Written by Eric Zuesse
In order to understand what the final settlement terms for the war in Ukraine will be, what is first essential is to understand that ever since the petering-out of what had been for Ukraine a remarkably successful expansion of the war into Ukraine’s invading (via drones and missiles) even deep into Russia itself during the first six months of 2025, the fundamental dynamics of this war have always been the enormous outproduction, by Russia as opposed to the entirety of NATO, both of weapons and of ammunition, which vast outproduction has been causing a more-than three-to-one ratio of Ukrainian soldiers killed for every one Russian soldier killed.
As the head of NATO, Mark Rutte, put it, on 13 February 2025, “Russia is producing in three months in ammunition, what the whole of the Alliance is producing in the year.”
With an advantage like that, Ukraine’s defeat in this war has been inevitable, and the only questions have been when it will occur and what the after-War settlement of it will be.
The definitive study of the casualty-numbers in this war was “Debunking the Ukrainian Claim About Russian Casualties”, by the retired CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson on 30 May 2025, and reported (beside those casualty-ratios):
In 2024, Russian forces fired an estimated 12 to 17 million artillery shells in Ukraine. This figure reflects a significant escalation in artillery usage compared to previous years.
Here are the ratios by year comparing Russian artillery barrages to those of Ukraine:
2022, Russia vs Ukraine — 7 to 1.
2023, Russia vs Ukraine — 4 to 1.
2024, Russia vs Ukraine — 23 to 1. …
Here is what NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, told the NATO Ministers of Defense in February:
“We will discuss today the defence industrial base and how to produce more. We are not producing enough. And this is a collective problem we have, from the US up to and including Türkiye, and including the whole European Union, Norway, UK, we have fantastic defence industries, but we are not producing enough,” Rutte said.
The alliance’s Secretary General emphasized that NATO does not produce enough weapons compared to Moscow.
“No, I wanted to say Russia is producing in three months in ammunition, what the whole of the Alliance is producing in the year, and this is simply not sustainable.
Then, on June 4th, Spain’s El Pais newspaper, which like all mainstream news-media in the U.S. and its colonies (including Spain), is a propaganda-agency for U.S.-and-allied billionaires in order to keep their preferred politicians in power, represented nonetheless a good summary of what Russia’s settlement-terms for this war were, at that time, which was near the end of Ukraine’s successful attacks deep into Russia. (The situation for Russia has improved considerably since that time, and the situation for Ukraine has by now become desperate.)
The newspaper headlined “Russia demands unacceptable conditions for peace from Ukraine”, and reported (with its typical omissions and misrepresentations of the historical background of, and of Russia’s national-security needs for, these terms as being the minimal requirements in order for Russia NOT to be invaded by Ukraine or by NATO after this war is settled) that Russia was demanding:
the “complete withdrawal” of the Ukrainian army from the regions it wants to occupy: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian troops must also withdraw from the Russian border “to a distance to be agreed upon by the parties.” That is, Kyiv would have to pull back its army from the trenches that prevent Russia from advancing on Kyiv and Kharkiv from the north, leaving Odesa unprotected in the south. …
a package of concessions from Zelenskiy that includes “the cessation of mobilization [of new recruits] and the beginning of demobilization [of current forces]”; the end of arms supplies and foreign military assistance to Ukraine, “including the provision of satellite communications and intelligence services,” and “Ukraine’s renunciation of sabotage on Russian territory [including occupied areas of Ukraine].” …
neutral status for Ukraine; that is, Kyiv’s renunciation of its NATO membership bid and any other defensive alliances with third countries. Moscow demands the country’s disarmament in another section: it asks to “establish a maximum number of personnel, weapons, and vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” as well as to disband its “nationalist” units and the National Guard.
The Kremlin is also attempting to destabilize Ukrainian politics by demanding “the outlawing of nationalist parties and organizations.” According to official Russian discourse, which denies the existence of Ukraine. …
Moscow links this demand to its proposal to “outlaw Nazi propaganda.”
Moscow also demands that Kyiv “guarantee all the rights of the Russian-speaking population and grant Russian the status of an official language.” This is a sensitive issue: in order to reinforce their independence from Moscow, Ukrainian governments began restricting the official use of the country’s second language following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the incursion into eastern Donbas that same year, and the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Finally, Moscow is demanding that Kyiv waive any future compensation for damages caused by an invasion that has devastated cities and killed tens of thousands of people. …
In order to understand why all of those demands were essential in order for the Russian people NOT to continue (as has been the case ever since the U.S. coup in their neighboring nation of Ukraine overthrew the democratically elected neutralist leader of Ukraine and replaced him with a rabidly anti-Russian U.S. stooge and thus started the Ukraine war, very violently, on 20 February 2014), please click here for the complete explanation of why. Consequently, for example, the propagandist’s having written that “demanding ‘the outlawing of nationalist parties and organizations’ … denies the existence of Ukraine” was alleging that to remove and replace the Hitler-admiring Ukrainians whom the U.S. and its colonies have been financially backing and placing into power in Ukraine ever since 2014 “denies the existence of Ukraine” — as-if Russians, whose country had lost 13,950,000 dead from Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa (the all-time largest-ever foreign invasion force) invasion of Russia, have no real reason to demand that those individuals, and others such as them, must NEVER AGAIN occupy positions of power in their next-door-neighbor, Ukraine. That’s a crazy (not to say outright stupid) assumption.
Consequently, with all of that essential prior history of this war having now been fully documented via those links to the essentiall evidences, it is, by now, clear that the June 2025 Russian demands will be met in the final settlement of this war; and the only remaining question therefore is whether this settlement will be with, or without, the public acceptance by America’s temporay king, Donald Trump. His only option as an alternative to accepting it is to continue maintaining — instead of now to start exposing — the lies that the U.S. Government (and its colonies) have been spreading to the contrary, ever since 2014 (and even before).
For him NOT to accept this as being Russia’s minimal terms for settling this war (which has been a proxy-war by the U.S. against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine using almost exclusivelly Ukrainian troops and U.S.-and-allied weaponry and satellite intelligence) will be for Trump to escalate this war into World War Three by trying to nuclearly decapitate Russia’s central command in The Kremlin and so — he then would be hoping to — ‘win’ WW3.
Presumably, the meeting today between Trump’s representative Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin in The Kremlin is either going to end in the annihilation of life on Earth as we know it, or else in the crafting of a euphemistic (face-saving for the U.S. Government and its NATO) peaceful settlement, agreed-to not ONLY between Russia and Ukraine, but also with the endorsement by the U.S., and by its NATO. Presumably, specific wordings of such a peace-treaty were presented by Putin and discussed with Witkoff, and will be considered by Trump.
Russia will not allow itself to become a U.S. colony (such as U.S. Presidents — with the exception of JFK — have been expecting ever since 25 July 1945). Iff Trump demands it to become a U.S. colony, then the result will be WW3. Trump alone will make the decision. However, if he decides for WW3, then there might first be a discussion in Congress as to whether it should announce a Declaration of War against Russia — or else Trump would do the invasion without that, and thus clearly be violating the U.S. Constitution (if that’s the way he would be trying to ‘win’ WW3 — by means of an unwarned nuclear blitz-attack annihilating Moscow).
His options at this time are all bad, because he did NOT, as soon as he entered office on January 20th, announce that the U.S. and NATO will NOT continue what he lyingly calls “Biden’s war.” (It’s actually Obama’s war — continued first by Trump, and then by Biden.) That would have been the best option for him (and for the world), but he has always been a neocon at heart, and so this present moment for him is EXTREMELY unattractive — because he had previously been expecting Russia to yield itself up to become just another U.S. colony. Russia had never given any indication whatsoever that it would, and it never will, do that. So, this ball is now fully — and only — in Trump’s court.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
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bottom line. russia needs to demand the summit be in russia not alaska given the crimes against humanity perpetrated against it since the 2014 $0r0$ inspired and cia/mi6/mossad backed0range revolution/coup. the stakes are too high for russia to send it’s delegation into the loserr$ “den”!…
the problem is that in russia there are a liberal oligarchy who want business with west and dont care so much about to liberate novorrosiya territories
l’oligarchia russa è liberale e si illudono di essere come gli occidentali si sbagliano l’occidente li disprezza non li tollera e li considera barbari il mondo russo è l’oriente devono capirlo e adesso l’attacco alla russia è per dividerla dalla cina chi comanda la russia comanda il mondo i russi ancora non lo capiscono sono liberali.
an arrest of putin based on the international charges while in alaska combined with the 5th column and military taking over and agreeing to a cease fire in ukraine would probably be fitting to the us playbook. question is if there are any oligarchs left in russia that are really delusional enough to believe the west will stay true to whatever the promisse them.
alaska is a good place for it, it’s the furthest place (latitudinally) from europe you can get.
all peace deals are historically dismissed or sabotaged by the nato cult . but that will not stop russia or china from producing more weapons than the west could ever dream of .
agree. then if that’s the case as russia has been burned too many times to court in the past 11 years alone not counting the chechen war($) prior to the maidan coup -why does russia persist knowing they will be set up again?… the nordstream sabotage, crocus hall, kursk invasion and the $400 billion of stealing russian account(s) in western banks should have sealed the deal on any theater towards peaceful negotiation with the west -especially on the west’s terms?….
the final settlement is the russian rava (or rava russkaya) on the border with poland. the city stands here since 15th century, when poland conquered this land – the red rus’ or galitsia/galitsian rus’. galich was the main city (known since 9th century). another city with name rava was founded in poland a century before, so new city was named the russian rava to distinguish between two cities.
that was a very long… long… time ago… at least poland like it’$ khazar mentors can dream about it in the movies as fiction… just like the u.k. does over their defeat at balaklava in the 19th century….
trump and putin,
they both do not care about europe and its weak joke leaders.
thats why russia and usa will make this summit outside of europe
and zelensky will not be invited.
usa and russians are neighbours
and they can fix all problems together without europe and its weak leaders.
this is the reason
if you ask,
why alaska has been selected
for this summit.
usa paid so much money for this war almost 3/4 +
military equipment, weapons etc.
europe paid only 1/4 of it.
so europe can watch only now.
usa and russia alaska summit (agu 15)
alaska is putin’s message to west (europe)
also message to usa as a neighbour country
thanks for publishing this . citizems of nato member nations are not allowed to read such things . but are allowed to have inflation destroy their currency / labor
congratulations to president trump and the trump administration
trump route for international peace and prosperity,
it is one of america’s greatest victories.
u.s. secures strategic trump transit corridor in armenia-azerbaijan peace deal.
so nato borders extended to the armenia and azerbaijan.
currently, 9 usa companies are interested in this. trump will select 1
the oil pipeline and railway will pass through this road in the future (tripp)
so azerbaijan and turkmenistan petrol will be sold to the european countries and it
will print money like a money machine and all countries will win.
1.usa %90
2.turkey %80
3.azerbaijan %70
4.armenia %60
5.turkmenistan %50
6.israel %30
the most profitable countries
yes congratulations to a blackmailed pedophile who will be reminded of his intolerable embarrassment at the hands of mossad that own him and probably have already given russia some of the compromising video(s) of trump at the epstein bungalow to aid in the negotiating process?… i understand that medvedev will be coming along for the alaska trip wearing only a smile. perhaps this will translate into the return of alaska all or in part to russia???…
the jews hate russia no clue what you are talking about the drone attacks on iran and the russian air fields had both isreali handwriting on it. isreal wants russia destroyed so they can retake what they controled twice once during the khazar empire and secondly during the early years of the sowjet union where no nonjew had any important position at all. and the predecessor of the kgb was mass murdering christians all over the sowjet territory.
i actually concur with your observations. and the appearance all along that poutine has given of being duplicitous in trading land and victims for profit. as i’ve said many times here on s-f. the biggest test will be the “right of return” to the victims and their descendant(s) in the eastern donbas vs. the oligarchs selling it to the highest bidders?…. i believe it will be another fire sale like gaza with the 100 trillion cubic meters of gas going the western oil conglomerates.
the two big brothers will decide the destiny of the multipolar world 😂 ukraine are not invited 😂 its cruel to not let them in ukraine which wants to die for the death cult, to do that. even more cruel to let the instigators of the mayhem, “us”, sneer at mass murder and genocide they have been executing, including in the hospitals. have russia forget what the indians find out, that there are no peace with the “us” entity ?
“nuclear weapon” seems not to exist. it was only a way for imported nazis to establish free mass murder and free genocide, and get rid of ussr. instead of a unique opportunity to get rid of “us”, you now have a russia killing europeans for “us” sins 😂 two despots, they multiple by partition 😂
without odessa is r defeat