> avoiding escalation seems like a sensible thing at this point as it’s clear neither side can easily win.
Im not sure how giving a country being invaded the weapons it need to defend itself is "escalation".
1,261 karma · joined October 25, 2018
Im not sure how giving a country being invaded the weapons it need to defend itself is "escalation".
Russia already got multiple assurances that Ukraines NATO membership would be vetoed.
They clearly don't care about NATO or about defending Russian interests, this is plain and simple imperialism.
But the stated reason has turned out to be not true, once again Russian officials just used the threat of nukes to try and slow down Ukraine.
Russia has threatened nukes about every second week since the war started for everything under the sun.
None have materialised because they are just that, threats. It's a shame Musk feel for it.
They disarmed their nuclear stockpile and their long range strike capability under an international agreement where the largest players in the world made promises / guarantees to them.
My guess is that they suspected that Russia would actually follow them and not break it because they felt like it.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1699168108148089169?s=20
This isn't the only time that this war could have been averted.
I also believe this war is partly because of the worlds weak response to the initial 2014 invasion, if the response to that was stronger then I think there was a decent chance the 2022 invasion would of never happened.
Are these things not worth fighting for?. If you don't fight for your freedom then what would you fight for?.
I think it’s more than that, they do make a hit to capability albeit they would degrade some slowly.
They also target specific units generally those ones that are launching the cruise missile attacks on Ukraine, or more recently airborne bases or groups have been involved in the war.
> But the situation here is unique in that Ukrainians can pretend they are not paying the price, and Russia does not respond with significant escalation. For now at least.
These drones aren’t expensive so the price is a bit of a moot point really, the cardboard drones that have been rumoured to be used in one of the attacks only cost 3k, and the Ukrainian long range beaver drones are only 100k
Both of these are very cheap.
With regards to escalation what is Russia going to do to escalate?, Russia run out of ways to escalate this situation about a month ago when they decided to end the grain deal.
And the ships kept coming anyway.
> As for NATO, well, they are paying a price. Bunkers containing NATO officers have been busted.
I haven’t seen proof of this can you provide a credible source id be interested in seeing if.
> But thanks to the censorship in place we wouldn’t know, would we? In fact, Ukrainian officials have admitted more than once that the Russians know exactly what they are hitting.
A lot of the proof from Ukrainian hits comes from sat imagery, Russia is more than free to use its sats to get imagery over Ukraine and release it.
They don’t for whatever reason.
And we know when Russia gets proof of anything (like the single downed Bayrakter TB2 they got) they like to present it front and centre.
> And the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defense is obviously way exaggerated.[1]
Do you have a source for this?.
It may not be, but only one side is using them to inflict damage that is upwards of 100M+ USD at a time (on occasion).
The Russian use of drones appears to be less effective then the Ukrainian use for whatever reason.
Its crazy that a 100k drone can destroy planes that are worth tens of millions of dollars that kind of price difference will surely change some ways that wars are fought.
Your source appears to indicate this started after Russia invaded in 2014. So unless Russians can see into the future I don’t see how that can be the cause.
> The US signed a treaty saying it wouldn't add Ukraine to NATO. Then supports UKraine with the stated goal of "interoperability" with NATO. The US did all but sign a treaty making it official.
I’ve never seen such a treaty can you link it?.
> After Russia invaded in 2022 the US told Ukraine to not negotiate peace. Every step of the way the choice has been made towards conflict instead of a diplomatic solution. I don't know how you can look at the course of events and come to any other conclusion other than the US wants a proxy war with Russia. No choice by the US has been towards peace.
I don’t think this is what happened, what I think happened is that when Ukraine recaptured territories (Bucha being the best example) and saw the absolute horrors that the Russians had left behind, they decided there would be no negotiating.
I can understand that, I wouldn’t want to negotiate with someone who had committed such heinous crimes against my people either.
Interesting comment because NATO never accepted Ukraine as a member or even gave them a MAP, hell even Germany promised Putin before he invaded that Ukraine would never be in NATO, that didn’t do anything.
The quickly deleted Russian victory article also doesn’t mention NATO at all either.
I think it’s far more likely that this has more to do with Russias and more bluntly Putins want to recreate the USSR and imperialism.
I mean the Russian victory article does talk about how Ukraines independence was a mistake and how they have corrected that “mistake”.
I think this kinda of language takes agency away from countries like Russia, Russia chose to invade and was not forced by anyone, given the rhetoric in some of there now deleted articles I think theres evidence that it was for imperialistic reasons and not because of NATO.
After all NATO doesn't appear at all in the now deleted Russian media victory article.
It's a military project so it's not surprising theres a lot of secrecy around it. Even more so that it's likely related to some sort of intelligence or combat missions.
> ...and Russia annexed Crimea in response.
Ah yes it's not because Russia invaded and annexed Crimea at gun point that was the violation of the Budapest Memorandum im sure it's something else that you'll come up with that makes it 'annulled'. Something that makes it someone else's fault and not the person holding the guns to peoples heads.
I presume you think that Ukraine deserves its nuclear weapons and long range bombers back from Russia, considering the agreement was 'annulled'?.
Just see the Budapest memorandum as a great example, the Budapest memorandum was a victory for the world and it requires Russia to do was to not invade Ukraine
But they couldn’t stick to it.
Another good example is the likely deal between Yevgeny Prigozhin and Putin after the failed coup attempt, he then a handful of months later dies in a plane crash.
What part of invading a country is protecting its democracy?.
> Either this is the dumbest comment I've read or the most confused comment I've read. Who was japan an existential threat against? Who did japan invade 'again'?
By my count Japan invaded at least 16 countries during WW2 and occupied a large number of them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territories_acquired...
They were also bombing a number of areas pre invasion such as America and Australia.
The fact that Jeffery Sachs even appeared on the show 100% colours his view on Ukraine.
It’s not “anti-intellectualism” to think that someone who went on the “we should nuke Ukraine show” to talk about how Ukraine should surrender, perhaps doesn’t have the most unbiased opinion about Ukraine.
> I'm curious, do you apply this same standard to those who are platformed by American/Ukrainian-government funded propaganda outlets?
I don’t think they’re comparable really, the show that Jeffery Sachs gladly appeared on has content that is incredibly extreme and feels something more akin to propaganda then any tv I can think of in the west.
That was off the table in 2014 when they did the exact same thing to Crimea, so theres no real change there, not that it changes the status of any of the territory they still remain areas of Ukraine (like Crimea) they are just temporarily occupied.
> If by independence you mean the ability to persistently ignore your largest, trigger happy neighbour concerns - indeed such independence was likely doomed from the start. That's the "flashing jewelry" part for you.
Independence means the right to choose whatever you want for your alliance. Which Ukraine has the right to do.
> And again, I'm not really talking about personal choices (maybe Ukraine did have to go through Second Independence War like USA did), but about the desirability of such scenario to be copied by other countries.
I think it should be desirable for other countries to be independent and not subjugated by their bigger neighbours.
> https://www.youtube.com/live/qciVozNtCDM?feature=shared
> International - Path to Peace in Ukraine , Jeffrey Sachs [239]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs
> In 2022, he appeared twice on one of Russia government-funded top-rated shows, hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, to call for Ukraine to negotiate and step away from its "maximalist demands" of removing Russia from Ukrainian territory,[73] for which he was criticised by the Wall Street Journal.[74]
I am not sure id trust the opinion of a person who gets platformed by literal Russian propaganda on their opinion on Ukraine.
My point is that the following paragraph doesn't exactly hold up if you consider Wagner to be "slight more competent weak opponents" which I would.
> When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy competence scales.
Russia and America have fought albeit slightly indirectly.
US soldiers engaged Wagner in Syria in the Battle of Khasham.
Rough outcome of this battle.
US / SDF side - 1 wounded
Wagner / Syrian government side - 50 - 100 dead. upto 200 wounded.
Well they keep threatening to nuke Ukraine and like a dozen more countries, generally over things that happen in Ukraine.
> What were the consequences of hiroshima and nagasaki again?
What war is Russia fighting against an existential threat that is trying to invade them again?.
> I suspect if their nuclear weapons didn't work, we would have nuked them a long time ago. > Sometimes people get so silly here.
Why? even if they didn't work we probably wouldn't nuke them, we don't nuke people just because.
America spends more money on maintaining its nukes than Russia spends on its entire military.
I have serious doubts about all of Russias nuke working given just how hollowed out and non-existent much cheaper parts of their military appear to be.
Then Russia is free to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine and they are free to suffer the consequences too.
If the nuclear weapons actually work that is.
I think Russia would have attacked and taken over Ukraine either way (either by political force or military might) and that the plan was always to do this.
I don’t think Ukraine could have avoided this fate by not keeping its belongings its car.
Sometimes cars get broken into anyway, and I think this is that case.
I think it’s very telling that the victory article Russian media posted then deleted suddenly on what would be the 4 or 5th day of the war talked heavily about writing historical wrongs (Ukraines independence) and didn’t really mention a coup or NATO or anything like that.
What if what led a country to become involved in a hot war its larger neighbour was entirely on its larger neighbour.
But that’s not the context that Ukraine wants to join NATO in, Ukraine wants to join NATO to permanently kick the Russian imperialistic invaders out of their country and making sure they never come back.
Effectively just holding Russia to the multiple agreements they signed where they promised to respect and not threaten Ukraines borders or sovereignty.
Surely if this was the case then it would be in Russias interest to just leave Ukraine right.
That would stop this 5d CIA plot from succeeding.
Russia has similar groups of cyber threat actors so this doesn’t really prove anything.
> so making the Poles hate Russia even more
I’m pretty sure Polands feelings regarding Russia are poor enough that a simple attack on their rail system is not going to make them change the way they feel.
> eventually resulting in public support of Polands' occupation of Western Ukraine attaining critical populist mass .. seems like an easy outcome of this attack.
This doesn’t seem like it’s ever gonna happen as it doesn’t have any reason to.
Do you have any evidence that Poland is planning to occupy western Ukraine?.
> Especially given todays newsroll explaining the Zelensky doesn't have its allies support for the invasion of Russia .
Ukraine doesn’t want to invade Russia they want to stop Russias invasion so I’m not sure what this sentence even means.