I’m sure both Moscow & the Russian military were (separately) made aware of their travel plans. More ballsy in terms of standing up to Putin than probably out & out dangerous. Even during the so-called peace talks they guaranteed the Ukrainian delegation safe passage to & fro.
Last week the Israeli Prime Minister ‘secretly’ went to Russia to meet with Putin. There were a number of country’s leaders who not only knew about it in advance but blessed the trip as another party/channel who might get Putin to end the war. He was not looked at as a pariah dealing with a leader that no other country would talk to directly.
The whole point of a line of succession is that your president/PM being captured for ransom doesn’t mean a thing. You’d just have your vice president (or whoever is in line) take over as the new head of state and carry on, and execute retaliation or a rescue mission. The loss of your president doesn’t affect your governance one bit, and not a penny of ransom need be paid.
In that case, Jack Bauer should be able to fly in from LA during a commercial break and rescue them by the top of the hour, providing that the PM of Czechia isn’t a double agent.
Mocking someone for doing something potentially useful and who was actually on the spot, apparently just to make this stupid joke, is not a class move, from someone sitting safely at home. I think your two posts on this topic stink.
My base concern with this situation is the complexity of all the players and their motives/desires.
The Ukraine situation in government and military is very complex. Now and before the invasion. Pulled in many directions by factions from normal to extreme in aims and how extreme they are willing to act. I am not even sure of how free Zelensky is to act in what he really thinks is the best interests of Ukraine.
I don’t feel Russia has anything to gain by causing harm to the Prime Ministers. But some more extreme actors in or out of the Ukraine government/military may wish to bring the conflict to a higher level of outside involvement by doing them harm.
I’m going to (politely) disagree with the last. What it is, is a calculated risk. Everyone going is a leader of a former USSR state, which, given Putin’s recent sentiments about recovering all of the former Russian territories, have a vested interest in making sure the war bogs down in the Ukraine, with or without NATO involvement. They, and pretty much everyone else, is praying that Putin doesn’t go nuclear (literally or figuratively) if he gets stopped there, and if Putin pushes the big ready button anyway, we already can’t stop him.
And yes, most of these leaders are NOT what the West would prefer as examples of enlightened Democratic ideals. Poland’s leaders have been falling into serious unliberal roles over the years, and they aren’t the only ones. Then again, the US had 4 years of Trump. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, and they’re already proven more trustworthy than Putin.
I don’t believe the old saw ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, but they can still be allies against your shared enemy. And they have every practical reason to show support for the Ukraine - no one wants to share a border with Russia anymore, unless you’re a puppet with no say like Belarus.
None of them are from former Soviet states. Poland and Czechoslovakia were members of the Warsaw Pact and Slovenia was part of a nonaligned Yugoslavia.
I’m curious what would happen if we just dropped the American Vice President or the head of the State Department into Kyiv and had them stay there until hostilities ceased as a human shield. Would that actually work?
AFAICT this is mostly a display of solidarity and a signal towards Putin that the former Eastern Bloc is willing to risk bodily harm to keep this from escalating. I think it’s quite a brave move, in the sense of putting your money where your mouth is. The Eastern Bloc has not forgotten who they’re dealing with. Since they have the most relevant experience in living memory I’d suggest we leave it up to them to make these calculations.
Gonna add a fuck no to this. It’s one thing if the leader of a relatively small country gets juiced, it’s quite another when the leader of the third largest nation in the world, and perhaps the greatest military threat to Russia, gets it. That would completely toss the game board even if a huge chunk of the USA wasn’t already questioning his legitimacy as POTUS (and cheering on Russia!). Can you imagine how ungovernable the country would become with an abrupt change to President Harris? You think the senate would do anything she asked, or would there be a crippling amount of, “Let’s wait till the next election and let The People decide”.
Might work if the intended message was that the USA wanted to become directly involved in the conflict.