by Gilbert Doctorow via https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/02/11/waiting-for-the-munich-security-conference-to-open-what-peace-plan-is-team-trump-bringing/#comments
Has the lifting of U.S. pressure of state censorship on social media and video platforms like youtube since Donald Trump’s inauguration made a difference in what we see and hear on the internet? My intuitive judgment says ‘yes.’ Day by day, I am struck by the proliferation of disinformation and fake news now coming from online broadcasters in the alternative media as ‘yellow press’ sensationalism rises for the sake of attracting an audience and signing up paying sponsors. Platforms may change with technology, but human instincts remain the same. By curious coincidence, this is happening at the very moment when lying and propagandistic mainstream media like The New York Times and The Financial Times have cooled to the notion of Ukraine dealing a strategic defeat on Russia while retaking all of its territories lost since 2014 and are presenting more fact-based reporting on the daily setbacks of the Ukrainian forces and the approaching Russian victory.
A case in point about rumor mongering was delivered to my inbox a day ago by friends in Brussels who sent me the link to a just released podcast by Clayton Morris (Redacted) claiming to know the contents of the peace plan Trump’s team will present at the Munich Security Conference that opens in two days. This plan supposedly will provide for joint Russian-Ukrainian control of the contested Eastern Ukraine regions of Novaya Rossiya now held by Russian troops, while Ukraine’s entry into the European Union is foreseen. It will provide for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Moscow will be incentivized to agree by the release of their frozen assets to Russian oligarchs. Oh, yes, and at the start of a cease fire, the United States would halt all further arms deliveries to Kiev.
Who knows? Perhaps such an improbable plan is among the papers that General Kellogg, Trump’s emissary to Ukraine and Russia, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are carrying with them to Munich. The notion that Putin can be moved to genuflect before Washington’s strong man by the self-serving dictates from his own Russian oligarchs is so utterly ignorant of Russian realities that it could easily have been put forward by Trump’s staff, who seem to be as poorly informed about what makes Russia tick as were Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken in the Biden administration.
We can be left guessing, because Trump himself in his latest chats with Fox News reporters yesterday declared that he has made great progress towards a peace in the past week. He said he has spoken by telephone to Putin. He still hopes to bring together Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky for face-to-face negotiations.
Note that so far Donald Trump’s approach to negotiating an end to the Russia-Ukraine war has exactly the same elements of bravado, bullying, hubris as we see in all of his other opening moves on the international front, such as his threats of 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, his demand that Denmark ‘sell’ Greenland to the USA and his imposition of what are intended to be crushing new sanctions on Iran so as to open talks on a comprehensive settlement of decades long confrontation from what Americans perceive as ‘a position of strength.’
Note also, that in the case of Iran, Trump’s tactics have so far failed completely. A week ago, the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameini, flatly rejected entering into negotiations with Trump, saying that the Americans were not trustworthy and that Trump’s opening moves were ‘undignified.’
Exactly the same new crushing sanctions were imposed by Trump on Russia to show off his muscle to American admirers: namely sanctions directed against the so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that Russia, like Iran, has assembled to take the delivery of oil to export markets entirely in its own hands, including provision of insurance coverage for the tankers. The intention of Trump in both instances is to reduce the exports and foreign currency earnings of both countries to nil.
All of the optimism coming from the Trump camp that it holds the high cards in relations with Russia flies in the face of the statements made yesterday afternoon by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov that relations with the USA “are at the breaking point.” The war will end, said Ryabkov, only when the conditions set down by Vladimir Putin in June 2023 are satisfied. These conditions include the withdrawal of all Ukrainian military forces from the 4 Eastern Ukrainian regions that have been formally integrated into the Russian Federation, disavowal by Kiev on its hopes to enter the NATO alliance together with acceptance of neutral status without the presence of any foreign military personnel or installations on its territory. Let us remember that Ryabkov is the same official who announced in December 2021 Russia’s ultimatum to the USA calling for return of NATO to its borders of 1997, that is to say, before the multiple expansion waves that took in the former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltic States.
Yesterday, Ryabkov also said that there are no prospects presently for successful discussions with the United States about limitations on medium range ground-based missiles or other items on the agenda in regulating strategic stability. Needless to say, Ryabkov’s very depressing message is not being reported by Western media. No one wants to spoil the party about to open in Munich.
When we look at the attendance list for the Munich conference, everyone seems to be present…except the Russians. What does the American delegation headed by the number two (vice president) and number three (secretary of state) officials in the U.S. federal government expect to achieve other than to ‘confer’ with its European allies who are in fact just vassals who will do whatever Washington tells them to do. Of course, Volodymyr Zalensky will also be in attendance, though here again, he is just dead weight on the talks since his opinion counts for nothing.
