American Committee for US-Russia Accord

The U.S., Ukraine, and Europe are inching closer to a security guarantees package to be presented to Russia as part of a settlement to end the Ukraine war. According to a Financial Times report today, the U.S. is already pledging “intelligence assets and battlefield oversight” to any Ukrainian-European plan for a post-war peacekeeping force.

The Western punditariat’s commentary on Russia is spectacularly ill-informed. This should be expected from mainstream journalists whose employment relies on the very ignorance they so readily espouse, but there is no excuse for those who promote themselves as “experts” and use this alleged expertise to help craft Western policy towards Russia.

The Trump-Putin Alaska summit was about far more than Ukraine. Since long before the meeting in Anchorage, the Arctic has been recognized as a setting for U.S.-Russia cooperation.

The​ official justification for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was set out by Henry Stimson, the former US secretary of war, in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s.

Too much of the talk about the recent Alaska summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin focuses on the wrong issue.  The key question is not whether an eventual peace accord ending the fighting in Ukraine will require Kyiv to accept Moscow’s continued possession of Crimea and at least a portion of Ukraine’s Donbas region.  Anyone with a modicum of realism understands that such territorial concessions are unavoidableif the bloody war of attrition is to end.  The real issue involves the demand of Ukraine and of its fan club in NATO that Kyiv be given “security guarantees” in exchange for accepting that reality.  Agreeing to such an open-ended commitment could ultimately prove fatal to the United States.

Russia has announced that it will no longer adhere to the terms of the INF Treaty, which Trump, at the urging of his neoconservative National Security Adviser John Bolton, withdrew from in 2019.

During the Istanbul peace talks on June 2, 2025, Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, acting on behalf of Zelenskyy’s administration, presented a list of 339 children, complete with specific details such as names and family testimonies, requesting their return.

The 339-name list represents the only cases Ukraine can substantiate with concrete evidence, such as documented family reports or institutional records. The broader 20,000 figure, however, is an estimate based on aggregated reports that include unconfirmed, duplicate, or potentially fabricated claims.

Putin is Hitler, we are all Winston Churchill, if we don’t stand up now there’ll be Russian tanks in Bexley before we know what hit us, etc etc.

We must grieve that the USA has wearied of financing and arming one of the stupidest, most pointless wars in human history.

An obvious deal could involve Russia dropping its territorial demand (or rather, like the Ukrainians, deferring the whole issue of legal sovereignty over the four provinces for future negotiation) in return for the West giving up the idea of a European reassurance force for Ukraine, backed by US airpower.

Though Moscow has clearly accepted the principle that Kyiv should come out of this war with a viable defensive deterrent against future aggression, the devil is in the details on precisely what form this deterrent can take.

Rather than seeking security for all, Europe is still seeking partial security, only for Ukraine. This short-sightedness stems from the desire to punish Russia, which argues that it is only defending its national interests.

Qi’s Kelley Vlahos interviews two well known analysts of  the Ukraine war: James Carden is a writer and publisher of The Realist Review. Mike Vlahos is a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and a weekly contributor on the John Batchelor Show.

Most commentators are reporting accurately that President Trump abandoned his previous demand that a cease-fire in Ukraine precede negotiations.  He clearly did despite his earlier comments—not the first time he has changed his mind.  I believe he did so because he was honestly convinced that Putin’s argument made sense.  That is, if there is to be a peaceful settlement, it must be worked out beforehand.

Just a little history will explain this.

There was an agreement for a cease fire in Ukraine before Russia annexed the Donbas. It was part of an agreement that those provinces would remain in Ukraine provided Ukraine pledged neutrality and amended its constitution to establish a federal system (like the US has) and guarantee Russian speakers language rights.  Ukraine did none of those things, routinely violated the cease fire, and used it to rearm.

So, one might ask, then why didn’t Trump avoid the war by giving Putin the assurances he required during his first term?  Answer: the effect of the “Russiagate,” hoax charging that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to elect Trump.  That meant that any attempt to make a deal with Russia would have been condemned in the U,S, by those claiming falsely that Russia had embarrassing evidence about him and thus he was subject to blackmail.

In Trump’s rambling comments he referred with particular emotion the effect of the “criminal” Russiagate hoax, implicitly confirming that this prevented him giving Putin the assurances required during his first term. When Putin commented that he believed Trump he, in effect, communicated that he agreed with Trump on this point.

I believe that if there had not been the “Russiagate” hoax and Neocon advisers like John Bolton, Trump might well have done more to repair U.S.-Russian relations during his first term rather than acting in a manner that further exacerbated the relationship.

Jack F. Matlock, Jr

August 17, 2025

Richard Sakwa is a British  academic expert who has been a prolific author of books and articles on the Soviet Union and Russia. He is known as one of the best and most fair-minded experts on Russia in the English-speaking world. In this wide-ranging interview, Sakwa discusses many topics, from the collapse of the Soviet Union; Russia during the 1990’s; the nature of VladimirPutin’s governance; the rise of a new cold war and the Russia-Ukraine War.

The recent pronouncements of Ukrainian president Zelensky—regarding his inability to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia—sound increasingly like the response of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who, deprived of the use of his arms and legs (which were chopped off by King Arthur), continues to invoke the ridiculous syllable “Ni,” as a defense until Arthur finally gets bored and marches on by. [Read more…] about ACURA GuestPost: Ben Dunham: The Ukrainian President Who Shouts “Ni”

Benoît Paré is a French army reserve officer and former defense ministry analyst. Mr. Paré worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as part of the seize-fire monitoring mission in Eastern Ukraine. He also wrote a book about this experiences in the Donbas with the title “What I saw in Ukraine: 2015-2022, Diary of an international Observer.”

Despite deep acrimony over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sound strategy demands Washington seek to normalize ties with the Kremlin. The United States and Russia share many fundamental interests, including strategic stability and the continuous flow of maritime commerce.

In February 2016, Donald Trump scandalized Republican Party elites at a CNN town hall event in Columbus, Ohio, when he dared to call George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq “a big fat mistake” and “the worst decision any one has made, any president has made, in the history of this country.” Trump’s assertion infuriated GOP insiders not because it was clearly mistaken or even easily disputable, but because it was all too true.

Footage from President Zelensky meeting at the White House with President Trump yesterday.