Ukraine told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" on Thursday, the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration at leaks from Western officials that say its forces are advancing too slowly.
Ukraine has been invaded. Are you suggesting they do not fight back?
NATO is not war. No NATO country has been attacked. Engaging against Russia directly would put NATO at war with a nuclear power. I cannot imagine that this is your plan.
Not just “the West”, but everybody is on the sidelines as far as direct engagement goes. Most countries are assisting Ukraine where they can. Some to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Most have imposed crippling sanctions. So. “sidelines” is a bit misleading from that perspective.
Even Russia’s allies are “on the sidelines”. You certainly do not see much overt support from China. They have even maintained ( in fact stepped-up ) diplomatic relation with Ukraine.
Or are you trying to imply that the underlying cause of everything here is something other than Russia’s continued invasion? Everybody could truly go back to the sidelines if Russia just left.
The only other path is for Ukraine to win. Are you supporting that or not?
If your goal is to prevent deaths, surrendering would have been the ideal yeah.
Zelenksy tried to surrender to prevent further deaths, and Boris Johnson refused to let that meeting happen because NATO isn't finished using Ukranians as crash test dummies.
If your goal is to prevent deaths, surrendering would have been the ideal yeah.
This has literally never been true in any war ever. Foreign occupations rarely tend to be bloodless and I doubt a Russian one would have been an exception. At no point were any of the peace talks about Ukraine's surrender – only renouncing it's NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops, as per:
"In the weeks ahead of Johnson's April 9 visit, high-level diplomatic talks held in Belarus and Turkey had failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, though reports in mid-March indicated that Russian and Ukrainian delegations "made significant progress" toward a 15-point peace deal that would involve Ukraine renouncing its NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Moscow's troops."
At no point was surrender on the table - that would have likely lead to Zelenksy's detention and execution in the early days of the invasion.
I don't think Zelensky was too keen on capitulating to Vladimir Putin's demands to destroy his country, after sending in GRU hit squads to kill him and his family multiple times at the outset of the war.
Zelenskyy tried to surrender and Boris Johnson stopped him?! Ooooookay… He maaaybe (all “unnamed” sources) expressed an opinion, which the U.K. learnt the hard way, that you cannot negotiate with dictators. There can be no “peace in our time” with dictators hellbent on destruction.
To cast that as “Ukraine was stopped from surrendering” is just obscene … and yet another Kremlin talking point.
which the U.K. learnt the hard way, that you cannot negotiate with dictators. There can be no “peace in our time” with dictators hellbent on destruction.
If the UK is convinced that you can't negotiate with dictators, how does the UK keep entering into arms sales agreements with Saudi Arabia? Do the contracts just appear out of thin air at BAE?
I am referencing to a dictator that is hellbent on invasion of other countries. We had plenty of relations with Russia before they decided to invade Ukraine and they were a dictatorship before. We have plenty of relationships with China now and they are a de facto dictatorship.
The Saudis used their British weapons to bomb Yemen and create one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent memory. The UK sold weapons to Saudi before, during, and after the Saudi involvement in Yemen.
Perhaps Russia should have merely bombed Ukraine to the point of starvation. Then they'd be a good dictatorship that the UK would be happy to carry out business negotiations with.
What’s going on in Yemen is incredibly complicated. I’m not condoning everything Saudi Arabia is doing there, far from it, but to call it out as a good vs evil war is frankly a simpleton view. Saudi is bad there. Everyone is bad there. It’s a huge mess. But I think it’s important to recognise that the Saudis aim is to restore order in a neighbourhood country, to prevent Iranian influence from growing and to suppress violent Islamic fundamentalism.
They did say saudis bad tho, we should give the same nuance we expect from others. I don't suppose the commenter you're replying to supports Saudi arabia, it's just odd that the nuance they're seemingly willing to grant the saudis wont be given to Russia
What’s going on in Ukraine is incredibly complicated. I’m not condoning everything Russia is doing there, far from it, but to call it out as a good vs evil war is frankly a simpleton view. Russia is bad there. Everyone is bad there. It’s a huge mess. But I think it’s important to recognise that the Russians' aim is to restore order in a neighbourhood country, to prevent American influence from growing and to suppress violent Neo-Nazi extremism.
I’m not condoning everything Saudi Arabia is doing there, far from it,
but
you girls get annoyed when we're 'inconsistent' (you just misunderstand us on purpose) but you guys are far more inconsistent in the worst ways possible than you even think we are.
Holy shit man just realize you have no ideology or clue, stop talking and educate yourself on what the actual fuck is going on in the world. It would be a far more productive use of your time.
But I think it’s important to recognise that the Saudis aim is to restore order in a neighbourhood country, to prevent Iranian influence from growing and to suppress violent Islamic fundamentalism.
"Restoring order is when you bomb hospitals and exacerbate famines and the more people that die, the more order it is."
The Saudis are committing genocide in Yemen. No ifs, no buts. To claim they have a good reason to be out there doing it is genocide apologia.
“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
The news highlights the impact of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to stop negotiations, as journalist Branko Marcetic noted on Twitter. The decision to scuttle the deal coincided with Johnson’s April visit to Kyiv, during which he reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to break off talks with Russia for two key reasons: Putin cannot be negotiated with, and the West isn’t ready for the war to end.
Foreign Affairs is a Kremlin propaganda outlet now?
Considering there's people in this thread complaining were spreading Russian propaganda by posting a press release FROM UKRAINE I'm starting to think their accusations may not be entirely in good faith.
Or do only people you disagree with require sources, so that way you can keep gleefully believing whatever the fucking and spewing it everywhere you go
Johnson’s April visit to Kyiv, during which he reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to break off talks with Russia
Hmm let's look at the source on that: Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukranian language paper headquartered in Kyiv, owned by a Ukranian investment company also headquartered in Kyiv.
You do understand how propaganda works, right? It works by zooming in on molehills until they appear like mountains. So while I wouldn’t rule out that Johnson the Idiot said something unwise to Zelensky government, I also don’t automatically think that it means Zelenski was “forced to not give up”.
I also don’t automatically think that it means Zelenski was “forced to not give up”.
Ukraine negotiates ceasefire.
BJ tells Ukraine to not go through with it.
Ukraine does not go through with it.
Why else would Ukraine have reversed course if not for one of its NATO puppetmasters commanding it to? Either it's that, or BJ making a really impassioned argument for sending a bunch of Ukranians to an early grave and Zelensky fell for it, or Zelensky just changed his mind all on his own and the timing is a pure coincidence.
Okay, but it is literally a propaganda source that is aligned with Ukraine lmao. We know it is propaganda, we are presenting it because even the ukrainian propaganda acknowledges it as factual.
"It's not clear how Zelenskyy himself responded to Johnson's reported push to halt peace talks. On the same day of the British prime minister's arrival in Kyiv, Zelenskyy told the Associated Press in an interview that "no one wants to negotiate with a person or people who tortured this nation."
"It's all understandable," he continued. "And as a man, as a father, I understand this very well."
But, Zelenskyy added, "we don't want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution."
Also the only time the word "surrender" shows up is in a quote here where it was the west telling Zelensky to surrender and flee.
Ukraine has plenty of opportunities to win. It could have chosen to chart a more balanced position between the EU and Russia. It could have given the Donbass some independence referenda and just let them go. It could have actually tried to adhere to the numerous Minsk Agreements to deescalate and prevent war. It could have negotiated for peace while the Russians were pulling back after its previously more successful counter offensives.
But each time its leaders ignored the off ramp to peace and pursued delusional maximalist goals, egged on by promises of EU and NATO membership which even Zelensky acknowledged publically were just carrots dangled in front of Ukraine.
Now there's no pathway to any sort of Ukrainian victory and the most realistic scenarios all involve Ukraine permanently giving up Donbas and Crimea. The only difference between the likely outcome now and just giving them a referendum in 2014 is a couple hundred thousand Ukrainian graves.
I'd respect the EU and NATO more if they had actually followed through with their promises to Ukraine instead of this Charlie Brown football bullshit.
It rules that libs constantly appeal to public opinion of people in Taiwan as an argument for why China should let it be independent but as soon as people from a Western aligned country want to exercise that same self-determination its "surrendering" to let them have a referendum.
Totally an intellectually coherent ideology and not just "our team (good), your team (bad)".
Your comment makes me want to see a fan cut of Captain America where he just gets the shit beaten out of him and his limbs ripped off and he dies and every five minutes “I can do this all day” but it never turns around and he fucking dies. He never appears to make a come back. He just keeps getting his ass kicked and never stops saying the line. Except it’s not his ass getting kicked, it’s some random children he took off the street and forced to be child soldiers or he’d kill them. And he just keeps saying “I can do this all day” while tens of thousands of people keep getting killed and not once for any reason or goal that progress is made towards. Just tens of thousands of dead bodies every month. “I can do this all day” except he’s not even there he’s on an internet forum. It’s still tens of thousand of dead bodies but not his. And he’ll never give up. But he’ll never get any closer to winning. Just death to countless people who aren’t him. He can do it all day. And every time he says it you can tell he feels really cool and badass. He’s Captain America. He doesn’t quit just because it looks bad.
Neither of these things he describes are surrendering:
It could have given the Donbass some independence referenda and just let them go. It could have actually tried to adhere to the numerous Minsk Agreements to deescalate and prevent war.
In fact both of them would have prevented Russia from annexing donbass. They would be independent territories that would act as a buffer state between the two countries.
I was coming at it from the sense of both outcomes being the same (Ukraine losing Donbas) but in one scenario Ukraine "wins" because it doesn't get bombed and lose hundreds of thousands of people, but you raise a great point. There was a chance that letting Donbas go in 2014 would have resulted in a fairly neutral buffer with Russia.
There was a point where the DPR and LPR were just seeking autonomy within Ukraine to speak Russian and decide local issues but the hardliners in Kiev decided to sic Nazis on them instead.
Hell in 2014 just granting more regional autonomy could have been viable (although the Russians would probably also push for travel rights that would allow easier logistics to Crimea)
Right, but it's not like every country not filled out in green is actively supporting Russia in the same way. In terms of countries supplying Russia the way the US, NATO, and the EU are supplying Ukraine, I'm pretty sure it's just Iran and North Korea. The US has largely failed to isolate Russia the way it wanted to, but Russia hasn't been able to get the kind of support from its allies that Ukraine has (like, unless there have been some Chinese Type 99s tanks spotted in operation by the Russians that I hadn't heard about, I'm not exactly tracking the front every day).
but Russia hasn't been able to get the kind of [material] support from its allies that Ukraine has
It hasn't needed to. Ukraine wouldn't be a functional state at all by this point were it not for the tens of billions of dollars in aid as well as all the military equipment slowly depleting the west. Russia on the other hand, has been doing quite well in holding it's own economically despite the sanctions and in holding the literal defensive line against all the NATO weaponry. It's a nonsensical comparison to make.
They've taken arms and supplies from Iran and are currently negotiating with the DPRK. Yes, Russia is bigger and can theoretically out-last Ukraine in a war of attrition on a 1:1 basis, but you shouldn't be hoping for something that prolongs the war.
It's a nonsensical comparison to make.
So is using a map of the countries supporting Ukraine to insinuate that the all the other countries must therefore be on Russia's side.
but you shouldn't be hoping for something that prolongs the war./
lol, what do you think I'm "hoping" for? Stating the fact that Russia can easily do what it has been doing indefinitely (but Ukraine cannot) has nothing to do with my hopes.
So is using a map of the countries supporting Ukraine to insinuate that the all the other countries must therefore be on Russia's side.
No one ever did any such thing, just noted that support comes in many forms other than military equipment, which Russia has mostly already covered for itself, even if it buys drone parts from Iran. Unlike Ukraine which now relies wholly and entirely on outside help for all of its material need. You changed the goalposts for what "support" means to make it sound like only military equipment counts as support, which is foolish because it isn't what Russia needs. You're just trying to move the goalposts all over the place to make it seem like you have some kind of valid point, but you don't. Even if countries are not sending unneeded tanks, Russia still has plenty of support all over the world, mostly from countries who rightly recognize this as a struggle against the imperialism of the US and NATO which is beneficial to any anti-imperialists (including any actual leftists, even though so many western "leftists" drink deeply of their overlord's propaganda).
You changed the goalposts for what "support" means to make it sound like only military equipment counts as support, which is foolish because it isn't what Russia needs.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned here or elsewhere that financial aid was being given to the Ukrainian government in order to keep their civil service paid. South Korea just approved some of that recently.
Whenever anyone in the West brings up "global support for Ukraine" that's what they're mostly talking about, I merely clarified that because people are operating on different definitions of what constitutes "support". When I consider "support for Ukraine" vs "support for Russia", I'm comparing money, arms, and diplomatic positions or comments made by a country's leadership. When I do so, I see:
Countries supporting Ukraine with money and/or arms
Countries that have condemned the war/invasion and nothing else, maintaining their existing relations with both Ukraine and Russia while also criticizing NATO in some cases
Iran + the DPRK, plus maybe Belarus for allowing it's territory to be used
Russia still has plenty of support all over the world, mostly from countries who rightly recognize this as a struggle against the imperialism of the US and NATO which is beneficial to any anti-imperialists
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line at reflexively supporting anything the United States opposes? Like, I get that the US successfully re-aligned Ukraine's foreign policy over the last decade or two, an unequivocal and blatant expansion of US influence and control, and so a successful Russian invasion would result in undoing that American victory, but I fail to see the benefit of Ukraine being in Russia's sphere of influence for socialists, beyond the fact that Russia isn't the dominant world power. Is that really it? And if so, how is it beneficial to replace one imperialist domination with another?
Doesn't it matter that Russia is arguably more of a neoliberal state in line with the domestic social, economic and political agendas of far-right parties in the US, UK, and EU, than many Western countries currently?
In what way? I think a lot of people are acting like anyone not actively sending arms or money to Ukraine must therefore be "supporting" Russia. Has the Saudi Arabian Kingdom given any weapons to Russia? Have they given any loans to plug the holes in the national budget while the country engages in open warfare? Or are they just viewing a European conflict as irrelevant to their own aims and goals?
Most countries are assisting Ukraine where they can.
lmao here i am living in a 200 million people country where nobody gives a single fuck about ukraine
even more political groups and discussions rarely involve ukraine except when lula decides to own zelensky in some way, no one here cares about nato's proxy war
even more political groups and discussions rarely involve ukraine except when lula decides to own zelensky in some way, no one here cares about nato's proxy war
I mean why should they? Brazil as a country (you mention lula, so) isn't in NATO so it doesn't have an ideological reason to support Russia or Ukraine in the matter. There's nothing to be gained geographically for Brazil either, since whoever controls Kyiv doesn't directly impact any strategic concerns for Brazil afaik.
You say no one cares, so while I think most people in Canada and US hope that Ukraine "wins", does that mean apathy in that regard or would you say most people are passively hoping Russia achieves its war goals?
i think most people here are just apathetic towards it, yea
as for smaller, more involved groups, you have the english-speaking libs and the middle class which are just nyt-brained to the core (on every single issue, so you can guess their opinions), and the communists and PT libs (with opinions that are pretty close to ours: "war is bad, putin is shit, and we should stay away from the whole thing, but hopefully the end result of this one is a weaker, and not a stronger, american/nato empire")
the communists and PT libs (with opinions that are pretty close to ours: "war is bad, putin is shit, and we should stay away from the whole thing, but hopefully the end result of this one is a weaker, and not a stronger, american/nato empire")
All sounds very reasonable, tbh even the libs and middle-class positions make sense to me if they are plugged into the same media as US libs.
This got an upvote?
Are you open to proposing your master plan?
Ukraine has been invaded. Are you suggesting they do not fight back?
NATO is not war. No NATO country has been attacked. Engaging against Russia directly would put NATO at war with a nuclear power. I cannot imagine that this is your plan.
Not just “the West”, but everybody is on the sidelines as far as direct engagement goes. Most countries are assisting Ukraine where they can. Some to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Most have imposed crippling sanctions. So. “sidelines” is a bit misleading from that perspective.
Even Russia’s allies are “on the sidelines”. You certainly do not see much overt support from China. They have even maintained ( in fact stepped-up ) diplomatic relation with Ukraine.
Or are you trying to imply that the underlying cause of everything here is something other than Russia’s continued invasion? Everybody could truly go back to the sidelines if Russia just left.
The only other path is for Ukraine to win. Are you supporting that or not?
If your goal is to prevent deaths, surrendering would have been the ideal yeah.
Zelenksy tried to surrender to prevent further deaths, and Boris Johnson refused to let that meeting happen because NATO isn't finished using Ukranians as crash test dummies.
This has literally never been true in any war ever. Foreign occupations rarely tend to be bloodless and I doubt a Russian one would have been an exception. At no point were any of the peace talks about Ukraine's surrender – only renouncing it's NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops, as per:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/boris-johnson-pressured-zelenskyy-ditch-peace-talks-russia-ukrainian-paper
"In the weeks ahead of Johnson's April 9 visit, high-level diplomatic talks held in Belarus and Turkey had failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, though reports in mid-March indicated that Russian and Ukrainian delegations "made significant progress" toward a 15-point peace deal that would involve Ukraine renouncing its NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Moscow's troops."
At no point was surrender on the table - that would have likely lead to Zelenksy's detention and execution in the early days of the invasion.
I don't think Zelensky was too keen on capitulating to Vladimir Putin's demands to destroy his country, after sending in GRU hit squads to kill him and his family multiple times at the outset of the war.
Zelenskyy tried to surrender and Boris Johnson stopped him?! Ooooookay… He maaaybe (all “unnamed” sources) expressed an opinion, which the U.K. learnt the hard way, that you cannot negotiate with dictators. There can be no “peace in our time” with dictators hellbent on destruction.
To cast that as “Ukraine was stopped from surrendering” is just obscene … and yet another Kremlin talking point.
If the UK is convinced that you can't negotiate with dictators, how does the UK keep entering into arms sales agreements with Saudi Arabia? Do the contracts just appear out of thin air at BAE?
Sigh.
I am referencing to a dictator that is hellbent on invasion of other countries. We had plenty of relations with Russia before they decided to invade Ukraine and they were a dictatorship before. We have plenty of relationships with China now and they are a de facto dictatorship.
The Saudis used their British weapons to bomb Yemen and create one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent memory. The UK sold weapons to Saudi before, during, and after the Saudi involvement in Yemen.
Perhaps Russia should have merely bombed Ukraine to the point of starvation. Then they'd be a good dictatorship that the UK would be happy to carry out business negotiations with.
Don't be ridiculous
Ukrainians are white
That's only acceptable when it's brown, asian, or south american people who's country you're destroying.
Temporarily white mind you. They will be presented as unwashed asiatic slavic hordes soon enough by the western press, unfortunately.
Such trends and anti-ukranian xenophobia are already strongly devolping in Poland.
What’s going on in Yemen is incredibly complicated. I’m not condoning everything Saudi Arabia is doing there, far from it, but to call it out as a good vs evil war is frankly a simpleton view. Saudi is bad there. Everyone is bad there. It’s a huge mess. But I think it’s important to recognise that the Saudis aim is to restore order in a neighbourhood country, to prevent Iranian influence from growing and to suppress violent Islamic fundamentalism.
When I started reading this thread I really did not expect you to start defending Saudi Arabia to own the tankies ngl
They did say saudis bad tho, we should give the same nuance we expect from others. I don't suppose the commenter you're replying to supports Saudi arabia, it's just odd that the nuance they're seemingly willing to grant the saudis wont be given to Russia
What’s going on in Ukraine is incredibly complicated. I’m not condoning everything Russia is doing there, far from it, but to call it out as a good vs evil war is frankly a simpleton view. Russia is bad there. Everyone is bad there. It’s a huge mess. But I think it’s important to recognise that the Russians' aim is to restore order in a neighbourhood country, to prevent American influence from growing and to suppress violent Neo-Nazi extremism.
Every lib's real values: white people invaded=the good guys
Brown/Black people invaded=it's complicated
Ahh that's why Russia used the Wagner group
Lol, Iran is more moderate than Saudi Arabia and bombing and starving populations is how you create radicals.
And you think somehow the Ukraine situation is cut and dry?
The NYT said that one is simple!
When it's the US/West doing something there's all this room for 'nuance' but when it is Bad Country it's suddenly clear-cut good vs evil.
Incredible self-own
you girls get annoyed when we're 'inconsistent' (you just misunderstand us on purpose) but you guys are far more inconsistent in the worst ways possible than you even think we are.
Holy shit man just realize you have no ideology or clue, stop talking and educate yourself on what the actual fuck is going on in the world. It would be a far more productive use of your time.
"Restoring order is when you bomb hospitals and exacerbate famines and the more people that die, the more order it is."
The Saudis are committing genocide in Yemen. No ifs, no buts. To claim they have a good reason to be out there doing it is genocide apologia.
the saudis make a desert and call it peace
yeah the saudis are really worried about Islamic fundamentalism
Yemen isn't a country because it isn't white enough for you
I think italicizing it into sigh would look better but whatever
You're not very smart.
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They get their opinions straight from the white house and brussels.
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Foreign Affairs is a Kremlin propaganda outlet now?
Foreign Affairs is certainly propaganda, just not of the Kremlin variety.
Lol exactly, it's the last place you'd expect to find anything challenging the U.S. narrative.
Considering there's people in this thread complaining were spreading Russian propaganda by posting a press release FROM UKRAINE I'm starting to think their accusations may not be entirely in good faith.
What part of this reads as a "surrender" to you?
It's not how I'd characterize it personally, but it's what that other person was referring to.
Ah, all good then.
“Reportedly” means “others report”.
And your sources for your beliefs are where?
Or do only people you disagree with require sources, so that way you can keep gleefully believing whatever the fucking and spewing it everywhere you go
Hmm let's look at the source on that: Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukranian language paper headquartered in Kyiv, owned by a Ukranian investment company also headquartered in Kyiv.
Kremlin propaganda!
Sigh.
You do understand how propaganda works, right? It works by zooming in on molehills until they appear like mountains. So while I wouldn’t rule out that Johnson the Idiot said something unwise to Zelensky government, I also don’t automatically think that it means Zelenski was “forced to not give up”.
Why else would Ukraine have reversed course if not for one of its NATO puppetmasters commanding it to? Either it's that, or BJ making a really impassioned argument for sending a bunch of Ukranians to an early grave and Zelensky fell for it, or Zelensky just changed his mind all on his own and the timing is a pure coincidence.
What leverage exactly do you think Johnson had over Ukraine? He hasn’t even got leverage over his toilet seat.
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Okay, but it is literally a propaganda source that is aligned with Ukraine lmao. We know it is propaganda, we are presenting it because even the ukrainian propaganda acknowledges it as factual.
Heavens to Betsy sigh
Oh fuck lmao, it’s a bot! It all makes sense now
coping, give us a source
I love how you think a bunch of queer marxists are actually FSB agents or smth
Also link to anything in the kremlin saying this?
What the fuck is that shit that I just read.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/boris-johnson-pressured-zelenskyy-ditch-peace-talks-russia-ukrainian-paper
Also the only time the word "surrender" shows up is in a quote here where it was the west telling Zelensky to surrender and flee.
You're fucking capable of more reasoning than that, surely. After all, you have a brain that can think and challenge disagreeing views, right?
You really ought to try more and maybe, just maybe realise you may not be in the right here. But hey, you can always try to justify your views.
What do you mean by not just the west?
We have almost zero countries on Asia, Africa and Latin America which have sanctioned Russia or sent military aid to Ukraine
This is just related to nato/Europe/global north countries.
Europe is not the whole world
Shocking
But are they supporting Russia through money or tanks or drones or intelligence? No? Then they're on the sidelines. Like they said.
Ukraine has plenty of opportunities to win. It could have chosen to chart a more balanced position between the EU and Russia. It could have given the Donbass some independence referenda and just let them go. It could have actually tried to adhere to the numerous Minsk Agreements to deescalate and prevent war. It could have negotiated for peace while the Russians were pulling back after its previously more successful counter offensives.
But each time its leaders ignored the off ramp to peace and pursued delusional maximalist goals, egged on by promises of EU and NATO membership which even Zelensky acknowledged publically were just carrots dangled in front of Ukraine.
Now there's no pathway to any sort of Ukrainian victory and the most realistic scenarios all involve Ukraine permanently giving up Donbas and Crimea. The only difference between the likely outcome now and just giving them a referendum in 2014 is a couple hundred thousand Ukrainian graves.
I'd respect the EU and NATO more if they had actually followed through with their promises to Ukraine instead of this Charlie Brown football bullshit.
I mean they tried to but they got couped by the US for their troubles.
"They could have won by surrendering so many times"
It rules that libs constantly appeal to public opinion of people in Taiwan as an argument for why China should let it be independent but as soon as people from a Western aligned country want to exercise that same self-determination its "surrendering" to let them have a referendum.
Totally an intellectually coherent ideology and not just "our team (good), your team (bad)".
Your comment makes me want to see a fan cut of Captain America where he just gets the shit beaten out of him and his limbs ripped off and he dies and every five minutes “I can do this all day” but it never turns around and he fucking dies. He never appears to make a come back. He just keeps getting his ass kicked and never stops saying the line. Except it’s not his ass getting kicked, it’s some random children he took off the street and forced to be child soldiers or he’d kill them. And he just keeps saying “I can do this all day” while tens of thousands of people keep getting killed and not once for any reason or goal that progress is made towards. Just tens of thousands of dead bodies every month. “I can do this all day” except he’s not even there he’s on an internet forum. It’s still tens of thousand of dead bodies but not his. And he’ll never give up. But he’ll never get any closer to winning. Just death to countless people who aren’t him. He can do it all day. And every time he says it you can tell he feels really cool and badass. He’s Captain America. He doesn’t quit just because it looks bad.
If he holds out long enough, the Ghost of Kiev will return with the Infinity Gauntlet and Thanos Snap half the Russian armed forces away.
Neither of these things he describes are surrendering:
In fact both of them would have prevented Russia from annexing donbass. They would be independent territories that would act as a buffer state between the two countries.
I was coming at it from the sense of both outcomes being the same (Ukraine losing Donbas) but in one scenario Ukraine "wins" because it doesn't get bombed and lose hundreds of thousands of people, but you raise a great point. There was a chance that letting Donbas go in 2014 would have resulted in a fairly neutral buffer with Russia.
There was a point where the DPR and LPR were just seeking autonomy within Ukraine to speak Russian and decide local issues but the hardliners in Kiev decided to sic Nazis on them instead.
Hell in 2014 just granting more regional autonomy could have been viable (although the Russians would probably also push for travel rights that would allow easier logistics to Crimea)
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Go out and fight Russia yourself and after that you can propose that Ukrainians should keep being drafted against their will on your behalf, coward.
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Always the same map
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Right, but it's not like every country not filled out in green is actively supporting Russia in the same way. In terms of countries supplying Russia the way the US, NATO, and the EU are supplying Ukraine, I'm pretty sure it's just Iran and North Korea. The US has largely failed to isolate Russia the way it wanted to, but Russia hasn't been able to get the kind of support from its allies that Ukraine has (like, unless there have been some Chinese Type 99s tanks spotted in operation by the Russians that I hadn't heard about, I'm not exactly tracking the front every day).
It hasn't needed to. Ukraine wouldn't be a functional state at all by this point were it not for the tens of billions of dollars in aid as well as all the military equipment slowly depleting the west. Russia on the other hand, has been doing quite well in holding it's own economically despite the sanctions and in holding the literal defensive line against all the NATO weaponry. It's a nonsensical comparison to make.
They've taken arms and supplies from Iran and are currently negotiating with the DPRK. Yes, Russia is bigger and can theoretically out-last Ukraine in a war of attrition on a 1:1 basis, but you shouldn't be hoping for something that prolongs the war.
So is using a map of the countries supporting Ukraine to insinuate that the all the other countries must therefore be on Russia's side.
lol, what do you think I'm "hoping" for? Stating the fact that Russia can easily do what it has been doing indefinitely (but Ukraine cannot) has nothing to do with my hopes.
No one ever did any such thing, just noted that support comes in many forms other than military equipment, which Russia has mostly already covered for itself, even if it buys drone parts from Iran. Unlike Ukraine which now relies wholly and entirely on outside help for all of its material need. You changed the goalposts for what "support" means to make it sound like only military equipment counts as support, which is foolish because it isn't what Russia needs. You're just trying to move the goalposts all over the place to make it seem like you have some kind of valid point, but you don't. Even if countries are not sending unneeded tanks, Russia still has plenty of support all over the world, mostly from countries who rightly recognize this as a struggle against the imperialism of the US and NATO which is beneficial to any anti-imperialists (including any actual leftists, even though so many western "leftists" drink deeply of their overlord's propaganda).
I'm pretty sure I mentioned here or elsewhere that financial aid was being given to the Ukrainian government in order to keep their civil service paid. South Korea just approved some of that recently.
Whenever anyone in the West brings up "global support for Ukraine" that's what they're mostly talking about, I merely clarified that because people are operating on different definitions of what constitutes "support". When I consider "support for Ukraine" vs "support for Russia", I'm comparing money, arms, and diplomatic positions or comments made by a country's leadership. When I do so, I see:
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line at reflexively supporting anything the United States opposes? Like, I get that the US successfully re-aligned Ukraine's foreign policy over the last decade or two, an unequivocal and blatant expansion of US influence and control, and so a successful Russian invasion would result in undoing that American victory, but I fail to see the benefit of Ukraine being in Russia's sphere of influence for socialists, beyond the fact that Russia isn't the dominant world power. Is that really it? And if so, how is it beneficial to replace one imperialist domination with another?
Doesn't it matter that Russia is arguably more of a neoliberal state in line with the domestic social, economic and political agendas of far-right parties in the US, UK, and EU, than many Western countries currently?
Even Saudi Arabia is supporting Russia and they're an American ally
In what way? I think a lot of people are acting like anyone not actively sending arms or money to Ukraine must therefore be "supporting" Russia. Has the Saudi Arabian Kingdom given any weapons to Russia? Have they given any loans to plug the holes in the national budget while the country engages in open warfare? Or are they just viewing a European conflict as irrelevant to their own aims and goals?
they have timed movements in the oil market to be more supportive of Russian economic needs
hmm okay. I mean, they are both OPEC members after all. It sounds like the war just isn't altering Saudi decision making the way the US would like.
For the copypasta. You really distilled a lot of liberal brainworms down with good comedic timing.
It's so fucking funny when you consider that this is in response to a post saying Ukraine has a point.
lmao here i am living in a 200 million people country where nobody gives a single fuck about ukraine
even more political groups and discussions rarely involve ukraine except when lula decides to own zelensky in some way, no one here cares about nato's proxy war
I mean why should they? Brazil as a country (you mention lula, so) isn't in NATO so it doesn't have an ideological reason to support Russia or Ukraine in the matter. There's nothing to be gained geographically for Brazil either, since whoever controls Kyiv doesn't directly impact any strategic concerns for Brazil afaik.
You say no one cares, so while I think most people in Canada and US hope that Ukraine "wins", does that mean apathy in that regard or would you say most people are passively hoping Russia achieves its war goals?
i think most people here are just apathetic towards it, yea
as for smaller, more involved groups, you have the english-speaking libs and the middle class which are just nyt-brained to the core (on every single issue, so you can guess their opinions), and the communists and PT libs (with opinions that are pretty close to ours: "war is bad, putin is shit, and we should stay away from the whole thing, but hopefully the end result of this one is a weaker, and not a stronger, american/nato empire")
All sounds very reasonable, tbh even the libs and middle-class positions make sense to me if they are plugged into the same media as US libs.
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