• @UnkTheUnk@midwest.social
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    42 years ago

    “the only way this war ends is with a negotiated settlement between two sides”

    there has not been a single war in history that doesn’t apply to

      • @UnkTheUnk@midwest.social
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        02 years ago

        wasn’t really my point but I’ll bite

        What’s the alternative? A short war was the only way that Russia was going to win, without aid from NATO (which effectively is just the US) Ukraine looses by default.

        Personally I think NATO should be supplying arms to Ukraine for as long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, not for a weaker Russia, but for a stronger Ukraine.

        They have the right to fight against a hostile empire invading their home, any other stance is by definition imperialist.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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          82 years ago

          The best alternative would’ve been to work with Russia and Ukraine to come up with security architecture that everyone could live with. People keep saying that Russia would’ve invaded regardless. However, the fact of the matter is that Russia made simple demands that Ukraine remains neutral, officially state that it will not join NATO, and respect Minsk agreements.

          If Ukraine actually did these things and Russia still invaded then there would be a reason to say that negotiations weren’t possible. The reality is that negotiations were never even attempted.

          Russia’s demands haven’t changed substantially since the invasion, and there were even negotiations happening that started to look promising. However, when Ukraine indicated that they may accept Russian demands then UK stepped in to tell them to walk that back at which point negotiations collapsed.

          NATO supplying weapons to Ukraine is not going to result in a stronger Ukraine. Objectively, all this accomplishes is to increase death and suffering for Ukrainians. You’re also conflating what the Ukrainian regime is doing with the will of people living in Ukraine. It’s pretty clear that people in Ukraine aren’t willing to fight given the fact that there is no insurgency happening in Russian occupied areas. We can compare this with Afghanistan to see what things look like when people are willing to fight.

          The imperialist stance is to support NATO and continued destruction of Ukraine with the explicitly stated goal of weakening Russia.

          • @UnkTheUnk@midwest.social
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            -22 years ago
            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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              72 years ago

              I’ve literally listed the demands on my original comment. Russia wanted Ukraine to be neutral, to abandon pursuit of NATO membership, and to respect Minsk agreement it is signatory to. These are in no way unreasonable demands.

              The reality of the situation is that the longer this goes on the worse the deal is going to get. Once Ukrainian army collapses, then Russia will simply be able to dictate whatever demands they want.

              Meanwhile, western media has been churning out propaganda such as the articles you linked for two months straight now. Now we’re slowly seeing the mood change as it becomes clear how the war is actually going.

              Here is FT reporting on how things are actually going https://www.ft.com/content/f299cb83-9f12-484b-8839-12ec96c87a72

              In what is likely to be a brutal and bloody onslaught on Ukraine’s east, the Kremlin’s aim is to secure the whole of Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk. Together they are known as Donbas, a vast region of which roughly a third is already controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists since a Russian-fuelled insurgency that followed the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

              Standing in Russia’s way are the troops of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), some of Ukraine’s best trained and most battle-hardened soldiers, who have been dug into defensive positions for much of the past eight years. Around 40,000 troops were stationed there before the conflict exploded in February, about a quarter of the Ukrainian army, and they will have since been reinforced.

              If Russia is able to make major gains in the north and south of Donbas, it could cut off the JFO from western military reinforcements and potentially encircle and trap a significant chunk of the Ukrainian army — an outcome that would undermine efforts by Kyiv to defend a potential renewed Russian assault on western Ukraine.

              Ukraine’s military successes in the first two months of the war came from using guerrilla style tactics and the innovative use of short range anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons supplied by the west. But that approach is less likely to work in the more set-piece battles many expect in Donbas.

              “A solid line of armoured infantry at the sharp end, and then behind them, safe and protected, all the artillery, rockets and whatever else they fancy lobbing with utter impunity at the Ukrainian defences,” the official adds. “That’s a very, very different prospect to what the Ukrainians have dealt with so far.”

              To sum the above up, best Ukrainian troops are pinned in Donbas and Russia has a terrain advantage while pro-Russian forces control large parts of the territory. What Russia is doing currently is shelling and bombing Ukrainian positions to soften them up before the actual troops move in:

              In preparation for the onslaught, Russia began a process of intense shelling and missile strikes on April 18 in south eastern Ukraine and along the Black Sea coast. The US Pentagon has described this as a shaping operation designed to disrupt the flow of western weapons and other logistical support to the Ukrainian army — especially of fuel.

              Ukrainian forces on the Donbas front line, which stretches some 300 miles, north to south, describe relentless attacks by Russian howitzers, mortars and multiple rocket launchers, as well as by helicopters and low-flying planes.

              Not only that, but Ukrainian forces are seriously outnumbered and the fact that they’re running out of ammunition indicates that they are in fact cut off, or to put it in other words surrounded:

              Ukrainian forces, potentially outnumbered three to one by the Russians according to western defence officials, have meanwhile run low on ammunition and other weapons.

              Here are some further revelations from FT:

              “Alternatively, they could take bite-size chunks out of the Ukrainian front line by encircling pockets of troops in strategic areas, cutting them off with electronic warfare and using artillery to stop reinforcements, and then squeezing them in small cauldrons,” Cranny-Evans adds.

              That would follow the pattern of Russia’s onslaught in the besieged city of Mariupol, where troops divided it into different areas and squeezed each one tightly so that, as Putin put it on Thursday, “a fly can’t get in”.

              Ominously, a similar process happened in Donbas in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists encircled Ukrainian fighters in the city of Ilovaisk — and then, after they surrendered, reneged on an agreement that would have let them withdraw unharmed along humanitarian corridors. Survivors later described it as a “massacre”.

              The approach of breaking up the enemy force and then creating cauldrons has been the tactic Russia used very successfully ever since WW2, and we recently saw it work in Syria pretty much the same way it’s working in Ukraine now.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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                  12 years ago

                  If Russia sees NATO as an existential threat, which they do, then it is reasonable from their perspective. The only way to avoid conflict is by having a security framework that makes everyone feel safe. This is the part westerners can’t seem to wrap their head around.

                  Saying that it isn’t reasonable for Russia to invade Ukraine doesn’t change the fact that Russia did feel the need to invade Ukraine. Doesn’t change the fact that many people’s lives were destroyed because the west and Ukraine didn’t want to negotiate with Russia regarding their concerns.

                  This infantile view doesn’t help avert wars.

              • @UnkTheUnk@midwest.social
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                -32 years ago

                Because of what I assume are massively different media diets I don’t think there will be agreement on this topic within a reasonable amount of time. Because of this I’ll try to condense what I think might be the most important points while not getting lost in the weeds.

                -I think Ukraine has a fighting chance militarily

                -the Ukrainian public REALLY does not want to be under Moscow’s thumb

                -while NATO nations very often do imperialist shit NATO itself is not the way they do it (or any military means for the most part), it’s a defensive alliance

                I don’t really have time, inclination, or skills to have an unbiased view on this (even if such a thing were possible). Most of my understanding on this comes from two sources: Beau of the Fifth Column, an anarchist former military contracter youtube person who makes shortform content aimed at people who don’t generally hear any left-leaning views (and I mean actual left).

                Peter Zeihan, private analyist who predicted the current invasion in 2017. even though I find him politically ehhh he does really good work.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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                  12 years ago

                  I think we’ll see how this plays out in a few months time. I do think that it’s very hard to tell whether you’re getting factual information nowadays, and you’re right that we can end up forming wildly different views based on our media diets. So, waiting to see what happens is probably the best course here.

    • down daemon
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      -82 years ago

      ukraine can negotiate getting crimea back in exchange for not bombing inside russia

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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      52 years ago

      Chomsky advocates that the west should stop fanning the flames in Ukraine by supplying more weapons and prolonging the conflict. Instead, it should help broker a diplomatic solution that will end the conflict and end the suffering for the people in Ukraine.

      • Sightline
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        02 years ago

        Nothing is stopping the Russians from going back to Russia.

        • comfy
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          82 years ago

          The soldiers? Coercion from their state, at the least. I don’t know how most feel about it, but soldiers rarely abandon in large numbers, even in other controversial invasions like USA in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Cuba.

          The state? They didn’t just go in for no reason. Whether it be expansionism, anti-NATO “forward defense”, Putin being irredentist, concern for neo-Nazis being embraced and killing pro-Russian separatists or ‘ethinic Russians’ what ever that means to them, whether the motives are ethical or selfish or not or a mix, they had motivation or they wouldn’t have spent so much on it. They’ve sunk the cost, what happens if they retreat? Massive morale loss, reputational damage to leaders, continued expansion of NATO and US influence in Europe, loss of useful territory, impact to their allies including (what Russia recognizes as) Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic. There’s a lot motivating them to continue being there, whether we think it’s right or wrong effectively doesn’t matter to the people making that decision.

          (I am not an expert)

          • Sightline
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            -12 years ago

            Your cope novel doesn’t detract my statement. If Russia leaves Russians will stop dying in Ukraine, end of story.

            • comfy
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              32 years ago

              Explaining why your utopian comment is false isn’t a coping mechanism lmao.

              • Sightline
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                -22 years ago

                Except you didn’t explain how it was false, you wrote a bullshit novel that boils down to “just because”.

  • @morrowind@lemmy.ml
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    -12 years ago

    Especially once russia’s initial attempt went quite poorly, I’m sure they would have been willing to negotiate as an easy way out. They did hint at it, but now they’ve doubled down.