US army secretary briefs ambassadors at ‘nightmare meeting’ in Kyiv on Friday after talks with Ukrainian leader
US officials have told Nato allies they expect to push president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into agreeing to a peace deal in the coming days, under the threat that if Kyiv does not sign, it will face a much worse deal in future.
The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from Nato nations at a meeting in Kyiv late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. “No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,” he told them, according to one person who was present.
The mood in the room was sombre, with several European ambassadors questioning the content of the deal and the way in which the US had conducted the negotiations with Russia without keeping allies informed.
How exactly is this going to be worse? Putin keeps a bunch of territory, gets welcomed back into the global economy, Ukraine gets hard limits on NATO membership and they’re on military in exchange for a weak non-guarantee of security. You could sum the whole thing up as ‘let’s all agree Russia won’.
It’s bullshit. It legitimizes military conquest of territory. The only compromise should be that Russia stops their illegal invasion, Russia’s internationally held funds are 100% given to Ukraine for reconstruction, and the border territories get to hold a vote to decide which country they want to be a part of.
As this is now, it’s just legitimizing the occupation. As an American I am very disappointed that our President would push such a thing.
Yup. And the only reason for Russia to insist Ukraine never join NATO would be so Russia could attack them again in the future without consequence.
Exactly.
Look, don’t get me wrong here, I’m Ukrainian on my fathers side, but that line of argument doesn’t quite hold water when you look at what the US has been up to for the past 100 years. In some sick sense, I get it, it’s like, Putin is saying, fuck you, if the US can wage wars of conquest, so can we.
Clearly not as successfully, but I understand how you could defend that rationale. Jesus christ don’t think I’m defending the Russians here, I’m just saying, for real like. Slava Ukraini.
US is certainly no angel. Saying that as an American.
At the same time, there’s a difference between shit we did in the 70s (and so did many other nations including RU) and today. In this millennium the closest we came to conquest was Iraq but we dumped that pretty fast.
‘We’re going to conquer this territory by force and add it to our own’ hasn’t been an internationally recognized valid move in decades. We should not validate it.
No, there is not. You literally are funding genocide in Palestine, and every year half a million people are killed by US and EU economic sanctions.