Utahn Plays Pivotal Role in Russo-Ukraine Peace Process

Article republished with permission from the Utah Standard News

The following article was originally published on August 31, 2022 in the Utah Standard News, which is one of the best and most reliably America First conservative news journals in Utah. We strongly encourage all of our readers to consider subscribing and donating to them.

Utahn Plays Pivotal Role in Russo-Ukraine Peace Process

By USN Staff & Friends

“In a world seemingly obsessed with war, where any American who dares question the wisdom of providing tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine is immediately condemned as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Utah resident David Pyne has been spending much of his time over the past year publishing his innovative ideas on how the U.S. might act to prevent and resolve conflicts utilizing a Reaganesque policy of peace through strength, and the world is taking note. 

Mr. Pyne reveals that his mentor, Dr. Peter Pry, who tragically passed away a couple weeks ago following a year long battle with cancer, served as one of his main sources of inspiration for trying to formulate a national security strategy designed to prevent the U.S. from stumbling into an unnecessary war with the Sino-Russian alliance, in order to buy us more time to rebuild America’s aging and increasingly inadequate strategic deterrent. He states that all of the nuclear superpowers would prefer to avoid fighting a Third World War if at all possible, but that both Russia and China believe that America will not abandon its provocative foreign policies and will continue to attempt to intervene militarily in their respective spheres of influence and have thus spent the past couple of decades preparing to defeat the U.S. using unconventional weapons likely within the first few weeks of any conflict.. 

The Russian government recently indicated its tacit support for Pyne’s 15-Point Peace Plan that would end the Russo-Ukrainian war. The plan provides a just and lasting peace that would resolve all existing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, restore peaceful relations between Russia and NATO, and avert a potential World War Three that could quickly escalate to the nuclear level. Pyne states that President Trump was absolutely right in stating that Ukraine could have easily averted a Russian invasion. All it had to do was renounce its pursuit of NATO membership, declare permanent neutrality and implement the Minsk 2 agreement, which it agreed to back in 2015..

Mr. Pyne’s proposal is unique in that it is the first comprehensive peace plan which has been published in a Western journal, which attempts to address and permanently resolve, rather than postpone the resolution of, all existing areas of contention between Russia and Ukraine to ensure that Russia won’t have any reason to resume hostilities against Kyiv in the future. His proposal also addresses some of Russia’s most pressing security concerns while serving to enhance the security of NATO members by reducing the prospects of a future conflict with Russia.

David Pyne

David Pyne currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, as a Vice President for the Association of the United States Army’s Utah Chapter and as a West Valley City Police Honorary Colonel. He previously served as Director of the Utah EMP Task Force, National Security Policy Director for U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), as the founder of Sen. Lee’s Military Advisory Committee and as 2nd Vice President of the Salt Lake Total Force Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America. He also served as Chairman/Vice Chairman of the Utah State Legislative Compensation Commission from 2009-2017.

Russia state media outlet Sputnik News recently interviewed Mr. Pyne and linked their news article to his revised 15 point peace proposal which was modified in late June to be more favorable to Ukraine. The fact that Russia’s state media included a link to the proposal strongly suggests that the Kremlin views his peace proposal as an acceptable compromise for them as they would not have done so without express Russian government approval as to the overall terms of his proposal. If anything, Russia signaled support that the government is more open to a compromise peace deal with Ukraine now than at any time since the war began. 

While many Western analysts continue to claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in peace, the truth is that, according to former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who remains friends with Putin, he remains very interested in negotiating a formal peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Rather, it is Ukrainian President Zelensky who continues to refuse to negotiate peace with Russia until Russia withdraws all of its troops from Ukrainian territory to its pre-war positions, something Russia will never do. In fact, Mr. Pyne asserts that Russia’s peace terms are relatively modest and have remained unchanged since early March. While Russia has remained open to peace talks, the Biden administration deliberately cut off all high-level diplomatic communications with the Russian Foreign Ministry when the war began. In so doing, it missed the chance to mediate an end to the war several months ago, which would have saved the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainians. 

Pyne states that until the Biden administration is willing to pressure Zelensky into resuming peace talks by suspending U.S. weapons shipments, the prospects for a negotiated end to the war will likely remain dim. According to a new CBS News report, only about 30 percent of the weapons the US and NATO have sent to Ukraine are actually reaching the front lines with many of the rest being resold to other countries, perhaps to enrich Ukraine’s notorious billionaire oligarchs. 

While Russia and Ukraine were close to finalizing their own fifteen point peace plan in late March, the Russian military withdrawal from northern and northeastern Ukraine in early April caused the Biden administration to provide a blank cheque of U.S. military assistance to Kyiv in April leading Ukraine to pull out of peace negotiations. The specific terms of the agreement were never released to the public by either the Russian or Ukrainian side. Thus, for the first time since the war began nearly six months ago, Western leaders now have a concrete example of what a peace agreement acceptable to Russia would look like, after several months of stating they have no idea what Russia’s final objectives are in the Ukraine War or what Putin really wants.

Mr. Pyne’s plan is based, in part, on details released from Russia’s previous peace offers to Ukraine as well as the likelihood of it winning the Battle of the Donbass, and are the best terms we could realistically expect Russia might accept. He warns that, unfortunately, Ukraine may be running out of time to negotiate the return of most of its occupied territories as Putin is reportedly planning on holding popular referendums in all four Ukrainian regions they mostly or fully control as early as September 11th on whether they want to re-unite with Russia as the prelude to their full annexation.

The specific terms of his proposal include holding a popular referendum in the Donbass to vote on whether to become independent from Ukraine, a full Russian military withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory except for Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast in exchange for permanent Ukrainian neutrality as well as a mutual security agreement potentially withdrawing all western NATO and Russian troops from Eastern Europe. Sputnik News’ decision to report favorably on Mr. Pyne’s peace proposal clearly indicates that Moscow would still prefer a peace deal with Ukraine restoring its neutral buffer state status between Russia and NATO with only minimal territorial gains to annexing all of their occupied Ukrainian territory including 70% of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, giving it a land bridge to Crimea but having it remain allied with NATO. Such a negotiated compromise peace agreement could be mediated by France, Germany, Italy,

The war has resulted in the greatest refugee crisis since the end of World War II and its aftermath. It is estimated that nearly five million Ukrainians have left the country while an additional eight million have been displaced within Ukraine. These are staggering numbers which equate to nearly one-third of Ukraine’s citizens being forced to leave their homes. Furthermore, President Volodymyr Zelensky recently declared that Russian forces now control at least twenty percent of Ukraine’s territory.

While Western media outlets continue to mistakenly report that Ukraine is winning the war, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has indicated that Russia is continuing to make incremental progress towards achieving its military objectives. According to a recent Western intelligence report, even while the US is providing Ukraine with four to five times more military aid then they spend on their armed forces each year, Ukraine is losing the Battle of the Donbass and suffering “extreme losses” being “outgunned 20 to 1 in artillery” with Ukrainian troops running out of ammunition, increasingly demoralized and beginning to desert. It also states that Ukraine’s bargaining position has been weakened due to the fact that Russia has over ten times more prisoners of war than Ukraine has. 

While conceding the risks of Russian nuclear escalation, President Biden recently clarified that the US does not seek a direct war with Russia, nor will it support the overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin. After declaring last month that its objective was to weaken Russia and destroy its ability to wage offensive war by prolonging the conflict in Ukraine for many months if not years to come, the Biden Administration now says that the purpose of increased U.S. military assistance is merely to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to negotiate a more favorable peace agreement.  

Mr. Pyne points out the irony that during World War Two, the U.S. government shipped its most high tech weapons to Soviet Russia to help them re-conquer Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe (and kill millions of Ukrainians in the process) and now the U.S. is shipping them to Ukraine to prevent Russia from re-conquering part of Ukraine. The one thing that seems not to have changed is that U.S. leaders can always be trusted to do the wrong thing and betray U.S. national security interests.

He notes that almost everything about the Ukraine war that is being reported in the Western media is potential Ukrainian security services disinformation including stories reported on Fox News many of which they don’t even bother to fact check. War is all about propaganda. The Roosevelt administration was especially masterful at persuading our citizens to believe government propaganda disseminated during WW2 including pro-Soviet Communist propaganda suggesting that Josef Stalin, then the most murderous dictator in world history, was a champion of democracy who only wanted to liberate central and Eastern Europe from Nazi rule to restore their freedom and independence..

Ukraine and Russia are two of the most corrupt and dictatorial countries in the world. Then again, it’s hard to believe Ukraine is any more corrupt than the Biden regime which is without a doubt the most corrupt government in the Western Hemisphere with one of the least free and fair election systems. Even the Russian state news media has proven more truthful than the Ukrainian gov’t war propaganda that has dominated liberal cable news networks over the past six months.

And, not only is Russia not weak, as many Western pundits continue to mistakenly assert, but it has never been stronger relative to the US over the past 22 years since Putin took power than it is today, particularly its superiority over us in terms of strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons as well as Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons.

While the Biden administration continues to claim that Russian President Vladmir Putin is pursuing maximalist objectives in Ukraine, Mr. Pyne asserts that his objectives are much more limited than most realize. Rather, he states, it is the U.S. NATO and Ukraine that is pushing maximalist objectives to compel Russia to collapse, surrender, or even overthrow Putin himself so they can try Russian leaders as “war criminals” holding the Russian leader to a very different standard than U.S. political and military leaders during World War Two who were never tried for killing 540 times more civilians than Russia has killed in this war. Indeed, 25,000 civilians were killed in one day during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.

The Allied terror bombing of the city of Dresden in February 1945 was apocalyptic.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission has confirmed that 5,256 civilians have been killed in Ukraine after six months of fighting. Mr. Pyne asserts that the U.S. and U.K. killed that many on average in 2.5 days during WW2 yet Biden claims Putin is guilty of genocide. He says that these low numbers objectively prove Russia isn’t systematically targeting civilians. Putin is, without question, a bad guy and a murderous dictator but he is no more of a war criminal than President George W Bush who killed many times more civilians fighting his illegal, unprovoked war of aggression in Iraq which he started in 2003.

He concludes by saying that the good news is that Putin is no modern-day Hitler or Stalin but warns that if we keep provoking him and Chinese President Xi to attack the U.S. then they may end up teaming up to mass murder tens of millions of our citizens in a nuclear or EMP first strike on our homeland. 

In addition to his peace proposal to end the war in Ukraine, David Pyne has recently proposed a comprehensive national security strategic framework which could be utilized by U.S. leaders to counter Communist China’s grand plan to become the world’s global hegemon. That link can be found here: A New U.S. National Security Strategy to Counter the Rise of Communist China

He also published How Modern Wars Have Negatively Impacted U.S. National Security Interests, a report that details U.S. Involvement in major 20th and 21st century wars that resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths while creating new enemies, making the U.S. much less secure, and, Is President Biden Risking World War III with Russia to Protect His Corrupt Family Business Interests in Ukraine?

All of his articles may be found on his blog, “The Real War” and at The National Interest where he serves as a frequent contributor. 

Here is a little more about David Pyne:

Mr. Pyne served as a United States Army officer and worked as an International Programs Manager on the Department of the Army Headquarters staff responsible for the countries of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and Africa from 2000-2003.In addition, he has worked as a Lead Acquisition Analyst and Consultant for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, as an International Analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and for the Department of the Navy. David holds a Masters of Arts in National Security Studies from Georgetown University’s prestigious School of Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Southwestern University School of Law.

He has been interviewed on television and talk radio shows and has been quoted in a number of newspapers, magazine articles and books. He has had his op-eds published in The National Interest, RealClearHistory, Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, the Provo Daily Herald, WorldNetDaily.com and Military.com. He also served as a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s groundbreaking new book, “Blackout Warfare” as well as to his upcoming book “Will America Be Protected?”In addition, he serves as the host of the Defend America Radio Show on KTALK AM 1640 and as Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.”

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