Putin praying for a Trump victory

It was to be expected that Putin's rebels in Donbas and eastern Ukraine would be vehemently against an armed OSCE mission to oversee any elections that may be held as per the Minsk2 accords.

"The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) are strongly against the idea of deploying an armed police OSCE mission in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, according to DPR envoy to the Minsk Contact Group Denis Pushilin. (right)
Donetsk News Agency quoted Pushilin as saying that just as before, Donbass is expressly against any armed missions on the territory of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics and would consider such a move an intervention." (RT : 24 May, 2016) (my emphasis)

Recall that, as reported by Interfax Ukraine,

"Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that international partners support Ukraine's idea about the deployment of an armed peacekeeping mission in Donbas.
....
"At the moment, the main result that we have achieved is that both the OSCE and our partners from Germany and France, and an absolute majority of OSCE countries, and yesterday there was the statement by the defense minister of Turkey – everyone clearly say that they support Ukraine's position on the deployment of an armed police mission," (Interfax Ukraine : 14.05.2016) (my emphasis)

It was therefore to be expected that, as reported by Madeline Chambers, in a conference call that included Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and France's Francois Hollande, and that took place late on Monday,

"Progress on implementing the Minsk peace accords, negotiated by Berlin and Paris, has stalled. The elections are a key step in the agreement designed to end a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people since April, 2014.

Moscow and Kiev accuse each other of failing to stick to the deal, which also includes restoring Kiev's control over the whole border with Russia and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the conflict zone.

"In the center of the consultations were security questions and the preparations for local elections in the conflict areas in eastern Ukraine," said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert (right) in a statement." (Reuters : Tue May 24, 2016)
 
At the same time, as reported by Al Arabiya,

"The call [for a ceasefire between Putin's soldiers and rebel proxies in eastern Ukraine] comes as a Ukrainian soldier was killed and three others injured in a mortar attack by pro-Russian insurgents in the country’s east, where violence has persisted since the peace treaty." (Al Arabiya (AFP) : Tuesday, 24 May 2016) (my emphasis) (cf also: UT May. 22, 2016)

The sixty-four dollar question that really needs to be answered by Merkel, Putin, and Hollande is,

"How can elections be held in eastern Ukraine whilst approximately 10,000 of Putin's Russian soldiers are there on active duty, and whilst armaments from Russia are still pouring across the Ukrainian/Russian border controlled by his soldiers and into the rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine?"

Now bear in mind that the current President of the OSCE is non other than that Putinversteher, Walter Steinmeier. (left) 

Will Steinmeier back the call for an armed OSCE mission into the rebel-held territory to oversee the elections that Merkel and Hollande have always been clamouring for?

As the old saying goes, "Pigs will fly!"

This fixation by Hollande and Merkel on the implementation of the Minsk2 protocol about elections in the rebel-held territory of eastern Ukraine, to the almost mutual exclusion of returning the border between Putin's Russia and Ukraine back into the control of Ukraine, and the total removal of the near 10,000 Russian soldiers from eastern Ukraine, together with all their military equipment,, indicates yet again the pressure being brought to bear upon Hollande and Merkel by French and German businessmen.

No matter how much Putin tries to gloss over the tanking of the Russian economy, the growing impoverishment of vast swathes of the Russian people and the near 'paranoid' fear that now surrounds his kleptocratic solivoki 'family', has forced him to create his Praetorian Guard of 400,000.

It is therefor no wonder that Putin's most fervent and wishful hope of a Trump success in the US presidential elections also stems from the fact that Trump's current main political advisor, Paul Manafort, was also political advisor to none other than Victor Yanukovich  himself, as revealed by Prof. Timothy Snyder. (left to right: Manafort, Trump, Yanukovich)

The election of Trump to the Presidency of the US will, for Putin, be like 'manna falling from heaven'. We can expect an almost immediate US review of the sanctions against Russia.

As Timothy Snyder points out,

"... Trump has indicated, in his selection last month of Carter Page (right) as a foreign policy adviser, that American policy to Europe will be guided by Russian interests. 

Page, heretofore known as an adviser to Russia’s state gas company, has been among the prominent Americans spreading Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s revolution in 2014 and the Russian invasion that followed. In his writings he has questioned Ukraine’s status as an independent state, which is precisely the line that Moscow took to justify its invasion. (New York Review : April 19, 2016) (my emphasis)

We will know in November of this year, in just over 5 months time, whether the Maidan revolution will be crowned with success or failure.

(to be continued)