Half of the future US Administration seems to have weekly calls with Putin.

New DNI is basically the Kremlin spokeswoman.

Thank god. I remember the outgoing administration bragging about the fact that they haven’t held talks with Putin since the start of the war.

Maybe now diplomacy can happen and thousands of lives can be saved.

Alright Neville, let’s get you to bed

Even the super pro-Ukrainian historian Stephen Kotkin has criticized the overuse of the Munich analogy.

There have been hundreds of relatively small land grabs in European history. Most of them have not resulted in further expansion.

Ironically, before WW1 Tsar Nicholas could have appeased Austria/Germany. Instead he mobilized and the German emperor decided to launch a preemptive strike. If he had not mobilized, perhaps WW1 and WW2 could have been averted.

It is extremely concerning that thoughtless one liners like yours, most definitely posted from some comfortable location rather than the trenches of Donetsk, are steadfastly upvoted here. Presumably by people who are also not in the trenches.

Are you writing this message from 2014 or 2024? Hard to tell.

I don’t believe I (or you) from a position of comfort have the answers. I believe that western democracies should trust their partners on the frontlines to decide when and how to find peace with an invader, as they know more than we do.

The Russian state TV: We will come back to Berlin and nuke everybody who gets in the way!

Some westeners: We never know, maybe they will stop if we give them a few more villages this time.

How close to war does one need to be for their opinion on this to be valid?

A Shaheed drone flew over my head just less than two months ago. Does that qualify?

In case it does — don’t be so naïve. Of course the russians want more. They’ve made that clear enough. Their heads of state have made that clear enough. Repeatedly. For years.

> Maybe now diplomacy can happen and thousands of lives can be saved.

Diplomacy, like the time Macron came to Russia to stop the war and Putin told him the war would never happen. This kind of diplomacy?

Usually, the war can not be stopped just by taking a flight to the side that's initiating it and telling them to stop. We need more than that.

There's been dozens and dozens (if not more) of diplomatic talks which Putin all sabotaged.

Putin lying that there would not be any wars was just one talk among others, probably the most memorable and iconic of the war.

What is Putin bringing to the table this time to guarantee that it won't end up like the other times?

Like creating economic interdependency through extremely generous energy deals? That kind of diplomacy?

We can only hope. Unfortunately there are some disturbing parallels to WWI - there is a sizeable contingent in the US who won't admit they made a mistake on this one. It'll be like the Germans all over again, a big well armed population who don't understand that they'll lose even more if they stir up a big conflict. Even if Trump manages to put a lid on the current conflict I'm not hopeful it'll be enough to pacify the warmongers even in the medium term. There is a lot of work to be done. It has been unreal to watch the US muck up European security so badly. They are now also in a really bad position vs. China, they've secured it a well resourced ally to the north for no reason at all.

It is no mystery how Trump outmanoeuvres these people, they have the strategic acumen of a stunned fish.

This is really boring, tiresome hyperbole

Please explain, as this is not obvious at all.

They literally aren’t. And Russia being a boogeyman that both sides claim the other is in cahoots with is exhausting. And the premise that communicating with someone means you endorse their actions. It’s all just lazy

It might be "technically probably not true," but no it's not hyperbole. If anything it's an understatement. Actually what the incoming administration did is publicly asked adversarial foreign intelligence services to hack and disrupt the election campaign of an American political opponent.

And then those intelligence services actually did just that pretty much the same day.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...

Didn’t the US Navy just shoot one of its own down yesterday? Bleep happens.

Military incidents are very different. While all civilian planes carry transponders that identify them as such [1], military planes usually don't for obvious reasons, so they're much easier to misidentify as hostile.

[1]: https://www.flightradar24.com/

Aren't there systems like this instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe

IFF is a transponder system that's significantly more advanced and reliable than civilian aeronautical transponders.

The US Navy immediately announced what happened. Would you like to take bets on whether Russia fesses up to this one?

What a meaningless statement. So many specific critiques of Russia to be made and all you've done is demonstrate that you can't contribute in any meaningful way to the conversation.

here come the rote npc bots ...