No Middle Ground

War Laundering

Fraudsters have learned to deceive entire countries.

Relations between the West and the outside world are unequal—Europeans and Americans view the rest of humanity as a source of threat and an object for plunder.

Therefore, classical Western scholarship on international politics always places the power competition between powers at its core, where all means are acceptable.

Timofey Bordachev

Program Director of the Valdai Club

Bordachev is saying that in diplomacy, there can be no successful negotiations without equality. No equality, no middle ground, no meeting of the minds.

Of course, Western leaders pretend to be acting in good faith but history has shown they rarely do, for their goal is domination and exploitation. Most Western politicians are frauds. First they defraud the voters. Then they defraud other countries

It is fortunate that Putin is very sensitive to dishonesty, perhaps because of growing up on the mean streets of St. Petersburg —perhaps as a result of KGB training, or because of experiences in the 1990s and later after becoming President perhaps

He knows the game. He knows how to play it.

Newsday: The American Version

MANILA, Philippines — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the Trump administration is poised to help end the “senseless war” in Ukraine but acknowledged there is no quick path to a deal, saying diplomacy will require sustained effort and new ideas.

Rubio, who held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in the Philippine capital, alluded to how U.S.-mediated talks have stalled. He called them “unsuccessful or at least unfruitful” in the past but insisted that President Donald Trump was committed to the work “if conditions and factors have changed to make that possible.”

“That’s been the challenge — an end that both sides can accept,” Rubio told reporters. “We’ve tried and we’ll continue to try to see if we can, you know, find a middle ground that brings this about. And we’re prepared to play that role if the opportunity presents itself.”

A “middle ground”? There is no “middle” in this war. That was Minsk long ago.

The Russian Version: VZGLYAD

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila, the Philippines. The talks lasted just over 35 minutes. Also present were US Ambassador to India Sergio Gore and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker. According to RIA Novosti , the dialogue was initiated by Washington.

Lavrov as is well-known is now very skeptical about American intentions after Anchorage, as well as after the US’s unprovoked attack on Iran.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the two sides discussed, among other things, the situation in Ukraine. Lavrov briefed Rubio on the real state of affairs along the line of contact and declared that arms supplies to Kyiv were unacceptable. He also criticized European countries’ attempts to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

In other words, Lavrov (probably) said, “We’re about to liberate all of Donbas; we destroying Ukrainian infrastructure and supply lines. The Kiev regime is in chaos. But you keep on supplying arms to Ukraine. What “middle ground”? You were warned before. “

The minister also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness for a political and diplomatic resolution to the conflict and its commitment to the proposals put forward by the American side at the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Anchorage. Regional and international issues, including the situation in the Persian Gulf, were also discussed, the Foreign Ministry added.

Translation: After Anchorage and the war on Iran, talk is cheap. American promises are worthless.

Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio welcomed the cooperation between Roscosmos and NASA, cultural ties, and the development of interparliamentary exchanges.

This is just pro-forma. With Space X collapsing, as I wrote about recently, the US needs Russian help to get to the moon. My guess is that help has a price— which the US won’t want to pay.

“Attention was also paid to normalizing the operating conditions of Russian and US diplomatic missions,” the statement read. The foreign ministers agreed to continue communicating through their respective foreign ministries.

At present, the US and Russian don’t have “normal” diplomatic relations . Ummm….”middle ground?

The US Secretary of State, for his part, described the talks as a good and honest conversation.

“Good and honest” in diplomatese means short, abrupt, and unsatisfactory. The “talk” was only 35 minutes after all.

He clarified that bilateral relations between the countries, as well as Ukraine, were on the agenda.

Rubio stated that the US position on arms supplies to Ukraine has not changed: Washington continues to cooperate with its partners under the PURL program, a program for the purchase of American arms with European funds.

In other words, the US is continuing the proxy war.

No “middle ground”.

Russia plunging Kievan Ukraine into Chaos

Personally I don’t think that neither Putin nor Lavrov expected the “Empire of Lies" and it demented Emperor to deliver anything but false promises at Anchorage, which for Russia was just a bit of theater to prove to the world that it believes in peace, while prosecuting its war on NATO. Winning that war is an existential challenge .

Now, it has cut off Kiev from its supply lines to the Black Sea, and is methodically destroying Right Bank infrastructure. As a result, Kiev is in political chaos.

Syrsky is out. The NeoNazis are breaking into factions. Will they start fighting each other? I suppose it depends on the flow of money. So far, Zelensky has been the money man but how long can that go on? Can the Europeans find a better puppet.

For the US, the Ukraine is both a money laundering scheme of epic proportions and also what one might call ‘war laundering”.

War laundering typically refers to the intersection of illicit finance, organized crime, and geopolitics, where money laundering networks and trade-based schemes are used to fund military conflicts, bypass international sanctions, and sustain war efforts. It bridges the gap between everyday street crime and state-sponsored warfare, transforming “dirty cash” into operational military assets

That’s one definition.

In money laundering, the illegal or corrupt origins of the money are disguised as something legitimate, delivered by people in nice clean suits.

”War laundering. hides the malignant origins of the violence and the corruption and crime and disguises it all as diplomats prate about freedom and democracy and innocent women and children die.

Trump and his crew are war criminals. So too Zelensky and his government and much of his military.

There is no “middle ground” here — not for them.

But there may be middle ground elsewhere

It is possible that Ukraine will follow pattern established in the second Chechen war, with Chechen nationalist leaders competing against one another, and Putin finally aligning with former rebel leaders, such as Akhmad Kadyrov (and later his son Ramzan Kadyrov), who saw they could achieve their goals better as part of the Federation, with the Federation guaranteeing cultural equality, rather than separately.

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