- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reaffimed his firm refusal to cede any territory, resisting U.S. pressure for a painful compromise with Russia as he continued to rally European support for Ukraine.
“Undoubtedly, Russia insists for us to give up territories. We, clearly, don’t want to give up anything. That’s what we are fighting for,” Zelenskyy said in a WhatsApp chat late Monday in which he answered reporters’ questions.
“Do we consider ceding any territories? According to the law we don’t have such right. According to Ukraine’s law, our constitution, international law, and to be frank, we don’t have a moral right either.”
Good.
Meanwhile, I’m eagerly waiting for the local Tankie to, once again, explain how so much death is justified by the dire threat Ukraine poses to a 17 million square kilometer country with 5,459 nuclear warheads. And, apparently, to their own people. I’m sure NATO is still making them do it, yep.
This is an oversimplification. When the Berlin wall fell and Germany was unified there were assurances made that NATO would not expand eastward which obviously did not pan out.
The West has pushed forward with NATO inclusion of several eastern European nations including Ukraine since that time. During the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, George W. Bush insisted on raising the topic of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership, despite opposition from Angela Merkel, who was concerned about the implications for relations with Russia.
The concern from a Russian standpoint was an expanding Western sphere of influence, not fear of Ukrainian military action specifically.
Have you got a publicly available document that was signed by leaders of NATO and the USSR successor that there would be no eastward advancement?
Haven’t you heard, it’s because everyone in Ukraine is a nazi. Not the invader! the invadee. Nazis, all of them.
It’s a bit narrow to just write off opposing views as “Tankies.”
The vast majority of the world sees the Ukraine war as a conflict between white people. Their big objection has nothing to do with Ukrain vs Russia, it’s about the attention paid to a European conflict vs all the others around the world. Many nations notice that while Western nations have never been willing to harm their own economies to end conflicts around the world, those same nations are now asking a bunch of 3rd world countries to support our economic sanctions.
Then there’s a whole contingent of people who believe that “supporting Ukraine” is a meaningless platitude without a realistic plan for how to do it. Every sober analysis of the war concludes that it’s essentially a war of attrition. There are very few experts who believe that there is any chance that any sort of breakthrough tactic or technology will easily get Ukraine’s territory back. We know the math behind that; the rate of movement of the front is primarily determined by the number of people and ordinance you throw at the fight. Russia does significantly more of both. That’s been the case for the entire war so far and all signs suggest that it will continue to be the case.
You can go look up the movement of the front over the course of the war. To even out the numbers, we’d have to roughly triple the number of shells we send to the front (ignoring troops for now). That would likely bring the war to a stand still. To start reversing the movement at the same rate we’d likely have to triple it again. So cocktail napkin math says that if we actually want to revert back to pre-invasion borders, we’d have to increase expenditures by around 10x and sustain that for the next 3 years.
Wow, way to infantilize the vast majority of the world. Believe it or not, they’re as smart as you are and as capable of leaning about a particular conflict.
It’s a bit oversimplified but essentially accurate. You can easily find a number of sources that will show you that people is Africa, South America, India, and Asia aren’t nearly as concerned about the Ukraine war as Americans and Europeans are.
I know they’re every bit as smart as I am because I’ve had many conversations with them. I find they tend to know more about the Ukraine war, and many other international topics, than most Americans seem to.
Humans don’t give two shits about stuff not happening in their direct sphere of influence… i’m so shocked.
Doesn’t mean it’s a racial issue.
Not going to get into logistical analysis (I am behind on that). Nor will I dispute the hypocrisy of focusing only on a “white war.” That’s fair.
But I’m fervent that the justification for Russia’s action is total baloney. I can, and absolutely will, write it off.
To put it another way: even if Mexico was provably 100% Nazi, and they worshipped China and drug cartels and whatever boogeyman we have like gods, I would still be ashamed if my country, the US, invaded them as Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s beyond preposterous to think they pose a military threat to the US, or that it’s our job to purify them, much less to breathlessly excuse such an invasion as (say) Russia’s fault.
That’s what I mean by “Tankies.”
If “Tankie” means someone who thinks Russia’s invasion was justified, it’s the wrong word for many people.
There are many people who agree that Russia’s invasion was unjustified and also don’t believe that a simple “stand with Ukraine” strategy has a snowball’s chance in hell of working. If you look back into US history you’ll find a number of conflicts that we thought we could win by just offering advice, logistics, and support; they tend to be costly for the US and catastrophic for the country in question.
Justice doesn’t win wars and we know what happens when you keep throwing lives and resources at a war without a solid victory plan.
Based on what? Putin was clearly losing this war until Trump saved him. Russian losses have been catastrophic and no one can possibly consider Putiin’s invasion a success or a smart move. It seems to me like it IS working. And it’s preferable to IGNORING the Ukrainians and giving Russia an easy out.
Don’t look at the front lines. Look at the Russian economy. It’s more likely that the Russian economy collapses or Putin is overthrown due to some internal power struggles or uprising than it is for Ukraine to militarily defeat Russia.
That is as long as the West continues to support Ukraine with the bare minimum to bleed both sides continuously.
This is an underestimation of Russia’s economic realignment from West to East. Primarily with China and to a lesser extent India. It’s hubris to assume that Russia has to have a robust economic relationship with the West to remain solvent.
They are China’s bitch now. Not sure that’s a realignment.
Ok, let’s do that