The moment trump got into politics it was my #1 scenario. Before that? Never.
So far, no additional reporting of some imminent actual both-sides agreement that I’m aware of. I suspect this was all posturing and diplomacy-speak nonsense.
That partly due to the fact that Ukraine at least intermittently played the role of willing subservient satellite, like Belarus does today. When it wasn’t it was at least cautious about too seriously provoking Russian ire. The Ukrainian and Russian industrial economies were also heavily intertwined. The 2014 Maidan Revolution suddenly severed that previous cautiously cozy relationship, particularly under the very pro-Russian Yanukovych regime. War and sectionalism followed almost immediately.
Some Republicans are finally speaking out about this badly mishandled peace plan.
Guardian live feed
Big time. At that point the response wouldn’t be restricted to “let’s liberate Estonia”. It would rapidly move to “let’s invade Russia”. Russia is barely managing to fight Ukraine on an even basis. There’s no way they would be able to handle a multi front war. The war would have at least two fronts, in Estonia and on the Russia / Ukraine border (or Russia / Poland if we assume that Ukraine has already fallen) against several countries. If Putin or his successor go that crazy, I wouldn’t even be all that surprised to see South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Japan open up eastern and Arctic fronts.
“Intertwined” sounds like a symmetric arrangement. From everything I’ve seen over the past few years, though, it looks like everything good Russia ever had, was all actually in Ukraine. It’s where the agriculture is. It’s where the industry is. It’s where the key naval bases are, and the military tradition. It’s no wonder that Putin wants it back, except that it’s not even a matter of “getting it back”: It’s that Ukraine doesn’t want Russia back.
Ukraine should be considered the successor state to the USSR, not Russia.
Absolute symmetry, no - not necessarily. I don’t think it implies that actually or at the very least that’s not what I meant to imply 
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No, not at all. It WAS a major agricultural and industrial hub for the USSR, but it was hardly the only one. The USSR diversified geographically but also avoided concentrating industries in any one spot - it was a huge country with many discontinuous population centers. So just as one example the single largest nuclear submarine-building port was never in the big ship-building centers in and around Mykolaiv in Ukraine (where the Soviet aircraft carriers came from) - it has always been in Severodinsk in the far north.
Similarly the Donbas in eastern Ukraine was A heavy industrial region in USSR and probably the largest in terms of things like steel and coal production, but it was hardly the only one. Lots of metallurgy in the Urals, machine-building in the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas, etc.. Russia’s industrial base was larger, more diverse and arguably a bit more modern than Ukraine’s pre-2014. Russia is still a very large, resource-rich country even without the Donbas.
When I mean intertwined, I am referring to the persistence of the Soviet-style internal economic connections. Ukrainian factories were dependent on many parts built in Russia in much the same way many US auto plants get a lot of their parts from Canada. Russia was also the primary export market for Ukraine, things like small appliances and steel. In 2012 Russia accounted for ~32% of Ukrainian imports (next largest were China and Germany at ~9 and ~8%, respectively), ~26% of exports (next largest were Turkey and Egypt and ~5 and ~4%).
This is another reason this war was such a fucking boondoggle by Putin. Instead of being a quick walkover of a major economic asset (albeit an arguably dilapidated and obsolescent one in terms of a lot of its industrial output), he utterly destroyed the economy of Ukraine and devastated Russia’s. If he gets the Donbas it’s a political victory only. Economically it will be far worse millstone than East Germany ever was to West Germany and for decades to come. Rebuilding it will take a truly massive capital infusion (that Russia itself does not and will not have anytime soon) and probably a LOT of time.
Nothing happened, because it was a bunch of posturing nonsense.
That assumes Putin wanted to do anything but vandalize Ukraine.
Yes, he totally wanted his flag over their territory. But after the whether it was an economic basket case or not really did not /does not seem important to Putin. Just declare victory, leave it a smoldering mess, and move on. At some point in the far future maybe somebody in a Russian government might like to get eastern Ukraine productive again.
Maybe if we split up which leaders they’re succeeding. Ukraine the successor to Gorbachev (the only decent one among the bunch AFAICT), Russia the successor to all the other guys.
iiandyiiii
(Russia invades Ukraine -- The regional situation - #1390 by iiandyiiii)
Nothing happened, because it was a bunch of posturing nonsense.
As I said in post1328
Sometimes, it’s good to be wrong!
Another lesson that assuming and predicting the worst is baseless, again and again.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Andriy Yermak is/was the head of Ukraine’s negotiation team.
Ouch!
Good men of whatever gender are always hard to find.
Seems pretty clear now that the reports that Ukraine was close to agreeing to a “peace” (surrender) deal were a bunch of wishcasting by Trump/Putin stooges, and much of the “mainstream media” bought into it. Plus a few Dopers. Hopefully you’ve all learned your lesson!
More on the political situation in Ukraine. Zelensky’s government has been shaken.
Ukraine keeps makig hits on Russia’s oil revenue. It’s a good long term strategy to reduce funding for Russia’s military
There have been a lot of stories these last couple of days about how the EU is planning to oppose Trump including one that suggests the EU might dump US debt to destabilise the US economy if Trump looks like he will tip the scales in favour of Russia (which is from a tabloid so it’s just speculative). It’s interesting though that EU officials could be briefing these sort of stories to the media.
I think the EU has finally had enough of pretending to humour Trump and trying to influence him. Which is no surprise because that tactic has clearly not been working. They need a new approach and it could be to stand up to him. That it’s taken so long is very disappointing.
Europe cannot afford to let Russia win.
Europe’s had nearly 4 years now. If they were going to spool up their industry to deliver meaningful support to Ukraine, it would have happened by now. Going forward, it will probably still be stern talk and inadequate action.
Europe has been delivering meaningful support to Ukraine for four years.