ITS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLES

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“Principles drive values and goals and act as anchors during difficult and conflicting times.”

George A. Goens

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The latest ‘Trump’ peace plan copied and pasted from a Russian translation is, as we all know, a criminal bag of unprincipled garbage.

In essence it’s what Putin wants. And while negotiations will water it all down and make Ukraine look like it’s showing willingness to go with the flow, Russia will never accept what’s on offer.

Putin wants what he wants.

Maximalist objectives are his aim because without achieving them he has not really won in a way he can explain to Russia. The cost and losses for less than what he demands are simply not going to wear well, his strategic failure will be obvious.

Yet give him what he wants and he emerges a winner with all the deep and agonizing implications that will have for Europe.

There really is only one way to ensure that this never happens again. Russian forces leave Ukraine on their knees and the regime tumbles into a heap of economic misery, that will finally break the imperial power system that every other colonial empire has already dealt with. That is one potential future if the war goes on and Ukraine continues its campaigns.

On principle Russia cannot be seen to gain anything, nothing. It’s down to us to make sure that it doesn’t – that should be our principle, just as in WW2 we agreed that only unconditional surrender would be accepted from Germany and Japan. We knew that only their destruction and the death of their regimes would suffice. And we were right.

Nothing has changed. How we go about it has.

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“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

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It’s also now a matter of principle that we in Europe+ stop letting the Americans keep thinking they can even get to do this.

Ukraine and Europe+ at the very most senior levels must decide that together there will be no more running to Washington, or meetings in Geneva to discuss anything.

On principle everyone should have just read the document and said ‘no’. What exactly do the Americans think they can do?

Trumps power has been severely weakened. His Congress won’t go along with killing off support to Ukraine and his public approvals will tank still further – a subject that always bothers him. He’s already expecting it to go badly as you can see from his banal comments about leaving Zelensky to ‘fight his little heart out’. Trump is already bored with the game.

So why is Europe+ and Ukraine even bothering with this travesty? Just get up and walk out and tell them NO. None of it’s acceptable.

Then embark upon our principled journey to end this the only way it can be ended. With a strategic war on Russia at such a scale it will collapse under the weight of its own ludicrous contradictions.

Break them. That’s the principle.

End Putin’s regime, let Russia collapse and deal with the end result. Only that will chasten the Chinese and the Iranians. Only that will make certain Russian imperialism is ended and real, principled change can begin.

On principle Ukraine should be compensated and rebuilt and regain its land.

The Russians have created a war-ravaged environmental catastrophe in the occupied territories. It will take decades to remedy what they have done.

On principle we must all help. What Russia wants, is according to our principles no longer acceptable.

On principle we must stand by Ukraine.

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“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

President Thomas Jefferson

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If the cost of that is American isolation again, for a while, we’ll deal with it. Because on principle it’s worth it.

Remember that Putin is an indicted war criminal with a warrant for his arrest. His army continues to carry out endless war crimes on a daily basis.

Are we really willing to let all this go and appease this human detritus? These evil, ruthless ‘humans’ who care for nothing?

Because if we are, if there is a god may he forgive our dumbfounding stupidity. We will bring war to the point of inevitable. And as many have said before – World War 3 will be the last. There won’t be a fourth.

I sincerely hope we learn to stand up and stick to our principles. We have had to relearn what they are in the past four years but we’re almost all the way there now.

Let’s not go back.

THE ORIGINS OF THE PLAN

This whole plan has its origins in the Russian foreign ministry in 2022. Almost all of the proposals were included in the Russo-Ukrainian Istanbul talks that year. Some of the points are actually worse for Ukraine now.

These points have been used as the basis of many Russian declarations in respect of their maximalist aims.

The initial proposed version this time was first seen by a German Der Spiegel journalist, who considered it so unworthy of mention he didn’t report on it as long ago as May 2025.

The main protagonist of getting it seen by the American regime seems to have been the Special Representative to the Trump Administration, Kiril Dimitriev. There has never been to my knowledge, anyone other than the Russian Ambassador, assigned to such a unique role with plenipotentiary negotiating powers assigned to any previous administration. It tells you how much Putin feels he needs to be on top of what Trump is doing and making sure someone is right there to intervene if need be.

Trumps use of useful fools and unprofessional wannabes shoved a man with no background or even basic knowledge whatsoever in foreign affairs, Steve Witkoff, a realtor from Florida, into the position of ultra high level diplomacy. Flattered but overwhelmed by the heady atmosphere he was dealing in, Witkoff has clearly been outplayed and outmaneuvered by every Russian he’s come across, from Putin down to Dimitriev, who has played him like the lead violin in a string quartet.

Witkoff, has also been played by JD Vance, who recognized a soft touch when he saw it. Either Dimitriev gave Vance the proposal and he persuaded Witkoff to run with it, making it look like it was Witkoff’s idea to ensure him of his support and get it in front of Trump. Or Witkoff, needing advice and knowing he couldn’t go to Rubio who would demand that foreign affairs were his remit as Secretary of State, and that he should be in charge of such discussions, took it to Vance. Vance jumped on it whichever way around it was and while he seems to have let Witkoff deal with the ‘negotiations’ it was Dimitriev who put the plan into English and prepped Witkoff to get it to Trump.

Rubio and the State Department, gutted after thousands of DOGE cuts, knew nothing whatsoever about the whole thing. Rubio and Vance have very different ideas on where the party goes in a Post-Trump world. They’re two factions who hate each other and for Vance this was a way of minimizing Rubio and ingratiating himself with Trump.

The problem was that the Kremlin was getting agitated at the lack of progress, made partly more difficult without foreign affairs specialists input and the army of international law lawyers the document had not been scruitinised by. It turns out that it contains no less than 73 breeches of various agreements, UN resolutions and treaties the US has entered into since 1945. Russia isn’t interested in these problems, it just wants the administration to push Ukraine into signing because the fact is the Kremlin knows it cannot keep the war going for much longer, especially now that Ukrainian drone strikes are intensifying on the domestic front. It needs the war over one way or another and Putin seen to be seen to have won.

This impatience seems to have lead Dimitriev to leak the document through AXIOS, and when asked for comment, Witkoff rather than replying to AXIOS in a DM, replied in a tweet ‘this must have come from K’ – meaning Kiril Dimitriev. Then all hell broke loose. There was no careful framing of the document, no managed discussion, it was just out there and the regime chose to back it up as fast as it could.

Ai analysis has shown, that when asked, which language these English sentences are most likely to have been translated from , it replied ‘Russian’. It identified word constructs and capitalization that could only have come from a Russian original copy.

Rubio then went out of his way using his official X channel to tell the public, after calling key senators in charge of foreign affairs oversight – they went out on record and said so – that ‘This was not the American plan’ and that they were just communicating the Russian plan to the Ukrainians. He then completely backtracked on his personal channel, not his official one.

By now Trump is deeply agitated and has clearly been speaking to the grotesquely anti-Ukrainian Vance. Vance reminded him of Zelensky being ungrateful – none of which is true – but Trump jumped back on board that theme almost immediately, declaring that they had to sign this by this Thursday, Thanksgiving day, 27th November.

The backlash from Ukraine’s Ambassador was immediate, from European leadership – most of whom were at the largely disastrous COP30 in Nairobi, the feedback was instantly negative, even more so when the statement ‘we don’t care about the Europeans’ got out.

The Russians timing was perfect. They were pressing Pokrovsk, they just broke through at Huliapole and Zelensky was dealing with the biggest corruption crisis of the war as his closest friends betrayed him and Ukraine in a truly awful corruption scandal. One of my ‘magic’ skills is I can read body language like a detailed book. I watched him on TV and I don’t think I have ever seen him look like he was close to being at his wits end, wondering where the next blow would fall from. Who needs enemies with friends like this? He put on a brave face, but you can see from the way he is controlling his features, the lack of facial mobility when speaking, that he’s going through the motions and keeping calm on the outside. Inside I suspect he wants to say everything he can never risk saying. If there was a T-72 charging at him, he would stand there, flip it on its back and break the barrel off just to make the point, then wave on the next one to dare try.

I have already said that in my opinion we should not even be giving the Americans the time of day, we’re making a rod for our own back as long as we do. Whatever garbage comes out from Geneva, even if it seems mildly acceptable on the surface, that’s not what Putin wants. He wants a victory, he has to have his victory and it has to be palpable, if Ukraine won’t surrender he thinks he can drive it into the ground. You know and I know that’s not happening. It’s not Ukraine that’s likely to break. Because as I have said recently, Ukraine has real allies with real intent, real capabilities and the ability to keep Ukraine fighting until Russia breaks. Russia has none of that. Its ‘allies’ are expedient, a means to an end, for them as well as they for it.

Even as I write and the Rubio/Witkoff/European negotiations in Geneva conclude (apparently he had no trouble getting Trump to let him lead the talks, which is what he’s for after all), Lavarov has just admitted from Moscow that the original document was indeed Russian.

Imagine a world even 20 years ago where America was forcing one of its allies to surrender almost completely to its invader, using a document cooked up by Russia and adopted wholeheartedly by the administrations senior figures who pretended it was theirs? You could not make this up 20 years ago, even 10. It’s the ultimate in right wing amateur hour ignorance. It’s a disgusting stain on America, on those who did not vote for the madness that now stalks the land.

I remain confident in Russia’s defeat. Its arrogance and temerity, its fake story telling that is clearly failing to convince anyone much now, even in America, is being revealed for what it truly is is. The last gasps of a regime strung up from the gallows, hoisted by its own petard.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst@bsky.social