For immediate release: January 20, 2025

In Los Alamos, Scott Ritter and Dmitri Trenin discuss paths to peace in Ukraine; other resources

Contact: Greg Mello: 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

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Albuquerque, NM -- On January 15, the Los Alamos Study Group hosted two prominent U.S. and Russian analysts in a hybrid discussion with a live audience in Los Alamos ("Peace in Ukraine -- How Do We Get There?" A discussion in Los Alamos with Scott Ritter and Dmitri Trenin,").

That discussion is now available on the Study Group's YouTube channel here. The two speakers each began with a roughly 20-minute initial presentation, followed by 10 additional minutes apiece, after which we took questions from the Los Alamos audience.

We highly recommend this discussion as a tonic to those who may be thinking that the peace plans being vaguely bruited by the incoming administration are realistic. We agree with our speakers and many others that peace in Ukraine will require meeting Russia's key security demands, as well as acknowledging the changed military realities on the ground and under law, including formal acknowledgment that the four breakaway provinces in their entirety, plus Crimea of course, are now part of Russia. 

Russia demands that the new, smaller Ukraine be neutral and demilitarized, so as to pose no threat to Russia. 

Russia also seeks an enduring architecture of peace in Europe, as she did in December 2021. The upcoming talks will include that challenge as well as the problem of ultranationalist institutions in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora in the West, a matter of grave concern here as well as in Russia. 

On our daily-updated Ukraine War web page -- especially today and recently -- we provide what we believe to be a basic set of resources useful to realistically approach ending the terrible war in Ukraine. You will see there a recent interview with John Mearsheimer for example, which harmonizes well with the views of our speakers in Los Alamos, as well as various expressions of Russia's minimum demands.

Study Group director Greg Mello:

"In Los Alamos, Scott Ritter, especially, provided the bucket of ice water we need to wake up to the reality of the terrible war in Ukraine: the long U.S. deceptions that led to it and the reality-based acceptance needed to end it. 

"We Americans need to think for just for a minute about other peoples' lives and deaths for once -- as well as about the enormous treasure being spent to, in effect, kill Ukrainians, money which is so badly needed here at home. 

"The ridiculous propaganda trope that the U.S. is somehow "helping Ukraine" by sending gobs of money and weapons to Ukraine needs to be entirely exploded. We have just about destroyed Ukraine for the sake of a grotesque geopolitical gambit that a child could see would fail, the immorality of which towers to the sky. To U.S. foreign policy elites, a Ukrainian life has been worth nothing, zero. Ukraine has lost about 10 times as many soldiers as the U.S. lost in Vietnam. It's far more horrible than most people realize.

"Remember, this madness began under Obama, with Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland on-point for the Russophobic Blob. But it was Biden who, in Ukraine as well as in Palestine, filled the Oval Office with innocent blood.

"As a result of the string of incredibly irresponsible actions taken by the Biden administration, this war is going to end largely on Russia's terms, full stop. If Trump does not accept most or all of those terms, ignoring the shrill outcry that will surely and instantly come, Ukraine will lose even more people and land. Ukraine would then be much worse off, and the specter of nuclear war would remain and grow.

"If Trump does not end this war now, on what will be Russia's terms, it will become "his" war -- and will be much harder to end, and much more dangerous.

"Trump has the opportunity to be a real peacemaker. Ending this war and creating an architecture of lasting mutual security needs all our support. It's the first step toward nuclear arms control. People interested in nuclear disarmament need to step up to the plate.

"In that new architecture of mutual security there will be no place for NATO, as will hopefully be seen by more and more people. NATO is very much an aggressive nuclear alliance that prevents peace, while helping control and subjugate Europe to U.S. wishes. To prosper in Europe, get rid of it."

***ENDS***