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The Real Reason Why Russia Invaded Ukraine – by English Outsider
by English Outsider
Ma Laoshi – grateful to you for finding that Scott Ritter piece.
Terror and Mental War
First things first. Ritter’s no fool and, as you’d expect, identifies the trigger that set off the SMO:
“… a rejuvenated Ukrainian military, specifically trained and equipped by NATO, positioned itself to resolve the Donbas question through military force. This in turn triggered the Russian intervention in the form of the Special Military Operation.”
It’s not trivial that Ritter does that. Any discussion of this war is bedeviled by the fact that most of those opposed to Western policy in Ukraine get the reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine wrong. They think the SMO resulted from a decision in the Kremlin to finally put a stop to NATO encroachment, not, primarily, from a decision to pre-empt a Kiev incursion into the Donbass.
That may seem a simple point but you’ve no idea how disabling this error is. The influential opponents of the war with Russia in the US, Germany, UK, have a gaping hole at the very centre of their argument. We see this, as one example, with Diesen. One of the finest and most level-headed opponents of the war that we have in Europe – but all over the place when it comes to explaining why the Russians are fighting us!
Professor Diesen joins Professors Roberts and Mearsheimer and a host of other authoritative sources who get that Russian invasion of Ukraine wrong. Seriously wrong, as most of the big names do. According to Diesen, that Russian invasion was a “war of aggression with unpredictable consequences”, an “egregious violation of state sovereignty”. The fact that the last thing Putin wanted to do was send his tanks across the border, went to considerable lengths to avoid doing that, and in the end was given no option but to act fast to prevent the Kiev forces running amok in the Donbass, has passed unnoticed by many of the big names and I suspect always will.
That’s a hole a mile wide, therefore, dead in the centre of the argument against current Western policy in the Ukraine. “The Russians were in the wrong starting the SMO but are in the right at the same time because NATO.” No wonder the authoritative dissident figures in the West get so little traction with the general public. On the one hand they state that the Russians were 100% in the wrong starting a “war of aggression”. On the other they argue that the Russian cause is just. That’s a real mess of an argument that you might expect to get away with with an audience already sympathetically inclined. Joe Public can smell a rat a mile off and is having none of it.
Ritter’s got more sense. He doesn’t twist himself into knots arguing that black is white. He’s a direct and forceful man and if he thought that the Russians were in the wrong starting their SMO he’d be saying so load and clear, not trying to pretend they were in the wrong and at the same time in the right. But he knows the reason for the SMO – one that so many of the others fail to grasp – and is therefore able to put forward a coherent argument condemning Western policy in the Ukraine. …
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b here:
The above is a very important point. Russia did not want to invade Ukraine. It did its best to prevent an escalation of the smoldering conflict in the Donbas. But by mid February 2022 the Ukrainian troops, prepped and fired up by NATO, were only days and hours away from invading the Donbas republics.
At that time this blog pointed to the rapidly increasing artillery fire on the ‘rebel’ republics in the Donbas. The observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) at the zero-line reported way more Ukrainian artillery impacts on the Donbas rebels than vice versa. Anyone with a tiny bit of military training could predict the next step that would come after such an artillery preparation – a full fledged armor attack on the Donetsk and other rebel held areas.
The Russian intervention was launched to prevent that.
The Ukraine Conflict End State? – by English Outsider
by English Outsider
Russia will just overwhelm Ukraine and then install a puppet government to ensure it remains as a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe/NATO. This could go on for some more years, or maybe Russia will speed things up, surprise everyone, and make it happen sooner.
Posted by: aelfwed | May 28 2026 0:24 utc | 52
Yes, the end state of remnant Ukraine will be along those lines, though precisely how it’ll be done is unclear and is still maybe unclear to the Russians themselves. Friendly state (unlikely), neutral state, puppet state or occupied territory. The last decidedly the worst case for the Russians and they’ll avoid it if they can. Also, of course, the worst case for remnant Ukraine.
The position has changed, however, since the early Istanbul negotiations. Paramount now is the Russian need to prevent remnant Ukraine being used by the West for attacks into Russia. These have increased greatly in scale and intensity over the last few years and there is no indication that these attacks will cease unless remnant Ukraine is neutralised in one of the ways set out above.
This is not some rarefied “geostrategic theory” for the analysts to mull over. It is an urgent practical necessity for the Putin administration. How long would any American administration last if the American President had to say to his voters “We’re getting sabotage and assassination missions run in against us from Mexico. Drones and missiles are still coming over. There’s not a lot we can do to close these attacks down entirely so we’re going to have to put up with them for the indefinite future.” Impossibly to imagine an American President saying that and similarly impossible for any Russian President. So the Russians do have to aim for an end state to this conflict that precludes, permanently and entirely, any such threat on their Western border emanating from remnant Ukraine.
This imperative takes precedence over any other Russian goals. Maybe they’ll get their “new European Security Architecture”, maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll come to some accommodation with the US, maybe they won’t. But if they don’t solve the problem posed to them by the Western use of remnant Ukraine as a convenient base for mounting attacks into Russia, their entire Special Military Operation will have gone for nothing. They’ll be ending up precisely where they started from in February 2022. They will have been defeated.
Since the Russians can’t be forced to accept what would be to them an entirely unsatisfactory outcome, they won’t. They can’t be forced by economic or diplomatic means, certainly not by military means, to accept defeat. So the end state for remnant Ukraine will inevitably be as set out. Friendly state, neutral state, puppet state or Russian-occupied. Any one of those results will preclude the hostile use of remnant Ukraine by the West and one of those results will be what we see at the end of this war.
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Cont. reading: The Ukraine Conflict End State? – by English Outsider
Iran Open Thread 2026-111
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-110
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine or Iran) Thread 2026-109
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …
War On Iran: – There Isn’t Going To Be Another Ceasefire Deal
AlArabia has published what it claims is the:
Final draft of [the] preliminary US-Iran memorandum of understanding.
I am pretty sure it is not a draft Iran has seen or even in parts committed to.
It is a U.S. wishlist with lots of points that have no tangible outcome, process or date attached to them. It points to undefined “agreed upon arrangements” and “interim understandings”. Without those being written down and followed by the letter the whole thing is useless.
Excerpts:
- Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international navigation, guaranteeing the free passage of commercial vessels and oil tankers without additional transit fees, with the Iranian side committing to take the necessary technical and security measures to ensure the safety of navigation, including the removal of mines and maritime obstacles according to agreed-upon arrangements
- Enabling the Islamic Republic of Iran to resume the sale and export of oil within the framework of the interim understandings agreed upon by the two parties
- …
- Consideration will be given to suspending or easing some sanctions related to the Iranian oil sector in phases, in accordance with the implementation of mutual understandings and commitments
- The necessity of ending military operations and de-escalation on all regional fronts, including the Lebanese arena, will be emphasized, along with working towards establishing a comprehensive regional de-escalation
If that is the real state of the negotiations the whole thing will go nowhere.
Being in week twelve of his two week war on Iran there is no way left for Trump to escape the damage he has caused to the global economy and his own standing.
The best way out for him is for Congress to vote against the continuation of the war. It would give Trump the necessary excuse to recall the troops from the Middle East and to draw the attention elsewhere.
War On Iran: – Netanyahoo Blocked Imminent Deal
The short version of what happened over the weekend with regards to a deal with Iran:
Trump: “WE HAVE A DEAL”
Netanyahu: “Nope”
Trump: “Deal’s off”
The longer variant:
Trump’s attempt over Friday and Saturday to come to some deal with Iran has failed.
A few hours after Trump had announced a preliminary resolution of the conflict, his boss, one Benjamin Netanyahoo, called and inserted clauses designed to prevent a deal:
President Trump and I agreed that any final agreement with Iran must eliminate the nuclear danger. That means dismantling Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites and removing its enriched nuclear material from its territory.
President Trump also reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against threats on every front, including Lebanon.
Iran’s supreme leader had rejected to move any enriched Uranian from Iran’s territory. Enrichment to Iran is a non negotiable right. The inclusion of a real ceasefire in Lebanon is also a prime condition for Iran to conclude any deal.
After the call Trump immediately changed course. The deal he had been eager to conclude hours earlier was suddenly no longer urgent.
Trump soon diverted attention by resorting to a new, mafia-like, scheme.
He threatened to (again) bomb Iran. Iran, he claims, would then retaliate against Arab U.S. proxies in the Gulf. To prevent that, Trump says, those proxy states should immediately sign a peace deal with Israel:
“Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!
During my discussions on Saturday with President Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, of The United Arab Emirates, Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and Minister Ali al-Thawadi, of Qatar, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, of Pakistan, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of Türkiye, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, of Bahrain, I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords.
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If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention.
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Therefore, I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords …
Of course none of those countries even replied to that nonsense.
A deal with Iran is (again) off the table. Meanwhile the severe damage of the conflict to the global and U.S. economy is accumulating by the day.
Time is not on Trump’s side. He urgently needs a deal. But to get there he needs to get Netanyahoo off his back. How to do that is the really difficult question.
Iran Open Thread 2026-108
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-107
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-106
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-106
War On Iran: – Pushing The Can Down The Road (Again)?
There is news, or maybe just learned rumors, about a prolongation of the ceasefire between USrael and Iran.
US and Iran close to extend ceasefire by 60 days, reports Financial Times – Gulf Today
The United States and Iran are close to agreeing on a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war, two regional officials and a diplomat said on Saturday.
Iran signaled “narrowing differences” in negotiations with the US after Pakistan’s army chief held more talks in Tehran, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists in India that “there’s been some progress made” and “there may be news later today.”
The officials and diplomat expressed hope that a final decision on the Pakistan-prepared draft could come within 48 hours as both sides review it.
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Iran state TV quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei as describing the draft as a “framework agreement” and adding: “We want this to include the main issues required for ending the imposed war and other issues of essential importance to us. Then, over a reasonable time span, between 30 to 60 days, details are discussed and ultimately a final agreement is reached.”
Conditions of a preliminary deal were published yesterday by former CNN journo Alex Marquart:
In the agreement, which would be signed in Islamabad, the terms the US has offered Iran to include:
- Immediate end to military operations including Lebanon and no more threats of force against each other.
- The MOU leads to negotiations on a “final deal” to officially end the war. Axios reported earlier that would be 30 days of talks, I heard it’s now longer and could be extended.
- Discussions of nuclear enrichment, removal of enriched material discussed later in the final deal. Iran commits in the MOU to never develop a nuclear weapon.
- A large economic reconstruction plan for Iran, to be developed by the US and its allies in the region. How it works exactly is part of the final deal.
- The US will unfreeze Iranian funds as talks progress.
- All US and UN sanctions – including secondary – to be lifted after a final deal which will lay out a schedule.
- Before a final deal and the lifting of sanctions, the US will issue waivers for Iranian oil exports, banking and other products/areas.
- US removes naval blockade and starts to redeploy forces after MOU is agreed to. Pre-war maritime traffic restored within 30 days. US forces removed from near Iran within a month of a final deal.
- The UN Security Council will eventually bless a final deal.
All of that seems too vague to me to ever come to a real agreement.
The most crucial points, some of which are extremely difficult to agree on, are all pushed down the road. There are way too few detailed commitments for either side:
Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Pushing The Can Down The Road (Again)?
Tulsi Gabbard Fired / Resigned
Hmm …
Is this an additional sign that a new round of USraeli strikes on Iran are imminent?
Gabbard resigns as Trump’s top US intelligence official – Reuters
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday she is resigning from her job as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, saying her husband had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and that she was stepping away from her role to help him.
Gabbard advised Trump of her intention to step down during an Oval Office meeting on Friday, Fox News Digital reported earlier. The resignation is effective June 30, it said.
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A source familiar with the matter said that Gabbard had been forced out by the White House.
Iran Open Thread 2026-105
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-104
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine or Iran) Thread 2026-103
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …
Axios Announces Date For New Attack On Iran
June 10 2025
Trump told Netanyahu he still wants to defuse Iran crisis with talks, not bombs – Barak Ravid / Axios
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President Trump stressed after a three-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that he wants to keep pursuing a deal with Iran rather than moving to military action at this time.
June 13 2025
In Twist, U.S. Diplomacy Served as Cover for Israeli Surprise Attack (archived) – WSJ
U.S. negotiations with Iran aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program were widely seen as an important way to preserve regional peace. They ended up being the perfect cover for a surprise Israeli attack.
—February 11 2026
Trump to Netanyahu: U.S. prefers deal with Iran to war, for now – Barak Ravid / Axios
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President Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their Monday phone call that he believes there’s a chance of reaching a nuclear deal with Iran and he therefore opposes military action at this time, an Israeli official and a U.S. official tell Axios.
February 28 2026
Yet another mid-talks attack suggests Trump was never serious about peace – Guardian
The attack mounted jointly by Israel and the US on Iran had been planned for months, but the timing, in the midst of negotiations between Iran and the US, will again raise questions about whether Washington was ever serious about striking a deal with Tehran.
—May 20 2026
New Iran peace proposal triggers tense Trump-Netanyahu call – Barak Ravid / Axios
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Trump continues to say he thinks a deal can be reached but that he’s ready to resume the war if it isn’t.
May 22-26 2026
Planning trades? Here’s the Memorial Day stock market blackout – Palm Beach Post
U.S. bond market will close early on Friday
The New York Stock Exchange will be closed on Monday, May 25, and will reopen for trading at normal hours, 9:30 a.m. ET to 4 p.m., on Tuesday, May 26.
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The U.S. bond market will close early, at 2 p.m. EDT, on Friday, May 22, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, and remain closed on Monday. The bond market will reopen at normal hours on Tuesday.
h/t Hamidreza Azizi
War On Iran: – Was This Really The Crazy Plan For Regime Change In Iran?
Was an USsraeli agent positioned and expected to take over Iran?
That question is coming up when reading a new New York Times story that is making the rounds.
Early War Goal Was to Install Hard Line Former President as Iran’s Leader (archived) – NY Times, May 20 2026
An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.
The gist of the story:
It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.
But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.
There are many questions which let one doubt the veracity of the story.
Ahmadinejad, who has been president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, is a bygone politician. He has no institutional following and is openly despised by many people in Iran. There is no chance that he could again be holding a leading position in Iran. Neither the state institutions nor the law would allow that.
Even if that has been a plan why would the Trump administration leak it now? Why would Amadinejad, an USraeli asset if the story is right, be outed as a traitor?
Why was his house bombed? Ahmadinejad was under house arrest and had to be freed by bombing him?
But the NY Times also mentions that he has traveled a lot:
Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Was This Really The Crazy Plan For Regime Change In Iran?
U.S. And China Dismiss British Disinformation
Next to all the AI slop appearing every minute there are still the classic disinformation items channeled through the main stream press.
Today’s Financial Times presented this ‘scoop’:
Xi Jinping told Donald Trump that Putin might ‘regret’ invasion of Ukraine (archived)
Xi Jinping told Donald Trump during their talks last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin might end up regretting his invasion of Ukraine.
According to several people familiar with the US assessment of last week’s summit in Beijing, the Chinese president made the comments during wide-ranging talks that touched on Ukraine …
My first thought when reading those lines was ‘nonsense’. Why would Xi make a negative remark about the leader of China’s most important ally to the leader of its most ferocious enemy?
The first incongruity which catches the eye is the difference between the headline – “Putin might ‘regret’” – and the actual text – “Putin might end up regretting”. Those are quite different statements. The first one asserting a possible present state while the second describing a potential future one.
Then comes the sourcing. Someone in the U.S. wrote an assessment on last week’s Trump-Xi summit. Would an assessment include a quote on something that was, if at all, a side item in the meeting?
Some people claim to be ‘familiar’ with the assessment. What does that mean? They did read its executive summery? And why are several of those people talking to the Financial Times?
The claim does not make sense. The sourcing is extremely weak. Moreover the ‘leak’ is obviously timed to disturb today’s arrival of President Putin of Russia in China for his meeting with President Xi.
To sow distrust between ‘hostile’ allies through fake stories is a well known tool of a U.S. divide and conquer strategy.
China by the way vehemently denied the claim:
Cont. reading: U.S. And China Dismiss British Disinformation
War On Iran: – Trump’s Stock Investments May Hold Him Back
At Naked Capitalism Yves Smith has held for a while that only ‘the markets’ can prevent U.S. President Donald Trump from further attacks on Iran.
‘The markets’ here are for one the bond market where any slump would mean lower treasuries, higher interest rates and problems for the U.S. to finance its debt. It is here where inflation hits Trump the most. Any interest increase is a political burden for Trump who has argued for the Federal Reserve to lower its benchmark interest rate.
But ‘the markets’ are also the stock market where Trump is privately engaged. A recent filing to the US Office of Government Ethics revealed that more than 3,600(!) transactions were made between January and the end of March on Trump’s personal account, which is (allegedly) handled by his sons through a brokerage:
The cumulative value of the trades ranged from at least $220 million (€188mn) to as much as $750 million (€641mn) as federal ethics disclosures only require broad valuation bands rather than precise figures.
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Individual purchases of Nvidia, Microsoft, Broadcom, Amazon, Apple and others ranged from $1 million (€856,000) to $5 million (€4.27mn) in disclosed value while buy orders of AMD, Intel, Goldman Sachs, Alphabet, Airbnb, DoorDash, Micron, Bloom Energy and others ranged from $500,000 (€427,500) to $1 million (€856,000) in disclosed value.
US President Donald Trump also reported hundreds of stock sales ranging from $15,000 (€12,825) to up to $25 million (€21.37mn).
According to the report, and assuming the holdings have remained relatively the same since the end of March, Trump is 20% or more in profit on almost all of the names indicated here and others.
Trump is heavily invested in those companies which deliver the hardware for the Artificial Intelligence bubble:
The account established new $1 million to $5 million positions in Broadcom (AVGO), Synopsys (SNPS), Cadence Design Systems (CDNS), and Texas Instruments (TXN), according to investing.com.
Notice the pattern. The account’s new multi-million-dollar positions are concentrated in the AI supply chain, not in the hyperscalers that dominate headlines.
These are the companies that sell into the AI buildout, the picks-and-shovels names that benefit regardless of which cloud or model wins.
Trump is personal hyping stocks he had bought:
The most attention-grabbing trade in the filing is Dell Technologies (DELL).
The account bought DELL on February 10 in the $1 million to $5 million band, then added smaller positions throughout March, per Fortune. It never sold a share.
On May 8, at a Mother’s Day event at the White House, Trump told the audience to “go out and buy a Dell.” The stock surged as much as 14.6% intraday and closed up roughly 12%, hitting an all-time high of $263.99.
Dell is now up about 107% year-to-date, …
One may call this corruption and insider trading which should be banned.
But it has also a positive side.
As long as Trump is politically (through the bond market) and personally (through stocks) bound to rising markets he will likely avoid anything that might lead to a large tumble of bond and stock values or even a crash.
Another big attack on Iran, and Iran’s inevitable retaliation, would likely lead to a market crash and sever personal losses for Trump.
That may well be the one and only thing that is holding him back.
Iran Open Thread 2026-102
News & views related to the war on Iran …
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