Putin Says Russia Is Ready for War With NATO

U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine has hit a wall. After a five-hour negotiation session on Tuesday, the Russians rejected the proposal, which was revised multiple times by the time it got to Moscow. And just before those talks, Russian head of state Vladimir Putin told reporters that his country is ready for a fight with NATO if that’s where the war is heading.

Putin’s comments follow those by NATO officials who openly suggested they were thinking of attacking Russia. Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone said NATO may take a “more ‘aggressive’ approach to deter Moscow from continuing its campaign of drone incursions and cyberattacks in Europe,” according to reports.

On Tuesday at an investment forum in Moscow, Putin was asked if Russia was preparing for war with NATO. He said Russia didn’t want to fight Europe, but if it came to that, the Kremlin’s strategy will be different from the one it’s using in Ukraine:

We are not planning to go to war against Europe. I have said that a hundred times. But if Europe wants to wage a war against us and suddenly starts a war with us, we are ready. There should be no doubt about that. The only question is if Europe suddenly starts a war against us.… Europe is not Ukraine. In Ukraine, we are acting with surgical precision. You see my point, don’t you? It is not a war in the direct, modern sense of the word. If Europe suddenly decides to go to war against us and actually follows through with it, then a situation may arise very quickly where we will be left with no one to negotiate with.

Europeans vs. Peace

Earlier, Putin accused the Europeans of subverting the Trump administration’s peace proposal. “Seeing that the outcome does not please them either, they have begun to sabotage the efforts of the current United States administration and President Trump to achieve peace through negotiation,” he said. He added that the revisions they made were intended to “obstruct this entire peace process” by putting forth demands they know “are utterly unacceptable to Russia.”

This view has been echoed even by some in the West, including journalist Gerry Nolan, whose impassioned opinion was featured on the Ron Paul Institute’s website:

Europe’s “peace plan” is pure fan fiction: unlimited Ukrainian army, NATO doors wide open, foreign troops invited in, sanctions snapped on and off like Christmas lights — and not one inch of territory ceded. In other words, the exact blueprint that created the war … now repackaged as the path to end it.…  

The Europeans have finally placed their “rival plan” on the table and it reads like a suicide pact masquerading as diplomacy. Not a roadmap to peace, but the most dangerous piece of political fiction since the Iraq WMD dossier. It wasn’t written to end the war. It was crafted to re-ignite it, by technocrats who’ve never seen a trench, never buried a son, yet now presume to redraw a battlefield they’ve never fought on. This plan would destroy what’s left of Ukraine and plunge Europe into permanent instability.

After Tuesday’s comments at the investment forum, Putin met with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who appear genuinely interested in ending the war. Also present in the meeting was Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Kremlin confidant Kirill Dmitriev, who is reported to have had a major say in crafting the original proposal.

Land the Major Obstacle to an Agreement

Reports suggest Ukrainian territorial concessions are among the major obstacles to an agreement. Russia wants the entire Donbas region (it controls all but 14 percent of it), and the portion of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that it controls. The Americans’ plan calls for the Russians to give some of it back.

The Russians are not likely to walk away from any land they have won. The closest the Ukrainians have ever come to warming up to the idea of territorial concessions was just before Putin’s visit with Trump this summer in Alaska. But they appear to have reverted back to an absolutist position, despite already having lost complete control of about 20 percent of the country’s landmass.

But even if Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky and his European whisperers agree to territorial concessions, there’s no guarantee the military will follow orders and walk away. Certain Ukrainian hardliners in politics and the military have openly said that Zelensky has no authority to concede any land. Zelensky has said this too. Some experts on the matter have suggested that even if he agrees to land concessions, certain elements of the military will not only refuse to pull back, but likely overthrow him, maybe even try to kill him. You can read more about that in our previous report here.

Ukraine Still Looking to Join NATO; Building Military

In addition to territory, the two sides talked about security guarantees for Ukraine, its NATO aspirations, and postwar limitations on its military. Ukraine has yet to concede future ambitions to join the NATO alliance, which Russia considers hostile and one of the primary reasons it invaded in 2022. The Russians will not accept any deal that allows Ukraine to join NATO or bring in foreign troops, although reports of the original “28-point plan” suggest it may have included some semblance of security guarantees from the U.S.

Among the changes the Europeans made to the Americans’ original plan was boosting the limitation on Ukraine’s postwar military to 800,000, a 200,000-man increase. But even this may be unacceptable to Ukrainian hardliners. Colonel Andriy Biletsky, a national hero and commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps, has said he envisions Ukraine as “a permanently militarized society, effectively becoming the army and the arsenal of Europe.” A limit on military personnel is antithetical to that vision. Biletsky, despite being the founder of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, is very well respected in Ukraine, and he’s mulling over a career in politics.

Different Visions for Europe

Although they did not reach an agreement on Tuesday, the Russians say they’re continuing “closed-door” talks with the Americans. When Putin was asked why the Europeans are not involved in the negotiations, he said they have chosen to exclude themselves by cutting off contact with the Kremlin and refusing to accept the reality that Ukraine will not win.

It appears the Europeans and the Americans have two different visions. Having recognized that the Russians have the upper hand, the Americans’ plan includes territorial concessions of land the Ukrainians cannot win back without significant intervention from other nations. The Ukrainian army is operating at half capacity. It’s losing ground daily. Its manpower shortage is so dire that it’s allowing pregnant women to serve in the military. As for the men, in addition to not being allowed to leave the country, if there are any left who can be of any use and are not already in the fight, they will likely be snatched off the streets and thrown onto the battle lines.

Europeans Encouraging War

Yet despite these seemingly insurmountable challenges and a loss of life that will impact Ukraine for many years, the Europeans continue pouring in support to keep the war going. The Ukrainians are likely biding time, believing that eventually help will arrive. They have repeatedly framed their brave and very respectable resistance as a favor to the rest of Europe.

Europe, meanwhile, has been significantly bolstering their military capabilities and readiness. While the official reason is to stave off a Russian invasion, no rational and mildly informed person believes Russia would dare roll into Europe after taking three years to grind out one-fifth of Ukraine. Even NATO officials admit this. When asked about Putin’s comments regarding Russia’s readiness to fight NATO, an official with the alliance told The Wall Street Journal that “Russia doesn’t have the troop numbers or military capability to defeat the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe.”

General Mike Flynn, one of the few sober-minded analysts out there, has been saying for quite some time that the Europeans are not interested in peace. He has accused NATO of deliberately “trying to start a nuclear war with Russia.” If successful, such a war would almost assuredly draw in the United States, a member that makes up the majority of NATO’s power. We recently reported on Germany’s once-secret plan to go to war with Russia. The plan, of course, involves U.S. troops.

U.S. Involvement

This isn’t the first time NATO has egged on a war with Russia over a non-NATO country — and it wouldn’t be the first time it has sought to draw in the U.S. Back in 2016, hacked emails from former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO Gen. Philip Breedlove showed that he was secretly plotting ways to convince President Barack Obama to be more aggressive with Russia over its annexation of Crimea.

“Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country,” The Intercept reported in 2016. But Breedlove “attempted to influence the administration through several channels, emailing academics and retired military officials, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, for assistance in building his case for supplying military assistance to Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists.”

Remarking on this back then, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, long an opponent of neocon foreign policy, said, “NATO is not a friend of peace. We don’t need it. Just as the British decided to leave the EU, so should the U.S. leave NATO.”