev And Chaos At The Front
  Related:
  – Zelensky has never been more vulnerable. Trump just upped the pressure (archived) – Washington Post
  – The U.S. Tightens the Vise on an Already Besieged Zelensky (archived) – NY Times
  – Move Over, Netflix: Ukraine’s Corruption Investigators Bring the Drama (archived) – NY Times
  – Iskander: An Improved Russian Missile Tests Ukraine’s Air Defence – RUSI
  – Blackout – Evaluating Ukraine’s energy crisis – Amerikanets

• Nov 18 – The Defeat Of The West And Europe’s Bleak Future
  Related:
  – When grades stop meaning anything – Argument
  – Sheriff David Hathaway : Breaks Silence on Government-Sanctioned Killings (vid) – Judging Freedom
  – DHS Scrubs Record of FBI Financing of Right-Wing Terror Group – Hidden Histories

• Nov 20 – High Noon In Kiev
• Nov 21 – Trump’s 28-Point Ukraine Plan
• Nov 22 – Kellogg Fired Over Leaking 28-Point Plan – Proposal Designed To Trap Putin
  Related:
  – US vice president defends Ukraine-Russia peace framework, says critics ‘living in a fantasy land’ – Anadolu
  – Trump says Ukraine deal is not ‘final offer’ as officials gather for Geneva summit – Guardian
  – Zelensky may never have faced a more agonizing choice (archived) – Washington Post
  – Zelensky running out of time with Trump peace plan on the table – Asia Times
  – A DMZ for Ukraine – Atlantic

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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-269

It seems that Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, got fired over leaking news of the 28-point ‘peace plan’. Let’s follow the traces.

On Tuesday the 18th November someone ‘leaked’ to Axios reporter Barak Ravid who then wrote the first story of Trump’s new plan for Ukraine.

Scoop: U.S. secretly drafting new plan to end Ukraine war

The plan’s 28 points fall into four general buckets, sources tell Axios: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe, and future U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine.
…
Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is leading the drafting of the plan and has discussed it extensively with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a U.S. official said.

Shortly thereafter Steve Witkoff made a mistake on Twitter when he sent a response meant for a private direct message to the public side of his account. He soon deleted it but someone had already taken a screenshot.

biggerOn Thursday, the 20th of November, the New York Post mentioned it:

Cont. reading: Kellogg Fired Over Leaking 28-Point Plan – Proposal Designed To Trap Putin

There seem to be several version or translation of Trump’s new ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine.

I believe that the one below, originally published (archived) by the Financial Times, is the most accurate version.

The plan as it is is dead in the water, stillborn or however you may want to characterize this collection of ill-defined, non-binding and ridiculous clauses. No one will ever accept it.

But it includes a few U.S. concessions to Russia that will be taken and preserved for later negotiations.

Cont. reading: Trump’s 28-Point Ukraine Plan

The ‘new’ Trump plan to end the war in Ukraine, mentioned here yesterday, is unlikely to come to fruition.

Russia has said that it does not have any official knowledge of the plan or its content. But there are several reasons for it to reject it.

The Telegraph claims that the plan does not acknowledge that the Donbas and Luhansk are part of Russia but only allows for Russia to ‘lease’ the territory:

The Trump administration deal would see Kyiv cede control of the eastern Donbas region, but maintain legal ownership. Russia would pay an undisclosed rental fee for de facto control of the region, officials familiar with the deal told The Telegraph.

There is also the role of NATO which the Trump administration’s plan does not mention:

As European and U.S. officials alike sought clarity, they said many aspects of the plan remained in flux, including the role of NATO and any Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia.
…
One aspect U.S. officials are still pondering is whether and how to mention NATO, the person said. The discussion of NATO has not been previously reported.

Ukraine has sought NATO membership as a security guarantee against a future Russian invasion. While some European countries support that, the U.S. has rejected it and Moscow has long demanded Kyiv not join the defensive alliance, viewing that as a threat. The European allies also worry about granting Russia territorial concessions, which they see as rewarding Moscow’s aggression and setting a concerning precedent.

Those European allies who reject the peace plan and are concerned about precedent should look up ‘Kosovo’ and how that came into being.

The prospect of NATO membership of Ukraine was one of the main reasons for starting the war. Russia will not allow NATO, or any other military ‘security guarantee’ for Ukraine, along its western borders. Ukraine’s explicit rejection of entering NATO will have to be part of any acceptable peace agreement.

Ukraine’s acting President is not willing to agree to the plan. He now sees the recent revealing of the corruption scandal involving his friend Mindich as part of an operation to press him to fire his chief of office Andrei Yermak and to accept Trump’s peace plan. He will argue that Russia is pulling the strings on each of these issues:

Cont. reading: High Noon In Kiev

The situation in Ukraine is becoming even more complicate.

The war on the frontline is going bad for Ukraine as is the war on infrastructure deep behind the contact line.

A corruption scandal is used to neuter President Zelenski. New power structures are set to evolve to further the execution of the war. President Trump is attempting to impose another peace effort while Europe finds that it lacks the money to finance Ukraine and the war.

There are at least seven cities which are falling or are destined to fall within the next few month.

biggerKupyansk is largely under Russian control. During the last days Russian forces took some 25% of Siversk. Pokrovsk is to 95% in Russian hands. Fighting in its encircled sister city Mirnograd is slowly coming to an end. The road between Pokrovske and Guliaipole has been taken. The later city is thus cut off from its main supply line and will soon be encircled.

The Ukrainian command had thrown in all its reserves to prevent the taking of Prokovsk and Kupiyansk. It was to no avail.

All regular Ukrainian brigades lack infantry. The constant Russian drone attacks have also taken a large toll on the logistic elements of those units.

General Syrski, the Ukrainian commander in chief, had set his bet on newly developed assault units to allow for offensive action while neglecting the general brigades which have to hold the lines. The weakened lines broke down when the Russian infiltrate them. Assault units were sent in and wasted on counterattacks that were supposed to stop further Russian breakthroughs but failed to have significant effects.

Defense fortifications and buildings can no longer protect the soldiers. Each day Russia is using 200 or more glide bombs to demolish them. Drones and artillery strikes follow. Russian infantry sneaks in to mop up remaining resistance.

It is a fairly slow process but it works for the Russians and is causing them a minimum of casualties.

The war on infrastructure far behind the line of contact is also preceding at a high pace. Ukraine had rejected the ceasefire on infrastructure previously agreed to by President Trump and President Putin. It has continued attacks on Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities with drones and missiles. They have so far done too little damage to slow down the Russian economy.

Russia has responded to those strikes by launching thousands of drones and missile against Ukrainian electricity and heating facilities causing up to 18 hours of blackout per day even in large Ukrainian cities. Another Russian target are railway depots where locomotives are maintained. Hundreds of them have been destroyed in such strikes.

The lack of electricity and mass transport have all but stopped large scale production of industrial goods. The economy suffers. Tax income decreases.

Cont. reading: Ukraine SitRep – Power Play In Kiev And Chaos At The Front

No post today, sorry, but two good talks to listen to:

• Emmanuel Todd: Defeat of the West – Collapse of Power & Values (vid) – Glenn Diesen

• John Mearsheimer addresses the European Parliament on the topic of “Europe’s Bleak Future” (vid) – American Conservative

Over the next two years Ukraine plans to spend some €140 billion ($162b) it does not have to continue its war with Russia. There is serious doubt that the European Union, which has already shuffled €180 billion ($216b) to Ukraine, will be able to pay even a fraction of that.

Despite Ukraine’s lack of money it acting president Vladimir Zelenski is announcing deals to procure expensive military aircraft at an unprecedented scale.

In late October he went to Sweden to buy JAS 39 Gripen-E multi-role fighter jets build by Saab:

Ukraine could get 150 advanced Swedish fighter jets under just-signed deal – CNN, Oct 23 2025

New NATO member Sweden has said it is willing to sell Ukraine up to 150 of its most advanced fighter jets, the first offer from a member of the alliance to supply significant numbers of jets to Kyiv, which is seeking to upgrade its small and ageing air force.

The deal signed on Wednesday by Volodymyr Zelensky and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is a letter of understanding, meaning exact terms, costs and delivery dates for 100 to 150 Saab Gripen-E jets are yet to be determined.

But both leaders said it has the potential to be a game changer, not only for Ukraine – which desperately needs more air combat capabilities in its fight against Russia – but for NATO and European security overall.

The planes ain’t cheap:
Cont. reading: Ukraine Is Buying Fighter Jets With Money It Does Not Have?

Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Nov 10 – Ukraine – Zelenski Friend Accused In Energy Sector Corruption Case
  Related:
  – Bags of cash and a gold toilet: the corruption crisis engulfing Zelenskyy’s government (archived) – Financial Times
  – Russia Tried to Cut Ukraine’s Lights. Now It’s Aiming for the Heat. (archived) – NY Times
  – Impressions from the field research trip to Ukraine – October 2025 – Rochan Consulting
  – Russia to produce 120,000 glide bombs and 70,000 drones this year – Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence – Ukrainska Pravda

• Nov 11 – How To Start War With Russia – A British Think Tank Has Ideas
  Related:
  – Lavrov: Russia ready to offer non-aggression guarantee to NATO, EU – Yahoo
  – The new Russian arsenal that can deter wars – Bhadrakumar / New Indian Express
  – Responses by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, to questions from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which the newspaper refused to publish in full without cuts or censorship, Moscow, November 13, 2025 – Mid.ru

• Nov 13 – Justice Department Office Which Justified Torture Now Argues For Killing
  Related:
  – Secret U.S. Memo Authorizing Drug-Boat Strikes Cites Chemical Weapon Threat (archived) – WSJ
  – Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels (archived) – NY Times
  – Trump’s Killings at Sea Escalate the US’s Forever Drug War – Jacobin
  – Family of Fisherman Killed in U.S. Military Strike Says It Wants Justice (archived) – NY Times
  – Trump weighs Venezuela strikes as U.S. forces prepare for attack order (archived) – NY Times

• Nov 14 – Thoughts On The Shutdown
  Related:
  – Letter: By capitulating on the shutdown, Democrats showed their true colors – Salt Lake Tribune
  – ‘Epstein Hoax’ Got Legs? – Meaning in History
  – Jeffrey Epstein Was a Warlord. We Have to Talk About It. – Nation
  – A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers – Wired
  – Is This When Trump Became a Lame Duck? – American Conservative
  – Trump Is Falling Into the Same Trap That Ensnared Biden – Bulwark
  Republicans learned nothing from how badly Dems bungled inflation.
  – Trump, like Biden before him, finds there’s no quick fix on inflation – AP

—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-266

What was the point of the government shutdown?

Caveat – I have not followed the issue in depth. My understanding is that the Democrats blocked the funding of the government because they wanted additional money for one of their healthcare programs.

Trump used the time of the shutdown to further his politics.

Six weeks later, just as the public was turning against the Republicans, the Democrats caved in:

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end Wednesday after the House approved the Senate-passed funding package, and President Trump signed the bill into law.

The legislation extends funding for most agencies until Jan. 30 and includes three bills that fund other parts of the government through September 2026.

The Senate approved the legislation on Monday, when seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats joined Republicans to end the standoff in the upper chamber. Six House Democrats crossed the aisle and voted to reopen the government.

The only thing that the Democrats have ‘won’ was a promise to put the additional healthcare money to a separate vote:

Eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to reach a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown, dashing the party’s effort to win an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits in return for their vote to reopen the government. ..

As part of the deal, Democrats secured a promise to hold a vote next month on the tax credits, which help millions of Americans pay for health insurance premiums for plans purchased on state exchanges.

The Republicans will of course reject that measure.

By the way: Why were the tax credits, part of Obama’s health care reforms, time limited in the first place?

To hide their utter defeat the Democrats released a slew of Epstein emails with the hope to plant new sensational rumors about Trump.  I have found nothing remarkable in that stack.

If this looks like a second Russiagate its because it is similar bullshit.

Instead of being a real opposition to Trump’s wars and miserable programs the Democrats’ are pushing performative nonsense.

Do they expect to get votes for that?

In 2003 the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council (OLC) issued a memo which declared the use of torture in ‘authorized military interrogations’ as legal when done under the ‘president’s constitutional authority to direct a war’.

The memo was widely condemned. The Obama administration withdrew it but refrained from prosecuting the torturers which had used it as cover.

The Trump administration now issued a comparable OLC memo to justify its wanton killing of alleged drug smugglers at sea.

Starting in September the Trump administration announced 19 strikes on boats in the Caribbean which have killed at least 76 seafarers. Most of them were random poor people:

One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.

The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs.

The argument of the new OLC memo is even more frivolous (archived) than the torturous reasoning of the former one:

The opinion, which runs nearly 50 pages, also argues that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” waged under the president’s Article II authorities, a core element to the analysis that the strikes are permissible under domestic law.

The armed-conflict argument, which was also made in a notice to Congress from the administration last month, is fleshed out in more detail by the OLC. The opinion also states that drug cartels are selling drugs to finance a campaign of violence and extortion, according to four people.

That assertion, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that traffickers use violence to protect their drug business, appears to be part of the effort to shoehorn the fight against cartels into a law-of-war framework, analysts said.

The true purpose of drug cartels is obviously to make money. There is no evidence that any drug cartel ever has been or is in business because it wanted to create violence.

Cont. reading: Justice Department Office Which Justified Torture Now Argues For Killing

Once a while the writers at RUSI, the British Ministry of Defense think tank, produce some valuable research. Mostly though they are out to push war mongering nonsense. A recent piece in Foreign Affairs by Jack Waitling is of the later kind.

Ukraine’s Hardest Winter – Foreign Affairs, Nov 11 2025
With the Donbas in Peril, Europe Must Pressure Russia Now

I’ll leave the dozens of outright lies, false assertions and delusions therein for others to mock.

Waitling’s main thesis is that more (economic) pressure on Russia will somehow press it towards a ceasefire without concessions from the Ukrainian side. But his suggestions on how to do that are all designed to drag Europe into an even more direct battle with Russia.

To support the Ukrainian campaign against Russia’s oil industry the Europeans should close the Strait of Denmark:

For Ukraine’s international partners, the question is whether they are prepared to match Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s oil infrastructure with comparable real rather than performative pressure on Russia’s economy. Above all, this means targeting Russia’s shadow fleet: the hundreds of decrepit tankers, operating under flags of convenience, often without insurance or trained crew, to move its oil to India and China. This will require denying the 80 percent of Russian seaborne oil exports that pass through the Strait of Denmark and threatening secondary sanctions against the ports where shadow fleet vessels unload.
…
Some European governments—including Denmark—have cited the 1857 Treaty of Copenhagen, an international agreement that established tariff-free transit of commercial shipping through Danish waters, as a legal barrier to action. But this is an excuse rather than a real obstacle. The countries that have a Baltic coastline today, excluding Russia, could agree to a new treaty requiring ships to meet certain standards of insurance and certification to be allowed to navigate the Baltic—for example, on grounds of ecological protection. Since the aging vessels of the shadow fleet do not meet these requirements, such a treaty would deny them entry into the straits. This would not impinge on the principle of tariff-free transit for commercial shipping through Danish waters.

Nice idea. But would enforce such nonsense and how?

Cont. reading: How To Start War With Russia – A British Think Tank Has Ideas

There has been a severe power struggle going on in Ukraine which the circle around acting president Vladimir Zelenski fighting against the former president Petro Poroshenko and his clique.

Today the power struggle went into a new round with fresh corruption accusation raise against intimate allies of Zelenski.

Zelenski has control over the ruthless Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The group around Poroshenko is allied with ‘grant structures’ previously close to the US Democratic Party.

‘Grant structures’ are the ‘civil society’ and the ‘anti-corruption’ parallel government organizations in Ukraine which were, until recently, financed by U.S. funds and controlled by Democrats. After Trump had blocked the funding for those groups Poroshenko jumped in with financing and the European Union took over.

The fight has been ongoing since 2022 when the war in Ukraine started for real. During the mid of this year the fight went public:

An intense information operation has been launched to remove Ukraine’s (former) President Vladimir Zelenski from office. Behind it are a cabal of Ukrainian opposition figures in coordination which western media and parts of the Trump administration.

The current campaign follows a earlier one which was directed against Zelenski’s main advisor and head of the office of the president Andrei Yermak.

Several pieces in major western outlets were launched against Zelenski and his clan. They were the preparatory fire for a wider attack which would accuse people around Zelenski, and finally himself, of large scale corruption schemes.

Zelenski tried to preempt the attack. On July 22 he put the whole anti-corruption vertical, including the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, under his control. That move caused open protest in Kiev by various non-government organization. The EU pushed back and Zelenski had to concede defeat. The Anti-Corruption vertical was released from supervision:

Cont. reading: Ukraine – Zelenski Friend Accused In Energy Sector Corruption Case