Comment by whimsicalism
2 years ago
This war will likely end with Ukraine losing some amount of land - it is just a matter of if they ever accept this or whether they want a Korea style frozen conflict.
2 years ago
This war will likely end with Ukraine losing some amount of land - it is just a matter of if they ever accept this or whether they want a Korea style frozen conflict.
The war will not end there. Just pause.
It will not "end" until Russia has installed a subservient client regime in Ukraine like it has in Belorussia.
If you doubt this, I encourage you to look at actual opinions within Russia itself. Interviews with Russians (the 1420 channel on Youtube for example), Russian media, Russian politicians. Their objection is far more than "there's Russian speakers being persecuted by Ukraine." Their national chauvinism leaves them unable to tolerate actually-sovereign nation states on their borders, especially one with an intertwined cultural-linguistic-political history like Ukraine.
"Split Ukraine into two and give the far western half to Poland and absorb the rest into Russia" is a commonly held "solution".
Those same people on 1420 will tell you that Poland and UK need to be denazified. It's just propaganda working, you can't mistake it for real strategic goals.
Absolutely, it's not scientific at all, but it shows the strong presence of a chauvinistic compliant population.
FWIW I think you could find similar nonsense on the streets of many (but not all) American cities. It's the kind of hubris that comes from being a huge country that is its own centre of gravity and a political leadership that runs around saying it's the "best country in the world" and stuff like that. That's how it looks from up here in Canada, anyways.
Anyways, you don't have to look at 1420, just the public pronouncements of Putin himself
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That happens in 2014 when Ukraine lost Crimea. They accepted it and lived on. There is zero safety guarantees for them.
Ukraine has been fighting Russia for nearly a decade, with active if low-level warfare in the Donbass region the entire time. I wouldn't exactly call that "accept[ing] it and liv[ing] on."
From about 2017 the war was very low-level, limited to some artillery duels. And those duels weren't entirely Ukrainian choice, if Russia shoots at you, you can't just ignore it.
Remember when the local "insurrection" to kijev marched into the theater in kherson because they thought it the regional governments office. For all their propaganda multitudes fines online, they are just lethal clowns on the ground, unable to innovate, because bound by puppeteer strings. Ukraine will win. Moscovia will fall apart once again.
Empires die and vanish all the time.
Not quite! The immediate history here plays a huge role in where we're at today. In the 2014 the US backed a [coup, revolution, insurrection - whatever you want to call it] in Ukraine that saw their democratically elected pro-Russian President overthrown. Numerous Ukrainian territories that also leaned pro-Russia refused to recognize the new government and declared their independence, the Donbas region and Crimea among them.
For the 8 years from 2014 to 2022 Ukraine was intermittently attacking and shelling these breakaway territories (excepting Crimea, which had become part of Russia) which were (and are) largely populated with ethnic Russians, and Russia was "secretly" protecting them. This led to a series of treaties, The Minsk Accords [1], to try to arrange peace between Russia and Ukraine, and give the breakaway territories some sort of special status while remaining under Ukraine.
These treaties were always violated. And while this was happening Ukraine was increasingly fortifying and arming itself, as well as seeking to join NATO - which NATO was, sincerely or not, indulging. This all really set the stage for where we are today. It also sets the stage for where we're going tomorrow, because the inability to maintain any sort of a peace over these regions is going to make obtaining a 'minimally unfavorable' settlement for Ukraine, over this war, much more difficult.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
None if this is true. For example, the "pro-Russian President" wasn't overthrown. At Russian pressure, he ditched a very favorable trade agreement with the EU that would've opened up many new business opportunities for Ukrainians. When protesters assembled, he ordered police snipers to shoot at them, killing 108 people. He fled to Russia the next day and Ukraine's parliament voted to remove him from office, and scheduled new elections, which were held three months later.
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You’re telling the false version of these events spread by the Russian state propaganda.
> US backed a [coup, revolution, insurrection - whatever you want to call it] in Ukraine
People of Ukraine did the revolution. The western backing you’re talking about was limited to vague verbal expressions of support.
> territories that also leaned pro-Russia refused to recognize the new government and declared their independence
That only happened on the territories invaded by the Russians.
Crimea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea#H...
Eastern Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin#Sloviansk
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So do you think all of Russia's annexations should be recognised by the international community?
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You say it like it’s their choice. Moldova never asked for Transnistria. It’s fairly SOP for Russia to take bites from its neighbours, let’s stop blaming the victims. Whatever Russia ends up doing, they are preparing for themselves a second Chechnya at the very least.
Of course it is not just their choice. Russia has indicated their willingness to accept current holdings (for now, you are right there are no guarantees).
Ukraine could and should get better than just that, but this notion of taking back Crimea is a pipe dream and I don’t support continued funding until that goal is realized.
If you want to be extremely cynical and seek to strictly extend and project the USA's power as harshly and effectively as possible, the war in Ukraine was God's gift to the USA. They get to basically take out Russia (China's key geopolitical ally) without losing a single American life, for a tiny fraction of the amount they're used to spending on wars.
And yet it's American nationalists themselves who want it all to stop, to throw all of its European allies under the bus and burn the alliance with the rest of the Western world to the ground. An amazing and almost impressive act of self harm.
It's not so much "America first" with you lot, it's "America alone".
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