Quote (Malopox @ 25 May 2023 15:12)
Ukraine had a multitude of choices. Don’t forget - Arestovich is a propagandist and a pretty ruthless one at that. He even frames the question as “us or them” without giving it even a second of thought or proposing a solution of peaceful coexistence which are truly European Values.
There is nothing wrong in trying to toe the line without antagonizing your neighbors.
A better comparison would be to think about your neighbour suddenly buying an attack dog, a gun, barbed wire, announcing that it is no longer allowed to speak Polish in Europe as the lingua franca is now English. This is not how you make a peaceful and prosperous society by suppressing minorities and promoting fear and anger.
"Us or them" was obviously a shortcut, but its justified one.
Ukrainians saw what Russia was doing in Belarus, slowly taking IT over.
They knew what Russians were doing between 1945 and 1990.
The knew Putin speeches saying that Ukraine is just a province of Russia.
Stop being naive, after you give control to Russia it never ends in "peaceful coexistance" when it comes to relations with Russia.
South American can have peaceful coexistance with Russia, because they are far away, Russia doesnt plan to expand there.
But they do plan to expand into Ukraine, and the only option to stop it is to say them "niet".
So far the Ukrainians are doing fine defending, but of course I dont know who will win the war, its just too many variables.
For example we know that Putin people were corrupt. And Putin tolerated corruption, as long as the people were loyal to him.
Now he asks his corrupted people to give some of the stolen money back. Obviously they dont like it, but will they listen to him for a long time? Or try to stop the war?