Summary
Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that NATO must accept “new territorial realities” in Ukraine as a precondition for peace talks, reiterating claims that NATO’s “aggressive policies” and disregard for Russian security interests caused the war.
Scholz condemned Russia’s aggression and called for troop withdrawal during the call, which has drawn criticism from Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Zelensky warned the talks could ease Putin’s international isolation without altering Russia’s stance.
A Western diplomat suggested Scholz might leverage the call domestically amid Germany’s upcoming snap elections.
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Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that NATO must accept “new territorial realities”
Is he talking about Kursk by any chance?
Maybe my reading comprehension is failing me here, but where’s the ultimatum? He hasn’t made any demands with a specific time limit and repercussions if Scholz didn’t meet them. He has only stated his preconditions for peace talks.
The subtext is that Trump will withdraw from NATO, taking 70% of the defense budget with him, if Putin’s demands aren’t met. Then NATO becomes just an acronym, and new territorial realities become manifest whether NATO wants them or not. He’s basically calling out NATO because he knows he’s got the actual foundation of NATO’s power in his back pocket.
You’re going to hear more of this same saber-rattling from Putin and with more frequency. Trump wants an excuse to leave NATO already. His staff have already outlined that the executive branch has unilateral power to withdraw from NATO. Putin’s job, which he is happy to do, is to antagonize NATO into doing something that will piss off Trump and give him justification to withdraw.
Frankly, the withdrawal seems almost inevitable at this point, especially with his plan to empty the upper military ranks. The EU is trying to plan to compensate for it, but losing 70% of your military strength within a coalition that so exclusively relies on the US as the primary backer of the EU’s defense strategy is nearly impossible.
The EU has a military partner in the United States that spends 4x what the entire EU membership combined spends on military funding aggregated (not just that they allocate to NATO). The US contributes an irrefutably dominant amount to the coalition. When Trump threatened to leave last time, NATO tried to come up with plans to maintain its deterrent force, but it went nowhere because the EU simply can’t afford to compensate for the US withdrawing from the coalition, so they did basically nothing and breathed a sigh of relief when Biden took office.
That freed up the ability for the EU economy to continue prioritizing other things because they realized making up for the US leaving NATO will destabilize the European economy. But now, not trying to make up for it will leave member states incredibly exposed. Estonia, like many other member states, have a defense strategy that amounts to, “try to die slowly for two weeks until NATO arrives.” So Putin is playing with the leverage he gained through Trump and the republican party’s seizure of all dimensions of the federal government. And it is tremendous leverage. The EU should be absolutely freaking out right now, but I don’t think they have yet wrapped their heads around the fact that the US might (indeed probably will) leave NATO.
Watch out. Geopolitics are shifting.
The ultimatum is give him whar he wants or else he’s going to keep sending his military age men to get blown up by Ukrainian drones.
I think his bucket of military aged men he’s willing to sacrifice runs low, he’s been sending their fathers for a while.
And the least effective reddit trolls, don’t forget.
It’s kind of a Russian tradition to throw every person at a conflict and hope it works out. During WWII they had more people than guns, but people got sent out anyway
It’s straight from Zapp Brannigan’s Big Book of War
The ultimatum is to finally ban Newsweek for the complete gutter trash it is.
The title is quite misleading. Scholz is leader of a NATO country, but it reads like an ultimatum was issued to the leader of NATO, which Scholz is definitely not.
Scholz is barely the leader of Germany. But at least we’ve got rid of the FDP.
Putin is definitely the type to pick a fight and then play the victim. At some point he probably fell on the floor and stamped his feet like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum
