I wonder what sort of "settlement" is likely when Ukraine is excluded from the talks?
Well, I don't think you can exclude Ukraine from any peace deal. However, America do get to decide on how much they fund this war. I hear a lot of criticism about America not using their taxpayer to fund a European war and I think....if I was an American struggling to pay my bills, living paycheck to paycheck (like most of them) I'd be pretty miffed.....and as we saw with the election, continuing intervention wars isn't a vote winner.
However, I do agree that Ukraine ultimately get to decide whether they fight Russia or not.....not that I agree with Zelensky getting to stay dictator without elections using the war as an excuse. Plenty of countries have held elections during wars, including Russia.....We made Iraq and Afghanistan hold elections while they were fighting resistance movements blowing up venue after venue....it's all an excuse to keep their man in charge.
I say to you why should I care if Putin wins this war? What difference does that make?
What difference did it make when Germany invaded Poland?
Well WW2 ended in being a disaster for us, my view on it is closer to Tucker Carlson's (which itself goes back to Patrick Buchanan's opinion) and that view is becoming far more popular within conservativism. In fact I think it won't be long before it becomes the defacto conservative opinion with the changing of generations and the worsening of the European future.
Regardless frankly I'm tired of this constant reference back to the world war....something that those of us on the anti war side of this debate are trying to avoid while the inevitable consequences of what you're saying is that we either enlarge an existing war with Russia and get our people killed or seemingly continue fighting until Ukraine collapses.....I'm not sure what exactly you expect to happen or change.
Again, I'd point you to the battlefield, Ukraine is losing territory every day, Biden's policy didn't work....all this was predicted at the start.
If the CIA played a part in overturning a democratically (really?) elected government, you might want to consider Moscow's involvement in selecting the governments of several other former Soviet satellite states?
That's whataboutism, but regardless, I've never been on here saying that Putin's Russia is some model I want to follow. Russia and Ukraine are both corrupt countries. Zelensky was prominent in the Panama papers because he's corrupt and Ukraine before the war was receiving major complaints about its neo Nazi regiments.....but this was all glossed over as soon as it became convenient.
Yes, Russia was also trying to influence Ukraine during 2014 but it lost out and I don't support any of that underhand brown envelope stuff. But you know what the difference is between Russia and the US? The difference is that Ukraine is on Russia's border with a lot of Russian support in the east. It has a massive self interest in not having an anti Russian state on its border, five hours drive from Moscow. The west on the other hand has no business being in Ukraine spending billions to overthrow a democratically elected government.
Something they denied and thus lied about by the way, if it weren't for whistleblowers like Benz we would still think it was all organic.
The seemingly easy option is to let Putin get his own way, I agree, but what will that mean for the medium and longer term for all Europe not just Ukraine?
At the start of the old thread regarding this war I held a pro Ukrainian stance on this war. The posts are all still there. In fact I've never agreed with the decision Putin took. My position only changed to an anti war position here once I fully went into the context and history and likely consequences of this war.....I realised then that there was plenty of lies being told and that there were no good guys here.
Well, that's not strictly true, the good guys were those fighting for their country....lions being used by a donkey elite who now fill graveyard after graveyard because they were wasted in a war that they couldn't win.....the war should have been ended in 2022.
But while it's true that I found out that this war should and could have been easily avoided what also factored into my change of position here was a simple evaluation of how it would likely end. A war with no upsides is a bad war. I could see how the war benefited the US and China and even Russia....but I couldn't see how it had anything but disastrous costs for us.
The advantages were always with Russia. All they had....and have to do is avoid economic collapse and they win. So what happens, well Biden's inability to talk to Putin meant that he went to China and all we did was strengthen both of them.....I've said this many times, this war was conducted by western elites that I wouldn't trust to win a game of chess against a teenager.
England
