"Sorry bud, I'm under sanctions so it's actually illegal for me to repay you."
The question is mostly how slowly Ukraine loses. Zelenskyy seems to have chosen "slow and painful".
6 months ago it was looking like Ukraine was going to be constantly ground down, but they've forced the Russian forces to cede a lot of territory and make poor excuses for it.
If they lose slowly, it'll be a matter of being tied up in a war that is fought inside their own borders and keeps delaying their development, in contrast to their enemy.
The war fucking sucks and shouldn't be happening at all, of course. I'm not exactly happy that thousands of Ukrainians are dying every week.
If their government wants the war to stop, they could always just... surrender. Their blatant fascist elements would have been right where they wanted to be to whip up an angry mob and coup the place, even. Instead they've been throwing every able-bodied adult in Ukraine into a sausage grinder because girls are watching and they don't want to look like a sissy.
Why wasn't the "plenty of strategic depth" used to ensure that the offensive on Kiev succeeded? Or even to hold onto Kharkov or Kherson?
I think it's pretty clear at this point that Western military budgets can prop up Ukraine enough to keep fighting on indefinitely, albeit at a major human cost.
By this time the only result of a drawn-out war I can see is just more troops and equipment sacrificed into no-man's-land.
There were 3 objectives to the "SMO": denazify, demilitarize, defend Donetsk and Luhansk.
It was clear that the plan hinged around taking Kiev and installing a sympathetic government. Not only would this have backfired (such a government would have made Yanukovich look wildly popular in comparison), it pushed the entire Ukrainian political sphere towards the ultra-nationalists.
Ukraine as a country is now unified around the interests and fever dreams of the worst people therein, and their lib president cannot help but do their bidding too.
Contrary to popular belief, Russia does not have the military budget to destabilize everywhere on earth. the US military budget is over 10 times the size of Russia's. Over a month into winter and Europe is still firm on its self-destructive sanctions in support of Ukraine. Russia might have stockpiled weapons but they don't really stand to win an economic war of attrition against the majority of weapons-producing countries on the planet.
Ukraine was "running out of artillery shells" (and also artillery pieces) 6 months ago. Then somehow they retook a whole bunch of strategic positions.
The war is bad for Russia, bad for Europe, extremely bad for Ukraine, good for Russian capitalists, and good for the American MIC. The only benefit that it really has to the world is diverting the attention of American foreign policy, and empowering Venezuela and China.
Who would they even hold liable? Zelenskyy personally? Whatever puppet Putin installs who will just tell them to fuck off?
I wonder if this is just a way to ensure the debt is still owed, not so they can 'be made whole' for what they are owed, but so they can consider it bad debt
Without this clause, the debt would probably be unilaterally dis-chargeable (and it still might considering these are extraordinary circumstances), but if the clause were to hold scrutiny, it would mean the debt could be classed as 'bad debt' and sold off to other parties so they could try and collect. It would be for much less than it was originally worth, but it would mean the lender could still recoup some of their initial investment
Bad debt can also be written off as a loss for tax purposes, which could also be the driving motivator
We make libs so mad with our anti-NATO, "Ukraine should just cut their losses and cede the Donbas and Crimea to stop the bloodshed" takes... but at the end of the day I truly feel us commies are the only ones out there who see pretty clearly how badly the people of Ukraine will suffer at the hands of the IMF, World Bank, Wall Street private equity firms, etc, and we desperately don't want it to happen. But it's going to happen. Western libs will forget all about Ukraine to moment a peace deal is eventually made, and that's when the suffering of the people there will only get worse...
