A second day of peace talks in Turkey today between Ukraine and Russia. On its face, day one looked like some progress was made. Or, was it?
Russia said it would “drastically” scale back its military activity around Kyiv to “increase mutual trust.” Keep in mind though that Russia is still pounding other parts of Ukraine.
So, what’s going on here? The White House is not confident about Russia’s claims. President Biden says, “We’ll see.”
John Kirby from the Pentagon says, “We believe this is a repositioning not a withdrawal and that we all should be prepared to watch for a major offense against other areas of Ukraine.”
For its part, Ukraine says it is ready to declare itself permanently neutral. That means it will no longer try to join NATO. That has been a key Russian demand.
The Washington Post is reporting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is working with ten nations… including the United States, the U.K., China and Israel… on a security agreement that would ensure the “horrors that the Russians have brought to the Ukrainian people” are never repeated.
If anything good comes out of this, maybe it’s that. That an atrocity like what’s going on in Ukraine never happens again. Anywhere. We are watching cities reduced to rubble. We are watching people die. We are watching people leave their country. It’s a true humanitarian crises.
My fear is that as this plays out, it will lose its lead story/front page status. Trust me, I know how the news business operates. We move on quickly. Until this is over, it needs all our attention.
And… I have started to think this will go on for a very long time.