David Ignatius (lead image, left) has been a career-long mouthpiece for the US State Department. He has just been called in by the current Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) to convey an urgent new message to President Vladimir Putin, the Security Council, and the General Staff in Moscow.

For the first time since the special military operation began last year, the war party in Washington is offering terms of concession to Russia's security objectives explicitly and directly, without the Ukrainians in the way.

The terms Blinken has told Ignatius to print appeared in the January 25 edition of the Washington Post. The paywall can be avoided by reading on.

The territorial concessions Blinken is tabling include Crimea, the Donbass, and the Zaporozhe, Kherson "land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia". West of the Dnieper River, north around Kharkov, and south around Odessa and Nikolaev, Blinken has tabled for the first time US acceptance of "a demilitarized status" for the Ukraine. Also, US agreement to restrict the deployment of HIMARS, US and NATO infantry fighting vehicles, and the Abrams and Leopard tanks to a point in western Ukraine from which they can "manoeuvre...as a deterrent against future Russian attacks."

This is an offer for a tradeoff - partition through a demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the east of the Ukraine in exchange for a halt to the planned Russian offensive destroying the fortifications, rail hubs, troop cantonments, and airfields in the west, between the Polish and Romanian borders, Kiev and Lvov, and an outcome Blinken proposes for both sides to call "a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine's territorial integrity".

Also in the proposed Blinken deal there is the offer of a direct US-Russian agreement on "an eventual postwar military balance"; "no World War III"; and no Ukrainian membership of NATO with "security guarantees similar to NATO's Article 5."

Blinken has also told the Washington Post to announce the US will respect "Putin's tripwire for nuclear escalation", and accept the Russian "reserve force includ[ing] strategic bombers, certain precision-guided weapons and, of course, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons."

President Putin has offered a hint of the Russian reply he discussed with the Stavka and the Security Council last week.

Putin told a meeting with university students on Wednesday, hours after Blinken's publication. "I think that people like you," the president said, "most clearly and most accurately understand the need for what Russia is now doing to support our citizens in these territories, including Lugansk, Donetsk, the Donbass area as a whole, and Kherson and Zaporozhye. The goal, as I have explained many times, is primarily to protect the people and Russia from the threats that they are trying to create for us in our own historical territories that are adjacent to us. We cannot allow this. So, it is extremely important when young people like you defend the interests of their small and large Motherland with arms in their hands and do so consciously."

Read on, very carefully, understanding that nothing a US official says, least of all through the mouths of Blinken, Ignatius, and the Washington Post is trusted by the Russians; and understanding that what Putin and the Stavka say they mean by Russia's "adjacent historical territories" and the "small and large Motherland" has been quite clear.

Follow what Blinken told Ignatius to print, before Putin issued his reply. The propaganda terms have been highlighted in bold to mean the opposite — the public positions from which Blinken is trying to retreat and keep face.

From day one of the war in Ukraine, the most powerful argument against unrestrained western intervention in the conflict has been the danger of catastrophic escalation into an all-out war between Nato and Russia.

So far, western governments have shied away from a truly existential confrontation with Russia. But the threat remains that continuing western military aid to Ukraine will provoke Russian countermeasures that could turn Moscow's proxy war with Nato into a direct military conflict.

Western hawks have long argued the danger of escalation is illusory. In an op-ed for the New York Times, former British diplomat Nigel Gould-Davies claimed "Putin has no red lines" and that, far from being deterred by fear of escalation, the West should call Putin's bluff and threaten Russia with nuclear retaliation if he overreacts to western support for Ukraine.

Gould-Davies provides no hard evidence for his insights into Putin's mind. His argument is pure speculation, and prompts the question: what if Putin won't back away from a major war with the West? Should Nato be taking even a small risk of igniting a larger conflict that could kill millions?

Recent decisions by western governments to supply Ukraine with many more tanks and armoured vehicles suggest that the materialisation of such a scenario is not so far-fetched.

On Tuesday evening on his prime time show, Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Hunter Biden of using classified information to profit in Ukraine.

The revelation from Carlson came in response to a New York Post story that was derived from the infamous Hunter Biden laptop.

"The entire question whether it's a big deal or no big deal at all hangs on that question what was in the documents?" Carlson started while discussing whether or not the classified document story is important.

It is "almost unthinkable" that Russia would lose in the Ukraine conflict, former Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori has said, questioning the US-led drive to support Kiev, which Tokyo has joined.

"Is it fine to put so much effort into Ukraine?" the former official asked, as quoted by Japanese media. "It's almost unthinkable that Russia will lose," he added, during a meeting of the Japan-India Association in Tokyo on Wednesday.

The 85-year-old politician explained he didn't understand why Tokyo was willing to damage its relationship with Moscow after "we have come this far." Russia and Japan have an unresolved territorial dispute and are technically still at war with each other.

Currently, the world's attention is focused on the European theater of war, but some very interesting events are also unfolding in Asia.

Japan is the most illustrative. Until recently, the country was reluctant to peddle a militant attitude either in terms of weaponry or even in using economic pressure. Things are changing, and this is a strong indicator of the transformation of the international arena.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has just completed a tour of the US and the leading countries in Western Europe. Contrary to usual custom, there was virtually nothing but military rhetoric everywhere. In a policy statement delivered in Paris, Kishida stressed that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific region are inextricably linked and must be ensured collectively.

Other statements in Rome, London and Washington confirmed the new trend: In the security field, Japan no longer intends to limit itself exclusively to its relationship with the US, though it forms the basis of its entire defense strategy. Now, Tokyo seeks a much broader engagement with the main Western bloc (NATO), subject to its gradual reorientation towards the Pacific space.

On January 10 of this year, Biden met with Trudeau and the president of Mexico at the 10^th North American "Leaders" Summit. While there, Biden signed the Declaration of North America. Here is what was inside it.

This is verbatim text, as found at WhiteHouse.gov. Our comments are below each segment in bold and italics.

Today, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President Joseph R. Biden, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Mexico City for the 10th North American Leaders' Summit (NALS). The leaders are determined to fortify our region's security, prosperity, sustainability and inclusiveness through commitments across six pillars: 1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 2) climate change and the environment; 3) competitiveness; 4) migration and development; 5) health; and 6) regional security.

Right off the bat, you know that this document means trouble. Every American is fully aware of the woke concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how that plays out in their daily lives - discrimination against them. Climate change is being used to push through global tyranny. This sets the stage for what is to follow.

U.S. politicians who receive invitations to the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, always seem to say stupid things, or stay silent when they could speak up for American values.

We have several creepy crawlers over there this week who exude what's wrong with America - Seth Moulton, Joe Manchin and Brian Kemp. There are many others but, for brevity's sake, let's focus on these three as examples of why no U.S. politician worth their salt should attend these meetings.

Vera Jourova, the vice president of values and transparency for the Executive European Commission, speaking Tuesday on a Davos panel with the Orwellian title "The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation," predicted the U.S. would soon have hate speech laws, like they do in Europe, regulating what people can and can't say on the internet.

Here she is, sitting next to the Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts, Seth Moulton, who she taps condescendingly on the arm and laughs as she makes her dystopian prediction. Watch the video below and you'll see Moulton just smiles and says nothing to rebut her evil prediction.

A recent statement by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) head Bill Nelson that the US was in a space race with China, when combined with recent moves by both the US and China to militarize space, could send the US on a policy trajectory that transforms established policy regarding space-based activities as being exclusively exploration-driven in nature, to one where conquest and domination become the dominating factors. Such a move would be a sharp departure from past practice and inconsistent with existing treaty obligations banning such conduct.

However, the current level of anti-Chinese rhetoric in the US and an historical willingness to walk away from treaty vehicles that fall foul of US interests, could combine and result in Bill Nelson's self-declared "space race," becoming the foundation of future US declaratory policy — especially once billions of dollars are allocated by the US Congress premised on such a notion.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has introduced the PELOSI Act, or officially the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act, that would prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from holding or trading individual stocks. The bill already has support from many House Democrats.

"As members of Congress, both Senators and Representatives are tasked with providing oversight of the same companies they invest in, yet they continually buy and sell stocks, outperforming the market time and again. While Wall Street and Big Tech work hand-in-hand with elected officials to enrich each other, hard-working Americans pay the price. The solution is clear: we must immediately and permanently ban all members of Congress from trading stocks," Hawley said.

On Tuesday the White House decided that it would send about 30 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, which was seen as political cover for Germany, which decided to ship 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev.

Early on the morning of May 2, 1945, General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the Soviet 8thGuards Army, accepted the surrender of the German garrison of Berlin.

Two days prior, soldiers from the 150th Rifle Division, part of the Soviet 5th Shock Army, had raised the victory banner of the Red Army over the Reichstag. An hour after the banner went up, Adolf Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, committed suicide in his study inside the Furhrerbunker.

Chuikov, the hero of Stalingrad whose battered 62nd Army was renamed the 8th Guards Army in honor of their victory in holding that city in the face of a massive German onslaught, had led his troops into the heart of the Nazi capital, battling stubborn Nazi resistance in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, where the den of the Nazi beast was located. The Soviet general was rewarded for the courage and sacrifice of his soldiers by being in position to accept the German surrender.