I suppose there’s a question (to which we wouldn’t and probably shouldn’t be allowed to know the answer) about whether we non-US countries would have or could develop whatever sources and resources that are being closed off - and how soon. It doesn’t yet look as though there could be punch-ups at Fylingdales and Menwith Hill, but disentangling ourselves won’t be easy.
Putin doesn’t sound like a leader prepared for peace talks.
I think it’s always been understood that Ukraine’s occupation in Kursk is a bargaining point at any peace talks. Charging soldiers as terrorists is certainly not helpful in peace talks.
I believe Putin doesn’t gives a crap about peace talks.
Guardian live
At first way back, it was Ukraine not in NATO. Then s hit fan and Donetsk and Luhansk were at war with the west of Ukraine. Russia took Crimea and held referendum. No surprise massive Russian ethnic population voted to join Russian Federation. Then Minsk fiasco happened twice. Russia was happy to have Crimea back. Wasn’t too interested in war, but helped Donetsk and Luhansk. Then more talk of NATO getting in Ukraine. Russia invades and bluffs at taking Kiev. A settlement is almost made that would only have given Crimea to Russia and let the two regions be more self governed but still a part of Ukraine. Each agreement is scuttled by the western interests. Russia goes all in. Starts taking territory. West cuts off speaking to Russia at all. I personally think Russia makes mistakes in annexing more territories into the federation.
At every step Russia said we want this to stop. Here is what we want. Neutral Ukraine. Don’t mess with ethnic Russians in Ukraine. No reasonable offers in reply. So they went further.
Now the offer from Russia is a much bigger bitter pill to swallow. Similar to original demands in many ways, but now including a far larger amount of territory.
And still, the west wants Ukraine in NATO. A neutral Ukraine would be a buffer for both NATO and Russia. But they must have more NATO right on the border with Russia. After decades of publishing and talking about plans to break Russia up and control it. Turn this situation around and imagine Ukraine as Mexico or Canada. Even tiny Cuba. West would have gone full out war too if Russia was going into those places with a military alliance.
Again I think Russia made serious mistakes. Especially taking territory into the federation. Burned bridges of negotiation there. Making it harder to come to terms now. But the overall history of this war is one mistake and overreach after another by many sides. A far reaching European security plan should have been formulated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would have saved money and lives. But some folks always need an enemy to conquer/control/pillage. And that does not apply to just one side ion this fiasco.
You are repeating lies. Putin said explicitly that Ukraine isn’t a country, isn’t a real ethnicity, isn’t even a real language, and it’s really a part of Russia. That’s why he invaded - by his own words. The NATO and neutrality stuff is all bullshit, all made up. Putin wants to swallow Ukraine and Ukraine doesn’t want to be swallowed. It’s that simple.
I fear Putin’s wrath in Ukraine if Russia is allowed to take over in the upcoming negotiations.
Putin could purge native Ukrainians and bringing in Russians. Just like Stalin used starvation in Ukraine to further his goals.
Ah, so Putin only tried to take Ukraine because the mean nasty West tried to prevent him from taking Ukraine, and if we’d only just let him take Ukraine, none of this would have happened. Got it.
The Cairo negotiations had only Crimea to be kept by Russia. Russia was happy with that territorial concession. Ukraine to be neutral. No other territory to be taken. Both sides were on the verge of signing off on it. But Boris Johnson and others said no. We will back you to the last Ukrainian. Well there is a shortage of Ukrainians now. And a further shortage of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine was pushed into a proxy war and is being pushed to continue it. One can look at the plans laid out by the Rand Corp and such as well as the words of people in power that a proxy war with Russia was wanted. They got it. And are losing it.
Putin and Russia wanted a European security plan for decades. But for decades the plan was to break up Russia.
This war has triggered an unravelling of many things that were advantageous to western European countries. It has hurt their economies badly. Germany in particular. Now instead of some kind of peace plan, they want more war. Which will further damage their economies and cost more wasted lives. The US is looking to lose dead weight now. Doing a cost benefit analysis that will be even worse for western Europe. It could have been prevented long ago.
NATO should have stopped expanding and instead the money being devoted to making it a solid well supplied fighting force. It is a hollow shell now. Spread far too thin. The manufacturing capacity cannot even support what the older smaller sized NATO required. Negotiate a good sized neutral buffer zone between the supposed enemies and toughen up NATO.
Rand Corp plan 2019 note the provide lethal aid to Ukraine section.
- Donald Trump was President in 2019, not the Deep State. You’re implying that Trump was selling arms to Ukraine as a measure to divide and take over Russia?
- Ukraine was under attack by Russia in 2019. It wasn’t the open invasion that unfolded in 2022, but it was consistent and ongoing, with fallen Russian troops being brought back to Russia and interred.
- Supplying arms to a country that is defending itself from an aggressor is a reasonable thing to do. Like, if a woman is being threatened by her ex, giving her a gun to protect herself is not nefarious.
What triggered Russia to invade Ukraine in 2014 was the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had turned down a political association and free trade agreement with the EU in favor of one with Russia. Pro-western forces took power in Ukraine, to which Russia responded by invading and annexing Crimea. The two countries have been at war ever since. So it was a pro-western trade deal and a political association that led Putin to attack Ukraine, not the potential admission of Ukraine into NATO.
Ukraine is not the only former SSR that Russia has invaded. Putin invaded and annexed part of Georgia in 2008.
Putin has said that the greatest disaster of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union. His actions suggest that he’s trying to reassemble it. I don’t think he cares about communism, but he does want to restore what he sees as the power and glory of the old empire.
You’re spreading Russian lies. Putin’s words are there for anyone to read. He wants to swallow Ukraine and Ukraine doesn’t want to be swallowed.
Nah, we definitely need even more NATO. My dream scenario is that one day Belarus becomes Westernized and joins NATO. Then the NATO-fication of Russia’s west flank would be complete, and the humiliation of Putin would be at its peak.
NATO needs to have an attitude of, “We WILL expand, and you WILL like it.”
NATO spread at its thinnest still eats Russian forces for lunch anyday.
Okay so, a woman is afraid of her ex. She starts talking to her friends and family about joining a self-defense club and taking gun lessons, because she’s afraid of him. Word of this comes around to him, and so he breaks into her house, pretends like he’s going to kill her (but it was just a bluff?) and then takes up camp in the bedroom across from hers.
This is the situation that you just described to us…as a good and reasonable thing for him to do?
Or like, let’s take Putin’s statements that the Ukrainians are Nazis, a group that - 70 years ago - sought to murder all the Slavs. So, let’s say that I’m Jewish or Slavic and a neo-Nazi moves in to the house next door. You would hold that I’m free to invade in the middle of the night and murder the neo-Nazi - no trial, no evidence that the neo-Nazi was actually threatening me?
Aren’t Ukrainians Slavic? Isn’t their popularly elected leader a Jew? This theory requires that Ukrainians kill their leader and commit seppuku as their first step.¹
If your reasons for doing things, even taken at face value, still make you someone who would go to jail - you’re not the good guy.
¹ Surprisingly, the same people that thought that the Aryans (from Persia/India) were a golden-haired group of white skinned demi-gods, had a questionable handle on the word “Slavic”, and appear to have meant “mixed race or non-white people within the borders of Russia”, excluding other groups of Slavs like those in the Baltics, Ukraine, etc. If modern Ukrainians, in part or in total, followed mid-20th century Nazi belief, they would need to kill Zelensky first, but they’d be on the same side as the Wagner group, wanting to get darkies out of power and raise up the white Slavics, like Putin.
So the US is evil then too. As is NATO. AS they have also invaded, bombed, destabilized and in many other ways militarily caused death and destruction. According to you it is all unwarranted.
When was the last time the US was invaded attacked? When was a NATO member invaded attacked?
They say they do these things in the name of their security. The evil horde is at the gates. Fight them there so we do not have to fight them here.
Of course it is all justified if it is your side.
Well at least you’re not spreading Putin’s bullshit lies in this post. Yes, the US and some NATO countries have done some bad things. That doesn’t remotely justify Putin’s efforts to swallow Ukraine.
No wonder Ukrainians wanted close ties to the West - their neighbor Putin wants to swallow them up!
That’s right, Kedikat - the big, big bad NATO wolf has expanded near Russia. And it’s gonna huff and puff on Piggy-Putin’s house of straw. The Baltic Sea is now a NATO lake. Russia’s already had 50 times more soldiers die in Ukraine than America lost in the entire Middle East in the past twenty years. The evil America and rest of NATO has a GDP 22 times larger than Russia’s, and a combined military budget way larger. And you know what? Every single Warsaw Pact nation has voluntarily joined NATO, with the exception of those that were directly part of the Soviet Union. Finland adds 830 more miles of NATO border to Russia. With sanctions against Moscow, jets grounded due to lack of spare parts, brain drain, piling national debt, and Russian sports teams banned, it’s a beautiful time to be alive.
We are big and bad. How are you going to stop us?
Time for your KGB piggies to panic because the big bad NATO wolf is blowing, and blowing hard.
If we view the US as some specific individual who has lived for decades and centuries, then yes. But, that’s sort of like saying that if one police officer kills a drug dealer and steals all the drugs, then that entire police station is evil. If one police officer ever did such an act, no matter that it be decades and decades ago, then that police station is still evil.
Obviously, that’s nonsense.
The US and NATO have invaded and attacked people. In some cases that was indefensible and bad. In other cases it was for good. There’s a difference between an officer shooting someone to defend the innocent and an officer shooting someone because he wants to steal drugs. There isn’t some universal rule that makes everything easy to quantify. You have to look at and understand the details.
I’d hand over GW Bush to the ICC. His administration mislead NATO and invaded and occupied a country, unjustly, and legalized torture.
But Bush is not Obama; Bush is not Trump. What Bush did is Bush’s to own. When Obama kicked Russia out of NATO, that was a fair thing to do and swinging around NATO to defend others from Russia was reasonable. When Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani, that was his choice and he’s guilty or a hero, depending on the specifics.
Putin isn’t to blame for the things that Stalin did. If he points to bad things that Bush did, that’s no defense for his own actions. There’s no sane mother in the planet that would hear her kid say, “Well, Bobby stole from the 7-11 and he got away with it.” And think, “Oh, well then I guess it must okay, then!” We’re not talking deeply complex morality here. If you admit that what you’re doing is bad, you’re not boosting yourself at all by pointing at evidence that you knew it was wrong - which is all it is when you point at Bobby or GW Bush.
It should also be noted that there are also shades of evil here.
Bush invaded a country that was being run by a guy that practiced racial cleansing on his own people. Whether that attack was justified in that moment or not, the guy still deserved it. The US didn’t want to own the country and slurp its resources up. We set them up with their own country, democratically elected by the people, though did unilaterally install our own military base in the corner. Not great, but not completely evil; a rather questionable grey. If we did it because we wanted a place to put bases, then it’s a darker grey. If we did it because Bush convinced himself that Saddam must have secretly been behind Al Qaeda somehow, then it’s a lighter grey.
There’s no comparable case for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s just colonialism.