Moscow Offers Ukraine Terms of Surrender Hours After the Attack Began

NBC’s Richard Engel reports that Russia has offered terms of surrender to Ukraine in return for Russia ceasing its military operations. According to Engel, Russia will end hostilities if Ukraine agrees to become a neutral state and will agree to forbid deployment of foreign weapons inside Ukraine.

The terms don’t sound too bad, although not receiving weapons from NATO leaves them vulnerable. Independence from NATO and the US isn’t a bad thing for them.

It’s hard to say why Russia is doing this. It could just be another dishonest tactic. Then again, what they wanted was to rid themselves of the threat of NATO and to secure a new land mass in the East. This could do it, if they can be trusted.

Perhaps the intense pressure from world leaders and threats of sanctions as well as protests in their own country forced them to rethink what they’ve done. The Oligarchs can’t be happy.

They also might not be able to sustain this type of attack.

There is also the fact that the Russian stock market plunged today and the interest rates skyrocketed to 15%. Forbes reported that Russia’s stock market lost a third of its value — $200 billion in stock-market value and roughly a third of the sovereign debt’s value today. The ruble hits a new low against the US dollar.

What do you think about this? It’s fairly shocking. What is Putin up to?

Hundreds of protesters were arrested in St. Petersburg.

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