Capturing the Donbas and Crimea was Putin's objective from the get-go, so if he winds up taking the lands east of the Dnipro but West Ukraine holds onto Kyiv and Odessa, can it really be said to be a good outcome? I mean, besides the part where Ukraine could have negotiated a peace on those terms two years ago and saved hundreds of thousands of lives, its still Putin getting 'what he wants' in the end. Pretty sure the west could have gotten a lot better terms and held onto more of the middle farmlands that are now imperiled.



When it comes to Afghanistan (back in the USSR) and the Syrian war, we were just arming locals to fight a proxy war and not forced to exit. However many fields are left in Ukraine I doubt they're much more likely to pay us back for ""loans"" any more than those Taliban goatherds were. If West Ukraine is folded into the EU, its going to be an indefinite net negative drain on resources as it becomes the worst welfare state in the union, even greece would start looking like germany.

I'd say for Biden's current decision making, if any is being made at all, its that nasty conflict between political expediency and geopolitical pragmatism. If the optics of perpetuating a pointless forever war get more votes than steering the world towards a peace to our benefit, I guess that's just a failure of democracy itself.

thought this was about israel support at first

Someone is confused on Nazi’s 😂

This post was edited by lodd222 on Jun 13 2024 10:23pm

Right?

Russia arming and supplying separatists in Ukraine for years is the biggest elephant in the room here.
Those separatists were ultra-nationalist and pro-Russian.

Azov was created in Mariupol to oppose those same separatists when it became clear they would try to take the city/region.

Ops line of arguing is the most blatant hypocrisy.

That was his minimum goal, but his objectives went far beyond that. Otherwise, he wouldn't have invaded all of Ukraine. Yes, one can excuse the push toward Kyiv as an attempted "decapitation strike" which would have brought the war to a quick end, fair enough. But his forces also pushed heavily toward Kharkiv and Odessa in the opening stages of the war, so to insinuate that Crimea and the Donbass were "everything Putin ever wanted" is clearly ridiculous.


The big question is if these peace negotiations two years ago took place in good faith and would have produced a stable, lasting peace. The answer is of course 'yes' if your premise is that Russia is a trustworthy, good-faith actor in this conflict and essentially just reacting to Western aggression.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 14 2024 02:48am

I hope you don't mind if I illustrate your post with this picture.

They do God work, eliminate big threat

i dont think its as ridiculous as you say. if he did end the war we could still sign a peace treaty and accept nothing but the east of the country. just because you win doesnt mean you're forced to take everything, let a lone a crumbling capital that needs to be rebuilt. rebuilds post-war are a terribly expensive endeavor, i doubt putin wants to overburden himself. he has weapons, he has people, aplenty. i dont think he has as much of the ability to rebuild things and be able to get oligarchs to accept the bill.

as to the latter any lasting peace deal involves Ukraine not getting NATO membership, which even the ukranians dont really want imo. even if they're not trustworthy thats a clear redline to re-invasion.

Based and red pilled