It doesn’t have to involve us, but if it does what great moral imperative have we broken? It would make sense if Ukraine had no chance of winning and our involvement meant just slowing the inevitable Russian victory or if we were some how “tricking” Ukraine to accepting our help that ultimately turns out to be fickle, betraying them. But I don’t think Ukraine is naïve about the fickleness of our help and it seems like, with our help, they seem to be doing pretty well.
If we are, after all, just playing Great Game geopolitics than there’s no reason not to attempt to shrink Russia’s sphere of influence. They are, after all, attempting to expand theirs.
Ukraine’s stated goal is to push Russia out 2014 Ukraine boundaries. My objection to supporting Ukraine in achieving those goals is that Russian escalation could be extremely dangerous. Whether or not it’s “right” for Russia to think of Donbas and Crimea as part of Russia, I think it’s clear that’s what the Russian elite think. How will they react if American-backed Ukrainian fighters liberate those regions? I don’t know. But intervening to the degree that we are seems dangerous.
I understand that people might think that the Russian view I describe is unreasonable, wrong, dumb, mistaken, whatever. To me that’s irrelevant though. The question is, is that what the Russian decision makers actually think? I think an analogy can be drawn to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think that American actions were dangerous, irresponsible, and capricious. The Soviets were just mirroring our missile deployments in Turkey but we went absolutely apeshit. Should the Soviets have dealt with the American reaction and attitude as it was, or should they have dealt with what they thought the logical and rational American reaction should have been?
Are we supposed to just ignore you thought that the Russian elite thought the entirety of Ukraine was their territory, and that it was too dangerous for them to defend themselves? You were completely wrong about that, why are you correct now?
This doesn’t help. I’m asking that we stop taking shots at each other without receipts. It’s not conducive to healthy discussion. Goes for everyone in every thread.
He literally removed his name from all of his posts once. Fuck that.
Also, the receipt for that post is literally just the post above. Oh the Russian elite didn’t think Ukraine was there’s, they just attempted to conquer it because they thought it was rightfully there’s. Big difference dontchaknow!
Is it clear they think that or is that just what their propaganda says? Do we have any evidence of their level of conviction for those claims relative to the grander claim the Ukraine has no historical significance and should not exist as an independent country? Are they really convicted strongly enough enough to risk a direct conflict with NATO over Donbass when their only options in such a conflict are to lose or tie in a game where everyone dies?
Maybe you have a good read on them but I think we can all agree that most of what they say publicly is posturing and propaganda and not necessarily reflective of their convictions.
We know that you thought nuclear war was pretty likely if Russia ever actually invaded Ukraine:
But that would be incredibly dangerous, as who knows, maybe the Russians actually would fight with their actual army. And then you’ve got Russians and Americans directly killing each other with thousands of nukes backing them up. What could go wrong?
We know for a fact that the Russian elites said all of Ukraine was rightfully theirs, and that they could use nukes. They have been repelled, and they didn’t use nukes. I guess there is no evidence either way for whether you, as you say now, saw through this clever ruse and knew they wouldn’t use nukes after failing to capture Kyiv, despite having claimed it as Russian territory and threatening nukes. That was sure an inconvenient time for a forum hiatus, because you could have really demonstrated how clever you are, to know that repelling the northern front wouldn’t result in nuclear war but now can see that repelling the eastern assault would result in nuclear war.
But then again, you also were pretty sure Russia wasn’t actually going to invade at all, so that certainly raises some skepticism about the degree to which you have your finger on the pulse of the Russian elites.
United States intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, an element of a covert campaign that U.S. officials fear could widen the conflict.
The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, officials said. American officials also said they were not aware of the operation ahead of time and would have opposed the killing had they been consulted. Afterward, American officials admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, they said.
The closely held assessment of Ukrainian complicity, which has not been previously reported, was shared within the U.S. government last week. Ukraine denied involvement in the killing immediately after the attack, and senior officials repeated those denials when asked about the American intelligence assessment.
I don’t know if this Russian military is going to be able to stop the Ukrainians at all at this point. Having management screaming ‘no retreat no surrender’ at the top of their lungs definitely isn’t helping things. You would think that if there was one tactical lesson learned in the great war it would be that retreat is a useful tactical maneuver that lets you sell the other side territory in exchange for their lives or your safety… and that failing to retreat in time results in being overrun and slaughtered.
I think a top down command structure like the Russians is just about the worst thing imaginable in a full on rout and that’s what this is. Assuming the Ukrainians keep the pressure on and don’t let the Russians settle I think this thing really might be over by Christmas.
I kinda feel like if I was the Ukrainians I wouldn’t be taking notes on who to kill or not kill from the U.S. government. If they wanted to kill her or her dad I’m sure they had a good reason. They were absolutely valid war targets IMO. I’m a lot less bent out of shape about them murdering her than I am about the tens of thousands of conscripts Putin is about to feed into the meat grinder all at once hoping to jam it probably.
Maybe but I could see why they’d do it if some Ukrainians have the view that the war won’t end until it is personally costly for the Russian elites, and those elites don’t really care about the Russian soldiers lives but do care about their children. And this woman was personally involved in the war effort with the propaganda so a more legitimate target than some of the other children.
What? They were absolutely not legitimate war targets - you can’t murder civilians, even if they are putting out war propaganda. I’m pretty sure killing civilians is a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Obviously Russia is doing far worse to Ukrainians, but that doesn’t mean we should give Ukraine a pass for something like this.