Conversation

Illia Ponomarenko
@IAPonomarenko
So, worded simply: "We have ****** up with our three-day blitzkrieg against Kyiv and had to withdraw from entire north Ukraine following severe losses and a complete failure of the 'special military operation' - but you nonetheless have to roll over, admit a humiliating defeat, render yourselves almost totally defenseless before Russia, stay away from NATO and any military cooperation with any Western nations, never get any Western weapons to defend yourself, govern your sovereign nation the way we tell you, and that goes with formal 'security guarantees' under which not a single 'guarantor' will ever go to war for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, we'll give you absolutely nothing in return - neither Crimea nor Donbas, no indemnities for ruined cities and mass graves, not even formal 'assurances' of non-aggression - it's not that we spent a year and a half amassing 180,000 troops against Ukraine and lying through our teeth -- only to eventually unleash a grand war under the dumbest, the flimsiest, and the most ridiculously false pretexts ever. And, of course, be sure that it won't take much time for us to AGAIN wipe up our ass with this worthless piece of paper, so we'll recover from the initial shock of the failure, fix our mistakes, and invade Ukraine again (because you failed to speak Russian loud enough in your courts of justice!), with far greater success -- because you morons were seriously thinking we'd give you 'PEACE' if you just leave Ukraine defenseless and us totally free to try again." Here's your 'peace treaty' that Vladimir Putin was willing to give.

And, of course, this draft is dated April 15, 2022 - the days when Russia had generally completed regrouping to launch a new major offensive in Ukraine's east. As you probably remember, we were only counting the days to when it began. The war's new phase, the nightmarish Battle of Donbas, was launched in full scale as soon as April 17-18, 2022. Russia never wanted any 'peace' with Ukraine unless it was about a total Ukrainian surrender and its demise as an independent nation. Following the unexpected failure at Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, it tried to take a break as the 'special military operation' had gone off the rails. Yet, the Kremlin's primal goal made it impossible for Russia to issue at least remotely acceptable terms of peace & co-existence with Ukraine. No matter what Ukraine would offer as 'concessions' or provisions for reaching a 'middle ground' to stop the war -- Moscow could offer nothing but 'Surrender, render yourselves defenseless, make things easy for us next time soon."

Russia had to narrow down its goals against Ukraine and switch from the failed 'special military operation' to a full-scale, protracted war on Ukraine that is now entering its third year. And all this blood and horror is for the sake of the megalomanic ego and lust for power of just a handful of old KGB bureaucrats who would rather kill millions of people in a senseless criminal war than admit their failure.