That's all, American propaganda, there is no invasion and there won't be.
(sorry, its a quote from post #2)

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2024 08:13am

Legit curious who you mean by this. senators? twitter posts? fictional characters?

i havent heard anyone that insane, outside of perhaps a few twitter accounts named shit like Xyz24HousGG that are clearly burners or bots.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Feb 15 2024 08:26am

Depending on how you view things, it's somewhat correct. Gotta kind of squint and hold your head at just the correct angle for it to make sense though.

If you assume that the Donbas Republics sovereignty is correct, and that the rebel regime that threw out the legitimate government of Ukraine has been conducting war against those republics for the last decade or so, and that those Republics requested aid from Russia, and then requested protectorate status, then Russia hasn't invaded. Sort of.

There's still the question, even given those assumptions, about the convoy that stopped a few miles short of Kiev. My assumption the moment I heard of that, as well as the capture of Chernobyl was that the power plant was captured to remove the access to the (relatively) easily weaponizable material the plant had to offer, and the convoy was a feint to prevent Kiev from immediately sending reinforcements to their front lines in the Republics.

Assuming all of that is true, then Russia really hasn't invaded Ukraine... Yet. The largest problem I see is the lack of men in Ukraine. Such a high percentage of the Ukrainian male population is now dead, is it even possible to them to maintain sovereignty? Like, let's say peace is negotiated today, Ukraine withdraws from the Republics, acknowledges their sovereignty (and Russian Protectorate Status), and agrees never to join NATO, there's still a massive issue: Ukraine does not have the manpower to defend themselves from... Anyone. What is to prevent NATO members from just marching in and setting up shop? It's sincerely looking more and more as though, due to Zelenski's refusal to negotiate when there was any leverage remaining, Russia may have to reintegrate greater Ukraine anyhow, just to provide protection from the predations of Europe and the US.

It's a really weird situation. And reports of 65K missing children, disappearances of thousands of Ukrainian women to who knows where... It's a very bad look.

What exactly has the West done in 2019-2021 that pushed Russia into invading in the first place? That we handled things suboptimally once the invasion got going is undeniable, but I reject this type of revisionist history which frames the West as the aggressor and Russia as the poor victims who were left no other choice than to wage war.





You're falling for Russian propaganda, presumably due to a lack of historical knowledge. During the East German uprising in 1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-89 and the Russo-Georgian war of 2008, they always used the exact same playbook: a Kremlin-aligned local puppet regime with shaky democratic legitimization and public support loses control and requests help from Moscow, followed by Russian tanks waltzing in and quelling the revolt against Soviet/Russian rule with sheer force.

Using their own puppet regime's call for help as a pretext for invading other countries has literally been the Russian modus operandi for the past 70 years, if not even longer. (I'm not as well-versed on Eastern European and Central Asian history from 1917 through 1950.)

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 15 2024 10:47am

In general terms I would normally agree with you. The problem is the Maidan Revolution was a conquest. It wasn't some peaceful, democratic shifting of power. The eastern Republics and Crimea were and are majority ethnic Russian, and resisted the pro-western government from the start. While nobody at all is contesting that western Ukraine is under the control of Kiev, the absolute "best" anyone could claim is that the Donbas Republics were in a full state of Civil War against the government in Kiev. But, they declared their independence, Kiev failed to conquer them. And after sitting back and simply watching for 8 years, Russia opted to act.

Human Rights Watch and other such groups have been following the depredations of Kiev against the Donbas for too long to bury it. I don't honestly care about Ukraine. Or Russia. Not when it comes to this conflict. On the flipside, I do have a bit of a soft spot for the ethnic Russians in the Republics who spent 8 years (nearly) getting raped, tortured, and murdered by Asov. Perhaps if the West had stepped in and controlled their puppet in Kiev a little more, Russia might actually look like a bad guy. As is, they seem like the only people who care about the lives of the people of the Donbas Republics.

So now that we know that Russia got the jump on weaponizing space, I'd advise all my fellow pardinians that live near the purple sections in the below picture to keep an eye out for low orbit satellites...you may be a target for a nuclear strike!

Your post is a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand you are asking what the West had done to push Russia (when this has all been covered repeatedly in this topic) and on the other hand your presuming someone has a lack of historical knowledge. When you speak of revisionist history you are simply ignoring all of the times that Russia told the USA that touching Ukraine was the brightest of red lines. If you are accusing a user of revisionist history surely there is an equal argument that you are also championing revisionist history? no offense intended here.

If you believe that the coup in 2014 was "fair" and that Russia should have just rolled over, that is a hill for you to stand on, but that hill is not for everyone else to stand on or agree with. While Russia is not able to play the game as well as USA there comes a point ( i would imagine ) when they say enough is enough, and to my mind they came to that point. You can call this revisionist / lack of historical knowledge, I prefer to call it a F around and Find Out moment.



As InsaneBobb said, the conflict in eastern Ukraine went on too long after 2014 to stop the facts from remaining online, and earlier in the topic (i.e. in the first few 1000 posts) we provided links to UN inspections teams who reported that Ukraine was being too heavy handed - and that was right before Russia invaded.

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2024 11:07am

The new word for it in short form. FAFO. And now NATO is expanding to the East as well. It is clear as day at the moment NATO is not just an institution for EU. It is for the world at large. Should Change the name soon. Maybe something like that WATFUP

This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on Feb 15 2024 11:18am

Jokes on you Vlad, NATO already has Nazi space dolphins in permanent orbit.

That is according to Seymour Hersh the totally not motivated by sensationalist journalism, journalist.

an article from 2021: https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/why-un-peacekeeping-mission-ukraine-doomed-fail-32116

long form:

A low intensity conflict

Ukraine has become the top topic of world media due to the mass protests in Kyiv between November 2013 and February 2014 (the Euromaidan revolution) and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. This attention came despite several, more violent conflicts around the world which also required the UN’s involvement. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the death toll in the conflict in Ukraine was 4,441 in 2014 and 1,315 in 2015 (making 2014 and2015 the high-intensity stage of the conflict). Meanwhile, the 2014 civil wars in Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan caused at least 50,000 casualties, respectively.

From 2016 to nowadays, the Ukrainian conflict has transitioned to a low intensity phase, and the number of battle-related deaths does not exceed 400-450 people annually. Even though the Minsk agreements-2 were not implemented, in the summer of 2015, the intensity of hostilities dropped, and the conflict entered a stage of low intensity. From that time to the present, a status quo has been maintained in the armed conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. On the one hand, there is no progress in resolving the conflict between Kyiv and Russia-backed rebels. On the other, the risk of a major war between Russia and Ukraine is assessed as very low.

Competing peacekeeping proposals

Between 2017 and2018, foreign state and non-state actors proposed competing projects for peacekeeping interventions in the eastern Ukrainian conflict. In September 2017, Russia issued a draft UN Security Council Resolution proposing the deployment of UN forces along the frontline separating the government-controlled territories from the territories controlled by the self-declared DPR / LPR. In response to this proposal in February 2018, former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose political consultancy group runs a strategic campaign called the Ukraine Initiative, floated a comprehensive proposal for a peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine. The proposal of the Ukraine Initiative emphasized that the OSCE mission is also to some extent a peacekeeping mission, but the OSCE mission lacks a clear political goal in its activities, while the draft of the peacekeeping mission of the Ukrainian Initiative had one – the implementation of the Minsk agreements. The peacekeeping proposal of the Ukraine Initiative tried to accommodate the interests of all actors in the conflict (first, Russia, Russia-backed rebels, and Kyiv), but also major great powers to reduce obstacles to its adoption and implementation. However, neither Moscow's proposal nor the Ukrainian Initiative were accepted or implemented.

Among the obvious reasons is mutual distrust between Moscow and Kyiv and Moscow and Washington. However, there are deeper reasons as well. According to the ‘ripeness’ theory, “parties resolve their conflict only when they are ready to do so – when alternative, usually unilateral means of achieving a satisfactory result are blocked and the parties feel that they are in an uncomfortable and costly predicament. At that ripe moment, they seek or are amenable to proposals that offer a way out”. Applying the ripeness theory to the Ukrainian crisis, it is safe to say that both proposals for the introduction of peacekeepers were raised at the wrong time. Between 2017 and2018, the conflict in eastern Ukraine had already gone through the high intensity stage, that is, when a peacekeeping mission could stop the aggression and save human lives. The conflict had already entered a stage of low intensity (the current status quo), and the parties to the conflict found a way to benefit from the current situation and minimize their own losses. Both Moscow and Kyiv expected the conditions to emerge in the future that would allow to achieve victory without having to reach a compromise with their opponent. As Lawrence Freedman put it, ‘With no strategy for bringing their war to a conclusion, Ukraine and Russia are now seeking each other’s exhaustion’.

Both Moscow and Kyiv, supported by the West, considered the possible peacekeeping intervention as a factor that would allow improving their position in the conflict vis-a-vis their opponent, that is, not to settle the conflict through a possible compromise, but to win it. The most illustrative example is the disagreement between Ukraine and Russia around where peacekeepers should be deployed. Moscow offered to deploy peacekeepers at the place of demarcation between the self-proclaimed DPR / LPR and Ukraine-controlled territories, which, of course, would freeze the status quo, make Kyiv's military revenge impossible, and allow Moscow to support the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. On the contrary, Kyiv's position on the peacekeepers contained clear "red lines": peacekeepers should be deployed on the state border between Ukraine and Russia, which, of course, would cut off the separatists from Moscow's support and create conditions for the success of Kyiv's military operation to return the DPR / LPR under Ukrainian control (the so-called "Croatian scenario" similar to the military operation implemented in Serbian Krajina). According to expert estimates, in the absence of military support from Russia, the armies of the self-proclaimed DPR / LPR would have held out no more than 3-5 days against the Ukrainian army. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba claimed the conflict could be resolved in a week if Russia stopped its engagement. Undoubtedly, if peacekeepers were deployed on the border between Ukraine and Russia, it would mean the defeat of Russia in the proxy war in the Donbas part of Ukraine, and, therefore, it would be unacceptable for the Kremlin.

A thorny issue for Ukraine’s civil society

Kyiv's tough diplomatic position, which implies the de facto need for military victory over the self-declared Republics and the restoration of Ukrainian statehood there without any conditions, is a cover for other motives. The Minsk agreements themselves, including autonomy for the DPR / LPR within Ukraine and an amnesty for Russia-backed fighters, are unpopular among Ukrainian political elites and civil society. The Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council openly declared that the Minsk agreements are unfavorable for Ukraine and the Deputy Minister of the Temporarily Occupied Territories considers Donbas as a cancerous tumor that can infect all of Ukraine. There are reasonable risks from the reintegration of Donetsk and Luhansk: the Ukrainian state’s weak institutions would not be able to accommodate the separatists territories; while reintegration would slow down or even render Ukraine’s course towards European and Euro-Atlantic integration impossible. Moreover, right-wing radical sentiments would likely grow in Ukraine, potentially leading to clashes between right-wing radicals against the DPR/LPR’s residents and significant expenses for the restoration of destroyed infrastructure in Donbas; while there would be a likely drop in the confidence of residents (and the electorate) of Western Ukraine towards President Zelenskiy. More importantly, Kyiv fears that with the reintegration Russia would acquire powerful leverages of influence on Ukrainian foreign and domestic policy. In a recent interview with the Ukrainian TV channel Dom, which broadcasts on the DPR / LPR, Volodymyr Zelenskiy outlined the priorities of Ukraine’s policy towards Donetsk and Luhansk: reintegration will not come soon (comparison with the Berlin Wall); Donbas will be a depressing territory; and the pro-Russian population needs to leave for Russia.

As such, the failure of the proposals for peacekeeping missions in Ukraine is caused, firstly, by the mutual distrust of the parties and the wrong timing of the proposals for the introduction of peacekeepers. Secondly, it is due to Kyiv's reluctance to implement the Minsk agreements (the declared result of the peacekeeping mission). Ultimately, a peacekeeping mission is doomed to fail when its outcome is less attractive than the status quo.

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I underlined what I found to be the most telling - Ukraine wants everything or nothing. there is no compromise.

This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 15 2024 11:35am