sculptor
Valued Senior Member
JEEZ Bork
That reads as totally fucking insane
and
with a complete lack of an appreciation of history
Putin's invasion of Ukraine
- Thread starter Saint
- Start date
That reads as totally fucking insane
and
with a complete lack of an appreciation of history
It is a huge area of discussion no?You'd rather millions, if not billions, die, just so as not to reach a compromise???
It could be argued that it is compromise that has led to this situation in Ukraine. If we were certain of good faith and will in the diplomacy of compromise then sure, but sadly that appears to be sorely lacking these days.
re: Boiling frog, slippery slope, making a pact with the devil, creeping normality etc..
Compromising on a sovereign nation's (Ukraine) ability to self determine is not really possible is it?
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all descendants of the original inhabitants of Ukraine, if I am not mistaken. Ukrainian to Rusky to...and so on..
In a sense the current conflict is a civil war...
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I don't really understand what there is for the Ukrainians to compromise on in peace talks. I understand that they would probably agree to talks just to stop the bombing but Russia wants them to give up Crimea and the Donbas region and to be "neutral".
I don't see that giving up part of their country is "compromise" and Russia didn't invade in the first place because they weren't "neutral". Ukraine was never going to invade Russia. "Neutral" to Putin just means that he wants Ukraine to not be able to defend itself. How do you "compromise" on that?
I don't see that giving up part of their country is "compromise" and Russia didn't invade in the first place because they weren't "neutral". Ukraine was never going to invade Russia. "Neutral" to Putin just means that he wants Ukraine to not be able to defend itself. How do you "compromise" on that?
Russia deliberately built its most important cities close to Europe and now they want to complain that Europe is too close to their borders. They can eff right off, if they're willing to use nukes to claim all that territory then it was bound to happen sooner or later regardless.
You'd rather millions, if not billions, die, just so as not to reach a compromise???
In my view, millions or billions will eventually die anyway if we keep making these "compromises". We only have so many millions of square kilometres left to give away, Russia has already taken most of the remainder.
Everyone on the planet will eventually die, whether we make compromises or not.
The issue I have with what you said is that in the event of nuclear war, 90% of the casualties will be innocent people, on both sides, people who never were asked if they were willing to compromise or not. Nuclear war doesn't just involve the two sides of the initial conflict, but the entire planet. Your comment really was no better than when Putin said words to the effect of there being no point to a planet if Russia was not part of it.
Nuclear war, though, is not the answer. It should never be the answer.
Look, all I'm saying is that if the option in front of a country was "give us X or we start a global nuclear war" and you genuinely believed it would happen, then, to me at least, compromise is the only way ahead.
The rest of the world would then sanction that country back to the Stone Age, putting pressure on the population to overthrow that aggressive government for their own benefit. And then hopefully able to start righting the wrongs that had been done. To me, that is far more preferable than risking billions of lives.
I guess you could call it taking one for the team, with the hope that the rest of the team can ultimately avenge and correct the situation, albeit in the longer term.
Is that really correct? While geographically they are indeed closer to Europe, I don't think being close to Europe was the driving factor, as your comment suggests.
The reality is that east of the urals is not particularly hospitable compared to the other side. So most of their population naturally settled on the west side.
Compared to a few decades ago, Europe is much closer to their borders. They had the Iron curtain until the mid-80s, behind which they had numerous countries protecting Russia itself from the West. With the fall of that curtain, the EU has now expanded to include the majority of those buffer countries, with Ukraine, Belarus, and one or two others being the few exceptions.
So Europe has certainly gotten closer to their border for sure. What they (Putin and his ilk) seem to be frightened of is that their population can now see up close the "advantages" of democracy, whereas before the population of Russia were surrounded by other communist regimes.
With the fall of communism in those countries, with the fall of the iron curtain, he now fears that Russia itself may soon fall to the charms of democracy. And where would he and his cronies be then!
(This is a decidedly simplistic take on it all, so treat accordingly.
)Are they willing to use nukes??
That is the question. I think best we can hope for is that Putin's generals realize it's a circular firing squad and would refuse the order.
Its hard to end the war when even the
Members of congress are profiting from it.
Btw Russia is winning the war ,no matter what western media want us to believe,
There was interview w US general on Fox but it got deleted as he simply said the truth about Rusia going slow as to avoid destroying Ukraine infrastructure and hurting civilians,only targeting military
reason why its taking so long is to avoid civilian casualties which is a big problem as the members of neo nazi group that controls Zelensky are hiding behind ordinary people.
Biden could end this war quick but maybe this is a reason why he doesnt
Members of congress are profiting from it.
Btw Russia is winning the war ,no matter what western media want us to believe,
There was interview w US general on Fox but it got deleted as he simply said the truth about Rusia going slow as to avoid destroying Ukraine infrastructure and hurting civilians,only targeting military
reason why its taking so long is to avoid civilian casualties which is a big problem as the members of neo nazi group that controls Zelensky are hiding behind ordinary people.
Biden could end this war quick but maybe this is a reason why he doesnt
Russia is going slowly because they are incompetent. They are having their armored vehicles stolen by Ukranian farmers. They are being duped into firing on their own vehicles. Russian soldiers are drilling holes in their own fuel tanks so they don't have to continue to fight.
There is no doubt that they will win in the short term; they can keep throwing money at the problem until they win, no matter how incompetent their troops. But to do that they will have to destroy Ukraine. And in five years they will quietly abandon the country in disgrace, just as they abandoned Afghanistan.
So Zelensky, a Jew whose grandfather survived the Holocaust (and whose three great-uncles were killed in concentration camps) is in league with neo-Nazis.
Do you even think before you start typing?
Not wanting to kill tens of millions of people, perhaps? Some people value human life.
sculptor
Valued Senior Member
St. Petersburg was specifically founded by Tsar Peter the Moron to be Russia's new capital city as it was much closer to the rest of Europe than Moscow was. Then a couple of centuries later Stalin decided that Finland was too close, just as Putin complains about NATO and the EU being too close. And if they're allowed to take Ukraine and replace its population like they've done everywhere else, they will complain next that Poland is too close.
So what? Compared to 80 years ago Europe is still much farther away than it was previously. What's next, they're gonna say Berlin is too close to occupied Konigsberg?
So Europe has certainly gotten closer to their border for sure. What they (Putin and his ilk) seem to be frightened of is that their population can now see up close the "advantages" of democracy, whereas before the population of Russia were surrounded by other communist regimes.
With the fall of communism in those countries, with the fall of the iron curtain, he now fears that Russia itself may soon fall to the charms of democracy. And where would he and his cronies be then!
(This is a decidedly simplistic take on it all, so treat accordingly.
I like your take, it seems to align well with what's happening on the ground. I think the riots in Kazakhstan also played a role in this paranoia. In my opinion Putin should indeed be frightened of prosperous democratic countries and he fully deserves to be frightened by them. Of course that's still no excuse for committing genocide nor for others standing by and doing nothing about it.
I think they either are willing to use nukes and will eventually find an excuse to do so, or they're terrified of the retaliation and wouldn't likely use them unless American troops were marching on the gates of Moscow. If you let Putin do whatever he wants in Ukraine just like he did in Syria because nuclear war blah blah blah, then the same logic applies when he decides he wants a piece of Poland, Lithuania, Turkey, France, Alaska etc.
As a collective, I don't give the Russian people a free pass on this one either. Doesn't matter how terrible their media may be and how much the free thinkers are suppressed, they have enough access to the information we provide to understand a far more sensible version of global events, and they have consciously chosen to ignore it out of wishful thinking and dreaming of not being inferior to Americans, satiating their egos by supporting conquests over weaker people. If they're willing to support leaders who are in turn willing to take half the planet down with them rather than humbly accepting their inferiority and living with it peacefully, then they don't deserve any sympathy for getting what they want in full.
Worth noting:
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances (signed 1994)
The memorandum prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.[2]
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances (signed 1994)
The memorandum prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.[2]
Fair enough - that much I didn't know. I was looking more generally as to why they tend to have settled in the Western part of Russia rather than the Eastern.
Well, Finland was invaded and taken over by Russia in 1809, so I'm not sure that's all Stalin's doing. I.e. Finland was part of Russia's empire, and remained so until 1917 when they gained full independence rather than remain an (decreasingly) autonomous duchy of the Russian empire.
But they retained close ties with Russia after that, and prefer not to provoke them, hence neutrality and not joining NATO.
It's not a dissimilar situation to Ukraine: a former part of the Russian empire, now independent. But unlike Finland, Ukraine made quite clear its intention to join the West, overthrowing their leader last decade when he seemed to reject the will of the people and turned back toward Russia.
Poland, and other previous parts of the Russian empire, have managed to make that step and join NATO. That, hopefully, makes it too late for Russia to do anything to stop them becoming westernised (if that is their will). But Ukraine hadn't taken that step yet, which means it was Russia's last real chance (Belarus aside) to assert authority over a country it previously had control over.
So I don't see Poland being next, or any other NATO country. Maybe I'm being naive, but I just don't see Putin as that stupid as to engage the US in war, let alone all the other NATO countries.
80 years ago Russia had all the Eastern bloc countries - including half of Germany - between Russia and the West. Now the West (i.e. the EU, NATO) is literally on its border. That's a huge buffer that crumbled with the fall of the iron curtain and the USSR.
Kazakhstan isn't really a democracy, but rather an authoritarian regime. It's also part of the CSTO (Russia's equivalent of NATO). They even asked for CSTO "peacekeepers" to help intervene against the what Belarus' Lukashenko termed "international terrorists" (or just demonstrators, as they may well have been). The CSTO force was in and out within a week, but the riots were mostly fuel-price related (sudden hikes) and seemed to mostly end when the government reinstated the price-cap.
Yeah, I think the latter would be the only scenario. Putin has said (words to the effect of) "what point of a world without Russia in it"... so before the end of Russia I'm sure he would rather end the world.
Fortunately he's never put Russia up against a nuclear power. And he's running out of space in Europe to do so, as NATO is a nuclear power (assuming US, UK, France etc, live up to what NATO stands for).
I think you're underestimating the level of control that the Russian state has over what people in the country think. But there's also likely a divide: the older generation who still stick to the notion of mother-Russia where they blindly follow Moscow, still fearful of what it means to not follow; and then the younger generation, more used to world-wide information flows, more open to what the West has to offer. They're the ones protesting in Russia, they're the ones who the current regime are going to struggle with in the future.
But there's not a huge amount they can do in a country where elections are clearly rigged, to the point where being an opposition candidate is likely a death-sentence.
War , from some old cronies , who never sacrifice , themselves , nor relations to the cause . But want the old days back . Putin is in his on World . Literally .
And the US doing its War Mongering as usual .
???
You surely jest? In what way are they war-mongering? They are certainly aiding a country in defending itself against an external aggressor through the supply of equipment and aid. They are doing so along with pretty much the entirety of Europe and NATO. How is that "war mongering"?
They have been at pains, as part of NATO, to decline any act of physical aggression that will lead to direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. So, again, how is that "war mongering"?
Is the US/NATO supposed to let Russia invade any non-NATO country that it wants, and just sit back and let it happen even though the invaded country pleads for assistance?
Actually, do you even know what war-mongering is??
I get it .
But what if the US is actually waging war with Russia ? What if Russia is waging war with the USA . Does it ever end ...hopefully soon , as in asap .