'I'm astounded at how many people continue to live in the 3rd fantasy of believing Ukraine could somehow "defeat" Russia while still avoiding WW3'
2. The US lost in Vietnam without using nukes. Even more relevant, the USSR lost in Afghanistan without using them! I believe Pakistan has lost 3 straight wars to its arch-enemy, with no nuclear weapons being used.
If we follow your logic to its conclusion, Russia can annex Poland, Lithuania, Germany, France, and so on, and at every step of the way we'd say 'well we can't defeat Russia or else they'll use nukes'. They'd be able to conquer.... everything this way. This seems bad? Would you like to live in this world?
America lost to Taliban
USSR lost to Afghanistan
All of these were insurgencies. Why can’t Russia lose to an insurgent Ukrainian population?
Is Russia willing to fight for 10 years?
Yeah and buy American liquefied gas instead. Thanks but no thanks.
What settlement could Ukraine have with Russia that wouldn't be the end of Ukraine? Russia is demanding that Ukraine allow part of its territory to secede and form "independent" nations, as well as have Ukraine avoid bolstering its ability to protect itself from its neighbours. Do you think those countries won't try to take more territory from Ukraine, with Russian backing? Do you think Russia will really stop invading Ukraine, after having already done it twice?
Any settlement would've been better than this. Every major city destroyed, 15% of the population emigrated.
Because the only one on the table simply has Ukraine remove its ability to defend itself, and create a Russian client state that Russia will continue to use to wage proxy war on Ukraine until they're entirely within Russia's control.
Appeasing the bully or tyrant leads only to more of the same. From the tyrant's perspective, what they did worked (gial achieved) and the opponents indicated that they are OK with it. Thus, they should try the next step they want.
The reason this invasion happened was because there was no real push-back to the Crimea invasion.
When would you propose that we start fighting back instrad of allowing Russia ti annex ever more - when Lithuania and Poland are being bombed? Berlin & Frankfurt? Paris? London? DC?
The US was looking to buy petroleum from Venezuela. The same Venezuela they were vehemently criticizing and putting economic sanctions because of the ongoing dictatorship over there.
This war is more complex than we think. The world is already in a second cold war and now we have to blocks: the West (US and the EU) vs The East (China and Russia).
We are at "...hard times make strong men..." Cycle now.
Thanks for the high compliment, but although I stand with the Ukrainians, I do not have that heritage. I also do not appreciate your insult to Ukranians as if it would be their take, and their desire for freedom from Russian tyranny is somehow senseless.
>>Do you really think Russia can afford going to war with literally half of the planet? In merely the past few weeks, Russian officials have specifically threatened Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and other areas, literally saying that these are 'historical Russian territories' and should be under Russia's control - the exact same justification for their current 24-Feb-2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia was not stopped after Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, and other territories. Russia therefore assumes that since these advances were not strongly opposed, that more will be accepted. Since we are now opposing, if we do so successfully (push RUS out of every square inch of UKR territory), it will stop. If we yield, which is what Russia is counting upon, they will go further, at a time of their choosing. Not instantly, but they will not stop. This is being demonstrated at this moment.
>>If that's the case, NATO might as well send preemptive strikes (nukes, etc..) to avoid that scenario or probably Russia could foresee that and strike first since they are currently at war. This is not true and is an unnecessary and counterproductive escalation. Russia has already made lots of nuclear sabre-rattling about various topics such as Finland and Sweden joining NATO, yet been shown to be absolutely toothless. Russia does not want nukewar any more than we do, but they do want us to cower under that threat. The choice is simple, either back down and accept tyranny under their threats, or stand up and face the threat.
Again, Russia will not undertake these ongoing wars instantly but will do so at a time of their choosing. The message we want to send is not that we will wipe you out now, but that your future attempts will result not in the successes you have enjoyed, but only more costly failures.
>>This war is more complex than we think. The world is already in a second cold war ...
Of course this is more complex. IMO, we are already in WWIII and have been since at least 2014.
>>We are at "...hard times make strong men..." Cycle now.
Fully agree. Now is the time to stand up to authoritarianism, or democracy will be lost globally for at least generations, if not centuries or permanently.
First, the Americans warned everybody that Russia would attack on Feb 16 and they were widely mocked for it... for a week.
Second, there is no "settling". Ukraine could either be a puppet state with all its leaders, laws and policies decided and picked by Moscow, or it can be a normal country. This was never about Russia getting the Donbas and Crimea and you could not have assuaged Putin by giving him this. Sadly this will take a while, but Russia will lose this war the way they lost Afghanistan, Poland, Japan and countless other wars.
I was wrong about the war, but I think my understanding of the situation has improved. My mistake was naivety. The naivety is gone now, and I think there is real chance of this war going global if the West keeps fuelling the conflict.
This war will continue unless the Ukrainian govt decides to sue for peace and enter negotiations with Russia. This war is really about Russia telling the US and NATO to go F themselves. Putin is done with those "b**ches."
The purpose of prolonging this war through military support is to draw Ukraine into the remit of the West as they will be indebted in one way or another to the West if they "win" this war. That part is already done. The question is whether a defeat of Russia will allow that to be realized.
Ukraine's best bet now is to get rid of the Zelensky regime and replace it with one ready to enter into negotiations. If the West will not enter the war directly then the war is lost as far is Ukraine is concerned.
If Ukraine starves Russia of ammo they win the war and HIMARS looks like it is doing exactly that.
Additionally every week that goes by is a week that Ukraine gets new weapons in the past couple weeks it was HIMARS in coming weeks it’ll be M270s and Gepards, and in the coming month/s it’ll be NASAMS.
It's not black and white anymore. I'm just a bystander but instead of looking for alternatives to deascalate, people here want Ukraine to "win" the war by any means necessary while they are probably comfortable and well fed at home.
Why? These kind of cold-war era proxy wars happened throughout history. One big power makes a move directly or indirectly, while the other side will be supported indirectly by other powers. It becomes a pure resource war, and no party has a reason to escalate it beyond the conflict zone. Russia has no reason to open new fronts even if NATO props the war zone, or covertly supports sabotage attacks within Russia's border - the same way the US or China fights proxy wars, based on success, they take it or leave it (for the time). Ukraine is a long term strategic investment for Russia, not a life and death struggle.
If we use the Afghanistan analogy, Ukraine is on the border of NATO too. Interestingly, then NATO would be the overextended multinational entity trying to expand even further in this scenario. If we expect an "Afghanistan" scenario to repeat itself, then logically one would expect NATO to collapse.
In earlier comment you said: "Vietnam and Afghanistan .... Those were pure proxy wars. This is not a proxy war, it is a direct hot war." And here you wrote: "This is not a proxy war. Russia is involved directly on its border. A proxy war is in a far off land." And I was saying that Afghanistan was not a far off land, it was on the border, so your two usages of "proxy war" weren't consistent.
Sorry, I don't understand your second paragraph, I was not trying to draw an analogy with USSR and Afghanistan.
As I understand, your argument is instead that: "Afghanistan was not important to USSR, so USSR did not consider using nuclear weapons then", while "Ukraine is a core interest of Russia, so it will rather start a nuclear war (and risk destruction of the world) rather than back down and return to the positions before Feb 24th." I don't know if this statement is as obviously correct as it may seem to you. Certainly many believe that Russia is not willing to self-destruct to stand the ground here.
This isn't just Ukraine v Russia, hence the proxy war label is correct.
Read more newspapers. You can choose: https://www.google.com/search?q=civilians%20dead%20in%20afgh...
https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/civilian-casualties...
"Civilian casualties of explosive violence mount as Taliban capture Kabul"
Somehow wikipedia is only the second link, mentioning the actual numbers of civilians.... but again... when was the last time news like this made headlines? When was the last time anyone imposed sanctions against countries killing civilians there?
Also, considering we're still there (eg. syria), we're still the occupying force there, why is there not daily reporting of what we did there and how bad it was? Why are there not international efforts to pull our soldiers out of there?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/16/pentagon-pay...
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casual...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/unco...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes...
Although I agree there was no real punishment, after all the US isn't going to charge their own soldiers unless they can find hard evidence it was done on purpose because it would disincentivise them from doing their work, at best they could hope for some payment from the US, that did happen on the odd occasion, no where nearly as much I doubt as they would have received if they killed someone domestically like that though.
> because it would disincentivise them from doing their work
You mean "making mistakes" and killing civilians? Why can't EU impose sanctions on US? Like kick them out of the EU teritory as a start?
USA even bombed a couple of weddings in pakistan... and they aren't even at war with pakistan.
And let's not forget what happens when US kills a reuters journalist... they go after the whistleblower of course, and the website operator that published the video.
Look, we all know russians are bad, but for many more countries america is the "number one risk and enemy", and even at this moment, many more countries are occupied by US army than by the russians. If we (the europeans) don't mind americans destroying countries all around the world, even bombing some in europe (yugoslavia 1999, similar reasons to what putin is doing now), why are we destroying our own economies now, when the russians are doing it?
The only ones having any benefit out of this current crisis are the american politicians... EU economy is fucked, russian economy is fucked, and Biden is taking the taxpayers money, giving it to Zelensky, so zelensky can buy weapons from bidens buddies, who (probably) give a percentage back to biden (or whoever his handler is). Oh, and also china for getting cheap oil an gas from russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/coalition...
I must question how hard you are looking because none of these links have shown paywalls to me, and even if they did you could use reader view (depends on browser) or various archive services to see what was written. If you want articles from specific date periods you can use Google search date parameters.
> You mean "making mistakes" and killing civilians?
No, from doing any sort of military activity. If you wanted to 100% verify there is no potential civilian nearby any military activity would immediately grind to a halt. You'll find for similar reasons why few Nazi German soldiers were ever punished for killing civilians, because even the Allies understood is it something almost impossible to accuse your enemy of without it also applying to your own soldiers, thus most trials focused on purposeful targeting of civilians, which is something different.
> Why can't EU impose sanctions on US?
EU has put sanctions on the US for various things over the years.
> Like kick them out of the EU teritory as a start?
Because it would mean they actually have to pay for their own defense which none of them are particularly keen on doing.
> US kills a reuters journalist...
If you watch the actual video it's pretty clear the men the journalists are with are carrying weapons, if I remember correctly an RPG. Militarily speaking they were entirely a legitimate target and I personally never understood the controversy about it, perhaps because they worked for a western news organization it became famous. If you wanted to pick an example of them killing civilians who weren't hanging around with militants there are many better ones.
> similar reasons to what putin is doing now
There was no genocide of Russian speakers in Ukraine so that's nonsense.
> The only ones having any benefit out of this current crisis are the american politicians.
This is also obvious nonsense. How are high gas prices and high inflation rates beneficial to American politicians? The Russian economy is doing (for now at least) far better than the American or EU ones.
If you look at what was actually given, half of it is given under lend-lease, which as the name suggests, is a lease, they're not actually buying anything that they have to pay back. The US is buying them from whatever companies and then lending them out to Ukraine. If you read the law passed for it, the US expects no compensation for any loss of military equipment given to Ukraine, only that whatever is left is returned when the war finished. Instead of spouting conspiracy nonsense you should actually go and learn up on what you criticize because it's very common that people talk all this stuff about things they don't understand at all. I do agree though that China and India are big beneficiaries from this being able to buy things from Russia at big discounts though.
It's all very hard to be consistent about. For one thing, one can't fanatically support any "side" since there are bad deeds being done in many corners of the world.
Im affraid the person you directed this question to (putler) doesnt read HN.
Russian win in Ukraine means more attacks in the future.
Later maybe we'll get a more moderate government in Russia and they'll give up the neo fascist dictatorship thing?
Did you believed that Russia was going to get Ukrainian territory easily, Putin thought that also.
> What is your end game?
Too avoid repeating the same mistake that with Hitler. Give Putin more territory and he will need hungry for even more. This may end the war now instead of encouraging further fights.
I definitely agree about American hubris though, they had the opportunity in the 1940s to use nuclear weapons against the Soviets to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons but the risk avoiders and pacifists won out, those who thought America would win without war because they were under God or because their system was better or something of those ideals. I guess that ultimately was true and it did potentially save lots of lives but culturally & militarily speaking I don't see modern Russia being much different from the USSR.
Whether you consider that Ukraine can 'win' the war depends on your definition of 'win'. They could certainly stop them from taking any more than what they currently have, perhaps even take back significant parts of Ukraine, but it would require much more military support than is currently given. The US seems content on draining Russia without really having them lose much of the territory they have gained.
I am not quite sure why people think you could just 'settle' with Russia. Settling would only happen when Putin wants it to happen, and from his own speeches and writings it is clear he wants to restore Russia to how the USSR was geopolitically. I remember even 5 years ago some Russian military guys I knew who would joke about one day being able to have a second try of mass raping German and Polish women (WW2 being the first) so in my view I doubt settling would do much except delay further ambition of Putin.
I very much doubt that Putin would be willing to go to WW3 over Ukraine though no matter how many military defeats he had in Ukraine, he isn't stupid and Ukraine isn't worth that much.
The worst part is, this delusion of believing in Western omnipotence continues fuelling bad decisions today. I was in Kharkiv, Ukraine when the war hit -- there were two major delusions prevalent in the weeks and months leading up to the war. 1. People believed the war could not happen because we believed our American superpower ally would somehow magically prevent the war or stop it quickly, or 2. we believed our leaders would have the sense to settle with Russia instead of destroying our country. 4 months later after losing 20% of our territory, both fantasies evaporated quickly, but I'm astounded at how many people continue to live in the 3rd fantasy of believing Ukraine could somehow "defeat" Russia while still avoiding WW3. Do people understand what a defeat of Russia would look like? Are you trying to bring a global thermonuclear war apocalypse? What is your endgame here?