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CommieGIR posted:No, because key NATO members would still refuse to ratify Ukraine joining NATO. Again, this is very much a conspiracy theory, not founded in actual events. There has never been anything suggesting a conditional change in government was going to make Ukraine a NATO member. It's not particularly great that this new thread is basically repeating the EE thread a few weeks ago, just so tankies can drop their "Ukraine is full of nazis anyway", "West did it because USA bad" and "polls said Crimea wanted to be Russia so Ukraine deserved to get invaded" hot takes again. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 14, 2022 20:44
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Russian military directly invaded and stopped the Ukrainian advance that was significantly pushing back the Russian-backed mobsters in the summer of 2014. There's nothing home grown about the "separatists" in Donbas.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:57
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Actually, Russia is NOT within its right to randomly move large invasion forces on the borders of other European states according to the Vienna Document which Russia also signed. But hey, surprise. Russian propagandists will endlessly harp on supposed promises and warranties nobody actually gave them about forever staying out of their sphere of influence back in the 80s, but abiding by actual treaties and written agreements they signed? Totally optional, they're just a ploy of Western nazis anyway. BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:The US is sending troops and fighter jets to Poland, and though their present mission has been publicly declared to involve staying put in Poland regardless of future events, it is odd to me that this is seen as peacekeeping while Russian movements within their own borders are provocation. And I do not disagree that Russian movements are provocation. However, if I'm skeptical of US movements as a US citizen, one might think the Russians would be particularly skeptical. 
orcane fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Feb 14, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 21:09
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Russia has been agressive in its neighbourhood since the Soviet Union dissolved. This time when Russia was totally peaceful until the West bribed a few too many former satellite countries, it's a complete propaganda myth. Georgian Civil War (1991) Abkhazia (1991) Transnistria (1992) North Ossetia (1992) Chechnya (1994, 1999) Dagestan (1999) Georgia (2008) Ukraine (2014) Totally peaceful guys, the fact we're constantly messing with our neighbours and minorities is completely the fault of the West who cheated us with the evils of shock therapy capitalism in the 90s.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:29
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:I'm not concerned about them attacking Russia, I'm concerned about them entering Ukraine, either preventatively or in response to Russia entering Ukraine, which is something one might do with forces stationed in Poland.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:34
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They pulled similar stunts in Crimea. Yeah, totally pulling back our "peacekeepers", what are you even worrying about hysterical westerners  *leave unmarked special forces behind, organizes fake referendum and annex everything*
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Feb 15, 2022 11:36
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Follow their interpretation of Minsk* But yeah if they formally annex the territory like that, they take away another tool that allowed Germany and France to lie to themselves about how Russia is totally worth talking to as an equal in peace negotiations with third parties and not at all party to the war.
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Feb 15, 2022 13:23
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Paladinus posted:It's pretty obvious in context that if control of the border is supposed to be transferred back to Ukraine after the election, someone else will be controlling it in the meantime. And the precondition to border control is elections.
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Feb 16, 2022 15:38
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The west is impoverishing Ukraine by getting Russia to repeatedly invade, murder a few thousand Ukrainians, shoot down airliners and steal territory and equipment. American warmongering at work!
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Feb 19, 2022 20:39
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In a first step this changes nothing because Russia already controlled, defended and paid for these territories. The entire Minsk process was aimed at this - keep control, keep Ukraine out, stage a referendum in which nothing but the "republics" deciding to join Russia would have been acceptable/possible. He basically enforces what his goal was with Minsk II except without pretending to be a neutral third party and without the thin veil of a referendum over self-determination. Maybe this time France and Germany will notice, but probably not. The question is where he goes from there.
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Feb 21, 2022 19:49
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Play posted:Please, please loving do it. Do it you pussies. As if any of us give a flying gently caress about billionaire/corporate money stored in Russia, shouldn't even be there anyways. At the same time it's a good reminder for the idiots in charge of said western companies who probably thought "let's get this Russian market, big money, no risks!"
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Feb 26, 2022 11:32
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CommieGIR posted:Restore Peace in Donbass? Nowhere else? 
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Mar 3, 2022 15:25
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notaspy posted:Wtf is an OMON They're the riot police thugs.
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Mar 6, 2022 13:59
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the popes toes posted:Palace Square, St Petersburg, preventing a Tiananmen. The Russians do listen to history!
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Mar 6, 2022 23:55
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They consider the entirety of Ukraine theirs now so that's only a useful distinction when Russia isn't already invading the country.
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Mar 7, 2022 10:45
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How are there still people claiming Finlandization would be the one trick that will get everyone out of this mess. One party to this agreement has shown they will break every agreement and treaty they signed the moment they think it's convenient, has stated they don't actually accept the independence and statehood of Ukraine, and has indicated "no bloc" means "don't join the Western bloc" because Russia is not interested in neutral Ukraine, it has to be Ukraine as an annexed Russian province or a puppet state. None of the demands have changed. It's still "we will stop mass murdering civilians if you unconditionally surrender and join the Third Russian Reich out of your own free will", just the wording changes slightly every time they release this statement. But yeah, let's give Putin the benefit of the doubt, maybe it will save lives this time
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Mar 7, 2022 14:01
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His Divine Shadow posted:Why didn't they? Why now when they seem to be in a worse position? I also think at that point Russia was still somewhat interested in keeping up the charade as a civilized nation, and creating frozen conflicts probably seemed to be sufficient to stop Ukraine's independent development in its tracks, except it did not and accelerated the country's westbound course. Also, re: comparisons to Iran: Besides Russia having been a part of the global economy in a way other pariah states like Iran or North Korea have never been, there's also the question of who will arm and support Russia. Iran uses globally-connected Russia (and China) to circumvent sanctions in order to trade oil, buy military hardware etc. Russia can't go to Russia though, and alternatives like India and China are unreliable (India will at some point have to decide if it needs western support against China more than preferential access to Russia's sanctioned military hardware, and China needs continued economic success so they won't fully burn all bridges to the West for now). So if Russia's "defense" industry can't easily upgrade and replace the precious war toys for the domestic market (let alone exports), there's no connected big boy they can use to supply them with that stuff instead.
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Mar 7, 2022 14:47
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France has been doing its own military (mis-) adventures, eg. in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Armed_Forces#Recent_operations
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Mar 10, 2022 17:22
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PederP posted:The whole problem when talking about peace deals is that Russia isn't happy unless Ukraine accepts subjugation and incorporation in the Russian sphere of influence. Even if Ukraine cedes Donbass, Crimea and accepts not joining NATO - Russia will still insist on demilitarization, no EU membership and Russian influence on Ukrainian internal affairs. It isn't possible for Ukraine to have a meaningful peace deal where the conditions include ceasing to be a sovereign nation - that's just a surrender wrapped up as a peace deal.
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Mar 11, 2022 22:17
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NATO countries, including the US, were still tiptoeing around Russia's feelings and largely did not provide the things that could have helped Ukraine even more (more modern anti-tank weapons and AA systems) until the invasion was underway. Until that point eg. Germany was sending some helmets and (parts of) a field hospital. Also, supplying stuff in January was when it was obvious Putin was setting up the invasion for real.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:22
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Hammerstein posted:Putin was not the only one who was surprised that the people of Ukraine believe that much in their country and are willing to fight and die for it. And it's even more amazing when considering the insane corruption and that most of the wealth is in the hands of a small group of oligarchs. orcane fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Mar 27, 2022 |
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Mar 27, 2022 20:29
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Russia almost immediately started to wage wars and invade smaller neighbours after 1991, poor little Russia that just had to turn into a mass-murdering, fascist dictatorship because it wasn't properly coddled by ~The West~ in the 90s is a complete fabrication by idiots and propaganda.
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Mar 27, 2022 20:41
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Play posted:[...] The part where a woman's mother in Russia just mindlessly repeats Putin's lies was especially tough.
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Mar 27, 2022 23:58
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A bunch of experts ("experts"?) are saying that replacing the oil would be fairly easy and useful, both because it's a large part of Russian income and also because it would be much less painful to replace because, yeah, transport options and the fact it's a much smaller percentage of European energy imports. So it hurts the Russian economy a lot, the European one a little, and they can still work on phasing out gas imports gradually. Doing it on a global scale gets more difficult because there's still China.FlamingLiberal posted:It's really not that different from the people who only get their news from Fox and right-wing Facebook pages. The longer you get a steady stream of that garbage, the faster it rots your brain. In Russia you don't have the ability to get alternative sources of news either.
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Mar 28, 2022 00:06
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The bonus feature of the helmets was that they were announced one month before the invasion, but didn't arrive until a day or two after Russia already invaded. Maybe Germany thought a puppet regime installed within 24 hours of a Russian Blitzkrieg didn't need new helmets.
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Mar 31, 2022 08:50
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ZombieLenin posted:You’re almost there. Russia maintains veto rights on their foreign policy, particularly when it comes to engagement with the West, not because Russia itself is threatened by this, but instead because Putin’s plan to reabsorb all territory once part of the Soviet Union—and maybe even the Russian Empire—by force. Russian leaders have never stopped being imperialists with a distinct "zero sum" world view where everything that happens either helps them or their opponents, never both. They were temporarily embarassed when Warsaw Pact-style subjugation turned out to be unsustainable, so for a while they continued with genocides on a smaller scale (Chechnya), were limited to minor invasions (Transnistria, Ossetia), and openly opposed the supposed rules based world order by supporting Serbian genocides in the 90s. There never was a Russian leadership that was really open to the country being part of an international order based on the rule of law and cooperation of (mostly) equal nations. No, Russia considers itself a great power that has the natural permission to rule over minor nations (sure those in Europe are more powerful, economically, but our nukes are feared and anyway they're all puppets of the US anyway, we just have to change that!), it won't accept rules set by anyone else. The idea of "1991 Russia as a normal country that just got over imperialism a few decades later than the rest of Europe" is pure fiction. People who write papers on the evils of shock therapy must have some form of economic recovery program in mind that would have included strict controls and wealth redistribution, making sure apparatchicks, oligarchs and investors wouldn't have a chance to rob the country blind. But there was simply no point after 1991 where Russia's leadership would have accepted such a more socially acceptable economic recovery program because it would have been controlled/forced on them by the "enemy". And their acceptable alternative to NATO was not "Russia as an equal in NATO", it was "Russia with the power to ignore the concerns of minor nations of Europe in NATO, or a new organization where Russia was in charge". orcane fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 3, 2022 |
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Apr 3, 2022 18:12
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E: yeah ^^ The problem with these "give diplomacy a chance!" calls is that they completely ignore that one side is not at all interested in that and has never been. Basically Herstory Begins Now posted:The prewar russian demands started at "Ukraine must be demilitarized and denazified" and "NATO must be rolled back to Germany" and "Ukraine must be neutral" and in case someone thinks those were starting points for negotiation they also helpfully added that none of the demands were negotiable. 
orcane fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Apr 17, 2022 |
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Apr 17, 2022 17:54
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There's no room for "Austrian neutrality" for Ukraine, especially not since February 20 (Russia explicitly says they're not a country/people, they're just misguided little Russians who need to be reprogrammed and brought back into the empire). Neutrality is a propaganda argument for useful idiots and, oh...
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Apr 17, 2022 18:04
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Warbadger posted:Worth pointing out that Sweden's and to some degree Finland's "neutrality" for the past 30 years involved very tight military cooperation with NATO, a military geared specifically toward defense against Russian invasion, and a deep economic relationship with Western Europe. Also EU membership, with its own security agreements... with most of NATO. the white hand posted:I don't think anyone was ever saying Ukraine was going to be guaranteed anything, only that they might have avoided their country being directly, violently annihilated in a conflict between greater powers.
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Apr 17, 2022 18:31
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Germany being the target of nuclear hell was a function of it being the actual border between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and therefore the natural first battlefields in a hot Cold War. But that was over in 1991, being scared about daddy Vova's nukes over sending some tanks to Ukraine in 2022 is ridiculous.
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Apr 26, 2022 12:18
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Vox Nihili posted:There is a big air component. Russia has run thousands of air strike sorties during the course of the war. At one point in March they ran 300 sorties in a single 24-hour period.
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Apr 29, 2022 21:33
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They massively reduced the attacks where they actually fly planes into the country to terrorbomb some stuff after the first weeks, I didn't say they don't do it at all (otherwise Ukraine wouldn't get to shoot down the planes they claim) 
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Apr 29, 2022 21:50
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jaete posted:Thanks for the info everyone.
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Apr 29, 2022 22:53
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Yeah I suppose using planes against planes is possible... feels a bit weird to me though since I would guess mobile ground-based systems would be cheaper to operate and maintain. Or maybe not I dunno.
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Yeah they've been serious about ending the special operation since day one. If Ukraine stands down and accepts the Anschluss with demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian nation, and the West stops the inhumane sanctions and the dangerous weapon trafficking at once.
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Apr 30, 2022 18:03
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TulliusCicero posted:It's basically a Russian C-117 right? If so absolutely.
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May 2, 2022 18:35
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Dick Ripple posted:Some of you are missing the forest for the trees here. Unfortunately none of will find out a lot of the what and whys of this conflict until years or decades later. But my point on being concerned about what this all will lead to is valid. Russia is headed for a defeat on the battlefield which will no doubt cause them humiliation, which they deserve. But when in their entire history have let something like that go? The Mongols? I wish I could see a scenario were Ukraine retakes the Donbass/Crimea and Russia some how sees the error of their ways and reforms into some western friendly government... There is information Ukraine keeps under wraps, sure, but that's not unexpected or extraordinary (and yeah that list of "why don't they let me spy on them" is laughable). However, you somehow link it to the 2003 Iraq war because??? "It's not black and white" is a useless statement - the motivations are very black and white, the outcome obviously isn't because pushing back Putin's murderous hordes takes time and will come with a significant loss of life and material either way. That doesn't change the calculus: There's no way to come to an agreement with the war criming regime which doesn't care about a single agreement or treaty it signed, and no one can go in and clean up the way Allies did after WW2, nor is there any sign of a Russian leadership without the imperialism and revanchism. Which is precisely why Russia has to be pushed back/out in the mid to long term, and it has to be crippled (economically and by breaking a significant part of their army) to make repeat invasions like this unlikely. That's humiliating to their expansionist rage, I'm sure, but "face-saving" options would just validate and reward the regime's behaviour in the past 30 years and set the stage for the next invasion.
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May 18, 2022 10:28
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alex314 posted:Russia sits on untold riches in oil, gas, minerals and other stuff. As long as there's someone to buy them (or whatever gets made with those) Russia will rebound. Basically this post: ranbo das posted:Post WWI/civil war the Soviet Union had to beg the West for food as starvation had gotten so bad people were resorting to cannibalism, and they most likely would have collapsed without outside assistance. orcane fucked around with this message at 21:06 on May 19, 2022 |
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May 19, 2022 21:01
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:We talked to some family friends in Rubstovsk again and my lil buddy I posted about before, dead in the first weeks of the war- 
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May 20, 2022 22:47
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I can't roll my eyes hard enough at concessions to "the West".Kavros posted:in the same situation i would be aggravatingly pessimistic about it to the international community, because optimistic lead-ins like "yeah we got this poo poo in the bag, we hosed em up only a matter of time lads" leads to other countries feeling like there's no longer a sense of urgency to supply Ukraine
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May 26, 2022 02:05
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Keeping the war from spiraling out of control is a valid concern to some extent, on the other hand Ukraine has to be able and allowed to hit ruscist supply lines and bases in border regions if "Russia must not win" is taken seriously, or they will alway have a somewhat easy time to just regroup and resupply from within its borders (or borders they consider their own). Not like being able to send cruise missiles to Moscow, but the war will not be over faster if stuff like bases in Rostov or Belgorod or their precious Kerch bridge are considered off limits by Western supporters.
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May 26, 2022 23:59
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