From Paul Craig Roberts
John Helmer Reporting from Moscow Indicates that Putin Is Preparing Russia’s Surrender
October 1, 2024 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |
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John Helmer Reporting from Moscow Indicates that Putin Is Preparing Russia’s Surrender
Paul Craig Roberts
From the beginning of the Ukraine conflict I have said that Putin would have to conquer Ukraine or surrender. The latest information from Moscow suggests that Putin has chosen to surrender, with surrender defined by Putin giving up enough of his goals for the Special Military Operation to get a peace agreement. How many and what they would be is not known.
At first glance, if Putin has made such a choice, it is an honorable, humane decision that places the life of the planet above Russian national sovereignty. Putin, of course, will not get any credit for it. The official narrative will be a defeated Russia got the best deal it could.` But at second glance, Putin’s surrender to the West merely kicks the can down the road.
Putin’s surrender could undermine his support and Russian unity and encourage Washington’s effort to breakup the Russian Federation into several small countries that lack the ability to serve as a constraint on American hegemony. The Russian military is opposed to trading concessions for peace, and Putin has removed one of his critics.
Helmer reports that one month after the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, Putin, who has no taste for war, sent a peacemaker, Vladimir Medinsky, to Instanbul to negotiate peace with Ukraine. Medinsky appears to be an Atlanticist Integrationist, who thinks Russia can build bridges to the West with cultural exhibitions, orchestral and ballet performances, and museum exhibits. Apparently, he believes this despite the Wests’s ban on any semblance of Russian culture, including Olympic athletes.
The Russian military rejected the peace terms Medinsky negotiated in Turkey. Fortunately for Putin, Washington made Ukraine reject them, saving Putin from a confrontation with the Russian military.
Now approaching three years of a conflict that a real national leader would have ended in 3 weeks, Putin has his back to the wall. There is no space left to which to retreat. Faced with US/NATO missiles fired into Russia, Putin says it means World War. If Putin backs down again, Russia is finished. As Putin doesn’t want war, he is willing to make concessions for peace and has instructed Medinsky to negotiate a peace agreement. The world should thank Putin, because Russia will pay a price.
The Russian military, or at least significant parts of it, are concerned that concessions will play as a defeat and have adverse effects on Russia. Fleet commander, Admiral Sergei Avakyant, removed from command by Putin, and Deputy Chairman Medvedev of the Russian National Security Council view concessions as unacceptable. Helmer speculates whether the military will remove Putin. If so, I would imagine his replacement would be a more hardlined person.
What follows is from Helmer’s report:
“Medinsky’s version of the end-of-war terms is flatly opposed by the General Staff. In the Security Council the General Staff’s case is argued by Deputy Chairman Medvedev. Medinsky’s appearance at the Security Council last week is a sign, Moscow sources believe, of the intensification of the debate between the Army and the President.
In an unusual disclosure of military command thinking, the former Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Sergei Avakyants, has written earlier this month that “despite its external logic and attractiveness”, the Medinsky terms for ending the Special Military Operation “lead to a catastrophe that threatens to become the last and most tragic in the history of the Russian people. In Russia, it is dangerous for the current government to lose wars, especially when for a long time this government held parades and convinced the people of the invincibility of their native army. Defeat will cause disappointment and loss of faith, but not in the army, rather in the political leadership.”
Avakyants was warning Putin publicly. In private, Putin had ordered Avakyants’s dismissal in April. No Russian military blogger has reported the circumstances of the clash between Avakyants and the Kremlin.
According to Admiral Avakyants’s declaration of military independence from the Kremlin, “the pressure on Russia from its historical opponents will only increase, and the escalation process will enter an irreversible phase. The enormous resources currently invested in the indirect hot war of the collective West against our country will be redirected to finance all destructive and anti-state forces (regional separatism, ‘the fight against the rotten corrupt regime’, ‘the promotion of universal freedoms and values’, etc.). Various states ‘historically offended’ by our country will begin to make territorial claims against Russia from all sides.”
“The sanctions will not be lifted, but they may take even harsher and more painful forms for our economy. Part of the elite — weakened but still strong compradors, the remaining part of the ‘fifth column’ in the country [intellectuals and Atlanticist Integrationists] will painlessly adapt to the conditions of the collapse of the state. The country’s leadership, elite groups directly integrated into state structures, will be destroyed (politically, economically, and some even physically). No one will be forgiven, and no one will be forgotten.”
“It is very important for the West to once again demonstrate to the entire world what awaits the ‘rebels’ who have encroached on its model of world order. There is no hope for support from allies due to the absence of any (except Belarus). It will be necessary to answer a very difficult question that is already forming in the public consciousness: ‘For what were so many sacrifices made if the goals of the Donbas operation are not achieved, and if peace is concluded at the expense of fundamental concessions to enemies which means a defeat for Russia?’ The people, having once again lost their ‘Faith’ and ‘Tsar’, will remain silent, watching the collapse of their ‘Fatherland’. All this will not happen overnight, but by historical standards very quickly – in five to seven years.”
“To avoid all this, Russia must choose the second option. It can be briefly described in two words – ‘Fight and Victory’. This option is unattractive and uncomfortable. It requires the leadership to assume the heaviest burden of responsibility, implement unpopular decisions, change the usual, established way of life for millions of people, introduce a different system of values and life priorities for the ruling elite. ‘Option No. 2 will require (for some time) exerting all efforts, attracting new personnel selected on the basis of professionalism, patriotism and the prevalence of the interests of society and the state over personal ones. It will be necessary to carry out a significant reorganization and restructuring of various government structures and a significant part of the entire state mechanism.”
In Avakyants’s outline of end-of-war terms, he proposes negotiations after military victory. “The victory must be unconditional – neither enemies, nor partners, nor our own people should have even the slightest doubt that this is Russia’s Victory. The goals declared by the President must be achieved without fail: access to the 2014 administrative borders of the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions; denazification – a change of the ruling regime in Ukraine, a change in the Constitution of Ukraine and current legislation (permission for the UOC [Ukrainian Orthodox Church], official bilingualism, a ban on Nazi-Bandera ideology, etc.); demilitarization – constitutionally activated neutral status of Ukraine, prohibition of deployment on its territory of foreign military bases and military contingents (including advisers and instructors), heavy weapons, types of weapons capable of threatening the territory of Russia; after the invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region, Ukrainian statehood in its current form should not exist or, in extreme cases, can be preserved, but weakened as much as possible.”
If Putin’s fails to defend Russia, the failure will open the discussion to “conspiracy theorists” that Putin is nothing but a compliant member of the World Economic Forum’s globalism, the agenda of which is the destruction of national sovereignty, including Russia’s, and the unification of the world under a global ruler.
Will this be Putin’s legacy?
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