You do understand that the majority of nations spending under their required percentage of GDP on their militaries is the literal demilitarization of NATO, right?

Hence why it's all about Europeans demanding the US do something about Russia, rather than Europe doing something about it themselves?

NATO is nothing but the US being the police for the antics of the warring tribes of Europe. A position the majority of Americans object to.

Has this WSJ stuff been posted here already?

They reported on the peace deal for Ukraine. EU was ok, NATO was not, Crimea goes to Russia, Ukraine gets bilateral security guarantees instead of NATO alliance. Article is paywalled, sorry folks, can’t get around this one. WSJ calls it “punishing”, what do you say PARD?

Key points of the deal included:

◾ Ukraine potentially joining the EU, but not military alliances like NATO

◾Crimea remaining under unconditional Russian control. The future of the "LNR/DNR" to be determined in personal negotiations between Zelensky and Putin that never happened.

◾Other occupied territories by Russia after February 24, 2022, were not mentioned in the article, but it was stated that Russian troops agreed to withdraw from them.

◾Foreign weapons and troops cannot be sent to Ukraine, and the Ukrainian army was to be reduced to certain levels.

◾The Russian language was to be used alongside Ukrainian in official spheres, but Ukraine did not agree to this. Ukraine rejected the proposal to exclude all mutual sanctions.

◾Security for Ukraine in the agreement would be guaranteed by the P5.

◾International security guarantees would not apply to Crimea and Sevastopol. Russia wanted Belarus to be added as a guarantor, while Ukraine wanted Turkey. In the event of an attack on Ukraine, Russia proposed that all guarantor states agree on a response, but Kyiv opposed this, wanting its airspace to be closed and requiring the guarantor states to establish a no-fly zone and provide weapons. Russia disagreed with this.

◾The WSJ comments that this document "appears to be largely based on the 1990 treaty that created unified Germany." Negotiations continued until June 2022, including via Zoom, but ultimately, they ceased at Ukraine's initiative. "Ultimately, no deal was reached. The scale of Russian military crimes in Ukraine became apparent, Ukraine's military successes improved, and the West provided weapons to support Kyiv." It was previously stated by Arakhamia that Ukraine refused to sign a peace agreement in 2022, partly due to Boris Johnson's position.

So, Putin wasn't lying after all about this peace deal. These "punishing terms" in retrospect, look pretty damn good for Ukraine.

Source:

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-ukraine-peace-deal-2022-document-6e12e093

This post was edited by Malopox on Mar 2 2024 01:35am

- I highly doubt that Russia was willing to withdraw from the the land bridge to Crimea which they had secured in the early months of this war.
- With its troop levels reduced, no NATO membership and no foreign weapons allowed to be sent to Ukraine, they would have been completely defenseless and exposed to any kind of future Russian aggression.
- The "security guarantees" are evidently worthless, no Western country is willing to risk a direct war against Russia over Ukraine, let alone deploy boots on the ground. The early months of the 2022 invasion made that perfectly clear.



Side note: the Two Plus Four Agreement from 1990 which paved the way for the German reunification differed from these proposals in multiple key aspects:
- The reunified Germany was still allowed to maintain 370k troops.
- The unified Germany renounced biological, chemical and nuclear WMDs, but was otherwise free to get any weapons from any source.
- It could remain a member of NATO, but NATO responsibility for East German territory would be temporarily suspended until the withdrawal of Soviet troops was completed (1994).
- No nukes or foreign troops were allowed on territory of East Germany, but could remain in West Germany.


So this treaty allowed Germany to retain and supply a decent-sized military of its own and allowed for the continued presence of US troops and nukes on its territory for further deterence.
By contrast, this proposed peace deal would leave Ukraine completely defenseless, with diminished troop strength, no NATO protection, no foreign troop presence and without the ability to supply its own military with foreign weapons. This deal would have left Ukraine at the mercy of Russia and thus de facto relegate it back to the status as a vassal of Moscow which they had left behind in 2014.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 2 2024 02:53am

Oh ok then maybe it isn't "a great testing ground" anymore huh

Absolutely it is. Do you think arms manufactures don't pay attention to live conflicts?

I've seen this week the first airburst drones used by Ukrainians.
And I can tell you that from the evidence, it works.

Sadly for you NATO arms manufacturers can't keep up

Nice testing ground turned into demilitarization

Djunior from the looks of it the West is going to provoke a wider war in Ukraine which will necessitate the increased manufacturing of weapons. So the idea, for now, that Ukraine is being demilitarized, does not hold up with what is being widely reported. Multiple countries are floating the idea of sending troops to Ukraine. There is zero evidence of a rethink or backing down. its simply not on the table.

This post was edited by ferdia on Mar 2 2024 06:32am

I replied to his drone remarks and we know that Ukraine is now focusing on FPV drones because they're running out of ammo and NATO / combined West cannot keep up.

This is a fact

His "uhh demilitarized lol" or whatever just shows how detached from reality this guy really is. NATO / the West sent everything they had and stripped stockpiles from South Korea and Israel and even pushed Japan to send artillery shells. That's the reality.


NATO provoking a wider war will make things even worse we will see Russia / China / Iran / NK working together even more I'm sure NATO doesn't want that. Did you hear NK sent 6700 containers of ammo to Russia carrying more than 3 million artillery shells https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/n-korea-sent-russia-millions-of-munitions-in-exchange-for-food-says-seoul

Three million artillery shells vs a bunch of FPV drones lets gooo

i dont read his posts. i was just responding to you.

Video from Avdeevka prior to the fall, posted by the 3rd Assault Brigade (Azov) on their own tiktok;



https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ukraine-war-effort-farm-workers/

Pretty significant desperation development as Ukraine begins to draft farm workers, which means they are abandoning next years harvest in order to try to hold those same farmlands being imperiled by the Russian advance. This has been something Ukraine purposefully avoided, knowing how important its exports were- farmers were exempted from the draft. Since the farm country is mostly along the Donbas where Russia is advancing and also have more ethnic Russians and proximity to Russia, this means several self-defeating factors: Even if they somehow hold the Donbas, they won't have the men to harvest it. These soldiers might not be loyal to western Ukraine and look for chances to surrender or defect. They're already being terrorized by conscription officers, not going to build a lot of support for an obviously losing cause that directly threatens their homes and farms.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/world/europe/ukraine-defenses-avdiivka.html
https://archive.is/8qVUd

New York Times article about how Ukraine built surprisingly weak and shallow defense lines around Avdeevka. Just earthen barriers and trenches and that's about it, when Russia spent the last couple years building massive layered fortifications in depth to stymie any counteroffensive;



We sent them $110 billion. How much of that actually went to helping the war effort and how much went into the pockets of corrupt middlemen?
Looks like while Russia was sending in corps of engineers and heavy equipment, Ukraine had a few "conscripts with shovels"

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 2 2024 07:17am