Quote (ofthevoid @ 20 Mar 2022 14:14)
If Russia was really targeting civilians on purpose and not accidentally then you would of seen hundreds of thousands of deaths of refugees fleeing. They could target and bomb border crossings and get thousands of civilian deaths instantly. People keep saying Russia is failing to take any major cities, without explaining why they’re failing. They’re failing because they weren’t willing to indiscriminately turn those cities into parking lots. Mariupol is different though. It’s the home of the nazi battalion Azov and it’s the scene where these far right groups committed atrocities between 2014 and now so they have no problem unleashing.
What’s happening now is something I talked about weeks ago. When one side is clearly the military superior typically wars end very fast without so much blood shed. We in the west encouraged Ukraine to dig in and fight back so that quick outcome is now off the table. As a result though we’re in for a long and deadly war with Ukrainian lives on the line.
You see patriotism and are cheering because Russia isn’t immediately achieving its goals, I see tens of thousands of deaths (mostly Ukrainians) and I’m saddened because there’s no scenario where the Russians geopolitical goals weren’t going to be achieved and all those people died for no reason.
Once Ukraine has clearly lost this war, they should surrender. We're far from this point though.
Specifically targetting civilians comes with a ton of political risks. Risks undermining the morale of your own troops. Risks losing support for the war among your own people because once a certain scale of atrocities has been exceeded, even the most elaborate propaganda and censorship apparatus can't hide it anymore. Particularly since Putin framed this war as a mission to rescue Ukraine from its evil regime. The risk of the West intervening with its own troops also increases in the face of heart-breaking pictures of Russian atrocities. And like I've mentioned weeks ago in this thread: ruling over the rubble is a lot less worthwhile for Russia than ruling over a somewhat-intact Ukraine.
Regarding the geostrategic goals: Ukraine was unable to join NATO before this war anyway, every other geostrategic goal becomes less likely once he orders his troops to bomb Ukraine into the ground.
Quote (Goomshill @ 20 Mar 2022 14:52)
Sure in a logical war, once your military is destroyed and your cities besieged and surrounded by an enemy who has the ability to flatten them overnight, you'd want to surrender and minimize casualties. Heck, surrender should come long before that point, when the inevitability is clear. But we helped install and micromanage the Ukrainian government, we supplied and armed them. Its not the self-interests of the besieged Ukrainians guiding the decisions, its an unscathed west.
Do you think Ukraine should surrender already?
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 20 2022 09:46am