That I agree. The great "deal-maker" gave them away already to his buddy PuPu. Or rather gave Zelensky's cards away already.
Vlad is dicking around with the cease-fire proposal. Watch your arse Vlad. You have been warned. Your buddy Trump can go south pretty fast. This is your last of a dozen warnings I have issued. Don't try to get cute with the Orange Man.
And why wouldn't he? The EU fills his coffers daily with all the oil and gas they buy from him. Trump will fix that too. Or try. Watch the EU protest.
Plus Biden overlooked all the russian shadow fleet shipments of oil to other countries. And overlooked all the financial transactions that were giving Vlad and his buyers backdoor access. And, Biden overlooked other countries doing business with Russia while also doing business with the U.S. Lot of areas to tighten up if needed. Biden allowed a lot of energy violations because he did not want to drive up the price of oil in an election year.
Putin wants nothing to do with a 30 day ceasefire proposal. All of his mouthpieces have already stated the Kremlin's position. A 30 day ceasefire will only provide Ukraine with time to rearm and boost their defenses. The only proposal that will be accepted is a peace proposal which provides Russia with everything it wants including the yielding all of eastern Ukraine to be part of Russia. Trump's buddies will be going home from Moscow empty handed --- or simply carrying empty promises that Russia will not follow through on. "Peace in our time".
The sticking point will be/is around the demilitarization of Ukraine. Putin can get and Trump will give him on a freebie platter the occupied territories and the sanctions relief. Which is enormous but not enough for Putin. He wants assurances that Ukraine has not entered into mutual defense with Poland, EU etc, and that Ukraine can not build up its own arms and that the west cannot provide them arms. Wayyy too much for Poland, Ukraine etc to swallow. Poland 100% believes they are next after the dems are elected in 2028 and Putin takes all of Ukraine. Doesn't matter whether you or I or anyone believes that, but Poland does and they are probably right. Trump is very tight with Poland which is sort of a complication in the mix for Putin. He wants to give Vlad a lot but Vlad's modus operandi is that "too much is not enough." Therein lies the dilemma.
I believe that once Putin seizes Ukraine then Poland, the Baltic countries and other eastern European nations are next on Vlad's menu to reunify the Soviet empire. This underlines why it is important to stop Putin firmly in Ukraine -- and further underlines why Trump is flubbing the entire situation by not firmly supporting Ukraine in stopping Russia's aggression. If we allow Putin to take Ukraine then the next step is WW3 when Putin attempts to violently seize NATO countries in Europe. Appeasement did not work with Hitler, nor will it work with Putin.
The latest from Russia. Kremlin says there's 'nothing' for Russia in US ceasefire idea for Ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...rainian-forces-kursk-kremlin-says-2025-03-13/ Kremlin says truce would give respite to Ukraine military Kremlin: Russia wants long-term peace settlement Putin orders defeat of last Ukrainian troops in Kursk Putin to speak at news conference on Thursday - Kremlin MOSCOW, March 13 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's top foreign policy aide said on Thursday a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the United States to pause the war in Ukraine would give Russia "nothing" while gifting Kyiv's forces a much-needed battlefield respite. Russian forces have been advancing since mid-2024 and control nearly a fifth of Ukraine's territory, three years after sending tens of thousands of troops into its neighbour in a war that U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will halt. Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks. Russian officials said U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz had provided details on the ceasefire idea on Wednesday and Russia was ready to discuss it. Trump had said in the White House on Wednesday that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine said it would support. Yuri Ushakov, a former ambassador to Washington who speaks for Putin on major foreign policy issues, told Russian state TV that he had spoken to Waltz on Wednesday to outline Russia's position on the ceasefire. "I stated our position that this is nothing other than a temporary respite for the Ukrainian military, nothing more," Ushakov said. "It gives us nothing. It only gives the Ukrainians an opportunity to regroup, gain strength and to continue the same thing," he later added, saying he felt the proposal needed to be updated to take account of Russia's interests. Ushakov, who has served alongside Putin in the Kremlin since 2012, stopped short of rejecting the U.S. proposal outright, however, saying the president would likely speak to the media later on Thursday and outline Russia's position in more detail. Ushakov said Moscow's goal was "a long-term peaceful settlement that takes into account the legitimate interests of our country and our well-known concerns." "It seems to me that no one needs any steps that (merely) imitate peaceful actions in this situation," he said, making clear he thought that the Europeans were trying to put Moscow in a position where it looked, wrongly, as if Russia was against peace. The remarks from such a senior Kremlin official indicate that Putin, Russia's paramount leader since 1999, thinks that Russia's advances on the battlefield in Ukraine and in western Russia give Moscow a strong hand in peace negotiations. It was unclear how Trump would react though, after saying on Wednesday that he hoped Moscow would agree to a ceasefire to end the "bloodbath" and that in his first term he had been tougher on Russia than other presidents. "I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia," Trump said. "I don't want to do that because I want to get peace. I want to see peace and we'll see. But in a financial sense, yeah, we could do things very bad for Russia. It would be devastating for Russia." Trump has sought to rebuild relations with Russia to avoid an escalation of the Ukraine war that he says could develop into World War Three, though he has also held out both the threat of more sanctions and the prospect of lifting sanctions if Moscow seeks to end the war. KREMLIN HARDBALL Just hours after Trump spoke in Washington, the Kremlin published footage of Putin dressed in a green camouflage uniform visiting the Kursk region of western Russia where Ukraine is set to lose its foothold after a major offensive by Russian forces. Putin, a former KGB officer, very rarely wears military outfits. The Kremlin said that Russia's supreme commander in chief had deemed it necessary to wear the military fatigues. The United States agreed on Tuesday to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said at talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal. But Russia has been advancing on the battlefield despite the hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. and European aid to Ukraine, whose forces are being pushed out of the western Russian region of Kursk. Beyond the immediate ceasefire idea, Russia has presented the U.S. with a list of demands for a deal to end its war against Ukraine and reset relations with Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter. Asked about the Reuters report, Ushakov said Washington knew Russia's position. In an attempt to divert Russian forces from eastern Ukraine, gain a bargaining chip and embarrass Putin, Ukraine smashed across the border into the Kursk region in August, the biggest attack on Russian territory since the Nazi invasion of 1941. Ukraine now has a sliver of less than 200 square km (77 square miles) in Kursk, down from 1,300 square km (500 square miles) at the peak of the incursion last summer, according to the Russian military.
I was wondering about those ghost fleets of Russian oil. Is there any maritime law that would allow the USN or the UK's navy to commandeer those without it being viewed as an act of war? Technically Russia would have to deny they are theirs right?