Genocide, actually.
Not justified but predictable and predicted. Like I don’t think that the US response to the Cuban missile crisis was justified but it was predictable and so the Soviet decision to put missiles in Cuba was a poor choice. Similarly the US knew or ought to know that strengthening Ukraine’s military and coaxing it to align with the Wet would lead to war. Now some say it’s a worthwhile war for the US to be involved in but I don’t see how Ukraine aligned with Russia or not impacts the US either way.
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Put aside the US involvement as we (I think) agree 99% of all US foreign policy has been disastrous. It doesn’t seem to me the US had that much to do with this all?
Putin thinks Ukraine is part of some imagined “natural Russia” and is trying to manifest its existence. Had he left Ukraine alone NATO doesn’t expand and the US is no more involved than they are in NATO generally right?
I’m no expert but this feels like a totally unforced error for Putin.
You’re missing the possibly important fact about the number of Russians living in some parts of Ukraine.
The pretext was Ukraine needed to be de-Nazified. Straight down the memory hole.
Sure but as I understand the real reason was his belief in a greater Russia as the natural state?
Do you know that there’s been a war in eastern Ukraine since 2014? So the US was supporting Ukraine that whole time, and increasing the level of support during Trump and again with Biden. So Russia’s demands in February 2022 were to implement the Minsk agreements. Which basically means autonomy for the two regions of Ukraine that were fighting that civil war since 2014. Other demands were a guarantee that Ukraine would never be in NATO and that Crimea is part of Russia. I mention all of this not to say that Putin was necessarily sincere that those demands would forestall invasion, that’s not provable. But to say that you can’t really remove the US as a party to the conflict as you seem to want to. It doesn’t make any sense.
And once the conflict starts, the US can force an end to the conflict whenever it wants. Or maybe not, I don’t know what Ukraine’s weapon stocks looked like. But Ukraine had very little capacity to renew those stocks and was dependent on the West if it was going to keep fighting. So with the Biden administration stepping forward with a blank check for their proxy war, Ukraine is much less likely to negotiate, because now they can fight. Many people think this is good because Ukraine is fighting for Democracy and Freedom. Well, I’m less enthusiastic, obviously. What do I care if eastern Ukraine is ruled by Russia or Ukraine? Makes no difference to me, and I suspect a lot of Russian speakers in the Donbass aren’t all that thrilled with the Kiev regime themselves. Which, you know, the decade-long civil war in the area is kind of a tip off there.
Sure but the war started in 2014 because Putin invaded a sovereign nation?
It seems like your position is too strongly influenced by “anything the US supports must be bad”. I agree that’s generally a decent rubric but here I think it masks the pretty obvious assigning of fault.
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No they can’t. Ukraine gets the majority of their weapons from other places or domestically and even if all that was cut off they were having Molotov building parties when the invasion started. Furthermore, “an end to the conflict” in this context means Russia conquers Ukraine. That’s a bad thing.
You could look up how the election results looked, but that would require considering facts that do not fit with your feelings.
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Not necessarily.
Maybe but more likely it’s a negotiated settlement with Ukraine fearing catastrophic defeat. Certainly Russia couldn’t have planned on occupying Ukraine with the 150k soldiers it had deployed around Ukraine in 2022.
Both can be true, right? As Chomsky has said about the conflict, paraphrasing, of course the invasion was provoked, that’s why the propagandists constantly refer to “the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.” And in the same breath says that Russia is guilty of the supreme war crime of aggressive war. I don’t think those are incompatible views.
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Hahahahaha. Once again, Ukraine was asking for it.
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Ya that seems fair. Although I’m not sure if the US had not gotten involved as much the result would be more favourable. Seems like the likely outcome is Ukraine is overtaken as noted above by iron.
I guess the morality of the response has to be linked to the initial citing incident but the response should be proportional. That’s why I think it’s fair to say the US should provide military aid but not morally reprehensible weapons like cluster bombs.
I don’t think he said that at all.
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Keeed and I have gone a few rounds on this already, so I’m not commenting to necessarily continue that, but as we have a new reader in the chat, I wanted to address some things.
There is a long and important history to imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and Ukraine, way too much to cover here, Google it if you wish. There is also an important history to post Soviet Ukraine, including events like the Orange revolution in 2004.
Got to start somewhere though, in early 2014 the democratically elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in the Maidan revolution. I’m not going to litigate who did what, except to say the US state department supported the revolution. Here is where you get the allegation that it was a CIA coup and all that there. This is not my position obviously, but again, search it if you’re interested in more.
In response to the revolution, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014 (the little green men), and shortly after launched a multitude of special operations to take over regions in Eastern Ukraine, and some of these succeeded, the most important of these were Donetsk and Lughansk. In response, the provisional Ukranian government launched the ATO (anti-terrorist operation) to reestablish Ukranian control over the East. When this operation was close to succeeding, the Russians sent in a massive amount of weaponry and troops to repulse the encirclements, although they pretended it was just a few volunteers and the bulk of the fighting was done by everyday farmers and miners. They beat back the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians have not controlled those regions since.
More or less, this was the war post 2014 that continued until 2022 before the current invasion, with mostly frozen lines and various attempts at peace accords, most notably the Minsk II accords.
So the first thing I’d stress to new readers is that it is complete bullshit that post 2014 Donbas was some kind of Ukranian civil war. The two regions Keeed is talking about were and are sovereign Ukranian territories that the Russians took over, turned into military buffer zones, and from which they eventually deployed further conquests of Ukraine. There was no civil war, to suggest that there was lends unwarranted support to Russian propaganda.
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Yes they could. It was obvious the Russians underestimated the Ukrainians and thought locals would help.
Come on. You dish it out plenty. Which is fine, this is the internet after all. But you think I should brush off your saying I’m a sap for nationalist propaganda?
Ok I might have been a little hasty with the hero remark. Maybe the nationalism stuff is projection. Or reflex. Or frustratation. Idk, I can’t tell what’s going on with you.
I said his model is inconsistent. He’s selective and dishonest about what Putin says. I’m not going to discuss specifics with you because you won’t admit the blindingly obvious. Anyone else, fine.