My favorite part of that thread is how utterly convinced they all still are that Ukraine is winning and Russia is falling apart. It's a real testament to the power of western propaganda. The whole support for continuing the war is fundamentally premised on the idea that Ukraine will prevail in the end.
I think what's really impressive about western reporting on the war is that they do squirrel away enough facts that you can get a picture of what's actually happening when you read it carefully. However, the spin in the articles does a great job distracting the reader from the facts of the article. One of my favorite examples of that is when western media will report on Ukrainian losses, and will always through in the claim that Russia is actually suffering much bigger losses without providing any evidence. And of course, people reading these articles want to think that Ukraine is winning, so they just take the idea that Russia is doing terribly as read.
The framing of the west being the good guys while Russians being evil orcs is also very powerful because it facilitates the narrative that negotiations are impossible. Doing negotiations with Russia would be letting evil win, so we must fight to the bitter end. Better have Ukraine destroyed and end the world in a nuclear holocaust than to compromise.
And of course, the west being good is also fundamental to the narrative that NATO expansion is not a threat to Russia. How could Russia possibly be threatened by NATO when it's a defensive alliance of good people. So, it must be that Russia is invading Ukraine because Russia is imperialist.
It's going to be interesting to see where the narrative will shift in the coming months, especially if Russia starts going on an offensive and taking significant territory. The impression I get is that the west now realizes that Ukrainian offensive has failed, and seems that US wants to move towards some sort of a frozen conflict. However, I really don't see why Russia would go along with that.
Any sort of frozen conflict would just create an opportunity for the west to ramp up its industrial base and start pumping weapons into Ukraine leading to the conflict restarting in the future. Since Russia now has the initiative, the only logical thing to do is to exploit it and ensure that Ukraine can't be used as a staging ground for NATO in the future.
I don't get the impression that western leadership understands this. It's entirely possible that they drank their own koolaid and internalized the belief that Russia is struggling. So in their minds Russia is also looking for a way out just like they are.
This is one of the major weaknesses in the west in my opinion. There is a very narrow window of accepted opinions. Anybody who disagrees with these opinions is marginalized and their voice is removed. This creates an echo chamber where people just repeat the same mantra to each other regardless of whether it has any grounding in reality or not.
if the russians start to attack again and gain territory, the narrative will shift to even more racism, saying that the ruskies orcs has no consideration for life and thrown so much bodies that the good rational honorary white people of ukraine couldn't comprehend and got overrun by the barbaric horde or whatever.
They've already said that with their offensives in the past, that the "asiatic hordes" threw so many bodies at the Ukrainians that they ran out of bullets and were overwhelmed.
It worries me how much of the rhetoric surrounding this conflict is literal nazi propaganda, not even "cleaned up" but just with the nations changed.
My favorite part of that thread is how utterly convinced they all still are that Ukraine is winning and Russia is falling apar
Remember when Russia was running out of missiles and they would have to surrender any day now? Oddly, they seem to still have ammunition...like a year later.
The impression I get is that the west now realizes that Ukrainian offensive has failed, and seems that US wants to move towards some sort of a frozen conflict. However, I really don’t see why Russia would go along with that.
I agree, I think once upon a time that may have been possible, but Russia knows by now that anything short of an actual treaty being signed has no meaning. Honestly, I would imagine they are skeptical how much weight a peace treaty would even have given we know now that there was never any plan to honour the Minsk accords. They'd have to know that allowing a prolonged stalemate would just allow NATO to pump more weapons and materiel into Ukraine. As much as that honestly would bleed NATO of resources more than Russia, I doubt there is any real desire to lose more lives.
Right, I don't think Russia would want to keep fighting this war indefinitely and they can't trust the west with any peace deal now because that will just lead to the same situation that resulted in the war in the first place. Given that, there's only one option left which is to absorb all the territory that's not rabidly anti Russian and turn what's left of Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state.
I think this is the nightmare scenario for the west because trying to keep propping it up will turn into an economic black hole. Meanwhile, western economies are already contracting, and the burden of keeping Ukraine going isn't going to help things. On the other hand, letting Ukraine collapse would mean a massive refugee crisis in Europe.
My favorite part of that thread is how utterly convinced they all still are that Ukraine is winning and Russia is falling apart. It's a real testament to the power of western propaganda. The whole support for continuing the war is fundamentally premised on the idea that Ukraine will prevail in the end.
I think what's really impressive about western reporting on the war is that they do squirrel away enough facts that you can get a picture of what's actually happening when you read it carefully. However, the spin in the articles does a great job distracting the reader from the facts of the article. One of my favorite examples of that is when western media will report on Ukrainian losses, and will always through in the claim that Russia is actually suffering much bigger losses without providing any evidence. And of course, people reading these articles want to think that Ukraine is winning, so they just take the idea that Russia is doing terribly as read.
The framing of the west being the good guys while Russians being evil orcs is also very powerful because it facilitates the narrative that negotiations are impossible. Doing negotiations with Russia would be letting evil win, so we must fight to the bitter end. Better have Ukraine destroyed and end the world in a nuclear holocaust than to compromise.
And of course, the west being good is also fundamental to the narrative that NATO expansion is not a threat to Russia. How could Russia possibly be threatened by NATO when it's a defensive alliance of good people. So, it must be that Russia is invading Ukraine because Russia is imperialist.
It's going to be interesting to see where the narrative will shift in the coming months, especially if Russia starts going on an offensive and taking significant territory. The impression I get is that the west now realizes that Ukrainian offensive has failed, and seems that US wants to move towards some sort of a frozen conflict. However, I really don't see why Russia would go along with that.
Any sort of frozen conflict would just create an opportunity for the west to ramp up its industrial base and start pumping weapons into Ukraine leading to the conflict restarting in the future. Since Russia now has the initiative, the only logical thing to do is to exploit it and ensure that Ukraine can't be used as a staging ground for NATO in the future.
I don't get the impression that western leadership understands this. It's entirely possible that they drank their own koolaid and internalized the belief that Russia is struggling. So in their minds Russia is also looking for a way out just like they are.
This is one of the major weaknesses in the west in my opinion. There is a very narrow window of accepted opinions. Anybody who disagrees with these opinions is marginalized and their voice is removed. This creates an echo chamber where people just repeat the same mantra to each other regardless of whether it has any grounding in reality or not.
if the russians start to attack again and gain territory, the narrative will shift to even more racism, saying that the ruskies orcs has no consideration for life and thrown so much bodies that the good rational honorary white people of ukraine couldn't comprehend and got overrun by the barbaric horde or whatever.
the asiatic hordes narrative will definitely get a lot more airtime
They've already said that with their offensives in the past, that the "asiatic hordes" threw so many bodies at the Ukrainians that they ran out of bullets and were overwhelmed.
It worries me how much of the rhetoric surrounding this conflict is literal nazi propaganda, not even "cleaned up" but just with the nations changed.
Remember when Russia was running out of missiles and they would have to surrender any day now? Oddly, they seem to still have ammunition...like a year later.
I agree, I think once upon a time that may have been possible, but Russia knows by now that anything short of an actual treaty being signed has no meaning. Honestly, I would imagine they are skeptical how much weight a peace treaty would even have given we know now that there was never any plan to honour the Minsk accords. They'd have to know that allowing a prolonged stalemate would just allow NATO to pump more weapons and materiel into Ukraine. As much as that honestly would bleed NATO of resources more than Russia, I doubt there is any real desire to lose more lives.
Right, I don't think Russia would want to keep fighting this war indefinitely and they can't trust the west with any peace deal now because that will just lead to the same situation that resulted in the war in the first place. Given that, there's only one option left which is to absorb all the territory that's not rabidly anti Russian and turn what's left of Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state.
I think this is the nightmare scenario for the west because trying to keep propping it up will turn into an economic black hole. Meanwhile, western economies are already contracting, and the burden of keeping Ukraine going isn't going to help things. On the other hand, letting Ukraine collapse would mean a massive refugee crisis in Europe.