{"id":1533658,"date":"2025-05-02T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1533658"},"modified":"2025-05-02T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T11:30:00","slug":"radio-liberty-let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag-regarding-the-eus-game-plan-for-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/radio-liberty-let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag-regarding-the-eus-game-plan-for-ukraine\/1533658\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio Liberty Let The Cat Out Of The Bag Regarding The EU’s Game Plan For Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Radio Liberty Let The Cat Out Of The Bag Regarding The EU’s Game Plan For Ukraine<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Russia can expect nothing in return from the EU if Putin concedes to allow their troops and aircraft to deploy in and patrol over Western Ukraine…<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Russia has long warned that any unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine of the 30-day sort that Zelensky has\u00a0proposed<\/a>\u00a0could create an opening for NATO to expand its military influence in that country. Hitherto dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the West,\u00a0Radio Liberty<\/a>\u00a0just let the cat out of the bag. The unnamed officials who they cited in their recent article confirmed that they envisage this \u201cbuy[ing] the Europeans time to assemble a \u2018reassurance force\u2019 in the Western part of Ukraine\u201d and organize \u201cair patrols\u201d there.<\/p>\n

Their reported game plan is \u201ckeeping the Americans onboard\u201d the peace process, \u201csequencing\u201d the conflict by clinching a ceasefire that\u2019ll later lead to a lasting peace, and using the aforesaid interim period to carry out the abovementioned military moves for pressuring Russia into more concessions.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

What\u2019s omitted from Radio Liberty\u2019s article is that Russia has threatened to target Western troops in Ukraine, who Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth\u00a0earlier said<\/a>\u00a0wouldn\u2019t enjoy Article 5 guarantees from the US.<\/p>\n

Even if Putin agrees to this concession that\u2019s assessed to be among\u00a0one of the five significant differences<\/a>\u00a0between him and Trump that prompted Trump\u2019s angry post against Putin, Radio Liberty reported that this still wouldn\u2019t lead to de jure European recognition of Russia\u2019s territorial gains.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The same goes for them lifting sanctions or returning any of its \u20ac200 billion of seized assets. More sanctions might even soon be imposed and the windfall profits from those assets will \u201cbankroll Ukraine\u2019s military needs\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given what Radio Liberty revealed, Russia can therefore expect nothing in return from the EU if Putin concedes to allow their troops and aircraft to deploy in and patrol over Western Ukraine. Any hopes of restoring Ukraine\u2019s antebellum buffer state status would be crushed, and it can\u2019t be ruled out that the EU\u2019s zone of military activity could later expand to the Dnieper or beyond. One of the\u00a0special<\/a>\u00a0operation<\/a>\u2019s goals was to prevent the West\u2019s eastward military expansion so that would be another major concession.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s decades-long close friend and influential senior aide Nikolay Patrushev just told\u00a0TASS<\/a>\u00a0earlier this week that \u201cFor the second year in a row, NATO is holding the largest exercises in decades near our borders, where it is practicing scenarios of offensive actions over a large area – from Vilnius to Odessa, the seizure of the Kaliningrad region, the blocking of shipping in the Baltic and Black Seas, and preventive strikes on the permanent bases of Russian nuclear deterrent forces.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Secretary of the Security Council Sergey Shoigu\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the same outlet several days prior that \u201cOver the past year, the number of military contingents of NATO countries deployed near the western borders of the Russian Federation has increased almost 2.5 times\u2026NATO is moving to a new combat readiness system, which provides for the possibility of deploying a 100,000-strong group of troops near the borders of Russia within 10 days, 300,000 by the end of 30 days, and 800,000 by the end of 180 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the EU\u2019s\u00a0prioritization<\/a>\u00a0of the Baltic Defence Line and Poland\u2019s complementary East Shield are added to the equation, coupled with plans for expanding the \u201cmilitary Schengen<\/a>\u201d to speed up the eastward deployment of troops and equipment, the trappings of Operation Barbarossa 2.0 are apparent.<\/strong> Putin can\u2019t influence what NATO does within the bloc\u2019s borders, but he has the power to stop its de facto expansion into Western Ukraine during a ceasefire, which could partially hinder its speculative plans.<\/p>\n

Conceding to them, which he might agree to do for the five reasons mentioned in the second half of this analysis\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0from early March, would lead to Russia\u2019s mutual defense ally Belarus being surrounded by NATO along its northern, western, and then southern flanks<\/strong>. That could make it a\u00a0tempting future target<\/a>, but Western aggression might be deterred by the continued deployment of Russia\u2019s Oreshniks and tactical nuclear weapons, the latter of which Belarus has already been authorized to use at its discretion.<\/p>\n

Conceding to Western troops in Ukraine in exchange for the economic and strategic benefits that Russia hopes to reap from the US if their\u00a0nascent<\/a>\u00a0\u201cNew<\/a>\u00a0D\u00e9tente<\/a>\u201d takes off after a peace deal would therefore entail conventional security costs that could be managed through the means that were just described. At the same time, however,\u00a0hardliners<\/a>\u00a0like Patrushev, Shoigu, and honorary chairman of Russia\u2019s influential Council on Foreign and Defense Policy\u00a0Sergey Karaganov<\/a>\u00a0could dissuade him from such a deal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Putin must therefore decide whether this is an acceptable trade-off or if Russia should risk losing its post-conflict strategic partnership with the US by continuing to oppose NATO\u2019s de facto expansion into Western Ukraine, including via military means if EU forces move into there without Russian approval. His decision will determine not only the future of this conflict, but also Russia\u2019s contingency planning vis-\u00e0-vis a possible hot war with NATO, thus making this the defining moment of his quarter-century rule.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 05\/02\/2025 – 03:30<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/radio-liberty-let-cat-out-bag-regarding-eus-game-plan-ukraine<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Radio Liberty Let The Cat Out Of The Bag Regarding The EU’s Game Plan For Ukraine Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack, Russia can expect…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1533659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1533659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}