Joe Biden has given a lot of his time and treasure to support Ukraine’s war against Russia.
It seems that it is the only thing that can be “not be questioned” by the Biden Administration when it comes to funding: money for Ukraine. It’s not the defense of our borders, mind you. Only Ukraine, with no clear goal.
According to the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ), it seems that Joe Biden may have been open to appeasement with Vladimir Putin despite all this. NZZ reported that William Burns, the CIA director, went to Moscow secretly and offered Russia 20% of Ukraine in exchange for ending the war. Russia claims 20 percent of Ukraine, which would roughly equal the size of the Donbas region. According to the Washington Post, Burns met Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s President, in Kyiv last month. The deal is believed to have been submitted in January.
Russia and Ukraine didn’t like the offer. It is possible that Ukraine wasn’t too pleased with the deal.
According to NZZ, Kyiv rejected the proposal “because they don’t want their territory divided”, while Russian officials stated that they “will win the war in the end anyway”.
Sean Savett, National Security Council deputy spokesperson, said that the report was “not correct.” However, they didn’t say “completely false” — inaccurate can refer to one aspect of the report being incorrect but the rest being substantially true. If the WaPo report can be believed, then why did Burns meet Zelensky?
Dmitry Polyanskiy was Russia’s first deputy permanent representative at the United Nations. He told Newsweek that the NZZ report was “interesting,” but that it wasn’t possible to “comment on speculation.”
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, told reporters Monday that negotiations between Russia & Ukraine were “impossible” because there are no conditions either de facto or de jure.
It doesn’t seem like anyone is going to give up on anything that might have been offered. This could also explain the recent change in policy and the decision to send Abrams tankers, which we reported on the 31st of last month.
The deal is reminiscent of the attempt to appease Hitler during WWII. Neville Chamberlin waved the agreement afterward and claimed that he had secured “peace in our time.” We don’t even have to go back so far. There was the Obama/Biden inaction on the initial invasion of Crimea. They believed that Russia would be able to take over Crimea. They were wrong. If Putin was determined to retake Soviet territory, such a deal would buy Russia enough time to recover — until they invade again. It’s clear that Zelensky knows this, even though Joe Biden may not.
Let’s look back at how and why this happened, as well as the signals that “minor incursions” may give us.
Remember when Biden said invasion was OK as long as it’s a “minor incursion”
Seems very relevant right now…pic.twitter.com/sA01TI1gtC
— Danny De Urbina (@dannydeurbina) February 3, 2023
