larry johnson writes about the empire's refusal to acknowledge the putin terms for ending the ukie war;

From the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, Russia has been unequivocal in its objectives: demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. The US and its NATO allies, however, apparently do not believe that Russia is serious about this. If the reports about the Trump peace plan are accurate, then Trump’s plan will be rejected by Putin. There is no room for negotiation on these two points.

Western media report, citing senior officials following talks in Geneva, claim that Ukraine agrees to limit the number of its armed forces to 800,000 soldiers… That is a non-starter for Russia because it would require Russia to accept Ukraine having a larger military than it had at the start of the SMO.

On February 22, 2022—the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion—Ukraine’s military was undergoing reforms to modernize and expand its forces, but it remained smaller and less equipped than Russia’s. Data from authoritative sources like the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) The Military Balance 2022, and contemporary reports, estimated Ukraine’s core standing army, including ground, air, naval, and support units to be 196,000 in February 2022; Ukrainian Defense Minister later referenced 261,000 as the baseline at the start of the SMO. Ukraine also had 900,000 reservists, which included former conscripts and territorial defense volunteers.

As I noted in an earlier article on the Trump peace plan, Russia and Ukraine agreed during their negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 to cap Ukraine’s military at 85,000. Given that Russia is now successfully attacking Ukrainian positions along eight separate axes (i.e., the plural of axis), Moscow has zero incentive to agree to a plan that would effectively leave Ukraine with the same size military force that it had at the start of the SMO..........more.........