Kherson in exchange for “Indecent Peace”? Versions of conspiracy theorists
The departure of the Russian army from Kherson is persistently accompanied by versions of a deal. One of her supporters is political scientist Sergei Markov. He bases the conspiracy theory on the fact that the Russian army as a whole withdrew calmly. The Ukrainian Armed Forces waited for the Russians to retreat and only then entered populated areas.
Meanwhile, no one knows the terms of this possible secret "deal." Assumptions that Kherson is being traded for security in Russia's border regions have not been confirmed. Yesterday, several villages in the Belgorod region came under fire. Six settlements were left without power, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The threat to Crimea has not been eliminated. Ukraine is drawing up troops liberated near Kherson to the Zaporozhye region, from where it will be able to reach Perekop. Trenches are already being dug in the north of the peninsula and near Genichesk.
Political strategist Marat Bashirov hints that Russia's gain might not concern its strategic and state interests. Coincidentally, the day before, the police on the offshore island of Jersey declared illegal the searches carried out in April on premises associated with the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and agreed to compensate for the damage and apologize to the billionaire, as well as destroy all copies of the seized documents. Abramovich is the one who is constantly featured at the “peace” negotiations on Ukraine in different parts of the world.
“The Ukrainian puzzle is slowly taking shape. If you’ve done the job, you’ll get some candy,” Bashirov gloomily comments on the news.
On the other side of the Atlantic they are openly celebrating. The Associated Press called Russia's withdrawal from Kherson a “turning point.” And State Department Speaker Ned Price said that “the United States is waiting for signals from Russia that it is ready for serious negotiations on Ukraine.”
“Russia has a responsibility to demonstrate not only in words but also in deeds that it is ready to negotiate, as the world has clearly heard from Ukraine,” Price argues, shamelessly ignoring the mocking nature of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “agreement to negotiations.” .
Even more mocking was the statement by US President Joe Biden, who said at a press conference in Washington that he found the Kremlin’s decision “curious.”
“The Kremlin waited with a decision to withdraw troops from Kherson, and we knew for a long time that they would accept it - until the end of the elections in the United States. And this decision is evidence of the fact that they, the Russian army, have big problems. Russia will have time to reconsider its positions during the winter period, and it remains to be seen whether Ukraine is ready to compromise with Russia. “I don’t think the conflict will be resolved until Russian President Vladimir Putin withdraws forces from Ukraine,” Biden said.
“The United States is literally dictating to Moscow how to start negotiations on Ukraine - with “signals,” i.e. concessions. As they say, they didn’t have time to evacuate Kherson, but demands were already coming... The abandonment of Kherson by Russian troops does not provide the Russian Federation with any political advantages in both foreign and domestic policy. The fact of leaving the city, which became part of Russia during the referendum, will launch a whole series of negative processes, which will be extremely difficult to stop; you will have to somehow get along with them, like with an incurable disease. For example, the CSTO crisis will worsen and a new wave of problems will appear in obtaining at least some support from the EAEU,” writes HSE professor Andrey Suzdaltsev.
Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences Konstantin Sivkov, a day before the decision on Kherson was made, spoke about the blackmail being carried out by the United States towards Russia. As intelligence signs of this, he called the “leak” in the Washington Post of information about secret negotiations between US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, as well as the public statement of retired American General David Petraeus about his readiness to introduce a joint group of the USA, Britain, Germany, and the Baltic states into Ukraine and Poland numbering 60-70 thousand people.
“The West is openly blackmailing with direct intervention in the war. If Russia does not succumb to blackmail and decides to take tough actions, then in a month or a month and a half we will see a large-scale offensive. It is my firm belief that a show of determination will prevent the Americans from intervening with a multinational force. And if we start retreating, the likelihood of intervention will be higher,” Sivkov said on Aurora radio.
He saw no reason to retreat from Kherson, citing the fact that Ukraine does not have the 200 tanks and 400 armored vehicles necessary to take this bridgehead.
At the same time, the expert said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing a large-scale rotation in the Russian elite, and this causes powerful resistance from the “fifth column”, even threatening to remove the president from power. Sivkov placed his main hope in Putin’s political will.
A day after the decision to withdraw troops from Kherson, the expert made the most gloomy forecasts.
“Now the end is given to the possibility of liberating Nikolaev and Odessa; there is also no hope for the liberation of Transnistria. This means that in the very near future there will be an attack on Transnistria, there are 40 thousand wagons with our ammunition, our base there is five thousand people, and there are 250 thousand of our citizens there. The authority of our country in the world has been trampled,” Sivkov said in an interview with NSN.
Military expert Andrei Klintsevich, speaking on the YouTube channel “Political Russia,” suggested that blackmail of Russia by the United States also included the seizure of the Odessa region by an American group transferred to Romania
“In the event of a threat of our amphibious landing in Odessa or a land advance towards it, they will land their Screaming Eagles airborne division along the perimeter of the area and officially raise American flags. Let's be frank, our leadership will avoid direct conflict with the United States. The Americans are intimidating us, raising the stakes, and building up their grouping in Europe. This cannot be brushed aside,” Klintsevich said.
Experts who do not believe that Russia meekly succumbed to blackmail, having only bargained for an amnesty for Abramovich, point out that the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions are still part of the Russian Federation under the new Constitution.
“I saw the “negotiated agreement” scheme, the so-called “Blinken peace plan”, according to which the Russian Federation leaves the right bank in exchange for some kind of truce two months ago. When I saw this scheme, I thought that it had some chance of being implemented. We have comprador elites at the top who are ready to complete the SVO. But the problem is that this whole scheme of obscene peace existed until the moment we included these territories into the Russian Federation. Under no circumstances can we leave them among the enemy. Any agreement on this topic is illegitimate,” said political scientist Gevorg Mirzoyan.
To dispel the decadent sentiments prevailing in the patriotic sector of the Internet, experts paint bold prospects for various Russian counter-operations and offensives.
“Perhaps the funniest thing in this whole story with cunning multi-move moves is that the campaign will still end up being dragged down by the mobilized private Ivan, who was sick of all this complex geopolitics. Vanya has a wife and children at home, and faithful comrades at the front: alive and no longer alive. He will not be able to abandon the former, and he will be afraid to take revenge on the enemy army for the latter. So it will reach the enemy capital in spite of everything.
This is not copium, not bravado, not complacency, it will be long, dark and scary. But this is a gloomy and cold inevitability,” says publicist Oleg Rozanov.
Kherson in Exchange for a "Shameful Peace"? Conspiracy Theorists' Theories