The EU clearly believes they can win this fight so why should it withdraw support to Ukraine?
I would imagine there is a similar point of view in many Russians regarding the West (and they can make arguments about abuses and how intrinsically evil the other party is and patriotic jingles and all that too).
So how, on that road, does this end?
I think we know the answer and it really and truly is awful and the end of the world we have previously known.
FYI, they're "dealing with Russia through force" right now. It's just through proxies, and it's going pretty well.
Although there might soon be some "proxies" soon, like Azerbaijan (unfortunately) and (hopefully soon) Georgia.
The road ends the same way it ended last time, 30 years ago - in adjustment of Russian borders.
Unless you claim that a state that can't even manufacture tanks or ordinary cars (or phones; Russia is wholly dependent on technology imports from Europe) is still capable of remanufacturing nuclear warheads, and is willing to sacrifice itself as a state to use them to... not even prove the point, because it would still be a defeat.
Some back and forth, increasing desperate Neocons with no reverse gear pushing the thing. Western society is over indebted and teetering. Eventually the world explodes in fire, billions die, and some version of MAGA presides over a much reduced United States when it ends. (I'd rather believe your prediction but do not).
There might be a way to avoid the scenario (unlikely at this juncture but possible). It isn't with wishful (Russia has lost half it's armed forces) and hostile thinking though.
Just my opinion.
To Ukraine, this is about pretty much everything - Russians are quite open with their intention to erase Ukraine as a nation, and hundred thousand civilians killed in Mariupol alone proves they are serious.
And then there's Russia, USSR's retarded offspring. They will likely get a lifeline, but it's unlikely they will be allowed to keep the army.
We will see.
>> Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukraine, and refuse to allow transit for weapons sent to it. How does that one make you feel? Do you think Europe will take it? It's probably only a little less likely than Russia taking your option.
> It works both ways you know. Europe cannot afford to lose face either. Imagine EU can be blackmailed by Russia! Wouldn't stand a chance against the US or China.
Exactly my point.
> The EU clearly believes they can win this fight so why should it withdraw support to Ukraine?
I never said they should. I said that a proposal that Russia unilaterally withdraw is not actually an "easy" one because it would feel to the Russian leadership like the EU withdrawing would feel to your typical Westerner.
America forced the EU into a proxy war with Russia... by having Russia invade Ukraine? Sounds like somebody has been huffing Russian propaganda.
- That the US has a long term goal of preventing a "peer competitor" from arising.
- That the US has a financial and strategic interest in causing the collapse of the Russian Federation.
- The US leadership is capable of intelligent long term thinking (so we have to ignore Trump/Biden).
https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1346.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-rise-and-conflict-with-us/a-550...
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/nato-versus-russia-in-u...
A quick quote from the last link sounds like classic US policy to me:
"A much more truly ambitious apparent long-term US ambition seems to have been to instigate the breakup of Russia into smaller manageable countries, paralleling the emergence of nations in eastern Europe after 1989. It could then deal with a reconstructed historical Russia of smaller emerging statelets run by competitive elites at odds with each other. These new polities, anxious for revenues, will then, presumably, be eager to sign lucrative commercial deals with US corporations since the entire region is extraordinarily wealthy in raw material resources."
And if we look at the result of the current crisis (I'll quote myself from a post above):
"- Potential collapse of the Russian Federation and the economic benefits this would bring (for the West)
- Solidifying EU support of NATO
- Increased energy sales to Europe at higher prices
- Increased military sales to NATO countries due to new threat
- Increased budget for "the military industrial complex"
- Further the long term goal of preventing a peer competitor from appearing by both weakening Russia and making the EU more dependant on the US both economically and militarily.
- Mutually beneficial German/Russian cooperation is pretty much dead now so no threat of such an alliance appearing in the future."
I think its pretty well played on the part of the US; nothing to be ashamed about. I'm interested to see what happens next.
Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.
It’s easy to imagine Ukraine coming out just as big a loser as Russia even if they “win”. The EU is in for a tough time too.
I do wonder where we’ll be in 12 months time.
Unfortunately it also means Armenia is screwed. That's what you get for putting trust in Russia.
Only cowards need to save face.
Russia is fighting a war of aggression in Ukraine. Do they have interests there? Sure, but that doesn’t give them the right to invade and topple the government.
Before you ask, yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong.
This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus, and the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich meant that they didn’t have a leader that was 100% on their side in Ukraine.
No, it's rooted in the notion that Russia has it's own POV, and it's that POV that will determine its actions. The GGP's "simple first step" is nonsense, because it didn't recognize that POV.
> but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong.
And if someone (like an adversary) doesn't share your views about what’s right and what’s wrong, they'll reject your analysis and any recommendations based on it.
What are you talking about? I never said anything about a “simple first step”
> appeals to right and wrong are only persuasive for people who are aligned with you one that
Look, I’m all for understanding the other side, but don’t take empathy so far that morality has no meaning.
I corrected that. I didn't notice at first that you were a different account than the one I originally responded to.
Exactly, so no one should suggest to the Russians that they just go home because what they're doing is wrong. It's not realistic. If you want them to just go home, you have to do better than that to engineer the situation. Otherwise, the options are fight or surrender to them.
I don't think such an analysis is 100% useful because because that's not the main criteria that countries use to make their decisions. The main criteria are strategic and economical considerations. Ethical considerations are nice to have but they are more often used to justify a decision based on furthering strategic/economic goals. The US has played a blinder on this one.
Has US ever suffered sanctions for that? I don't remember any.
> This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus
How do you know this? Did Putin said this personally to you? Announced this in the media?
You attribute to him something that western propaganda fakes like it's some irrefutable absolute and complete truth.
BTW, do you remember that before it all started, Russia explicitly asked for guarantees that NATO won't expand further towards Russian borders and that request blatantly refused by the West.
Also, your media probably do not say that Ukrainian politicians repeatedly announced plans to exterminate Russian population of Ukraine. Physically kill all the Russians just as Hitler (he's considered a hero in Ukraine) wanted. You'd probably never find this in English or any other language spoken on the West, but there is plenty of evidence in Russian/Ukrainian even though a lot of it being scrubbed in the last 200 days. Still you can find a lot of those on YouTube for example, if you can understand Russian/Ukrainian.
You'll never be able to get a complete picture of what was and what is happening here because you can read and understand only what is fed to you by your media and this information is heavily biased to put it politely.
> the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich
It wasn't a revolution - it was a coup funded and organized by the EU and USA.
I don’t doubt that there was western involvement, just as there was certainly Russian involvement supporting prior administrations. While it can be difficult to discern the true desires of Ukrainians given outside involvement, its very easy to say that the current government in Ukraine is much more democratic than plenty of US Allies in other parts of the world, eg the Middle East.
> Also, your media probably do not say that Ukrainian politicians repeatedly announced plans to exterminate Russian population of Ukraine. Physically kill all the Russians just as Hitler (he's considered a hero in Ukraine) wanted. You'd probably never find this in English or any other language spoken on the West, but there is plenty of evidence in Russian/Ukrainian even though a lot of it being scrubbed in the last 200 days. Still you can find a lot of those on YouTube for example, if you can understand Russian/Ukrainian.
If this is so easy to find, why not provide actual sources?
Edit: the irony here is the extremely close parallels between this war and hitter’s annexation of the sudentenland.
> How do you know this? Did Putin said this personally to you? Announced this in the media?
I can tell from his actions. Russia has been invading its neighbors the entire time he’s been in power.
Did I go a bit overboard when I said “complete fealty”? Sure. But it’s quite obvious that Putin won’t accept those states as anything less than Russian client states within its sphere of influence.
> Has US ever suffered sanctions for that? I don't remember any.
US does bad things so other countries should do bad things too.
What makes you think so? What was/is democratic about Ukraine? How Zelensky, for example, crushed all the opposition parties and media, and even arrested some of his opponents after he came to power? Do you know about that?
BTW, here's the video of him before he became president: https://youtu.be/cAfXNbnXwxg Hilarious, if you understand Russian. It's about so-called Ukrainian democracy. I'm pretty sure it won't exist for long on YouTube, and it won't be ever translated to English.
> If this is so easy to find, why not provide actual sources?
Would you be able to understand without translation? Who would translate it to you?
Can you understand this, for example: https://youtu.be/ofEF5l72sjQ
> Edit: the irony here is the extremely close parallels between this war and hitter’s annexation of the sudentenland.
There are no parallels. Except that Ukraine was pumped with nazi propaganda to the top. They named streets and stadiums after Nazi collaborators that helped Germany exterminate tens of thousands of Jews in Ukraine during WWII. If you look at almost any photo/video of Ukainian army personnel, they openly wear Nazi uniform, Nazi tattoos, SS insignia. They even use Nazi salute.
It was especially easy to find before 24.02, they've become more careful since then, but still they fail many times to blur swastika or Hitler tattoo when filming their new propaganda videos.
There're tons of videos like this: https://youtu.be/_eDjtPwC2wY
> US does bad things so other countries should do bad things too.
More like, US does bad things and always gets away with it.
This has been covered in Western press:
https://m.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskiy-bans-three-opposition-...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/former-ukraine-presiden...
However, I haven’t seen any thing that says _all_ opposition has been banned, do you have proof of this?
> Would you be able to understand without translation? Who would translate it to you?
I’d rather you post something than just make blanket statements with no basis. Unfortunately I can’t understand Russian/Ukrainian, but then again anything translated into English would be from western sources anyways.
> I'm pretty sure it won't exist for long on YouTube, and it won't be ever translated to English
Everything you posted has been up for years.
You have no means of access to objective or balanced information. You can't read anything about Russia or Ukraine in the original uncensored form. You can't watch any video from Ukraine or Russia without it being carefully selected by somebody and then translated for you.
E.g. you wouldn't be able to ponder when you see videos of Ukrainian soldiers being killed during combat, why seconds before dying they always speak in Russian, how that resonates with Joseph Brodsky poem last lines: https://russianuniverse.org/2017/02/27/joseph-brodsky-on-ukr...
And usually it's you, Western audience that makes blanket statements with no basis, uttering it so arrogantly as you know it all, where you actually know nothing.
Does anyone? I never was under any belief that I did.
Excuse my understanding, but is it your assertion that there is unfettered access to uncensored information within Russia??
Well, there is. Why do you think I have less possibilities to access information than you? Yes, some websites are blocked. A tiny minority of USA/EU funded propaganda horns like Meduza, that for years translate pretty obvious rusophobic messages. But I can read even them through VPN or through numerous other ways that CIA and NSA provide for free for such propaganda factories.
A huge difference is that I can speak and read three languages. I can (and do) read US and European news in their native languages. I can read and do read from time to time social media like Reddit. I have friends and relatives in various countries of the world.
People in US and EU have less possibilities. Does any significant proportion of population can read Russian? No. You are forced to read only tiny amount of information that is selected by somebody else and translated for you.
Regarding Russia/Ukraine conflict there's even more. There's no separate Ukrainian nation. It's not genes, it's not anything else. Republic of Ukraine was created by Lenin and later was supported by Stalin who promoted "ukrainization" of eastern regions of Russia. We do not yet fully understand why they did it. We only see documents signed by Stalin, for example, "to intensify teaching of Ukranian in schools in universities" in this region. It's an irony, that they vilify and destroy monuments devoted to people that created their state. Also, I'm sure you never read about this and saw these documents translated anywhere in your media, because it would be pretty inconvenient truth.
Anyway, because it was always Russia, there're millions of families split between Russia and Ukraine. We understand each other. Even Ukranian language is easy for us to understand - it's Russian grammar but some words are replaced with Polish equivalents. There was and is perpetual movement of people between Ukraine and Russia. My ancestors were living on Ukraine when there was no such state but it was a part of Russia.
You cannot understand the history and relationship of Ukraine and Russia to the same extent as we do. You can't understand the Nazi propaganda in Russian and Ukranian that is all over the Internet, especially Russian/Ukranian parts.
You're being told a very simple story: "Putin hates democracy and that's why it want to destroy the great democratic state of Ukraine and it's great democratic people!" and you have no other choice but to believe it. There's simply no other source of information for you. Nor would you ever be able to understand what people here feel and think about it, when US based agencies come to Ukraine, for example, and publish books like "Paladins of Hitler" and other rusophobic propaganda, that is either Nazi or entirely confabulated.
You seem to think that because Ukrainians and Russians have some shared heritage (cultural, linguistic and biological), they cannot be separate nations. But many other pairs of nations also share a significant degree of these things – Germany and Austria (and German-speaking Switzerland too), France and Belgium (Wallonia), Belgium and the Netherlands (Flanders), the US and Canada, the UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Do you apply the same standards to any of them?
> Republic of Ukraine was created by Lenin and later was supported by Stalin who promoted "ukrainization" of eastern regions of Russia.
Neither Lenin nor Stalin invented the Ukrainian nationalist movement. There were already people within Ukraine who viewed themselves as belonging to a distinct nation from Russia; Lenin and Stalin just decided to ally themselves with some of these people and grant them some of their policy wishes.
> We do not yet fully understand why they did it
Marxism was originally an anti-nationalist movement–hence, it was very natural for the Bolsheviks to oppose Russian nationalism and support the demands of ethnic minorities for autonomy. Then, in the 1930s, Stalin gradually changed his mind about the topic – he began to see ethnic autonomy movements as a potential threat to his rule, and started promoting Russian nationalism and Russification in response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEKQsnRGv7s
One that saves face, to at least some degree.
> There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday.
Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukraine, and refuse to allow transit for weapons sent to it. How does that one make you feel? Do you think Europe will take it? It's probably only a little less likely than Russia taking your option.