Imperial Lewis, hard on for the Russians.
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Imperial Lewis, hard on for the Russians.
Lewis, we've talked about this before and this is not the accepted narrative. The Ukranian farmers clearly won the war within two weeks, the last two years have just been about making a game of it.
Get on the page please.
Well, I'll tell you who didn't win the war in two years.
And what has been gained in these two years? Absolutely nothing. Russia denuded of any pretense of military might, hundreds of thousands dead, generations completely fucked on both sides and for what? Has the border even moved? Didn't Russia have de facto control of the separatist bits of East Ukraine already? It's absolute unbridled folly, and it has gone very badly.
Whose argument is this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
Allowing Russia to effectively annex a democratic country should not is not something Europe/the West/NATO should allow.
If they win then that'll be job done. Dead Russians in the hundreds of thousands won't really matter anything like to them that those numbers would to us. That it's still going on tells you all you need to know on that score.
Good to see you're on board with lol Russia invading Europe though. We should have stuck up a no fly zone at the start or left it the fuck alone and carried on with our lives. The only people this whole sorry fair has benefitted are those in the arms industry.
Lovely words and all Kik's, they truly stir my heart, but if Russia win then we have allowed it, just as we allowed Crimea. Only difference on this occasion being that a death toll approaching half a million (which we're also allowing) and the Western economy fucked for years. Gotta love a moral stand - we've won the argument right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
Not even sure what your argument is so ok, you win.
That our response has been pretty useless, bordering on virtue signalling and certainly not something that's saved Ukranians - thousands upon thousands of them are still dying. As a result I question the point of it, as I did after a few weeks in. The defence of it then was that Russia would give up, which they manifestly haven't.
I honestly don't think the west would be able to form a big enough army. Every cunt under 40 feels hated by thier government and hates their government in return. The Eastern Europeans may still have some incentive to fight, but Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain? Lol. Goodluck.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
The UK's response has been pretty good all in all. You'd need the US to go any stronger though.
We shouldn't 'allow' one country to invade another one, let alone annex half of its territory; but, given that we didn't have a plan beyond hoping that hassling Roman Abramovich and stopping Russians buying Ben & Jerry's would collapse a self-sufficient garrison state in record time, we probably shouldn't have spent the last decade or more encouraging Ukraine to take the maximum big man course that made such an outcome inevitable.
You can't join NATO, and you have to take Russian interests into account owing to the fact that 1) they are next door; and 2) half of your population has at least an affinity with Russia, if not an outright identity with Russia. Is that so unreasonable? Was turning themselves into a failed state really the preferable option? Asking for a country that is letting the European Union run Northern Ireland to avoid paperwork on fruit.
If anything, Ukraine was asking for it with that short skirt on.
If it was wearing it down Rape Street, during a massive rape epidemic, and the police had signalled their unwillingness to prevent, investigate, and convict rapists beyond issuing you with an extra pair of pants... Self-preservation has to come into it at some point.
Vlad has offed Navalny.
This was an amazing example of what my office is like. Two hours ago the Russian passed me a post-it note on which he had written NAVALNY DEAD : ( , I made a surprised face, he didn't say anything and went back into his office. It wasn't even on twitter or anything at that point, he must have seen it on VK or some other Russian network. Just now, one of the Brits read out loudly from his BBC News app: 'Breaking news, Russian opposition leader has died' whereupon everyone else is in the office having a cringey chat about how to pronounce his name, establishing who he was and if they'd heard of him, and making jokes about radioactive poisoning. Meanwhile the Russian is just sitting in his office facepalming.
Surprised Navalny didn't fall out of a window, such are the lengths the Russian state seems to go to to make these things look blindingly obvious.
Felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness and died?
Yep.
Makes you think.
Must've been the vaccine.
That balloon gets around.
Avdiivka is now in Russian hands. I imagine Spring arriving will see more of the same. Superior numbers will always tip the scale eventually and it sounds like Ukraine are reaching the stage where women and kids will be handed rifles and boots.
Finally the good guys are winning
Eat a dick, you dirty loser :harold:
The plan worked.
Where do the support Ukraine on principle people go from here? Do you advocate for Ukraine exterminating itself because that's what Harry Potter would have done, or do you call for Western intervention? And you can't say 'give them more weapons', because we can't produce them and they don't have the people to use them.
I'd call it off now, fully westernise the Ukrainian state that emerges, and see if the Donbass etc really enjoy living in Putinland. If they do, great, wait for him to die, and then see if they still like it. Maintain the sanctions on Russia because he has effectively been at war with us for 20+ years (a one-way war) and because authoritarianism itself needs to be opposed for the western model (as history shows, the far superior model) to prosper.
As the Chinese fall into shit over the next 20 years, Russia will naturally be pushed back our way anyway.
I said it a lot of pages back and, rightly or wrongly, kopped a bit of stick for saying that they should just settle at the current front lines because largely, that front lies at the border of where majority ethnic Ukrainians crosses into majority ethnic Russians.
Usually we think of Russians being good at the long game but I think this whole escapade has been an example of Putin, perhaps now qualifying as the archetypal old man in a hurry, blowing the long game in a quest for short-term results. If Ukraine sue for peace now and give up the Donbass and Luhansk, then they will have lost in two senses: firstly Putin will have satisfied some of his war aims in gaining that territory, and secondly they will have lost face in the sense that they won't have fought to the last man for every square foot of territory. Ukraine can nonetheless claim success in that at the start of the war Russia tried to kneecap the state and install a puppet, and in this it failed miserably. They have also had a nationally formative war experience that will ensure they are never drawn into the Russian sphere again. Putin can do a parade in Red Square like the good old days and declare the special military operation a resounding success; Ukraine can rebuild itself along what will be determinedly western lines, almost certainly joining the EU, NATO and every other such institution. This will in effect set up a new iron curtain, running from Tallinn in the north to Kherson in the south. Fans of the genre will note that this iron curtain will be located about 1000km east of the previous one. They will also remember that the iron curtain was never breached by either side, until gravity prevailed.
We (as the West, fans of individual liberty and democracy) should be very happy to turn it into a new cold war, because we'd win it within about 15 years. Russia lost the first one because their ideological position collapsed under the economic power of its opponent. The Putin state doesn't even have an ideological position, or an economic alternative, except for a deep frustration at what a balls the Soviet Union made of everything and how quickly and easily it self-immolated at the end. The USSR isn't coming back, so that generational frustration will die with him, and what comes after that? Capitalism is like gravity, you can't stop it, as the Chinese have found out. All Putin has left after this is wailing about gay sex and cracking funnies about BLM, which basically makes him Taz in a bearskin hat. This war has achieved the self-defeating aim of making Europe far less dependent on Russian energy. He's just obliterated 250,000 of his own men and the next generation won't fancy going the same way in the name of more boiled potatoes.
So I think fighting on now for the sake of it would be counter-productive when these guys aren't going anywhere or threatening anything much in the long run. I still haven't seen any sign of Putin grooming a successor. I'd be more worried if he was.
Hang on, if we bail out now with Ukraine agreeing to hand over territory to Russia, what was the point of getting militarily involved in the first place?
Western Ukraine gets EU and NATO membership.
You're playing for time. Seeing what losses Putin was willing to put up with, etc. If we don't get involved, this is over within months and no submarines get sunk.
Right, so if we hadn't got involved Putin would have been in a winning position therefore Ukraine would have to negotiate and surrender territory. We have got involved and Putin is still in a winning position, it's just taken two years or so longer than it would have otherwise done and now Ukraine are going to have to negotiate and surrender territory. Assuming Putin's in the mood to accept that now (if he's winning I'm not sure why he necessarily would but let's got with the NARRATIVE), why wouldn't he have done so two years ago? When we could have given what was left of Ukraine NATO and EU membership.
I know nothing of war tactics, I'm Yevrah, but surely I can't be the only one looking at this situation (if it indeed now plays out this way) thinking it was a colossal waste of time, money, economic stability and countless lives.
This is the worst possible justification because if gravity always prevails - and I'm not saying it doesn't - then it would still have prevailed with Ukraine as a neutral buffer state, in which case we've coaxed them into self-destruction for literally no reason other than to possibly speed up the process.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
If we don't get involved Putin takes the whole of Ukraine in months and installs a puppet government. Even if the Western support pulls out now (it won't), you've still got a large Ukrainian state that will be overwhelming pro-Western for decades and EU/NATO membership will completely stifle Russia's influence on the continent post-war.
To give Ukraine the best chance without over-committing ourselves and turning it into a larger conflict. It's not all or nothing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
But again, it's in 'our' gift to give who we want EU and NATO membership, so why did we need to wait until tens of thousands of lives have been lost to do it? And why won't Putin just go on and take the whole of Ukraine now anyway?
I know the roflcopter keeps chugging on the Russian plan lols, but seriously, our approach here seems about as well thought as the pandemic one.
The best chance to what though, ultimately end up negotiating anyway?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The outcome I've described is far better for both them and us than Putin putting a stooge into Kiev, and the whole of Ukraine turning into a second Belarus, would have been. So the fight is over whether Kiev gets to be on the right side of the wall now, or in 30 years' time. Its inhabitants, having had a taste, choose now, and are clearly willing to die for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Has there been a neutral buffer state in Europe in the last 110 years? In the CW it was us and them, except maybe Finland, and they've joined NATO now too.
Sew some civil discontent, shake up Russia's military by deaths, sackings or mysterious helicopter accidents, etc. Ultimately, you're hurting Putin's strongman image. And now it's election season.
Hasn't the last two years shown they're just not capable? They've only just taken Avdiivka which is a majority ethnic Russian town pissing distance from Donetsk which they've held since 2014.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
Do you think that maybe the lack of neutral buffer states is what has led to 110 years of constant aggro? Austria was neutral during the Cold War (and beyond) and they seem happy. Had people recognised that Ukraine is in an unfortunate position both geographically and ethnically there would be no need for stooges of any kind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Austria had the ability, through geography and political relations at the time, to be neutral. If Ukraine attempted the same thing here they wouldn't have lasted two minutes.
Only one ending for neutral buffer states in ethnically unfortunate positions:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-Anschluss.jpg
Austria was partitioned like Germany until 1955. The Soviet Union allowed its reunification in return for perpetual neutrality, which it still abides by today. If you don't think it was possible for Ukraine to be neutral along comparative lines then this war was not only inevitable but entirely justifiable from the Russian perspective.
How's it justifiable? If Sinn Fein get a ruling majority at the next Irish election and suddenly start cosying up to "alternative" states then do we have a right to barrel in there and sort it out?
This is all assuming Ukraine see surrender (or "peace" as a viable option after the actions of Russia the past two years and see fighting to the death the best option. Russia have lost thousands again in this battle and they will continue to fight no matter what.
Ireland is pretty insignificant, like Russia not caring about the Baltic states; but do you think America would let Canada or Mexico invite Chinese troops and missile systems in? Everything they've ever done in their hemisphere would suggest not. Numerous examples elsewhere all the time. NATO friend Turkey has been squatting in Northern Cyprus for fifty years for remarkably similar reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Ukraine is well within its rights to kill itself, but if there is an actual strategic Western plan beyond platitudes and pretending international law is real - i.e. strengthening NATO, weakening Russia - then allowing them to do so would be massively self-defeating.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
There obviously isn't one, because the Germans are traitors (never trust the Germans) and the Americans are rubbish. If there was any NATO strategy other than short-term self-enrichment then they wouldn't have spent years allowing Russian oligarchs to launder money through their countries, and in Germany's case, let an actual Russian asset run the country for years. However, if there was a NATO plan, it would likely now be around a table with Zelensky telling him that his best option from here is to pack up now and become the new West Germany / South Korea. An option that good wasn't on the table in Feb 2022.
Erm, no comment.
(most of it's going through Turkey, if he wants to know. And he is right about Germany/Poland as well. I've seen dozens of Russians setting up in Germany trying to buy our stuff).