President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine’s partners “are afraid of Russia losing the war” and would like Kyiv “to win in such a way that Russia does not lose,” Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv’s allies “fear” Russia’s loss in the war against Ukraine because it would involve “unpredictable geopolitics,” according to Zelensky. “I don’t think it works that way. For Ukraine to win, we need to be given everything with which one can win,” he said.
His statement came on May 16 amid Russia’s large-scale offensive in Kharkiv Oblast and ongoing heavy battles further east. In a week, Russian troops managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers in the northern part of Kharkiv Oblast, according to Zelensky.
I feel like for a number of the allies, their main goal has been to drain Russia of resources, even if it costs the lives of Ukrainians.
This seems to be the sad realpolitik truth. It explains how some of the aid has been given.
Enough to keep grinding down the Kremlin’s war machine, not enough to actually take the Kremlin out of the fight.
In a more utilitarian analysis, this might be the best for the greatest number of people. From an empathetic human perspective… it’s pretty fucking dark to see young Ukrainian men dying for this. Still better than living under the Kremlin’s boot.
I’m assuming the West’s analysis is that there’s no better political reality inside Russia in sight, even with Putin gone, so they’re better off just declawing the bear. Which to a large degree has already happened…
Meanwhile the upside is that the collective West gets to try tactics and weapons for modern warfare (drones, ai, analysis) and get ready for the next fight. They also gained a fight-ready, trained ally in Ukraine and a sharper focus in Europe of what’s at stake and everything that that involves (eg energy and supply chain independence).
The downside is obviously the deaths of Ukrainians in the front line, but I don’t know how many of them could be prevented without NATO getting properly involved.
I think it’s more down to the fact that regime change initiated from the outside doesn’t go well. And if the west tries to take out Putin directly there’s a very high likelihood of it resulting in a nuclear war.
The sanctions the west has in place are designed to nudge some powerful people within Russia to take out Putin. Problem is Putin has been around long enough that he’s been able to make it extremely difficult for someone to make a coup happen.
Meanwhile the upside is that the collective West gets to try tactics and weapons for modern warfare (drones, ai, analysis) and get ready for the next fight.
Russia also gets this experience. And we can get this kind of information from more traditional sources (ie. Israel) without Russia getting it.
It would be better for the West if Putin was gone, but that needs to be done by Russian, and that’s easier said than done.
I wouldn’t look for too much nefarious intent for things that can be explained by regime change being hard to pull off (and very risky when it’s a nuclear power) and war is not a simple thing.
The goal is to provide enough aid to Ukraine to defeat the invading army without providing so much aid that Ukraine becomes an existential threat to Russia. There being an existential threat to a nuclear power can have some bad outcomes. So it’s a balancing act for the West. This is what Zelensky is alluding to with “to win in such a way that Russia does not lose.”
And of course there’s a lot of shenanigans involving Russian assets in the west doing everything they can to sabotage aid efforts. That’s a significant factor in all of this that shouldn’t be ignored. Providing military aid to Urkaine is a no-brainer for geopolitical interests, but no-brain Russian shills are doing their best to block it.
A long drawn out war of attrition isn’t actually in the best interests for the West. Russia gains experience, improves their weaponry and has ample opportunities to test that technology in the battlefield. They’ve been updating the battlefield doctrine to include ways to effectively use new technologies like drones. This isn’t something the West wants.
Best outcome for the West is Ukraine drives out the Russian Military, and there’s a peace agreement that resolves all disputed territory which would pave the way for Ukraine to join NATO. The longer the war drags on, the longer it will be before Ukraine is part of NATO.
I know that Russia has threatened the use of nukes, but I find it hard to believe they’d actually follow through. Seems like a red line that would activate more direct action from lots of other countries against Russia. Then again, red lines have been made pretty flexible in the past, including recently.
Seems like a red line that would activate more direct action from lots of other countries against Russia.
Yeah they don’t want direct action from lots of other countries because that would be an existential threat to them. But if Ukraine is an existential threat, why would a few more stop them from using everything they have in a desperate attempt to save themselves?
A cornered rat is going to fight with everything it’s got when it’s about to be stomped on. The fear of a couple more people coming over to also stomp on it doesn’t change anything for the rat when it knows it’s already going to be stomped dead.
That’s a nice way of calling people helping you cowards for doing it half hearted cuz they’re also afraid of your opponent. I think the message was sent.
He MUST know how much influence Russia has in the halls of power and media of his allies as well.
Ukraine fights a war on MANY fronts. Not all of them with bullets.
A large part of this war is centered on propaganda and information warfare- something Russia excels at
Unfortunately they’re probably the best at it. It must suck to live in a country that honesty will likely get you killed.
Some of us are more afraid that they will win and get ideas that they can test article 5 in the Baltics/Poland and survive.
Yeah. I wonder if they still would be afraid of letting Russia lose, if the war was against Poland, Sweden or freaking Germany!
The west is legit afraid of Russia’s collapse because once again someone will have to bail Russia out and it’ll either be another 1988 mess or a new toy for China.
What will happen to Russia once it’s fully in “war economy” and loses the war?
Kyiv’s allies “fear” Russia’s loss in the war against Ukraine because it would involve “unpredictable geopolitics,” according to Zelensky.
Is “unpredictable geopolitics” a euphemism for ‘nuclear war’?
More like money people don’t want their money fucked with anymore than it has been by this war
Bingo
In so far as they want a predictable outcome, because unpredictable outcomes arent profitable
Not when you play all sides.
The devil you know…
So much of the current internal domestic Russian zeitgeist is the idea of national strength compared to other nations. Pride comes with their strongman. If they are finally faced with the truth that neither Russia or its strongman are strong, it could lead to Russia/Russians trying to assert it in other ways to try to rationalize it. Or Russia could simply collapse from within orphaning hundreds of nuclear warheads leading to opportunists selling warheads to the highest bidders. The only thing worse than Russia having nuclear weapons is every two-bit terrorist or backwater dictator getting their hands on them.
Keep in mind none of this in my mind means we stop supporting Ukraine economically and militarily. Russia made its bed. We can’t choose our actions based upon trying to save Russia from itself.
I think that’s one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?
I don’t think that’s a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.
Imo it’s the find out part of Russians fucking around. Don’t give a fuck what repercussions or hardships they face next, THEY started this shit
The concern isn’t about the consequences faced by Russia, but the impact on the rest of the world. Like, if Russia were to collapse, I think most would agree that Egyptians don’t deserve to find out what suddenly not having $1.7 billion in wheat would mean, right? I don’t think anyone has any idea what that would mean for, say, Tajikistan and other post-Soviet states with economies closely tied to Russia. Collapse would be chaos and it wouldn’t stay confined within Russia’s borders.
And, again, I don’t think that justifies preventing Russia from losing. There are worse concerns for Russia winning. And the idea that Russia neither winning nor losing could be a sustainable final state is probably a fantasy.
While we really don’t want a state with thousands of nukes to splinter, I doubt that any policy writers in DC feel that way, given the eulogies they gave to Navalny, a guy who had politics somewhere around Mussolini’s and made Putin look like a dove.
But also the fact that we have like 8000 tanks in the desert that we’re not sending tells me that they’d rather fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood than actually break Russia so who knows.
While we really don’t want a state with thousands of nukes to splinter
People said that would happen after the fall of the USSR too. Turns out treaties and agreements can do a lot to stop things like that quickly.
On the other hand, such an agreement is what Russia is violating right now.
Yeah, circumstances are very different now. Back then the Russian bourgeoisie thought they’d get to join the club. Now they have very little incentive to abide such deals.
Also there’s way more right-wing psychos.
i remember several nerds mentioning how theyd see nuclear weapons on the black market around the fall of USSR and notified the feds. apparently it was a pretty major undertaking.
Russia didn’t splinter with the fall of the USSR. People who had control of the nukes retained their control. And Ukraine was forced to move theirs to Russia.
I think this hard divider in history is a false narrative. In a sense, the current war, is a continuation of the USSR falling apart, and exactly 1 of those quickly made treaties is to blame: the one that de-nuked ukraine in return for safety guarantees.
Hi can you point me to more information wrt Nalvany assertion, please? Tyia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny#Political_positions
Navalny co-founded the National Russian Liberation Movement, known as NAROD (The People), which sets immigration policy as a priority.[437] The movement allied itself with two nationalist groups, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and Great Russia
Those groups are both pretty big on fashy iconography
In the same year, he released several anti-immigration videos,[439][440][441][442] including one where he advocated the deportation of migrants.[443] In one of the videos, in which he advocates for gun rights, he compares Muslims from the Caucasus to cockroaches and mimics shooting one who attempts to “attack” him.
His views on foreign policy evolved over time.[448] He had initially supported the Russo-Georgian War in 2008,[456] having asked the Russian army to strike the Georgian General Staff, calling Georgians “rodents”[457] and requesting that all Georgian citizens be expelled from the Russian Federation.[458] He later apologized for insulting the Georgians, while stating that his principled position remained unchanged.
Oh wow. That’s not good. Thank you for the reference and quick reply.
IKR. The way such easily accessible information was entirely ignored in western media insane.
People look at me like I’m crazy when I say portraying the guy as Putin’s biggest rival is sillier than if Russian papers started claiming Pete Buttigeig was Trump’s biggest rival, since at least Mayo Pete didn’t come in 4th in a mayoral race.
Yeah. I’m kind of embarrassed I didn’t even think of Wikipedia. I just figured anything relevant would be not there or held in “talk.”
I was thinking the collapse of the state, and China picking up some of what’s left.
I don’t think so, not necessarily. It means that the existence of russia stops some countries from doing some things, if you remove russia, those countries will not be counterbalanced anymore
This is and always has been a proxy war and a siege meant to exhaust Russian resources slowly and without rapidly escalating to more destructive methods.
Unfortunately this is a big part of why the first big summer counter-offensive by Ukraine stalled; NATO delayed aid by just enough that it guarunteed the war would drag out.
Personally I think it’s about money for the industrial military complex. If the war had ended quickly while Ukraine had men, momentum and the initiative it would mean less money for industrialists.
Even US generals like Patreaus were predicting the delay by the Biden admin on F-16s etc. would lead to a massively protracted conflict.
It makes one ashamed that when our country finally does have a righteous cause for our massive military complex our leaders are still playing grab ass trying to make a buck while Ukrainians are fighting to exist. It’s one of Biden’s (and NATOs) biggest failures.
Siege of whom? Normally, a siege ends when the sieger goes home. If russia wants to stop bleeding, go home.
Ukraine is currently under siege. That’s who is being sieged. The proxy war is because no one in the West wants a direct conflict between two nuclear powers. Russia is being bled by a thousand cuts here. They’ve lost over 70% of their stockpiles, probably more like 80-90% at this point, so far and every day that Putler continues his war, it adds more years of Russia ceasing to be a global power at any level.
a proxy war and a siege meant to exhaust Russian resources slowly and without rapidly escalating to more destructive methods.
funny how Putin started a siege on russia by invading a country they were treaty-bound to protect… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Yes and in return Ukraine eliminated all nuclear weapons. This will be an example used for the future for why countries will NEVER agree to denuclearize regardless of the language in a “treaty”.
This is true. Russia saber rattling about using nuclear weapons, doesn’t mean much. Putin knows this would not lead to victory and likely would end up with him losing power and likely life.
The scary time is what he will do when he will see his power slipping. Thankfully in 1992 Gorbachev managed to handle it peacefully. Hopefully when it happens it will end up similarly.
Europe should step up and commit troops and real weapons. America will have your back, but Europe should be the next to jump in.
The minute a NATO member put boots on the ground, it’s a bigger can of worms that is opened.
A NATO country can do whatever it wants with its troops, even engaging in a war overseas, without any kind of implications for the wider alliance.
The only way it would further escalate is if Putin thinks he can then attack/invade those countries in response, which may trigger the mutual defense article of NATO.
Or swing the nuclear dick, make everyone nervous and make them swing their nuclear dicks as well.
The point still stand, if a NATO member engages fights in Ukraine, the outcome is not predictable and it escalates the conflict.
It’s never a war in a vacuum with only two sides.
Sure. But he’s done an awful lot swinging his nuclear dick already.
But that is true. It would obviously be perceived by Russia as a massive escalation for any other country to send troops into Ukraine. I’m just making the point that just because a NATO member is involved doesn’t necessarily mean all NATO members would be involved, even if they suffered casualties.
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The outcome of the war in Ukraine has always been a game of chicken, being which side is willing to escalate to nuclear weapons, and whether the other side may or may not back down. The logic of escalation has always been that no possible gain exceeds the losses caused by a nuclear exchange. The Madman theory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory ) is about convincing one’s opponent that is one is not rational, and is willing to use nuclear weapons despite the losses. The threat then, is that Putin, seeing himself politically vulnerable because of his losses, but still powerful enough to command the military to use nuclear weapons, would demonstrate his willingness to use nuclear weapons, even if not directly against a military target, in a demonstration (perhaps in the Black Sea) or an exoatmospheric test.
No it hasnt.
If you think Russian would nuke “their land” or at best a “bordered neighbour”. You’ve lost the plot. Also the title of their ag industry “lost plots”…
You are entirely wrong. Russian doctrine with nuclear weapons has cases in which nuclear weapons would be detonated as area deniability. You nuke an ingress route, it will keep infantry and tanks from being able to attack in that direction.
They also had doctrine about losing land and essentially turning it into a Carthage situation and making it completely unlivable.
That’s all well and good, if this were 1910. We have airplanes now that can drop entire tank battalions out the back. Blocking an ingress route just means we go around with our mobile Taco Bell and McDonald’s.
Even Stalin knew better than to fuck with the US in the air or at sea, and they’ve spent the last 80 years becoming the Global Boogeyman, only to turn out to be a schoolyard bully, meanwhile when the US military announces that it can do “_______,” they never release the real capabilities of their syatems so we don’t care if they nuke themselves. They wanna step up to bat, we’re gonna speedrun the 3 day war in 72 hours.
The Russians have nuclear submarines. No amount of bellicose bravado will blunt the sting of those.
Yeah, and they are so noisy we have known where they all are, as well as their “attack subs,” since the late '60s. Russia makes a move and we sink all of theirs immediately, since we have triple the amount they do
Nuclear war is a very real possibility. If Putin becomes desperate enough, he will try to go to the very edge of brinksmanship. In this situation, with launch on warning, any perceived provocation could rapidly escalate. As the fear of a preemptive strike increases, so does the probability of a preemptive strike. Rationality gives way to fear. This is the logic and danger of brinksmanship: that the more you rely on it, the more likely it is to escalate out of control before one side backs down.
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Removed, civility.
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No, they fear that Ukraine will lose no matter how much aid is provided.
Make an agreement to make the “disputed areas” independent of both russia and ukraine. Nobody wins. Enforce it with a pact that would draw in Nato but forbids them from joining Nato.
Conservatives do not negotiate in good faith. Putin is a conservative. There can be no negotiating.
Call It like it is, Nazis can’t be trusted, and Putin is a Nazi
If they’d be true independence aspiring breakaway regions, Russia shouldn’t have a problem with neutrally supervised original population referendums but alas
Russia performed genocide in those regions. There’s no possibility of referendums. Things have have been changed, forcefully by Russia.
