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U.S. territory is of no concern to Putin. Ukraine (and Eastern Europe) is.
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Ukraine agrees to demilitarized economic zone in Donbas to advance Trump’s peace plan
- Thread starter Valletta
- Start date
U.S. territory is of no concern to Putin. Ukraine (and Eastern Europe) is.
Larniavc
"Larniavc sir, how are you so smart?"
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That's the whole point! Russia does not invade NATO countries but it does invaded non-NATO countries.
That's why it enrages Putin; he loses an opportunity to gobble up another country because Russia is a paper tiger.
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BasedLutheran
Active Member
Excellent. I pray that Trump brings about peace in Ukraine, and that Ukraine stops its violation of rights of Christians in its territory. Zelensky is starting to see he no longer has the support for an eternal war that he did back at the start of this, and is realizing he'll need to make concessions, because Trump isn't playing.Zelensky seems to finally have figured out he has to take some kind of concession step as Trump explained to him.
Ukraine agrees to demilitarized economic zone in Donbas to advance Trump’s peace plan
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has agreed to demilitarize the roughly 30% of the Donbas still occupied by Kyiv, making it an “economic zone” to advance President Trump’s p…nypost.com
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BasedLutheran
Active Member
Yeah, the MSM didn't cover that did they?
Ukraine: New Law Raises Religious Freedom Concerns
Ukraine’s new law banning religious organizations with ties to the Russian Orthodox Church is overly broad and could have far-reaching consequences for Ukrainians’ right to religious freedom.
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Yeah, and Russia promised Ukraine that it wouldn't invade if Ukraine gave up their nukes. And yet here we are. The lessons learned is - don't trust Russia.For the non-Boomer generation from George Washington Univ:
"
Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (Home | National Security Archive).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]
The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.[3]
This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. The two issues were related but not the same. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did.
The “Tutzing formula” immediately became the center of a flurry of important diplomatic discussions over the next 10 days in 1990, leading to the crucial February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between Kohl and Gorbachev when the West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east. The Soviets would need much more time to work with their domestic opinion (and financial aid from the West Germans) before formally signing the deal in September 1990.
The conversations before Kohl’s assurance involved explicit discussion of NATO expansion, the Central and East European countries, and how to convince the Soviets to accept unification. For example, on February 6, 1990, when Genscher met with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, the British record showed Genscher saying, “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.” (See Document 2)
Having met with Genscher on his way into discussions with the Soviets, Baker repeated exactly the Genscher formulation in his meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on February 9, 1990, (see Document 4); and even more importantly, face to face with Gorbachev.
Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” (See Document 6)
Afterwards, Baker wrote to Helmut Kohl who would meet with the Soviet leader on the next day, with much of the very same language. Baker reported: “And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? He answered that the Soviet leadership was giving real thought to all such options [….] He then added, ‘Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.’” Baker added in parentheses, for Kohl’s benefit, “By implication, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.” (See Document 8)
Well-briefed by the American secretary of state, the West German chancellor understood a key Soviet bottom line, and assured Gorbachev on February 10, 1990: “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.” (See Document 9) After this meeting, Kohl could hardly contain his excitement at Gorbachev’s agreement in principle for German unification and, as part of the Helsinki formula that states choose their own alliances, so Germany could choose NATO. Kohl described in his memoirs walking all night around Moscow – but still understanding there was a price still to pay.
All the Western foreign ministers were on board with Genscher, Kohl, and Baker. Next came the British foreign minister, Douglas Hurd, on April 11, 1990. At this point, the East Germans had voted overwhelmingly for the deutschmark and for rapid unification, in the March 18 elections in which Kohl had surprised almost all observers with a real victory. Kohl’s analyses (first explained to Bush on December 3, 1989) that the GDR’s collapse would open all possibilities, that he had to run to get to the head of the train, that he needed U.S. backing, that unification could happen faster than anyone thought possible – all turned out to be correct. Monetary union would proceed as early as July and the assurances about security kept coming. Hurd reinforced the Baker-Genscher-Kohl message in his meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow, April 11, 1990, saying that Britain clearly “recognized the importance of doing nothing to prejudice Soviet interests and dignity.” (See Document 15)
The Baker conversation with Shevardnadze on May 4, 1990, as Baker described it in his own report to President Bush, most eloquently described what Western leaders were telling Gorbachev exactly at the moment: “I used your speech and our recognition of the need to adapt NATO, politically and militarily, and to develop CSCE to reassure Shevardnadze that the process would not yield winners and losers. Instead, it would produce a new legitimate European structure – one that would be inclusive, not exclusive.” (See Document 17)
Baker said it again, directly to Gorbachev on May 18, 1990 in Moscow, giving Gorbachev his “nine points,” which included the transformation of NATO, strengthening European structures, keeping Germany non-nuclear, and taking Soviet security interests into account. Baker started off his remarks, “Before saying a few words about the German issue, I wanted to emphasize that our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. We had that policy before. But today we are interested in building a stable Europe, and doing it together with you.” (See Document 18)
The French leader Francois Mitterrand was not in a mind-meld with the Americans, quite the contrary, as evidenced by his telling Gorbachev in Moscow on May 25, 1990, that he was “personally in favor of gradually dismantling the military blocs”; but Mitterrand continued the cascade of assurances by saying the West must “create security conditions for you, as well as European security as a whole.” (See Document 19) Mitterrand immediately wrote Bush in a “cher George” letter about his conversation with the Soviet leader, that “we would certainly not refuse to detail the guarantees that he would have a right to expect for his country’s security.” (See Document 20)
At the Washington summit on May 31, 1990, Bush went out of his way to assure Gorbachev that Germany in NATO would never be directed at the USSR: “Believe me, we are not pushing Germany towards unification, and it is not us who determines the pace of this process. And of course, we have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion. That is why we are speaking in favor of German unification in NATO without ignoring the wider context of the CSCE, taking the traditional economic ties between the two German states into consideration. Such a model, in our view, corresponds to the Soviet interests as well.” (See Document 21)" more...
NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive
Western leaders gave multiple assurances against NATO expansion to Gorbachev in 1990-1991 according to declassified American, Russian, British, Germans documentsnsarchive.gwu.edu
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SoldierOfTheKing
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7thKeeper
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No, they very much actually did cover that, it was discussed here before. This isn't some "gotcha!" moment here where you found something the "MSM" doesnt want to cover because reasons. You were just so vague about what you meant that it was impossible to know what you were talking about.
And I think those articles and posts left out the bit where several members of the Orthodox Church were found to be spying for Putin and helping them in other ways too from inside Ukraine. Soooo... Yeah, once again, context matters instead of posts on X trying to score brownie points with certain segments of the US voting population.
How the hack do so many of these Russian propaganda things get spread by US politicians, mainly conservatives/"conservatives"?
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7thKeeper
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War of aggression would imply that NATO invaded someone in "aggression". Not intervene in a genocide. Again, context on what was going on besides one talking point is needed to understand things.
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Yes, the FSB (previously KGB) are deeply involved in the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy - in fact, the current head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, worked for the KGB while living in Switzerland in the 1970s. His mission included influencing the World Council of Churches in Geneva, said to be heavily infiltrated by the KGB at the time.
KGB collaboration among Soviet clergy was widespread, systematic, and deliberately engineered by the Soviet state, though the extent varied by era, region, and rank. Modern analyses show that the ROC was used as a foreign policy and intelligence instrument, a practice inherited from the KGB era and continued by its successor agencies.
This is why the ROC is banned and the affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is likely to be banned under the law that bans any religious organization in Ukraine that is legally or organizationally tied to the Moscow Patriarchate.
The main Christian church is the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) which is widely accepted in Ukraine, although there are others (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Roman Catholics, & Protestant communities [Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, etc.])
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SoldierOfTheKing
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A bombing campaign is no less an act of aggression than a ground invasion. NATO’s placing of troops in Kosovo, which at the time was Serbian territory, would qualify as an invasion.
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Hans Blaster
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7thKeeper
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This arguement does nothing to counter the fact that it was an intervention against an attempted genocide. You literally just repeated your own arguement. Troops on the ground or not, calling it a war of aggression implies NATO starting a war in aggression, when there was a conflict already ongoing and a genocide happening. You kinda leave that out of it all for some odd reason.
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Laodicean60
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Several years of peace till NATO decided to expand the country club. I believe America lied first.
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