Hi there, I’m Decoding Trolls. I wanted to give you my quick take on the proposals Ukraine is going to bring to the so-called peace conference in Saudi Arabia next week.
Obviously, my heart and many hearts sink at the prospect of Ukraine surrendering either to Russia or to America’s concern trolling about deaths in Ukraine — especially as credible reports have emerged from the battlefield in Kursk which suggest that Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian forces in Kursk has suddenly improved exponentially. Suddenly improved at the same time that Druidy Don’s special envoy mentioned that what they are trying to do to Ukraine is what these people would do to a mule who was too stubborn — slap them until they moved.
When we see this intentionality on the side of the American regime under Druidy Don, and then we hear reports from the battlefield in Kursk that suddenly Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian positions and the killing of Ukrainian soldiers has improved — we heard similar reports in Avdiivka last year under President Biden. Yet again, we see Russia relying on America to help it out of the hole it has dug for itself by invading a country which will continue to resist.
The two proposals Ukraine says it will bring to the Saudi Arabia peace talks next week are: first, Ukraine will propose a ceasefire involving a moratorium on the use of long-range weaponry to hit parts of Russia — last night, there was a hit on a Russian oil refinery some 1,200 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. Second, a moratorium on attacks at sea, in the Black Sea.
The team going to Saudi Arabia is very experienced with these kinds of negotiations. I was a diplomat in eastern Ukraine between the years 2015 and 2022. I’ve seen this rodeo before. I’ve been on this rodeo before, I think is the proper phrase.
In the autumn of 2019 — which may be remembered or unnoticed by many people — Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington were all ranged against Ukraine. They were colluding to pressure Ukraine into accepting what was named for the current president of Germany, the Steinmeier solution. Under the Steinmeier solution, Ukraine would agree to allow Russia to hold elections in Russia-occupied Luhansk — where I worked between 2015 and 2018 — and Russia-occupied Donetsk, before Russia gave Ukraine back control of its borders. Essentially, this was the international community colluding with Moscow to get Ukraine to accept the occupation, the brutal genocidal occupation and continued brainwashing of Ukrainians inside Russia-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk, by allowing them to hold elections.
At the time, I and a colleague, a former British Army officer, were tasked with working out in rough general terms what it would mean to hold elections in Russia-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk — elections which, under the OSCE framework, would need to be proper, free, and fair.
The first problem was to bring in the 1.5 million Ukrainians who had fled from Russia-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk and allow them to vote. The second problem: we worked out it would have cost the international community around 1.5 billion euros and involved armoured vehicles and army squadrons at every polling place in Donetsk and Luhansk, which obviously the Russians wouldn’t agree to. It was a non-starter.
There was a meeting to be held in December 2019 in Paris with Duncy Putler and the comedian President Zelensky, hosted by Emmanuel Macron — Jupiter is his call sign. At this meeting, President Zelensky — who was then perceived by many in the international community as not up to the job, just a mere comedian rather than a great artist, a great business person, and a true Ukrainian patriot — some papers emerged in the weeks before this meeting where the signature of Andrii Yermak, who is still the chief of staff in the president’s office, was on documents that suggested Ukraine was going to allow these elections under the Steinmeier solution in Russia-occupied Ukraine.
There was an immediate explosive movement across Ukraine called the No to Capitulation movement. Many people who concern-troll about Ukraine or try to pressure President Zelensky or Ukrainians to surrender to Russia just in the name of peace aren’t aware that President Zelensky doesn’t have the power to impose a peace on his people. He’s not an autocrat, even if he wanted to be. There’s no evidence he ever wanted to be.
This No to Capitulation movement — I went to many of the demonstrations across Ukraine — involved thousands of people saying: we will not accept the Steinmeier solution, we will not allow Russia to hold elections in Russia-occupied Ukraine.
Flash forward from 2019. It is now 2025. Russia has killed over a million people — its own people and Ukrainians — in the full-scale invasion. I detect and pick up no sign that Ukrainians are desperate to get peace like they were given under Minsk I and II, like they were pressured into accepting under Minsk I and II.
Secondly, I do not actually detect any pressure, rightly, from the international community — except from Washington. What we see in Washington under Druidy Don and all these characters around him, including Paul Manafort, who himself — according to his daughters, his own daughters — sparked the murder of the 100 protesters on the Maidan in February 2014 as part of a plan.
At the time, Paul Manafort was working for the soon-to-be-impeached Ukrainian President Yanukovych. Manafort’s plan was to spark this violence and these deaths, which would in turn troll European leaders into trolling Ukrainian protesters into surrendering to continued rule by Yanukovych. The Heavenly Hundred were martyred and killed on the Maidan. A year later, we saw in leaked texts from Paul Manafort’s daughters that they believed it was their father who had advised Yanukovych to follow this strategy, which almost worked — because European leaders at the time were pressuring Ukraine into allowing Yanukovych to continue if the protesters would stand down. But Yanukovych got scared and he ran away. The whole master plan fell apart.
Flash forward to December 2019 in Paris. We have this great picture of Macron with President Zelensky, who’s looking extremely devilish and quite rightfully happy, because he said in no uncertain terms — he laughed when Putin at the press conference after this meeting suggested that Ukraine would allow Russia to hold elections. Putin looks very embarrassed and very upset.
It’s the same team advising President Zelensky now on these so-called peace talks. This is not their first rodeo. They understand that Druidy Don has just surrendered — he has just capitulated himself and withheld sanctions against Mexico and Canada. It is still not impossible that America and Druidy Don will end up opening the floodgates of aid to Ukraine.
It’s equally not impossible that Druidy Don has ordered American military assets to communicate to Russians the exact coordinates of Ukrainian positions so that Russians can then devastate them. If that is the case, then I would expect someone — as happened under Druidy Don’s first impeachment, when Vindman, who was on the National Security Council, made a confidential complaint which led to Druidy Don’s first impeachment on the grounds of withholding $270 million worth of Javelin missile systems until the comedian, President Zelensky, announced an investigation into President Biden. That was the basis of the complaint, and it was held true in the impeachment trial in the House of Congress.
It is not impossible that if America is today aiding Russia to kill Ukrainians, someone who has taken an oath to the Constitution and to defend the Constitution of America — someone in the chain of command involved in leaking information, if it has been leaked — will themselves make a complaint, and this will lead to a second impeachment trial of Druidy Don.
However, even if this eventuality does not happen, I do not expect the Ukrainian negotiators in Saudi Arabia next week to capitulate. I expect them to continue doing what they’re doing by asking for these two conditions — which is to re-archetype Ukraine in the minds of humanity as strong.
What Russia and Druidy Don are colluding in doing is trying to portray Ukraine as weak, as a damsel in distress, when Ukrainians are having to manifest a desire for peace in order to service Druidy Don’s addiction to serving Russia’s interests. However, I do not detect or pick up any appetite for peace at any price in Ukraine.
Ukrainians understand, in a way that many of us have only recently understood, that the use of the term, the moniker, the mantra “peace” itself has been repurposed to serve other meanings. When Druidy Don’s Disinfolklore is talking about “Ukraine must make peace” — “We must hit Ukraine like we would hit a mule until it wants to make peace” — what he is really saying is: we want Ukraine to capitulate and surrender.
Ukraine has lost at least 20,000 of its children who are named and known. Duncy Putler and his children’s commissioner have warrants out for their arrest for the forcible transfer of these children, which is a breach of the laws of war.
All of us who spend our days understanding what’s going on on the battle line and following it — we remember all the atrocities and the people murdered by the Russians. If I remember them as a foreigner: the Nova Kakhovka Dam, the killing of Lisa in Vinnytsia, the terrible revelations of the torture chambers when Russia ran away from Kherson, when it ran away from Kupiansk, from Kharkiv. All the awful atrocities, the destruction of the children’s hospital in Kyiv, the maiming of children.
No one in the world wants peace more than Ukrainians. But equally, no one in the world understands what it will take to bring peace better than Ukrainians.
I’m not too concerned that Ukraine will surrender to Druidy Don. I think he’s going to get a rude awakening. In his mind, he is still archetyping — and he gets this probably from the Russians — Ukraine as a weak damsel in distress and Russia as invincible. Whereas those of us who understand Russia’s weakness and see Russia using donkeys on the front line — talk about mules — it’s Russia which is using mules on the front line to transport its goods because it doesn’t have the vehicles. They’re more expendable than humans in the Russian mind. They’re poor animals. It’s Russia which is the mule.
Druidy Don, the Disinfolklorist himself, will discover that just as America and Russia could not pacify Afghanistan or indeed Iraq, and Russia couldn’t pacify Syria and all these other countries — after three years of war, Ukraine’s capabilities are much greater than they were even in February 2022. Druidy Don will have a rude awakening when he finally understands that Ukraine will not surrender to his diktats about what constitutes peace. This concern trolling at a geopolitical level won’t wash. It doesn’t wash with any of the European leaders as far as I can see. They see through it, which is very different from 2019, very different from the situation of the Maidan in 2014.
We see publicly — and I see no cracks or nothing emerging — European leaders like President Macron, who have been at this rodeo a few times before, supporting Ukraine. All of whom understand that if Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, and if it has a chance to rearm during a ceasefire in Ukraine, it will come for all of our children and move into Poland and Hungary and Bulgaria, et cetera. It’s already dominating our information space and the minds of humanity through Elon Musk and Druidy Don, who appear to be Russian agents by proxy. Just because they speak with American accents and appear to be American or South African oligarchs doesn’t mean they are not executing policies which have been on Russia’s wish list for a century or longer — in every dimension, from collapsing America’s force power to stopping America’s participation in NATO exercises, talking about withdrawing United States troops from Germany and sending them into Hungary.
Frankly, all these terrible reports we are seeing of late — if I see them, then I’m sure the Ukrainian leadership sees them and understands who it’s negotiating with.
My final summary conclusion on these peace talks: I’m not worried about them. I don’t think Ukraine is going to be forced into capitulating. It can argue about the size of the table for years. If Druidy Don gets impatient, then the more he tries to pressure Ukraine by, for instance, helping Russia with targeting, the more pressure will be on him inside America.
Just as he learned or didn’t learn with the first impeachment, he will understand that tangling with Ukraine and not supporting Ukraine is a real fatal error. It really is.
By contrast, supporting Ukraine and helping to smite Russia’s menace on our continent and in our minds — that is an easy win. We have this amazing country, these amazing people, fighting to the death to resist Rushism and to beat Rushism in Ukraine before it further invades our info space, our land, and takes up our mental space and our children in the endless wars.
The easiest thing to do is for Druidy Don to turn his coat and support France, Germany, Britain, and Italy in supporting Ukraine until it finally exits Russia from 100% of Ukraine.
Only that will end the war. Tens of thousands of drones a night, which Ukraine will be able to send across Russia if Russia breaches the ceasefire — which must include an armed element but also an information warfare element.
Russia has voluntarily entered into legal obligations not to interfere in any country’s internal affairs. It’s part of its OSCE membership application. By interfering in elections in Romania, America, Ukraine, Britain, France, and other countries, Russia is breaching its own voluntarily entered obligations. The response to these must be both kinetic and informational.
Ukraine, with a ceasefire after Russia leaves 100% of Ukraine, will have the power — through its world-class drone warfare capabilities — of imposing conditions on Russia every time it breaches the ceasefire, as it has done continually in the past. We cannot allow this to happen again.
I look forward to hearing your views in the comments. Thanks very much.
