He’s getting attention in European leaders getting airplanes to come and chat with him….
The American President is threatening him…
But he also is talking to the Russian President….
The Russian Foreign Minster is asking for more talks...
The Kremlin is saying what invasion?…
And?
The Russian people do not think their will be a Ukraine snatch…
Russia IS looking for a hard statement from the Ukraine that it will NOT join NATO…..
Hmmmmmm?
In a meeting with Lavrov, Putin supported the need for continued talks, but underscored Russia’s concerns about “the endless, in our opinion, and very dangerous expansion of NATO to the East,” referring specifically to Ukraine’s bid to join the alliance.
Reporting to Putin formally on Russia’s bid to end NATO expansion, Lavrov said the rejection of Russia’s key security demands by Washington and NATO did not satisfy Moscow. But headded that there was room for further dialogue.
He said that NATO wanted to determine Europe’s security architecture without reference to Russia, but that talks with the United States and NATO “now must be developed and intensified,”….
….
Amid massive Russia military drills with Belarus in the Black Sea, southern Russia and other parts of the country, Putin also met Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who said that some drills were coming to an end and others would be completed “in the near future.”
Earlier, the Kremlin continued to press Ukraine to drop its NATO membership plan after Ukrainian officials explicitly ruled it out….
…
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that if Ukraine withdraws its bid for membership in the alliance, this could allay some of Russia’s security concerns. Moscow insists that Ukraine’s joining the alliance is a “red line” that would threaten its security — while Kyiv argues that it poses no threat to Russia and that it is seeking membership to guarantee its security….
…
Speaking on BBC television Monday, Prystaiko, the Ukrainian ambassador to Britain, said Kyiv was willing to make concessions to avoid a catastrophic war.
“We are not a member of NATO right now, and to avoid war we are ready for many concessions, and that’s what we are doing in our conversations with Russians,” he said. But he also said his comment had nothing to do with Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, which is written into the nation’s constitution.
In an earlier BBC interview Sunday, he said Ukraine was flexible and willing to contemplate ending its bid to join NATO to avoid war. He noted, however, that Kyiv is unlikely to do so, “not because we are stupid and stubborn” but because Putin would likely make more demands if Ukraine makes that concession….
The ostensible reason for all this is Putin wanting “guarantees” that Ukraine won’t join NATO.
Ukraine has ,with varying degrees of enthusiasm ,talked about joining ,but there has never been a major push for membership and anyway what kind of “guarantee” exactly does he want?
Some kind of statement?
Putin,As a student of Russian history should well know the usefulness of such things (see Soviet German Non Agression Pact in WW2) .
I think there’s more here.Remember Putin famously told GW Bush down at the ranch,” you know George ,Ukraine isn’t really a country.”Further, that view predominates in Russia .After all a substantial amount of Ukraine’s population is ethnic Russian.
What the end game is here remains to be seen.
First of all, as the grandson of two Ukrainian immigrants, the Ukraine is not, and never was, in the eyes of the native population, part of Mother Russia.
We spoke Ukrainian in our house, not Russian, although my uncles did. The Ukraine is much more Western in its outlook than Russia ever was. This war, if it comes, is because Putin needs to keep his folks distracted and he thinks, after four years of Trump, he can get away with it. But, at what cost?
I would believe that I am the only one on this Board who has ever spent time in the Ukraine. I still have cousins who live there and my older brother and I had to actually travel to Crimea to extract our great uncle when Putin invaded the last time. Our travels gave us lots of opportunity and time to talk to family and their friends. Putin had it easy then, he won’t this time.
These folks will not take this without fighting back. They didn’t want to be under the control of Russia 80 years ago, and still don’t want to.
Oh, and NATO doesn’t want them until they can prove they have cleaned up their act. The NATO thing is just an excuse from a paranoid KGB agent who likes to poison people. No Mr. Putin, you can’t have my DNA.
It’s hard to tell from seconds-long soundbites in much longer TV news stories, but I get the impression that many of the Ukraine’s Russian-speakers are patriotic enough to the Ukraine that they don’t want Russia to “rescue” them from their own country in the way he has in the Donbass (Donetsk-Lughansk) region of eastern Ukraine.
¶ Vladimir Putin is noted for saying that (of all that century’s other ghastly horrors) the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century was the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. (I think that as a former sworn K.G.B. colonel, he thinks of himself as a loyal Soviet patriot as much as a Russian one.).
Rescuing the Russian ethnic or linguistic communities in almost all of the now-independent Soviet Socialist Republics from some supposed oppression (or sometimes actual discrimination) has been his rationale for meddling in, subverting and threatening several former S.S.R’s in the Baltics and elsewhere, as well as supporting “the last Stalinist” dictator of Belarus (the former Byelorussian S.S.R.) against Belarus’ own people.
Interestingly when the Soviet Union collapsed,Ukraine had nuclear weapons on its territory but later gave them up and joined nuclear non proliferation agreement.
Because they are grown up and trying to do the right thing, besides, the maintenance on the nukes ain’t cheap.
Seems the Ukraine expects an attack within the next 48 hours.
A couple things…Putin may be serious about invading Ukraine, but the end game would be unclear, annexation and occupation too costly, short term attack is a message sending move but could have political/economic consequences for Russia, so that might not be great either…could this all just be a feint? Or as one of my friend’s said, this could all be a sleight of hand move, keep our attention on Ukraine while someone makes a move else where like a good magician….could it be an attempt with China to refocus on the west to allow for China/Russia to do something in the East, maybe Afghanistan?
Bdog?
The Russian Leader appears to have got himself in a bot deeper than he gambled for
But it makes no difference
He has no natural opposition to what he does internally
We have to wait snd see how things develop
But he REALLY doesn’t want the Ukraine joining NATO