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Don’t be disappointed if the Russians achieve their goals of taking the Russian speaking areas. Ukraine is no longer facing a 160,000 man force as designated under the Russian Special Operation. Russia is now on a war footing, they have 745,000 men who will follow the artillery operations. Russia is fighting against an enemy entrenched like in WWI, thus there is a target for the artillery that doesn’t move. The Russians are moving at a slower scale simply due to the need of their artillery to soften the Uke’s. The Financial Times of London is now no longer claiming Ukraine is going to win the war. The idea that Russia is not a credible negotiating partner stems from the 2014-2022 Minsk II that Merkel put forth was a ruse to give time for the west and NATO to arm Ukraine and train their military. Merkel has admitted that the west misled Russia... thus we in west must come up for reason why Russia can’t be trusted. The truth be told, NWO leadership in western nations can’t be trusted period; the Russias are difficult as well to trust but when it comes to their National Interests, they are putting forth the conditions to end this war.

“The truth be told, NWO leadership in western nations can’t be trusted period”

I was thinking about the Cuban Missile Crisis and it how it required TRUST to wind that down - particularly JFK’s secret agreement to remove US missiles from Turkey.

God knows how it would have ended if the Soviet Union didn’t trust the US, or if the US tried to be ‘cute’ as seems to be our policy now.

As indicated by the failed attempt to take Kiev and install a Russian puppet government, Russia has not limited its war goals to taking the Russian speaking areas of Ukraine. And what defensible and legal military purpose for that or any other valid war aim is served by Russia's torture, rape, murder, and abduction of thousands of Ukrainian civilians? Or by bombing Ukraine's civilian power plants?

In the modern era, drafting and sending masses of unwilling, untrained, and unequipped conscripts to the front adds little to an army's fighting power. At present, Russia is not gaining ground and is suffering severe casualties. Their military is poorly led, lacks essential weapons and equipment, and is now reliant on drones from Iran and artillery rounds from North Korea. Those are signs of failure and desperation, not success.

Putin and his circle are especially untrustworthy as negotiating partners. Russian propagandists have distorted Merkel's recent comment on the Minsk agreement by pretending that it revealed Western treachery against Russia. That agreement was designed to provide a format for resolving the conflict in Donbas and was widely criticized at the time as unlikely to work due to Russian dishonesty and continued aggression -- criticisms that proved true.

Merkel's recent comment was an acknowledgment of that, but with a defense of the Minsk agreement as nevertheless providing Ukraine with time to develop better ties with the West and to reform its military. And in fact, a key reason why Ukraine has had the success that it has had was its adoption of modern US and NATO military organization, training, and doctrine in place of those of the Soviet era.

So how was Russia misled? I guess the claim boils down to Russia thinking that Ukraine cheated by using the period after the Minsk agreement to better defend itself against the ensuing Russian aggression in violation of Minsk and the prior denuclearization agreement. As always, thugs are outraged when their victims put up a fight and do better than expected. I do not think that, on reflection, such thinking deserves endorsement.