On Minsk agreement, Putin wins and Obama loses

The only way that U.S. President Barack Obama can win in Ukraine now is by negotiating subsequent details to become deal-breakers to the February 12th draft agreement, such that for Russian President Vladimir Putin not to accept Obama's proposed details would mean that no deal will be signed. This could happen, because the prestige of both leaders is on the line in this new draft deal on Ukraine.

The agreement is only basic principles, which can be found here. The announcement of the agreement opens as follows:

"Russian President Vladimir Putin; President of Ukraine, Peter Poroshenko; French President Francois Hollande; and Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel, confirmed full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. They firmly believe in the inevitability of peaceful resolution."

U.S. President Barack Obama is not mentioned there; but, for him to reject their deal, and to send lethal weapons to Ukraine now and so escalate the war and its massive bloodshed — which has already cost "up to 50,000" dead and millions of refugees — would be extremely embarrassing for the United States: no American "boots on the ground," just tens of thousands of Ukrainian corpses under it, in a war that Obama himself had initiated (and even the founder of Stratfor, the "private CIA" firm, says that the February 2014 overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, which started the war, was "the most blatant coup in history," which it certainly was , and is increasingly recognized as having been ).

If, during coming days, Putin does nothing that causes Merkel or Hollande to say Putin is violating what had been understood between the negotiants, then Putin will be essentially in control on those crucial remaining details too, and the U.S. position (which favors more war) (and this is so not only from Obama but also from the Congress) will go down in flames. The next few days and weeks will thus be crucial, and Merkel and Hollande hold the top cards, because Obama needs to avoid an open break with them — something that would be an open break with the EU itself, which America's aristocracy very much don't want to happen (since America's aristocracy would then lose their enormous influence over the EU).

The U.S. position has been for war against Russia from the start, which goes back at least to before 20 November 2013, when it was revealed in Ukraine's parliament or "Rada" that the U.S. had already very skillfully set to spring a Euromaidan movement to bring down the Ukrainian Presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, which "Euromaidan" then started the very next day, when President Yanukovych announced that Ukraine had received a better economic offer from the Eurasian Economic Community than from the European Union, and that therefore it would be in the best interests of the Ukrainian people for Ukraine to join with the EEC (which the people in eastern Ukraine wanted), than with the EU (which the people in western Ukraine wanted) and that this joining of the EEC would now happen. The Euromaidan protest, which had been organized by America's CIA, began on 21 November 2013. Its mass-members were regular western Ukrainians, but its leadership, the people who were armed, were Ukraine's nazis , a special group of western Ukrainians, who viscerally hate ethnic Russians and actually want to exterminate them (thus making these people ideal for Obama's purposes of crushing Russia).

Immediately after the coup when Yanukovych was overthrown, the EU sent an investigator, Urmas Paet, to find out whether the extremely violent overthrow of Yanukovych had been due to Yanukovych, or else to "someone from the new coalition [meaning the EU and U.S.]," and he reported, on 26 February 2014, to the EU's foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, that it was due to "someone from the new coalition [our side]." This information shocked her. (As Obama's chief agent controlling the coup, Victoria Nuland, had said on 4 February 2014, preparing the coup, "F—k the EU!" In that same phone call, she also selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the person who would take over the Ukrainian Government after the coup, which he did, 22 days later. Anyone who denies that it was a coup is either ignorant or lying, because this is the first coup in history that was fully documented on live videos.) However, rejecting Ukraine as a new candidate for the EU didn't fit Ashton's job-description, and she could do nothing about the matter anyway; so, she accepted it, and tried to make it work, as peacefully as possible.

The EU's reason for wanting Ukraine is chiefly economic, for its gas and agricultural resources. The chief reason that America's aristocracy want Ukraine is as a launching-pad for NATO missiles against Moscow, because Russia is the world's main military hold-out against control by the U.S. aristocracy, and America's aristocracy are eager to use taxpayers' money, which is to say the U.S. military, to bring Russia to heel and within their economic control — it's then a freebie to them.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin is primarily concerned to avoid Ukraine having a Government that wants U.S. strategic (i.e., aimed against Moscow) missiles; in other words: he wants to avoid Ukraine's becoming a member of NATO — the anti-Russian military club of nations, which now surrounds Russia. The only way that he can achieve this crucial objective is for the far-eastern region of Ukraine, Donbass (the region shown in dark purple on this map), which had voted 90% for Yanukovych and 10% for America's candidate (Yulia Tymoshenko) in the 2010 Presidential election (the last election in which all parts of Ukraine voted), to remain as being voters in Ukrainian national elections, so as to counterbalance the anti-Russian northeastern half of Ukraine and thus avoid any more nazis being elected to national power in Ukraine.

Donbass is the region where Obama's Ukrainian Government is trying to exterminate the residents (whom they call 'Terrorists' and try to kill in their "Anti Terrorist Operation" there, fooling the western Ukrainian public that those are "Terrorists" instead of simply Donbass's residents, the people who live there). If Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, or whomever the U.S. supports, doesn't succeed at exterminating or else driving out the residents in Donbass, then Ukraine's Government will probably not be able to join NATO and bring in its strategic missiles aimed at Russia — which is what this is all about, from the standpoint of Barack Obama: it's part of surrounding Russia with NATO missiles .

Looking at that draft agreement, it seems to meet Putin's basic national-security needs for Russia. Doubass's people would retain their right to vote for Ukraine's President.

In order for him to do this, it is essential for the breakaway region to stay within Ukraine as regards the voters there participating in future elections for Ukraine's President. As I headlined on 19 September 2014, "Russia's Leader Putin Rejects Ukrainian Separatists' Aim to Become Part of Russia." The current draft agreement meets this Russian-national-security need. As I commented at that time: "Perhaps Putin's declining to accept Ukrainian territory into Russia is part of an agreement between the two leaders in which Obama is, for his part, declining the urgings from congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats for the U.S. to provide weapons to the Ukrainian military to expedite their ethnic cleansing campaign." However, if U.S. President Obama goes ahead with the Republicans' position, of sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, then the United States will end up becoming internationally isolated, unless either Merkel, or Hollande, or both, declare that Putin is failing to comply with the new agreement, and rejoin with the United States in its ethnic-cleansing effort to eliminate the residents in the separatist region, "Donbass," which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

So, although Putin has won this opening round of obtaining a new peace agreement, Obama still yet can win in the later stages and increase the ethnic cleansing, if either Merkel or Hollande abandon Putin.

The draft agreement also includes other features that would be necessary for the economic reconstruction of the Donbass region, which the Ukrainian Government has been bombing in its ethnic cleansing campaign. For the first time (if the initial statements from the IMF become borne out in additional 'loans' actually taxpayer donations, to Ukraine), Western taxpayers will be contributing to that economic reconstruction, which will be vast, especially considering that around 50,000 civilians and soldiers have probably thus far been slaughtered in Obama's ethnic-cleansing campaign there, and more than a million residents have fled and become refugees (mainly in Russia), and the cities and villages have been bombed and even firebombed. So, while some aristocrats may have gained from Obama's coup, taxpayers in the West will now be paying tens of billions to undo some of the economic damage that Obama and the U.S. Congress (especially Republicans there ) have caused in Ukraine by means of the coup and of its essential ethnic-cleansing aftermath. Since 'we' taxpayers (the public) caused the war (from which only some international aristocrats might benefit — and those were the people behind it), we (and not those aristocrats) shall be cleaning up from it — if the current deal doesn't fall apart and the damages from the war thus soar even further.

But, at least in the first draft of this agreement, Putin has won, and Obama has lost.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of , and of .

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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