As in Potsdam at the end of the Second World War, the only path forward now is working out the terms of Ukraine’s defeat. And there is still time to save lives, writes Stefan Moore.
Ukrainian soldier in the Donbass in 2015 at the start of the war. (Ministry of Defense of Ukraine/Noah Brooks/Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0)
By Stefan Moore
Special to Consortium News
European leaders are in panic mode. They are scrambling to ensure that Trump’s 28-point peace plan that they believe favours Russia can be revised to give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an equal say alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is delusional thinking. Whether or not Zelensky and his U.S./NATO allies, who have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into this conflict care to accept it, Russia is the indisputable victor in this terrible 14-year war, beginning with the 2014 Ukrainian civil war, which Russia entered in 2022.
Moscow will call the shots when it finally ends. As in Potsdam at the end of WWII, the only path forward now is working out the terms of defeat.
Those terms include Ukraine losing all or most of the four eastern oblasts – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (amounting to roughly a third of its territory and population); an ironclad prohibition from joining NATO, which Russia correctly views as a hostile alliance; the reduction of its armed forces (the size to be negotiated) and the denazification of its military and government.
For those who believe this is an intolerable capitulation, it’s time to review the historical record.
Since the end of the Cold War, despite promises to Russia that it would not move “one inch eastward”, NATO has pushed up to Russia’s borders from Poland to the Baltic states and in 2008 invited Ukraine and Georgia to become members. The potentially devastating consequences of this expansion were signalled by the most senior U.S. diplomats at the time.
William Burns, the U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2008 warned in a cable published by WikiLeaks that Ukraine becoming a NATO member could lead to war with Russia in Ukraine, a prediction that eventually came true.
The architect of America’s Soviet containment policy, George Kennan, presciently warned as early as 1997 that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”
Not only were these words not heeded, but the West set out to weaken Russia in every way possible.
The Coup
The violent coup in Kiev, February 2014. (Mstyslav Chernov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
In 2014, the U.S. helped engineer a coup (revealed here, here, and here) to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russia-friendly president Victor Yanukovych and install a Western-friendly regime. Billed in the Western media as a popular uprising for democracy, it led Ukraine on the path to civil war between the European-aligned west and the east which had closer ties to Russia.
The biggest losers in this adventure were the ethnic Russian people of Ukraine’s eastern region who opposed the coup and called for the creation of separate autonomous states. In response, Ukraine’s armed forces and its virulently anti-Russian neo-Nazi battalions went on the attack.
In what turned out to be a disingenuous attempt to resolve the conflict, Ukraine and Russia took part in the Minsk Accords (mediated by France and Germany with U.N. support).
Among other things, Minsk proposed autonomy of the ethnic-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk within a federated state of Ukraine, and an understanding that Ukraine could not join NATO, an alliance that Russia correctly sees as an existential threat.
For those who fail to comprehend Russia’s insistence on the latter point, it would be equivalent to Mexico or Canada entering a security alliance with Russia that allowed them to station nuclear capable missiles on the U.S. border. One only has to recall the Cuban Missile Crisis to see how that worked out.
Had the western powers acted in good faith to resolve these issues at Minsk, history might have taken a different course. Instead, European leaders did everything they could to scuttle the Accords.
Later, former Germany’s Angela Merkel and then ex-French president Francois Hollande would publicly admit that they were just playing along to give NATO more time to arm Ukraine to defeat Russia – a battle they have been willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Feb. 12, 2015: Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the Normandy format talks in Minsk, Belarus. (Kremlin)
Between the time of the Minsk Accords in 2015 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on behalf of the besieged population in the east, thousands of ethnic Russian civilians had been killed by Ukraine’s forces, teaching the Russian language had been prohibited, Russian churches had been outlawed and Russian language media had been severely restricted. (The U.N. Human Rights Office (OHCHR) says 3,106 civilians died in Donbass from 2014 until the end of 2021).
The Istanbul Denial
Yet, despite the setback following Minsk and just two months into Russia’s invasion, another opportunity to end the war was being negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul.
The terms were similar to Minsk, but just as Ukraine was about to sign the agreement, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson descended on Kiev on behalf of NATO to tell Zelensky to pull the plug — the U.S. and Europe would provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needed to continue to fight Russia.
So, four years on, here we are. Putin, fooled twice, has lost all trust in Western leaders and has no more time for their games. On the battlefield, Russia is in no rush; it is defeating Ukraine in a grinding war of attrition that by now is irreversibly in Russia’s favour.
Contrary to European leaders’ tough talk, Ukraine has nearly run out of trained soldiers, the U.S. has run out of ground war arms to give to Ukraine and, despite its belligerent rhetoric, Europe has run out of money to send to Kiev. (Meanwhile, revelations of corruption close in on Zelensky’s inner circle, claiming the resignation today of his chief of staff.)
The fall of Andriy Yermak – Zelensky’s fixer, enforcer, gatekeeper, and indispensable ally, isn’t a “corruption scandal.” It’s Washington slapping the table. NABU, the U.S.-trained attack dog of Ukrainian politics, didn’t raid the Presidential Office by accident. It raided to… pic.twitter.com/6k8cYOJ6I0
— THE ISLANDER (@IslanderWORLD) November 28, 2025
The tragedy is that all of this – the loss of over a million lives (mostly young Ukrainian and Russian men thrown into the meatgrinder of trench warfare), the fleeing of over 7 million Ukrainian refugees who are unlikely to ever return and the widespread destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure – could have all been avoided.
The notion that the West came to the aid of Ukraine to defend democracy in the most corrupt and neo-Nazi infested country in Europe is as deceptive as it is laughable. This has always been a battle initiated by the U.S./NATO alliance to weaken Moscow, overthrow Putin and return the West to dominance over Russia like in the 1990s, with Ukraine as the unfortunate willing proxy.
It was sheer hubris and stupidity for the neocons in Washington and Brussels, pumped up with triumphalism after the fall of the Soviet Union, to think they could mould the post-Cold War world including Eurasia in their interests without disastrous consequences.
In the end, Ukraine will be defeated but there are no real winners.
Both Ukraine and Russia will take years to recover from the human and economic cost of this devastating war; Europe’s economy is in tatters with near negative growth, energy prices three times higher than before the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, and companies fleeing to produce offshore.
As for the U.S. , it has nothing to show other than public anger over the war, soaring national debt and increasing isolation as a global power.
As always, the biggest prize-winners are the global defence contractors whose profits have skyrocketed since the start of the war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Stefan Moore is an American-Australian documentary filmmaker whose films have received four Emmys and numerous other awards. In New York he was a series producer for WNET and a producer for the prime-time CBS News magazine program 48 HOURS. In the U.K. he worked as a series producer at the BBC, and in Australia he was an executive producer for the national film company Film Australia and ABC TV.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I would recommend watching this episode of Nikita Mikhalkov’s program “Besogon TV”. Here is a link to Rumble:
hxxps://rumble.com/v70jxa6-where-do-the-legs-grow-from.html?e9s=src_v1_wh&playlist_id=watch-history
Nikita Mikhalkov is, in my opinion, one of the best content creators. I use this general term since he is an author, an actor, a director and a filmmaker. Recently, on the occasion of Nikita Mikhalkov’s 80-th birthday anniversary, in an interview, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov described him – paraphrasing – as someone who is highly intellectual and because of and through his artistic genius can present complex issues to the hearts of ordinary people.
This particular episode contains some important information about… well… where the legs do grow from. I suppose, it is a Russian expression for where it all starts, what the root cause is. Keep also in mind that this episode was created in April, 2022 – just a short time (a little over a month) after the start of the Russian Special Military Operation in the Ukraine.
Another thing – Nikita Mikhalkov’s program is called (BESOGON TV)“.
The name is derived from two Russian words – (demons – as one meaning) and (cast out – as one meaning) – so it could be translated as casting out demons or exorcism of demons.
I hope you enjoy watching the episode.
Even at this late date, I am still being blocked on social media for recounting, with links, how Russia’s SMO was provoked and pointing out the Russian leadership’s wish, stated repeatedly, to negotiate an end to it by resolving its root causes.
The countless awful consequences of this terrible war aside, what drives me crazy personally is how alienating it is to live in a society so thoroughly indoctrinated in deceitful narratives I am literally surrounded by people who live in an entirely imaginary reality and are willing to go to the mat to defend it.
I have known a few people along the way who lived in the USSR. They, and from what I understand everybody they knew, knew they were being lied to. The collective West, on the other hand, is a sea of truly brainwashed individuals crazed with hatred for actually exemplary human beings.
I find being enveloped in this extremely difficult.
The genius of the USUKISR propaganda system … the best ever devised: the marks themselves police the narrative that primarily enslaves them.
It was never the weapons. That’s a distraction. It was the MONEY. Boris arrived with MONEY. The powerful would provide lots of MONEY. “I say Vlad old chap, we’ll give you limitless MONEY”. Say that to the poorest country on the continent and guess the result. The Green T-Shirt thinks, “Money is power. I can buy everyone I want and as much power as I wish”. Boris arrived with a blank cheque not a loaded gun. As Socrates said, “All wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth”. Ukraine has always been poor. Poor societies become corrupt. Ukraine was poor and corrupt because there was little wealth to go around. Corruption isn’t a vacuum phenomenon. When the Green T-Shirt heard about Boris’ MONEY the proposition was irresistible. The MONEY continues to this day. It’s a lot easier to move than a HIMARS or an F-16. Just pop it in an Estonian bank account named “Green T-Shirt”.
Great piece with lots of historical context. It is a real shame that the US/UK (and NATO vassals) used Ukraine as a proxy in the war on Russia. They are clearly willing to fight til the last Ukrainian, as Michael Hudson predicted from the very beginning of the SMO.
Ukraine is now a highly corrupt failed state that will suffer for decades to come, as noted in the article.
Zbig B’s magnum opus The Grand Chessboard spelled it all out in 1997, that Ukraine had to be “pried away” from Russia at all costs in order to prevent Russia from becoming a great power again. The now-infamous Rand corp. articles: “Extending Russia” and “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” also lay out the West’s plans, hiding in plain sight.
The late prof. Stephen Cohen predicted in 2014, that the (CIA, MI6 supported) Maidan coup would result in war with Russia. He was 100% correct, but few listened. Even the “liberal” or “leftish” outlets like Democracy Now (Hypocrisy Now!) stopped interviewing him and started pushing CIA talking points to demonize Russia and indirectly support the war.
Russia has suffered greatly as well, but not nearly to the extent that Ukraine has. The Russian economy is not collapsing, and Russian weapons development and production leads the world. (Bureveshnik, Poseidon, etc.) Russia and China have been pushed together and now with new energy and pipeline agreements. Sec. Bessent, no surprise, is a bald-faced liar.
The DT2 regime plays “good cop” to the EU/NATO vassals “bad cop”, but Russia is not falling for the BS again. Despite hopes that the DT2 regime BS 28 point plan will lead to peace, the US continues to impose sanctions on Russia, continues to provide intelligence and logistics support for Ukraine etc. The US has not forced the euro-vassals and banks to give back the 300 billion of Russian finances that they froze. So the “peace” effort of the US is just a cheap PR stunt as usual.
Sadly, no matter what happens in Ukraine, the war on Russia will continue.
I am shocked, shocked that Russia is now in a position to win!
After all, our Western mass media c. 2023 were constantly telling us how Russia had ran out of weapons and was using parts from washing machines for military armaments.
An astonishing turn around indeed!
The Whole Truth and Clarification of Everything in the Holes in the Truth
For a state entity that does NOT see itself as defeated, “unconditional surrender” IS “an intolerable capitulation”, as it was for NAZI Germany, until it was militarily defeated and forced to capitulate.
Yet Japan had witnessed the total defeat of Germany, already in May 1945, and knew it was itself defeated; was ready to concede but still the U.S., in order to send a message to the world that it now arbitrarily saw itself as the global policemen went ahead and dropped the only two nuclear bombs ever dropped on a human population, in August 1945; on an already shattered Japan – three months after WWII was over, simply to convince the world who was now in charge of world affairs, thereby unilaterally crowning itself as Hegemon.
This was still the same U.S., who in 2014, instigated, and provoked the Ukrainian civil war.
Question: What has been the actual difference between the post-war, Cold War era (1945-1989) and the preceding Hot War of WWII (1939-1945) other than the time duration of each period?
Answer: Nothing!
THE warring, globally, has never ceased, not even for one decade!
The one, and the same question, as always, always seems to pop up: Who are the specific individuals in command and control of humankind’s trajectory, and thereby, the fate of all of humanity?
Answer: unanswerable!
They have certainly not been the more civilizationally advanced among us!
Those souls have been but “shooting stars”, such as, for one, René Descartes: “I think, (reasonably) therefore I am” of a mere 500 years ago.
When Vladimir Putin was first formally elected president of Russia in 2000, his inclination was for Russia to be accepted as an integral aspect of Europe… and here we are!
Don’t forget the US, European and NATO elite raking in millions for this stupid war! How much money could have been spent on health, education and research rather than death, chaos and weapons?