On Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 10:51:44 AM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
"Moscow wants to return to the negotiations as they were before falling apart in mid-April. On March 29 in Istanbul, Russia and Ukraine had coordinated the key parameters for a peace deal. These included a neutral and nonnuclear status for Ukraine (
this has technically been the case since 1994) in exchange for certain security guarantees from “a group of leading powers,” including Russia — and potentially even Belarus. The security guarantees did not extend to Crimea or the self-proclaimed
Donbas republics, whose ultimate status was to be decided at a future point. In other words, Kyiv was agreeing to de facto new borders for Ukraine.
The parameters also had military components: a prohibition on foreign military bases in Ukraine, Russia’s right to veto military exercises with third countries on Ukrainian territory, and restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the
types of weaponry used (including a ban on long-range ballistic and cruise missiles).
As advantageous as the Istanbul formula was for Russia, it would have required Russian troops to retreat to the positions they held on February 23. This was not acceptable to Putin, whose goals were more ambitious than merely keeping Ukraine from
joining NATO. Moscow therefore called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept the new “territorial realities,” and dismissed demands that Russia pull back its troops. The “new realities” were apparently contained in the Russian draft
of the settlement submitted to Kyiv in mid-April.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has also hardened its stance, likely following consultations with its Western partners, which may have made clear to Zelensky that Russia’s role as one of the security guarantors gave Moscow new opportunities to restrict Ukraine’
s sovereignty, turning it into a “mandate territory” of the guarantor states.
...
If Zelensky does not want to stop his counteroffensive and resume talks, then the Kremlin believes it must convince his Western partners to force him. The Kremlin must persuade U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration of the threat of a nuclear
conflict that will affect the continental United States, and not just Europe or Ukraine.
The Kremlin hopes that the nuclear threat will compel Washington to step in and “freeze” the conflict with Russia’s current territorial gains, though there does not appear to be unanimity among the Russian leadership on whether the conflict
should be frozen temporarily, until Russia can regain its strength, or forever.
Moscow has also changed its rhetoric on U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. This is now being referred to as “direct participation in hostilities,” and the Kremlin is warning that it could lead to an inevitable military conflict between the United
States and Russia ..."
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/10/12/strategic-procrastination-whats-russias-game-with-nuclear-signaling-a79064
Russia is waving nuclear to preclude direct and large scale NATO involvement. Not as a mean to change minds in Ukraine.
English language media often conflate the two separate issues. Leon Hadar's National Interest article clears the air. If
Ukraine is the only concern, "Putin Could Cripple Ukraine Without Using Nukes".
"Much of the discussion in Washington and other Western capitals in recent days has been
focused on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s supposed threat to use nuclear weapons in
Ukraine, in response to challenges to what he perceives to be Moscow’s core national interests.
Yet as we ponder this specter of Russian deployment of its nuclear arsenal which, we are
warned, could lead to a Cuban Missile Crisis II, we need to be reminded that a global superpower
can cripple a small or mid-size power without resorting to the use of nukes. By just using the full
force of its conventional weapons in Ukraine, Russia would force Washington into the same no-
win situation it found itself in after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, when it concluded that
saving the victim of Moscow’s aggression would require direct U.S. military intervention.
Contrary to our collective historical memory, the single most destructive bombings raid in human
history was not the United States’ detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan, but the firebombing air raid on Tokyo by the U.S. Air Force during two nights in March 1945.
That raid left an estimated 100,000 Japanese civilians dead and over one million homeless. By
comparison, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of between 40,000 and 80,000
people.
The many attacks on military forces as well as on civilian populations during World War II, including
by German bombers and missiles that targeted British cities, and the devastating bombing of Berlin,
Dresden, and other German urban centers by American and British air forces, were as much, if not
more, destructive than the possible impact of a tactical nuclear bomb."
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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