Rumors come and rumors go and this one lit up like a Kansas brushfire this morning.

JUST IN: ZELENSKY SUDDENLY READY FOR A CEASEFIRE! - BILD pic.twitter.com/9roWtvsLVf

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 10, 2024

So, that's interesting, right? What was also kind of entertaining was watching all the speculation running rampant concerning why this change of heart had supposedly come about.

Most of the guesswork centers on one meeting the Ukrainian president had during his recent American whistle-stop cash grab and anti-Trump campaign tour. It was the intimate tête-à-tête in New York sweater boy came out of, not flush with cash for once, but looking a little green around the gills.

#3 - Ukraine President Zelenksky gets visibly agitated as Trump dominates their meeting, citing a “very good relationship” with Putin. pic.twitter.com/QHRWehJSBF

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 29, 2024

Bets are, if the rumored ceasefire wishes are true, that July head-butting session may well have been the genesis, particularly after the terrific week Trump's opponent has been having.

Zelensky can read polls, too and has an inkling which way the wind is blowing, even from Kyiv.

Interesting that right after Zelensky met with @realDonaldTrump he's wanting to talk ceasefire. He knows who's about to be in charge. https://t.co/fiwjrEeNWM

— John Rich🇺🇸 (@johnrich) October 10, 2024

If only it were true.

People know these shenanigans are about to come to an abrupt stop

— Leefus (@lbgray3) October 10, 2024

Who knows - they've got a statement out from the Ukrainians that it's so much bunkum.

OP denied the information that Zelensky is ready for a ceasefire along the front line in exchange for security guarantees.

Advisor to the President on Communications Dmytro Lytvyn emphasized that the information spread in the mass media is not true.

"We have a Peace Formula, it… pic.twitter.com/VRGehcLhHa

— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) October 10, 2024

...Advisor to the President on Communications Dmytro Lytvyn emphasized that the information spread in the mass media is not true.

"We have a Peace Formula, it clearly states how Ukraine sees a just peace, and it is on this basis that negotiations with partners continue to strengthen Ukraine's positions," the adviser noted.

This dovetails nicely with Zelensky's arrival in London just a bit ago, why?

Well, he's looking for more military aid as he seems to think there's going to be a shortage of American support in a couple of months. After pulling Starmer's ear for more, he'll be hitting up the rest of the EU powerhouse members and the Vatican, trying to make his case for increased European contributions to his cause, even as persistent ceasefire rumors swirl.

President Volodymyr Zelensky met UK premier Keir Starmer in London Thursday, as the Ukrainian leader embarked on a whistle-stop tour of European capitals aimed at securing military aid before next month's crunch US election.

Starmer greeted Zelensky shortly after 9:00 am (0800 GMT) on a red carpet outside Downing Street, where the Ukrainian leader was also expected to meet new Nato chief Mark Rutte.

After London, Zelensky was due to visit France and Italy on Thursday, before meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz later the same day.

The Ukrainian leader, dressed in his trademark military fatigues, is seeking to secure as much financial and military backing as possible during the tour, with US support in doubt if Donald Trump wins November's vote.

Kyiv could be facing its toughest winter yet, with Russia launching fresh waves of strikes on the country's power grid and advances across the eastern frontline.

But is it worth it?

Folks who've read my work over the past two-plus years know I'm no fan of either this grifter or, most assuredly, our unaccounted-for billions flowing into one of, if not the most, corrupt countries in the world - I don't care if we were fighting Satan himself. Now, while Putin may well be Satan incarnate, we are not doing the fighting but are funding this proxy war.

With dollars we don't have and a military of our own who needs them, not to mention Americans themselves in desperate shape.

There's also the unsettling way the 'proxy war' creeps ever closer to becoming an actual war requiring American troops. One false move or missile hits Moscow away from the game Biden and Co. are playing now.

What makes this entire episode so frustrating is learning more and more about its origins. Biden and his toadies - or handlers, whatever that truth is - can't hide forever, and what they allowed to happen in Ukraine should have some people in jail if what's being reported is true.

There's quite an article by Ted Snider in The American Conservative that should have every American ouraged and, frankly, sick to their stomach at the depths of perfidy POTATUS and his malevolent clowns are willing to stoop to start a war.

Snider opens in April of 2022, as the Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in Istanbul for negotiations. There were details left to settle, but the two sides had essentially had come to a mutual agreement to end the war with "a peaceful settlement."

What happened next is horrifying.

...“We opened the champagne bottle,” Arestovych said.

That draft treaty stipulated that Ukraine could pursue European Union membership but would provide a written guarantee that they would not join NATO. This was the key point. It provided protection for ethnic Russians in Ukraine, security guarantees for Ukraine and limits on the Ukrainian armed forces. The Donbas would be autonomous, Crimea would be Russian. The Kherson and Zaporozhye regions that Russia has now incorporated were, at that time, still part of Ukraine.

But instead of encouraging and nurturing the promising talks, the United States and Britain discouraged them. Davyd Arakhamiia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team, has confirmed that “when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.” In December 2022, Ukrainska Pravda reported that on April 9, 2022, Johnson hurried to Kiev to tell Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “the West was not.”

Rather than encourage Ukraine to pursue negotiations that would have satisfied their goals and potentially ended the war, the U.S. promised Ukraine whatever it needs for as long as it takes in the pursuit of “core principles” that made the war “bigger than Russia” and “bigger than Ukraine,” namely “the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.” Instead of nurturing diplomacy, “the West ramped up military aid to Kyiv and increased the pressure on Russia,” according to a former U.S. official “who worked on Ukraine policy at the time.”

There is now a convincing body of testimony from those who played intermediary roles or were present at the talks that shows that the West discouraged a diplomatic solution to the war.

The premise of the US interfering with a peace agreement has been corroborated by leaders and individuals involved at the time, up to and including the loathsome Shelob of "diplomacy," Victoria Nuland herself.

...Then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder both acted as intermediaries to the talks at the request of Ukraine. Bennet says that “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire,” but the West “blocked it.” Schröder agrees: “Nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington… The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”

...And now, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, has become the first American official to imply that the West played a role in blocking the peace talks. In a September 5 interview, Nuland said that when “the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going…. people inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart.”

Two and a half years ago, in April 2022, a diplomatic end to the war was possible until the West “blocked it.” At that time, most of the devastation, loss of life and loss of land had not begun. Since then, autonomy for Donbas has turned into annexation and two more territories have been added. 

The casualty figures are staggering.

...Reliable estimates of the dead and seriously wounded are hard to come by. But in the nine months since, that number may have swollen even more. By some accounting, Ukraine is losing more troops per day than at any time during the war. Commanders in the Ukrainian armed forces estimate that “50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation.” Ex-Rada MP and Aidar Deputy Commander Ihor Mosiychuk has recently put the number of dead or seriously wounded at 500,000. Some analysts have suggested that could translate into about 320,000 dead and 180,000 seriously wounded. One analysis says that the number of dead could be as high as 600,000.

To think that the US and Britain blocked a peace deal two and a half years ago that would have spared those lives so that they could fight a war of attrition against Putin with someone else's kids.

I don't know about you, but I find that to be unconscionable.

I don't ever want to hear another Democrat call someone a "neo-con" or "warmonger" again.