“We” are fighting nobody. The Ukrainians are. And as long as they want to keep fighting the invaders, it’s only right to assist a country that’s only defending itself.

What do you believe those reasonable red lines to be?

Yes, it was very easy to avoid, by Russia not invading another country without provocation.

And if you’re going to spout some bullshit about them not wanting Ukraine to join NATO or the EU, well… That’s none of their damned business. It’s not their country, and they’re not a member of either, so they have no say in the matter.

No one wins ever in appeasing a tyrant. It is though that ever worked and did not lead to a major war before.

“*Meet me in the middle.” said the unjust man

You take a step forward and he takes a step back

“Meet me in the middle.” said again by the unjust man*

You do realise that more Ukrainians will die in the future if you are truly concerned? It is obvious that Putin will use any lull to lick his wounds and attack again. He lied multiple times. Why And more importantly, the longer the war drags, the more it becomes more disadvantageous for Russia, even if Ukraine could not win back their territory. Look, sure Russian economy has experienced growth, but as with any economy on a war footing, their economy is already overheating as inflation is rising. The Russian Central Bank increased their interest rate to 21%; ninety-eight percent of all Chinese banks are refusing to give loans to Russia for fear of secondary sanction; there is labour shortage which increases wage on the private sectors as they have to compete with army wages set by Kremlin; and as the war drags on, more Russian men and women are either fleeing or dying which hurts the Russian economy. Now, with manpower shortage, Russia is now relying on North Korean soldiers because he fears further mass mobilisations will cause political chaos. And even so, there is already a growing political rift among the Russian oligarchs and we see the cracks growing and growing the longer the war takes. Not to mention releasing and pardoning Russian prisoners for war effort is already causing rising crime rate to soar and social backlash to communities who received former convicts turned recruits.

No one except armchair generals playing Starcraft, Hearts of Iron or Company Heroes is expecting Ukraine to pull a gamey, miraculous military victory and then march to Moscow. Seeing as letting Putin gain any sort of concessions is any victory to him and will use the lull period to recuperate to attack again, the liberal democratic world should not allow that to happen. Ukraine knows this. They are fighting for their own survival and have nothing to lose so they keep going. You could easily Google to see how many Ukrainians are still willing to fight-- even if they don’t retake Crimea or other territories. That’s why they attacked Kursk in spite of Putin’s nuclear threat. To them, submitting to Kremlin is as good as being nuked because they will face genocide regardless. So they took the gamble, and lo and behold the nuke threat turns out to be just another bluff like the last ones.

However, any ongoing war is always unpredictable. No one expected Ukraine to still keep fighting. No one expected them to retake much of Kharkiv, Kherson and Donetsk. No one expected Russia to still stand following the humiliation. If Putin is somehow able to keep his power and much of his current gains in the foreseeable future, the best that Ukraine could do is to serve him a humiliating political defeat à la North Vietnam against the US by making Putin pay for every inch of the ground gained. But Putin’s gains could likely be reversed, when he’s gone, because the long term social and financial consequences of invading Ukraine will take effect in the coming generations. Russia will become less of a great power than it was before 2022.

I completely agree that ideally there should be peace, but there needs to be guarantee that Ukraine will not be invaded ever again by duplicitous Russia. Either let Ukraine join NATO or repossess some nuclear weapons.

Hopefully Russia is completely devastated and it’s government and leadership destroyed and much of his population wiped out so they cannot be a threat to anyone else

No, just making fun of you.

If you find that funny I seriously question your sense of humour

And that is because Trump negotiated with the Taliban and not the Afghani government. He handed them the country.

You didn’t read the article. The US upheld their part of the deal, China did not. They conned Trump.

I have you tagged as tankie for a reason…

I kept you unblocked to give you the benefit of the doubt, but here we are…

Go join the russian army if it is so well paid.

I have you tagged as “Tankie and Tate supporter”, your oppinion carry negative weight with me.

A typical Ukrainian family would recognise that if Russia is allowed to keep a meaningful amount of the territory it’s gained, it’ll be in Russia’s interests to use a peace deal as an opportunity to rebuild equipment, recruit and train more personnel, and then invade one of its neighbours (potentially Ukraine again) in a few years.

Western powers being afraid to escalate during the invasion of Crimea directly encouraged Russia to start it’s current invasion of the rest of Ukraine. Fear of escalation leads to more loss of life if you think more than a few months ahead.

Removed by mod

Yep - that’s about as coherent as I expected.

A quick end to the war via a cessation of aid will see Ukraine annexed. There’s a reason Ukraine went to war to stop that.

Manufacturing a situation to dump surplus military hardware doesn’t meaningfully help the US - using what amounts to garbage and foreign troops to undermine a hostile state actor clearly does. There’s no altruism necessary here.

Your desperation to leap to moral purity testing and American diabolism is leading you to some atrocious positions. Fuck me - take a win when there’s one to be taken rather than throwing Ukraine to the bears.

It’s not the worst idea.

So the lesson here, is if you ever have control of an area you need to forcibly assimilate them against their will so they become ‘your’ people and decades later you can justify invading to defend Germans in the Sudetenland defend ethnic rights in Crimea.

That’s the reason why the east/west split past the Dnieper river exists - the Imperial Russians ran their pseudo-genocide everywhere, the USSR kept trying whilst looting the industrial and agricultural spoils, and once the UkSSR got independence and were allowed to have their own national identity, they pursued it. The same happened in almost every former USSR holding, and we saw how Russia decimated Chechen society when they dared assert a desire for self determination.

Please cite proof for this “zero enthusiasm” Ukrainians have for defending themselves you allege. Regardless, everything you describe is what happens during any war and mobilization - Russia already had theirs during peacetime because life outside Moscow is shit, and again during the last mobilization. They’ve resorted to mass recruitment of unwitting and desperate migrants and internal minorities being promised citizenship and cash payments.

I wholeheartedly agree that the ‘aid-laundering’ into MIC was cynical and in the long term self serving, but almost all aid except IMF debt forgiveness is not fully altruistic and serves the donor and recipient - that’s the unfortunate reality of geopolitics.

I’m gonna fight you on ‘meaning dialogue’ because ever since the Berlin Wall came down, the west opened itself to Russia, politically, economically, and culturally. And at practically every turn where the Russkiy Mir met opposition they’ve thrown shitfits and spurned regime change and invasions - do the million of former USSR vassals ‘belong’ to Moscow? Do the Baltics only exist as Russia’s buffer zone, forever denied self determination?