A lot of people in the West are calling for the conflict in Ukraine to be frozen… This means Ukraine is cooked!

CNN has the details:

“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social channel. “Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”

OK 👌

Kellogg, Trump’s 80-year-old former national security advisor, has laid out his peace plan in some detail, writing for the America First policy institute in April.

It begins calling the war “an avoidable crisis that, due to the Biden Administration’s incompetent policies… has entangled America in an endless war.”

Blaming you predecessor ain’t cool…

Kellogg spends most time berating Biden’s actions – saying that his administration gave too little lethal aid too late. He says Trump’s decision to give the first lethal aid to Ukraine in 2018 conveyed the strength needed to confront Putin, and that Trump’s soft approach to the Kremlin head – not demonizing him like Biden has – will enable him to strike a deal.

I sensed in 2019 that things are heading to war. Trump’s weapons deliveries have emboldened Kiev and instilled the belief they can return Donbas and Crimea by force.

Kellogg says more weapons should have been given before the Russian invasion, and immediately afterwards, to enable Ukraine to win.

I think that more weapon deliveries would have spurred Russian intervention earlier.

Kellogg says the United States doesn’t need involvement in another conflict, and its own stocks of weaponry have suffered from aiding Ukraine, leaving the country potentially exposed in any conflict with China over Taiwan. He says Ukraine’s NATO membership – in truth a very distant prospect, tentatively offered to Kyiv in symbolic solidarity – should be put on hold indefinitely, “in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees.”

There are people out there that believe, Murica has stockpiles overflowing and the amount of weapons sent to Ukraine was fractional.

Foremost, the plan says it should become “a formal US policy to seek a ceasefire and negotiated settlement.”

They want ceasefire because Ukraine is pretty much done for now.

It says future US aid – likely given as a loan – will be conditioned on Ukraine negotiating with Russia, and the US will arm Ukraine to the extent it can defend itself and stop any further Russian advances before and after any peace deal. This latter suggestion is perhaps dated by the fast Moscow advance underway in eastern Ukraine and the current high US level of aid already makes Kellogg uncomfortable.

Russia is on a roll, why would they stop now?

The frontlines would be frozen by a ceasefire, and a demilitarized zone imposed. For agreeing to this, Russia would get limited sanctions relief, and full relief only when a peace deal is signed that is to Ukraine’s liking. A levy on Russian energy exports would pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Ukraine would not be asked to give up on reclaiming occupied territory, but it would agree to pursue it through diplomacy alone. It accepts “this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough which probably will not occur before Putin leaves office.”

I am not sure Russia would allow a demilitarized zone in Ukraine maintained by NATO soldiers. Also, removing sanctions is not an incentive. Sanctions might have hurt Russia in the short term, caused some inconveniences but they did not kill Russian economy. And what doesn’t kill you should make you stronger. Russia can grow and diversify its economy as a response to sanctions, it would be a shame if instead of taking up this challenge they would sell out to the West.

Also, the magical date when Putin is gone is not very far. I hope to live to see that but I am not certain the Russian system would produce anyone willing to give Ukraine whatever it has lost. Ukraine is fake, it is artificially created and it is still in a process of being forme vis a vis Russia and other countries.

It is fetchingly simple and swift in its approach. But it lacks an accommodation of what Moscow will demand and has used the diplomatic process for in the past: To cynically pursue military advances. The freezing of the frontlines will precipitate a very violent few months ahead as Moscow seeks to take as much ground as it can. The Kremlin has in the past ignored ceasefires and pursued its territorial objectives – often blankly denying that it is.

Half-ass freeze to the conflict would 100% mean a future war.

A demilitarized zone would likely need to be policed, possibly putting NATO troops, or soldiers from other non-aligned nations, in between the two sides. That will be hard to maintain and staff, to say the least. It would be enormous, spanning hundreds of miles of border, and a massive financial investment.

NATO troops in Ukraine is why Russia is fighting in Ukraine. So, I am not sure they would willingly accept this.

Arming Ukraine to the extent it can stop present and future Russian advances will also be tough. The plan notes the United States manufactures 14,000 155 artillery rounds a month, which Ukraine can use up in just 48 hours. Paradoxically, Kellogg wants the US to arm Ukraine more, yet also accepts they really can’t.

I think Trump will deliver more weapons to the Ukrainian military. That’s more certain than him striking a deal with the Russians.

He adds that some critics of continued aid to Ukraine – in which he seems to include himself – are “worried about whether America’s vital strategic interests are at stake in the Ukraine War, the potential of the involvement of US military forces and whether America is engaged in a proxy war with Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflict.”

This absolutely is an American proxy conflict against Russia and it has been going on since 2014. The late John McCain said that if Russia attempts to recreate the Soviet Union, she will be met with serious conflicts, and the late Zbig Brzezinski said Russia is not an empire without Ukraine. The American establishment has these beliefs about “Russian imperialism” and Ukraine was supposed to serve as a proxy that would bring the Russians to the heel and make them capitulate before the West. Hence Maidan and War.

These two sentences provide the ultimate backdrop for the deal proposed: That Ukraine’s war is about values we don’t need to perpetuate, and we should step back from Putin’s nuclear threat. It is the opposite of the current unity in which the West prioritizes the values of its own way of life and security, based on the lesson of the Thirties that appeased dictators don’t stop.

There is also the anxiety of letting Putin win. This is called appeasement and evokes 1930s. The European politician knows one thing very well, historical propaganda from school.

But it begins a process in which a wily and deceitful Putin will revel. Exploiting a ceasefire and Western weakness is his forte, the moment he has been waiting nearly three years for. The plan accepts Western fatigue, that its armament production cannot keep pace, and that its values are wasteful. It also makes little accommodation for what Russia will do to upset its vision.

I personally do not see any benefit to Russia from anything written above. Only demilitarization, and denazification of Ukraine, and rejection of NATO would do.