Civilians in the Donbas are very safe now. The military aged males? Even safer.
I agree that there was a big problem there. Seems to me they failed to solve it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
