I still (steal and) listen but every time he describes Russia's actions in the war as really stupid it just grates on me. No doubt you can identify mistakes but "lmao putin dumb" is just dogshit liberal "analysis". Looking forward to hearing this episode, either way.
Except the war has been going since 2014. Ukraine increased their shelling of civilians in the leadup to the Russian invasion. An anti-war perspective would agree that that eight year long aggression must be stopped.
Civilians in the Donbas are very safe now. The military aged males? Even safer.
What's your point, that the anti-war position should be to let actual Nazis continue hitting hospitals and homes with artillery until they get tired of it?
I agree that there was a big problem there. Seems to me they failed to solve it.
Sure, if your cutoff for a solution is "right now". The people of Ukraine voted for an anti-war president and he couldn't stop the war crimes. Is there another solution you see to the eight year long problem?
And the invasion was a "solution"? For who? I don't see how it resolved anything. It was deeply stupid and denying that is weird imo since they obviously thought they'd be able to trounce Ukraine like they did Georgia in 2008 and call it a day after a week but here we are a year later and its just escalating and the possibility for real peace for people in the region just worse than ever before.
what is the abscene of a peacetreaty , and what would you do if this here + Zelensky under applause declaring his persude of Nuclear Weapons at the Munich Security Council , is the reaction on your diplomatic initiative..
not that there are not other Reaction then the invasion and other goals , but i want you to state an actuall alternative Strategy not just "invasion bad" ...
how do you play it ?
Edit: I would have first shut sown the landline pipelines to europe as a treat, and offere an donbass specific ulitmatum ..
Do you have an alternative proposal? This conflict was going to happen one way or another because of NATO and America's arming literal nazis. I don't think there's any reasonable analysis of this that doesn't acknowledge that.
Oh cool, thank god Russia doesn't arm literal nazis such as, let's say, the Wagner group.
Please, if you are trying to analyze the conflict don't sound like you are trying to turn Putin into some antinazi icon.
Does Wagner do pogroms in Russia? Do they run any ministries? This is tired NAFO fella rhetoric.
Oh cool, do nazis run ministries in the US, do they commit progroms????? I guess they are not a problem either.
Lmao, thank god nazis are not a problem unless they control the upper echelons of the government.
Didn't answer the question, deflect to an imagined point I didn't make. Oh yeah, it's :reddit-logo: time.
I mean, the far right in the US does run ministries. Like, half of the Republican party is either explicitly fascist or close enough. And that's not even getting into local governments in the US, where every single police department is more or less just a paramilitary force for whatever purpose they think they should serve.
You can literally make most of those points about russia too. As i've said, pretending russia is doing this for some noble antifascist reason is incredibly naive and frankly embarrasing.
Deflection? This was literally about some guy pretending the Wagner group is ok because they are silly little guys with no power. Acting exactly like the liberals with Azov.
Yes, and liberals also say that the Azov's group influence is overblown.
Consume state dept propaganda and my positions falling in line with them?¿?¿?¿
Hilarious, please, point to me where have i ever defended this war or supported Ukraine. Is "no to this war" the official US position? Has Biden critiziced Zelensky and it's gang of nazis???
Stop with the mindless drivel, you people randomly spew buzzwords before even reading what someone else is actually saying.
"Haha, silly Lenin, how dare you say both sides are the same, don't you know we must defend our people against french aggression??"
For someone antiwar you do seem too keen in justifying Putin. This war is both his and the US fault.
Shelling civilians is bad??
Wowie, thank god Mr.Putin is not doing that, am i right???????
Georgia did. After NATO built them up for years they tried to grab a slice of South Ossetia. They got their asses handed to them on a platter. The corporate media then tried to spin it as Russian disinformation. Why wouldn't Ukraine?
Russia is untenable as a nation if Ukraine is not at least neutral, and everyone knows it. Why else did NATO spend so much effort trying to get Ukraine in? It's a springboard for invasion.
sorry but the idea of Ukraine invading Russia or something is just dumb, they didnt pose any serious threat lol cmon
Are you serious? NATO were training them and built them up. They might not invade Russia, but donbass region? They have the capability to do it. It might be dumb from your perspective, but after 2014 and the ethnic Russian in that region separate, it's basically becoming a civil war and there's no way Russia, Putin or not would let the whole Ukraine be control by nato/nato train force.
I dont care if Ukraine invades itself, thats its own business. The idea Ukraine would really pose any real threat to Russia is just dumb, its the poorest country in Europe and Russia has 6000 nuclear warheads.
Well, the Donbass region ask Russia for help. Again, Russian will not tolerate any nato force/nato train force in Ukraine. 6k war head doesn't matter when the enemy force is next to your border that nato could put nuke that aim straight at Moscow. This is just a classic battle for influence, the Russian will not tolerate any force next to them just as the US will not tolerate any military build up near them, which is why they tried to invade Cuba in the first place, because they can't control them, if they can't control them then they blockade them.
I know it why the US did that, but you understand the US shouldn't have right? Russia won't tolerate it, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't have. Its not like Ukraine would have ever joined NATO with ongoing border conflicts, and its not like Cuba posed a threat to the US either even with nukes.
US shouldn't have, but they still did it. The US shouldn't expand nato either, but they still did it. As I said, the US touch the Russian sphere of influence, Russia naturally respond, Cuba is not posing a threat to the US but they still get blockade and harass. The world would be perfect if the elite not thirst for power, but that's fantasy, not the reality we're dealing with.
ok but this whole convo started with "of course he should have invaded what else was he supposed to do???" and obviously the answer is not invade, lots of other stuff any more rational country like China could have done 🤷
Well he tried for 8 years and it gotten worst. If today, Tsai In Wen declare independent, then China would instantly commence reunification. If 2014 coup hasn't happen, don't think Russia would invade.
I don't care for government stoking separatist movements in other countries for one thing, that's the shit the US does. You people believe insane shit about Putin, you think he is invading Ukraine out of altruism for Russians there?
Don't think the Russian govt need to stoke separatist movement when it's only 20 years the Soviet dissolve after all, considering the history of that region which was once belong to Russian empire then transfer to Ukraine SSR because they were country. Peoples there have family in both. Like i'm not surprise that the region want to separate after learning their govt want to ban the language that they've been using since forever.
Ukraine has been bombing civilians for nearly a decade and allowed Nazi paramilitaries to harass and kill them.
You "dont care" about that? It's Ukraine's "own business?"
Fuck you dude, also this provides a lot of context for the repeated threads you posted to whine about anti-war conferences.
Oh cool, so then we should also support the US intervening in Iraq, i guess.
You don’t care if Ukrainians do genocides on Russian ethnic civilians by bombing cities and burning communists alive in union halls? That’s lib shit
Yeah no, the Ukrainians were absolutely building up for an invasion of Crimea, that was explicitly the position of the coup regime
You don't maintain a 700,000 strong army just to have it sit on Russia's borders for eternity
Ukrainian military buildup from 2014 represented the largest, by percentage of population, non-superpower military buildup since WWI. They weren't just building it up for funsies. What they were going to use it for, I couldn't say, but you generally don't build up that much of a military while in the middle of a civil war and not use it to retake the area that has separated.
Plus probably Crimea, since they were talking about it so much.
I mean they did trounce them considering Ukraine was ready to sign the peace agreement in April.....until the west sabotaged it and proceeded to empty Europe of arms in a successful bid to prolong the war
The cutoff for the present "solution" seems to be never. The lines on the map are barely moving. The Wagner guy says 2 more years I think. And if Ukraine capitulated tomorrow, revanchism and irredentism are going to be majority positions in a country full of traumatized veterans and ATGMs.
I can't know how a different approach would have worked out. But when you send in the tanks you take responsibility for how it turns out.
There was no other solution because America and NATO weren't going to let this go another way. It was 2022 or sometime soon for this conflict to blossom, and Russia simply took the initiative.
Morocco is constantly undermining spanish authority, planting bugs in the presidential palace and constantly stirring shit up. Should Spain invade Morocco, then? Maybe they should take the initiative too.
Are they shelling civilians? Why is it so hard for liberals to remember the status quo before the Russian invasion?
Yes, lmao. They murdered 50 inmigrants with the complicitness of the spanish government a few months ago.
Morocco isn't trying to take over Andalusia or install a coup government in Spain, and NATO isn't trying to break Spain into tiny pieces
Is Spain a target for NATO and sanctions by Western bankers and Morocco receiving funds to buy the bugs from said prior parties?
Yes, they are actively bombing the Sahara. No, they don't need to, Morocco is already cozy with the US. Yes, it used to be, and Morocco is bombing said citizens. Yes, they are being murdered by the moroccan regime. No, the spanish bourgoisie is deep in morocco's pocket and don't care about it. Yes, as i said, they invaded said region in the 70s.
Yeah, no. Also, not to Spain, to a region that used to be spanish up to the 70s, was conquered then by Morocco, and has been bombed ever since because they want to be independent.
It's hilarious how certain "leftists" are more bloodthirsty than liberals.
WTF?
There are a lot of equivalencies, as i've said. And i oppose imperialist wars in all shapes and forms. Unlike you.
You sound like a zionist, complaining about being shelled while ignoring absolutely everything else.
Oh cool, two treaties, not one or three. You want two. The Sahara has been internationally recognized by 80 countries, is that enought for you?
Yes. Cool it with the question mark.
Where's the pogroms??? Are you fucking kidding me?¿??¿?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/oppression-is-brutal-morocco-breaks-up-western-sahara-protest-ahead-of-un-talks/ https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocupaci%C3%B3n_marroqu%C3%AD_del_Sahara_Occidental
Holy shit, you people are sooooooo inmersed in russian propaganda than when presented with the exact same scenario in a different part of the world, you will inmediately run to justify the colonial power, again.
“Oh so you’d be a Zionist? Oh so you’d be in favor of invading Iraq? Oh so if the positions were different your position would be wrong and bad”
I agree with you, I think the other interlocutor keeps making analogies that are frankly inane
Hmm seems like you Poles have a big problem with fascists doing pogroms. The Soviets have failed to solve it (You in 1942)
This is the entire fascist NATO west using Ukraine as a proxy army and putting Russia in a corner. Russia has no choice but to fight, and for the good of humanity we should all hope they win again, as they did in WW2 against the demons from the west.
Under certain circumstances, you should consider that. But that's not really analogous to this situation
Given NATO's track record I don't think it is morally possible for Russia to just surrender their people to the tender care of a US backed regime. It's just not happening.
Well they sure as shit weren't safe when Ukraine was shelling them daily and neo-nazis militias were disappearing 15,000 people
Much preferred it when the Nazis were doing hunting safaris sniping children, and the whole world was ignoring it
Stopped by dominating the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk? Certainly.
But warped by making a long-shot push to take the capital and install a new government, and then turning a third of the country into a bombed-out combat zone? That's a bit inept.
It would be inept if Russia wasn't also facing the industrial might of NATO, people don't seem to get what happened last year, Europe was completely emptied of Soviet arms, all of it went to Ukraine
MacGregor was absolutely correct when he said the Russians have destroyed three entire Ukrainian militaries built from the ground up while simultaneously dealing with the most severe sanctions regime in history and 8 years of western paid fortifications in the most defenseable region in the country
Turns out all of that results in a bit of a delay and maybe even a stalemate or two
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Russia used the tactic of shutting off pipelines through Ukraine to blackmail both Ukraine and Europe. This was effective and bloodless.
The current government of Ukraine had a conciliatory platform and policy in 2019-20. The ultranationalists might be strong in some institutions, but not the executive and legislature on the eve of the invasion. It would be disingenuous to say that there was an ever-escalating crisis between Ukraine and Russia.
If anything, the war has assured a destabilized and impoverished country to the southwest, a permanent hatred for Russia and Russians amongst all Ukrainians, and increased antipathy from the West.
MacGregor was absolutely correct when he said the Russians have destroyed three entire Ukrainian militaries built from the ground up while simultaneously dealing with the most severe sanctions regime in history and 8 years of western paid fortifications in the most defenseable region in the country
All 3 of these assertions are exaggerations, and presented hagiographically.
The current government of Ukraine had a conciliatory platform and policy in 2019-20.
I guess you didn't see what Zelensky said yesterday, also it is flat wrong to claim the ultranationlists didn't control the executive or legislature they are the dominant party even if their neo nazis militias maintain a fake media distance, and the increasing Ukrainian shelling of donbass in months prior to the invasion is the definition of ever-escalating crisis
All 3 of these assertions are exaggerations
Um no, not with the numbers of equipment losses provided by Israeli intelligence two weeks ago, 6,000 tank losses in under a year is equivalent to three Ukrainian militaries in the years prior to the invasion
Servant of the People, a liberal/centrist party, won a supermajority in the last of both presidential and parliamentary elections. Freedom and Right Sector did not even make the top 5 parties/candidates.
Certainly lots of things went out the window when a hawkish US regime came to power and started provoking a contest. But that was in 2021. Whatever Zelensky saod yesterday was in 2023, not in the early stages of his presidency in 2019-20 that I was making a point about.
There's no need to cherry-pick about how many tanks constitute a military (or even worse, that Donbass is more defensible than Crimea or Ivano-Frankivsk). What I'm saying is that there is an implicit agreement, between the state apparata and ruling classes of the US and Russia, to sacrifice Ukrainians in a race to seize land and resources and markets. The Ukrainians do not deserve the bulk of the blame for their own suffering; that bulk is due to NATO.
Servant of the people passed anti-russian language laws
Servant of the people allowed neo-nazis militias to intergrate into the military
Servant of people mps gave regular speeches assuring that Crimea would be reconquered
Servant of the people continued the forced disappearances of ethnic Russians in donbass
Liberal and centrist can mean alot of things, but just buying wholesale into the nonsense framing of a radical coup government that only "looks" tame compared to actual insane nazis is a pretty interesting position for people on the left to hold
That liberal/centrist party is bankrolled by the the same guy that bankrolls the Azov Battalion. Zelenskyy serves the fascists who rule the state. Get real lib
You mean to tell me that capitalists would do such a thing as funding multiple rival political parties?
Next thing I know you'll be telling me they financed both sides of WW2.
So you agree that Ukraine’s government is a fascist NATO state that needs to be destroyed or at least de-militarized because it’s run by Nazi aligned financiers?
sitting on the blackened earth, surrounded by thousands of square miles of despoiled fields and ruined cities
"Well, it only cost 500,000 Ukrainian lives, a third of their population as emigrants, and all of their infrastructure and domestic industry, and we might have a huge insurgency on our hands, but it was totally worth it to depose a leader friendly with American and British reactionaries and replace him with a leader friendly to Russian reactionaries."
Go back and read my original point: defending Donbass was morally defensible, attacking Ukraine proper was less so.
Crazy how artillery and rockets make it impossible to “defend” territory without going on offense to push them back and break supply lines
If NATO fascists pick an imperialist proxy fight, they should be defeated. I don’t want to hear lib both sides shit
Hell yeah, fuck France imperialism, long live the Russian Empire and AustroHungary, brother.
Bet you are neutral on Iran-Israel too, just two capitalist states. All sides are equally bad in Syria too. Everything is flat.
Hey, palestina is bombing israeli citizens, so it's perfectly ok for Israel to conquer them, am i right???
Fuck off. You people don't give a fuck about actually combatting imperialism.
Wow, people on a leftist shitposting forum don't 'actually care about combatting imperialism'. Looks like we have the one true leftist here.
If you are so worried about imperialism, log off, shut the fuck up and go join an antiwar group in your own country (I am assuming the U.S., but hey we get all types here). There is dick-all you can do about Russia on here.
Yes, you are absolutely right. We should all oppose western imperialism, since that's the one we have a higher chance of actually being able to impact.
Doesn't mean i can't be suspicious/wary of people who, in my opinion, are a little too forgiving of Russia, thought. Forgive me if i sounded a bit NATOy.
I don't really give a shit if you sound NATOy, but being an insufferable debate-bro by bringing up completely unrelated scenarios as if they have any relevance on the moral calculations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is annoying af. Stick to the topic at hand.
There are terrible things happening in the Donbas, there were terrible things happening in the Donbas, and terrible things will continue to happen for the foreseeable future in the Donbas. None of us know what the correct moral calculation is, so stop counting angels on the head of a pin. I am fine if people are 'more forgiving of Russia' on this one little forum as opposed to the metric shit-ton of dumb takes I have to suffer through offline. (Example: I'm glad they are fighting in Ukraine because then Russia can't invade the U.S. like it wanted to.) At least these people actually understand the history of the conflict.
Lmao, no, they don't. Talking about the terrible things that have been happening in the Donbass since 2014 is also pointless since Putin doesn't give a fuck about said citizens. Material analysis please.
And again, i don't really care about all the NATO propaganda you subject yourself to. Running in the other direction and swallowing uncritically what Putin says to justify his actions doesn't help anyone.
You've demonstrated clearly throughout the thread that you have less of an idea about what is going on and the history of the conflict than basically anybody else on this thread. I mean, at least Prinz knows what went on and still completely disagrees with the invasion. You're just saying words, otherwise why the fuck would you bring up irrelevant shit all the time.
Lol, christ, stop throwing around your half-understood leftist buzzwords as if they have any meaning the way you are using them. This is what I am talking about when I say annoying debate-bro shit. Where did I say Putin was making moral calculations? Where did I indicate anywhere what I think Putin is thinking. I was talking about US, as westerners, determining the moral calculation of how much support we give Russia, and what the long run on history for this action will be.
I don't 'uncritically swallow what Putin says'. In fact, nobody on this forum does that, at least since ZPoster got banned.
However, here's some actual 'materialist analysis'. Even if all of us swallowed all of the Russian propaganda and repeated it uncritically on this forum it wouldn't matter in the slightest. Materially, this forum is a fart in a hurricane of manufactured discourse, and can't help anyone in one way or the other. Aside from that, from a systemic standpoint neither side of this conflict is governed by democratic government actions, so EVEN IF the talk on this forum were to matter to the discourse, it still wouldn't matter to the 'helping of people'.
Stop pretending you have some sort of high ground for arguing in the internet. You just wanna be right, and you are fine with being as annoying as possible to feel that sweet sweet dopamine rush. We all love the skinner box, don't we folks?
You are the one that’s a fence sitting moralist. I think Palestine should destroy Israel, just like I think Iran should destroy Israel and Russia should destroy Ukraine and China should destroy Taiwan. I’m a hardline anti-imperialist, you’re a fence sitting liberal
Lmao, hell yeah brother. Long live our antiimperialist fighter Putin.
I guess the bolsheviks were also fencesitters for not supporting either side during WW1. I have my one side, the working class, both the ukrainian and russian one.
All colonies and all NATO bases must be destroyed with violence, it is the primary contradiction, and your role as a westerner inside the imperial core is revolutionary defeatism. You should be minimizing and sabotaging your own nation’s ability to make war, not repeating the casus belli narratives of your own empire. The radlibs cheering on Dark Brandon’s anti-Russia campaign will be the end of us all because we can’t form a coherent or large enough revolutionary defeatist left
defending Donbass was morally defensible, attacking Ukraine proper was less so.
There is absolutely no scenario in which Russia defends Donbass that the West would not construe as an invasion. The plan for years has been to arm Ukraine to fight Russia. The calculus Russia made was that if they're going to get a whole war, they need to fight a whole war, and that means not limiting themselves to only operating in a tiny segment of Ukraine. That's not a viable path to victory. Morally defensible or not, states are going to use the strategy that will succeed: a fantasy ideal scenario of only being involved in the Donbass could not be successful and so would not have happened. Any intervention in favor of people in the Donbass means a full war is necessary because of the inevitable geopolitical reaction
Crimea was done pretty cleanly in 2014. There might have been verbal denouncements, but there was no military response nor any chance of one. Most of the world unflinchingly just accepted that this presently and historically Russian-majority area eagerly agreed to be Russian.
I'm at least partially in agreement with WWario that it would have been better for Putin to also take at least Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, to avoid the protracted mess that became of the region.
Putin should have fully invaded all Ukraine in 2014, not just Crimea, and destroyed the fascist NATO putsch decisively before they built up an army. Letting fascists fester only leads to more and more working class deaths in the future, they must be excised
2014 Russia would've collapsed under the weight of sanctions and financial isolation. 2014 was very different from 2022. It's very doubtful 2014 Iran, 2014 China, and 2014 India would've gone along with Russia. 2014 China, for one, actually condemned Russia's annexation of Crimea. You really think they would've actually supported Russia if Russia tried to invade the entire country instead of annexing a peninsula where everyone there was either Russian or Crimean Tatar? Plus, there's also the matter with Syria, where half of 2014 Syria was controlled by ISIS. Obviously, if Russia had to devote the vast majority of their military to invade Ukraine in 2014, what would happen to Syria?
What the Western world gravely misjudged was thinking absolutely nothing happened in the subsequent 8 years. ISIS was completely crushed in Syria thanks in no small part to Russian and Iranian military support, Assad was able to maintain power in Syria, Iran had a change in government with the entrance of the so-called hardliners (ie people who refuse to suck up to the West), Russia had 8 years to begin economically decouple from the West, and China had a taste of open Western hostility and also began to economically decouple from the West.
Well then it sounds like Putin is taking initiative as early as he could have. Critical support in crushing NATO
I think the invasion more or less happened as soon as it was feasible to do so.
tbf russia would have gotten absolutely wrecked by the current sanctions package had it been implemented back in 2014
in retrospect the only thing they really fucked up on was letting themselves get dicked around by the minsks, as opposed to not taking the west at its word and preparing more fully for the inevitable kinetic confrontation
I love these guys, but they don’t understand how Russia believes Ukrainian neutrality to be a key tenet of their ideology. It really would be like if Canada or Mexico was given missiles to point at the US from China.
America would invade in those scenario, and the campaign would be full of problems.
Yeah, there's already plenty of Americans who would be happy for us to invade Mexico just for the cartels, but you'll never convince a liberal of this reality
America would invade in those scenario
I mean, we gamed this out in practice back in the 60s. Cuba got missiles. America did not invade. Just the opposite. Invading Cuba has been something neocons have wanted to do for decades, but that the Deep State simply cannot stomach in a way that is surprising given the lengths we've gone to invade places as far away as Afghanistan and Vietnam.
If Mexico had nukes pointed at the US, I suspect it would be far more resilient to invasion than it is even now.
The reason they didn’t invade Cuba is because at first Cuba was backed by the USSR, and then after the USSR collapsed because Cuba no longer poses any threat and they figured it would also collapse sooner or later.
An amphibious invasion from Cuba into America is absurd and would never happen. Cuba never posed any actual threat to US territorial integrity in any way.
That is not analogous to NATO, the world spanning empire, amassing one of the largest armies on Earth on your land border that you have been invaded through 3 times in the last century
You live in a world of ideals and dreams, you are not serious or pragmatic
Cuba no longer poses any threat and they figured it would also collapse sooner or later.
That was the outstanding theory in the 90s, sure. But then it didn't happen. And 40 years later it still hasn't happened, despite ample CIA meddling and corporate sponsored psi-ops.
An amphibious invasion from Cuba into America is absurd and would never happen.
No. The biggest threat Cuba poses is, ultimately, a cultural one. American leadership is terrified that anyone might believe Cuba is a nice place to live.
But the addition of weapons to the island wouldn't change the math of career suicide if an invasion failed. An amphibious assault on Cuba would be nightmarish for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which being how close to the action Americans would actually be. Bay of Pigs is still far too fresh in everyone's mind. Nobody wants to play the Allen Dulles to our current President's Kennedy. Nobody wants to get into a military quagmire within spitting distance of Florida.
You live in a world of ideals and dreams
I'm quite practical on this issue. There is no "clean" way to invade Cuba and no strongman we can install to secure the island even if we could take it. Unlike Iraq or Vietnam, there's no way to shield Americans from view of the atrocities. And, at some level, there's a very real risk of sympathetic Leftists throughout the northern hemisphere deciding to retaliate on the US directly in a way that would be extremely bad for US business interests.
Just look at what's come from our dirty wars in Latin America. The immigration crisis we keep freaking out about is the direct fallout of our failed 40 year drug war. The chronic failure - and in many cases outright reversal - of US foreign policy south of our border suggests we aren't equipped to maintain control of our own backyard. Throwing the full force of the US military at Cuba would be like kicking a hornet's nest.
I'm no military strategist, and information is so poor that I would never play armchair general. I will play armchair diplomat though... Personally I didn't expect any better, but it was still incredibly disappointing that after decades of speculation about this scenario (literally predating the dissolution of the Soviet Union) that Russia's/Putin's response was, well, what it was. That it got to the point where Russia had to militarily invade... The failure to maintain their sphere of influence and prevent a military conclusion could well point to a tremendous lack of imagination and diplomacy on Russia's part. How is it that the US/NATO are just that much better at propaganda? I know it's a declining superpower, but the writing has been on the wall since the Soviet-Afghan War at least: If you invade a neighbor because the US has been fomenting conflict, they will pour billions of dollars, weapons, and CIA/JSOC training into arming radicals in that country to create a US-Vietnam style embarrassment and destabilize the region probably permanently. They just walked into it, again despite decades of forewarning from even the liberal foreign policy crowd, and with 8 years between the previous flare-up and this round.
I think the only dumb thing Putin did was wait until Ukraine built up a formidable army and trust the west’s braying bullshit. He should have crushed these fascist NATO dogs in 2014
every time he describes Russia’s actions in the war as really stupid it just grates on me
The amount of blood and treasure Russia has thrown at this conflict suggests their leadership went in half-cocked, having failed to game out the real long-term impact of a ground invasion. Maybe their military leadership could have simply done a better job of targeting and killing critical masses of people in the Ukrainian territory. Maybe they should have been more conservative and simply taken/secured the Donbas like they took North Osetia and Crimea. Or maybe the whole invasion was ill-conceived.
However you slice it, the real military consequences of endless pitched battles on the Russia-Ukraine border combined with the loss of valuable infrastructure (Nordstream 2, et al) and the alienation of regional allies (China, most notably, but possibly Türkiye and chunks of East Africa by the time we're done) will have long term negative consequences for the Russia state.
“lmao putin dumb” is just dogshit liberal “analysis”.
No worse than "lmao Bush dumb" or "lmao Bernie Sanders dumb", at the end of the day. They're right to note that Putin's inner circle failed to give him good actionable advice. They're right to note that Russia is giving up a not-insubstantial number of young people and a not-insubstantial amount of domestic resources to play tug-of-war with DC and Berlin over a mere corner of its western border. They're right to note that wars are, generally speaking, a failure of foreign policy at a very basic level.
What these analytics often leave out is how disastrous this war will be for Western Europe as well. Or how it ultimately distracts from more pressing Western interests - most prominently Chinese socio-economic expansion along the Pacific Rim. Or how the Western states are investing their own blood and treasure in a fruitless shit-flinging competition while their domestic institutions crumble. Or how America - in particular - has a large body of white nationalists sympathetic to Russian media and ideology who may pose an existential threat to the American neoliberal hegemony in the same way that neoliberals in Russia ultimately brought down the Soviet state 30 years earlier.
Much like how Iraq transformed from an American tentative ally to a regional thorn to a massive self-defeating quagmire, Ukraine is shaping up to be the death of both Russian and US-backed modern leadership. Its Lose-Lose.
Hersh was good. You could tell he's tired of putting up with bullshit
Did Mark Ames rebuke believing the US did it initially on Twitter or am I misremembering things?
He kind of did. This has been a thing since the Ukraine invasion, where they say things like "We don't know. We're not going to make predictions. It's hard to say, but maybe it was Russia. There were a lot of moves, including the invasion, Russia made that don't make rational sense." And have also backed down from being as critical of the official narrative with regards to Russia.
They’re still shellshocked from repeatedly claiming that Putin would never be foolish enough to invade Ukraine. Seeing as how the Ukrainian government was threatening to build nukes if they weren’t allowed to join NATO, I can’t say I blame him.
Seeing as how the Ukrainian government was threatening to build nukes if they weren’t allowed to join NATO
oh shit. that's an angle i hadn't heard about before. source?
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/vistup-prezidenta-ukrayini-na-58-j-myunhenskij-konferenciyi-72997
19 February 2022 - 18:14
Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time. I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.
Budapest Memo is what binded Ukraine to not pursuing Nuclear Weapons. There's another quote from a Ukr Def Minister or something around this time that is more direct, but this seems like what really caused the invasion once the border build up had been ongoing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
According to the three memoranda, Russia, the US and the UK confirmed their recognition of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively abandoning their nuclear arsenal to Russia, and that they agreed to the following:
Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders. Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used". Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.https://uawire.org/zelensky-ukraine-may-reconsider-its-nuclear-status
this is from April 2021:
Ukraine will consider arming itself with nuclear weapons if it does not become a member of the NATO military alliance, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany said.
"Either we are part of an alliance like NATO and contribute in this way to making Europe stronger ... or we are left with the other option, which is to arm ourselves," Ambassador Andriy Melnyk told Deutschlandfunk radio Thursday.
Kyiv would then "perhaps also consider its nuclear status," he said. "How else can we guarantee our defense?"
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/ukraine-mulls-nuclear-arms-if-nato-membership-not-impending-envoy
Moon of Alabama mentions it here, says it was the week before the invasion that Zelensky was opening his mouth about nukes
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/02/disarming-ukraine-day-1.html
Like me and many other analysts Mearsheimer did not expect that a Russian move into the Ukraine would happen. Why the Russian government finally decided to take that step is not clear to me. I believe that Zelensky's lose talk about acquiring nuclear weapons for the Ukraine was one of the decisive factors. Who told Zelensky to come up with that?
another MoA post has the actual source, can't find it, but you got them in the other reply
