Unwilling to go to direct war against Russia by ignoring it.

"Unwilling to go to direct war against Putin" means Putin can nibble at Europe one country at a time.

"cant risk WW3 over Ukraine"

"cant risk WW3 over Poland"

"cant risk WW3 over Latvia"

"cant risk WW3 over Estonia"

etc, etc ...

The situation is closer to 1914 than 1939. And I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that the escalation that led to the first world was a colossal mistake

I vehemently disagree.

1914 saw large imperialist empires on both sides. There were no real "good guys" in that war, as both sides were looking to either keep and consolidate power over colonial empires (the Entente) or break up the colonial empires to get some for themselves (the Germans and Austrians).

1939 saw an ambitious despot attack democracies to brutally subjugate them. That is also what we are seeing now.

It literally started with the Austrian empire invading semi recently independant Serbia for bullshit reasons. Yes I guess we can see how russia is evil now. And when we look back at ww1 we think that the situation Was much more ambiguous with tons factors and motivations from all sides. but that's hindsight! if you go back to 100 years ago that was exactly how the french or the russians were justifying the war. "The evil Austrians were trying to subjugate our slav brothers and we need to save them". The Austrians will probably not stop at serbia, and take over the balkan. Yet, we can still see that saving the Serbs was not worth the carnage of the great war.

My point here isn't that russia will be proven right in the future. Its that war always sounds like a good solution, or even the only solution to avoid something worse. But we have to avoid getting into that same cycle over and over again, Especially when we are in a nuclear world.

By the way, the comparison with 1939 Germany is completely spurious imo. Germany did not attack Poland because it was a democracy, had already purged it's own Jewish population, had started gassing the disabled and mentally ill, had already eaten 2 medium-sized countries in a year, was in an offensive pact with italy, openly planned to engage in ethnic cleansing...

If you think that is comparable to the current situation then all nuance has been lost and all wars are comparable to ww2. That ww2 was morally unambiguous makes it very convenient to use and project ourselves as the equivalent of the allies in 1939 and call for military action while the opposite is true for the first war. But the comparison is still baseless beyond the war rhetoric

The realpolitik of the modern world is that you can't mess too much with any nuclear nation, no matter how much it sucks. All you can do is get your own nukes and make the red lines very clear, and cut off trading and diplomatic ties to the extent it won't be treated as a declaration of war. Unfortunately, the decision of x vs. total nuclear annihilation is very heavily weighed towards x, no matter what that x may be.

I'm starting to feel that our sense of morality is not well adapted to a world where a despot can end civilization with the push of a button.

It's not quite like that though. In Ukraine Putin's already lost 466 tanks, 95 planes, 5 generals, a few thousand troops depending on how you define that one and so on. And that's in three weeks - not sure how long they can keep it up. Also the west seems to be increasing support a bit - I think there are better surface to air missiles and switchblades on the way.

We may be a week or two from "culmination point" when the strength of the Ukrainian forces exceeds that of the Russian ones.

And then those other countries are NATO and attacking them would be quite a different kettle of fish. Those truck convoys probably would have been smoking ruins within a day if NATO air forces had had a go.

You are high on twitter propaganda. Loses are meaningless to Putin as long as objectives are completed. Mariupol is done, surrounded and in ruins. Messages showed up suggesting Russians started sending people to gulags/concentration camps https://twitter.com/timesobs1/status/1505258913398235145

My country is next on the list together with other Baltic nations. This current inaction is identical to start of WW2 with everyone paranoid about their own nose and "unnecessary escalation". We have maybe 2-3 weeks to sent troops into UKR before its too late. If we dont help Ukraine its a sign NATO wont intervene beyond sending arms and "stay strong" prayers when our time comes. Another Yalta is on the table, after all why should we risk Nuclear war if Putin gives us a word he will stop at German border, right? :(

There's much more the international community could do even without direct war. It should be possible to station troops in the West of country, thus freeing up Ukrainians to fight. If Putin wishes to attack them, than he'll be the one escalating.

It would be not too different than Idlib, which hasn't led to massive war, with the exception the government will have invited these troops.

Yes exactly where you want to be is sitting there watching the ICBMs fly saying "well I wasn't the one to escalate so."

Sure, we should act according to Putin's whims. So if Putin says 'do not help Ukraine or else' we stay. If Putin invades the Baltics, well, no ICBMs, right. If Putin nukes Ukraine we do nothing (no ICBMs right?). Can't we just surrender the world to him to stop these ICBMs?

Good thing we didn't have this attitude during the Cold War. We can help, and we should not going to listen to a non-ultimatum which hasn't been even given.

We had exactly this attitude during the cold war lol. Nato's actions here are absolutely consistent with the principles of deterrence worked out during the cold war.

There's a reason there were endless proxy wars, guerrilla trainings, and secret arms supplying back then. Neither side would risk a direct conflict with the other, so they did all that instead.

You'll notice that's the exact same toolbox they're drawing on now. They didn't invent this shit for putin.

That's basically the predicament the entire world has been in ever since the first nuke was developed. It's just that no nuclear power has quite passed a line that another nuclear power isn't willing to accept. If what you said above were to happen we're basically in uncharted territory.

I'd step out on a limb and say maybe the best move is to let the aggressors take whatever they want, nobody really knows.

By that logic, we can be counter aggressors and demand Russia leave.

Stop believing the ICBM bluff.

Putin already crossed that line - he has been bombing places in West Ukraine like Lviv and that training site for a couple of days now.

Putin has been bombing in the West, but there's no Russian troop presence anywhere nearby and he wouldn't dare bomb near an actual deployment of foreign troops.

Do you mean regular army? Because Russian Airspace Force definitely has killed a few dozen foreign mercs (and presumably "military advisors") in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavoriv_military_base_attack

I heard various casualty reports, doesn't really matter though. These are volunteers, with no official backing. Not the same as a true deployment.

Apparently I'm not the only one thinking this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30730140

I don't doubt a lot of people think the Western forces would be invulnerable to Russian fire and suggest even setting up a no-fly zone (i.e. engaging Russian military vessels). I don't see any rational basis for this belief though. Even Ukraine itself has not declared a war with Russia, what Western country would, in your opinion?

The legal basis for presence in the Ukraine would be no different from the legal basis for Russia's presence in Syria (except this government isn't in the habit of using WMDs against its own citizens).

If Putin wants to commit suicide by being dumb, we can't stop him, but he should know an attack would end up badly (for the Russians). We can see they have difficulty with merely the regular Ukrainian army.

Well, this the question, why would it end badly for Russians? I mean, the Twitter difficulties are definitely a thing but as far as I can tell in reality Ukraine has its cities encircled or lost, its military either hiding in the encircled cities or being ground down in cauldrons, Ukraine has not succeeded in any significant counter offense, it's out of fuel even to retreat and regroup.

And Ukraine had an army better than any EU country other than Turkey and Russia had not been waging a total war (thus the forces hiding in cities are not being burned with tactical nukes/thermobaric munitions). Russia is not Syria, it has air force and navy, great anti-air and anti-ship capabilities, military intelligence of all kinds (and nukes, of course). What is going to ensure the Western victory, angry twits? As far as I know, Twitter is banned in Russia already. More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment and Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.

>>More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment

Source? Because on the face of it, that sounds actually crazy. Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already. By summer, they won't be able to run their farms that operate foreign equipment, their planes can't fly anywhere but even if they could that's a moot point because very soon they won't be able to maintain them, tens of thousands of Russians are fleeing the country every day(and I can only imagine a lot of them are the best and brightest and also people with means to actually escape). It looks like the best they can hope for is for China to buy them out and that they can become a slightly better equipped North Korea 2 - a chinese vassal state.

>>Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.

I'll give them one thing - Russia has been better at sanctioning themselves than "the west" could ever hope for. Just today they announced a 10 year ban on any foreign company that doesn't return by 1st of May, in addition to the legislation that is getting rid of copyright as well as patent protection for foreign companies in the country. Why would anyone do any business with them long term.

So yeah, I absolutely expect them to destroy whatever sliver of economy they still have and actually turn off the gas. I can't wait actually.

>Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already

Sure, this is what Obama said in 2014. Since then Russia modernized its military: deployed the new MBT, 5th gen fighter, hypersonic missiles among many things (and actually used the latter in combat just recently) and waged two successful military campaigns (Syria and Ukraine). What did the Western military do in the same time? Managed to screw up the retreat from Afghanistan and the West-backed forces in Syria lost/defected. Any successes of the Western military might I had missed?

And the WH Press Secretary had been telling us that the inflation the US is suffering is caused by Putin so I am guessing it's the effect of the sanctions since I doubt very much Putin is in control of the US economy just yet (that's assuming WH is not blatantly lying and there is some link between Putin and inflation).

>>Sure, this is what Obama said in 2014

Maybe you missed it, but the sanctions imposed on Russia in the last two weeks are nothing like we've ever seen. The position Obama was in 2014 is not even comparable. Also, has he really actually said that? I find that hard to believe.

Obama did in fact say that in his 2015 SotU [0]. And he was right, while it rebounded after 2015, the Russian GDP/capita dropped almost 12% in 2014 and almost 34% in 2015.

[0] Here's one piece of analysis after, and referring to, the description: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/21/obamas-remarks-on-russias-ec...

Are you denying Obama proclaimed Russian economy is "in tatters"? Is the current state of "being reduced to economic rubble" even worse than being "in tatters"? I'd like to see the whole scale, please. I am curious what's next after "reduced to rubble" since that is what will be needed if the EU/US are going to fight Russia. I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.

I'm not denying anything - I'm asking you for a source where he said that, because I'm genuienly not aware of him doing so.

And like I said, current economic sanctions are worse than anything we've ever used against a developed country in terms of economic punishment. So whatever image you have of Russia in 2014 - now is worse.

>>I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.

I don't see how it would.

One good source is his speech at the State Of The Union in January of 2015 (though he had been claiming it as soon as they imposed the sanctions in different words perhaps). I am sorry, I thought you are feigning ignorance since you seem to be speaking with authority on the sanctions effect on Russia yet appear to be ignorant of what the POTUS who imposed those sanctions had to say about their effect.

> I don't see how it would.

Figures. As I said further up thread, many people seem to be applying their ignorance to analyze a complex geopolitical situation.

The entire world is not just America you know. I'm not American so I'm not particularly aware of what your president said in 2014. America isn't the only country imposing meaningful sanctions on Russia. I don't think that's ignorance either - you probably don't know what was the Polish presidential stance in 2014 either and I wouldn't call you ignorant because of it.

And I looked up the transcript of the State of The Union address you mentioned and he does indeed say that. Thanks.

Sure I don't even know that Poland had a president. But I don't claim authority i.e. I am not saying "Russia is going to starve this summer because the mighty Polish sanctions deprive it of strategic sunflower seeds" or "Russia is going to crush Poland by sending 10M Africans through the Belarus border!". I just notice that economic claims, especially formulated in such imprecise terms as "tatters" and "rubble" seem to appear the result of political posturing and not an actual analysis of economic effects. There are no effects of the sanctions wrt the campaign in Ukraine, at least ones that I can observe, so I don't see how any hypothetical sanctions could have stopped the hypothetical future military conflict between Russia and NATO.

> Is the current state of "being reduced to economic rubble" even worse than being "in tatters"?

Probably far worse, though actual measurements will take time; also, if the sanctions are maintained equally well, given how much more comprehensive they are, it will be much harder for Russia’s economy to reconfigure and bounce back as it did post-2015.

Except the 2014 sanctions have not ended and Russia had been cutting ties with the West ever since then. New sanctions might be harder but Russia is also much less vulnerable to them.

I am sure the sanctions will hit hard people who still have ties with the West e.g. people working for the Western companies or doing business with Western companies but I don't see how this can affect Russia's military capability. Some "model" not getting paid from Instagram/OnlyFans is not going to slow down military production and deployment.

>If Putin wishes to attack them, than he'll be the one escalating.

So you want to send boots on the ground in ukraine. Presumably you also think doing so isn't escalatory. However, you also think if some of them get killed, it's putin that's escalating? That almost sounds like "if you get hit it's your own fault"[1] logic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZSoJDUD_bU

It works out to approximately the same thing in terms of the outcome of the invasion.

Ukraine would be in substantially worse straits if NATO hadn't been helping with training the last few years, and providing thousands upon thousands of modern antitank and antiair missiles.

I don't think Ukraine would benefit from Russia and NATO coming to blows.

I wish NATO countries would send so many antitank and antiaircraft military equipment that the Ukrainians would push back and say "hold up we have enough for now" . Why are we being so slow to send them military equipment? It's a lot cheaper now than when Russia invades a NATO country and the gloves come off.

Ukraine would be in substantially better straits if NATO told upfront everyone (including Ukraine and Russia) the Ukraine will not be part of NATO. The biggest country in NATO does not want to enforce no-fly zone and does not want to give planes to Ukraine. When will Ukraine wise up that they will never be part of NATO? US is bleeding Russia as much as possible, Ukrainian suffering be damned. (Putin fell head-first into the biggest geo-political trap in the last 30 years. Similar in size with Vietnam and Afganistan traps).

> The biggest country in NATO does not want to enforce no-fly zone and does not want to give planes to Ukraine.

You can replace "enforce a no-fly zone" with "declare actual war on Russia". A no-fly zone either involves striking targets in Russia and Belarus, or hands the initiative to Russia if/when an air war starts. It is a very bad idea, to put it mildly.

I guess my point was not clear. I meant to say this: 1. Ukraine will never join NATO, and NATO knew this 2. NATO encouraged Ukraine to ask for NATO integration knowing (since Dec 2021) Russia will not stand for it, 3. Russia invades Ukraine and US supports Ukraine with weapons, 4. Russia will spend money, lives, international standing, etc...; 5. US will profit (your enemy's loss is your profit); 6. Ukraine will be burned to the ground.

If NATO told Ukraine from the onset they will never join NATO steps 2 and 3 would not have happened. Which means step 6 would not have happened. [edit - a typo in the numbers in events sequence. Sorry about that]

> If NATO told Ukraine from the onset they will never join NATO steps 2 and 3 would not have happened.

Look, if I murder my neighbor because they’re friends with the other neighbor I hate, I’m the bad guy.

Russia does not get to tell other countries they aren’t permitted to ally with each other.

> Russia does not get to tell other countries they aren’t permitted to ally with each other.

Logically, no - they don’t. In the real world, it does not work that way. Hence, the US has the Monroe Doctrine. It’s also the reason why US has invaded Latin American countries and many other ones. “Might is right” is an unfair unfortunate realty in international military situations.

Americans have superpower bias. They think that every country can ally and antagonize any other country they want. When you're a buffer state, you don't have that privilege. If Mexico started talking about a military alliance with Russia, they would have some American freedom missiles delivered very shortly. Ukraine is Russia's Mexico.

> since Dec 2021

It goes back way earlier than that. Russia has repeatedly expressed in no uncertain terms that Ukraine is the single one red line that they will never accept joining NATO. A very insightful article on FP on the topic:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-cri...

It's totally nonsensical and does not map to Putin's writings on the essential unity of Ukraine and Russia or myriad other geographic, demographic, and resource-based practicalities of why Putin wants this war.

Please see my earlier comments for why this but-NATO! argument is the opium toked by demagogues and their acolytes.

The entire Ukraine joining NATO thing is such Russian garbage. Ukraine would not have been allowed NATO membership precisely because they have a "unresolved external territorial disputes", which is exactly why Putin invaded both Georgia and Ukraine (e.g. Crimea) in the first place. Putin wants to make another Belarus plain and simple.

Putin was going to invade in either case. He didn't invade because Ukraine was courting NATO, he invaded because things were looking up for Ukraine and Russia has been languishing for a couple decades now and he didn't want an up and coming democracy beside him, he wanted a Soviet style puppet state than he could dominate. It also gives him an excuse to push foreign countries out of Russia so he can tighten his fist around the throats of Russians even tighter and blame it on the West

Are we now admitting that NATO was in Ukraine? I thought that was verboten.

NATO has been training Ukrainian troops openly for years. Seems to be paying off, too. https://www.mil.gov.ua/en/news/2019/09/30/new-ukrainian-brig...

They are not in Ukraine participating in combat in the current conflict.

NATO is not "in" Ukraine with troops, they are supplying weapons to Ukraine. This is not exactly a secret, it's all over the news.

NATO soldiers have been conducting training operations in Ukraine since the Crimea takeover.

Russian soldiers have been helping rebels and openly fighting in east Ukraine for years as well. Let's not act like Russia didn't start the need for this.

I recall these soldiers were evacuated just before the war.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/12/uk-troops-se...

I suggest reading back your own past comments for a quick reality check:

> There is basically no escalation from Russia. [...]. It is just convenient (Biden's domestic issues/Nordstream 2/other unknown reasons) to claim imminent invasion and the media is incentivised to fuel that narrative since it seems to have captured the attention of the populace at large (perhaps based on the Russophobia that is prevalent in mainstream media).

Maybe it's time to be extra aware of your own biases against Russia, NATO, mainstream media...

I was wrong. I admit that. I spoke from a position of superficial knowledge at the time as I ignored the wider context of the situation and was commenting from a position of received wisdom as I was unaware of what a parent post mentioned regarding a widely known fact that NATO was in Ukraine providing thousands of weapons, I was not aware of that and was only commenting on the basis of "received wisdom" on a particular situation.

I have examined my bias against mainstream media and still find them completely warranted, thank you.

So you're implying that NATO providing defensive weapons to Ukraine is the reason Putin invaded? That seems a stretch.

No, I am saying that I had not taken Russia's threat model into account. Given that threat model, Ukraine is an existential issue for them and the resolution of the uncertainty that has been in place since 2004 was just a matter of time.

It’s safe to say Ukraine is an existential threat to Putin. Russia as a nation shouldn’t care that Ukraine is democratic and integrating with Europe, except to ask why they couldn’t also.

I don't see how Ukraine being democratic is an existential threat to Putin in any meaningful way. This situation has been almost 14 years in the reckoning since April 2008.

The NATO-US acting from Ukraine possibly attempting to foment "color" revolutions in Russia, NATO missiles on Ukraine soil, an increasingly belligerent leader in Ukraine renewing the push to join NATO and NATO-US arming and training Ukraine troops. These seem to be more likely factors in the invasion.

Given that the "West" has been frothing around the mouth for his ouster (he did once ask to join NATO btw), one could conclude that "He who goes first wins" was a viable strategy for him.

Not pushing the world really close to a nuclear war also counts, in the eyes of those who think that a direct involvement of NATO would trigger the MAD scenario.