• Egon [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Did field marshal Douglas Haig write this?
    "You see them preparing defense fortifications which we throw ourselves senselessly into is actually a part of our master plan".
    Are you doing a weird Blackadder bit?
    "They'd expect us NOT to attack where they are strongest, with little to no preparation and no chance of victory."
    "I see a small issue with your plan sir. It's the same we used the last 16 times."
    "Which is precisely why they won't expect us to do it again!"

    Russia is sitting on all the territory that it claimed, and is now in a war of attrition which it is winning pretty handedly in part because Ukrainians are being thrown into a meat grinder they have no chance of beating.

    I know you all hate Ukraine

    Hating ukrainians is when you don't want them to die in the thousands for a pointless war.

    Oh wait you didn't mean people you meant the political entity.
    I don't really give a shit about countries, and I really can't give a shit about which political entity ends up "winning" the game war. I care about people, and I'd like for them not to die.

    But reality doesn't always reflect your geopolitical wet dreams.

    Are you being serious right now? The first of the surovikin line could not even be breached. You're talking about thousands of casualties being worth it for some greater political goal. That's geopolitics you idiot! You're the one talking geopolitics, and you're basing your wants on a fantasy. Thousands of ukrainians are dead, more are dying, and the Russians are chilling in defensive fortifications. But somehow you think I'm the one with a geopolitical aim and an unrealistic worldview?

    When do you think this war will end? You seem to think the Ukrainians will have to expel the Russian military first, so that would take the dismantling of the three defensive lines, as well as the lines that will have been erected further back in the meantime. Going by how you think they should do it - Throwing themselves to their deaths by the thousands - they will run out of Ukrainians before anything else happens. If you're so into this grand geopolitical game, go fucking volunteer yourself. You'll die in a ditch and the world will be none the worse for it.

    • Vncredleader [he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      God I can't believe you hate Belgians and the French, why must you be so against them being shredded by artillery and choking on mustard gas? Don't you know that Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori?

      • Egon [they/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        During the war of 1864 Denmark should've fought to the last man. Retreating after the battle at Dybbøl Mill and ceding Holstein to the Prussians is a breaking of their obligation to die as cannon fodder

        • ChapoKrautHaus [none/use name]
          ·
          10 months ago

          You could have picked ANY hopeless last stand from 2000+ years of military history and you went for an obscure sideshow war in the German unification wars that less than 1% of humans are even aware of.

          Impressive.

          • Egon [they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            Thank you! I was hoping to start a thing where we went further and further back in time and obscurity. Sadly I chose something too obscure to being with

        • Vncredleader [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          Ah glad someone else is aware of the second Schleswig war. The ACW was nothing compared to the moral battle going on there. Anyone who brings up the Confederacy is just like those tankies mentioning Azov and the shelling of Donbas.

          • Egon [they/them]
            ·
            10 months ago

            I think of it like a turning point for Denmark, it was as if everybody got brainworms around that time, and then they never left. Yeah sure Denmark you can beat fucking Prussia lol. Okay you lost what will you do? Oh fuck up all the ecosystems, water streams and other, just so some farmer can get even more land? Super.

      • Egon [they/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        I guess a Ukrainian victory would be one where nukes get launched and they luck out?

        • Egon [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          And then the Ukrainians all get unicorns!

          Sorry it was just since we were doing fantasy scenarios that will never and have never happened, I figured I might as well make it a better fantasy

        • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          ok but how would Ukraine make them do that. Clearly the current Russian position is to not do that. What is the Ukrainian path to making that change

        • FortifiedAttack [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          Look at the thread title again, and then ask yourself how realistic you think this scenario is?

    • aport@programming.dev
      ·
      10 months ago

      You can't pretend to be altruistic when your idea of peace is letting Putin forcibly annex all former Soviet states. Come off it.

      A counteroffensive is Ukraine's prerogative, right, and in many senses an obligation.

      • Egon [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        I think Ukraine should negotiate for the best peace settlement it can get, and take it. You strawmanning me into thinking something else isnt really surprising, but it is disappointing that none of you delusional bloodthirsty armchair generals can even handle a differing perspective. This is further proved by your failure to answer a single one of my questions, instead once again choosing to soapbox to some imagined audience. Answer my questions you weak-willed little ingrate.

        A counteroffensive is Ukraine's prerogative, right, and in many senses an obligation.

        Obligation??? They're obligated to throw thousands to their death? Fuck you, go volunteer. That's your obligation. You have a moral obligation to go fight for Ukraine, you obviously think it is wrong for Russia to invade, so you are obligated to go do your duty in Ukraine. Or are you a coward, only willing to cheer on the death of others in a far away land?
        You're doing the Shrek meme, but unironically.
        Go give your life for the cause you snivelling little coward. You have an obligation to fight for glorious Ukraine.

        • aport@programming.dev
          ·
          10 months ago

          I think Ukraine should negotiate for the best peace settlement it can get, and take it

          And what do you imagine that settlement would be, other than a complete surrender of every square kilometer of their land, their people, and their lives?

          • edge [he/him]
            ·
            10 months ago

            You're just making shit up instead of looking at Russia's stated, implied, and material goals.

            a complete surrender of every square kilometer of their land

            Russia doesn't want to annex all of Ukraine. There's nothing for them in the north. At the very most they would annex Novorossiya, but if Ukraine were to go to the negotiating table right now they likely would get away with only losing the four oblasts that Russia already annexed, plus Crimea ofc. Aside from that land, Russia wants guarantees that Ukraine will stay out of NATO and the EU.

            their people, and their lives

            There is absolutely no evidence that Russia wants to or is carrying out a genocide of Ukrainians. There has been no rhetoric from Russia that the Ukrainian ethnicity as a whole are some untermensch and/or threat to society that needs to be removed. In fact there's been the opposite, that Ukrainians are their brothers, "little Russians". The only genocidal/ethnic cleansing rhetoric I've seen has been from Ukraine's side, celebrating when a random Russian civilian is killed by a shark, calling all Russians "orcs", wanting to remove Russian civilians from Crimea (who have been living there long before it was transferred to Ukraine in 1954), anti-Russian language laws which Human Rights Watch reported concerns about just a month before the invasion.

          • Egon [they/them]
            ·
            10 months ago

            Jesus Christ where do you people get these ideas from? Do you never go check anything for yourselves? Is your worldview shaped by scary bedtime stories told by your nana The Us State Department?
            When has Russia ever claimed it wanted to annex all of Ukraine? Why would it even?? Why would it want to occupy a large region that would resist it's rule, why would it want to get embroiled in countless territory conflicts and battle out hundreds of mini quagmires, when it could just annex the autonomous regions that do not have these issues?
            https://hexbear.net/comment/3845791

            Now answer my questions you unimaginative impotent rat. Get off your condescending dead rhetorical horse and answer my questions, if you have any intellectual integrity.

            • aport@programming.dev
              ·
              10 months ago

              Do you never go check anything for yourselves?

              If I did that I wouldn't be sitting here looking like a misinformed jackass, now would I?

              Is your worldview shaped by scary bedtime stories told by your nana The Us State Department?

              State dept, US and western-sympathetic media

              When has Russia ever claimed it wanted to annex all of Ukraine?

              I think Putin wants a Lukashenko in Ukraine.

              why would it want to get embroiled in countless territory conflicts and battle out hundreds of mini quagmires, when it could just annex the autonomous regions that do not have these issues?

              I feel like I'm missing something here because the "autonomous regions" are where these battles and quagmires are occurring.

              • Egon [they/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                10 months ago

                Thank you for your response. I appreciate it, and I apologize for the hostility.

                I feel like I'm missing something here because the "autonomous regions" are where these battles and quagmires are occurring.

                You are correct. However the fighting has been occurring in these regions since 2014 due to their high number of russian separatists. Those regions would likely be relatively stable as memberstates of Russia - as well due to these high number of ukrainian russianspeakers. Other regions of Ukraine which have been relatively stable as parts of Ukraine, would likely not be stable as parts of Russia. These regions would then become unstable autonomus quagmires.

                Finally: If you think Ukraine has a moral obligation to fight to the last, why do you think you are not obligated to go there and fight yourself? If Russia is an evil imperialist country, why does standing up to them not go across borders? We are supplying Ukraine with weapons and armaments and equipment and training, and the country is welcoming (begging for) volunteers. All the manpower it can get it needs, so why do you think you're exempt? If you are so invested in the course of this war, if you believe there is a moral obligation, why do you think yourself not to be obligated?

                Edit: I've since seen your apology. You do not have to answer the last question if you don't want to

          • fuckiforgotmypasswor [comrade/them,any]
            ·
            10 months ago

            I'm just curious -- why are you so concerned with the nation-state of Ukraine maintaining its border, at apparently any cost? You virtue signal all day long that you're just concerned for the poor Ukranians, and yet you seem to conflate land, people, and constructed imaginary borders like they're interchangeable. Does "surrender of every square kilometer of their land" mean the same as them "losing their lives?" Is there a giant killswitch that just obliterates every inhabitant of a country when the arbitrary name associated with that land changes?

            The point is this: I've got cousins fighting on the frontlines who can't wait to get the fuck out of that warzone, and you seem to have more of a perfectly liberal, purely aesthetic disgust for the idea of land changing ownership than you do for the notion of hundreds of thousands of people dying in a fucking trench in a needless war.

            Fuck Putin, fuck Zelensky, fuck Ukraine and fuck Russia, fuck the United States, and fuck the bourgeois scum who pump out all the vile propaganda you're regurgitating, that tell you a piece of land is worth more than your family's life.

      • tuga [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        You can't pretend to be altruistic when your idea of peace is letting Putin forcibly annex all former Soviet states.

        You're a child

      • FortifiedAttack [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Peace follows once the war ends, regardless of whether you win or lose said war.

        And you shouldn't fight battles you have no chance of winning, and which won't benefit you at all in the long run. Doing so anyways is lunacy.