A drifter? What's that



What you wrote sounds fine, I wouldn't expect a conversation with that guy to be very productive but you are much more patient than me

news are rather quiet about ukraine atm, i was told the orcs would lose any day now

The grain deal was only struck in the first place because of Russia blackmailing the rest of the world with food insecurity.
You are of course right that Western energy sanctions also caused food prices across the world to go up. Note that I was against this type of sanction from the get go.


Keep in mind that Russia has a long history of weaponizing cold // attempting to freeze defiant people into submission when they cut off gas supplies at the height of winter. They did this repeatedly against numerous countries:
Against Lithuania in 1992.
Against Belarus in 2004 and 2007.
Against Ukraine in 05/06 and 08/09.
Against Georgia in 2006.

And I'm sure I would find more incidents like these if I spent another 5 minutes on further google research. The point is that Russia has weaponized necessities of civilians like food or a warm home long before there was any noteworthy Western meddling. This tactic is Russia's usual modus operandi, rather than a desperation measure into which we pushed them with our sanctions.




To be fair, I don't remember many serious sources saying that Ukraine would outright win. Any rational commentator anticipated that this counteroffensive would be harder than the Kharkiv offense last fall (when Ukraine was able to steamroll completely undermanned and unorganized Russian forces).

What many Western commentators imho didn't anticipate is that the counteroffensive would go this poorly and basically get stuck before even reaching and applying pressure to Russia's main line of defense.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 6 2023 06:17pm

the german warmonger media and the military industrial complex shills kept saying the whole time how ukraine is totally winning, if we just give them enough weapons and money

they still believe in the endsieg.....

Ukrainian “stab-in-the-back” narrative taking shape.

https://twitter.com/freeonis_/status/1687848437721735168

I wonder if a ceasefire is signed on terms that Ukrainian far right will not endorse, will they direct their anger at Russians or the collective West (Western Europe?).

This post was edited by Malopox on Aug 7 2023 02:32am

In response to the West weaponizing the global economy. You use the weapons you have. Russia can't cut the West off economically. It can fuck up the West's food and oil and destabilize regions the West has under some level of control. Tit for tat if the West hadn't been fucking around Russia wouldn't be responding in kind.



Like the US in Cuba and North Korea and Iraq and Syria and pretty well every nation in Africa and South America. Russia's doing no worse than the US does.

While we can argue about the degree to which Ukraine has been treated very poorly by Russia for decades, ultimately Ukraine wanted out of that toxic relationship, which the west and neutrals can understand. However, from a realpolitik perspective Russia simply cant accept a very hostile neighbor (Ukraine) and so while the West is all about expanding democracy (what they call democracy anyway) etc, for Russia, this is a case of invade or die (it does not matter what one thinks, it matters what Russia thinks).

We discussed this before, in relation to your stab in the back comment, I think a more balanced view would be that the value of life in Ukraine now and for decades to come will be much lower then it was before the war. This is a natural consequence of the brutal war going on right now. I think it is highly unlikely that Ukraine will direct operations at or against the West, their immediate and long term enemy is Russia, not the West. They truly believed that they could win the war and while greater minds in the US military complex knew this was not the case (and these people repeatedly told the US not to provoke Russia, but were ignored) they went ahead.

If there is a humiliating defeat, and the loss of regions (as appears likely), I expect that Ukraine will lick its wounds and try again in a few years time. This is in line with their nationalism, outlook, and was stated by Ukraine, before the war "we will have 2-3 wars with Russia" (or words to that effect).

So TLDR, Ukraine is reliant on western hand outs, now and in the future, and Russia is the Enemy, so I do not see Ukraine turning on the West. I mean they have to liberate all of Ukraine, its not as if they can do that with (or without) Western weapons in this war, so they can try again in the next war. And to be clear, unless Russia invades all of Ukraine (which it won't), Ukraine will invade those regions lost, within a few years time, to attempt to liberate them.

It remains to be seen what Russia does after Putin is gone, there are alot of bad ends in such a scenario however. I see no realistic view of a positive scenario however.

This post was edited by ferdia on Aug 7 2023 04:33am

Its a bit reductive a viewpoint. Some of Ukraine wanted to split with Russia, some of Ukraine wanted to join with Russia. For better or worse, the DPR/LPR/Crimea were all part of Ukraine as Ukraine existed in the post-soviet pre-Maidan, and ostensibly it was a democratic republic that represented people of a varied background and ideologies. And overall the ethnic/leaning Russia side was more populous and more powerful and had more resources, and won the fair elections. Now we can no longer think of Ukraine as a singular entity, because the position taken by the current NATO-run western Ukraine is utterly farcical when it comes to claiming control over the Russian regions they've never set foot in. And Russia doesn't even stake a claim to western Ukraine.

This might also point to the disparity between a cynical pragmatic Russian worldview of brinksmanship, dangerous gambits and reciprocal escalation- and a self-destructive bull-in-a-china-shop American worldview of constantly fucking up everything we touch.
I mean this in the sense- Russia wanted to take all of Ukraine, and gave it the old college try. If they could take Kiev in a fairly bloodless blitzkrieg, they would have been happy with the result. It failed. So instead they settled for the separatist regions. And to that point, it seems like Russia actually is quite willing to live with a very hostile neighbor and NATO right up to the borders. That was after all the inevitable endgame of Albright's plan, and Russia already has multiple borders with us anyway. If Ukraine can be pacified after a cease fire, it could settle down to being no worse than their border with Finland, or Kalingrad being an exclave. Russia couldn't hold Ukraine forever in its grip, so it makes sense for them to settle for the better half of solomon's baby.

And that's where the self-destructiveness comes from. We're getting the worse half. In what was already the poorest country of europe, we're getting the worthless part, and its now also bombed to rubble, depopulated, totally dependent on our handouts, and yet also filled with heavy weaponry and ideological extremists who fought a proxy war on our behalf, a recipe which has reliably backfired on us every single time. The Taliban? ISIS? Now we're arming literal nazi war criminals, what could go wrong. And that's all besides sabotaging our petrodollar hegemony and severing with the one world power that could have joined us against China.

I can see a whole lot of explanation for Russia's actions from their own rational self interest, and I can't say the same for us
I mean, just look at who got us into this mess. We had Ukrainian partisans in Washington DC like the 'whistleblower' in the Biden saga, foaming at the bit to get into a war with Russia because they believed in their ultra-nationalist cause, blind to that natural consequence of Ukraine being torched in the process and needing decades or more to recover. True believer ideologues, the worst of the worst

This post was edited by Goomshill on Aug 7 2023 04:38am

"The better half of Solomons baby" nice

I agree with pretty much all of that though I do think the US is acting in its own self interest despite the consequences

Who are you referring to when you say "look at who got us into this"?

Neoliberals in Washington had this peculiar streak of Ukrainian nationalism, which partly we can chalk up to Joe Biden micromanaging the coup for Obama and getting in bed with them, but notably included bureaucrats of Ukrainian descent pushing for the war, who existed in government either way
There were a lot of people pushing for their own interests in Ukraine, which didn't align with our national interests. That's some parts inherent to a large unruly democracy compared to the centralized pseudodictatorship of Russia, but what's more problematic is how we removed all the safeguards and accountability that should have stopped it from getting out of control. And thats how we wind up with NYT articles explaining why we need to lock up Trump for telling people to peacefully let their voices be heard while rationalized why Joe Biden should skate on taking $10 million in bribes