Thread by @KitKlarenberg

🧵: With Kiev finally being thrown under the bus in spectacular fashion (even I'm stunned by the pace and scale), important to revisit RAND report from January, which laid out a very clear blueprint for Ukraine's betrayal. Which, I'd argue, we've been seeing play out ever since.

This got no maintream attention at the time but was *hugely* significant (). RAND is massively influential and its recommendations are routinely adopted as policy, almost immediately after publication. Recommend you read in full, it's only 30 pages. rand.org/pubs/perspecti…

RAND concluded costs of keeping the proxy war going massively outweighed the benefits. Warned Kiev won't make territorial gains in a future counteroffensive, inflation and supply chain disruption too much for Europe to bear, and Russia and China being pushed together.

Stunningly, RAND concluded these risks - along with threat of escalation into WW3 - sufficient to disregard "international norms" and jettison "debatable" ambitions of Ukraine regaining territory. I interpret this as "more will be traded away in negotiations."

RAND recommended slowly and subtly creating the conditions for Kiev's betrayal, and "a negotiated end in a timeframe that would serve US interests," as "a dramatic, overnight shift in US policy is politically impossible." The past year has been building to now. And here we are.

Interestingly, I was asked during my interrogation by counter-terror cops in May why I thought the US would betray Ukraine. One officer gave a lengthy soliloquy about the US' commitment to European security and preserving Ukraine's sovereignty and independence 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡.

British intelligence considers "claims the West is an unreliable security partner" to be an example of "disinformation" and "pro-Russian messaging". The same people admit behind closed doors Russian disinfo is often "factually true" 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦