Excuses are getting dumber by the day

25. Mai 2022

[edit: Davos Press Con­fe­ren­ces are now hid­den from public view.]

Kule­ba at Davos.

Kule­ba: The­re are now no pre­con­di­ti­ons for ent­e­ring peace nego­tia­ti­ons, apart from Ukrai­ne “fee­ling” that “they are held in good faith”. And “rus­sia will only come for­ward to hold peace nego­tia­ti­ons [no in good faith used in that phra­sing] - if they are star­ting to lose, and are covering their los­ses, that I can pro­mi­se you.”

Selen­sky­js requi­re­ments for peace nego­tia­ti­ons on May 7th (Chat­ham House speech):

Ukrai­ne will only reen­ter peace talks with Rus­sia if the Krem­lin gua­ran­tees the res­to­ra­ti­on of pre­inva­si­on bor­ders and returns thousands of Ukrai­ni­ans who were force­ful­ly evacua­ted to Rus­sia, Ukrai­ni­an Pre­si­dent Volo­dym­yr Zelen­sky said Friday.

src: click

Selen­sky­js requi­re­ments for peace nego­tia­ti­ons on May 24th (the same World eco­no­mic forum Kule­ba is spea­king at today):

Ukrai­ni­an Pre­si­dent Volo­dym­yr Selen­sky insists on direct talks with Rus­si­an lea­der Vla­di­mir Putin. In an address to the World Eco­no­mic Forum in Davos, he again rejec­ted con­sul­ta­ti­ons through media­tors. If Putin unders­tood rea­li­ty, the­re would be a chan­ce to find a diplo­ma­tic way out of the con­flict. The lea­ders­hip in Moscow should with­draw its tro­ops to the lines befo­re it began its inva­si­on of Ukrai­ne on 24 Febru­a­ry, Selen­skyj deman­ds. “This could be a first step towards talks.” Ukrai­ne will fight until it has regai­ned all its ter­ri­to­ry, he said.

src: click (APA/AFP)

I’m sure no media out­let will report any con­tra­dic­tion here.

Second point: In the press con­fe­rence with Kule­ba, he put a new spin on the “we need time to inte­gra­te the brain­wa­s­hed peop­le in the tem­pora­ry occu­p­ied ter­ri­to­ries” messaging Selen­skyj has put for­ward in the Zaka­ria inte­view befo­re, and spun it into “it will take time to find peop­le who would be wil­ling to live in regi­ons next to rus­sia again, which is why it is hard to gage how long a pro­cess of rebuil­ding Ukrai­ne will take”.

Two aspects. First the are­as cur­r­ent­ly occu­p­ied by rus­sia are now exten­ding into Ukrai­ne past more than half of said bor­der ter­ri­to­ry. Second “we need to find peop­le who want to live the­re”, sounds much nicer, right?

Third point. Kule­ba is now open­ly for other nati­ons enga­ging in hel­pful diplo­ma­tic talks that could bring about the end of the war. It is just that “they cant impo­se “new lines of con­ta­ct””, or “touch the ter­ri­to­ri­al inte­gri­ty of Ukrai­ne, as a who­le - at all”.

Apart from this being a per­fect quag­mi­re on its own, three days ago Poli­ti­co publis­hed the following:

Poland’s pre­si­dent told Ukrai­ni­an law­ma­kers that “only Ukrai­ne has the right to deci­de about its future,” in a speech that was the first in-person address by a for­eign head of sta­te at Ukraine’s par­lia­ment sin­ce the Rus­si­an invasion.

Not­hing about you without you,” Andrzej Duda told the assem­bly in Kyiv on Sunday, while slamming the “worry­ing voices” that have been cal­ling on Ukrai­ne to make con­ces­si­ons to end the war.

Duda recei­ved a stan­ding ova­ti­on and pho­tos pos­ted on Twit­ter show­ed him embra­cing Ukrai­ni­an Pre­si­dent Volo­dym­yr Zelen­skyy. Poland has wel­co­med around 3.5 mil­li­on Ukrai­ni­an refu­gees and sup­ports Ukraine’s bid to join the EU.

Duda’s comments came as Ukrai­ne said it would refu­se a cease-fire and will not give up ter­ri­to­ry to Rus­sia. In an inter­view with Reu­ters, Ukrai­ni­an nego­tia­tor Mykhailo Pod­olyak said con­ces­si­ons would back­fire and only encou­ra­ge Rus­sia to hit harder.

The war will not stop [after any con­ces­si­ons]. It will just be put on pau­se for some time,” said the pre­si­den­ti­al adviser.

After a while, with rene­wed inten­si­ty, the Rus­si­ans will build up their wea­pons, man­power and work on their mista­kes. … And they’ll start a new offen­si­ve, even more bloo­dy and large-scale,” he said.

src: click

With this (pres­su­re to not influ­ence ukrai­ni­an decisi­on making) being the cau­se both for the ger­man governments posi­ti­on of “the Ukrai­ne has to deci­de on its own, when it wants to con­tem­pla­te ending the war”, as well as the same posi­ti­on fea­tured in the UvdL speech in Davos yesterday.

Tho­se are respon­ses to that voi­ced need to not be influ­en­ced by out­side pres­su­res which now doesnt exist any­mo­re accord­ing to Kule­ba, as long as tho­se out­side pres­su­res dont try to nego­tia­te a new con­ta­ct line, or touch the ter­ri­to­ri­al inte­gri­ty of the Ukraine.

Also the argu­ment of the Ukrai­ni­an nego­tia­tor you might noti­ce, calls for a seve­re dete­rio­ra­ti­on of rus­si­an mili­ta­ry capa­bi­li­ty (usual­ly the phra­se “so they cant con­tem­pla­te a simi­lar attack for at least 30 years” is used). Which coin­ci­dent­al­ly is the US posi­ti­on Nina Khrush­che­va sta­ted that she hears from US gene­rals in pri­va­te con­ver­sa­ti­ons, but not when they are spea­king to media.

Now wait to read none of this in tomor­rows news­pa­per. Becau­se they are our heroes.

Spea­king of the usu­al heroes, just for refe­rence, here is Kis­sin­gers Posi­ti­on from two days ago: click
And here is the ukrai­ni­an response.

But dont worry, that was just ano­t­her old guy respon­ding who was brought up on the noti­on, that Nato expan­si­on was a threat.

edit: Short asi­de on ita­lys peace talks initia­ti­ve being rejec­ted by russia.

Ita­lys peace initia­ti­ve in broad out­lines: click
Rus­sia pulls diplo­ma­tic corps from ita­ly: click
Reu­ters reports the rus­si­an for­eign minis­try spo­kes­wo­man sta­ting that the ita­li­an peace plan for Ukrai­ne was a “fan­ta­sy”.

If they hope that the Rus­si­an Fede­ra­ti­on will sei­ze on any Wes­tern plan, then they haven’t unders­tood much.”

So the rus­si­ans aren’t exact­ly inte­res­ted in peace nego­tia­ti­ons either.

Kule­bas posi­ti­on on the ita­li­an peace plan in Davos can be found in the video at 28min in. And it actual­ly was what promp­ted Kule­ba to go into lay­ing out “his new rules for peace nego­tia­ti­ons, faci­li­ta­ted by other coun­tries”. Pre­fa­cing that with “Lui­gi Di Maio is a friend, so in princi­pal I will not have anything against [some­thing] pro­po­sed by a friend”.

In total­ly unre­la­ted news, ger­man pre­si­dent Frank-Walter Stein­mei­er was quo­ted say­ing the fol­lowing yesterday:

Ger­man Pre­si­dent to Putin: “With­draw your troops!”

Ger­man Pre­si­dent Frank-Walter Stein­mei­er has cal­led on Rus­si­an Pre­si­dent Vla­di­mir Putin to with­draw from Ukrai­ne immedia­te­ly at the Katho­li­ken­tag in Stutt­gart. “Respect Ukraine’s sov­er­eig­n­ty, stop the figh­t­ing,” Stein­mei­er appealed at the ope­ning cere­mo­ny of the church fes­ti­val on Wed­nes­day evening.

src: click









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