Putin Giving Up on Ukraine Plan He Never Had: Report

The New York Times is giving a glimpse into how the Biden administration will likely try to frame a Russian victory in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly giving up on plans he never had in Ukraine. (Russian President’s Office)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has just been designated the “geopolitical winner of the year” by a top editor in The Wall Street Journal for surviving Western sanctions and thwarting Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive that was supposed to win back land and assure Western backers.

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The White House, desperate to keep the war going, is begging Congress for another $61 billion to help fund Ukraine’s military effort, but is coming up empty. The issue is so important for Congress that members have left for holiday recess.

Reports indicate that Ukraine is running desperately low on men to send to the front, and have resorted to suiting up troops far from their fighting prime, including those with illnesses.

And, to top it all off, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who banned elections in his country, has been accused by one of his chief opponents of turning Ukraine into an “authoritative state.”

It has been a disastrous end of 2023 for Zelensky and Biden, so, naturally, it is high time for articles about Putin. This time, he doesn’t have blood cancer, nor did he have a stroke. Putin is reportedly giving up on his plans to take over Ukraine and is desperate to end the conflict.

Putin has been signaling through intermediaries since at least September that he is open to a cease-fire that freezes the fighting along the current lines, far short of his ambitions to dominate Ukraine, two former senior Russian officials close to the Kremlin and American and international officials who have received the message from Mr. Putin’s envoys say. - The New York Times.

The problem is: Putin has never indicated that he had any interest in dominating Ukraine. Military analysts, not invited on mainstream shows, noted how Russia began its war operation with 190,000 troops — a desperately small amount to try and take over a country the size of Ukraine, which would require up to 3 million.

Putin held a four-hour press conference earlier this month and said the war will come to an end when Russia decides that its objectives have been achieved. He said he will denazify and demilitarize the country. Ukraine will also become a neutral country.

Sergey Lavrov, his top diplomat, said Western officials have been reaching out to him discreetly to try to come up with some kind of resolution. He accused these officials of being hypocritical because these are the same people who insist that only Ukraine will determine when it is ready to negotiate, the paper reported earlier.

Putin told a conference in October that Russia is not interested in seizing new territory in Ukraine and wants the conflict to come to a swift end. Russia currently controls about 20 percent of what was considered Ukraine before the 2022 invasion, which includes two Donbass republics and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Kyiv has said it will not stop the fight until it reclaims all of its territory and Crimea.

Putin has blamed the U.S. and NATO for their aggression before the invasion.

TRENDPOST: Long forgotten was the U.S. and NATO’s pledge not to expand into Eastern Europe following the deal made during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification.

Therefore, in the view of Russia, it is taking self-defense actions to protect itself from NATO’s eastward march. 

As detailed in The Los Angeles Times back in May of 2016, while the U.S. and NATO deny that no such agreement was struck, “…hundreds of memos, meeting minutes and transcripts from U.S. archives indicate otherwise.” 

The article states: 

“According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9, then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation with Germany, the U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’ Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. 

“No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.” 

TRENDPOST: In 1997, when President Bill Clinton was expanding NATO’s borders eastward, fifty American foreign policy leaders sent him a letter saying that it would be “a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability,” and “NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.” 

The letter was as follows:

June 26, 1997

Dear Mr. President, 

We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S. led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability for the following reasons: 

In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma to the START II and III treaties; In Europe, NATO expansion will draw a new line of division between the “ins” and the “outs,” foster instability, and ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included; 

In NATO, expansion, which the Alliance has indicated is open-ended, will inevitably degrade NATO’s ability to carry out its primary mission and will involve U.S. security guarantees to countries with serious border and national minority problems, and unevenly developed systems of democratic government.

In the U.S., NATO expansion will trigger an extended debate over its indeterminate, but certainly high, cost and will call into question the U.S. commitment to the Alliance, traditionally and rightly regarded as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. 

Because of these serious objections, and in the absence of any reason for rapid decision, we strongly urge that the NATO expansion process be suspended while alternative actions are pursued. These include:  

opening the economic and political doors of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe; 

—developing an enhanced Partnership for Peace program; 

—supporting a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship; and 

—continuing the arms reduction and transparency process, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons and materials, the major threat to U.S. security, and with respect to conventional military forces in Europe. 

Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.