knew it would be the colonel.

Sign over sovereignty to who? The entire point is that Yanukovich presided over a time in which half the country wanted to align with West and the other half were content wiith Russia. The Ukrainian 'nationalists' were really just fighting to hand over their sovereignty to another master, not have true independent Ukraine. What sparked the insurrection and coup d'etat was the 2013 push for an EU-Ukraine Association agreement, aa bill which they hoped would eventually lead to EU membership and some day Ukraine could pawn away its sovereignty to Brussels in exchange for Eurobucks, like other Eastern European countries. To suckle on Merkel-now-Scholz's teat and gain the benefit of those coercive loans. And what was the outcome, after the coup? Yanokovich was replaced with a pro-EU government, any pretense of democratic legitimacy was thrown out, and the West micromanaged the installation of government businesses and corporate oligarchs to ensure the West would profiteer from the fallout. They did it so blatantly and without the prudence of keeping their hands clean, that Joe Biden's crackhead dropout possible chomo son was raking in millions from Ukraine, a board with a literal CIA head on it.

Now reverse time a few months in that paragraph to back when Yanukovich was being torn between east and west. Put yourself in his shoes, and ask: If Yanukovich was a well meaning patriot with his country's self-interest at stake, which way would he go? The kneejerk jingoistic American response is to put on spandex and scream 'Truth, Justice and the American Way!'. But put some thought into it. Yanukovich knew that Russia had a stake in Ukraine and was unwilling to let it fully defect to the EU and would be willing to intervene to stop it, even if it meant invasion of breakaway pro-Russian regimes, and god forbid even if it meant invasion of greater Ukraine and seizing Kiev and bombarding cities. Yanukovich knew that America and the EU were also cynical and corrupt, maybe less so, but most importantly he knew they wouldn't stick out their necks to defend what little interest they had in Ukraine. I said this back in 2014, repeatedly: Ukraine's self-interest was served by the pragmatic choice of abandoning starry-eyed western idealism when they lived under the shadow of Putin. And its just a complete fucking laugh to look at what Ukraine is today and pretend that this is serving their self-interest. How many bombed out cities, how many dead Ukrainians, how many millions of refugees will make this preferable to Yanukovich's pro-Russian administration?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine. How long does it take to learn a lesson?

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 6 2022 10:02pm

What exactly was different during the 2014-2022 time period compared with the 2004-2014 years? In both cases, the country was onstensibly democratic but not really, was corrupt to the gills, the common people were getting fleeced by oligarchs while their country was getting sold out. The only difference was the political affiliation of the government: during the post-Maidan period, the bulk of the country's pro-western population lived under a pro-western government while the pro-russian people in Donbass and on Crimea lived under pro-russian rule. Aside from occasional skirmishes in the East, the status quo during the post-maidan, pre-invasion period was actually quite okay for most Ukrainians, and definitely better than the pre-2014 years when the entire country had to live under a Russian puppet government although at least half the country wanted to break free.

I've written about the idea of splitting Ukraine yesterday, I think in another thread, and the response I got was very tepid, but the longer I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is indeed what should have been done as far back as 2014.



Also, there was no good reason for Russia to change this status quo and go all-in on an invasion. The frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine meant that a NATO membership for Ukraine was always out of question, so Putin had already achieved his two primary goals (bring Crimea back home, prevent another NATO country bordering on Russia). I still don't get why he's hell-bent on regaining control of the entire Ukraine, irrespective of the economic price he has to pay and the military risks he has to take.

I mean, Ukraine did split, as soon as the coup happened. That's how Donetsk and Lutansk left Ukrainian control and Crimea was annexed by Russia. Most of the western news coverage in the past 8 years just likes to gloss over the fact that the people living in these regions were ethnic Russians who support Russia or their own independence. Crimea split after holding a secession vote that the US declared illegitimate- with 97% in favor and 83% turnout. America supported the coup and denounced the referendum and sanctioned Crimean officials. They've had a standoff for 8 years with border skirmishes and shelling between Ukrainians and Separatists. Make no mistake about what Russia is doing now: Seizing the pro-EU greater Ukraine where people are opposed to Russia. They're intent on imposing Russian dominion over the people who opposed them in Euromaidan and tearing down the pro-EU government now led by Zelensky, and that's just what they'll do. And since he's encircled in Kiev, this will end with him dead. Unlikely taken alive as a prisoner, I'd wager.

As far as Russian geopolitical interests and their decision making, its a lot harder for me to evaluate it like I can with US decisions because we're shrouded from a lot of their internal pressures and deliberations and doing more black box guessing. I think we could make pretty direct devil's advocate arguments for why it would either be in Putin's favor, or why Putin would think its in his favor without anticipating its full effects. For example, lets say that Russia feels that the west is entrenching itself in Ukraine and fortifying their position and eventually will be too engrained both militarily and politically to be ripped out. And Putin's direct interest would be retaining Ukraine as a buffer zone within its sphere of influence to keep NATO creeping back from Russia's borders- what he says pretty bluntly in his public statements. In that case, it makes sense to act decisively, and sooner rather than later. This would be particularly aggravated by Trump's choice to send lethal arms to Ukraine, something Obama notably declined to do out of fear Russia would see it as escalation and take action against Ukraine, much like this. In that vein, the argument would be that Trump provided the casus belli and escalation that demanded Russia response, while Biden came into power and presented the glass jaw of a paper tiger who would let Russia waltz right in, even directly stating he wouldn't intervene to save Ukraine prior to Putin making the decision to invade. Now, is that storyline accurate? Surface level dynamics might obscure whatever is going on behind the scenes. But it also would say something about Obama being wise, Trump being reckless and Biden being incompetent.

It didn't split officially. To pacify this long-running conflict, the split would have to be made official - the Ukrainian government would have to officially acknowledge that Crimea, Donezk and Luhansk would rather be aligned with Russia than the EU and will not be coming back; Russia would have to acknowledge that the people in Western and Central Ukraine do not want to be its vassals.


Regarding Putin's calculation: a simple explanation would be that he drank too much of his own kool-aid. Perhaps he genuinely believed that large parts of Ukraine would welcome the Russian tanks and offer no resistance, just like what happened on Crimea in 2014. Perhaps he thought that the West was only bluffing when they told him time and time again that there would be hefty economic sanctions if he crosses the line. Perhaps he overestimated the capabilities of his own military and thought he could easily break what little resistance Ukraine would be able to throw at him. And now that he has made his move, there is no face-saving way of going back.

I'm sceptical of this explanation though. If Putin started negotiating in good faith and offered Ukraine a ceasefire, Zelensky would imho take it in a heartbeat, given how utterly desperate he is. And the West would imho happily go along with it. There's zero actual appetite for making those economic sacrifices and dealing with a huge wafe of refugees.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 7 2022 01:05am

damn, american propaganda eh

oh sure, the country that was invaded and occupied by its neighbour, had three major regions taken by a hostile military force, was "poking" aka 'provoking' its neighbour until they simply had 'no choice' but to start another invasion, this time of the whole country. how dare the evil ukrainians mistreat poor old putin like that? it's amazing how your narrative shifted from "it's all a conspiracy, papa putin has no intention of invading" to "ukraininans made him do it" in just two weeks, lol.

do you genuinely not realise how you just can't stop spewing russian propaganda narratives?

also lol'd at you ignoring the circumstances and shadiness surrounding yanukovich's miracle "win", but uncritically regurgitating the asinine "iT wAs a WesTeRn cOuP!!1!" narrative. putin bot...

did anyone even bother to watch putins speach on the issue? It's clear there was a contract that NATO had with Russia and they lied and didn't keep the agreement.

The insanity of the U.S seizing random russians assets in the u.s , and firing anybody who happens to be russia will lead to one thing
Russia will begin seizing assets of all american companies in Russia, and there are over 300 of them
Then China will do the same
then you will really see mass chaos on a global scale

Yeah that was like 20%. Then he went off on that blood and soil tangent that made it clear Nato wasn't his primary concern.