Nuland was very talkative today

22. Februar 2024

[News­flash: The offi­cial CSIS tran­script of the Nuland talk is mis­sing this question/interaction. Isnt that swell?]

Ok, so first - I’ve found the chief edi­tor of the aus­tri­an news­pa­per “Der Stan­dard”. Its Vic­to­ria Nuland. Took a while, but the­re is total con­gru­en­cy in all rele­vant positions.

Except for one.

Mode­ra­tor: “The­re is often being con­cer­ned, by the Ukrai­ni­ans and others that rus­sia would want to nego­tia­te over Ukrai­nes head with the United Sta­tes, I guess I’d ask you if you or the US government had got­ten any indi­ca­ti­ons of the Rus­si­ans try­ing to enga­ge with the United Sta­tes in back­chan­nel nego­tia­ti­ons over Ukraine.”

Nuland: “Thats always the rus­si­an way, you know. Ever­ything about Ukrai­ne without Ukrai­ne. You know I faced the same, when I was in UR [?] nego­tia­ting with Putins guys in 15 and 16, you know, they think that this is about a much lar­ger chess board, and this is the nar­ra­ti­ve of grea­van­ce, that Putin has woven to try to jus­ti­fy, what he has done, that this is about euro­pean secu­ri­ty, that this is about NATO, which after all is a defen­si­ve alli­an­ce, and never inten­ded to come any­whe­re near rus­sia unless it was atta­cked, you know… He will always try that. But we are reso­lu­te, and Ukrai­ni­ans are reso­lu­te, that they lead in any dis­cus­sions of this, and not­hing about Ukrai­ne, without Ukraine.” 

Yeah… So first thank you for the con­fir­ma­ti­on that Putin is not a cra­zed histo­ry buff making impromp­tu snap decisi­ons based on his­to­ri­cal ide­as and his mood. Its almost like thats just a pro­pa­gan­da nar­ra­ti­ve no one rele­vant real­ly belie­ves in - 

See also:

Han­no Pev­kur (Minis­ter of Defence of the Repu­blic of Esto­nia), 31. 05.2023, Glob­sec Conference:

What Rus­sia wants to achie­ve, the poli­ti­cal goals, let’s be honest - and they, the­se poli­ti­cal goals of Rus­sia have never chan­ged, they want to have a grey-zone bet­ween Rus­sia and NATO, they want to have a con­trol over this grey-zone and this is what they want to achie­ve. And they want to have some “secu­ri­ty gua­ran­tees” for them­sel­ves, sor­ry this is not the Free World and this is what Ukrai­ne is figh­t­ing for at the moment, that they are figh­t­ing for - the Free World and rule-based world and this is why we sup­port Ukrai­ne so this is obvious and then this is why we can never accept this approach of Rus­sia, loo­king at inter­na­tio­nal law.”

src: click (bei 43:50 in)

- so thats ahm… good to know… Thank you for con­fir­ming that, first and foremost.

About that “grea­van­ce” nar­ra­ti­ve Putin was buil­ding up to “rec­ti­fy all of this”, what time­frame are we tal­king here? Becau­se when the Rus­si­ans enga­ged the US with their “euro­pean secu­ri­ty infra­st­ruc­tu­re con­cer­nes” and wan­ted to hold talks (Decem­ber 2021) - the­re was no grie­van­ce nar­ra­ti­ve in play yet - ever­yo­ne was qui­te poli­te and all around ela­ted that the mee­ting could final­ly take place, and when Rus­sia brought for­ward simi­lar con­cerns in wri­ting with NATO after­wards (and Stol­ten­berg even repeated that state­ment mon­ths later) - the­re still was this public aura of ten­ta­ti­ve hope that the­re wouldnt be any war, which actual­ly most of the ana­lysts at the time agreed on, as the majo­ri­ty of them belie­ved this may­be would esca­la­te to a more acti­ve con­flict in the Don­bas, but not­hing bey­ond that - and this was just both sides ratt­ling the chains, and then the US flat out igno­red any and all of rus­si­as secu­ri­ty con­cer­nes (becau­se they were “far too exces­si­ve” (the initi­al deman­ds were, not the red lines, accord­ing to Tho­mas Gra­ham of the CFR), or so the public nar­ra­ti­ve goes) - so at which point did the “grea­van­ce” nar­ra­ti­ve “Putin expert­ly wea­ved” kick in Miss Nuland if you dont mind me asking?

At the point whe­re they dar­ed to talk about secu­ri­ty con­cerns they had in the regi­on? Over Ukrai­nes head? Or at the point whe­re the Atlan­tic Coun­cil publis­hed the “the best thing rus­sia could do is to move out of Ukrai­ne ent­i­re­ly, and then may­be we could start nor­ma­li­zing rela­ti­ons­hips again” mocke­ry of a state­ment in Novem­ber of 2021?

Was war eigent­lich US und Nato Posi­ti­on im Novem­ber 2021

About that grie­van­ce nar­ra­ti­ve the rus­si­ans used to rec­ti­fy that war intern­al­ly, Miss Nuland… When exact­ly did you noti­ce it beco­m­ing a grea­van­ce narrative?

Might be important for euro­pean histo­ry and the his­to­ri­cal public record in terms of the actu­al sequence of events.

After you clo­sed down all efforts and blo­cked all nego­tia­ti­ons “over the heads of the Ukrai­ne”? Or before?

Oh and by the way, thank you for con­fir­ming, that Rus­sia actual­ly tried to nego­tia­te with the US on a regio­nal peace, but that the US denied all efforts that would have gone over Ukrai­nes head… And that that may actual­ly be the source of the “the Ukrai­ne has to deci­de for its­elf” rhe­to­ri­cal figu­re in the wes­tern narrative.

I havent heard that tal­ked about/represented even in eng­lish spea­king media before…

Huh…

Lets just end with: Nuland should give more interviews.

That self assu­red “I’m not that smart, but want to show gre­at initia­ti­ve and poi­se” flair and bra­va­do that comes across in all ans­wers, actual­ly is very hel­pful in coaxing out more of the actu­al infor­ma­ti­on on what took place, than you might think. Actual­ly - this time around you were excep­tio­nal­ly hel­pful, Miss Nuland.

Now lets work on a way to also make this the public stance of Der Stan­dard, to have that plea­sant total con­gru­en­cy in all rele­vant posi­ti­ons with aus­tri­an news media again. 🙂

Lis­ten up Stan­dard, you’­ve heard it from Vic­to­ria here - Rus­sia tried to nego­tia­te a regio­nal peace, more than once, with the US direct­ly - but the US didnt want to betray Ukrai­ne so… They stop­ped their mili­ta­ry aid packages.

Got that? Good, so now repeat after me: The rus­si­ans actual­ly tried to get a regio­nal peace sett­le­ment with the US several times, using backchannels.

Now you alo­ne, ger­man spea­king news media, its actual­ly fun.

Repeat after Vic­to­ria Nuland.

edit: Oh, the buz­z­word of this mon­ths con­fe­rence was “Ukrai­ne ven­tu­ring into more asy­m­etric war­fa­re”, in a sen­se at least.









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