by Seymour Hersh via https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/an-endgame-in-ukraine
Excerpt
Washington remains split as secret talks on a settlement proceed
In Washington, the Democratic Party leadership, having spent years ignoring the impairment of President Joe Biden, is now ignoring the increasing evidence that Russia has won the war in Ukraine. Leading Democrats in Congress have returned to the mentality of the Cold War in their contempt for and fear of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
I can report that some of those involved in the on-and-off secret talks between Ukraine and Russia are convinced that the long stalemated war will soon be ended by a closely calculated division of territory that has been lost by each side in a war that Putin chose to initiate in February of 2022.
There is still a widespread belief in the Democratic Party that President Donald Trump’s chronic complaints about the leaders of the nations that make up NATO are not paying their way are, as one international scholar told me, “a ruse.” Trump is really interested, the scholar said, “in weakening democratic, liberal Europe and its collective institutions in order to make it easier for his new ally, Putin, to throw his weight around.” The scholar quoted a recent essay by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the world economy editor of the Telegraph, who compared Trump’s actions to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that barred the countries from attacking each other. and left Germany to focus on Western Europe, drawing the UK into the war.
The scholar cited a number of Trump administration actions to back up his view of Trump as little more than a Russia asset. The president has ceased arms shipments to Ukraine and intelligence sharing with its military. He ordered an end to offensive cyber operations against Russia. He and Vice President JD Vance publicly supported pro-Russian political parties in recent European elections. Some of his key aides are working to revive the flow of cheap Russian gas to Germany via the remaining Nord Stream pipelines “to keep Western European countries, especially Germany, dependent on Russian gas and oil, thus providing Putin with another lever of influence” in Western Europe.
The major American media, most notably the New York Times, remain hostile to Putin. The newspaper’s opinion and news columns repeatedly express the belief that, having won a large chunk of Ukraine on the battlefield, Putin would take advantage of any negotiated settlement to deepen Russia’s hold on Ukraine. It is feared that Putin would take a settlement, which could include the dropping of all sanctions on Russian gas and oil trading, as a sign of American weakness, and that Russia would undercut the leadership of the Baltic states and continue to undermine Nato and the European Union.
