https://nitter.net/TarikCyrilAmar/status/1678332708227895297
Russia did have less aggressive options and massively overreached.
Did they though?
Perhaps, but I find it to be a waste of breath. If we go down this road we find ourselves debating an alternate reality which does not exist. The Russia antagonists have no interest in outlining an alternate course of action which would have put a lid on US military and economic influence in eastern Europe, and the Russian nationalists don't care.
At the very least, a discussion of what Russia could have done differently should include a discussion of what the US, NATO, and Ukraine should have done differently, but no one wants to have that conversion and you get called an apologist for bringing it up.
The question, "how could the war have been prevented?" is purely academic. The question, "How can the war be ended?" is very real and practical.
Clearly the answer was to truck RU soldiers into the donbass and just sit on their thumbs allowing Ukrainian artillery to smash them, or something
Obviously the Ukrainians (and NATO) would just allow this to happen, and not decry it as an invasion anyway, because they operate on such good faith after all.
Yeah, sitting on their thumbs for 8 years allowing Ukrainian artillery to smash civilians.
??? they were fighting and dying. what is with this characterization of the war in the LPR/DPR as ukraine idly lobbing bombs at civilians and not an actual war?
Exaggerating a bit I guess. They were fighting but it wasn't exactly full throated support, or else Russia would have recognized the DPR and LPR and actually pushed back against Ukraine like they are now. Which is the point of:
Clearly the answer was to truck RU soldiers into the donbass and just sit on their thumbs allowing Ukrainian artillery to smash them, or something
People saying Russia shouldn't have invaded are basically saying the status quo of the war was good actually.
They could have invaded in
2013edit: 2014 before the western military buildup. It would have takes a few weeks tops. Much less agression involved.They wanted to avoid aggression entirely, which is why they didn't invade. They negotiated the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, then sat by letting Ukraine break those agreements for 8 years before doing something about it.
i.e. they tried the diplomatic way, and when that failed they still waited years before doing anything.
Yes thats my point. The russian lib goverment made the situation worse by inaction. They should have acted a lot faster and more descisevly. That has been the only way to deal with facists.
Ukraine had a pro-Russian president in 2013. This all started with the western backed coup in 2014.
They did, at least in so far as it came to bombing major civilian infrastructure as far west as Kiev.
There was also the option of simply evacuating ethnic Russians from the Donbas rather than launching an invasion into Ukraine. Cede the territory to the Ukrainian nationalists and fortify your borders without actually crossing into neighboring territory and spending the next two years in a bloody quagmire.
You always have the "Don't Do War" option. The invasion was an entirely unforced error on their part.
There was also the option of simply evacuating ethnic Russians from the Donbas rather than launching an invasion into Ukraine. Cede the territory to the Ukrainian nationalists
Do you hear yourself? That's a horrible option. "Just give the Nazis what they want."
"The Russians have kidnapped x citizens from Ukraine" literally it's why Putin is wanted by the ICC lmfao
"Just give the fascists what they want."
The trolley problem, but on one side of the track are 300,000 civilians of various origins all tied to the tracks and on the other, a fascist waiting patiently by the trolley stop to receive a basket of treats.
Yes. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are worth more than whether or not some Banderite gets to be smug on Twitter.
Fascists don't stop when you give in to their demands. We learned that lesson almost 90 years ago.
This isn't a question of fascist demands, its a question of preserving civilian lives.
Invading the Donbas didn't end fascism in Eastern Europe any more than invading Afghanistan ended the threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.
It literally doesn't matter how you try to justify this humanitarian atrocity. The Russian invasion only served the interests of European fascism in the long run, without doing anything to preserve the lives of the Donbas residents it was supposed to protect.
Might as well suggest we needed to bomb Auschwitz in order to kill all the German guards as bomb Ukraine to kill the fascists.
Yeah? Some anti Nazi resistance fighters asked the RAF to bomb the death camps, because anything was preferable to Auschwitz continuing to exist. There were people who wanted that.
Some anti Nazi resistance fighters asked the RAF to bomb the death camps
Well, if some random assorted collection of anonymous people said so, I guess the Allies really missed an opportunity to do an even more reprehensible attack than Tokyo or Dresden.
Heres an article with some names. 5 min research.
"In June 1944, John W. Pehle, the executive director of the War Refugee Board, appealed to the U.S. government to bomb the railways leading into Auschwitz. In July, Johan J. Smertenko, the executive vice chairman of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, sent a letter to President Roosevelt asking him to bomb the extermination camps, especially the “poison gas chambers of [the] Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.”" https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/why-wasnt-auschwitz-bombed/
As hawkish as the yanks are I think they're smart enough to not actively support Nazi paramilitaries doing border raids on a nuclear power.
How do you think those Nazi paramilitaries got there?
They can keep fomenting unrest that spills over the border while still maintaining plausible deniability, much like how they legally recognize one country two systems in regard to Taiwan while ratcheting up tension in the region with the navy.
I would agree with the statement quoted earlier if the word "actively" was replaced with "openly".
You're delusional if you think the "international community" (i.e. the West) wouldn't support Ukraine against Russia no matter what. The facts don't matter, if Russia had to respond to a literal attack they'd still be calling it an "unprovoked act of aggression" and sending Ukraine cluster bombs.
And again the proposal here, deporting ethnic Russians from their homelands in the Donbass, is just categorically bad. Plus the "international community" would condemn it as Russia "kidnapping Ukrainian citizens".
By giving into this one demand you put the fascists in the position where any further escalation is purely on them. If they stupidly took the bait in that situation the international community would be totally opposed to them, and not shipping them cluster bombs.
i.e. if they escalated against Russia and Russia responded. It's the same action from Russia, just under slightly different circumstances. The West would have treated it the exact same way.
As hawkish as the yanks are I think they're smart enough to not actively support Nazi paramilitaries doing border raids on a nuclear power. If you put Azov in the position where they're the aggressor I highly doubt they'd be getting much if any support from the west.
Azov spent 8 years being the aggressor and it didn't dampen US support of them at all.
They condemned that dumbass military adventure where a bunch of mercs drove across the border in armored trucks just to get blown up by Russian helicopters, and subsequently the media ghouls barely talked about it
You're contradicting yourself here. The US didn't condemn it they just didn't talk about it. Now the US is talking about providing Ukraine and it's far-right paramilitaries with cluster bombs. That seems like support to me, actual material support and not just cheering on a failed invasion.
Who gives a shit about media coverage if the US continues to provide weapons to the guys who did the border raid?
That's slop for hogs, it's just there to keep the American people docile. It doesn't have any immediate effects on the American state.
Propaganda does have long-term effects on American elites, you can see the effects that its had on them over the many years. Heck, just compare HW Bush and Dubya Bush. However, this isn't the propaganda's intended purpose.
Sure but we're still in pure propaganda territory. You haven't shown that there's an actual material change in US support. You would need to show me some sort of change or reduction in actual material US support to convince me. Ukraine has attacked the Kerch Bridge and sent raids and artillery into Belgorad without the US doing more than tut-tuting. Ukraine continues to strike Donetsk City with artillery, despite Russia recognizing them as being independent at the start of the war. Russia then annexed Donetsk, making it legal Russian territory and the artillery attacks still continued. The entire spring offensive has been into Russian-annexed territory and it's had no effect on US/NATO support. The only thing that is effecting US support is depletion and self-preservation for the US. I don't know where you're getting this idea that Russia could have pulled off some kind of weird political trick to make US propaganda work against its own interests.
There was also the option of simply evacuating ethnic Russians from the Donbas rather than launching an invasion into Ukraine. Cede the territory to the Ukrainian nationalists and fortify your borders without actually crossing into neighboring territory and spending the next two years in a bloody quagmire.
In the 90s the solution would've been blue helmets and neutral zones that are controlled by international troops. Without expulsions of population.
Honestly, if you consider how NATO treated Serbia and how Russia treated Ukraine, there are far more parallels than either side would want to acknowledge.
So take the territory Ukraine has been shelling for nearly a decade and leave their supply lines and support infrastructure untouched? What’s your plan here, move the entire Russian army into the Donbas and wait to be bombed off the map?
You always have the "Don't Do War" option. The invasion was an entirely unforced error on their part.
You’re right, invading the Donbas in 2014 and starting to commit ethnic cleansing was an unforced error on Ukraine’s part. Russia meanwhile took nearly a decade to respond to the war started by its neighbor.
What’s your plan here, move the entire Russian army into the Donbas and wait to be bombed off the map?
No. Move the ethnic Russian civilians out of the Donbas and onto Russian soil, so they're out of range of Ukranian artillery.
Russia meanwhile took nearly a decade to respond
By doing the exact same unforced error at several orders of magnitude higher death toll. We went from the Ukrainians killing people by the dozen to Russians killing populations by the thousand. This did nothing to improve the situation of the civilians in the Donbas. And two years after the conflict started, we're left with hundreds of thousands dead for... what?
What has the Russian invasion actually accomplished? You can't even claim it got rid of the fascists. Azov and its ilk are as prolific as ever. The Donbas is a giant kill zone. The Russian government is less stable than its ever been. The western half of Ukraine is a giant black market for surplus arms between fascist groups. The Scandinavian states are lining up to join NATO, while the rest of Europe is gearing up for a third World War. Ethnic Russians are increasingly the subject of a global hate campaign.
What did the invasion accomplish? Show me one thing that was actually improved by this reckless and foolish decision.
No. Move the ethnic Russian civilians out of the Donbas and onto Russian soil, so they're out of range of Ukranian artillery.
"Just cooperate in Ukraine's ethnic cleansing of the Donbass."
"I have no counterargument, so I'm going to deflect by distorting something you said to make you look bad."
Bro this ain't a small collection of villages we're talking about, the maps can distort the reality, Donbass is a massive heavily populated region, millions of people and a multitude of large cities, there's no other way to slice it, it would've been a self-inflicted ethnic cleansing lmao
And should they have done the same for Crimea? There is no escaping the confrontation, it was set the minute the fascists pulled the coup
I agree with his point, but that's not going to stop me from being a snarky contrarian debatebro when I see a good opening to attack.
Telling the M.S. St. Louis to turn around and go back to Europe, because otherwise we're cooperating with the Nazis.
Those were people trying to escape. If ethnic Russians wanted to leave the Donbass, they could have done so already, or at least asked for it. Forcing them to leave against their will isn't the same thing.
Turning the Russian army to the purpose of evacuating and providing relief to Donbas refugees to facilitate a smooth exit would have been an infinitely better use of Russian money and manpower than launching a suicide mission across the border.
Hundreds of thousands of lives would have been spared. The economy of border towns would have surged. Half of North Africa wouldn't be facing a famine due to destruction of arable land. Russian and Belarusian borders would have been well-fortified, rather than juggling the egos of a bunch of rebellious mercenaries. And we wouldn't be debating how many mines and cluster bombs to scatter across the Eastern European interior, to plague generations to come.
evacuating and providing relief to Donbas refugees to facilitate a smooth exit
You mean forcibly deporting. Because that's what it would be.
You mean forcibly deporting.
I mean opening the borders and building up refugee housing and civil services on the other side of the border.
Cool, and what happens to those that don't want to leave their homes, as people commonly do? Do they deserve to be cleansed by the Nazis or something?
what happens to those that don't want to leave their homes
They presumably get hit by Ukrainian shells, which is a thing I assumed they would want to avoid.
Do they deserve to be cleansed by the Nazis or something?
No. But then neither does some poor dipshit in Kiev deserve to get hit by Russian artillery. Nobody deserves this shit. And cranking up the volume of artillery fired does not spare anyone. Burying more mines and dropping more cluster bombs does not spare anyone. Nothing the Russians did in the invasion spared anyone.
So basically you prefer inaction in the face of ethnic cleansing. So if Hitler hadn't invaded the Soviet Union, you think the Soviet Union should have just sat there forever never doing anything about him? Millions of lives would have been saved after all.
There's only one way to deal with Nazis, and it's not by giving them what they want.
Giving passports to the few people willing to leave their homes is barely action. And for the rest, it's inaction.
comparing brigades strength fascist paramilitaries to nazi germany is beyond asinine
Nazi Germany started out as brigade strength fascist paramilitaries. Look up the Freikorp, the SA, and the SS.
What about in 1936 after those fascist paramilitaries were incorporated into the German army and then sent in to occupy the Rhineland? What would be your opinion in 1936 if the Rhineland had fought back instead of letting itself be occupied by Nazis? A lot of deaths could have been avoided if the Franco-Soviet treaty was enforced in 1936 or if the French and Russian backed Minsk 2 ceasefire had been enforced by the UN.
really stretching the metaphor here, but in your scenario its not just saying the rhineland should do self-defense, it's endorsing the French invading wurrtemburg & annexing the rhineland as well
The metaphor is indeed too stretched. I'll just say that I would have endorsed the French invading Nazi Germany in 1936 and indeed annexing any and all parts of it in order to bring peace to Europe. This is 1936 so I think the US was still supporting Nazi Germany at this point, if Germany had unlimited support from the US then the concept of a limited war against the Nazis would have been folly.
The Donbas is a lot more like Alsace–Lorraine (or Elsass-Lothringen) but that doesn't quite work out for historical analogies.
suicide mission
Evidently not, they're winning by all metrics except perhaps "not winning fast enough"
Nothing about this bloodbath constitutes "winning". Hundreds of thousands of people are dead. The repeated failed harvests are threatening regional famine. We're looking at economic damage well into the tens of billions, assuming the war were to end tomorrow, and trillions going into the future. Military budgets across the continent are surging, as European leadership is whipped into an anti-Russo panic.
All this so two legions of mercenaries can play artillery tag across the Donbas basin? How is that winning?
People usually die in wars, not sure what you were expecting.
NATO literally does not have the ability to sustain this war. They could get there, if they were not neoliberal hellholes, but they are. Their military industries are build around making overpriced, wildly complex equipment that is sometimes good enough to kill insurgents and not nearly good enough for symmetrical warfare. No amount of money can fix this.
Russia, while also being something of a neolib trash fire, still has enough Soviet infrastructure to produce in months what takes years in other nations, and they will eventually win the conflict. Whether that will be just the Donbass or a full annexation or somewhere in between remains to be seen.NATO literally does not have the ability to sustain this war.
The Western MIC can keep churning out hardware forever. There is no upper limit to the number of bombs we can manufacture, just the rate.
Russia, while also being something of a neolib trash fire, still has enough Soviet infrastructure to produce in months what takes years in other nations
It doesn't matter, when one bomb can level a city block. We're approaching a point at which there simply will not be anything left worth bombing.
Maybe, but that would just push them closer to NATO and the EU, which is the exact opposite of what they want.
but obviously so did the invasion
Only if Russia loses. Ukraine isn't joining NATO or the EU until after the war is over, which means it's dependent on the outcome of the war. The most likely outcome is Russia imposing terms on Ukraine that they can't join NATO or the EU.
Weren't the Minsk agreements mentioned in point 5 the peaceful option that ruzzia had pursued for years with no avail?
Yep. Russia took nearly a decade to respond militarily. Ukraine started the war in 2014.
Ukraine was not sovereign by 2014, Maidan means we may as well say the US began the war in 2014.
decade to respond
russian annexation of crimea
russian ""volunteers"" in Donbass
What does "russian ""volunteers"" in Donbass" mean? Were they an extension of the Green Men NATO was rambling about?
in the takeover of crimea the russian army didnt pretend to be affiliated with a breakaway republic iirc but it was a similar "these aren't really our guys" sort of deal
So, are the Donbass separatists mostly an native-Ukraine force, just somewhat supported by Russia, despite their Surzhyk, OR are they composed of foreign, official Russian army soldiers, with barely any links to Ukraine?
no one's sure about that except the russian army i expect. now that they're annexed any "native" troops are russian too
- #Russia did have less aggressive options
oh yeah, sure. that's why you listed them
The argument literally makes no sense when you account for the years between 2014 and 2022, the Russians did use numerous "less aggressive options" and all it resulted in was 15,000 Russian Ukrainians getting disappeared and a massive military expansion of the Maidan coup regime
The rest of the outline is ok tho
I'm still confused on how the 15,000 Russophone Ukrainian civillians dead were caused mostly by the AFU, than the separatists. If I remember correctly, less than 4,000 dead on the AFU, and less than 6,000, on the seperatist side.
Edit: Sorry, I just meant 15,000 dead civillians
I'm not talking about the war-dead, at least not combat-wise, I'm talking about police action of the Ukrainian state outside of combat, that human right orgs in the west said (all the way back in 2018) resulted in 15,000 disappearances in eastern Ukraine alone
I'm still wondering how the AFU caused the majority of these deaths, and any such sources on them? Thanks if you can find some.
I mean not escalating things into an intense armed conflict which will probably kill hundreds of thousands of people, injure many more, and generally cause significant harm to workers at home and abroad would have been nice, but such consideration can't really be expected from a government that is decidedly not socialist.
I mean since the invasion Azov has only grown in size and now has extra defenders so great job there
I care much less about the size and internet presence of Azov than who they have dominion over. I won't assume your values, but if all you care about is line go up, Azov was already growing and getting integrated properly into the Ukrainian military before the invasion. The war presents an outside possibility of its ultimate destruction ("denazification" means mainly this) and, and I cannot stress this part enough, preventing the Azovites from being able to slaughter the people of Donbas with impunity.
The war presents an outside possibility of its ultimate destruction
It doesn't. Be honest. This is literally just copium. The US and the rest of NATO will continue to flood them with arms for as long as it takes.
preventing the Azovites from being able to slaughter the people of Donbas with impunity.
They are slaughtering people at this very moment
It doesn't. Be honest. This is literally just copium. The US and the rest of NATO will continue to flood them with arms for as long as it takes.
Guns require people who are willing and able to shoot them. The Ukrainian army is not infinite and their generals are not immortal. Your defeatism makes quite a lot of sense ideologically, but I for one think that the US actually can be beaten back so long as it's not being directly threatened.
They are slaughtering people at this very moment
I don't believe it's quite the same situation for them now, considering how under-equipped the Donbas military was and how they had no allies doing any of the fighting. Beyond that, the war will end, and the point of the war is indeed not the war itself but its end, with some sort of peace for Donbas being negotiated in a manner that has more weight than the premeditated lies that were the Minsk treaties. The extent to which it is two countries negotiating versus one extracting concessions from what is left of the other is not something I can really predict, but I can assure you that if only one remains standing it will not be Ukraine, so the outcome should be better for Donbas either way than if Russia had not intervened and the only end in sight for the shelling of Donbas was the possibility a thorough on-the-ground pogrom.
They are slaughtering people at this very moment- are they doing it with impunity though?
I remember some sad looking Nazis in bunker town last year.
I think the Azov's ability to roll up into town unimpeded and begin disappearing people has been reduced some what . Is the death and carnage worth it? well, obviously yes it is- for the Donbass fighters who defended themselves from the beginning of this in 2014 . And no one with a Azov tattoo would even discuss the ability of letting the donbass rule itself so they seem pretty happy to keep it going.
Ukraine was a time bomb and it was going to go off eventually.
This is unquestionably true, and also why I said that nothing else could have been expected.
#4 is questionable, because no matter how much Russia avoided the last option of invasion, US/NATO would just keep provoking.
Its pushed a massive Nazi and NATO threat further away from their borders thus far so it did improve their nations safety
Has it? I guess I don’t know just how “disputed” the breakaway territories were before the start of the SMO, but if you include them as de facto Russian territory it doesn’t seem like the maps shifted all that much
I can't find it anymore because Google searches are polluted with propaganda and I don't know how credible this is but I saw a map of Russias nuke detectors
They range it covers are all cone shaped and because of the way the Western facing ones are positioned, there's actually a small Blindspot in the Eastern part of Donbas
If US stationed nukes there, they would not be able to detect them early in launch
TBH the only reason I considered that there might be a point to #4 is because it's Mark Ames position, but perhaps he's not immune to liberalism.
I think #4 is correct, but if Russia had leaned more heavily on economic/political methods of countering Ukraine and the west it would've - imo - just been kicking the can on this whole process for a few more years. They'd already been trying that approach before the SMO started. This whole thing certainly could've been avoided but it takes two to tango and Russia couldn't have unwound the tension solely by itself
good, nuanced take
I knew this post would lack historical materialism before I read it lol
There's a reason why these DSA radlibs focus on "NATO" rather than critique the actual material property relations. You won't hear them talk about things like IMF finance imperialism and the privatizing of Ukraine's 'breadbasket of Europe/Russia" farmland.
In the comments he argued one of the ways Russia could have been less aggressive is if they just claimed Donbas and left it at that. But I don't see how that prevents a larger conflict, UA and NATO wouldn't take that sitting down. I can see plenty of ways Russia could have been less aggressive but UA and NATO wouldn't have acted in kind. I don't see how Russia is the aggressor, I see this as the result of UA and western actions.
Crimea was annexed without force, but then again that region didn't have as much existing conflict. IDK.
Obviously they should have sent troops into Donbass and called it a police action
Putin could have easily spun it that way if not for the early rush for Kiev.
yeah, i really think that early rush for kiev and the framing that ensued was probably one of their largest mistakes. not that the west would buy the police action spin, but like...well the us has certainly done far worse under that precise name.
Russia has committed the crime of war of aggression
You mean Ukraine? When they started the war in 2014?
The Ukrainian working class was skeptical about joining the EU which is why the imperial core deep state had to foment a coup
Don't you think the Maidan coup was more of a struggle instead between pro-Russian and pro-Western capitalists?
Am I the only one who hates how often this conflict is referred to as a "war of aggression"?
Really reminds me of how the confederacy and their lost cause believers call the civil war the "war of northern aggression" even though they started that shit
It makes me think of someone pointing a finger at your eye from 2" away and saying "I'm not touching you." It's just legalism being used to obscure what's actually happening.
Edit: I remember the breathless news about how a clearly reluctant Russia was definitely going to invade on a certain day, and then when it didn't happen the bombing of cities in the Donbas would accelerate. Maybe I'm an idiot, but it seemed obvious that Russia was being provoked into having to intervene. There had to have been a lot of public pressure to do something to protect people in the LPR and DPR.
I also can't see any broad Ukrainian interest in having a war with Russia. If they wanted this I think more of them would've stuck around. If this war isn't a project of the Ukrainian working class, then I wonder who's interests it actually does serve?
There is nothing aggressive about doing what is necessary. Only libs think pre-emptive survival actions are "aggressive".
They will have absolutely no problem with a war of aggression when they perform the next one.
Cards on the table I haven't seen anything from the Russians substantiating "Kiev in 3 days" only western talking heads dooming about the invasion at the start, it just seems like this broadly accepted idea, now, that Russia took a half-assed shot at Kiev for all the marbles then pulled it at the last minute
I lean towards the feint theory side but admit it could just be cope, it just strikes me as wild to consider taking a capital as some sort of win war button, thats not how it works
it just strikes me as wild to consider taking a capital as some sort of win war button, thats not how it works
But it's worth 50 victory points!
I think the most plausible explanation for the Kiev pincer in the early days is it was a feint, which is a tactic the Soviets developed and used extensively. Its point was mainly to put pressure on the Ukraine government and prevent them from being able to commit more forces to the actual front in Donbass. If there had been no resistance, maybe they would have taken the opportunity and pushed into Kiev, but they pulled out when early negotiations were making progress.
We have no idea what Russia actually wanted or expected, we just have Russian statements and speculation from western talking heads speculating about that.
My speculation was that Russia wanted a repeat of their intervention in the South Ossetia war. A show of force, including a rapid drive on the capital, followed by a favorable peace deal. This peace deal would probably include an end to the Donbas war, Crimean water rights, and massive demilitarization of Ukraine. Ukraine may have had to recognize the Donbas republics. The peace talks were in Turkey and it looks like Boris Johnson came in and scuttled them.
disproving your althistory fantasy with my own straight out of a russian nationalist's most paranoid delusion
no it didn't. what are fucking talking about? ukraine cannot invade and kill millions of russians.
still missing: mortal threat to russian lives and soverignty.
yeah, minsk wouldve been a good compromise and it was purposefully sabotaged by ukrainian ultranationalists---that doesn't mean Russia's acting in unqualified self defense. this war ain't being fought on Russian soil
ethnic russian citizens of ukraine, a siege the russians had a hand in extending through armed support to the separatists
"Russia helping the Donbas separatists resist the literal neo-nazis attacking them extended the siege by preventing the resistance from immediately collapsing"
Bullshit take. The only way to stop the violent imposition of ethnonationalist rule over Donbas was and is through force, as Minsk 2 proved. The absence of a war would not mean the presence of peace for those ethnic Russians as Azovites nonetheless run roughshod over them unopposed.
separatists now annexed to the russian federation. i for one think the russians were simply there to help
You're bullshitting for the sake of a point you can't defend. I never said Putin was engaged in charity -- he is not, he's just a mafioso. It is nonetheless better for Donbas if his gang succeeds rather than the Banderite gang.
I never said Putin was engaged in charity
merely ommitting the context that contradicts your characterization of arming the LPR/DPR as humanitarian antifascist aid
the separatists would have folded without russian aid. i am not making a moral case, just saying that russian actions contributed to the extended war & casualties. this is factual. pretending the russians were not involved militarily in ukraine after 2014 is lying, however much preferable the russians might be to banderites.
merely ommitting the context that contradicts your characterization of arming the LPR/DPR as humanitarian antifascist aid
Bull-fucking-shit, I have never and would never characterize Russia's actions this way, merely explaining how we should evaluate them. I apologize for not going through the fucking kabuki theater of disavowals with people who should (and perhaps do) know better by this point, I do that shit enough trying to explain to liberals that the invasion was not "unprovoked" as the Reddit phrasing goes. Putin is a mafioso -- as I say on what feels like every single comment I make on the subject -- his agenda just happens to be the one that is better for us. This isn't a difficult concept.
the separatists would have folded without russian aid. i am not making a moral case, just saying that russian actions contributed to the extended war & casualties. this is factual.
It's also a stupid argument. "If the Warsaw insurgents merely surrendered instead, there would be less fighting!" Yes, but this is completely blind to what the purpose of the fighting is and the violence that happens outside of what we recognize as war. Violence against the people of Donbas would not have stopped just because the shelling did, the ethnic Russians -- along with all other minorities in Ukraine -- would have become more and more marginalized even within that "peace" while anyone suspected of dissidence would be tortured and/or murdered by Banderites, and who knows what a bunch of Banderites who are heavily armed, state-sanctioned, and have subjugated a region of unruly ethnic Russians would do to them in the long term? I wonder if we can get any insight on that from Bandera, "their father"
I'll let you reach your own conclusions on how neo-nazis deal with ethnicities they hate.pretending the russians were not involved militarily in ukraine after 2014 is lying, however much preferable the russians might be to banderites.
This is obvious and our discussion up to this point was predicated on this assumption. I see no reason for you to bring it up now as though I am contesting it unless you're really that desperate to look like you have a case to make. As I already said, Russia sending military aid to Donbas insurgents was good, a statement that would be nonsensical if they had not, in fact, been sending military aid to Donbas.
I apologize for not going through the fucking kabuki theater of disavowals
like it sucks to do it but when you talk about things to not literally the same people you have to. i mean you're here under a comment foretelling a fictional ukranonazi genocide of russia, how am i supposed to know you aren't on board with the ridiculous OP if you don't say so? nobody is privy to the totality of your worldview unless you make it clear.
i'm pretty done with this shit, if you want to have a no-assumptions discussion take it up some other time, under a comment disagreeing with a comment disagreeing with a post is no way to talk about something with any nuance
Minsk agreements that Russia kept trying all specifically kept Donbas as part of Ukraine. Russia were happy to have Crimea immediately in 2014, they never wanted Donbas that's why it fucked around for years and years and years before this. Ukraine had almost no fucking army at all in 2014, that's why all the fighters were nazi batallions through Right Sector and Azov. Had they wanted it, they could have taken it without any resistance whatsoever back then.
Pretending this is about land grabbing that region is just absolute nonsense cooked up by liberals.
That pretty much lines up with my views. Russia is entirely justified in seeing NATO as a threat to its sovereignty, their assault of Ukraine was not a proper response to that, but it’s also obvious that Western powers aren’t interested in peace or the best interests of Ukraine, they just want to break Russia by any means necessary.
I feel like a viable option for #4 would be to fortify their border and build up troops and artillery right next door. As wild as Ukraine is, I don't think they would have shelled or bombed Russian territory, and I think it would have kept them a little more chill about their ethnic cleansing for fear of retaliation.
There are no good natural stop gaps on the border between Ukraine and Russia in 2013. It is understandable to want to reduce the length you have to defend and have also more defense in depth. Since Russia is currently relative to plenty country groups west of it on its maximum point.
Its population is structured in a way that combat ready people will diminish over the next years, plenty of weapon systems that are in use in this war would not have been able to be used in say 20 years, the economic comparison between Russia and Ukraine and a couple of relevant countries means that in economic might relative to NATO countries Russia will weaken unless event change it.
This means among the best points for such a war was now. Shock & awe didn't work out, which made the war much more costly.
In current military journals the conviction is that mobile/active troops will always be able to break through passive/fortified positions. This means bunker would need to be built in depth which costs quite a bit and makes you withdraw capital from other aspects of your country. So I don't think bunkers are the answer to #4.
little more chill about their ethnic cleansing for fear of retaliation.
Russia had a literal invasion army on the border of Donbas in 2022 and Ukraine responded by increasing the artillery bombardment of Donbas. How many more thousands of troops do you think Russia could put on that border to chill Ukraine out?
