What about what Ukraine wants? How come everybody has agency except the country about to be invaded?
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I’m not into cosplaying so, yeah, perhaps the piece wasn’t written for me.
US intelligence has all kinds of sources which they can’t possibly reveal. The US government also has their own agenda they are serving by saying what they say publicly, which we can also only guess at. So I think it’s of limited usefulness to try to parse what they’re saying in detail.
You’d have to define invasion. If you mean an attack on Kiev and an attempt to annex the whole of Ukraine then I definitely think that’s an underdog. Then there’s various levels of limited incursion. Like if Russia sent actual troops into Donetsk and Luhansk, already under the control of Russian militias, that would qualify as an invasion, but it’s a lot less than what Russia are advertising they’re capable of doing.
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They prefer unilaterally surrendering and giving Russia everything that Putin asks for?
We’ve seen enough of war to guess how it most likely plays out. If war comes, Putin will say he had no choice but it’s just not true. This situation is coming down to the desires and decisions of one man. Just one.
It’s not absolute, but where is the balance in Russia, compared with “The West” or the US? It’s far more accurate to say that Putin= Russia and that his agency is the one that matters at this moment than it is to say the same about Biden or anyone else. It’s not a question of fear or respect or what I or you can do.The stage is set. Putin decides what happens next.
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Well for starters, they could just be telling the truth and be wanting to warn expat citizens.
I don’t think the US saying that Russia will invade imminently increases the chances of war. It’s not like Putin has a problem being able to credibly project a loose-aggressive image, so he won’t care if he has to back down.
There are many other scenarios for why US intelligence might want to say an invasion is imminent. Just off the top of my head, the US may have a source of intelligence (be it human or signals) which they know is compromised, but which Russia still believes the US are reliant on. If that source of intelligence says “invasion coming Wednesday”, it serves US interests to be like OMG ATTACK COMING WEDNESDAY ACCORDING TO OUR SOURCES in the media. This is what I mean. You can’t assess chess moves if you don’t know the position, and I am not able to see the board that US intelligence is looking at, so I can only speculate on their motives.
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People are complicated. I get that you find it distressing but there is a game-like aspect to the situation. It’s not unusual to get caught up in a kind of excitement over it even though rationally you wouldn’t choose war.
I used to work in a facility that would have been high on Russia’s nuclear target list. Ofc the hazards inherent to the place were far more likely to kill us and we engaged in dark humor about all the possibilities but nobody wanted anything to really happen.
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U know in dictatorships u usually lose certain rights and an independent judicative? So you might not die in a war but live the rest of your life in constant fear of ending up in some prison because of some bogus charges. I dont understand how somebody can so easily talk about giving up certain freedoms. You only live once and I certainly not keen about dying in a war but I am also aware that I like to speak my mind and could easily end up being a target for saying the wrong things to the wrong person.
People have been doing exactly this for all of recorded history, and presumably all of unrecorded history as well. You seem to be applying your own personal feelings - which is that you would give up almost anything to avoid a war - and projecting that onto everybody else. It simply is not true.
Most people do not think the way you do. Humans fight wars. We are a very tribal and territorial species. But we are not a particularly logical one, and even though we know all the horrible costs of war, we keep having them anyway. This will not change. This is what we do.
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How so? The Article 6 of the Budapest memorandum simply states that Ukraine, Russia, the UK and the USA will “consult” in case there is a disagreement on the interpretation of the rest of the memorandum.
Ukraine calling for international talks seems like one of the few peaceful ways out of this, but the UN is not even involved in Article 6 at all.
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Ukraine makes it even more obvious that you never, ever, ever give up your nukes.
zara ffs no.
having nukes works really well at stopping people from invading you
Ok, and they’re wrong about that. That’s why your comment is ridiculous.
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Countries don’t accidentally nuke themselves.
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