Russia’s control over it, whether through Ukraine’s withdrawal or forcible expulsion, is considered to be the basis of the US’ peace plan that the Brits and French are dangerously trying to subvert.
Andrew Korybko
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported on the four-year anniversary of the special operation
that the Brits and French are plotting to help Ukraine go nuclear. The
alleged plan is to provide it with relevant European components and
equipment that would then be misrepresented to the world as proof of a
domestically developed nuclear program. They’ll also give it at least
one actual warhead and/or materials for a dirty bomb. The purpose is to
give Ukraine an edge over Russia in the negotiations.
Zelensky recently claimed
that “Both the Americans and the Russians say that if you want the war
to end tomorrow, get out of Donbas”, which he flat-out refuses to do,
emboldened as he’s been by European support led first and foremost by
the Brits and French. The first are considered to be the masterminds
behind various anti-Russian provocations, including false flag plots
that Moscow warned about but which never materialized, while the second
has been leading the charge to send NATO troops to Ukraine.
Russia has been tight-lipped about what compromises
it might consider in exchange for Ukraine at the very least withdrawing
from Donbass due to the confidential nature of the negotiations, but
it’s possible that its compliance with this demand could lead to a ceasefire. Zelensky and his top two European backers don’t want that even though the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas claimed, regardless of whether one agrees with her, that “Moscow has failed to achieve any of its strategic objectives” so far.
Therefore,
the Brits and French want Ukraine to go nuclear out of desperation to
hold onto Donbass at minimum, the Kiev-controlled remainder of which
consists of the country’s top military fortifications. They expect that
Russia would then agree to a ceasefire along the frontlines if Ukraine
obtains nuclear capabilities, even if only a dirty bomb, and threatens
to use them if it doesn’t comply. At most, this could also
hypothetically be leveraged to get it to withdraw from all the territory
that Kiev claims as its own.
The reality is that Russia won’t accept a nuclear-armed Ukraine. Putin alluded to Zelensky’s speech at the 2022 Munich Security Conference
in which he threatened to revoke Ukraine’s participation in the 1994
Budapest Memorandum under which it transferred Soviet nukes (that were
always under Moscow’s control and never Kiev’s) to Russia in his address to the nation
announcing the special operation. Most Russian-friendly observers
accordingly expect Russia to not let this happen under any
circumstances.
Head of the Duma’s Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov debunked
the scenario of Ukraine developing its own nuclear program in fall 2024
after Zelensky sensationally suggested going down this route if it’s
kept out of NATO before walking his words back later that same day. With
that in mind, Russia certainly knows that the only way for Ukraine to
obtain nukes is from the Brits and/or French, and any attempt to do so
would amount to them going behind Trump’s back to subvert his peace plan.
The
gist is that Trump reportedly wants Putin to freeze the conflict if
Ukraine withdraws from Donbass or is forcibly expelled from there, with
the incentive to do so being a resource-centric strategic partnership
between Russia and the US. Regardless of whether or not Putin would
agree to this, the point is that the Brits and French’s efforts to help
Ukraine go nuclear out of desperation to hold onto Donbass undermine the
basis of Trump’s peace plan, so he should thus do everything to stop
them if he truly wants peace.