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Negotiations within the Minsk process are not likely to make progress so long as Putin remains totally intransigent. His mobilization of an invading force of 190,000 troops suggests that that could be a long time.
The great risk in any meeting between Biden and Putin, or in negotiations to avoid an invasion, is that the U.S. and NATO, and/or Macron and Olaf Scholz, could pressure Zelensky to make concessions in the Minsk negotiations which in the end will amount to a surrender, or that a secret deal could be made behind his back that effectively blocks Ukraine from ever becoming a NATO member.
Such concessions would amount to rewarding Putin for his aggression.
As the Munich Pact in 1938 demonstrated, rewarding aggression through a policy of appeasement may bring “peace in our time”, but that time is likely to be short.
Following the Munich Pact on September 30/October 1, 1938, Hitler invaded “rump” Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, and Poland on September 1, 1939. Indeed, Hitler’s threats against Poland and Germany’s false-flag and propaganda operations in late August 1939, accompanied by frenetic diplomatic activity, greatly resemble Russia’s threats and false-flag operations against Ukraine today.
Final thoughts
As Radek Sikorski, a former foreign minister of Poland, said on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program this morning, “Putin doesn’t want security guarantees. He wants Ukraine.”
Another quote from Sunday’s TV programs is worth bearing in mind. Retired. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, former Vice-president Mike Pence’s National Security Adviser, reminded his audience on Fox News, “Putin doesn’t bluff.”
See, Ross Douthat, “What Is Joe Biden Thinking?”, New York Times, January 15, 2022. Ross Douthat has done an excellent job in summing up the…
Sometimes political situations and their implications are very clear to the objective observer, someone like the Observer who is far removed from the buzz of Washington, Twitter, and the latest “breaking news” on the Cable News networks. The Observer is a keen and unbiased commentator who reads many newspapers, both American and foreign, and who has been paying attention to political developments in the United States for a long time.
Drawing on this experience and his own original analysis, the Observer believes that there are three major problems that pose a challenge to American democracy, and that there are three active measures that the Democrats and “little d” democrats should take, now, in order to save the Republic.
…
Taking down Trump is the single most important action the Democrats can take to safeguard American democracy in 2022 and 2024. Together with passing legislation prohibiting the knowing transmission of lies and disinformation on television and radio, and enacting voting rights legislation, indicting Trump is an essential action in any program to protect American democracy against the anti-democratic and authoritarian threat Trump and his supporters represent.
These three problems represent the greatest challenges to American democracy today.
These three urgent actions represent our best hopes for beating back the anti-democratic challenge before it is too late.
The Democrats refuse to prosecute Donald Trump. Moreover, they enforce a conspiracy of silence under which not even the question of whether Trump should be prosecuted can be discussed, or even raised.
Meanwhile, Trump, who appears to have committed numerous felonies in full public view, is left free to hold rallies and breathe air into a growing fascist movement led by the Republican party and his supporters
President Joe Biden continues to stumble, to blow the opportunities his and the Democrats’ narrow victories in 2020 have afforded him.
Neither Biden nor the Democratic leaders seem to understand that fascist threat.
The country faces a fascist challenge supported by 35-40 million voters living in a propaganda universe, an alternate universe where facts and the truth do not hold sway, plus perhaps another 20 million cynical fellow travelers.
Nowhere are their leaders with the courage to stand up and defend our democracy by taking bold actions, such as indicting Trump.
Americans live in the twilight of a democracy that will not defend itself.
One question tells the whole story: Why has Trump not been indicted?
We have set forth the considerations which we believe argue strongly for the indictment and prosecution of Donald Trump for his election-related and other crimes, and for the prosecution of his Republican co-conspirators who joined him in a vast conspiracy to overthrow the election and the Constitution of the United States.
We are faced with a Democratic conspiracy of silence regarding whether Trump should be indicted. It is not a criminal conspiracy, like Trump’s conspiracy to overthrow the election and the Constitution, but it is a conspiracy in the broader sense of the term.
Let us now consider the arguments for not prosecuting Trump and his co-conspirators.
Writing today, on June 4, 2025, it is hard to believe what has happened in the United States in the last few years. It wasn’t easy to uproot my life and move abroad, as a refugee from the fascism which has taken over in the United States.
With my mastery of foreign languages and cultures and history of working in many foreign countries, I have had many options. At the moment, I am in Costa Rica, where I lived for three years decades ago.
The second huge mistake the Democrats made was that they failed to prosecute Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for the many electoral crimes and other felonies that they appeared to have committed.
How the Democrats arrived at the thought that they might pierce Trump’s propaganda bubble without taking him on, and prosecuting him and his co-conspirators, was never clear, and in retrospect defies understanding.
(The Democrats) seemed to have entered into some kind of conspiracy of silence….Since the Democrats would not even allow discussion of the issues related to the non-prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators, there was virtually no public discussion of their strategy.
Proceeding with this strategy of not challenging Trump directly by indicting him and his co-conspirators, the Democrats lost the House in 2022. Joe Biden’s domestic initiatives then hit a brick wall….On January 20, 2025, the new Republican president took office. With the election of a Republican Senate and a Republican House, the Trumpists had returned to power. They promptly set about passing laws which curtailed freedom of the press and other civil liberties.
Within days of the inauguration, I boarded my flight to Costa Rica.
See, 1) Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Joe Biden is deaf, dumb and blind to the chaos the US has unleashed; The administration is ignoring history by putting…
The U.S. surrender to the Taliban and the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan have produced days of stressful attention and observation, first, as the Taliban’s…
Developing The Taliban has continued making sweeping gains today, taking the key northern provincial capital of Kunduz, and two other provincial capitals in the North….
Read Robert’s article, which translates the Capitol insurrention of January 6 into immediate personal terms, in a political context we all need to understand.
Fanone’s experience is one we should never forget.
