What is EU going to do when a million refugees camp on or rush to their border with stories of atrocities?
The Crimea was a relative cakewalk, in part due to the sizeable percentage of Crimean residents with Russian roots.
I doubt that the residents of Kiev will be as blasé to the sight of Russian soldiers.
I’m a little confused on the long-term vision on this as well from the Russian perspective.
Ukraine has no inaccessible mountain regions guerilla fighters can withdraw to.
These ones are white christians.
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crimea was a relative cakewalk because it came during a power vacuum in kiev, when yanukovich fled.
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I’m also confused about why Putin waited until Trump was out of office if he’s serious about taking more (or all) of the Ukraine.
lots of really deep woods/forested areas.
Because he wants him elected again
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Trump is such a wild card, who knows if he ratchets it up to a full-on USA/Russia war.
Trump is a wild card on everything except Putin.
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published in '97, lays out pretty clear plans for Asia, the Middle East, and Europe point by point in the wiki.
" * Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics”. Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent…"
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Because Russiagate never consisted of Trump being “soft on Putin” or doing his bidding or whatever, it was all just garden-variety corruption and taking help from whoever was willing to give it.
This.
Attempting to assassinate Putin seems somewhat more likely to lead to nuclear war than just attacking Russian troops in Syria.
But more importantly, willingness to go to war in Ukraine isn’t that helpful because the US doesn’t have the capacity to do very much. The ceiling is probably keeping the Russians from having air control over western Ukraine, but even that seems (to my ignorant eye) like it would require a bunch of bombing missions into Belarus to take out air defenses.
I dunno, the whole discussion of war between Russia and NATO seems like a Putin talking point more than anything realistic. More generally, I think the conversation about Ukraine is kind of screwed up because the world is so narcissistic. There’s really not much interesting about NATO’s decision-making here. Of course we’re not going to declare war on Russia to defend Ukraine’s territory. Of course we’re going to give them defensive weapons to arm themselves. Of course we’re not going to make a bunch of unilateral concessions demanded by Russia without getting something in return. The actors who have relevant agency here are Ukraine and Russia. People need to get more comfortable with the fact that even though we might care about what happens in Ukraine, the West is not the main character here.
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this is a good point. more than pursuing some nebulous profit from ukraine, US needs to be a good ally to current nato members, who clearly have concerns that russia is readying to occupy more territory when it becomes politically feasible.
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“soft on russia” begins from the fact that trump has compromised real estate interests in the region. interests that putin often unceremoniously confiscates if he sees the owner as a target. if trmp ran in 2016 to lose but make a lot of money, “putin was nice to me” is a perfectly rational deflection and a contrarian talking point, he can repeat it and set himself up for a board seat on nord stream 2.
but once in office, the relationship should instantly flip, right? the presidency is far more impactful than a shell corporation, governed by a putin stooge in the maldives. assets can be frozen and have an army of investigators find it all. like trmp organization has sold apartments to russian money, they could have simply turned it over to fbi.
yet, the “hard on russia” never came. like putin’s police was literally beating people in the streets, and trmp was trying to get his lackeys to do the same here.
Not if you’re a moron failson who can’t think of what to do with it other than get a lot of people to overpay for hotel rooms at your hotel chain. Remember that Donnie Dumb Dumb is so bad at business he couldn’t make money with casinos. Casinos!
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This guy is trolling just a little too hard.
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The administration was “harder on Russia” than the Obama administration in terms of policy, all the “soft on Putin” shit was just rhetoric. For example, Fareed Zakaria:
On CNN’s “New Day” on New Year’s morning, the network’s Fareed Zakaria was asked how U.S. Russia policy under President Joe Biden might differ from policy under President Trump. “I think, in general, there isn’t going to be as much difference as people imagine,” Zakaria said. “The Biden folks are pretty tough on Russia, Iran, North Korea. You know, the dirty little secret about the Trump administration was that while Donald Trump clearly had a kind of soft spot for Putin, the Trump administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine. They armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions. So I don’t think it will be that different.”
Like think about it. If I ask you for evidence that Trump was “soft on Russia” it is going to be bullshit like how he said Putin was a great guy and “we have killers too” or whatever. But Trump is a bullshit artist who also says things like “yeah I actually built 80,000 miles of wall when in office”. If I ask you to forget rhetoric and forget things done for personal gain (like accepting Russian help during the election) and just talk in terms of administration policy, you’re going to discover that there is no argument that the administration was soft on Russia.
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