The Poroshenko plan was a wolf in sheep’s clothing ploy because it was in effect a demand for surrender. All doubt was removed when Kiev said they would not engage in any negotiations with the break-away Republics’ elected leaders. That made it a dead on arrival offer, and one followed by continued fighting and shelling to prove it.
But last week the Republics took part in an ‘unofficial’ meeting in Donestk, the typical “put your toe in the water” step to finally get some momentum going toward a resolution. The expected attendees were the OSCE representative, the Russian ambassador Mikhail Zurabov, and the Kiev representative but with a surprise addition…past Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005). He was a stand-in of sorts for Poroshenko, and a wise and timely diplomatic move. Zurabov announced, “We agreed on bilateral ceasefire lasting until 10 a.m. on June 27.”
We pray that both sides can now get some rest, some badly needed aid supplies trucked in to the needed areas so the civilians can begin to get their lives back together. The question now will be whether the fighting will start right back up on Saturday. So let’s take a look at what needs to happen to prevent that.
Nothing is going to happen without negotiations, but we have some major hurdles to get to that point. Poroshenko slammed the door shut initially with his silly refusal to talk with the Republic’s leaders. Just whom had he planned on talking to… himself? His rebuff gave the Republics no other choice than to refuse to participate, so I read this as his having chosen a military resolution with US and EU backing, one designed the force the Russians to come in so they could trigger the next round of sanctions.
A meeting that took place with an ex-president there was a showing that Poroshenko’s position had changed, maybe as part of his plan, or maybe due to pressure from his Western sponsors that talks had to begin to stop the senseless fighting, where more killing and destruction would just make any final resolution more difficult.
Aleksandr Boroday, PM for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic took his first step when he said live on Rossiya 24 TV, “We hope that during ceasefire from both sides we will be able to reach an agreement and start consultations on the process of peaceful settlement of the conflict.”This looks like both sides have their hats in the ring. They are starting to talk about talking. It might sound silly but that is often the biggest and most difficult step.
I was surprised that the Republics’ demands had increased from having Kiev remove all of its forces from their territory. This might be difficult as the Right Sector people will not be happy, and the Oligarchs have their own battalions under their separate control. Kiev may say they will do one thing, but these others may not as we hear they have continued fighting these past two days. Having an unclear command-and-control situation is like having a loose cannon rolling around in the deck.
Boroday’s preconditions included compensation to be paid to victims of the fighting and the usual amnesty demands. But the catch-22 will be Kiev’s demand to have all militia arms surrendered. Such things are usually resolved as part of the final negotiations, not on the front end. Getting pension payments flowing again and the economy cranked back up will give all parties a bigger stake in avoiding more military action.
The reaction to this meeting I can only describe as superlative, particularly the high caliber of those chosen to participate. The extremists do not have a single seat. One example is Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of “Ukrainian Choice” political organization who stated BEFORE the meeting that its purpose was, “implementation of the peace plan to resolve the situation in eastern Ukraine, end the bloodshed, preventing people’s deaths, preserving the country’s unity.”
Russian State Duma CIS affairs chairman Leonid Slutsky weighed in with his comment on the quality of the team being “the strongest list of negotiators of all possible. Hopefully, it will become the most effective too.” This is huge shift from where we were a few days ago where none of us saw it coming, so thank goodness some grown up diplomacy was going on behind the scenes.
The Russians have steadfastly been asking for negotiations since the beginning. The West has tried to characterize the East Ukraine resistance as having been directed from Moscow. Bit almost no one believes that, and the West has lost more prestige with their silly “pin the tail on the Russian donkey” attempts so they could justify more sanctions.
If it were not for the West’s backing Poroshenko up on his combat operations, we could be weeks ahead in the negotiations now. Everyone who is dead, from both sides, was the result of the poor leadership exhibited by the West that has become a plague upon us all, the constant use of the destabilization weapon to extend Western Geo-political dominance.
We cannot assume that the current shift to begin negotiations comes from a humanitarian desire. We may owe it to ISIS and Iraq being put in play where the US now wants to de-escalate the Ukraine confrontation to concentrate on keeping the lid on the Persian Gulf. All the Western spin-meistering work to make Russia and China the new Cold War bogeymen, embarrassing for its being so transparent, seems to be undergoing a “pivot”, to borrow that popular term these days.
East Ukraine might be saved by a new bogeyman hysteria which we have seen being rolled out by our Veterans Today crisis team. In this case it is completely manufactured one. Kurdish Intelligence has spilled the beans that they informed the US about ISIS plans to take over Northern Iraq with a big push, yet the US failed to warn Baghdad to be ready.
On the contrary, one could say that catching the Iraqi Army by surprise resulted in the ISIS helping itself to tons of US combat equipment to take back to Syria to fight Assad, along with the $500 million removed from the bank of Mosul, or so they claim. Then we see, almost like they were communicating using cue cards, politicians all over the West hyping the eminent threat of the ISIS bogeymen coming to Europe…to “destabilize” it and affect “regime change”. Whatever happen to the “no fly lists”, and checking people’s passports are border control, and all the communication snooping on everybody?
The American politicians were not about to be outdone by the European hucksters. They are now claiming ISIS to be America’s and the WORLD’s biggest security threat now. Those sneaky ISIS guys must be hiding a lot of boats under those desert sands, and their air force and ICBM’s underground in Northern Syria.
Remember back when Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld disgraced himself with his fake briefing on CNN, diagrams and all, of those huge underground city bases that Osama bin Laden had all over Afghanistan. Rumsfeld specifically said there were “lots of them”, but of course none was ever found. Rumsfeld has not committed suicide in remorse, to this day. The man has no honor.
Now comes Dick Cheney and his daughter with their Sunday column that ISIS could strike Americans with another 911-type attack, which means that Cheney, the NeoCons, the Likuds and Christian Zionists are planning to light off another one of their stolen nukes in the US again. They will not survive doing another one. The loyal military folks promised us that after the last one. But that would be a high price to pay for getting rid if them. You just can’t make this stuff up.
So we wish the East Ukrainians good luck with Kiev. We might be distracted a bit from following their story, as we now have to start looking for what city our elite domestic terrorists have chosen for their next nuclear sacrifice or blackmail tool.
The ISIS has already helped them with their admission to Franklin Lamb that they have access to nukes, supposedly to use on the Zios, but we know that AIPAC would never let them be used on Israel when America is such a big country.
If you don’t hear from me again you will know the city chosen was Atlanta. Tell the ISIS guys they should have gotten the Likud Party annual convention, and I will never forgive them, as Atlanta is/was a nice place.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for Veteran Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.
