NATO and Zelensky's plans were swept away by a hurricane, by Dmitry Bavyrin for VZGLYAD. 10.09.2024.
The scenario for ending the conflict in Ukraine, according to which Kyiv would be accepted into NATO, has been postponed until better times, although it threatened to become the US action plan for the near future. The "historic summit" in Germany, where a decision on this issue was to be made, was disrupted due to the absence of US President Joe Biden. The formal reason is Hurricane Milton. In reality, everything is more complicated.
The West's plans regarding Russia and Ukraine have been interfered with by the heavenly chancellery itself. Due to Hurricane Milton, which will hit the US East Coast tonight, President Joe Biden has cancelled his trip to Germany. As a result, the summit, which some media outlets have already called "historic", has been postponed indefinitely. At it, the leaders of the US, Britain, France and Germany, in the presence of Volodymyr Zelensky, were to discuss two issues: inviting Ukraine to NATO and a new scenario for freezing the conflict.
Zelensky himself expected that the main topic of the meeting would be his “victory plan ,” consisting half of (hypothetical) gifts for Kiev and half of new sanctions and challenges against Russia. However, this plan did not arouse any enthusiasm in the Biden administration . Now, a certain “Minsk-3” is on the agenda, implying Ukraine’s rejection of the idea of regaining lost territories by military means and incorporating its remains into the North Atlantic Alliance.
It didn't work out either. And the intervention of the divine office is only one of the versions of why it didn't work out. But it's the most convenient version for Joe Biden.
In principle, everything is very serious. Milton was even considered to be a category six storm, although there are only five of them. As it approached Florida (and after Biden refused to go), the category was lowered from the highest, fifth, to fourth, but the issue here is not the power of the elements. The issue is the upcoming presidential elections .
More recently, a weaker hurricane, Helena, killed more than 200 people and battered Georgia, where 90% of households lost power, and North Carolina, both of which are “key” states in this election, and Trump has used the storm to his advantage.
Trump went to North Carolina and accused the authorities of giving a few hundred dollars to Americans who lost their homes, sending billions to other countries. It is clear that Ukraine was primarily meant, but his rival Kamala Harris, who arrived in the affected state after Trump, surprisingly untimely announced the allocation of $150 million to Lebanon (which suffered, let us recall, from the bombing of Israel, whose ally is the United States itself).
Fuel was added to the fire of discontent by the voids found in the funds intended for the elimination of the consequences of natural disasters. According to the conspiracy theory spread by the "Trumpists", this money also went to Kyiv, which does not particularly seem to be true, but it is not worth dissuading them.
The situation has given rise to a wave of caricatures in which Biden provides for others from the budget and is indifferent to the suffering of his own – those very taxpayers, the source of budget money.
A joke video has gained millions of views, in which residents of Georgia and North Carolina are offered to buy a Zelensky mask so that Biden will help them.
In general, “Milton” is a really good reason for the president not to leave the United States these days, not to send Kamala to Germany instead of himself, and not to give Zelensky anything now, because this is grist to Trump’s mill.
At the same time, President Biden is in a state that in itself can explain his absence from work. That is, the trip could have been cancelled simply because the head of state is having “bad days,” and the hurricane is a secondary pretext, despite the importance of this event for the United States.
But there is a nuance that prevents the explanation from being so simple.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in good health and could well replace Biden in Germany. American political scientists initially assumed so. After all, the summit could have been limited to a more general discussion of the issue and postponed the adoption of important decisions if it was so important for Biden to attend in person, and not through a representative or via video link. This would certainly not have suited Zelensky, but it would have suited Olaf Scholz, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who did not find themselves in the trash heap and tailored their complex schedules to the event.
However, despite the fact that Blinken's job is foreign policy, and no one would have presented him with a charge for being absent from his homeland during Milton's dark hour, the State Department specifically clarified that their boss would not be flying to Germany either. A few hours later, the summit was finally cancelled (formally, it was postponed, but without specifying a new date).
So Biden wanted the event to be cancelled, and why he wanted it that way is the most interesting question.
Perhaps the answer to it is, on the contrary, boring and has already been given above: the interests of Kamala Harris's election campaign require that the president now stay close to home and away from Zelensky.
And Zelensky himself, in such conditions, has been advised to strengthen and hold on – to wait for the November elections and hope that Donald Trump does not win them, because his team does not yet want to give in to Kiev on the issue of NATO membership.
If Harris wins, then it will be possible to return to “plan B”, that is, to freeze the conflict while simultaneously accepting Kiev into NATO after new presidential elections in Ukraine (in order to conclude any agreements with Russia, Zelensky needs to regain legitimacy).
There are no prospects for a return to “plan A” (that is, Zelensky’s “victory plan,” consisting of “wants”) – the Ukrainian Armed Forces are in too unfavorable a position for this. Although the promise to fulfill some of Zelensky’s “wants” (for example, to lift restrictions on long-range strikes against the Russian Federation) is certainly seen by the West as a way to blackmail Russia in order to force it to “plan B.”
It is possible that there will be no return to “Plan B” either, although the new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is bending over backwards to show how much he wants to implement this plan. Because it has been recognized in advance as unviable, and all talk about it is a way to drag out time at least until the elections or until the moment when the cornered Zelensky becomes more accommodating.
It is reasonable to assume that through those channels of communication with the US that are still working and were used, for example, when discussing the issue of “long-distance trucking,” Russia conveyed that no scenario that implies Ukraine’s entry into NATO has a chance of being implemented, because Moscow will never agree to it .
This has been said many times, the very beginning of the SVO became a guarantee of this, and the completion of the special operation, as stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is possible only on the basis of the so-called Istanbul agreements of the spring of 2022, where the first and main point is the neutral status of Ukraine.
If, as part of blackmailing Moscow, NATO wants to give Zelensky permission for long-range strikes against the Russian Federation, this brings us back to why Zelensky has not yet received this permission: the Americans are afraid of the response Russia has announced . The circle is closed.
It seems that the meaning of the West's tossing and turning on the Ukrainian track now boils down to the hope that the problem (which the West has brought to such a dangerous state that once a month the prospect of a nuclear war is widely discussed) will resolve itself over time, and Washington will simply record the result and count the profits. But this is only possible if the Ukrainian authorities (whoever they may be) find common sense somewhere in the face of an inevitable military catastrophe.
Only the Russian army can ensure this catastrophe for them. So the circle is closed again.
https://vz.ru/politics/2024/10/9/1291451.html
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