by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has a 90 minute phone call yesterday. We’ve embedded the readouts below. Contrary to common practice, there’s no indication as to who initiated the chat. But it’s not hard to think that Scholz did, since the German readout depicts him as presenting demands to Putin, the most cheeky being that Russia declare a ceasefire and immediately withdraw from Ukraine. We’ll return to these documents shortly. The striking quality of the readouts is there is almost no overlap between the two of them. It appears that each leader regarded virtually of what his counterparty said as not worth dignifying by repeating.
The timing of Scholz trying to arm-twist Putin does not appear to come out of the media-gasm over the Ukraine Kharkiv offensive. It instead appears to be driven by NATO attempting to escalate with Russia. I say “attempting” because like the Kharkiv offensive, this NATO bristling may be more optical than real. I must confess to having to rely on third-party takes as opposed to having read some of the key documents, so feel free to add confirming or conflicting information (preferably with links).
Right now, some of the Ukraine war-watching commentators are speculating on whether Russia will escalate due to the setback in Kharkiv. Note that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this morning said that Russia is not considering general mobilization.
As we’ll also cover soon, the more information comes out, the more it appears that this was a PR success achieved at real cost not just to Ukraine’s war-making capability but also its position on the battlefield.
However, Ukraine is seeking security guarantees from the West which would come awfully close to making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. This may be just another Ukraine big ask, like its constant demands for more money and huge weapons deliveries. My guess is that if Russia escalates soon (and the occasional hits to the electrical grid would not amount to that; it would take major missile strikes and/or increased troop commitments), it would be that Russia regards the security guarantee threat as serious and decided to get out in front of it, and not due a mere battlefield embarrassment that might even be a plus in the long term.
To back up and give a timetable:…
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