Trump's peace plan and atacms on the beach

Julia Latynina - about how Ukraine and Russia will try to move the front line

Reuters published Trump's plan to stop fire in Ukraine. More precisely, this is the plan of Trump's advisers: retired lieutenant general Keith Kellogue and Fred Flatez, chiefs of staff in the National Security Council during the presidency of Trump.

According to this plan, Kyiv will not receive weapons if peaceful negotiations do not begin. And, on the contrary, if Moscow refuses negotiations, then they will give a weapon to Kyiv. Further-freezing the war on the line of combat demarcation in accordance with the plans that the New Evropa published and which have been discussed for a long time by Turkey, Russia, China, France and the USA.

This is the same plan that presidential candidate Donald Trump voiced for a long time; But here it is important that Kellog and Flatez are not party leaders. These are people who play on a command card. Before us are concrete operational plans that will be launched if Trump wins the elections, and everything is calculated in them: how many weapons will be given or not to give, under what circumstances, and so on.

The leak occurred before the debate with Bayden - two days before them, and was hardly news both in Moscow and in Kyiv.

In connection with this plan, before both sides - both in Moscow and Kyiv - the main question arises. The “combat demarcation line” will probably be considered as of January, when this plan can be officially proposed.

Therefore, both sides have several months in stock to move this line. These are the very months on which Ukraine will have enough new weapons, just given to it.

It turns out that both sides have a choice: either to continue the war in the current mode until January, or to abruptly try to escort the situation by creating or using some “black swan” to recall the patriotic feelings of the house or sympathy in the West.

Indeed, for President Putin, these few months are probably the last chance to move the real boundaries. And the President of Zelensky can postpone elections in Ukraine only as long as the war is going on. “We do not hold the elections until we fight, but we will fight until we return the borders of 1991.” The line to the war, “until we return the borders of 1991,” entails very obvious political dividends. Under these conditions, the Ukrainian president is politically important to prove that Putin is inconsistent.

So far, we see that the escalation, albeit not very sharp, is happening, and Kharkov’s blows of Kharkov and the ATACMS airfield on the airfield in Belbek were a striking example of this escalation.

Recall, in fact, what happened.

This Sunday, June 23, the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched five AtacMS missiles with cassette combat units in Crimea. All missiles were intercepted. One, being knocked down from the course, deviated, and its cassette warhead hit the beach in Sevastopol, on which there were a lot of people on Sunday day. There were a five of them, of which two children were killed , and 124 people were injured.

The video is clearly noticeable: what hit the beach is precisely the cassette combat part of ATACMS. These are terrible shots: small fountains that break water and people.

After that, the Russian propagandists began to claim that the blow was delivered on the beach on purpose, the UK opened the case under the article “The Terrorist attack”, and the Ministry of Defense accused Washington of what happened. All this looks like another round of the propaganda escalation. ATACMS was probably damaged by the air defense, and the shock on the beach was unpredictable and accidental. His goal, most likely, was the Belbek airfield 8 km from the beach.

At the same time, the Armed Forces have always been inflicted on military facilities at night. This is a well -known technology for minimizing victims among the civilians.

Why did the APU this time strike during the day? I can assume two reasons. One of them lies in the fact that Russian troops struck Kabbi on Kharkov, and these strokes are delivered just in the afternoon, when the number of civilian victims is large, the aircraft, unlike missiles, fly during the day.

The second reason is that Atacams, starting at night, is noticeable much better than the one that starts during the day.

There are already several cases when Russian troops detected Himars according to night outbreaks, and then the Iskander managed to fly along it.

At the same time, it is clear that the number of peaceful Ukrainian inhabitants who died from Russian strokes is simply incomparably more than the number of civilians who died from the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

However, the adviser to the Office of the President of Zelensky, Mikhail Podolyak, speaking of the dead civilians, including children, called them "civilian invaders." “Crimea is also a large military camp and warehouse, with hundreds of direct military targets, which Russians cynically try to mask and close their own civilians. Which, for their part, are ... civil invaders, ” wrote Mikhail Podolyak.

Of course, we can say that it is worthless to react to words when people die. But if the random residents of the Crimea, including children, are “civilian invaders”, then it is not clear how, with this attitude to this population, the Office of the President of Zelensky is going to free them.

Thus, in a short time we have two clear escalation lines. As with regard to mutual exchange by blows (if Kharkov in the afternoon - Atacms that will knock down in the Crimea during the day), and in terms of words (“terrorist attack” and “civilian invaders”).