Even before his phone call with Donald Trump — now scheduled to be held tomorrow, March 18th — Vladimir Putin has proven me (and a whole lot of others) right when we predicted that he would remain intransigent in his demands for any peaceful settlement with Ukraine.

He no more wants peace on reasonable terms than I want a boil on my rear end.

This morning (Moscow time), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko told state-aligned media outlet Izvestia:

“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement. Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato [sic] countries to accept it into the alliance.” [George Wright, BBC News, Mach 17, 2025.]

One would think the U.S. response to that would be, at the very least, a bit of tough talk about further sanctions or other counter-measures. But no-o-o-o-o . . . Instead, this is what Donald Trump had to say while jetting back to D.C. aboard Air Force One from his weekend at Mar-a-Lago (costing the American taxpayers . . . how much?):

“A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants.” He added that he was already discussing “dividing up certain assets” between Russia and Ukraine. [Id.]

It’s not clear who “we” are — the people who have been doing the discussing and the weekend work. But one thing is blindingly clear, even before the “official” discussion between Trump and Putin:

Ukraine has already lost this war.

Despite all of the support from its Western allies, the grit and courage of its people, and the sanctions and other measures taken against Russia over the past three years . . . in spite of all of that, Russia is on the verge of accomplishing what it set out to do in the first place (although it’s taken longer than originally anticipated). And that is to “reclaim” another portion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory as its own, leaving the door open to the next phase of its westward expansion.

*. *. *

One could argue that, throughout the history of mankind, wars and alliances have brought about geopolitical shifts: borders have been moved; nations have collapsed under their own weight, or fallen under the greater strength of other countries. And, hundreds of years later, it makes great reading for the student of history.

But not so for the current victims. Some may call it geopolitical reality; I call it gang rape.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/17/25