Is this why Joe Biden reversed himself on transferring 34 Abrams tanks to Ukraine? According to the Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Biden offered a peace deal to Russia to end the war by slicing off 20% of Ukraine and handing it to Moscow. Presumably, this refers to the Donbas region and the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, which Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed, as well as recognition of Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.

NZZ also reported that both Russia and Ukraine rejected those terms — Ukraine for obvious reasons, and Russia because they remain convinced they can defeat Ukraine on the ground. That might explain why Biden upped the ante on Abrams tanks and opened discussion for further expansions of weapons supply to Volodymyr Zelensky.

That is, if this report is true. Is it? Newsweek’s source in the CIA calls the rumors that CIA chief William Burns made a secret trip to Moscow “completely false,” but not the report of a secret Biden peace proposal:

Kyiv reportedly shut down the proposal “because they are not willing to have their territory divided” while Russian officials said they “will win the war in the long run anyway,” reported NZZ, which has been described as the Swiss newspaper of record.

Sean Davett, the deputy spokesperson at White House’s National Security Council, told Newsweek that the report from NZZ is “not accurate,” and that the CIA would say the same.

According to the news outlet the German politicians said Biden wanted to avoid a protracted war in Ukraine, and so, offered the territory as part of the peace plan.

And when Ukraine and Russia both rejected the proposal, the Biden administration pledged to provide Kyiv with Abrams tanks, NZZ reported.

That certainly would explain Biden’s reversal. It doesn’t explain why Biden would have felt authorized to slice off 20% of Ukraine, however, especially without the approval of the government in Kyiv that we are presently supporting. It reeks of the West’s Munich strategy in 1938 in attempts to appease Adolf Hitler by giving him the most strategic part of then-Czechoslovakia — the Sudetenland, and on the same ethnic-unrest basis that Putin is now using to claim ownership of the Donbas. Hitler accepted that settlement in Munich, and then a few months later rolled all over the rest of Czechoslovakia after the surrender of its best defensive geography.

Want to bet that Zelensky understands the lessons of Munich? He’d better — he’s living through the replay. If he agreed to this deal, the Russians would have done exactly what Nazi Germany did, although perhaps after more like a year or two of strengthening their positions in the Donbas and resupplying their army after sanctions were removed.

If this report about the offer is true, it should clarify a few points. Primarily, it makes clear that Putin isn’t interested in ethnic-Russian complaints about Kyiv; he’s interested in imperial acquisition. That’s no different than historical Russian ambitions, even if the West keeps deluding itself that imperial history came to an end in 1990. Second, it also shows that Putin doesn’t want to even discuss accommodation, even if it might benefit him politically at home.

Putin may also have decided that Biden couldn’t deliver on this deal anyway. But in that case, Putin would have accepted the deal — and let Zelensky’s refusal justify continued operations. That dynamic might have split Ukraine from its allies, in just the way that Munich set up the Czechoslovakians for abandonment. The fact that Putin didn’t grasp that opportunity suggests that his political position at home may now be so fragile that he risks facing a coup if he delivers anything short of total victory over Ukraine.  We’ve discussed almost from the start how Zelensky has the Michael Collins dilemma if this comes down to talks, but Putin may have the same problem — especially if all Russia gets out of this disaster is what they effectively had in the first place.

On the other hand, the status quo isn’t doing Putin any favors either. As Russia’s military gets exposed as surprisingly ineffective against a much smaller force, it’s emboldening Putin’s first target of imperial aggression — Georgia:

Georgia’s president said Russia must be required to abandon its nearly 15-year-long occupation of her nation’s territory as part of an eventual peace deal to end the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

“Russia has to learn where its borders are,” President Salome Zourabichvili said in an interview in the capital, Tbilisi. “The Georgian issues should be on the table because nobody should think that this war can be resolved without Russia retreating from all the occupied territories” in the region, she said.

Zourabichvili’s call for restoring the regional order hinges on a decisive defeat in Ukraine for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a moment she claimed was fast approaching. “Russia already practically lost the battles if not completely the war,” she said at her presidential residence, its facade festooned with the flags of Georgia and Ukraine.

The Kremlin has set itself up for an Afghanistan-1988 level of collapse with its stunningly stupid invasion of Ukraine. A withdrawal then didn’t save the Soviet version of Russian empire, and now even that option may not be open to Putin any longer — at least if he plans to live much longer.