US security guarantees are probably not worth the paper they are written on.

It is an absurd position that the US should be on the hook to indefinitely pay for any war anywhere in the world forever, and if they attempt to negotiate peace while pulling out of that war that they are siding with the opposition.

The problem is not that the U.S. is trying to negotiate for peace, the problem is that the administration is doing a hilariously bad job of it by giving up all leverage right off the bat.

We don't have any leverage against Russia. America has no appetite to fight them directly. If Ukraine were more effective at hurting Russia where it counts, then we might have leverage but the last few years have shown that they are not capable of that.

Not sure how entertaining a petulant State Department puppet with a maxxed out credit card counts as leverage? US orchestrated Euromaidan in order to eliminate Russia from the chess board and balkanize the region. That's our negotiating position in the West.

US should be on the hook to indefinitely pay for a particular war that resulted out of a diplomatic agreement (Budapest memorandum) that effectively prevented Ukraine from defending itself by making it surrender its nukes in exchange for nebulous security guarantees that weren't honored by US.

I think it's a fine rule of thumb but what does Putin have to gain from negotiating with Zelenskyy who he is seen as a Western puppet orchestrated as legacy of US intel agency involvement? (Which we admitted is true…)

People in this thread are completely incapable of seeing any legitimacy in any Russian concerns about Ukraine.

Whether someone's concerns are legitimate is in the eye of the beholder, but actions can be directly observed. Unilateral violent invasion must not become a legitimate tactic again. It was the norm for centuries, and excluding it resulted in the fastest rise in global living standards in history--including in the U.S. and Russia.

Do you recommend violent 2014 coups instead? That is our position on Ukraine, officially.

The US was literally created the same way.

I thought Russia did a unique “full scale” unprovoked invasion? You can’t have it both ways and pearl clutch about sovereignty.

World affairs is only ever literally just gentlemens’ agreements and always has been.

Yes, actually, that’s how a lot of modern states got founded.

legitimate is in the eye of the beholder is right!

The coup happened before 2014, when Yanukovich took over the supreme court and reverted the country's constitution.

I'm just raising concerns! With a howitser.

So NATO is literally trying to kill Putin, what formal legal avenue would you like Russia to take?

Decades of NATO enlargement. What do you expect? Poke bear enough and it will bite you! But don’t be shocked…

Putin could have kicked back and enjoyed his dacha like other less powerful dictators do all over the world, but no, he had to write a "scientific" treatise about Ruski Mir and how the Ukraine isn't actually a thing. He wants a legacy.

Well, he got it and whatever happens in the war, Russia is cooked. It's never coming back from this.

It will either fracture from the war going badly, or it will become a vassal state of China, and ironically, perhaps the US, the way things are going with the White House these days.

The other powerful “dictators” get dragged through the streets or hanged for daring to enjoy an economic system outside the US dollar. Putin knows this and so should you.

It's very easy. To not get dragged in the streets as a dictator, you need a) nukes and b) chill in your dacha.

Putins actions now actually exposed himself to the dragged-in-the-streets treatment, by his own people. But it's all worth it, because of Ruski Mir.

> That is why the focus now is on security guarantees, which the U.S. is refusing so far.

This seems obvious to me, but is apparently not obvious to many here.... America (no country really) can guarantee Ukrainian security without risking WWIII, and frankly there's no reason to. At the end of the day, from a non-Ukrainian standpoint, it doesn't really matter who administers the land that today is Ukraine.