How Biden-Harris blocked a Russia-Ukraine peace deal

While a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine seemed likely weeks into the war, we must remember when U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted in April 2022 that America’s goal wasn’t peace, but weakening Russia.

Western media sources documented Ukraine and Russia peace proposals during the first weeks of the conflict in February 2022. Reuters noted, “Ukraine wants peace and is ready for talks with Russia, including on neutral status regarding NATO, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters. … ‘If talks are possible, they should be held. If Moscow … want[s] to hold talks, including on neutral status, we are not afraid of this. … Our readiness for dialogue is part of our persistent pursuit of peace.’”

Reuters printed a follow-up 14 hours later: “The Russian and Ukrainian governments … signaled an openness to negotiations even as authorities in Kyiv urged citizens to help defend the capital from advancing Russian forces. … Ukraine and Russia will consult in the coming hours on a time and place for talks.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesman said, “Ukraine was and remains ready to talk about a ceasefire and peace. … We agreed to the proposal of the President of the Russian Federation.” But as Reuters went on to note, “U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Russia’s offer was an attempt to conduct diplomacy ‘at the barrel of a gun,’ and that President Vladimir Putin’s military must stop bombing Ukraine if it was serious about negotiations.”

In Foreign Affairs, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent wrote: “According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and … Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

The British Financial Times reported in March 2022: “Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been the primary international mediator. … Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Zelensky told the Financial Times that any deal would involve: ‘the troops of the Russian Federation … leaving the territory of Ukraine’ captured since the invasion began on February 24. … Ukraine would maintain its armed forces but would be obliged to stay outside military alliances such as NATO and refrain from hosting foreign military bases on its territory.”

The Times report continued, “Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters … that neutrality for Ukraine based on the status of Austria or Sweden was a possibility. ‘This option is really being discussed now, and is one that can be considered neutral.’ … Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said that ‘absolutely specific wordings’ were ‘close to being agreed’ in the negotiations. … The putative deal also included … rights for the Russian language in Ukraine, where it is widely spoken though Ukrainian is the only official language. … The biggest sticking point remains Russia’s demand that Ukraine recognize its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two separatist statelets in the eastern Donbas border region. Ukraine … was willing to compartmentalise the issue.”

Ukrainska Pravda reported: “[T]he Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages. The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not. Johnson’s position was that the collective West … now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to ‘press him.’ Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine ‘had turned into a dead end.’”

U.S. changes war aims

But logically, weakening Russia was significantly less likely to happen if the Ukraine war ended in April 2022. Pentagon officials met in mid-April in a classified meeting with eight large defense contractors including Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation for discussion on resupplying weapons to Ukraine to prepare for a longer war with Russia.

Charles Freeman, past U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, noted that “from the very beginning the solution has been obvious, which is some variant of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, meaning a guaranteed independence in return for … decent treatment of minorities inside the guaranteed state; and … neutrality for the guaranteed state.”

Prolonging the war for whatever reason is not a criteria for conducting a “just war.” Extending the war would mean many more grandchildren, children, husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and civilians would be killed, wounded, or maimed among both Ukrainian and Russian casualties. Surely, the Russian and Ukrainian families and friends of those killed, wounded, or injured as well as owners of businesses destroyed in the war, when reflecting on their losses, would have thought that accepting the initial agreements were much better than what has happened since.

American columnist Pat Buchanan pointed out that “President Joe Biden almost hourly promises, ‘We are not going to war in Ukraine.’ Why would he then not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do: go to war with Russia?”

Russia-Ukraine accidental nuclear war

Putin warned that if the U.S. or NATO gave permission for Ukraine to use western missiles to strike deeply into Russia, that would radically change the current war because while choosing targets inside Russia can be done by Ukraine military personnel, getting the missiles to hit the long range Russian targets depends directly on western control guiding and directing the missiles. Putin said, “[I]t will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries, in the war in Ukraine.”

Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s press representative, said that Putin’s statement was, “extremely clear, unambiguous and does not allow for any double readings. We have no doubt that it has reached its intended recipients.” Biden-Harris have backed away for now.

America was founded on the belief in Providence, which consists of the Creator acting within the sphere of human history. Similarly, many citizens of Austria, a Catholic country, placed their trust in Divine Providence by engaging in a multi-year prayer crusade to free Austria from the Soviet military occupation that occurred after World War II. It included the Catholic Rosary organized by the Austrian Franciscan priest, Fr. Petrus Pavlicek, who believed that, “Peace is a gift of God, not the work of politicians.”

The effort to secure Austrian neutrality succeeded on May 15, 1955 with representatives of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States, and France signing a treaty under which all military occupation forces from WWII would withdraw from Austria if it would maintain neutrality. Austria has not joined NATO and has remained neutral to this day.

Unlike Biden-Harris, President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance do not have to reverse themselves on the prosecution of the Russia-Ukraine war. Barron’s reported in October that Donald Trump told Ukraine President Zelenskyy that the war never needed to happen, and that The Wall Street Journal reported that about one million have been killed or wounded on both sides.

Our late President John F. Kennedy told the 1963 graduates at American University that nuclear powers must avoid confrontations where the choice is between, “either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Rolling the dice on nuclear war especially when the United States has no defensive shield to stop ICBMs and no defense whatsoever against Russia’s 6,000mph hypersonic nuclear missiles is completely lacking in prudence.

When Americans voted on November 5, perhaps they considered which ticket had promised to “quickly” end the Russia-Ukraine war.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.

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How the Biden-Harris admin pushed Russia into war with Ukraine

Published on November 6, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Bob Marshall

I was … bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.… Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

In September, Vice President Kamala Harris stated several points at the White House as to how she would handle the Ukraine-Russia war: “I will work to ensure Ukraine prevails in this war.… Putin started this war, and … Putin could set his sights on Poland, the Baltic states, and other NATO Allies.… [S]ome in my country … demand that Ukraine accept neutrality, and would require Ukraine to forego security relationships with other nations. These proposals are the same of those of Putin.”

But these are the same Biden-Harris tactics and policies that provoked war.

Harris blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war. But the proximate source of the Russia-Ukraine conflict goes back beyond Putin to the breakup of the Soviet Empire and even earlier.

End of the Cold War

In late October 1989, the famed Berlin Wall as a dividing line between Socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and West Germany, called a “wall of mistrust” by then former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was crumbling.

Obviously, Gorbachev, with almost 400,000 troops in East Germany could have stopped the reunification. But Western officials gave Russian leaders assurances there was nothing to worry about. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev that NATO expansion would proceed, “not one inch eastward.” The next day, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl assured Gorbachev, “NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”

The Los Angeles Times noted, “Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.… NATO’S widening umbrella doesn’t justify Putin’s … incursions in Ukraine or Georgia. Still, the evidence suggests that Russia’s protests have merit and that U.S. policy has contributed to current tensions in Europe.”

Documents at George Washington University testify to agreements made between Western leaders and Russian officials at this time – that western nations would not expand NATO to the East.

Yeltsin said to Clinton, “I want to get a clear understanding of your idea of NATO expansion, because now I see nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed. How do you think it looks to us if one bloc continues to exist while the Warsaw Pact has been abolished? It’s a new form of encirclement if the one surviving Cold War bloc expands right up to the borders of Russia. Many Russians have a sense of fear. What do you want to achieve with this if Russia is your partner, they ask. I ask it too. Why do you want to do this?”

When Clinton spoke to Yeltsin in 1995, there were 15 NATO member countries. When Clinton left office, there were 18.

Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion

In 2016, President Clinton’s former Defense Secretary Bill Perry said, “In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years … the United States deserves much of the blame.… Our first action … in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia.”

Former CIA Director Robert Gates, who also served as Secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, opposed the policy of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”

In June 1997, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats, and foreign policy academics wrote to President Clinton about the problems and ill consequences of NATO expansion:

[T]he current U.S. led effort to expand NATO … is a policy error of historic proportions.… NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability …

In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition … [and] bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.

In 1998, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asked George Kennan, who devised the successful “containment” policy to prevent the Soviet Union from achieving its goal of world domination through open warfare, what he thought of the U.S. Senate ratifying NATO expansion even up to Russia’s border. Kennan replied:

[I]t is the beginning of a new Cold War.… There was no reason for this.… No one was threatening anybody else.… We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so.

I was … bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.… Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

In 2007, Putin noted, “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders … and what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact … NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on May 17, 1990 … said … ‘The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

Fiona Hill points to 2007 when Putin “put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO.… In 2008 NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine.… Four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the [Russian] invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership.”

William Burns, now President Biden’s Central Intelligence director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008:

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players … I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.

Putin told Burns in 2008: “No Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia. We would do all in our power to prevent it.”

In 2015, the German Der Speigel magazine interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, regarding the status of Ukraine in response to the abrupt change in the presidential leadership and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Brzezinski suggested that “Ukraine should be free to choose its political identity.… But … Russia should be assured credibly that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.”

More recently in 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Pope Francis said that the ‘barking of NATO at the door of Russia’ might have led to the invasion of Ukraine.… The pope … deplored the brutality of the war.… Pope Francis … described Russia’s attitude to Ukraine as ‘an anger that I don’t know whether it was provoked but was perhaps facilitated’ by the presence in nearby countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.… ‘In Ukraine, it was other states that created the conflict.’”

The caution of these experienced statesmen and world leaders is lost on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.

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Sec Def Austin Unveils $400 Million Arms Package For Ukraine — But One Thing Is Missing

Published on October 22, 2024

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jake Smith

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Ukraine but isn’t bringing the good news Kyiv wants to hear, as the country continues to struggle to hold the front line amid Russian advances.

Austin has been intimately involved over the last two years in overseeing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, of which there has been approximately $70 billion. The Defense Secretary touched down in Ukraine on Sunday in a show of continued support and announced a new $400 million arms package, but won’t be giving Kyiv what it really wants — the ability to use U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, according to multiple reports.

The request to use the missiles for such a purpose has been something Ukraine has asked for for months; as Ukraine can’t produce such weapons, it is looking to the U.S. and Europe for help.

Austin arrived in Ukraine without signaling that the request would be filled, and that’s likely to leave Kyiv unsatisfied. The administration has been hesitant to allow Ukraine to use U.S. or European-provided missiles to conduct long-range attacks against Russia, in part because it could escalate the war and drag the U.S. further into the conflict.

“We think it is wrong that there are such steps,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in early September, according to The Washington Post. “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

I’m back in Ukraine for the fourth time as Secretary of Defense, demonstrating that the United States, alongside the international community, continues to stand by Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/0gCwAqqEpK

— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) October 21, 2024

The idea has been frequently discussed between U.S. and Ukrainian officials but nothing has come to fruition. Austin has also previously said that he doesn’t think it would significantly improve Ukraine’s odds of victory, noting in an early September press conference that “there’s no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign.”

Ukraine is also pressing the administration for NATO membership, but Austin had no new updates to give on that request either, according to reports. The Biden-Harris administration has said that Ukraine’s fate is eventually to join NATO but hasn’t provided a timeline for when.

However, the U.S. is providing Ukraine with $400 million worth of weapons systems, Austin announced on Monday, including munitions, armored vehicles and tanks, according to reports. The aid will certainly meet some of the needs of Ukraine’s military but is not as large as some of the prior multi-billion dollar packages.

“The United States understands the stakes here, Mr. President,” Austin told Ukrainian Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, Reuters reported.

President Joe Biden’s options to help Ukraine are starting to run out as he prepares to leave office in January. Even with U.S. and European-provided military aid, it has done little more than help Ukraine maintain a defensive position against Russia, which has shown no signs of stopping its invasion campaign.

Russia launched sweeping missile and drone strikes against targets in Eastern Ukraine over the weekend ahead of Austin’s visit, according to Reuters. Ukrainian forces staged a successful incursion into regions in Western Russia at the end of the summer but Russian forces have started to retake some of the territory in recent weeks, The New York Times reported.

The odds that Biden can secure substantially more funding from Congress to aid Ukraine are slim; it was already difficult for the president to secure the last $60 billion aid package in April, as the sentiment among some lawmakers is that the administration doesn’t seem to have a plan to end the war and move Ukraine toward victory.

It will be either presidential candidates Donald Trump or Kamala Harris who will have to pick up where Biden left off. Harris would likely mirror Biden’s approach to the war and continue strong U.S. support for Ukraine’s military campaign, but some critics fear that she lacks the needed foreign policy wisdom to properly maneuver the conflict.

Trump has vowed to end the war before January if he’s elected in November, touting his ability to negotiate with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also signaled he may end military aid to Ukraine in favor of seeking a peaceful settlement between Kyiv and Moscow.

Austin on Monday dismissed ideas that U.S. support for Ukraine would end if Trump were elected in November.

“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last 2-1/2 years, and I fully expect that we’ll continue to see the bipartisan support from Congress,” Austin said, according to Reuters.