Last September, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent wrote this in Foreign Affairs: “According to multiple former senior U.S. officials, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement.”
In the end, of course, no such settlement was agreed. Which may be, at least in part, because Boris Johnson advised Zelensky not to sign it during his “surprise visit” to Kiev in early April.
As you may recall, one of Zelensky’s “close associates” told Ukrainska Pravda that Johnson was an “obstacle” to negotiations because he’d brought two simple messages: “Putin is a war criminal, he should be suppressed, not negotiated with. And secondly, if you are ready to sign any agreements on guarantees with him, then we are not. We can with you, but not with him, he will still abandon everyone.”
According to Roman Romanyuk, writing in Ukrainska Pravda:
Behind this visit and Johnson’s words lies much more than a simple reluctance to engage in agreements with Russia. The collective West, which back in February suggested that Zelenskyi surrender and run away, now felt that Putin is actually not as all-powerful as they imagined him to be. Moreover, right now there was a chance to “press him”. And the West wants to use it.
It should be noted that Romanyuk disagrees that Johnson’s visit was the main reason the deal fell through. In his view, concerns that “Ukrainian society might not accept such a deal” loomed larger. Others interpret the evidence differently.
Putin himself has claimed the West scuttled negotiations, noting in his September 21st speech that “after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements”.
Now, the former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett has lent credence to this view, claiming that the West “blocked” a draft peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The revelation came in a long interview (in Hebrew) posted on Bennett’s YouTube channel.
Bennett’s words cannot be dismissed as mere speculation, given that he played a central role mediating between the two sides, after a request from Zelensky at the war’s outset.
In the interview, Bennett states that he believed Israel’s national interest would be served by a policy of neutrality, which is why he accepted the request to mediate. Toward this end, he sought to understand the interests of both sides.
“Putin’s perception,” he says, “was wait, when the wall came down, we reached an agreement with NATO that they wouldn’t expand … why are you introducing Ukraine into NATO?” Later in the interview, he states that “the war broke out because of the demand to join NATO”.
After a sequence of phone calls with the two leaders, Bennett flew to Moscow on March 7th. (Meanwhile, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were holding talks at Gomel in Belarus.)
He says that Putin then “made two big concessions”. He promised not to “take out” Zelensky, and he “renounced disarmament of Ukraine”. The same day, Zelensky also “made a big concession” – he “relinquished joining NATO”. Describing these as “huge steps on each side”, Bennett’s impression was that “both sides very much want a ceasefire”.
According to the former Prime Minister, Putin was “very pragmatic”, and “so was Zelensky”. As an example of Putin’s pragmatism, he mentions that Putin “totally understood Zelensky’s political constraints”. Asked whether Putin is “gung ho to fight at all costs”, Bennett replies “no” because “he has goals to achieve”.
Regarding the various Western leaders involved, he says that “Boris Johnson adopted the aggressive line”, whereas “Macron and Scholz were more pragmatic”, and “Biden was both”.
Then we get to the most interesting part. “I think there was a legitimate decision by the West,” Bennett explains, “to keep striking Putin”, to take the “more aggressive approach”. “So they blocked it?” the interviewer asks. “Yes. They blocked it.”
Bennet’s account obviously comports closely with Romanyuk’s observation that the West felt there was a chance to “press” Putin.
One reason to be sceptical is that, insofar as Bennett’s mediation efforts ultimately failed, he has an incentive to blame outside forces (in this case, the West). For now, we can’t be sure exactly what happened. But the revelations are striking, consistent as they are with the earlier report in Ukrainska Pravda – down to the detail of Johnson being particularly hawkish.
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So presumably the new tax will only apply to EVs? Or if it applies to all cars, they will abolish fuel duty? Surely they don’t intend to subject ICE drivers to double taxation?
They are Labour.
EVs have very complex electronics and many are already interactive with the mobile phone network. I would think it would be difficult to fit this sort of system retrospectively to an old petrol/diesel car. And so I guess there will be a dual system in place.
I assumed they would use ANPR but I guess the camera coverage is too patchy.
ANPR is virtually everywhere now…
Not in rural areas
There are probably a couple of cameras in my town but we drove to where we swim tonight which is in the countryside and I doubt there are any cameras so they would have had no idea where I had been. I don’t see much evidence of any highways activity on a lot of the B roads and lanes I drive on- just potholes, overgrown undergrowth and signs you can’t really see
Realistically you need ANPR cameras every few hundred yards. Clearly one every mile would make avoidance simple. So £100 Billion more cash and millions of new cameras. Unworkable. They will use the EV data connections but that is easily jammed, after all the driver doesn’t need it unless self driving. Another unworkable mad idea from CS PPE idiots. Anyway I think the EV thing is niche and largely funded from subsidies to companies which is also unaffordable. The extra power used by all the cameras might even crash the Grid! Isn’t Britain fun now. The ANPR is also becoming useless as a lot of cars have false number plates, some people are not completely stupid on the source of stupid fines from everyone in charge like Khan.
The slapped 20% VAT on school fees so no, fuel duty is unlikely to be abolished.
Sadiq Khan for one will happily introduced road use charging and has no control over fuel duty.
Of course they do.
Buy shares in duct tape makers
But we keep reading DS articles telling us that nobody is buying EVs and manufacturers are reducing production of EVs. So if people are continuing to drive ICE vehicles, how can fuel duty be dwindling? Or is this just wishful thinking / gaslighting?
I think it’s called believing your own propaganda.
And politicians assume because they have wished/decreed it, it magically become reality.
Exactly that – EV take up has stalled massively, everyone who wanted one has one, 95% of them purchased to save tax, and 100% of them on lease are going to be very concerned about the ruinous depreciation… total BS from the government, but then what do we expect?
They’re as rare as hens’ teeth down here in rural Dorset.
“Pay-per-Mile Road Tax ‘On Treasury Agenda’ As Electric Cars Take Over”
Wipes tears from eyes: thanks I needed a good laugh.
In France there is no road tax, there is instead a tax on fuel. Those who use the roads the most, pay the most. Fair.
Many autoroutes are privately operated and charge tolls, reducing the road use tax on fuel. Road closures and delays diverting traffic off the autoroutes adversely affects revenue/profit so there is an incentive to complete roadworks quickly, keep roads open and traffic flowing smoothly.
Those not in a hurry or who are economically minded, use the ordinary roads, those prepared to pay use the toll roads. This spreads traffic across the road network helping to relieve congestion.
We could have had that system here but…
Not road fund taxing EVs was a Government (own goal) ploy to encourage us all to buy the UXBs.
Replacing road fund tax with pay per mile seems a great idea. Those using the roads most, pay most. It also opens up the possibility of private operated roads.
What’s the betting that road tax will apply to all vehicles, as will pay per mile, and fuel duty will continue – triple taxation for ICE drivers!
“What’s the betting that …”
Odds-on.
Don’t forget the 4th tax, VAT!
I wonder how that meeting went.
Official 1: Banning petrol cars means we”re going to lose our revenue from taxing petrol. Of course, nobody could have foreseen that, but it reduces our income and we can’t have that. Tax revenue always goes up, never down.
Official 2: How about we introduce a tax per mile travelled?
Official 1: Gosh what a good idea. We can get tax from electric cars again, but we can also hit those bustards who don’t obey us and stick to petrol cars with a double whammy. Brilliant.
Official 3: But won’t the public be angry about that? I mean we are promoting electric cars under the pretext that they are cheaper, even though we all know they’re only cheaper because we subsidise them. We’ve managed to fool them about the cost of electric cars up to now, but won’t we be letting the cat out of the bag introducing a petrol tax substitute?
Official 1: Why would we care if the public get angry? First of all they don’t know who we are. Secondly, some idiot politician is going to sell this and get all the flak for it. We’re safe.
Official 2: Do we need to worry about protest and god forbid riots?
Official 1: If the public get that restless we’ll get the media to call them far right and we’ll get the pokice to arrest anyone who speaks up against the tax for hate speech. That should take care of that contingency.
Official 2: You can’t save the planet without breaking sone eggs, eh?
All officials: Hear, hear.
Official 1. OK, that’s settled, let’s send out a communication saying that Treasury officials (I.e. us) are warming to the idea of a pay-per-mile tax. You know, to start preparing the plebs.
I imagine it went something like that.
There is no electric agenda because the assumption is that most of us will be dead very soon.If you want to look at it at a granular level then look at how risk averse the major car companies are in terms of the embrace of this technology, Toyota for example. The numbers simply don’t work and can never work and any attempt to make them work would result in environmental disasters a hundred times worse than the deleterious effetcs of the fossil fuel industry. The resources simply don’t exist on the earth and if you think that they are going to start mining asteroids to make your life better then I feel profound pity and empathy for you.
Flat rate taxation (like the poll tax) might be hard to sell. Taxing the amount of energy used is easier – and even now, they charge more for battery charging at traders like traditional petrol stations, where the VAT rate is 20%. Alright, it’s only 5% at home at present, often on unit prices a lot less than retailers like BP, but they might end up with variable VAT – after all, smart meters are required if BEV charge units are installed. Then they could roughly balance the system of excise duty + VAT on petrol & diesel by ramping up the price of charging at home – charge tax, in effect.
How is pay per mile “flat rate”?
There’s already a tax on juice used to charge Eco Commiemobiles – people who are not rich enough to buy one of the damn things pay extra tax to subsidise those are who are.
We’ve needed it for years for the lorries to create a level playing field for our hauliers when competing against foreign.
Well who would have thought it? It was pretty obvious that as soon as the silly planet saving eco socialists got their foot in the door that we would all be hammered for having gas central heating, or petrol or diesel cars. The tax is sure to rocket in the lead up to 2030 as we are all coerced into expensive or a bicycle, whichever we can afford. They will clearly hold off taxing EV’s for as long as they possibly can as one of the main selling points is “NO TAX”.
Has anyone noticed that the price of bikes is now 10 times what it was 10 years ago? Often people are paying £2-3000 for some titanium monster because it is 500g lighter than the old one? Idiots can be fooled all the time, and that seems to be most of the Public!
Hang on a minute, I must have missed something; this insane scheme means the govt will be tracking all vehicles all the time. I mean obvs we know they already are with cameras on all major roads every few yards and tracking your cell phone but this scheme legitimises 100% tracking, no warrant required.
IMO the financial side of it is a smokescreen, this is not about money, it’s about ratcheting up surveillance and control.
And must be opposed, vigorously.
Good point.
Showing a set of average speed cameras on a motorway is very misleading as if you spend a few seconds thinking about it, the cost and complexity of covering ALL the road network with cameras makes this option impossible. Ah! GPS transponders you say. Nope. The US will not allow their GPS system to be used for the purpose of raising money. That leaves the EU Galileo system that the UK is no longer a part of since Brexit. With Two Tier Kier being an EU lapdog they may agree a deal on access that may permit its use.
The Germans implemented a charge for trucks on their autobahns given that how much of Europe’s freight traffic uses their system but that is possible with cameras and it is still worth trucks staying on the autobahn system. Imagine what a motorway only charge system would do for our A roads and other roads.
The big gain for Labour would not be the tax but the record of every journey made by every car in the country. The better to control us and the easier to introduce a social control system.
If they disapprove of someone they can just track them and stop them on the road or else multiply the cost for them per mile until they become insolvent.
If road use is to be taxed (as I strongly suspect the blob have wanted for years), why not also tax demonstrators such as BLM and JSO.
Don’t even argue against them because it makes their feeble spirit feel stronger. It cannot happen and it will not happen. The same goes for the rest of the agenda. Doesn’t mean the future is going to be a barrel of laughs though. In terms of pure work hours much of it will be caring for people who are debilitated against a backdrop of higher and higher prices. The situation with Iran is about to drastically affect the libing standards of Europeans. That area will be cut off completely. Every penny of the money you incested in Ukraine is about to be shown tobe worthless. Will you care? Very few I expect. We seem to tolerate this.
Geoff Buys Cars has a video about surveillance links in cars to automatically report when you are speeding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXvboA24Baw&t=58s
I guess this all comes down to this whole technology surveillance approach to motoring. This will certainly kill off any sort of carefree, freedom of the open road approach to driving.
The concept of your car reporting that your speed is more than the GPS speed limit is a joke. There are a lot of errors even on Google Maps, and as it appears that no one tells them if they change the speed limit, the data is not reliable enough to use for serious prosecutions. This is a stupid idea from Ford, it would help a lot if they didn’t have so many problems with their duff designs such as “wet cambelts”, “broken crankshafts in Land Rovers and Jags” and poor reliability of Euro 6 emission equipment. Never mind, think of a distraction!
It will be late, over budget and it won’t work.
Also…. “Electric cars take over” – on which planet?
If the government stopped spending fifty billion pounds a year – £50,000,000,000 – supporting illegal immigrants, the ones they pretend are contributing to our economy, then that would save many times more than any pay-per-mile fuel levy!
Why is it the answer to problems the govt created, is always more govt interference, the very thing that created the problem in the first place? How is it they never learn!
I thought the number EVs being sold and produced is dwindling?