Exhibit A

If only there was a forum where people spoke French, ah well guess you are stuck here.

This post was edited by DizzyBusiness on Feb 15 2023 07:40am

An expanded global war is in no ones interests. what logic do you have to even consider this ? As difficult as this may be to comprehend, Russia sees itself as the defender here, but this obviously is a difficult pill to swallow if living in Eastern Europe, or if agreeing with the general western narrative. While ppl may agree that Putin is looking for a way out, it must be understood that any way out of this war involves a demilitarized unaligned Ukraine with Russia's security concerns assured (from Russia's leadership standpoint - regardless of who that leader is).

i 100% do not believe that Russia has expended its conventional means of defence/attack. I believe your assessment is this regard is incorrect. You must understand that Russia is a big country and can (and will) mobilise whatever forces it needs to, to win in Ukraine. Ukraine in contrast is quite limited in this regard. I am not jumping for joy here, i am merely outlining the position. I recently stated that I believe Russia will not use nuclear weapons on the basis that they have the means using conventional weapons to win. I still believe this is true. The narrative re: putin "i will nuke you all" is western narrative. Any country with an existential crisis will use w/e it can to defend itself and we took his statement and jumped to the worst scenario.

i 100% agree with your assessment that Ukraine wants to fight to the bitter end, for its existance, no surrender, no retreat, no compromise. There will be no peace in 2023. that is my view, on the basis that Russia believes that they can achieve their goals on the battlefields to dictate terms / Ukraine refuses to compromise. if nothing changes then the most plausible result is the total destruction of Ukraine (in its current form).

finally in relation to your last comment/quote, i believe the US wanted Ukraine in Nato, did not care about Russia's concerns or red line on this matter, and still believe that this manufactured war is one they will win and in their interests. While there are a few dissenting voices in the US it will take another year (or more) i think? before those voices get louder.

it is in US interests to curtain China, so yes, they will try to create a war with China before China is ready. This is logical from their viewpoint. The alternative is to have a global political established with security concerns understood and no stepping on toes. The United Nations and G7 / G8 has shown that this does not work. Therefore the US and China will go to war with each other, in our lifetimes.

TLDR:

your view: Appeasing Russia in Ukraine will only lead to a broader war/conflict.
my view: Not Appeasing Russia in Ukraine will only lead to a broader war/conflict.

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2023 08:35am

At bold for now. What conventional capability have Russia not already deployed?
This is not about Russia mobilising more forces, whatever that specifically means; It is about the implied threat of Russia retaliating to the West supplying Ukraine more advanced platforms. Fighter jets, longer range missiles.
Yet that threat was implied by Russia all along to deter the West, and what was the actual delivery of retaliation?
It was gesticulated that if the West sent tanks, Russia would somehow use a tactical nuke.

I do think that if Russia's interior and heartland was threatened/attacked to a large scale then nothing is off the table; But by your own definition, Russia is so powerful. Is that really a possible scenario?

re: Do you think an expanded global war would be preferential for Russia?

No country really wants to go to war. Countries go to wars for a variety of reasons. As a consequence of recent events (read; invasion) Russia has been ostracized from western nations, is involved in a serious war and has lost over 100,000 men. From the Russian leadership view point they are trying to maintain the pre-2008 status quo. This does not involve invading a Nato country or suddenly have dreams of imperialism. Just because Putin misses the USSR does not mean he wants to re-create it. If he wanted to recreate it he would have taken steps 2 decades ago. Therefore talk of invading Poland, or Finland is not credible.

As stated, the US is the global superpower, Russia knows that if it tries to go imperialistic (i.e. invade other countries) this will cross the US red line. Russia accepts the "no touching Nato countries" rule. Russia cant subdue Ukraine in a year, they would have no hope vs Finland (note that I rate the Finland army highly, when when i say no hope, it is a relative term - i.e. very very very difficult and they dont want to do it anyway). Therefore a global war (or expanded war outside of ukraine) is neither preferential or realistic.

for sure they will mirror what the Chinese and the US does though - putting in puppet governments here there and everywhere (but this is not the same thing).

===

re: last post, when you have more men, you have more means. get some of the army ppl to answer this question, i am not qualified to state what russia has left (while accepting i have read about it). also known as i would need several hours prior to giving you the response you want (and i cant right now sorry).

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2023 08:51am

You are insinuating that if Russia cannot achieve its objectives in Ukraine, then a global war is inevitable? And by supporting Ukraine the West are propagating that inevitable global war; Or that supplying more advanced platforms to Ukraine will somehow incur a retaliation from Russia.

Obviously we disagree on that. Even so, I can't find evidence or logic to understand or support your position on that. What am I missing?

I do think its fair to debate a potential next stage or even outcome of this conflict. But in reality, this is not going away anytime soon.
Even after conventional fighting "ends" this could well be a generational conflict and certainly there will be insurgency.

russia sees ukraine in nato as a direct clear and present existential threat that it will not countenance. i.e. if Ukraine is in Nato the Russian state believes it will be forever exposed to a weakness that it will not tolerate. Therefore this is already over their red line in the sand. this far and no further. well we went further and here we are now. This is the russian position afaik.

also i agree with you, even if russia "wins" in ukraine there will be generational conflict similar to what we had in ireland for the last 100 years.

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2023 09:37am

so many lies. pootin himself acknowledged back in 2003 that ukraine is a sovereign country and has the right to determine its own future.

russia knows for a fact that even today, in the middle of the war, after their repeated invasions and aggression, nato has absolutely ZERO interest in attacking russia. that's just a story they tell the world in order to justify their attempts to redraw international borders with tanks - it is NOT something they genuinely worried about. pootin is NOT dumb. he knows that nato would never attack the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world - what would they even have to gain from it? it's pure fantasy.

ukraine was de facto UNABLE to even join nato when russia invaded it again in 2022 - so when you say "we went further", that's just a demonstrable lie.

stop normalising kremlin propaganda, you absolute hack.

I think it is not the dissenting voices that are annoying. Everyone can and maybe have a different opinion and they can put out what they think and there will be a civil response.
It is when you put up a civil response and they start insulting you that you are left with only a few options, either you insult them back or you just block their response.
I think blocking responses is a better idea.

For Example, it is in my culture that Man is man and Women is Women. That is how we are being brought up and this is traditionally what we believe in. But we will not discriminate them on their personal preference.
Dissenting Voice : No !!!! You are an Orc !!!! Tou have to date a transgender NOW !!! if not you are transphobic and your culture needs to be eliminated !!!!


You see mate... you can't have decent and civil conversation with people like them. So block them off and have decent conversation with those who does. Look at both sides of the coin and come to the middle as much as possible.



now you got a new response you see what i mean ?


This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on Feb 15 2023 10:06am

There is really no proof of this to be honest and it's impossible to predict, he's just randomly cherry picking Ireland as an example because it fits the narrative. A more accurate comparison would be to look at Russian-Chechen dynamics. After years of bloody and brutal wars with Chechnya, Russia ultimately succeeded in squashing any separatist movements and there are no ongoing guerilla warfare or insurgencies. And this happened recently. The Chechens are also much more ethnically and religiously different vs most Russians compared to the people currently living in Southeastern Ukraine. Ultimately they were given some level of perceived autonomy and got a token Chechen leader in Kadyrov and for the most part it's settled.

The people in SE Ukraine are much more tame and much more "Russian" compared to the Chechens. So it takes a tremendous amount of blind faith to assume that they'll want to fight Russia some guerilla war, even though they voted pro-Russian over and over prior to the war, even though their sons were enlisted in DNR/LNR battalions, etc. What's most likely to happen is there is going to be such an exhaustion of war that most people will just be glad it's over and look to rebuild their normal lives.

i agree with alot of that. To be fair there is only a very low minority of people that are a high risk to society, or to users in these forums. Fender is a prime example of a toxic self righteous triggered outlier that should be kept at a distance. While there have been several users banned in this topic and while accepting that there are outliers here, in the round most of us try to conform to a degree of civility while accepting there is a difference of opinion.



its not random, or fitting a narrative, i am from ireland. also this is also the view held by the Ukrainian government as aluded to in that interview back in 2018 (which was previously posted in this topic) when they said they would be at war with Russia in 2022 (yes they predicted this war, just like it was predicted 7 years ago by john meirsheimer, which was also previously posted in this topic) and that they envisaged that there would be a prolonged conflict and more then one war.

but yes a more accurate comparison would be Russia-Chechen dynamics, noting thats a more similar culture to russia/ukraine, then NIlreland/England culture. also I am referring to western Ukraine, just to be distinct here. Pro Russian elements of Ukraine would ofc not throw their toys at Russia.

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2023 10:22am