US and EU Reject Putin's Peace Proposal

Are Americans and Europeans willing to die for Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia?

As a young boy growing up in Texas, I loved the story of William Barrett Travis, the 26-year-old commander of the besieged Alamo, who wrote his famous “Victory or Death” letter on February 24,1836, stating:

Fellow citizens and compatriots;
…. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country. VICTORY or DEATH.

I thought of Travis this weekend when I saw that the Ukraine, U.S., and E.U. had vehemently—with great indignation—rejected Putin’s ceasefire offer on the grounds that Ukraine agree to give up Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and to remain neutral instead of joining NATO.

I wonder how many American taxpayers have heard of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Could you, dear reader, have pointed to their approximate position on an unmarked map?

I found it notable that most media reporting of Putin’s offer does NOT even mention these provinces by name—a tacit admission that the names would mean nothing to most readers in the United States and Western Europe.

Are Americans and Europeans willing to die so that these provinces—inhabited largely by ethnic Russians who speak the Russian language—may remain a part of Ukraine?

The comparison of Putin to Hitler—which we always hear every time the United States wants to get rid of a foreign leader—doesn’t hold water. The pigheaded refusal to negotiate with Putin is of the same species of stupidity as the insistence that everyone get a COVID-19 gene transfer shot. The same gang of horrible people responsible for the official pandemic response are now determined to pursue a ruinous war with Russia, which will certainly result in unspeakably death and destruction. The summer of 2024 is starting to bear an eery resemblance to the summer of 1914.