It depends what you mean by ‘go up against Europe’. If you mean try to quickly seize the Baltics/Moldova and dare NATO to take them back maybe, just maybe, they could hold on long enough, bloodily enough to persuade Europe to cave to a fait accompli. But I think it is pretty likely anything beyond that is beyond Russia in its current state. NATO has significantly disarmed relative to peak Cold War. But not in general. Collectively (IF the collective holds) it is too much for Russia. Even that Baltics plan might be too much.
Russia: We’re not looking for a pause. We’re looking for a win. We’d like to open the negotiations by saying … give us everything we want or we’ll keep killing innocents:
Trump: y’know? We tried. (NB: he didn’t say this … at least, not yet).
I wonder if he has the wits to recognize the slight. Normally, he doesn’t appreciate “negotiating hard” and then having the work rejected out-of-hand.
I just saw a recent clip in which trump claimed he was being sarcastic when he said he would end the war on day one.
WTF penance is the US paying by having this asshole as president? Seriously!
You’re proving my point. How likely do you think victory would have been for either
ZANLA in Rhodesia or the NLF in Vietnam if the USSR and the communist world cut off all military aid to them? And Vietnam wasn’t won by guerillas, it was won by regular military formations of the NVA fighting a conventional war, massed artillery bombardments, tank thrusts and all. Easter Offensive 1972- Wikipedia, 1975 spring offensive - Wikipedia. The majority of communist military formations in South Vietnam post 1968 were regular military formations of the NVA.
This seems the most recent Ukraine thread, so posting this news here:
Chinese soldiers captured fighting for Russia
I think this is a good development for Ukraine, if only because it means that MAGA might need to back away from open support for Russia.
Well, looks like the Trump/Vance are firmly in Putin’s back pocket. Ukraine needs to give Russia all the land they currently occupy including Crimea (permanently) and never join NATO. Is there anything Russia wants that Vance didn’t include? I know Vance said Russia would have to give up some land, but I’m guessing that bit of land is really a “bit”.
Gift article.
Yeah, I sure hope the USA walks away. Better than letting quisling Vance have his way. Europe had better step up big; they’ve had 3 years to get it together.
Trump diplomacy appears to be Ukraine capitulates to Putin or dies. Fin.
But we’ve always known that. Did anyone think Trump’s “Solve it in one day” plan was ever anything more than, “Give Putin everything, and force Ukraine to accept by threatening to abandon them”?
I didn’t even think it was that.
I thought it was a completely empty statement like “This would never have happened if I had been president”.
Obviously he was in the tank for Putin, but he had no idea how long it would take to give away Ukraine.
They finally came out and said what I knew was going to happen. Reset national borders at current conflict lines and prevent Ukraine ever joining NATO. Stall for a while, then invade again.
Fucking shitbags running this country are breaking every one of our founding principles and turning us into a tinpot dictatorship.
What disgusts me worse is all the “Don’t Tread In Me” folks are cheering it on.
Yes, we’ve always known Trump was in the bag for Putin but this is the first time the GOP appears to be falling in line behind him and saying it out loud.
[It reads: I’d Rather Be Russian Than A Democrat]
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
–Maya Angelou
Still for sale at Amazon.
Somewhat tangential-but-related question: What does the average European (west, central, east) think of Ukraine, even before this war? Good? Neutral? Negative? Most Americans had relatively little view of Ukraine before the war, given that it was so far away, but since Ukraine is right smack dab in Europe itself, presumably all Europeans already had some sort of bias (positive or negative) about it before the war.
I ask because I’m wondering if historical/regional bias or attitudes are part of the reason most of Europe has been dragging its feet in supporting Ukraine, and being only half-hearted about it.
There was a miniseries back in the late 1980s called Amerika in which the Soviet Union managed a political takeover of the United States. (In the novel that it was based upon they used high altitude nuclear detonations to effect an electromagnetic pulse attack to disable US C3 systems but that was only obliquely alluded to in the miniseries.) One of the major criticisms that viewers and critics had (other than that it was long and ‘talky’) was that Americans would for sure never submit to Russian propaganda, much less control of their political system and personal liberties. So much for that plaintive belief, I guess:
Stranger
I can’t speak much for the rest of Europe, but if we’re defining “before the war” as before the annexation of crimea, we Brits thought about Ukraine very little too. And yes, I’m aware that there was already conflict before crimea, and it was reported on our news, but I think most of us knew little about Ukraine, so it was no more an important part of Europe than Georgia, say.
Firstly, let’s be clear that EU+ UK aid to Ukraine has been significantly larger than the US (in dollar terms, not military capability terms), despite what trump says.
But, in answer to the question, I think it’s been a combination of:
- Not being materially ready for a hot war – underfunding the military for decades
- Not being mentally ready for a hot war; it’s been a long time since a strong power has threatened a European nation and we’ve had a fit of the vapors
- Complex relationships with Russia, including buying fuel and some diplomatic ties
All 3 above are changing about as fast as it is possible to change though.
The prewar view of Ukraine would vary very much between European countries.
As for the average citizens, I suspect that only the Poles had occasion to have any opinion about Ukraine and Ukrainians before 2022, due to the large number of Ukrainian expats working in Poland, and due to a long common history. For other EU countries, the non-government people having anything to do with Ukraine mainly were people in industry (it turned out with the war that a surprising number of critical suppliers are Ukrainian OEMs, for example in wiring harnesses.)
For the average German citizen not in business with Ukraine, a lot of news reports were of a hair-raising level of corruption, second only to Russia. Few Ukrainians lived in Germany pre-2022 - now there are ~1.3 million refugees, ~1.5 % of the population of Germany.
In Germany a public mood of indifference towards Ukraine quickly changed to a large majority in support.
That’s a false impression that seems to be prevalent in the US.
See this overview from the Ukraine Support Tracker:
For purposes of comparison: the US GDP is
about 34 times that of Poland,
about 8.2 times that of the UK
about 6.1 times that of Germany
As for military aid, there is a significant difference is that the US armed forces have matériel coming out their ears, due to the US defence industry getting lavish corporate welfare. The US can afford to ship a lot of arms without in any way compromising their capability to defend the US. Not so with European countries, where little came out of mothballed defence industry stock (Leopard 1 and Gepard come to mind), and everything else had to come out of arms the national armies actually used for national defence. I read a report lately that the German army now has ammunition for ~ 3 days of full scale war.
I think it all really comes down to what Putin is thinking, which are not happy thoughts. He is in a damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t situation. If he shuts down the war, then he won’t have achieved his great, Providence-endorsed mission of reuniting Greater Russia. If he shuts it down without much in the way of concessions, however, he can perhaps lie to himself that at least he got some territory for now, and he’ll be back on it as soon as he can. As for the other horn of the dilemma, if he continues the war as is, victory is a long way off, and Russia is fucking its future in the process. There’s no way out.
I would say most Americans’ view of Ukraine comes from depictions in movies, where is been focused as the satellite of Russia since the post-USSR breakup. It’s been used as the corrupt bogeyman for the corrupt Russians, such as in “Lord of War” about illegal arms dealing or “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”, about a plot to attack the US and start WWIII.
The depiction probably isn’t far from the truth, depending on the timeframe, but the political transformation lead by the Ukrainian people to get rid of the corruption and move to true democracy is impressive, though wasn’t really in own prior to the Russian invasion.
Foot-dragging would adequately capture the Biden era of limiting weapon systems and slow walking approval.