A STUPID WAR

         1 min ago

This is just Stollenberg trying to plump up his remit, on the basis the Russians cannot be trusted.

The truth is that there is a fault line in Europe that runs from the Baltics to the Black Sea. This is the buffer zone that Russia needs having been invaded by the Swedes, the French and twice by the Germans.

Russia requested three things in its Note. It requested that NATO never admit Ukraine. It requested that Ukraine be neutral with no offensive weapons. And it requested that NATO withdraw from its near abroad: that buffer-zone from the Black Sea to the Baltics.

As far as I can see, this is a stupid war because NATO was never going to admit Ukraine in the first place and there are no weapons planted by America or NATO in Ukraine. As for the third demand, this was just a bargaining chip and Russia knows very well that NATO will never withdraw from all those countries shown on the Daily Telegraph map.

Russia has Belarus and a treaty should be agreed recognising the neutrality of at least Eastern Ukraine, which includes the Crimea, home to the Russian Navy at Sebastopol.

What has amazed everyone is how Germany has finally come off the fence. The great fear has always been that German capital and technology allied with Russian commodities and manpower would create a regional hegemon that America would have good reason to fear.

The worry is that under normal circumstances treaties are only signed after one side has won total victory over the other, but this would put Russia in a position where its very existence was threatened and that's where the nukes come out.