Is The 'Hundred Day Peace Plan' More Juggling?

First, some full disclosure. The concept of the ‘art of the juggle’ that I used yesterday to try to explain Trump’s negotiating tactic was the tag that my wife came up with as I discussed Trump’s narratival negotiating approach. That idea came up again yesterday evening as I was reading Simplicius’ latest SitRep from Ukraine (yes, I seem to be behind again).

Velyka Novosilka Falls Without Fight, as '100 Day Peace Plan' Reportedly "Leaked"

The theme that holds the SitRep together is simply this. Previously the Ukrainians have waged dogged defensive warfare in the face of the Russian offensive that began after the debacle of the Ukrainian offensive last year. Lately, however, strong defensive positions—fortress towns—are being surrendered virtually without a fight and Russian momentum is building speed. Of course, conditions on the ground—lack of trained manpower, the strain of trying to hold off superior Russian forces—are all part of the reason for the slow motion collapse (which is also gaining momentum). Simplicius provides the details for the latest developments along these lines.

However, Simplicius suggests another factor in the defeat of Ukraine is gaining prominnce. The leaking of the prospect of a Trump peace plan has led to a rush on the Ukrainian side NOT to be the last one killed before the peace. Which is entirely understandable. The Ukrainians have heard that the deadline set by Trump/Kellogg is 100 days or May 9—or something like that. To celebrate Victory Day, the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany.

But what does this supposed peace plan actually look like, and what are its prospects? Simplicius quotes a detailed Russian account of the supposed plan, which I reproduce. The Russian presentation, in turn, relies upon a “leaked” Ukrainian account:

Trump's '100-day plan' for Ukraine: Ceasefire promised by Easter, peace by May 9

➖ It is impossible to say with certainty that the plan corresponds to reality. The Ukrainian publication "Strana" reports that the document was transferred from the US to the Europeans, and they in turn transferred it to Ukraine.

➖ Main:

▪️Trump plans to have a telephone conversation with Putin in late January - early February. He also wants to discuss the situation in Ukraine with its authorities.

▪️Based on the results of the negotiations, a decision may be made to continue or suspend the dialogue.

▪️Volodymyr Zelensky must cancel the decree that prohibits negotiations with Putin.

▪️A meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelensky may take place in February or the first half of March. It is not yet clear whether this will be a trilateral meeting or two separate ones. The meeting is planned to discuss the main parameters of the peace plan.

▪️Starting April 20, a ceasefire is planned to be declared along the entire front line, and all Ukrainian troops will be withdrawn from the Kursk region.

▪️An international peace conference is set to begin at the end of April to formalize an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict. The United States, China, and a number of countries in Europe and the Global South will act as mediators.

▪️Also at this time, the exchange of prisoners will begin according to the formula “all for all”.

▪️By May 9, a declaration of the conference on the end of the conflict should be published. Martial law and mobilization will not be extended in Ukraine, and presidential elections will be held at the end of August.

➖ What is included in the agreement?

▪️Ukraine does not seek to return the territories that were liberated by Russia, either militarily or diplomatically, but at the same time does not officially recognize Russia's sovereignty over these territories.

▪️Ukraine will not become a member of NATO and declares its neutrality. The decision that Ukraine will not be accepted into the alliance must be confirmed at the NATO summit.

▪️Ukraine will become a member of the European Union by 2030. The EU is committed to rebuilding the country after the war.

▪️The number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not decreasing, and the United States is modernizing the Ukrainian army.

▪️After the conclusion of the peace agreement, some anti-Russian sanctions will be lifted, and restrictions on the import of Russian energy resources to the EU will be lifted.

▪️Parties that defend the Russian language and advocate peaceful relations with Russia should participate in the elections in Ukraine. The persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will also cease.

▪️Separate consultations will be held on the issue of EU peacekeepers.

RVvoenkor

My initial reaction to this plan was, What’s in it for Russia? And that’s exactly what Simplicius asks, too—framing the issue in simple terms. It’s not so much that Simplicius doubts that this “leak” is, indeed, the plan. It’s that he doubts the Russians would take it seriously. This plan maintains Ukraine as a potential existential threat to Russia, a strike platform against Russia still backed by the Anglo-Zionist led West. But the Russians are winning the war, hands down, while the ‘plan’ is framed as an exchange of concessions by supposedly more or less equal sides—Ukraine withdraws from Kursk in exchange for “some” sanctions being lifted, etc. Here’s Simplicius’ objection to the notion that the Russians would ever bite at this—and I simply add that Putin would be viewed by most Russians as a betrayer if he did:

If there’s an inkling of truth to it, we can say with certainty it will be laughed out of the room by Russia for this simple line:

▪️The number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not decrease, and the United States will modernize the Ukrainian army.

Even if Russia should achieve the concession that Ukraine is not allowed to join NATO, there is simply no way in hell Putin would allow Ukraine to retain its entire armed forces and have those forces vastly augmented and rebuilt into something even more threatening by the US. After potentially 100-200k Russian troops have been killed, thousands of civilians slaughtered, etc., there is simply no way Russian leaders or the general staff could possibly allow Ukraine to remain such an existential threat—with or without NATO. In fact, at this point, the NATO issue takes a backseat and is a small concern compared to the immediacy of a nationalistic totalitarian military dictatorship armed to the teeth sitting on Russia’s doorstep.

In short: the deal above is a non-starter should it actually appear in even a remotely similar form; it is the mere deluded fantasy of the West to even think Russia needs to stop fighting any time soon, at a time when major Ukrainian strongholds are folding like cheap lawn chairs on a daily basis.

The fact is also this: Ukraine now represents something far more dangerous than previously imagined, even with a ‘neutered’ military as per the original “Istanbul deal” from April 2022. You see, for decades Russia feared NATO creeping up to its borders due to the ability to inflict various unexpected surprise first-strike attacks on Russian early warning systems and other defenses which would cripple Russia’s ability to detect or respond to a full-fledged American decapitation attack, like a nuclear first strike.

Ukraine has already perversely demonstrated its brazenly unscrupled ability to hit Russian strategic level assets like Tu-95 bases, early warning systems, and other infrastructure, like targeting nuclear power plants. This means that even with a ‘reduced’ armed forces, Ukraine would still pose an unacceptable threat because launching new high-tech drones and various missiles does not require a large armed forces in the sense of a manpower pool or armor fleet.

For this fact alone, no kind of negotiations is possible without Ukraine’s total disarmament or capitulation—this issue is absolutely an existential one for Russia. An armistice and Istanbul-style ‘de-militarization’ could lull Russia into a false sense of security, but then at an opportune time in the future, NATO could use their sacrificial patsy to unleash a massive drone and missile strike on Russian strategic assets, which would be followed by a large-scale NATO attack to decapitate Russia entirely. This would take place precisely upon NATO’s own ‘re-armament’ and military strengthening, which they are in the process of initiating as we speak. Russian military brains know this and as such would not allow any kind of peace deal within the bounds of the above terms.

The question arises, if “Russian military brains” regard anything like this as a complete non-starter, how does Trump get Putin to sit down at a table. And please note the first difficulty—Trump, by this account, wants Putin to sit down face to face with a genocidal “comedian” who isn’t even the elected president of Ukraine any longer. Presumably that would be Putin’s concession to the narrative that this war is one between Russia and Ukraine, rather than a war between Russia and the Anglo-Zionist led West. This concept, alone, seems to me to be a deal breaker up front. Putin has always insisted that only a peace treaty between the US and Russia can be the solution. And there’s actually many more deal breakers hidden in the weeds of the plan—like NATO ‘peacekeepers.’

So, that being the well known case, is this plan—or, really, narrative—mostly directed at Trump’s domestic audience, and not so much at Putin? After all, Trump surely knows that the plan rests upon clearly counter factual foundations. Is the talk of a nuclear deal—which Trump brought up in a seemingly off hand way—the offer of a narrative to Putin which Trump believes Putin could sell to the Russian people to justify outrageous concessions that amount to an admission of defeat on the verge of victory?

Well, that’s speculation, but Simplicius offers food for some additional speculation. He presents a few short video clips of Austrian Colonel Markus Reisner—whose analyses of the war have been largely correct right from the beginning. Reisner:

Just listen to Austrian Colonel Markus Reisner’s latest interview with ZDF TV, where he states unequivocally that Ukraine may not even last the three months it would take to reach the “100 days negotiations”:

What he says next is even more damning:

“Let me make something clear, time is playing for Russia and Ukraine is running out of time. Ukraine is just about to lose this war. Russian advances are now beginning to switch to the operational level.”

As you can see, Reisner is remarking on the acceleration of the collapse of Ukrainian defenses, where major strongholds are now being taken without resistance, which will eventually allow Russian forces to likely even begin encircling them without much resistance, leading to a cascade effect.

And to that effect Simplicius quotes another Russian source describing that “cascade effect”:

Actually, that is why the Ukrainian Armed Forces have now switched to focal defense, building defense lines on an emergency basis with attempts to hold the front with infantry and FPV drones. The moment will soon come when the advance of the Russian army may amount to tens or even hundreds of kilometers in 1-2 days.

I simply don’t accept that—no matter what American officials say for public consumption about Russian losses and weakness—that the US military and Trump are unaware of these dynamics. There have been too many admissions from official sources to accept those statements as actually believed by those presenting them.

But if a cautious military analyst like Reisner—who is by no means alone—is willing to state categorically that Ukraine may well collapse entirely within the 100 days, does this shed a different light on Trump’s ‘peace plan’? In fact, smart people on all sides are saying that 100 days is way too short a time span in which to conclude what would be a complicated ceasefire process—because, as it stands, the plan is not to have an actual peace treaty. What if, therefore, Trump’s real plan—the purpose behind the dueling or juggling narratives—is to construct a narrative in which he heroically launches a hundred day peace process—a sort of Operation Warp Speed on a peace front—knowing full well that Ukraine will collapse before Trump’s brilliant plan can come to fruition? What’s in that for Trump? Well, he’s freed from the Ukraine tar baby, which he very much needs for his own political purposes, and he can also plausibly place the blame for the defeat on the Zhou regime and the Anglo-Zionists—they should have offered Trump’s brilliant plan to Russia sooner. And, if Trump can then start up a nuclear deal process, well, he looks like visionary. And maybe he will be. It looks messy, but it just might work.

There’s one last observation that Simplicius makes that plays into this, and fits with an observation that Alastair Crooke made yesterday, and which we have also made:

The ultimate problem now—and the primary reason for why time is now on Russia’s side—is because the only thing that can possibly save Ukraine at this point is the political will and unity of Europe. But the problem is: Europe is falling apart, with anti-establishment forces and parties quickly rising to depose the incumbent globalist tyrants. As such, the longer the war goes on, the more chance that Europe cracks and solidarity gets flushed down the drain, with Ukraine being left with no hope at salvation from their ‘big brothers’ at all.

Exactly. And who is pushing this process of political collapse that is encompassing most of the major countries—the UK, Germany, France, but not Italy? Trump. Through Elon Musk, who appears to be barn storming for regime change. Here’s the gist of how Crooke put it yesterday (heavily edited):

What Trump has been talking about on the the cultural issues--about DEI, about Free Speech, about no more disinformation, all of this has to go--has shocked Europe. It has broken the European narrative of the last 20 years about the Green Scam, how to run an economy, all of these sort of domestic issues. It has hit Davos and Europe like a whirlwind. They [the Trump team] seem intent on regime change in Germany and regime change in Britain. It looks very much as if the Trump team is going to engineer a change in both those countries to be more closely aligned with the Trump vision of the future, which many Europeans welcome--including me.

Doesn’t that look more like the big picture that we need to view the 100 Day Peace Plan within? It’s going on right in front of our eyes. Even as the German political establishment is desperately talking about banning the AfD, Musk is openly—not to say brazenly—touting the party. Starmer is collapsing UK politics all on his own. Trump’s pressure on Denmark is fracturing NATO. Could he really be serious about “pressuring” Russia? And China? Or is this all more juggling to cover for his real remake?