The most easy way for Trump to stop the war in Ukraine

[Spathi]

Currently Trump has a very easy way to end the Russian-Ukrainian war and make the western democracies win. He should make a public proposal to Putin on YouTube: Ukraine will voluntarily cede some territory to Russia, for example Balakliia and Izium, if Putin agrees to hold a referendum in Russia with the following points:

1) Unblocking YouTube

2) Unblocking messengers

3) Cancellation of 280 articles of the Criminal Code

4) Signing a peace treaty with Ukraine.

In the future, a 5th point could be added to the four: the return of 2013 territories to Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Russia. Currently, as we suppose, this point should not be declared, because in Russia there is the 280.1 article of the Criminal Code which prohibits public statements with suggestions to give somebody a Russian territory (this will prevent spreading the proposal by the Ukrainian supporters in Russia). On the other hand, the 5th point is important for calming Ukrainian patriots.

The gist of the idea is that Russia essentially consists of three peoples: an apolitical majority and two minorities - democracts and anti-democratic “vatniks”. Authoritarianism in Russia is based on widespread "sectarianism": everyone only makes friends with people who think like them. "Vatniks" talk only with other vatniks, and they believe they are the majority. If the referendum is held, most Russians will probably vote for all points, and the vatniks will experience cognitive dissonance; they will realize they are a minority, and their views will start changing. If Putin refuses to hold the referendum, the fact of the refuse will make the Russians change their views too.

The goal of this plan is to force Putin to implement democratization in Russia.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Why would Putin ever agree to hold a referendum that risks undermining his own power?

 

[Spathi]

Why would Putin ever agree to hold a referendum that risks undermining his own power?

Probably he wouldn't. But the fact of his refusal will make the Russians experience a cognitive dissonance, they will start understanding that Putin lies to them.

 

[Grinkle]

cognitive dissonance

Russians will rationalize his refusal to hold a referendum as sensible and justified to resolve any dissonance they may be feeling.

 

[Spathi]

Russians will rationalize his refusal to hold a referendum as sensible and justified to resolve any dissonance they may be feeling.

Why do you think so? Do you at least agree that if this referendum is performed, Russians would vote for unblocking youtube and ending the war?
The authoritarianism in countries like Russia is supported by LIES: the rulers declare that they fulfill the will of nation, but in fact they ignore this will in critical points like freedom of speech.
Trump will be able to go further; for example, he can declare that he plans to supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, but he would refuse to do so, if Putin nevertheless performs this referendum. Possibly Putin will start again making his nuclear threats. For him, possibly it can be rational to choose the nuclear war instead of the referendum, because if his lies would be exposed, he will loose the power and with the power - his life. But if this becomes obvious for the Russians, they will overthrow Putin.

 

[Grinkle]

Why do you think so?

It seems self-evident to me.

None of your arguments make any sense to me, frankly.

I am going to exit the conversation - we are so far apart on our thinking around human nature that I don't expect we could converge.

 

[Spathi]

I am going to exit the conversation - we are so far apart on our thinking around human nature that I don't expect we could converge.

It's very sad that you deny what I wrote.
Maybe you believe that most Russians support the Putin's war? This is not so. When they vote for Putin, they vote for "stability", not for the war.
I see that in Russia there is an apolitical majority and two minorities: those who support the war and those who are against it. The number of people who are against the war, or maybe have some unconcsious protest, can be estimated by the number of famous writers and musicians who have left Russia after the war - nearly half. Below I present some anti-Putin music videos, which give some insight how many people in Russian are against the Putin's war. Can you look at these videos?

 

[Patxitxi]

It's very sad that you deny what I wrote.
Maybe you believe that most Russians support the Putin's war? This is not so. When they vote for Putin, they vote for "stability", not for the war.
I see that in Russia there is an apolitical majority and two minorities: those who support the war and those who are against it. The number of people who are against the war, or maybe have some unconcsious protest, can be estimated by the number of famous writers and musicians who have left Russia after the war - nearly half. Below I present some anti-Putin music videos, which give some insight how many people in Russian are against the Putin's war. Can you look at these videos?

Most Russians are right now scared to death (and have been for decades).

Funnily enough like any true USA democrat nowadays, maybe they will finally learn where is that they truly live and the "freedom" they bost and talk about all the time.

 

[Patxitxi]

It seems self-evident to me.

None of your arguments make any sense to me, frankly.

I am going to exit the conversation - we are so far apart on our thinking around human nature that I don't expect we could converge.

Why do you assume that the object of a conversation is to converge?!

During the Communist times Russians were told they had to learn English because they needed "to know the language of the enemy".

How are you going to understand what the parties that you cannot converge with are thinking if you don't "converse" with them?

 

[Spathi]

I want to add, that currently Trump can implement the plan I suggested, but in future it can be too late. Currently many Russians sympathize Trump, because in the past Putin considered he as a useful ally, and both Putin and Trump dislike LGBT. But the Putin’s propaganda have started ridiculing Trump, and in future the Russians will dislike him. This happened once with Zelensky – when he became president in 2019, many Russians sympathized hi, but then the propaganda made they think he is a “addict” and “looser”. Besides that, possibly in future Putin will be able to successfully block mass media where the Russian can watch Trump’s appeal.

 

[Spathi]

Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela

The development comes as the U.S. military is drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including possible strikes inside the country.

www.nytimes.com

The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader.

Russia has ratified the strategic partnership agreement with Venezuela

The document was signed in Moscow on May 7, 2025.

www.akm.ru

Russia has ratified the strategic partnership agreement with Venezuela​

Can anybody suggest me a way to send my texts to Trump before it is too late?

 

[Spathi]

If you don’t like my plan, here is one more: Trump would publicly suggest Putin to perform this referendum, and say that otherwise Trump would deliver Tomahawks to Ukraine. If Putin refuses to perform this referendum, he will have to explain the Russians his motives – a nuclear war is better than the referendum? Don’t you feel how strange does this look?

 

[EricDMMiller]

Is there any reliable polling data on Russian public opinion? I certainly can't claim that I know of any.

I believe that the historical literature shows that referendums in authoritarian regimes nearly universally results in consolidation of power for the authoritarian. No one has really answered Greg's question:

Why would Putin ever agree to hold a referendum that risks undermining his own power?

Voluntary action has resulted in the dissolution of very few authoritarian regimes. I can think only of post-Franco Spain and Pinochet Chile. In Spain, change only occurred after Franco died.

It seems to me that aside from those examples, substantial change only happens through external violence, internal revolution, or elite defection. And even in those cases, there are really three potential outcomes:

• the incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders;
• someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists; or
• the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocratic regime.

I don't know enough about Russia to say whether anything aside from external violence could result in a meaningful change. My impression from reading historical and philosophical works is that a wide majority of the Russian populace is entirely de-politicized and Putin maintains a pretty tight and violent control over the elites.

Barbara Geddes has written extensively on authoritarian power transition. She draws a distinction between authoritarian military regimes and "personalist" regimes. My interpretation of her findings is that the military regimes are those that are amenable to more voluntary transitions to another form of governance, while the personalist regimes very rarely do. I would go so far as to say that they are virtually absent from the data that she has reported.

 

[sbrothy]

Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela

The development comes as the U.S. military is drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including possible strikes inside the country.

www.nytimes.com

The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader.

Russia has ratified the strategic partnership agreement with Venezuela

The document was signed in Moscow on May 7, 2025.

www.akm.ru

Russia has ratified the strategic partnership agreement with Venezuela​

Can anybody suggest me a way to send my texts to Trump before it is too late?

It's sad to laugh at the OP's illusions. If he/she is a Russian I'm not surprised that he/she thinks that the system can be changed from the inside (with a kick from the outside). From out here though, in relative freedom, I'm sad it just sounds naive.

 

[Spathi]

Is there any reliable polling data on Russian public opinion? I certainly can't claim that I know of any.

I live in Russian province, and try to talk with as much people as I can, from all classes of society. For example, I often talk with taxi drivers when I take a taxi.
I know a lot of Putinists, who watch YouTube with VPN.
Maybe you don't know, for example, that the word "war" is partly forbidden in Russia; officially we have only "special military operation", not war.

 

[sbrothy]

Yes. That is old news here.

 

[EricDMMiller]

When I was asking about "reliable polling data" I did not mean individual anecdotes, but a something with a validated design, representative sampling, and adequate statistical power.

 

[Klystron]

I live in Russian province, and try to talk with as much people as I can, from all classes of society. For example, I often talk with taxi drivers when I take a taxi.
I know a lot of Putinists, who watch YouTube with VPN.
Maybe you don't know, for example, that the word "war" is partly forbidden in Russia; officially we have only "special military operation", not war.

These anecdotes about language reveal much about the cultural differences encountered in Russia and Ukraine. Thanks to digital books (ebooks) and modern English translations, I have been reading 20th and 21st Century Russian literature not previously available.

Mikhail (Michael) Bulgakov describes political and social importance of certain words in several novels. In "The White Guard" set in1918 a pro-Ukrainain independence fighter susses out native Russian sympathizers in Kiev (who might be Trotskyist or Bolsheviks) by asking them simple words for animals such as 'cat' and 'whale'. Bulgakov notes that Ukraine lacking ocean access has scant experience with whales, reflected in language. Bulgakov makes even more cultural references to specific Russian words in "The Master and Margarita", among the best political novels written.

More contemporary, Vladimir Sorokin examines class significance in word choice (and supression) in "Telluria", "The Day of the Oprichnik" and "The Blizzard", the latter novel based largely on Mikhail Bulgakov's semi-autobiography "A Young Doctor's Notebook" set 100 years earlier. Though intended as political satire, "Oprichnik" shows amazing resemblance to contemporary police states in several countries.

N.B.: Reading Russian lit in digital form also adds the benefit of immediate lookup of words and phrases from multiple languages. Modern English translations also convey the benefit of contemporary feel to older texts.

 

[Spathi]

When I was asking about "reliable polling data" I did not mean individual anecdotes, but a something with a validated design, representative sampling, and adequate statistical power.

I suppose you understand that all such official data from Russian sources is fake?

 

[sbrothy]

I know I've said this before but the investigative intelligence source Bellingcat which is backed by talented penetration testing sleuths is a good source, IMHO. YMMV.

 

[sbrothy]

Putin is riding a tiger. He cannot get off without getting eaten, especially not with all the enemies he made on his ascend to power. He has no choice except to ride it out.

On 13 September, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist Party made an announcement, "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night." When the Volgodonsk bombing happened on 16 September, Vladimir Zhirinovsky questioned Seleznyov in the Duma the following day, but Seleznyov turned his microphone off. Later, Seleznyov said it was a misunderstanding, and he actually referred to an explosion organized by criminal gangs which took place in Volgodonsk on 12 September.

Talk about ruthlesness.

 

[sbrothy]

I live in Russian province, and try to talk with as much people as I can, from all classes of society. For example, I often talk with taxi drivers when I take a taxi.
I know a lot of Putinists, who watch YouTube with VPN.
Maybe you don't know, for example, that the word "war" is partly forbidden in Russia; officially we have only "special military operation", not war.

Be careful though. This sounds like risky business in todays Russia!

 

[sbrothy]

I suppose you understand that all such official data from Russian sources is fake?

Admittedly, there are few other ways to gather information in todays autocratic Russia than talking to dissidents. Hence my warning.

 

[Klystron]

Recommending reading books, digital or analog, to delve into Russian culture and conflict with Ukraine may seem archaic, even unhelpful, but some great minds describe their culture using fiction as medium of free expression. Totalitarian regimes whether imperial, communist, or fascist tend to supress unpleasant views, wrapping around so-called right and left to resemble each other. I am very happy that literature supressed by the USSR but mentioned in other sources, is now available online and in print.

Many of the interesting novels I mentioned are available as streaming movies and online audiobooks in many languages.

 

[Patxitxi]

I live in Russian province, and try to talk with as much people as I can, from all classes of society. For example, I often talk with taxi drivers when I take a taxi.
I know a lot of Putinists, who watch YouTube with VPN.
Maybe you don't know, for example, that the word "war" is partly forbidden in Russia; officially we have only "special military operation", not war.

We know.
That's why everyone calls it "Putin's War".
In any case in my times talking with taxi drivers was, most of the time, talking to any Russian with a vehicle, I even remember taking an ambulance as a taxi...
Are now most taxi drivers proper licensed individuals?

 

[sbrothy]

I stumbled over the concept "milblogging" today. A kind of "first-hand" war blogging. That might prove to be an interesting news source if you can sort the pro-war from the other kind.

 

[sbrothy]

Oh, and one of the links on that page is Open Source Intelligence which naturally lists Bellingcat.

 

[EricDMMiller]

I suppose you understand that all such official data from Russian sources is fake?

Yes. I know. That's why I literally said I don't know of any reliable information on those issues.

 

[Spathi]

Can anybody suggest me a way to send a message to Trump, maybe for money?
Listen, this is really important. I am sure that the described plan is good and can change the worldwide politics by 180 degrees. Trump seems to be a great guy nowadays - despite he is a freak, maybe even bastard, he is not fully controlled by the global elites and he indeed tries to do something to overcome the dictatorships. He asks for advices, and I greately hope I will be able to give him my information.