By Joe Montero

What the hell happened during the Trump and Puttin meeting in Alaska/ The answer is simple. There was a recognition that Russia is winning in the battlefield, and that the regime in Kyiv and its backers combined, lack the capacity to win the war. The fact that Russia was able to compromise on some secondary demands and secure its primary ones is evidence of this.

Russia has secured an important victory, for it is in a position to spell out the terms. Progress towards lifting of sanctions, stopping arms form flowing to Ukraine, abandonment of membership of NATO, and more, has begun.

Ukraine has been a tool to conduct a proxy war, and this has been a monumental miscalculation, built on the mistaken assumption that Russia is weak, would inevitably bow down to pressure, and that this weakness, could be the means to dismember Russia.

Those who deny history and insist that this is all about Putin invading and wanting to take over Ukraine on the way to conquering Europe are seriously mistaken. Centuries of history provides clues. Just consider the time from the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States, with the European players trailing behind, began to pour billions of dollars and Euros into interference in Ukraine’s internal politics. Interference designed to create the rift that led to the coup and war that began in 2014-15. It came with the systematic attack on the ethnic Russian population. Not a single Russian soldier had crossed the border and would not for more than half a decade.

The purpose? To engineer a militaristic regime that would enable turning Ukraine into a gigantic military base on Russia’s border, armed with both conventional and nuclear weapons. A regime in Kyiv, firmly under the control of the United States and its junior partners in NATO, was important for NATO’s expansion to the east.

Driving this was the ambition of containing Russia, and if possible, engineer its dismemberment. Other critical factors were putting an end to the perceived threat of growing friendship between Russia and China, mostly to block the rise of China. Ukraine cannot be understood without factoring in these realities. Obama’s pivot to Asia confirmed these priorities in Washington’s strategy.

Returning to the events in Alaka. Here was recognition that the ambition intended for Ukraine could not be realised, and that Russia’s capacity had been underestimated. Hence a change is strategy.

For a while, the preferred option was to create a kind of Korea situation, with a demilitarised zone and two armies facing in other across the line in perpetuity. Washington’s ambitions would be met this way. Such an outcome would also suit those in control of the European powers. Ukraine could still be converted into a gigantic military garrison this way, armed to the teeth with conventional and nuclear weapons.

A ceasefire without securing the peace was pushed to achieve this goal. Russia saw through it and refused to be drawn into the trap. This left Washinton, Brussels and the Zelenskyy regime in Kyiv to choose between an unwinnable war or find a face-saving retreat. Trump and his circle saw this. Brussels and Zelensky still refuse to do so.

Besides Russia’s underestimated strength, the United States and the second-rate European powers face the realities that their economies are sick, they no longer have the industrial bases to wage protracted war, and that they are therefore incapable of providing Kyiv with sufficient military and political support to prevail.

The shift towards a peace initiative in Alaska was not decided there. Behind the scenes dialogue over recent months led to a framework, and what happened in Alaka was not decision making but letting the world know that decisions have been made.

Pace has not necessarily been secured yet. There is still some way to go to achieve this. The next stage is the invitation of the reluctant European leaders and Zelenskyy to Washington and pressure them into acceptance of the inevitable. There is also the matter of those within the power elite in Washington who do not want to comply with the new reality. They may yet have their way. Nothing is certain yet.

The world has a shared interest in securing the peace, and a responsibility to ensure that it is realised.