Yup. Former Eastern Bloc NATO countries. Not Ukraine.
Supposedly the rumors of the Ukrainian leaders leaving are Russian plants
Thanks Neville
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If the west doesn’t seem interested in defending those countries NATO doesn’t mean shit
My optimistic take is that Russia officially annexes the independent areas and calls it a day. The western countries seem like they’ll accept it and Ukraine doesn’t have much of a choice. The pessimistic take is a shitshow
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So what’s your redline?
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Obviously. There’s a moral and legal (lol) responsibility for NATO members to defend each other. No one wants to be the person advocating nuclear war but if it’s totally unpalatable in any circumstance (which I don’t think is an outrageous position at all) then you might as well disband NATO.
If you do support being a member of NATO then the commitment is clear.
That’s probably the best outcome at this point, although it would be such a huge win for Putin. That would be twice in a row the west just lets him do whatever the heck he wants with no repercussions.
Glad we’ve cleared that one up.
What’s your view?
Would you risk New York being nuked to keep Lithuania independent?
3 times in a row if you count georgia. but it’s not a win for putin, even though he will be spinning it as such. 190k troops and he only got what he already fully controlled anyway, and sanctions are going to happen anyway.
by the way, mariupol is now in disputed territory. it’s technically a part of donbass oblast’ which putin just recognized as an independent state. so there’s your next piece staring right in the face.
Continuing on my optimism kick, an alternative explanation for massing forces on the border is to scare Ukraine into not interfering with annexing the rebel held areas.
What’s the statute of limitations for giving a shit about Palestine?
Seems like a pointless thing for Putin to do since he’s already in control there.
Beyond parody.
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Wait a minute, you just said that we should stand up for nato right? They’re a nato member.
A de jure expansion of the Russian Federation counts as a win, admittedly not a big win.
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UN Security Council emergency meeting also scheduled for 9pm ET. Ukraine to be represented. Awkward.
ABC says Zelensky advised by US to go to Lviv.
So this exact scenario was on the table 8 years ago, and the sense then was that Putin didn’t want to annex more of Ukraine because then he’d on the hook for actually governing whatever territories he seized, and he can do the same things militarily under the pretense of peacekeeping without annexation; that said annexing Donbas would be the end of Ukraine as we know it, maybe that’s what he’s going for although I’d still bet against it but it’s close.
That would make sense.
what nonchalantness do you detect? i’ve been beating the drum for a month that putin has been a very serious threat, and his aggression needs to be contained early rather than late.
it’s actually kind of amazing that biden has been calling out putin’s actions in real time compared to obama in 2014. could have been stronger, but damn trmp would have been walked all over by lavrov and putin.