Vladimir Putin proposed a total reset of US-Russia relations.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The Hill.

Vladimir Putin proposed a total reset of US and Russian relations in a newly released secret document. The Hill. The proposal was delivered to the State Department and called for a return to the status quo that was in place before the Ukrainian crisis. The proposal called for cyber security links and a special consultation to discuss Ukraine, Syria, Iran and North Korea. Putin and Trump would also meet face to face as well as their senior cabinet members. The document also proposed the reopening of channels that were closed due to Ukraine crisis. 

My Comment:

A quick note first. Buzzfeed has the document in question, but I refuse to give them any traffic at all. If you want to read it though, it should be easy enough to find as there is a link in The Hill article. I won't help an outlet as scummy as Buzzfeed even with whatever meager traffic my blog would provide. They deserve to go out of business and I won't support them in anyway. I also wonder how they got this document. You would assume a leaker would go to some place that at least pretends to still have some journalistic integrity...

This proposal very obviously didn't come to pass. It's a shame too because there is no reason for our relations with Russia to be this bad. One of the reasons I voted for Trump was to improve relations with Russia as both Hillary Clinton and Vladimir Putin hated each other with a passion and Barack Obama had burned our bridges with Russia. 

Why didn't it happen? Well the most obvious one is because the Media and the Democrats have been going on and on about Russia for almost a year now. Worst of all, traitors in the Republican Party have betrayed Trump on the issue for quite some time. Trump has very little leeway to do anything with Russia because of the phony accusations against him. 

Still, it's not like Russia hasn't screwed things up as well. Their support of Bashir al-Assad hurt the US relationship when Assad gassed his own people again. Russia had promised that he would not be doing that again and they weren't able to keep that promise. Our relations with Russia became so bad that we ended up having to shoot down a Syrian jet and a few Iranian drones in the Syrian theater. Things are a bit better now, but Russia's inability to corral Assad probably helped put the kibosh on this plan. 

Even if those things hadn't happened though, would this proposal have been accepted? I am not sure. Ukraine remains the main sticking point and as long as the US position is that Crimea is Ukrainian territory a deal isn't likely. We seemed to have come to an agreement on Syria, but any agreement on Ukraine seems all but impossible in the current political climate. 

Which is incredibly stupid of course. For as much noise as there has been about "Nazis" and "white supremacists", nobody seems to care that we are essentially supporting those groups in Ukraine. Supposedly we aren't giving groups like the Azov Battalion direct support, but we are helping a government that doesn't have a problem using neo-Nazi fighters. We have no interest in Ukraine whatsoever and we are also literally helping neo-Nazis. How does that make sense? 

Azov Battalion Patch via Wikipedia. Nothing Nazi like here! 

I do hope that someday we can finally go back to having a decent working relationship with Russia. We probably won't ever be friends but at the very least we don't have to be enemies. We have nothing to gain by propping up Ukraine and there is no chance now of getting rid of Assad. The Russians won on both issues and it's time to admit it and go back to the status quo.