Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.
Exact full quote from CNN:
“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063
These people are monsters, and the idiot liberals that have happily jumped on their barbarous murder machine are too.
You sent tens of thousands of people to die in a futile meatgrinder while acting like you’re good people “”“helping”“” those you were killing. In reality what was happening was that you didn’t care about what happened to those people as long as it harmed some russians.
The consequences of decades of anti-russian racism all came to a head in this war, with liberals LOVING the opportunity to be openly racist pieces of shit.
All excused by what? Some fucking lines on a map? I don’t give a shit about lines on a map, I care about the tens of thousands of people’s lives wasted on this shit, both ukrainian and russian.
What would be a solution to this conflict?
Well, the EU could have entered negotiations in good faith with Russia when all this started. The US could have not supported the Maidan coup. The coup Rada could have not declared their intent to destroy the culture and language of Russian speaking Ukrainians as their literal first act after assuming power. They could have granted the DPR and LPR the autonomy within Ukraine and protection of their language (and, frankly, ethnicity) that was initially requested. the EU could have honored Minsk and Minsk II. They could have negotiated in good faith at any point in this entire process. They could stop goading Ukrainians in to Russian defensive lines they have no chance of defeating to prolong the war. They could have allowed Ukraine to engage in attempts to negotiate a peace at any point in this process. They could have supported Zelensky’s peace platform when he was elected.
There’s no real solution now. Until Russia can no longer sustain it’s operations or NATO does, this is going to keep going until Ukraine runs out of Ukrainians to send to their deaths.
Ceasefire agreement and a return to negotiations would be a start. They had already agreed to a deal when Boris Johnson showed up over a year ago though, and then Ukraine went back on it after his unscheduled visit. My assumption is that this agreement would have preserved Donetsk and Luhansk as either independent countries or as autonomously governed regions of Ukraine, that’s changed now with the law making them part of Russia and I’m not entirely sure whether that’s something Putin even has the power to change without a vote by those respective regions or the State Duma (unsure what mechanism might exist).
Either way there is no military capability to take them back by force as demonstrated by the complete failure of the counteroffensive, Ukraine will either lose them by force with a massive pile of bodies lost on both sides, or not. This is the reality of the situation. I care about avoiding the pile of bodies one way or another.
At this point any solution that does not end in the complete collapse of nato is very bad for the third world. Because it shows the power the west has to arbitrarily apply embargoes. Even nuclear armagedon wold be betrer than that. If you think the yanks are unhinged now they ill be much more rabid after russia capitulates. So the only solution is to make trenches and fire artillery shells until the ukranians run out of amunitio or men.
Even nuclear armagedon wold be betrer than that.
That’s a take.
I have the best takes.
Nuclear war would be so much worse for the global south then embargoes.
I have better takes.
Not really i live thousands of miles away from were the nukes will be falling. We are going to be fine. There is going to be some problems depending on how much sunligth is bloked and trade disruption for a while but we will be rid of the dane so long term we are going to be beyter of than if current trends continue. And much better of than if the us keeps acting like a rabid dog.
i live thousands of miles away from were the nukes will be falling. We are going to be fine. There is going to be some problems depending on how much sunligth is bloked
Some problems? The ash and clouds alone can destroy countries agriculture. Not to mention just how far fallout can spread. Full scale nuclear war would be the end of humanity. Not civilization, not the West, but our species would go extinct.
Who invaded who? Who started shelling who?
I don’t give a fuck mate. The result of the war is that one group of bourgeoisie exploit people, or another group of bourgeoisie exploit people. Neither outcome is worth any lives to me. No war but class war.
You are a pro war bloodthirsty psychopath willing to expend as many lives as necessary as long as it empowers the particular group of billionaires that you cheerlead for instead of some other group of them.
And it was Ukraine that was shelling Donetsk and Luhansk actually. Don’t make me get the OSCE shelling maps out.
As always
to one of our finest postersWe love our posters
No political theory. No ad hominem attacks. Who start shooting first?
What the fuck do you not understand? I do not care. It does not matter to me who starts a war when both sides are bourgeoisie. And it does not fucking matter to me who wins them. I will not cheerlead either side of a bourgeoise war. I am not a psychotic nationalist. I am an internationalist.
Fucking trying to remove politics from a war is utterly deranged.
No political theory
“Go ahead and duel me, just take off your clothes first and drop your weapon”
And it doesn’t even work bc afaik the first shots in the civil war were when the nationalists trapped all those Ukrainians in the union building and burned them all to death.
Well, Ukraine. Or, rather, Right-wing nationalist Galacians who trapped dozens of Ukrainian union members who were the wrong kind of Ukrainian in a building them threw firebombs in until all the Ukrianians in the building burned to death.
Then the nationalist Galacians attacked the legitimate president, who had considerable support in eastern Ukraine.
Then the coup Rada started sending Nazi death squads in to Donbas, and shelled Donbass with artillery for like eight years.
Then the UA military staged a massive build up to invade Donbas with… uh… questionable intentions towards the Russian speaking Ukrainian population, and at that point Russia invaded.
So.
She answered in the last paragraph
This is too simplistic. Just stop. That’s not how geopolitics works. The lines on the map aren’t real and don’t mean anything. Christ Liberals and their profound inability to understand the nature of power.
I’m a liberal? “Liberal” is just a word and all words are made up. They don’t mean anything.
Woah, you just justified that any conversation doesn’t mean anything,congrats
If words have no meaning, then how are you communicating with people in this comment section right now?
To all the people not wanting to extend the proxy war against the war crime committing Russians: what do you expect will happen if you stop funding Ukraine defense against war crimes? You think Russians just go home? You think China and North Korea don’t look around at adjacent territories licking their lips? Do you understand what deterrence means?
Before you respond like a tankie that America is an imperialist shithole, America is not the one (this time) committing war crimes, RUSSIA is.
Those inscrutable asiatics are licking their lips! Something must be done!!!
Axis of Evil ganggggg
you think north korea is annexing ukraine??? what planet are you living on
I think no PPB outside of hexbear
I apologize then, I have broken my own containment
your analysis is completly of as it starts from a Propaganda Tainted cartoonishly Ill Informed Postion…
Russia Reacted , Its the Ukrainian Warcrimes thats the Issue here ! How can you Start this story from 2022 … its a crime against rational thinking , Chronology , Human Civilisation … Unserious Analyss based on the uncritical repetion of irrational claimes by the World greates Liars …
I wouldn’t even mind extending the war so much if there was any attempt to have some good faith peace negotiations to at least entertain a chance at peace??? Russia has always been up for peace talks, Ukraine/the West has not. In fact I am still often shouted down if I so much as say that all sides should be discussing the possibility of peace.
I agree Russia bad and should not be doing an awful invasion, but there is also a much wider context to their invasion that involves Ukraine refusing to give its eastern regions a vote on their own future and bombing civilians for 8 years. This war was very far from inevitable, even without giving Russia any major concessions.
Russia can unilaterally end the war by leaving Ukrainian territory. They choose to extend the war because they want land and resources.
Are you saying that Russia should leave the Donbas region and leave those people to be subjugated by the undemocratic Ukrainian gov that’s been indiscriminately murdering them for 8 years???
Hate Russia if you want but why do you hate the people of Donbas?
And have NATO 500 miles from Moscow and all of Russia’s industry? That would be suicidal, Everyone remembers Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya.
You think China and North Korea don’t look around at adjacent territories licking their lips
North Korea only borders SK and China. It has never invaded another country. China hasn’t invaded another country since 1979 and since then Vietnam and China have peacefully resolved their land border dispute.
Before you respond like a tankie that America is an imperialist shithole, America is not the one (this time) committing war crimes, RUSSIA is.
America is committing war crimes right now. The imposition of collective punishment is a war crime. America’s comprehensive sanctions which it has applied to several countries constitute collective punishment and are hence a war crime.
Condemning the Russian invasion shouldn’t mean white washing the world’s largest perpetrator of state terrorism.
Werent a bunch of reddit brigaders obliterated forgetting to turn off location services posting from their top secret training facility?
I wonder if there was a more efficient way of employing people without having executives from the MIC getting almost all the benefit?
We could just give the money to people for nothing but that would apparently be more immoral and illogical than having them make purely destructive things.
This makes sense to many people
It has been extremely obvious to everyone who isn’t an incredulous lib (ie the ledditor refugees from lemm.ee et al) that the US doesn’t actually give a shit about Ukraine and is more than happen to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Why else would the US constantly ship overpriced wunderwaffen that the Ukrainians can barely use due to lack of training time while at the same time gobbling up Ukrainian state assets? And as we saw with how Afghanistan ended, the US will inevitably pull support, most likely because of Taiwan, and the Ukrainian war effort will collapse overnight just like Afghanistan imploded as soon as the US left the country.
The US has to fight multiple fronts against its peer adversaries as well as not-quite peer adversaries. Just recently, there’s a coup in Niger with crowds of Nigeriens waving Russian flags cheering the coup leaders. While Western MSM underreport the average Nigeriens’ heartfelt desire to kick out the French and overexaggerate Russia’s involvement per usual, an anti-France alliance is forming in the Sahel, and Putin has launched a charm offensive courting African leaders. This is the formation of another front between the West and Russia, and the US will funnel resources away from Ukraine and towards various jihadist and separatist groups like Boko Haram in order to destabilize West Africa.
Ukraine isn’t so exceptional that the US will be willing to abandon a front and lose say Taiwan for the sake of Ukraine. And from MSM reporting about the failed counteroffensive, we’re close to the “US cutting their loses and leaving their allies out to dry while Hexbears repeat that quote from Kissinger” stage.
The propaganda from the west is absolutely baffling if you try to understand it through anything other than pure vibes. America claims that Putin is going to genocide every single Ukrainian and the response from the US is to send a dozen tanks in a year or so? Why not promise 200-300 tanks and promise to send them as soon they can get tankers trained on them? There’s literally 2000 of them just standing there in the desert, isn’t a conflict with Russia what they were built for? The west is sending just enough weapons and ammo to prolong the conflict but nowhere near enough for Ukraine to actually have a shot at winning.
The west is sending just enough weapons and ammo to prolong the conflict but nowhere near enough for Ukraine to actually have a shot at winning.
That’s the crux of the matter right there. And they then force Ukraine to carry out attacks with this lack of equipment and training. Knowing full well that there is minimal chance of victory. Ghoul empire.
It’s more like “the West” just has that equipment in insufficient numbers.
The NATO (or “Western”) military and political doctrine of the last ~30 years was something like “let’s buy most of them with contracts and convenient deals and Desert Storm the remaining few, cause our combined force is so fucking superior”.
It’s also that to some extent people have really started to believe in this superiority (I mean, it’s counterintuitive, an exceptional force of 10k still can’t defeat a crowd of 500k, but many people in Europe and USA seemed to believe that the dwarf armies of Europe are prepared for a real war if it comes).
NATO equipment is simply very expensive now (and complex, so takes longer to train personnel for) and not produced in sufficient quantities.
I mean, this war reminds us that all revolutions in warfare happen only on battlefields between comparable adversaries. When you imagine something and then “prove” it with a beating like Desert Storm, again, and pretend that this is what modern war will look like, you commit a mistake.
So - it appears that a real modern war still involves lots of ground forces grinding each other. Who would have thought that? I mean, Turkey and Israel have pretty western-style militaries, yet with conscription and large standing armies.
I wonder whether all those EU countries are going to introduce conscript training and reserve, cause if they intend to be militarily relevant, they’ll have to do that over all the “draft is slavery” cultural image.
NATO doctrine relies heavily on airpower for any large military conflict. The NATO ground armies might be relatively small, but their combined air forces are qualitatively superior in every metric and at minimum three times larger than any potential opponent. 10k people can hold off 500k when they have a giant arsenal of precision guided weapons and complete control of the air.
That is verifiably not true. Vietnam and Korea made it very clear that you cannot win a war with air power alone. And precision weapons are effectively useless. The US can’t sustain minor campaigns of shelling random cities in the Global South without running out of munitions. And short of nuclear weapons it has no capability to level cities with it’s air force. The F-35 has, what, like four weapons pylons?
Add to that, the Russia air-defense systems have proven very effective, which changes the game. And the F-35 that is the lynchpin of NATO’s air superiority strategy has a great deal of limitations, not the least of which is how expensive and stretched it’s logistical requirements are.
NATO’s air force is completely untested and reliant on extremely expensive, hard to maintain platforms with very limited tactical flexibility. It’s entirely possible the F-35 fleet will defeat itself through attrition due to it’s enormous maintenance requirements.
the Russia air-defense systems have proven very effective, which changes the game
Due to modernization in the course of the current war, and against weapons used in it, specifically those Turkish drones and the small copters everybody uses now in every conflict.
I’m not sure how good they’d be against something launched from F-35.
has a great deal of limitations, not the least of which is how expensive and stretched it’s logistical requirements are
However I should agree that I too just hate F-35.
NATO’s air force is completely untested
Well, again, Israeli and Turkish ones are tested somewhat well, but mostly against much weaker opponents unable to get their sh*t together.
and reliant on extremely expensive, hard to maintain platforms with very limited tactical flexibility.
Yes.
and the response from the US is to send a dozen tanks in a year or so
Europe is wondering the exact same thing: Why are the yanks pussy-footing around? They’re usually much more hawkish. The reason is that the US are shit-scared about Russia thinking the US is trying to invade by proxy or something.
The west is sending just enough weapons and ammo to prolong the conflict but nowhere near enough for Ukraine to actually have a shot at winning.
Europe is sending pretty much as much as it can without compromising its own defensive abilities. Have a look at the Baltic states, sending over as large as a percentage of their GDP as the US is sending as a percentage of its military budget. It’s the US which has gazillions of Abrams sitting around doing nothing but collecting dust and is not shipping them over, not Europe.
And also unlike the US, Europe is sending long-range missile systems to hit logistics etc. in the rear so that Ukraine doesn’t have to gnaw through trench lines.
Homework: Go through all your geopolitical takes and get rid of the term “the west” and instead actually be precise.
Why are the yanks pussy-footing around? They’re usually much more hawkish.
Because they’re using Ukrainians to grind down the Russian military, and economy, by attrition. The goal isn’t to “win”, the goal is to destabilize Russia. Ukrainians are just ammunition. The longer the war drags on, the more costly it is for Russia.
The reason is that the US are shit-scared about Russia thinking the US is trying to invade by proxy or something.
Russia already thinks that. That’s what turned the civil war in Ukraine in to a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
Have a look at the Baltic states
Okay, so? I could match that if I flipped over my couch and counted the loose change. All of the baltics together add up to one medium-large urban area.
It’s the US which has gazillions of Abrams sitting around doing nothing but collecting dust and is not shipping them over, not Europe.
That would be very expensive, and I’m not even sure the US has the logistical capacity for it. Plus seeing Abrams burned out by modern ATGMs would seriously harm the US’s reputation for military invincibility. And, again, they’re primarily concerned that Russia loses. Ukraine winning would be a nice bonus, but it’s not the chief goal.
the civil war in Ukraine
You have a very active imagination.
Okay, so? I could match that if I flipped over my couch and counted the loose change. All of the baltics together add up to one medium-large urban area.
Look, it’s that Seppo exceptionalism again.
That would be very expensive, and I’m not even sure the US has the logistical capacity for it.
The US only has those Abrams because it’s cheaper to produce them than shut down the production line for a couple of years and then start it up again. Realistically speaking much of what the US sends should be valued at negative monetary value as Ukraine taking it means the US doesn’t have to pay to dispose of it.
the civil war in Ukraine
You have a very active imagination.
Look up what was happening in Ukraine from 2014-2022. I know the media always refers to the people living there as Russian-backed separatists but they are in fact Ukrainians.
The US only has those Abrams because it’s cheaper to produce them than shut down the production line for a couple of years and then start it up again. Realistically speaking much of what the US sends should be valued at negative monetary value as Ukraine taking it means the US doesn’t have to pay to dispose of it.
So why hasn’t the US sent 200-300 tanks? Why did the US demand that Ukraine launch a counteroffensive with insufficient tanks and air support? Why is the US trickling in just enough equipment to prolong the conflict as much as possible without giving Ukraine everything it could possibly need to win. Why is US propaganda so different from the actions the US is actually taking?
The US obviously doesn’t care but the aid is helping Ukraine keep it’s independence and even if US pulled out Europe would continue it’s support. Like Poland is amping up ammo production to the point where it alone can supply Ukraine with ammo. Ex-soviet countries fucking hate Russia for a good reason. Also even if Ukraine got no support it’s not like they would stop fighting, they would just be slaughtered and occupied by the Russians which is the worst outcome for them considering what’s going on in the occupied regions. Like for once the US military is not doing something completely morally reprehensible and is actually opposing imperialism for once, that’s a good thing.
Ex-soviet countries fucking hate Russia for a good reason
No, they really don’t have a good reason
Like for once the US military is not doing something completely morally reprehensible and is actually opposing imperialism for once, that’s a good thing.
are you really that gullible?- Ukraine isn’t independent, they got coup’ed by US-backed Nazis and libs and they’re now a vassal of the US empire.
- Most European countries would immediately follow the US, as they always do.
- The whole of NATO cannot send enough ammo right now, and you think Poland can do it all on its own soon? What are you on about?
Sorry to break it down to you but if your safety DEPENDS from foreign weapon aids, you’re anything but independent.
No it cant all of nato cant support ukraine with ammo. That is nonsense.
Yes, but mainly that’s because NATOs ammo production was very limited. The factories are all designed to be scaled up massively in times of need, but pre-2022, NATO was barely producing enough to maintain stockpiles.
Is it a time of need now?
Manichean views don’t explain enough, although they do create engagement, which may be the primary goal.
A less angry explanation is that it is all of that at the same time. They want to help Ukraine’s democracy, weaken a historical authoritarian enemy and feed their military–industrial complex. It’s a balance of all of that in the interest of the people that elected them, like in any democracy. If something gets out of balance, yes they will probably retract their support before it hurts their country in some way, like any other country would. It’s just Realpolitik.
are we the baddies when the only domestic manufacturing we do is cancer tank shells & child murder bombs?
Whilst not suffering a series of mini-strokes on national television, Mitch is as always razor sharp and the epitome of giving zero fucks about any human lives/hides other than his own. May the Sweet Lord Above see fit to drown this nearly calcified ghoul in a bed of his own shit, like real soon. Tomorrow morning would be cool
Oof. Ruskie shills all up in these comments.
It’s really sad when the Russian shills are so good that you can’t even think of a rebuttal
I really don’t get how evaluating this quote as honest makes one a Russian shill.
It’s as if you could either be the good guys or the bad guys, and if the good guys are not so good, then you’re justifying the bad guys. This whole thought process makes me feel as if my brain was dying right now.
I mean, it must be pure charity, sending all those armaments etc to Ukraine while happily ignoring lots of other countries invaded over the last 10 years, right?
(I’m definitely not a shill, cause I write this openly from Moscow.)
lol like I’d waste my time.
you’re posting on lemmy, its all a waste of time
maybe the
only pays for the initial derailing post attempt, not the followup quarter-assed defense of “international rules-based order” that exposes the ignorance and unfamiliarity with material reality.The agent is forbidden from reading any response, otherwise he might develop a conscience or worse, self awareness.
You only have the energy for one unrelated buzzwordy comment but dont have the skills to defend yourself. Just lmao
Your side’s dead. You dont even know it yet.
ruskie shill says what?
Department of Naval Intelligenceeveryone who disagrees with me is a shill 🌽
That’s an unwarranted assumption. It’s perfectly possible that they are already familiar with your arguments and are uninterested in relitigating the issue with idiots. Certainly that would be my position.
Your only mistake was to respond instead of blocking them.
Tfw they are so right you gotta block them at first sight.
How do you say “ruskie” and not feel like a loser? Do you know what decade it is?
I’m supposed to be paid for this???
Say something about the article for christs sake. This doesn’t help your image the way you think
It makes sense to me that the ghouls in charge of this dying empire would say this but it always blows my mind when I meet someone in real life who will say shit like this. Especially when they turn around and play liberal progressive like they aren’t sitting in a circle trying to ritually summon the nuclear holocaust
Is the Empire dying? I’ve been hearing people tell me that I witnessing the death whales of fascism finally being stabbed out, since before a lot of gen Z was born.
There are a lot of things going on that could result in the US losing a great deal of it’s power. NATO’s poor performance in Ukraine will likely greatly reduce their reputation for an invincible military. The US’s illegal seizure of funds from Russian oligarchs and from Afghanistan seems to have greatly reduced confidence in the dollar. The Yuan is seeing more and more use in international trade, and Saudi is thinking about letting countries use currency other than dollars to buy oil. The famines or near-famines caused by the war in Ukraine has greatly damaged NATOs already poor reputation in the Global South. And of course the US domestic economy is in free fall, with many people struggling just to afford bread and a roof, and hundreds of thousands of homeless. And hundreds of thousands is likely a severe undercount. Plus the GOP aligned states are leading an active genocide against trans people, with an estimate by Erin Reed suggesting there are at least 250,000 internal refugees fleeing state repression in the US, with many more unable to flee for financial or other reasons. The US is going to face an enormous social burden from Long Covid related disability which will likely continue to increase as more and more people are disabled by Covid complications. The US is trying to provoke a war with China despite having no way to pay for it, no confidence in the government at home, and no way to replace the access to manufactured goods that a war with China would result in. To say nothing of the nuclear apocalypse. Large swaths of the US south hit a wet-bulb temperature that was fatal to human life earlier in the summer. This was not predicted to happen for decades yet. Given the state of infrastructure in the US south, especially Texas’s grid, this may lead to a truly horrific mass death event in the near future, with a commensurately horrific refugee crisis as people flee the death zone.
There’s a lot of destabilizing factors in the US. The future is never certain, but it doesn’t look good for America.
Seems to be, but it’ll take a long time to go completely. It’s easy to over estimate the speed at which these things happen.
as a good friend of mine once said, “there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.”
Russia invades a neighbour who dares to attempt to have stronger ties to the west.
West supplies neighbour with weapons to defend itself.
Tankies on Lemmy: “oh no, Russia is being oppressed”
Angry libs on lemmy downplay CNN poll showing majority of Americans oppose more US aid for Ukraine
Heckin wholesome democracy, ignoring the will of the people to keep doing what you wanted anyway, after doing that for decades in Afghanistan and Iraq
Imagine not helping your Allies when they’ve been invaded, unprovoked, and are fighting for everything.
Avengers theme plays
The White House must be angry libs on lemmy then.
You straight up butchered that straw man
He is in pieces
How could you do this
The US dares to coup a democratically elected government, and then its neighbor invades at the behest of people the new government were persecuting after two different ceasefires are broken by Ukraines puppet government.
Dronies be like “oh no our wholesome smol bean azov fighters are being oppressed”
Russia invades a neighbour who dares to attempt to have stronger ties to the west.
You mean a western led coup with assistance from neo nazis to remove the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014. With the explicit goal of “Latin Americanising” Eastern Europe and privatizing and selling off all their assets. The Ukrainian government still has a website up today for selling off anything not bolted down to the highest bidder. Shock doctrine 2.0.
West supplies neighbour with weapons to defend itself.
You mean forcing Ukraine to start a counter offensive using NATO combined arms tactics for witch Ukraine had neither the equipment or required training to execute. And with no will from the west to give Ukraine the required equipment (F-16 saga anyone?). How do you do a combined arms offensive without a fully functional air force? The worst part being that the west knew this, and still forced Ukraine to go ahead with the offensive anyways, knowing there was little chance of success.
Tankies on Lemmy: “oh no, Russia is being oppressed”
More like people saw this coming and think the loss of life over this attrition war is tragic. How does Ukraine win an attrition war against Russia? What is the exit plan? This is just Afganistan all over again in some ways.
The west forced Ukraine to defend itself?
Were they supposed to welcome the Russians with open arms?
I believe they mean by continuously sabotaging peace accords and talks
Yeah exactly. What has Ukraine accomplished since the sabotaged peace talks by Boris Johnson? Is the territory gained vs Russia since then worth all the life lost, the economic cost, etc.
They were supposed to not ethnically cleanse Russian speaking people in the eastern provences for 8 years, repeatedly breaking treaties and making threats about hosting nuclear weapons for NATO.
And the US was supposed to not support a violent coup to overthrow the democratically elected government and replace it with a one aligned with the fascist militias they used in that coup.
If this had happened to a weastern ally we would be at war to liberate the entire country let alone protect the regions facing immediate violence.
At a 2008 summit, NATO stated that it would attempt to expand to include Georgia and Ukraine, despite Russia having stated that NATO membership for those countries was a red line for them. Georgia was immediately invaded by Russia in response. Imo this makes it clear that NATO membership for either of those countries was so unacceptable that Russia would rather invade.
If we assume that Russia (and Putin in particular) is acting violently and irrationally like a wild animal, why did NATO continue to agitate Russia when the only possible outcome would be violence? Surely a neutral or even Russia-aligned Ukraine would be preferable to a war-torn Ukraine? This is proof that the US and NATO don’t care about the average person actually living in Ukraine, and indeed don’t care about the Ukrainian state beyond it being a useful (and profitable) proxy against a geo-political rival.
To be clear, I’m not excusing Russia here, but geo-politics aren’t about what’s “fair” or “right”, and if they were, the US would be a global pariah.
You can’t write two paragraphs excusing Russia and then say “I’m not excusing Russia btw.”
No country should be able to force ‘my way or a military invasion’ ultimatum on another non hostile sovereign state. If a government interprets a neighboring country joining a purely defensive treaty out of their own volition (no, Ukraine is not secretly run by the CIA after Maidan) as a hostile act, that only means the nationalism levels went out if control.
I’m normally very critical of the US, but neither them nor NATO can be blamed for this conflict.
For the first 40 years of NATO’s existence it sought to offensively undermine democracy and reinforce the states of NATO aligned countries in Europe through terrorism.
They then rather offensively carpet bombed Yugoslavia killing and wounding thousands of civilians ( many of whom were from Kosovo the people they purportedly wanted to help), 3 foreign diplomats by bombing a foreign embassy not in anyway involved in a conflict and completely destroying the infrastructure of Serbia.
They then offensively invaded Afghanistan where they destabilized the country, toppled the government and then put pedophile psychos in charge because they were the ones willing to work with us, killed nearly 100,000 civilians, and then ended up putting the original government back in charge 20 years later.
Finally they offensively took the most prosperous country in Africa, a country with universal college, healthcare, jobs programs, and housing, a desert country that had a 200 year supply of water and bombed the fuck out of it, destroying the water supply, plundering the gold, supporting the precursors to ISIS, and turned the country into a place with fucking slave auctions.
But yeah NATO is a defensive alliance.
Ok, I will not be defending those actions of NATO - I protested against my country involvement when possible and do agree about them being either dumb decisions (Kosovo) or straight up war crimes (Afghanistan). They shouldn’t have happend.
My point still stand though. NATO doesn’t threaten Russia borders. It could be called ‘Anti-Russia-Country-Club’, but even then the only things threatened by existence of NATO are post-USSR legacy and economic interest. Not exactly arguments to mount a large scale invasion/ethnic cleansing.
If NATO, as we both agree, is an aggressive group of countries that has a contemporary history of attacking countries that are not aligned with the West, despite many of these countries trying to align themselves with the West in good faith (Libya, Russia, and Iran all helped the West in the war on terror), then what is the appropriate way for Russia to react to the expansion of NATO to their doorstep? And I’m asking this as a genuine question, you’re Russia how are you reacting to the West surrounding you despite assisting them, when do you stop tolerating increased military encroachment?
I don’t think that Russia invaded Ukraine because of only NATO expansion, but it obviously played a role given that the peace agreement that was nearly agreed upon April 2022 had Ukraine agree to neutrality. I think a lot of it came down to the genocide of ethnically Russian Ukrainians in the East and Ukraine’s increased shelling of the region in February 2022 is probably what escalated the war into what we see today.
That’s a good question. Let me tackle it from a different angle though - why do ex USSR/Warsaw Pact countries actively want to join NATO?
As a resident of one, I think it’s because they feel that Russia after Yeltsin has the exact same imperialistic principles USSR did. And it doesn’t matter to them that Russia did cooperate with the West, because they see those principles as enough threat. Thus, they have the same reason to fear Russia as Russia has to fear NATO.
Perhaps if NATO disbanded before 1999 we wouldn’t have current Russia, but that’s alt history.
why do ex USSR/Warsaw Pact countries actively want to join NATO?
Because they are run by right-wing oligarchies that want to consolidate and protect their accumulated wealth and power? The imperialism is coming from inside the house.
Because the US starts color revolutions in those countries until a pro-western government is in power.
That’s a good question. Let me tackle it from a different angle though - why do ex USSR/Warsaw Pact countries actively want to join NATO?
Fellow ex Warsaw Pact resident here.
They wanted to join NATO because after the dissolution of the USSR these countries were pushed into a deep economic crisis, to which one of the solutions, apart from relentless austerity programs was the privatization of the shit ton of public assets they had. Of course lots of western companies were in on this since for them these assets were really cheap and they had a lot of money. The city hall of the town i went to university to became a fucking McDonald’s.
Thing is, a lot of people didnt like this, not just the austerity, but the handing of domestic assets to western companies. And they were not even that wrong about it! In Albania, in 1997 a series of bankruptcies of asset managing companies (most western owned) who were basically scamming people who barely came into contact with capitalism, telling them theyll get 50% interest rates for their money, led to a brutal uprising where ordinary people were sacking military bases, setting up machine gun nests in the borders of cities and overthrew the government (after half a year of protests).
In the meantime Russia was led by well-known alcoholic, Boris Yeltsin, who doesn’t strike me as the napoleonic conqueror people make him out to be.
So why did these countries join NATO? Because they DESPERATELY needed the money, but western companies wouldnt invest in (exploit) them if they dont have insurances (troops that could be sent against the people anytime an Albanian-type revolt breaks out or an anti-western government come in power who would try to renationalize assets) that their investments (exploitation) runs as smoothly as possible. And it works. People like to say that “ackshually the living standards went up in Eastern Europe”, but they never stop to check that it only went up because the rich got richer, pulling the average up. The working class’ lives stagnated at best, except the social net around them is rapidly brought down. Older people are not nostalgic for socialism here because theyre becoming senile, but because they see every time that they go to a hospital that the increasingly privatized healthcare system is crumbling.
Don’t believe me? It’s fine. But i would suggest that you examine who the current pariahs are in NATO: Hungary, whose government has to rely in a lot of things to the cheapest due to a ravaged economy (both by corruption and privatization), so they rely a lot on domestic production and trying to hand off as little stuff to western corporations as possible (and still fail at it, hence why they are still intact), and Turkey, who makes no secret of wanting to standing on its own feet and not rely on western corporations.
Russia after Yeltsin
Russia during Yeltsin rolled in the tanks on its own parliament. The absence of foreign invasions was not for lack of malice, but for lack of capability.
The reason why ex-Warsaw Pact countries are flocking to NATO is because when the communists left power, the reactionaries resurged. And naturally the reactionaries in power wanted to be part of a right-wing alliance. But no matter what revanchists might tell you, living standards across Eastern Europe were better in the 1980s than they were in the 2000s.
NATO weapons are bombing Russia literally right now.
Are the Russians sincerely supposed to believe that NATO isn’t a threat
That’s sort of a hard reality to contextualize away
Ok, I will not be defending those actions of NATO
You’ll just ignore their relevance to why NATO approaching your doorstep is, in fact, hostile and aggressive.
NATO was literally created to oppose the USSR and the left in Europe generally, and did not disband after the fall of the USSR, instead taking up further aggression and at greater range, and keeping a very clear encirclement position around Russia. The bases got larger, the spending increased, and membership was sought to undermine any countries stepping out of line of the American-imposed order.
non hostile sovereign state
For the past several decades NATO has utterly destroyed various countries around the world, while maintaining ruthless tradewars against the peoples of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, as well as a brutal colonial regime across much of West Africa. NATO won’t stop at invading your country either. They’ll maintain occupations in Syria and blockades of Afghanistan from now until the end of time.
NATO would rather see the people of Niger and Mali starve to death rather than pay market rates for their resources.
NATO will crow that countries in South America are too defiant, why, they didn’t even try and coup the brazilian elections last year!
NATO is, simply put, a defensive alliance of the world’s preeminent warmongerers.
Hosting NATO troops is the epitome of hostility.
Unfortunately for you some countries can actually resist. And resist they shall.
Oh I’d forgotten that Biden seized Afghanistan’s soveriegn wealth, causing a famine.
That famine was an investment in democracy.
non hostile sovereign state
: |
non hostile sovereign state
Non-hostility is when you do ethnic cleansing against the ethnicity the neighboring country is named after, engage in a war right by the borders to support that ethnic ckeansing, violate your treaties to end that war, and cozy up your coup government to the military organization intended to encircle that country, an org that regularly engages in aggression.
Ethnic cleansings in those territories are a fabricated casus beli for Russia ‘green man’. There were tensions between Russian and Ukrainian nationals in those territories, but I’ve seen no data on large scale extermination operations.
Ukraine engaged in a defensive war with a force clearly backed by their stronger neighbor that just laid claim to another piece of their land (Crimea). This was a land grab in all but name, no matter how much propaganda tries to paint it as a legitimate independence movement. Blame for casualties of that war lies entirely on separatists and Russia.
Ethnic cleansings in those territories are a fabricated casus beli for Russia ‘green man’.
there have been reports of Ukranian paramilitaries shelling the Donbas going back almost a decade. multiple peace treaties were signed over it, all aiming to stop the ethnic cleansing. each and every one of those treaties were violated. this is all extremely well-documented. can you even prove that a single of these reports is fabricated?
I meant pre 2014 conflict though.
the person you replied to was talking about the last 9 years
Ukraine has used internationally banned cluster munitions in the donbass since 2014. A six year old playing in a field and dying to unexploded ordnance, whether that child is a Russian or Ukrainian speaker, is a horrific tragedy. These bombs are a form of terrorism sponsored by the post-coup Ukrainian state, and the nazi paramilitaries active in the area were and are state-sponsored terrorists.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
But I never said I support cluster munitions. Fuck them, and fuck the Nazis.
I did not just engage in a few hours of discussion to try and convince anyone that Ukraine is the shining beacon of hope and democracy. It isn’t, they have problems. So does every state. Some (like Russia) just seem to have comparatively more of those, or are not particularly good at dealing with them.
The problem though is that these issues are self-perpetuating. Both the current Russian and post-2014 Ukraine governments are the products of US interference. If we were truly spreading Democracy, then they would be capable of mediating these conflicts peacefully. Since Capital dictates the terms of our international intervention, it puts its own interests first, and it’s very interested in selling weapons. I just can’t accept the premise that selling more weapons will lead to any sort of long-lasting peace or democracy in the region.
large scale extermination operations.
How many people do you have to exterminate before it becomes bad?
Ethnic cleansings in those territories are a fabricated casus beli for Russia ‘green man’
The ethnic cleansing was and is part of official Ukrainian policy. Do you think the sneaky Rooskies infiltrated and forced Kyiv to drop Russian as an official language, one that could be learned and used in schools in Donbas? Did they cleverly rename the streets to Bandyerite fascist names? Did they create the Azov Batallikn, Righy Sector, etc - the Ukrainian fascist groups weaponized against the ethnic Russian civilians of Donbas and now directly incorporated into the government and armed forces? Did Russia secretly create the entire Kyiv side of the civil war that heavily targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure on the Donbas side?
Cool to learn, I didn’t know that.
I find in all Russia’s statements kind of ridiculous that it would have a say in how other sovereign countries handle their safety. Ukraine and Georgia have their own decisions to make
It’s not pretty but this is how the world works. If a man is holding a gun to your head, and says he’ll kill you if you don’t give him your wallet, do you hold onto the wallet out of principle because robbery is immoral?
The man with the gun to his head doesn’t have much of a choice if he wants to live. You, though, have a choice between criticising and defending the man with the gun, and you’re choosing to defend him.
Bruv you’re not this dense. NATO, an alliance constructed for the express purpose of destroying Russia, which did not disband when the USSR was destroyed, which continued to advance towards and encircle Russia for decades after the fall of the USSR, which refused the RF’s attempts to join the alliance, which has engaged in numerous illegal wars of aggression, is the man holding the gun and I swear to god just because you were born there that does not make them the good guys.
lol, thug ethics. AKA offensive realist geopolitics. The great do what they want and the small accept their fate.
There is no ethics between capitalist states, there are only stratagems for how to exploit everyone else and not get exploited yourself.
Rhetoric about liberal world orders and rules and ethics are just propaganda to keep their own people complacent, like providing indulgences to themselves. They are wildly inconsistent and the self-named “good guys” carry out the absolute worst violence.
you do know there’s been an ongoing civil war in Ukraine since 2013 and that fascists have been genociding Russian speakers in the independent republics that have been trying to split off from Ukraine in that time, right? and you know that Ukraine violated multiple peace treaties in the process of doing so?
And we know that the separatist fascists are Russian plants. The future will tell us how much there’s a real independence movement instead in the areas.
Nevertheless, conquering and genociding whole Ukraine is not approvable
Those lifelong Ukrainian trade unionists locked in their union hall and set on fire? Yeah, just fascust Russian plants.
How did I arrive at such a smart and correct thought? I get that question a lot. Listen, tankie
You know sovereignty isn’t real, right? Like it’s just not? Countries invade whoever they want whenever they think they can get away with it? Most of Europe just went in to Iraq illegally and murdered a million people? Ukraine sent a lot of troops on that adventure. The US just kills people and topples governments all over? France controls colonial possessions in Africa? Canada de-facto runs a bunch of African territory through it’s ruthless resource extraction firms? South Korea and Okinawa are under US military occupation? North Korea only remains Sovereign because they can make Seoul glow in the dark if the US tries something? The west uses ruthless monetary manipulation, dumping of consumer goods and food, outright piracy and theft, to control other countries?
This isn’t model UN.
And it’s time to stop the invading shit
So then we agree, America must be defanged at all costs
Somewhat true (all costs is a troublesome term), but also disregards the rest of the issue
It really doesn’t. American aggression is found around every corner if you look at thr history and impetus behind this conflict.
Ok, according to what you’re saying, Mexico can never join BRICS if the US says no. Is that what you think? The US can be a pretty rabid animal too, as you say.
What do you think would happen if, hypothetically speaking, a nearby state such as, let’s say, Cuba started hosting the military assets of a hostile power?
What about even a distant nation such as oh I don’t know maybe Iran or one of the koreas started making weapons the US felt threatened by?
Just thinking aloud here I don’t know.
Nobody is offering Ukraine nukes, that’s what the Budapest memorandum was all about, knock it off.
Cuba had its revolution and had its own arsenal provided by the USSR and has survived everything the US threw at it so far and Ukraine will survive russia too, but a moat would be handy :)
and has survived everything the US threw at it so far
The point being the US threw a lot of shit at it because of course the US wouldn’t tolerate those missiles being there, and Russia won’t tolerate NATO being in Ukraine.
If China made a defensive alliance with Mexico that included a military base in Tijuana, Mexico would suddenly be in need of some democracy and freedom.
Continuing to deny this basic reality means your position isn’t connected to reality.
Peace requires a sustainable security situation for Russia not just for Ukraine and for Russia that means no NATO since NATO is hostile to Russia. It’s clear and denying this is just putting your head in the sand.
Yes, but the point is with Cuba, missiles were removed, peace deal was reached.
Does the US have to place nukes in Ukraine so that by removing them russia will stop attacking it?
But by all means, if Trump starts threatening Mexico with some bullshit invasion to clean out the cartels, they should by all means ask China and anyone else to help out, sure! That’s how it works in a bipolar world (there is no multipolar world, russia’s empire is gone and China+US will make sure it never returns)
NATO is not hostile to russia, NATO prevents russia from invading its western neighbours, which is obviously a bummer to russia.
The sustainable security solution is: russia respects borders and other countries’ sovereignty. The end.
Yes, but the point is with Cuba, missiles were removed, peace deal was reached.
Yeah so the obvious conclusion is that peace in Cuba required satisfying the US’s demand to not have a Soviet military presence there.
Likewise peace in Ukraine requires not having a NATO military presence there.
Pretending that NATO isn’t hostile to Russia is also simply disconnected from reality. You need to connect your world view to reality.
Yes, but the point is with Cuba, missiles were removed, peace deal was reached.
You get that in this analogy Ukraine is taking the place of Cuba, right? Like NATO is using Ukraine as a disposable proxy to bleed Russia… okay well the metaphor falls apart because the details are really different, but Cuba was threatening the US in a vaguely similar way to how Ukraine is threatening Russia, and the peace deal was that Cuba would remove all the missiles and in exchange the US would remove it’s missiles from Turkey and not massacre the Cuban population. So the equivalent would be Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO (not that NATO was ever going to let them), disarm, and stop trying to wipe out Russian speaking Ukrainians.
NATO is not hostile to russia
NATO’s explicit purpose is and always have been the destruction of the Russian state and the pillaging of it’s resources and it’s beyond bad faith to state otherwise.
Ukraine’s coup government was threatening to construct nukes shortly before the US proxy war there began. I would cite my sources but I know you won’t care 😉
?
What component of BRICS is a military alliance? That’s a nonsensical comparison.
And the Mexican president just said that Mexico is unable to join BRICS because of the geopolitical situation.
If Mexico was given an army by China and started bombing Texas and committing ethnic cleansing, it would not be imperialism to try and stop that
If the lines on a map are an issue for you, just imagine a world where the Us broke up and lost Texas to Mexico before the ethnic cleansing started
Well, BRICS isn’t really a formal alliance but if it were? Yeah, joining a hostile alliance while sharing a border with the US is asking for trouble, and the US has committed all matter of atrocities in latin america. I do think an outright invasion would be less likely than their usual method of military coups and death squads.
So just to reiterate, you are okay with America invading Mexico to enforce its will on them?
Half of Mexico is still under US military occupation, they already have a buffer zone between them.
Mate, it’s not hard.
It’s a yes or no question.
Your question wasn’t for me. And no, USA should give back all the land they stole from Mexico. And until they do that, it’s ridiculous for them to expect Russia to return land that’s populated with Russian ethnics to a fascists state that tried to exterminate them before the war.
NATO and BRICS are fundamentally different. You cannot compare them in good faith. NATO exists for the explicit purpose of destroying Russia. BRICS does not exist for the explicit purpose of destroying NATO, or America for that matter. It’s an extremely bad faith comparison.
Also yeah America would flatten the Mexico City if Mexico tried to join BRICS. They’ve already agitated for a coup a number of times in the last decade.
NATO and BRICS are just not comparable? Like… they’re both acronyms I guess.
edit: sorry this is really long.
I think it’s clear that NATO support for Ukraine is not altruistic (it is simply not how international politics functions) but the Ukrainian people as such certainly do, in my eyes, have an ethical right to self-defence. If I were Ukrainian, I would want NATO weapons because they give me a better chance of fighting off the invader. After all, it’s not like the 2022 invasion was the first bit of tension between Ukraine and Russia post-independence, it makes sense to try and form a counterbalancing alliance with the ‘far’ imperial power to counter the ‘close’ one, it’s a common thing to do. e.g., Mali allying with Russia to counter French influence, Armenia allying with Russia to counter Turkish-Azeri aggression, and so on and so forth.
I think what I find disagreeble about peoples’ attitudes on here is their attitude towards the Ukrainian people’s struggle. Yes, ok, I also hate the far-right elements in the Ukrainian military and don’t care at all that they got smashed in Mariupol, but I certainly do care about the RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION which is being denied to so many Ukrainians (there is clear evidence that outside of Crimea even Russian-speaking Ukrainians almost entirely oppose the invasion). Likewise
Yes, NATO does not care about Ukrainians, but an invasion was not the ‘logical’ response from Russia, and as per existing evidence was based on a complete misunderstanding of the realities on the ground in Ukraine from the Russian leadership which has become increasingly isolated and personalist (around Putin) in the past two decades but especially since COVID. There were a vast number of less escalatory and mutually destructive potential paths for the Russian leadership to have taken. After all, this war has gone terribly for Russia compared to their initial aims. Putin claimed (wrongly) that Ukrainian national identity was a Bolshevik creation with no real support, yet now a fervent Ukrainian national identity exists now more than ever before in both the east and west of the country. Putin thought Russian-speaking Ukrainians would rally to his side, yet he has pushed them into the arms of the Ukrainian state more than ever before. Putin was afraid of Ukraine becoming aligned with NATO, yet now he has pushed them into the arms of the west completely and permanently. The invasion has killed tens of thousands of young Russian men, has caused considerable capital flight, large-scale brain drain, and empowered Prigozhin and other mercenary/sub-state militias (including Kadyrovites and such) to the point where a mercenary group was within a few hours of marching on Moscow(!) before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort (Prigozhin is still strong enough to be allowed to potter about diplomatic meetings, if you need any indication of the dire state of the Russian state). Putin claims to be conducting de-Nazification yet his policies since 2014 have uniformly strengthened the position of the far-right within Ukrainian state + society.
Plus the conduct of the Russian Army and its affiliated elements has been extremely inhumane. I would not say there is evidence of genocide, no (though the large-scale kidnapping of Ukrainian children and their Russification, if true on a systemic scale, would be an act of genocide-I do not think there is enough evidence to say either way yet), but there is evidence of systematic and systemic abuses on a VASTLY larger scale than we have seen from the Ukrainians. It is a catastrophe of Russia’s own making.
To get back on topic (sorry), I do not see how you can admonish Ukrainians for supporting any means for their national self-defence. They have every right to resist the invasion and to not want part of their homeland (territory and ‘land’ is important in all national identities/mythologies), no? There is no contradiction between supporting this right to self-defence and self-determination and hating the Nazi groups which, unfortunately, have an outsized power within the Ukrainian military (but do not completely control the state-Zelensky is Jewish and a Russian-speaker!). Yes, Ukrainian national mythology has its share of far-right and general awful elements to it, but unfortunately that’s common in a lot of Eastern Europe and as per studies Nazism and antisemitism do not have more support in Ukraine than in Russia or the rest of Eastern Europe. There has been plenty of polling/surveying on these topics in Ukraine. There is more so just a lack of understanding as to what the Banderites actually did in WW2, not real support for their actions/Nazi collaboration. That’s bad but not what some are saying on here.
I certainly do care about the RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION which is being denied to so many Ukrainians
Do you support the right to self-determination for Ukrainians in the Donbas region? Do you support their right to live in peace, free from artillery bombardment and being terrorized by far-right paramilitary groups? Or do you only support the rights of Ukrainians that the state department tells you to care about?
I don’t think that is in any contradiction w/ my comment whatsoever.
I think a peace deal involving referendums in these areas (not under military occupation-creates unfair and unfree conditions for a referendum e.g., as in Crimea!) would identify the actual will of the people in these parts of the Donbas. I expect heavily that Crimea above all would vote to leave Ukraine and I think it has every right to do so ethically-speaking, though I do not think the referendum was carried out in free/fair conditions.
I think a peace deal involving referendums in these areas (not under military occupation-creates unfair and unfree conditions for a referendum e.g., as in Crimea!) would identify the actual will of the people in these parts of the Donbas.
Ukraine had even better terms than that under the Minsk agreements. They refused to hold to the terms and stop shelling Donbas, even after they signed a ceasefire twice. After the invasion there was another attempt at peace talks, it ended with Ukraine dragging their own negotiator into the street and shooting him in the head. Late last year Zelensky signed a decree making it illegal to negotiate peace with Putin. The few times Ukraine has retaken a major area they immediately begin purging “collaborators and traitors”. If Russia pulled back it’s military Ukraine would just immediately invade those areas, regardless of any agreements they signed.
I’m not philosophically opposed to your idea, it really would be the best outcome. It’s just impossible to actually implement.
Edit: I forgot to mention that this would also be impossible in Ukraine-held areas. Zelensky has banned all left-wing opposition parties. Oddly enough the right-wing parties were all left alone, including the far-right Svoboda party.
I think that is just a fundamentally one-sided understanding of why the Minsk Agreement failed to be honest. It was a poorly-written, unimplementable deal that neither side took seriously. It’s not like the D/LPRs and Russia were saints here. Indeed, there also isn’t much reason to believe the D/LPRs were, beyond the first year or so, really representative of the people in the region’s desires, since the original independent-minded leaders were replaced by those much closer to Russia. FURTHERMORE, the Minsk agreement was simply too unpopular in Ukraine for any government to survive implementing it. Ukrainians largely viewed the D/LPRs as Russian proxies (to what extent they are is arguable, but they certainly were less so as time went on and never were even to start with) and, in large, abhorred this sort of Russian influence.
It wasn’t just because Ukrainian state was war-mongering and poor baby Russia was forced to step in. This is not to say at all that the Ukrainian Government made no mis-steps in the build-up to the war-yes, they definitely did, and the Ukrainians simply didn’t believe Putin would be rash or stupid enough to launch such an invasion until very close to the time so never really backed down from a maximalist NATO position and didn’t prepare properly for early-war defences. But it’s not like you are saying. Both sides caused the failure of Minsk, and neither side was ready to adhere to it.
It was a poorly-written, unimplementable deal that neither side took seriously.
Then why did Ukraine sign the two separate Minsk agreements if they never intended to follow them?
FURTHERMORE, the Minsk agreement was simply too unpopular in Ukraine for any government to survive implementing it.
Peace with Donbas was popular with Ukrainians. In the most recent elections the candidate that ran on a platform of peace with Donbas won the election and became president. Zelensky then went to the front and gave his “I’m not some loser” speech to Ukraine’s militants on the front to try to deescalate the war. Once he failed to reign in his paramilitaries he began agitating for more war.
You are correct that it’s unlikely that a Ukrainian government could survive implementing peace with Donbas. This isn’t because it was unpopular with the people of Ukraine but because it was unpopular with the people in power. After the US-backed coup far-right elements were placed in positions of power in the Ukrainian government, especially in the police and military. If that failed, the US could have once again opened the floodgates of money from NGOs to anti-government protestors and replaced whoever the Ukrainian people elected with a more “pro-democratic” leader.
You’re right that overall the central Ukrainian government wanted war too much to abide by the ceasefire treaties they signed. I just don’t think that excuses them. Wanting war too much to do peace is literally what I’m criticizing Ukraine for.
“How dare ex soviet nations try to ensure their own protection after Russia showed multiple times they like to invade ex soviet nations!”
I remember another time when some dictator wanted a bigger sphere of influence and started occupying other countries. Appeasement didn’t work than and it didn’t work with Russia.
Russia having stated that NATO membership for those countries was a red line for them
Fuck that bully shit. They don’t own Ukraine and Georgia and they can make their own decisions. If Russia wanted a nato buffer zone they should have offered incentive. Look what they got instead…
You’re commenting on an article explicitly saying the US isn’t sending weapons for the purpose of defending Ukraine…
Tankies on Lemmy: “oh no, Russia is being oppressed”
Literally no one thinks this, but by all means, have fun in your fantasy land lol
I regret to inform you that you have failed your introduction to 21st century history class Like just little things.
Do you know that the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol? Did you know that it’s an incredibly important strategic asset? What do nation states do when an incredibly important strategic asset is threatened? Do they defend it?
Did you know Crimea has a 30 year long history of seeking more autonomy, or even independence, from Ukraine?
Do you know what the very first action of the coup Rada was?
Do you know what “encirclement” means?
I know Plato’s Allegory of the Cave gets used a lot when discussion the hegemonic power of western propaganda over western people, but come on bruv.
Do the words “Minsk II” mean anything to you?
Are you aware of the tariff agreements in place between Russia and Ukraine in 2013?
Do you know who Bandera was?
Do you know what the Russian Federation’s stated causus belli for the invasion is?
What do you know?
I don’t have the time for the classic tankie “reply with a wall of text and deflections”, I actually have a real job to attend to. But some main points.
Do you know that the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol? Did you know that it’s an incredibly important strategic asset? What do nation states do when an incredibly important strategic asset is threatened? Do they defend it?
Do you also know that Russia took Sevastopol from Ukraine back in 2014?
Tell me, do you also support Israel’s claims on Palestinian territory?
Do you know what the Russian Federation’s stated causus belli for the invasion is?
Yes.
Do you know what the causis belli for the US’s invasion of Iraq was? Are you stupid enough to believe that one as well? Or does believing causus belli only applies to whatever country is not an ally of the US?
What do you know?
I know you should get a gold medal on mental gymnastics and double standards.
What you call “reply with a wall of text and deflections” is 90% of the time well informed and sourced discourse, you just dismiss it cause you can’t argue with it.
jokey one-liners: you have no arguments
well-reasoned point: I’m not reading all that, I have a job
Do you also know that Russia took Sevastopol from Ukraine back in 2014?
Yes? Because the Black Sea Fleet is station in Sevastopol and Sevastopol is a vital strategic resource? Are we speaking the same language?
Tell me, do you also support Israel’s claims on Palestinian territory?
Non-sequitor?
Do you know what the causis belli for the US’s invasion of Iraq was? Are you stupid enough to believe that one as well? Or does believing causus belli only applies to whatever country is not an ally of the US?
… Okay so you know that UA was shelling Donbass and killing people for years, and the Rada was very openly hostile to the Russian speaking Ukrainian minority, right?
I know you should get a gold medal on mental gymnastics and double standards.
Could I get a sticker instead?
Also that’s not a wall of text you dork it’s like 10 sentences.
Because the Black Sea Fleet is station in Sevastopol and Sevastopol is a vital strategic resource? Are we speaking the same language?
So if the US has a fleet statinoned in another contry’s territory, should they just be allowed to take it?
Non-sequitor?
What don’t you follow?
Do you also support US-backed countries to take territory as they see fit? Or does that only apply to countries you like?
Okay so you know that UA was shelling Donbass and killing people for years, and the Rada was very openly hostile to the Russian speaking Ukrainian minority, right?
A Russian-backed separatist group starts a conflict and Ukraine responds.
Does Ukraine not have the right to defend their territory?
Could I get a sticker instead?
You can get some crayons to munch on.
Does Ukraine not have the right to defend their territory?
Do eastern ukrainians have a right not to be ethnically cleansed?
Do eastern Ukrainians have a right to defend their own territory and invite guests to help?
You’re a very foolish person.
I’ll make it easier for you
I actually have a real job to attend to.
Can’t be that important if you’ve got all this time lose arguments on the internet
You know you’re dealing with a pro-NATO bot when they say stupid boomer jokes like “well I have a job to go to”
Hi bot! 👋
reply with a wall of text
And here I thought that the classic tankie reply was low-effort trolling and shitposting.
I don’t have the time for the classic tankie “reply with a wall of text and deflections”, I actually have a real job to attend to. But some main points.
This whole “unlike you tAnKiEs I have a job” thing just makes you look insecure and childish.
You know that, right?
I don’t have the time for the classic tankie “reply with a wall of text and deflections”
This is literally a deflection to avoid dealing with the (inconvenient) basic facts you should’ve learned before having any opinion on this topic in the first place.
Eli5 that Pluto shit I toned out the Cave hard when I took a philosophy class
I found this funny and topical example.
Basically some dudes are tied up in a cave so they can only look forward. Behind them some other dude’s are making shadow puppets. The tied up dudes think the shadow puppets are the real world because they can’t look anywhere else and don’t think there is anything else. But then there’s something about if you’re skeptical you can escape the cave and see the real world outside.
The second part is important too: when someone escapes the cave and sees the outside world for the first time, it’s painful because things are so bright. After a while, the escapee’s eyes adjust, and they come to see how much better and more real the outside world is. They decide to go back and free their friends in the cave. But when they descend back down, their friends make fun of them because they can’t see very well in the dark anymore and so aren’t very good at talking about the shadows. Their friends think that they are just making up a big story about some magical “outside world” to cover for how bad they’ve gotten at talking about the shadows.
It’s amazing how much they support imperialism when it’s “their people” doing it.
Read Settlers
That’s because you don’t understand what imperialism means. US/EU capital is looting and exploiting the former socialist block and controlling it through western capitalist media, NGOs, and military bases. That’s imperialism. The Russians preventing Nazis from doing ethnic cleansing along their border and demanding not to be threatened with a gun to the head is not imperialism.
Funny how living standards in the ex-soviet countries have improved considerably since joining the EU, but that has not been the case for the ones that chose to be kept under Russia’s sphere of influence. 🤔
Looks like the EU is really bad at looting, they should learn from Russia.
There was a massive dip in all those places in the 90s with shock therapy. A lot of people are still worse off in a lot of ways and angry. Hence AfD, Orban, PiS and all those other angry nationalists.
Also, if you want to be fair, you should compare for example Poland to west Germany. Polish workers toil for German capitalists, and yet, somehow, they’re getting exploited way more than the German workers. Less pay, worse services, worse infrastructure, less worker’s rights. That whole arrangement is super-exploitative. Meanwhile foreigners bought most of that country. Treated like a colony basically.
The Russians got fucked even worse than Poland in the 90s, which resulted in a backlash which Putin made himself the head of. What Russia is doing is self-preservation. Any state with the means to preserve it’s sovereignty from a hostile takeover would try to do so, it’s not just something an imperialist state would do. Hence Russia is not doing an imperialism here.
Hell, compare East Germany to the
reichWest Germany. West Germany’s economic conquest of East Germany was incredibly ruthless and brutal, and East Germany never recovered from having it’s entire economy pillaged and burned.And east german lgbt rights and women’s rights lost half a century of progress during reunification.
Yeah. It’s still technically illegal to get an abortion in the reich afaik. It was really something finding out that the gdr had gender parity in most fields before the west crushed it, and that western germany had to give women a bunch of rights to try to manage to political turmoil.
living standards in the ex-soviet countries have improved considerably since joining the EU
Yeah the living standards sure did improve after one of the worst demographic disasters in that era. Easy for things to get better when you start from the bottom I mean come on do better.
Have some compassion, some people just want to crank their knob to exploitative porn without questioning why so much of it comes from Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.
Thank you for calling this out. It’s fucking gross how that happens. If I speak about what should happen to “sexpats”, I’ll be in trouble. Big big trouble.
Feel like clawing your eyes out?
So, why didn’t Belarus improve at the same rate as the Baltic countries?
They both started from the bottom, right?
So, why didn’t Belarus improve at the same rate as the Baltic countries?
If you think that the answer to this is simply “because Russia bad” you have the mind of a child.
Eastern European countries that opened to western trade and diplomatic relationships improved significantly.
Eastern European countries that became Russian puppets didn’t.
Explain that.
The Balts were immediately used as forward positions for NATO and were allowed to keep their state programs and industry. Belarus got the same treatment as Russia.
You should probably know the answer to your own snarky questions before you ask them.
So, what you’re saying is that the countries that sided with the West got a better deal than the ones that became Russian puppets?
They didn’t improve at all. The rich are better off, thanks to mass privatization of public property. For the middle/working class, quality of life stagnated at best.
Source: I live in an ex-soviet country.
since joining the EU
I hope you understand how this is an incredibly cherry-picked range. It’s like saying “look how steadily the American economy grew from the period of 1930 to 1940”.
Many Eastern European countries in the EU are still being hollowed out and suffering massive brain drain. The model of “tributary state” accurately applies here.
Are these nazis in the room with us right now?
no they’re not here. they’re over in ukraine putting up statues of Bandera and wearing nazi symbols all over their military uniforms. were you not listening, or…?
Don’t forget putting the OUN… er… ukrainian trident on that old monument.
And the Blood and Soil flags that are very common.
I mean, you’re not gonna like it, but;
CW: Like over a hundred fotos that all have some kind of Nazi imagery in them, except one where I think they mistook a patch for the 14th Waffen SS Grenadiers 1st Galacian patch because it has similar elements
They’ve been open and pretty frank about their goals. I can explain all the symbols and their history and significance for you if you’d like.
I’m sorry to break it to you but are you aware of the Wagner group that has been fighting for Russia? They’re pretty Nazi as well and yet hexbear keeps cheering for Russia anyway, saying the only way to end the war is to have Ukraine give in to them. For some reason Ukraine has to be the bigger man, but Russia, the actual aggressor, who is also employing Nazi fighters, can’t?
1.) Killing Nazis is not a tit for tat thing. Everyone should kill all the Nazis they can.
2.) Most of us are not cheering for Russia. This is not a sports game. There is not a goodguy and a badguy. The only thing I want out of this war is for the killing to stop and NATO’s hegemonic power diminished. No one is going to “win” this. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Nazis are emboldened and proliferating throughout Eastern Europe. Vast amounts of weaponry have gone missing and will begin being used in terror attacks in the next few years. Much of Ukraine’s last remaining state industries and farmland have been sold off the multinational vultures. The massive infrastructure damage in Ukraine is never going to be repaired. You’re treating this like a movie with a hero and a villain where someone wins and someone loses. That’s not how geopolitics work. The idea that Russia is an “aggressor” shows both ignorance of history and a failure to understand the security concerns of modern states and how conflcit is conducted. So many people have this very naive model un view that the lines on the map are real and you can be sovereign when you don’t have nukes. There’s a studious refusal to engage with the reality that NATO routinely engages in hostile wars of aggression and that countries all over the world will defend themselves from that to the best of their ability, regardless of your concept of morality or rule of law. Russia is intensely aware of what NATO did to Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria. They’re intensely aware of NATOs decades of sabotage and subversion, of death squads and assassins, of coups and coercion. And you can refuse to engage with that or understand it if you want. I can’t force you to acknowledge the world as it really is. But this ridiculous “oh Russia has Nazis so it” s okay that Nazis occupy positions of influence throughout Ukraine" thing is obnoxious. Round up all of Wagner and shoot them. I don’t care. Mercenaries are scum. I don’t care what happens to them. Nazis should be hunted down and killed regardless of where they are, not armed and emboldened.
Your words don’t match your attitude. You guys constantly berate Ukraine and defend Russia, even when it has similar problems. The only actual solution you have is to have Ukraine give up and surrender sovereignty to Russia. The only place I agree with you is that all Nazis are bad.
And Russia is the one who attacked, that makes it the aggressor. Ukraine wasn’t even joining NATO until they made it seem more alluring, and even then their membership is still an open question, so none of that matters. And if NATO did attack Russia, then they would be the aggressor, and I would be arguing against them, because Russia would have the right to defend itself, just like Ukraine does. But it wasn’t. They just wanted territory. You guys also seem to just take Russian propaganda as truth, generally taking their reasons as good faith, claiming genocides against Russian speaking people’s (even though the President is one) just because they specified the official language or saying some Nazi terrorists are a reason to obliterate the country (even though Russia has some, too, as does the US. It doesn’t mean I want someone invading to stop them, destroying my house and shit). It would be like if some terrorists attacked the US and that was used as a reason to obliterate a country, or two. You claim you see the world as it really is, even though Russia didn’t have to attack and none of this had to happen. It reminds me of conservatives who are always telling people on the left to open their eyes and see how the world really is.
Siri, what’s imperialism?
Yes, you really should ask her what imperialism is if you don’t think what Russia and China are doing is imperialism.
Imperialism is when china and russia and the more china and russia the imperialister it is
Siri please help the red fash tankies keep telling me to read Lenin.
I hope we can keep supporting Ukraine. This is one of the few times in history when the scenario is so clear cut good vs evil. The Ukrainians fought hard to get out from under the thumb of Russia and the Russians just couldn’t have that so they invaded. The support the world provides to Ukraine is support provided for all Democracies.
Yeah, clearcut good is when a government starts building monuments to Holocaust perpetrators, and banning minority languages including Yiddish, followed by a decade of bombing ethnic minorities in a border region.
Did they ban Yiddish, too? I hadn’t heard that, and it’s weird given that almost all Ukrainian Jews fled long ago to get away from, you know, Ukrainian Nazis.
The 2019 language law has carve outs for English, and national minority languages that are EU languages. Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish specifically don’t get exempted.
It’s cool though there’s definitely no ethnic cleansing component to this war, nosiree.
Democracy is when you ban all left-leaning parties in your country and burn a hall full of trade unionists alive, and the more parties you ban and trade unionists you burn alive the more democratic you are. I don’t see what’s so hard for these tankies to get!!
They didn’t just ban the left-wing parties they also seized all their assets.
I liked that part of the unalloyed good where your heroes locked a hundred ethnically unalloyed bad people in a building and burned them alive
I really don’t think a lot of the libs know that happened, or anything about the racial animosity of the right wing nationalist *cough* Nazi *cough* Galacians, or the ethnic makeup and goals of the coup Rada, or really much of anything about what’s happening.
Ukraine is Harry Skywalker and Russia is ebil Darth Voldemord. How much more clear could it be?
The Ukrainians fought hard to get out from under the thumb of Russia
What?
Euromaiden!?!??? Like a major defining moment in Ukrainian history!
The one where NATO backed coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine? That seems like the opposite of fighting to get out from under foreign thumb
The one that happened because their leader was passing laws making him a dictator and violently putting down protesters leading to more protests causing him to flee. Also any support came after that was over, not before.
See, if he were a legitimate leader he would have let the west supplant him in a violent coup WITHOUT reacting to it. That makes it justified post hoc.
You have to let the nazis march. It’s the rules.
So people in their country should never fight if their leader is working to surpress their rights and become a dictator. They just have to wait for elections that will never be fair again if they even happen. Also he did react to it by fleeing, Putin is not the leader of Ukraine, he has no business reacting to anything.
Putin did march his nazies into Ukraine after that if that’s what you mean.
I mean there’s a recording of Victoria Neuland talking about setting it up from months before but whatever.
Ah yes, the same point 30 other have brought up as well even though what was said was who they would think the leader is going to be which they, to no ones surprise, said the leader of the opposition, ya know, the guy who would be in power if their system worked like it should. That’s like someone saying they like the guy as leader that got all the votes.
This is one of the few times in history when the scenario is so clear cut good vs evil.
I mean yeah, if you ignore like 200 years of history, then entire history and purpose of NATO, any understanding of the nature of geopolitics and power whatsoever, everything about the economics and politics of all the involved parties, the entire timeline of events between 2013 and now, and a number of other things, it would be clear cut.
Even some otherwise good regular leftists have absolute dogshit takes on Ukraine. It’s like they’re allergic to even being coincidentally on the same side as the US State Department that they start falling all over themselves to be like “Remember guys, US Bad,” and start like saying that we should be pushing Ukraine to give up territory to appease Russia so they don’t use nukes. When we already know because of Crimea that Putin will almost certainly just regroup and try again if they give him anything.
Yes, I couldn’t understand it, because to most NATO members, NATO is the backbone of their security, but I’ve realised that many lefties’ reaction to NATO is akin to atheists’ emotional-dogmatic view of religion: They’re ever suspicious, never forgive nor forget past crimes, they reject all redeeming qualities and twist themselves to oppose benefitting them at the axiom level.
I would say most leftists (specially the libertarian type), are not on the side of Russia on this.
Tankies have just been really loud with their mental gymnastics lately.
Someone from my state recently died fighting for Ukraine. I live in New England. I guess we aren’t American?
I think you know what he meant, or are you claiming that the “someone” was part of a secret US military program and died in action?
Fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian
So as someone not close to this war, and as someone who’s always been open to the idea that the worst outcome for the war is for it to be drawn out for a long time, and that the west should think more clearly about what’s really going on here, but also as someone who would probably have picked up a gun and prepared to die if an invading force I didn’t like came for my country … what’s the alternative for the Ukrainians here? Or, do you think Ukraine should be conquered and are fighting an unjust war?
Upholding the Minsk agreement would have been an option up until 2022 at least.
It’s tough to hold an agreement as the only participant
???
Russia openly states that their goal is the elimination of Ukrainian identity. Literally genocide. And here you are being smug about it, believing your edgy contrarian sentiment is justified by the evils of a country which is not even party to the war.
Talk about rent free mind rot.
Trying to rob the word genocide of all meaning in the way your doing serves only to trivialise actual genocide.
Actual genocide like forced deportation of children? Or do you require actual gas chambers before you care?
Pop quiz, without researching, what was the bloodiest genocide last year?
Yemen?
Tigray
When you’ve lost the plot, deflect
What a shock, the person accusing other people of not caring about genocide can’t actually answer the question, because they don’t actually give a shit about genocides themselves, they just use it as an emotional cudgel to try and win debate points.
It’s not that I can’t answer the question, or that I deny evidence of genocide in Ethiopia, China and Yemen. In fact, I want to make it very clear that only one of us in this conversation is a genocide denier. It’s that your attempt at deflecting to a completely unrelated topic is pathetic (and frankly lazy) whataboutism.
More than anything, I don’t understand why so many leftists want to die on this particular hill. It just makes it feel like your stated values are merely ideological lip service.
You should be angry at the propagandists that made you selectively trivialize genocide this way.
The real question is why does russia want to kill Ukrainians to the last Ukrainian.
Seriously, to listen to hexbears talk about the Ukranian invasion, you’d think that the US talked Ukraine into invading Russia just for fun, and that Russia was simply left with no choice.
The killing can stop absolutely any day now - all Putin has to do is pull out and pay for his mess, easy peasy
You should do more listening to hexbears because that sounds nothing like us.
All you have to do is read through this very thread to find numerous examples of hexbears acting like US liberals are primarily (or second only to Ukraine itself) for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
“Why could Ukraine have just bent over and let Russia take it over??? And why couldn’t the rest of the world just pretend it never happened?? What about 'Murica in the middle east???”
Sounds pretty familiar to me.
I don’t see any of that, personally.
Any chance the liberal in your head is editoriakizing some straw men?
It’s literally everywhere in this thread. There’s history lessons abound about how bad Ukraine is (with no noticeable criticism of Russia) but no example of what should be done now except to have them give up their sovereignty, their most valuable land, and giving in to Russian’s demands.
It’s insane to me that these are the same people who would probably say that the US shouldn’t have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan, or that the US shouldn’t invade Cuba. In their view, since the US did a coup there once, I guess all their people deserve to die and lose their sovereignty? How does that make sense?
“No, we just want the US and Europe to stop giving them weapons to defend themselves!” OK then, then what do you think will happen? More deaths and then a loss of sovereignty obviously. Why is this on them and not on Russia, who simply have the option of stopping their aggression and walking away?
It’s literally everywhere in this thread. There’s history lessons abound about how bad Ukraine is (with no noticeable criticism of Russia) but no example of what should be done now except to have them give up their sovereignty, their most valuable land, and giving in to Russian’s demands.
Show one example, lib.
Russia repeatedly made peace talk attempts early on. Western powers that actually call those shots rebuffed them. Boris Johnson himself intervened, allegedly.
The answer to the real question, which is why Russia isn’t unilaterally ending the war, is that its objectives have not been met and/or the status quo is acceptable to them. The former is the exact same as saying why Russia invaded in the first place.
So why do Western powers want this was to go to the last Ukrainian? NATO military tactics that assume air dominance without the air dominance. Zero expectation of a win, despite the propaganda.
Russian conditions to even consider peace were pretty insane, like keeping all the territory their initial conquest managed to claim, removing the baltics and other countries bordering Russia from NATO and forbid Ukraine from joining any alliance. Not only could Ukraine not fulfill all those conditions, they would never accept that.
You are confused and are including open demands Russia made of the US / NATO prior to the invasion. Russia has not demanded that Ukraine somehow de-NATOify Baltic countries.
Russia’s initial negotiation demands were things like this:
- Denazification.
- Demilitarization.
- No application to NATO.
- Independence for Luhansk and Donetsk.
- Recognition of Crimea as Russian territory.
These are in no way insane demands given the context of NATO encirclement, the civil war and ethnic cleansing at their doorstep, and the fact that Russia is obviously never giving up Crimea. It is also… the lead-in to negotiations, which Ukraine started balking at around the same time reports came out about Western prevention of Ukraine participating.
Yea, even those were in no way reasonable. Those terms are obviously so Russia can keep conquered territories while removing Ukraine’s ability to defend itself so Russia can take the whole thing in a few years.
Also there was no ethnic cleansing, no idea where you’re getting that. The baltics joined NATO like 15 years ago and Ukraine’s application was denied so there’s none of that either. And even if both were true those terms mean annexation for Ukraine in the future so in no way acceptable.
Yea, even those were in no way reasonable.
They’re very reasonable, especially as a starting point for negotiations.
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Ukraine haw a very serious Nazi problem that liberals everywhere recognized right up until it became inconvenient for the war narrative. The Nazi problem is part and parcel of the civil war and failure to abide by Minsk II, as those Nazis were the tip of the spear against ethnic Ruasians in Donbas. Disempowering and jailing Nazi war criminals shouldn’t be controversial.
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Russia wants to prevent encirclement and to treat Ukraine as a neutral buffer. Given NATO’s advancements despite the fall of the Soviet Union, this demand is already a half-measure. Ukraine being militarized and used as a Western forward military base is not something Western countries would tolerate if the roles were reversed.
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Ukraine isn’t joining NATO anyways, not anytime soon at least. This is a formalization of the aforementioned neutrality.
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Independence of Luhansk and Donesk is a demand that says, “you couldn’t abide Minsk II and that leaves this as the only option”. Ukraine and their Western masters had nearly a decade to democratically deal with the breakaway states per their own agreements and chose to instead ramp up a civil war targeting ethnic Russians right on Russia’s border. The failure od the status quo ans the West’s ability to follow their own rules is the proximal issue Russia is reacting to.
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Ukraine isn’t getting Crimea back. This is a formalization that would simply amount to normalizing relations in peacetime.
Those terms are obviously so Russia can keep conquered territories while removing Ukraine’s ability to defend itself so Russia can take the whole thing in a few years.
Russia could take the whole thing any time they wanted to, lol. They have complete air superiority and a much more powerful arsenal and manpower and tactics. They could do the American thing - the NATO thing - and destroy the rest of the country, targeting Kyiv and civilian infrastructure en masse. Instead, they are choosing a war of attrition that achieves many of their objectives without just rolling over the whole country.
Neutrality is far safer for Ukrainians and always was. A neutral Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded by Russia in the first place.
Also there was no ethnic cleansing, no idea where you’re getting that.
Then you haven’t been paying attention. Like… at all. It’s been going on since 2013/2014. Please educate yourself on the derussification efforts undertaken by Ukraine targeted at ethnic Russians as well as their ruthless targeting of the Donbas.
The baltics joined NATO like 15 years ago and Ukraine’s application was denied so there’s none of that either
None of what?
And even if both were true those terms mean annexation for Ukraine in the future so in no way acceptable.
Ukraine is already not a sovereign state, lol. Their political leadership was chosen by Nuland et al behind closed doors as part of Euromaidan. Neutrality would actually be the most sovereign they have any chance of being, toyed with through economic courtship rather than couped and destroyed.
And again, Russia can annex Ukraine wherever it wants to. Most of it, at least. Poland would probably claim Western Ukraine for itself with various bullshit excuses.
- It had some nazies prior to about 2020. Not even close to the amount of nazies Russia has though so that’s a meaningless point.
- The countries joining NATO are joining because Russia keeps threatening them. If Russia just wanted a neutral zone they should really stop invading their neighbours. Georgia and Ukraine got invaded and Russia is doing a proxy war in Moldova as well so it seems the only thing causing NATO advancement is Russia.
- Except they also demanded demilitirization. So no allies or self defence.
- One if the points of that agreement to even take effect was that Russia removed their troops from the regions which they never did.
- They may now, depending on how the war goes.
No idea what these points are other than just lies. Russia has never had complete air superiority and definitely doesn’t now. Russia is targeting civilians constantly, like the largest mass graves in recent history were found in territories takes back from Russia. As for the equipment and manpower: Like Russia is rolling out museum pieces as tanks I have no idea where you are getting this info from. They do have more manpower since they are conscripting like everyone.
None of that was in reference to NATO encirclement. As in it was already encircled 15 years ago and Ukraine wasn’t joining NATO.
The political leadership Nuland ‘selected’ was the leader of the opposition party that was going to be in power anyways. That’s like some foreign politician saying they really like the reform party in Estonia to win after they already got the most votes.
Can’t find any ethnic cleansing done in Ukraine outside the Tatars by the Soviet union.
I’m guessing you mostly watch Russian state media since absolutely no one else thinks Russia could just take Ukraine if they wanted at this point. I’d suggest going to some other sources.
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This. Is. An. Investment. In. Democracy.
I don’t know if this is a joke or not and at this point I am afraid to ask.
:both-sides-mac:
Gotta be from that one copypasta from like three days ago
who and what
?
You don’t know who Hideo Kojima is?
am i expected to
He’s kind of a household name in videogames so it’s unusual not to know.
I mean if you don’t play many videogames it’s not unusual.
Sure but that’s like 50-60% of western populations and 36% of global so. Not sure about america specifically but I know the european figure off the top of my head and it’s 51%, my gut assumption would be the US is higher?
I do play video games but not particularly those video games. I long forgotten the name of Hideo Kojima which i play like one game 25 years ago and i didn’t even liked it.
