I’m not sure how many of them could successfully leave, and what if they have relatives they must leave behind? Could you go?
I know it’s just words, but I’m proud of Shapiro for speaking out against Trump:
“Come back when you want peace”. The nerve of that orange cocksucker.
I’m pretty optimistic about European nations stepping up big. After today they have to assume that US basically won’t help NATO. I think we’re going to see big defense spending increases from the UK, France, Germany, and Poland. Wouldn’t surprise me if SK doesn’t increase their aid as well; every NK soldier that doesn’t return is one that can’t attack them.
Whether stepping up big can replace ~half the foreign aid they were getting remains to be seen. Russia is very weak at the moment. They’re not going to be able to take Kyiv just because the US is dropping out.
My prediction is basically status quo, grinding attrition. with slightly better outcomes for Russia.
"Come back when you want…peace for our time."
I think the Oval Office scene yesterday was the death sentence for Zelensky. Without him the way is open to Ucraine for Trump and Putin. They will kill him and then share the prey. Trump might sell arms to Russia to invade Europe and the US will turn to Asia/Pacific for their own gain. Brave new world.
No. Utterly incompatible for one thing, Russia is not exactly overflowing with spare cash to massively rearm for another. Trump fishes for credit in his private business, he doesn’t extend it.
If I was in Moldova or Georgia, I’d be sweating bullets. The Baltics likewise, because whether European NATO came to their aid or not they’d likely be quickly overrun and have to be painfully re-taken in some WW III scenario. NATO may in fact not be up to that task at all sans the US.
But Russia isn’t overrunning Finland or Poland or Sweden any time soon (like, while Trump is alive). As battle-hardened and more experienced as they are after a few years of high intensity warfare, the Russian military has taken massive damage materially, they haven’t suddenly started displaying impressive new tactical acumen (they’re just slowly grinding away in a war of attrition) and European NATO excluding the US has rather more (and probably on average better) 4th and 5th generation combat aircraft than Russia does. Without air superiority the Russian army is getting nowhere on the ground against the larger NATO countries with even a little capacity to defend in depth. This is true even if some NATO countries (say, Turkey and Hungary) sit the war out. So “invading Europe” in any broad context is probably nonsense.
Not that that will be any comfort to Ukraine (or Moldova).
Not going to happen for Poland, for the simple reason that they’ve already massively increased their defense spending, to the point that the sustainability of its spending levels over the long term are coming into question.
Poland leads NATO on defence spend - but can it afford it? | Reuters
- Poland’s defence spending seen rising to 4.7% of GDP in 2025
- Government forecasts $10 billion revenue shortfall this year
- Long-term costs of new military equipment could strain budget
- Poland’s warring parties trade blame over soaring defence costs
For South Korea, you mean start providing aid, South Korea hasn’t provided any arms to Ukraine, only non-lethal aid. The government made some ominous noises reminding that it could send aid to Ukraine when North Korea became involved in the conflict, but nothing ever came of it. Arming Ukraine remains deeply unpopular among the Korean public.
South Koreans oppose arms for Ukraine as envoy visits | Reuters
SEOUL, Nov 27 (Reuters) - South Koreans remain widely opposed to directly supplying arms to Ukraine, recent polls show, despite renewed international requests from Kyiv and allied capitals after North Korean troops were reported to be helping Russia.
Ukraine has asked Seoul for a range of weapons and Seoul has said it could consider such aid, depending on future steps by Russia and North Korea.
For France, Germany and the UK, again I say it’s about fucking time. I’ve spent a lot of time debunking the false narrative that the US paid for Europe’s (and South Korea’s) defense during the Cold War pushed by isolationist morons of the like of Pat Buchanan, and in recent years explaining why rearming is harder than just throwing money at the problem, like when Germany threw 100 billion Euros into its defense budget in the immediate wake of the Russian invasion. For the major European powers to still not be reaching the 2% of GDP recommendation for peacetime spending after three years of Russia being in a large-scale conventional war on their doorstep, however, is frankly unacceptable.
Have no doubt that the MAGA crowd will find a way to spin this into TFG playing 5D chess to get Europe to increase its defense spending though. Let’s face it, most Americans aren’t that savvy about foreign affairs to begin with, and MAGA willingly swallows whatever lies TFG tells them. It’s really just sad and pathetic to read them posting about how the bloodshed has gone on long enough in Ukraine and TFG just wants to bring peace to the region.
Again, the ironic thing is that three or so more years of the conflict continuing the way it’s been going and the stockpiles of Cold War equipment in Russia would be completely gone, Russia has no way to meet more than a small percentage of its consumption of arms and munitions without relying on those stockpiles, and the West, with the US still in it, could keep supplying Ukraine indefinitely. If/when the US backs out of providing arms to Ukraine, with it not only goes half the budget of foreign arms to Ukraine, but even more importantly access to the massive reserve stockpiles of arms that only the US has.
The deal between Russia and the US doesn’t need cash necessarily, it could be natural resources or part of the territory. The hybrid warfare which is already in place (sabotage, disinformation campaigning etc.) can be intensified.
There might be more elements we might not think to be possible yet.
If somebody had told you one year ago that Elon Musk will be upending the US government today you might have considered this as pure nonsense or at least not a probability. So the war in Europe can develop in ways we do not foresee now. Putin said more than once that in any case he will reestablish Europe’s borders as they were in 1997. How far he will be able to go depends on US support. In any case Central Europa will become a theater of war in the not so distant future.
Not militarily, anyway. But if he can elect a useful person as their leaders and turn them into another Belarus, that would be fine as well.
That means withdrawing to the 1991 frontier with Ukraine, which would rather undo the last ten years of land grabs - or was that date a typo?
Anyway Putin has said a lot of things over the years, and he’s signed agreements over frontiers that he’s belied by subsequent brute force.
You are right, sorry, it was a typo indeed. What Putin said was, that he wanted to reestablish the frontiers of the Soviet Union, that is before 1991, when Ukraine was a Soviet Republic.
And you are right too, Putin said a lot of things which he didn’t respect later on. Some similarity with his new American buddy?
In hindsight, Zelinsky should have feigned enthusiasm for golf courses, and promised trump any pieces of land he wanted, post war. Afa those mineral rights, he should have signed anything put in front of him, and then, God willing the war ends with Ukraine a free country he can pull a trump and negotiate endlessly for changing the terms of the deal.
Vance does not go off on his own. This was a planned setup. Trump thinks Putin is the stronger horse and backs him.
Ukraine does not have known recoverable rare earth reserves, so Trump lost nothing by kicking Zelenskyy out of the White House before the colonialist deal could be signed. If Trump really wanted Ukraine as an American vassal, he would take a quite different approach.
Read this and tell me that Trump is not on top and in control:
So much for any fantasies about Little Marco being this administration’s version of the “adult in the room”.
Yeah, I don’t know how all of the diplomatic details work, but I have no idea why people don’t just deal with Trump and Russia simply by lying to him and breaking the deal when it’s convenient. That’s exactly what they’ll do. Why not use the maneuver to buy time?
Wouldn’t that just be an invitation/justification for the USA to invade Ukraine to secure the mineral rights? Not that this couldn’t happen anyway I suppose.
Oh, Ukraine will pay of course, but it will take a while because the terms were made under duress so should therefore be renegotiated. Slow walked until, hopefully, a Dem president gets elected.
I’m just glad that all sides of the deal were represented in the press corps. After all, it’s not as if Putin could find out the details any other way, right?
To date [written on Jan 20, 2025], we [the US government] have provided $65.9 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022
So the US government is giving about $25 billion a year in military aid to Ukraine since this war started. People act like Ukraine can’t get that from any other source. Whats to stop other NATO countries from expanding their donations? Other NATO nations have their own domestically produced military hardware that can replace US made military hardware.
This entire situation is deeply disappointing. The 77 million people who voted for this evil, treasonous moron should never be forgiven.
I wish we were supporting Ukraine, but my point is that why can’t the other NATO nations just expand their coverage for Ukraine since the US is too dysfunctional to be trusted or relied upon? NATO without the US still had a GDP of 24 trillion a year.
Trump doesn’t have the balls for that. If he did, he wouldn’t be screwing around acting like he could cut a deal. His only card to play was “give me the minerals and I’ll talk to Russia about something or other”, and got it rammed right back in his stupid face.