Putin Speech at Foreign Ministry (Part 2)

In this post I simply want to extract some significant points of interest from Putin’s speech of June 13th, together with some of my own observations. For specific details about what we can call Putin’s peace proposal, please refer back to the full text of the speech and to my previous (public) post.

1. Putiun’s terms are eminently reasonable - see my introduction to my previous post

2. Putin does not expect these terms to be accepted; instead, he expects a continuation of the conflict. As we have seen from my previous posts, this continuation would involve further Russian advance westwards, perhaps absorbing Western Ukraine if necessary. Indeed, some sources (and they include Larry Johnson, I believe, doubt whether Ukraine will even exist in a year’s time).

3. Other sources or statements from Kremlin leaders suggest that the Kremlin sees the relatively slow pace of the advance up to this time as a reflection of Russian determination to minimize casualties but that, when necessary, Russia can take the gloves off and advance at a much more intense pace. At present, Russia has approximately 700,000 men in the field, has a huge army in the mainland and among reserves and is attracting voluntary recruits at the rate of 30,000 a month, in addition to the numbers recruited in the normal process of national service. Ukraine may not even have as many as 350,000 combat-ready forces.

4. Putin regards Zelenskiy as an illegitimate president. The Ukrainian Constitution makes no provision for a President to simply to extend his period of service beyond expiry on the grounds of martial law and without calling for new elections. Therefore, Russia will not be negotiating anything with Zelenskiy. Nor for that matter will Zelenskiy want to negotiate anything with Putin given his own legislation that prohibits any such negotiation and because it would seem that Zelenskiy is determined to hold on to power: he fears a settlement of this conflict because it would almost certainly herald Zelenskiy’s own forced departure (possibly worse) from the scene. Putin’s team has identified the Speaker of the RADA as the constitutonally-acceptable interlocutor for negotiations.

5. Putin has identified the beginning of what he clearly sees as a history of rot in the management of international relations by the collective West in the 1990s’ break-up of Yugoslavia which, he believes has provided the playbook or template, so to speak, for subsequent Western meddling, color revolution and armed intervention. While I entirely agree that for the collective West the disgraceful episode of the disintegration of one of Europe’s most exciting and innovative countries, politically, has conveniently been officially “forgotten,” and that it does indeed contain the seeds of all subsequent Western-instigated catastrophes, nonetheless the story does not begin with Yugoslavia. If we are talking about a template for color revolution and Western meddling, I would look back to the 1953 Anglo-American conspiracy to topple the democratically elected leader, Mossadegh, of Iran, and the US-led overthrow of democratically elected Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. And I would include many other comparable instances between that period and the 1990s, stopping to consider, at great length, the ominous significance of the assassinsation by his own Deep State of a popular, humane and wise President, Jack Kennedy, in 1963.

6. With more specific reference to Yugoslavia, Putin has noted that although the country did indeed exhibit fractures and tensions, these could have been resolved within the compass of the Yugoslav state were it not for the fact that the collective West massively interfered with the internal situation of Yugoslavia in a manner that guaranteed - never less than in NATO bombing (an intervention that did not even have the support of the UN Security Council) - violence, war and fragmentation. What were some of the features of this Western interference? Support for only one side in a complex situation, the side that for historical reasons (mainly to do with the effective model of socialism pursued by Yugoslavia and the country’s studied independence of both the Soviet Union and Washington) the collective West found it most congenial to support. The real sources of the conflict were disregarded. International law was flouted whenever this suited the collective West. Kosovo, for example (a criminal regime if ever there was one), lobbied the International Court of Justice for a ruling that said that a declaration of independence by a region of a recognized State was not contrary to international law but an exercise of self determination (not even requiring an election, it would seem) and whose legitimacy was conferred by international recognition and which could occur regardess of the mother State’s own internal laws. When the case of Kosovo was cited by Russia in the context of the secession from Ukraine of Crimea and the People’s Republics of the Donbass (all supported by electoral processes), the West simply paid no attention.

7. As previously noted, Russia is asking for negotiations for a new European security architecture that would replace the medly of “legacy” systems that Europe inherited from the Cold War, such as NATO, and which, of course, should have had no further role. Had NATO been dismantled the lives of many millions would have been preserved).

8. Putin has recounted the story of the coup d’etat (I have used this term myself, without qualification, for a number of years, because that is precisely what it was) in Kiev in 2014 that was carried out with US funding, support, and direction. The main trigger for the coup was the wavering of then democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovyich over progress towards an association agreement between Ukraine and the EU. Yanukovyich came to recognize that the association agreement would trap Ukraine into debt dependency and hyper neoliberalism, and that an alternative form of help from Russia, a friendlier power, carried far fewer conditions. What were initially street protests in the Maidan led by middle class voters protesting both Yanukovyich’s decision on the association agreement, and, it is too often forgotten, the massive corruption of the State structure, something that has only grown worse under subsequent administrations. These protests, in my own telling of the story, were coopted by several Ukrainian Nazi militia (I respect those who consider that the term “neo-Nazi” is merely sugar-coating; these people are real Nazis). They mounted a concerted attempt to throw out Yanukovyich from power, even though he would have had to face the electorate, in any case, within a few months. They wanted to see him replaced with a pro-Western and anti-Russian candidate. On February 21st 2014, an agreement was reached between the protesters and Yanukovyich, one that was brokered by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland, that called on both sides to stand down, and for elections to be called before the end of 2014. Immediately following that agreement, Putin was persuaded by President Obama to ensure that Yanukovyich followed through while Obama took care of the protesters, that the latter would abandon occupied buildings and disperse, and Yanukovych would not use his police. However, as soon as Yanukovyich withdrew his police the protesters seized the Parliament and Yanukovyich’s residence and established themselves in power with direction from Victoria Nuland of the US State Department. Obama and the European signatories to the recently signed agreement just stood by, let all this happen, did not intervene and even supported the protesters and the new regime. At this point, Putin lost all trust in Obama and in the USA. This loss of trust greatly complicated the negotiations between Russia and the US over settlement of the crisis in Syria that year and the next. I

9. In the next major stage of this narrative, Putin worked with French and German leaders to try to settle what had now become a full-fledged war between the Ukrainian army (supported by Nazi batallions such as Azov who would later be fully integrated into the regular army) and the militia of the People’s Republics in the Donbass. The result were the Minsk accords of 2014 and 2015. But the Minsk accords, never implemented, were sabotaged by Ukraine in 2021 arguing in effect, with French and German support, that the conflict was internal. France and Germany (Macron and Merkel) ditched Minsk and called for Russia and Ukraine to negotiate directly, without reference even to the authorities of the People’s Republics.

10. At this point, Putin lost complete confidence in Macron who, as readers will know, is playing a hyperintrusive role in the Ukraine conflict, right now, one that is very dangerous. Russia concluded that a continuation of conflict was inevitable, that Western powers were determined to force a resolution only on their own terms. At this time, at the Putin-Biden summit meeting in Geneva in the summer fo 2021, the US was trying in vain to persuade Putin to distance Russia from China. When the US realized that this was not on the cards, relations rapidly deteriorated. Russia prepared for war but launched a last-ditch effort at resuming normality by presenting Washington with two draft treaties that in effect would have opened a path to renegotiating the European security architecture. This initiative was completely torpedoed by Anthony Blkinken in January 2022 in a meeting with Putin in which Blinken repudiated what the Russians believed had been a promise made in a telephone call the previous December from Biden that the US would not establish nuclear weapons in Ukraine and would negotiate the presence of such weapons in Poland and Romania. Blinken claimed that it was a US prerogative to put nuclear weapons anywhere the US chose, but the US might be prepared to talk about the numbers of such weapons.

11. Russia, as we know, in the light of these worrying, nuclear-related macro moves on the part of the US, and given evidence of a Ukrainian intention to attack the People’s Republics in the Donbass, launched his Special Military Operation on February 22nd 2022. Within days of the start of the SMO, Moscow was visited by a very senior Western politician, perhaps Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, who offered his services as a mediator on behalf of the Western powers. In his discussions with Putin he asked why Russia had invaded the oblasts of Kherson and Zapporizhzhia, which were not part of the Donbass. He was told that this was done at the insistence of Russian generals who wanted to establish a security belt around Mariupol and that would help them in operations in the Donbass. Putin at that time indicated that Russia would be prepared to return these territories to Ukraine. This may well have been considered in the Istanbul peace negotiations of March-April 2022 which were sabotaged by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on behalf of Washington when Johnson instructed Ukraine not to agree peace terms but to continue fighting with the weapons that the West would provide.