Medea Benjamin: Pentagon Leaks Show Ukraine War Is a Stalemate. Why Won't the U.S. Push for Peace?

[Uncle Joe]

Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week for the first time since Russia's invasion last year. The call comes two months after China put forward a 12-point peace plan to end the war, and Xi reportedly said negotiations are "the only viable way out" of the conflict. The Chinese president also offered to send a special envoy to Ukraine to help resolve the crisis. To talk more about the war in Ukraine and growing calls for negotiations, we are joined by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink and co-author of the new book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. "The world is calling for negotiations, and the U.S. keeps saying no," says Benjamin. "We are the ones who are holding up a peace process." Her latest piece in The Progressive is headlined "Pentagon Leaks Punch a Hole in the U.S. Propaganda War."

[AZSkiffyGeek]

1. Democracy Now continuing to peddle tankies, I see

Good to see they're providing the pro-Russian POV for the gullible.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

2. The non-fascist world

Is not calling for negotiations, Medea.

It’s calling for Russia to get out of Ukraine and stop murdering Ukrainians.

[brush]

3. Not yet. Ukraine's spring offensive is getting off to a good start...

the Wagner group is about depleted and calling for aid from Moscow. Putin is evacuation Russians from contested areas before the Ukraine army gets there.

The next few months will be decisive, what with all the additional tanks and weapons from western allies being introduced onto the battlefield.

There's a chance yet that Russia will seek negotiations on weaker terms than the presant situation.

[Hekate]

4. War crimes equals Peace is kind of an Orwellian equation, Medea. Russia *started* this....

…if you recall.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

5. Amazing! ... How any kind of movement towards truce and peace is met with derision, even

from friends.

[xocetaceans]

6. Deploy Medea Benjamin to Eastern Ukraine - so that she can start those negotiations herself.

She was right to oppose Bush and his invasion of Iraq, but she has lost the thread and seems no longer to see what is right in front of her face. Russia started this war of aggression in continuance of its policies, policies that have led to the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the war in Georgia in 2008, the overseas poisonings of Russian dissidents, the suppression through imprisonment or murder of internal political opponents to Vladimir Putin, etc.

In no way can Russia in its current state be trusted to be a peaceful neighbor, much less partner to Europe. All of Eastern Europe (which formerly was under the significant influence of the Soviet Union) have ample grounds to wish not to be subjected again to influence from Russia. They are independent countries as is Ukraine.

Medea Benjamin fails to recognize any of that and might as well be as much of a Russian propagandist as Tucker Carlson at this point. Both of them fail to recognize either the fundamental rights of those countries neighboring Russia or the significant US interest in helping to maintain a Europe that is free from war.

Medea Benjamin seems now only to come across as a pathetic reflection of someone who was once quite correct in her criticisms. One thing she clearly misses is that the war can end easily, all Russia has to do is pull back from all of Ukraine's territory (including Crimea).

That is an easy off-ramp.