Ukraine vs Russia IV - The Betrayal

It doesn't appear very likely that Putin will come to Istanbul. More likely Russia will be represented by a low-level functionary, like Medinskiy.

 

Do you ever check - check anything at all - before you post? Zelensky has been explicitly clear that he will go to Istanbul, whether or not Putin does. Every news outlet in the world has carried that.

That's because the optics of him showing up and Putin staying at home will be a major propaganda coup for Ukraine. So will Putin showing up: him and Zelensky sitting at the table and negotiating will be a visual recognition of Ukraine's statehood and Zelensky's legitimacy.

That makes Putin undercut the entire rationale for his war if he goes. He won't show.

 

I was so very upset in the beginning when Zelenskyy was not calling Putin's bluffs. Because Russia was "see he does not want peace". I love it how he does it now.

 

A British diplomat I met years back when the Northern Ireland negotiations were going on described these kinds of negotiations, where neither party can possibly back down so one of them is going to kill the talks, as a game of musical daggers: "the music will stop so everyone's there to avoid being the one holding the dagger when it does."

 

Putin has only one gameplan - to draw things out as long as possible. Every possible move he can make will worsen his position so he is going to try not to make one.

 

and there are no yellow cards for delaying the game

 

And his best bet is that by delaying the game as much as possible he might get Trump to force Ukraine into something that he can claim as "victory".

 

Regardless, it would be impressive if Ukraine and Russia were sitting down talking together in the same room would it not?

Or are you still of the mind that Ukraine should NOT be talking to Russia, as was the implied stance during the Biden administration.

 

Europe is going to ban 25 specific ships of the Russian dark fleet from traveling thought the North Sea.

https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar780e52d8

 

Yet another reason to wind down this horrific war instead of just slaughtering more of them with jubilation.

 

Rubio traveling to Istanbul on Thursday for potential peace talks.

 

Russians do this to themselves without need for a war. Didn't you hear the horror stories of what happens to conscripts? Or about the slavery problem Russia has?

 

I mean, sure.. But why does the war have to wind down in a manner favorable to the country that is performing a majority of the war crimes?

 

Let's ask Israel for more answers.

 

I'm not sure why that conflict needs to be drawn into this one?

 

Russia has suffered a severe frost in late April / early May. Particularly hard hit are sugar beets and fruits. Belgorod Oblast has declared a state of emergency, which is a necessary step for insurance to get paid out. I'm sure the very healthy Russian financial system will get right on that.

This is following other crop failures. Belarus is experiencing shortages of potatoes for its own people because so many were sold to Russia. Everything indicates this year will be worse than last, and last was a very bad year.

 

First of all, no one here is a diplomat or has any relevant foreign relations experience, but it remains to be seen how favorable a potential negotiated ceasefire or peace settlement actually will be to Russia.

That said, you also have to approach this with practicality and negotiate with the understanding of what is reasonably attainable and what is not. Russia may not be making significant advances, but they are going to be relatively hard to move from their current positions without some sort of negotiation. They simply have some inherent advantages as the "stronger" of the two countries, which of course they know entering any sort of negotiation. Whether the approach should be more carrot or more stick heavy has been discussed ad nauseum.

You may not like the end result, but we don't live in an ideal world. You have to look at the state of play as it is, not what you would wave a wand and wish it to be. If no one is 100% satisfied, then everyone may decide they can live with that.

 

This year Egypt is exporting 4.6 times as many potatoes to Russia as last year. They have also roughly doubled their exports of onions and fruit.

https://www.interfax.ru/world/1025416

This is the problem Russia has with determining an exchange rate. If they lower the value of the ruble, they can get a lot more for the oil they export. But they then have to pay a lot more for food. While consumers can delay some purchases (like how car sales in Russia have cratered this year), you can't exactly put off buying food until the situation improves. This is only going to get worse as Russia continues extracting money from agriculture instead of investing in it.

 

Well it is not like they have put their non Moscow/St petersburg population to starve before

 

Rewarding Russia for their aggression shouldn't be an option.

if Russia wanted to "wind down' the war, they can just go back to where they came from.

 

Russia's oil situation is worse than it seems. They are running out of cheap oil from the easy-to-extract oil fields. This means production is down, and the oil they are producing is increasingly using expensive extraction techniques which means their profit margin is down. And the government is spending zero rubles on finding new oil fields because they need the money for the war, so future prospects are down.

https://kyivinsider.com/gazprom-ceo-sounds-alarm-russian-energy-crisis/

 

The Russian-government owned JSC Rosgeologia is the holding company of all the firms that do geologic research, mostly finding oil. Not only are they currently spending zero on finding new fields, they have just defaulted on a loan.

https://www-interfax-ru.translate.g...en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true

They've actually been defaulting for months, but they just defaulted on a different bond today. They are hoping for a bail-out from the national welfare fund, and they aren't the only government owned, too-important-to-fail company who has designs on those slowly dwindling funds.

 

The "peace talks" in Istanbul tomorrow, but they won't involve Putin, Trump, or Zelensky. Instead, Russia sent a group of low level Kremlin aides led by Vladimir Medinsky, an ultra-nationalist "scholar" that has written a number of books/articles proclaiming Russia's historical claims to greatness and to territories outside Russia's current borders. In response, Zelensky left Istanbul and has assigned Ukraine's defense minister as the lead for Ukraine's negotiation team.

 

Weird, you'd think if Putin was interested in a peaceful resolution he would show up in person