The Odessa Moment. Scott Ritter - Counter Information

Home Top Ad

Post Top Ad

Saturday, May 17, 2025

demo-image

The Odessa Moment. Scott Ritter

Global Research, May 16, 2025

ritter-endgame-ukraine-400x218

Russia has informed Ukraine of its baseline condition for conflict termination—the withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the territory of lands which, from the perspective of the Russian Constitution, constitute part of Mother Russia. These include Kherson, Zaporozhia, Donetsk and Lugansk. Russia has also made it clear that if Ukraine does not accept these terms, the next time Russia is willing to sit down and negotiate with Ukraine their demands will include four additional Ukrainian oblasts, or administrative regions—presumably Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov. We have reached the Odessa Moment.

Back in January 2023, while appearing on “The Gaggle” with George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle, I postulated that Russia was approaching what I called “the Odessa Moment,” that confluence of military and political circumstances which, once reached, would trigger a strategic decision by Russia to expand the Special Military Operation (SMO) beyond the geography defined by the territories absorbed by Russia following a controversial referenda held in September 2022 on the territory of Kherson, Zaporozhia, Donetsk and Lugansk, in which the question of self-determination was answered by a vote on whether these territories should be incorporated into the Russian Federation or not.

 

https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd142f50b-e556-40dd-bc18-aea6988a688f_772x501

As originally conceived, the SMO was not about territorial acquisition but rather defending the rights of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. In negotiations which began less than a week after the SMO began—first in Gomel, Belarus, and later in Turkey—Russia simply sought to achieve that which had been promised as part of the Minsk Accords entered into with Ukraine, Germany and France in 2014-2015, in which Ukraine promised to make the appropriate changes to its Constitution guaranteeing that the rights and status of Russian-speaking Ukrainians would be protected.

Ukraine, backed by both Germany and France (and the United States as well) opted to treat the Minsk Accords as an opportunity to build up military power sufficient to reclaim parts of the Donbas region (comprised of the oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk) as well as Crimea which were lost in the aftermath of the CIA-backed Maidan coup of February 2014 which saw the Russian-speaking lawfully elected President, Victor Yanukovych, ousted and replaced by US-backed Ukrainian nationalists. Between 2015 and 2022, the US and its NATO allies trained and equipped hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers for the sole purpose of reclaiming by force the territories of Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea.

 

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2Fw_1100%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252Fa72a34bd-4c42-401f-8baa-5f7eb4419df9_760x459

Zelensky meets with Macron, Merkel and Vladimir Putin, December 2019

To Read the complete article by Scott Ritter click here 

Support Scott in his endeavours 

Scott will discuss this article and answer audience questions on Ep. 264 of Ask the Inspector.


https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-odessa-moment-scott-ritter/5887375

Counter Information publish all articles following the Creative Commons rule creative commons. If you don't want your article to appear in this blog email me and I will remove it asap.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Post Bottom Ad

Pages

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *