The short answer is simple. Ukraine is losing. This means that the USA and Europe are also losing. Now, like classic bullies who have been confronted and forced to retreat, they scaremonger that Russia is about to march on Cinderford!

Russia sees the war as one in which its existence is at stake. The USA made it clear that it would locate interceptor missiles in Ukraine literally within minutes of Russian missile silos. At the same time the USA has retreated from all the agreements it made about limiting missiles and adopted a nuclear first strike policy.

If we were in Russia’s position we would do exactly what Russia has done.

The USA – which began this proxy war by expanding NATO and triggering a civil war in Ukraine – has put forward a plan. It is theatre. Trump says this is ‘Bidens war’ and nothing to do with him at the same time as still providing satellite intelligence that guides Ukrainian bombs onto Russian targets. The Russians are not convinced. Would you be?

The eastward march of NATO and the machinations that went with it, and especially the US financed coup in 2014 and the subsequent civil war that set Ukrainian speakers against Russian speakers, has created a very messy conflict that will be hard to untangle. Negotiated agreements were repeatedly broken by Ukraine with US and British encouragement, so making military conflict inevitable.

The USA wants ‘Europe’ to continue to support the war in Ukraine – to ‘weaken’ Russia. It also wants to weaken Europe by making it dependent on the USA for energy and access to US markets by implementing tariffs. Fundamentally, the USA feels that its position as the leading power in the world is slipping and is manoeuvring to keep it.

This conflict has been presented as a Hollywood pantomime. ‘Putin is the villain and is another Hitler. He eats babies for breakfast/ is terminally ill/ has horns growing out of his head! Russia is about to collapse! Its soldiers fight with shovels and tens of millions have been killed! They attack in ‘meat-waves’! They are dismantling washing machines for chips to make missiles with! UKRAINE IS WINNING!!!!’

People believed this because it was fed to the media by the Governments Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee which ‘advises’ all the mainstream media on how to present issues of ‘national security’. They ALL sang from the same hymn-sheet. All alternative views – such as RT - were literally banned.

Its time this conflict and the huge amounts of money and corruption that has gone into the pockets of Ukrainian politicians was ended. Unless the underlying problems are addressed by agreement, Russia will have to sort things out on the battlefield. More people will die – all because the USA and NATO wanted to ‘weaken Russia’.

And the idea that the supporters of Ukraine should just get together and resolve what to do fails to recognise reality. When you are losing you don’t get to dictate the terms of a settlement.