Quote (Goomshill @ 18 May 2024 03:07)

Does anyone maintain that Ukraine's continued fight will retain more territory, blood and treasure than what they could have bargained for at both pre and post war opportunities?

Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 17 2024 09:23pm)

Oh come on, seriously? Russia was on the outskirts of Kyiv, controlled Kherson, was in artillery range of Kharkiv and eyeing Odessa and Zaphorizhzhia back in April of 2022, when the supposed 'peace' treaty was on the table which was alledgedly ripped up by nefarious Boris Johnson according to the narrative of the "Ukraine should surrender"-faction. Do you, does anyone, seriously believe that Russia would have gone home at that point in time in return for mere lip service from Ukraine about never joining NATO, without leaving troops of their own stationed on Ukrainian soil, without demanding a full disarmament of Ukraine? While only demanding "some" autonomy for the Donbass, rather than its full sovereignty or annexation by Russia?

It's completely ridiculous to suggest that they would have accepted any peace treaty at that point in time which didn't turn Ukraine into a defenseless vassal yet again, not when the whole reason for this war is that Ukraine had the 'audacity' of no longer being their vassal in 2014. In hindsight, the time to go for a negotiated peace was either in the fall of 2022, or the spring of 2023 - the two points in time when Ukraine had momentum and was able to credibly threaten Russia. Which goes back to my previous post about the duplicity of the West: the Ukrainian leadership clearly didn't expect the Western support to dry up that quickly, that drastically. We gave them big hopes and then hung them out to dry.



Well, of course they'll be worse off if they ultimately lose the war now. In terms of damage sustained, fighting and losing is always worse than surrendering right away. This obviously doesn't mean that rolling over is always the more prudent course of action; that fighting is never worth it.

By the way, you're painting a really rosy picture of a post-surrender Ukraine under the rule of a benevolent Russia. Chances are that Russia would have occupied Ukraine for quite some time to oversee the "disarmament and denazification", carried out purges of dissidents and opposition leaders, countless Ukrainian girls raped, etc. And that's not just me inventing a scaretale, that's what Russian troops literally did in 2022 in the places they occupied. Which also implies that this scenario would most definitely have come with millions of Ukrainians fleeing the country, too. So the difference in outcome between the two scenarios, while still meaningful, is imho not nearly as huge as you claim.



How many of those 15 million are actually fighting-age men? A lot of Ukrainian soldiers have wife and kids who fled to Poland, Germany, the UK, etc. and are glad about it because it means their loved ones are in safety. Counting these people as evidence for oppositon to the war makes no sense. There are the draft-dodgers, sure, so don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your argument here has not merit at all; there is definitely war fatigue. I'm just disagreeing with the slanted framing. Also, may I remind you of the numerous young Russians who left the country right at the start of this war because they saw the writing on the wall? May I remind you of the long queues at the border crossings out of Russia as soon as Putin announced a round of forced mobilization a couple of months later? Forced mobilization is never popular.



Ukraine doesn't even need to gain the upper hand, just holding on is already enough. They essentially just need two things before it's too late: enough artillery shells and enough air defense.

At its core, this is still an artillery war. The key tactical predicament is that whenever Russia establishes a secured position within artillery range of a valuable Ukrainian target (say a town they want to hold), they can grind them down and take the target with their 10:1 artillery advantage. But this artillery advantage hinges in no small part on Russia burning through their vast, but not endless stockpiles of Soviet-era ammo. They even went begging for shells in fucking North Korea, go figure.
So the artillery ratio will come down automatically once Russia has to rely on its ongoing ammo production. Likewise, we in the West haven't really ramped up our production meaningfully at all. And the industrial potential of NATO is many times larger than Russia's. This part of the equation is a war of attrition that NATO could win without breaking a sweat if it wanted to. Money-wise... something like $30bn in artillery shells per year, spread across all of NATO, would make all the difference on the ground, but not really trouble us too much.

Air defense might be more tricky, but on the other hand, this is an invaluable opportunity to find a solution to modern drone warfare in a conflict which is low stakes for NATO. With regard to the looming Cold War 2.0 on the horizon, this is something we will need to figure out sooner or later anyway.

I wouldn't compare Ukraine with Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. These places were all culturally very different; not ready yet for democracy, not compatible with our values and way of life. Nation building in these places was always doomed. Ukraine is much more culturally compatible and much closer to a functioning democracy than they ever were. And geographically much closer, so that economic integration is realistic, while it never was for AFG, SYR, LYB or IRQ.

Quote (Goomshill @ May 18 2024 02:07am)

Does anyone maintain that Ukraine's continued fight will retain more territory, blood and treasure than what they could have bargained for at both pre and post war opportunities?



And inevitably betraying our proxy warriors to the enemy as we abandon interest. Why would anyone expect otherwise given our reputation

Quote (ofthevoid @ May 17 2024 03:11pm)

The expectation and promise of our aid has also led directly to the continuation of this war. Think about it, we don't make the commitments, this war is settled through some settlement in the first 6-8 months. Hundreds of thousands remain alive, millions never leave Ukraine. Instead we said we'll give you a blank check until you win and you don't have to budge on negotiations.

Quote (ofthevoid @ 18 May 2024 17:47)

Mate, the details of the ask from 2022 are out, and the Russians gladly published them. They weren't asking for all the things you say, at that point not even the land bridge was part of the ask. The ask was Crimea is Russian, Donetsk/Luhansk recognized as autonomous and no NATO. Ukraine literally wouldn't budge on a single of these and during the Summer of 2022 decided (with some western whispers) that western support is there and they shouldn't negotiate but continue maximalist asks, even returning Crimea.

You're painting a completely biased one sided picture, that if Ukraine accepted that, that equates to full surrender, becoming a Russia vassal again, and so on. It's pure nonsense. Ukraine pro-western gov't would of remained in charge and the Russian pro east wouldn't have been part of Ukraine any longer, meaning Russia ability to leverage those in east to win elections in Ukraine would be zilch. They are objectively in a worse off position today, it's really not even a debate.

Quote (Prox1m1ty @ May 18 2024 10:55am)

Any rational actor should maintain that appeasement is just the delaying of inevitable conflict.
Ukraine was a divided country, broadly east to west. Eu leaning and Russian leaning.

Appeasement is a flawed endeavour

Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 18 2024 05:27pm)

In the draft, Russia did demand a massive reduction in the size and equipment of Ukraine's military and its permanent neutrality, which would include not just a ban on Ukraine hosting foreign soldiers or bases on its territory (reasonable), but also a ban of holding foreign weapons on its territory, which would have implied a ban on Ukraine receiving any Western arms supplies.

Details of the border were not fleshed out yet either. Furthermore, the Russians, during the ongoing negotiations, began demanding "that Ukraine ban “fascism, Nazism, neo-Nazism, and aggressive nationalism”", with these terms presumably to be understood the way the Kremlin interprets them.

The real crux of the draft, however, were the security guarantees. Quick reminder: in the Budapest Memorandum from 1994, Russia had assured Ukraine its full territorial sovereignty, a promise that they obviously broke. So for this whole Istanbul deal to be worthwhile to Ukraine, they suggested a mechanism in which multiple guarantor states, among them the US, the UK, China and Russia, would be obliged to intervene with troops of their own if Russia attacked Ukraine again. Russia didn't agree to the specifics of this agreement, for example the obligation to establish a no-fly zone. And Russia insisted that this mechanism could only be triggered when all guarantor states agreed, which would have given themselves veto power over the process and rendered the whole concept moot. And last but not least, Ukraine had not coordinated this part of the treaty with its Western partners, who weren't actually willing to provide these firm security guarantees.


---------------------------

Tldr: yes, the Russians did demand a disarmament and a "denazification" of Ukraine and did make demands which would have left Ukraine defenseless and at their mercy, just like I said. The negotiations had made a lot of progress and covered a lot of ground, but the most thorny questinos had not been resolved yet: the specifics of where the new border will be drawn, the specifics of the security guarantees which Ukraine would have received in return for their neutrality and disarmament, and the buy-in from the Western partners to commit to Ukraine's defense with boots on the ground if Russia attacked again. Which all in all means that the treaty was not actually all that close to being a done deal.

https://www.intellinews.com/fresh-evidence-suggests-that-the-april-2022-istanbul-peace-deal-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine-was-stillborn-321468/
https://civilek.info/en/2024/05/03/here-are-the-conditions-with-which-russia-and-ukraine-could-have-signed-a-treaty-in-2022/

Quote (Norlander @ 15 May 2024 22:57)

Whatever, dude. I said "presumably" and it ended up to be a pro-Ukrainian instead of Ukrainian nationalist however his name says it all.

Quote (ofthevoid @ May 17 2024 02:17pm)

100% we fueled that war to weaken a geopolitical enemy. Slowly guided and funded the factions we wanted to get to power, which then led to the coup, then subsequent civil war. But there's still so many people that pretend that we had no hand in this and it was just some organic populist democratic uprising and we are just sending billions because freedom and democracy. But honestly, these are the same hopeless type of characters that cheered on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, only later when it became of kind of not cool in social circles all of the sudden in revisionist ways they actually never supported those wars.

Quote (ofthevoid @ May 18 2024 12:40am)

'Unconditional surrender' under which they would agree not to join NATO and recognize some autonomy for the Donbass vs the alternative of today, of not only losing the Donbas but bulk of Kherson and Zap Oblasts, maybe Kharkov oblast eventually?, 6 figures dead, millions more leaving the country, dozens of dams and other critical infrastructure destroyed and a economy that's almost entirely on life support and only surviving because of billions of monthly infusions from US/EU. Damn, good thing they didn't accept those terms, they really are in a much better position today.

You guys keep referring to Ukraine decision to keep fighting as some unified decision when in reality many of us keep poking holes in that narrative. 15+ million people leaving, wide spread dissatisfaction with forced mobilization, wide spread corruption, daily videos of gestapo-esque tactics of forcing people to the front. We have this discussion every few months, at what point is Ukraine going to get the upper hand to force some favorable settlement? How many more billions in commitments? How many more years of war and hundreds of thousands dead? Why is this starting to look like every other US war during the last 20 years. Get bogged down in a conflict that drags on for many years and has a price tag with a T, and after all of it, literally nothing to show for it.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 18 2024 06:27pm)

In the draft, Russia did demand a massive reduction in the size and equipment of Ukraine's military and its permanent neutrality, which would include not just a ban on Ukraine hosting foreign soldiers or bases on its territory (reasonable), but also a ban of holding foreign weapons on its territory, which would have implied a ban on Ukraine receiving any Western arms supplies.

Details of the border were not fleshed out yet either. Furthermore, the Russians, during the ongoing negotiations, began demanding "that Ukraine ban “fascism, Nazism, neo-Nazism, and aggressive nationalism”", with these terms presumably to be understood the way the Kremlin interprets them.

The real crux of the draft, however, were the security guarantees. Quick reminder: in the Budapest Memorandum from 1994, Russia had assured Ukraine its full territorial sovereignty, a promise that they obviously broke. So for this whole Istanbul deal to be worthwhile to Ukraine, they suggested a mechanism in which multiple guarantor states, among them the US, the UK, China and Russia, would be obliged to intervene with troops of their own if Russia attacked Ukraine again. Russia didn't agree to the specifics of this agreement, for example the obligation to establish a no-fly zone. And Russia insisted that this mechanism could only be triggered when all guarantor states agreed, which would have given themselves veto power over the process and rendered the whole concept moot. And last but not least, Ukraine had not coordinated this part of the treaty with its Western partners, who weren't actually willing to provide these firm security guarantees.


---------------------------

Tldr: yes, the Russians did demand a disarmament and a "denazification" of Ukraine and did make demands which would have left Ukraine defenseless and at their mercy, just like I said. The negotiations had made a lot of progress and covered a lot of ground, but the most thorny questinos had not been resolved yet: the specifics of where the new border will be drawn, the specifics of the security guarantees which Ukraine would have received in return for their neutrality and disarmament, and the buy-in from the Western partners to commit to Ukraine's defense with boots on the ground if Russia attacked again. Which all in all means that the treaty was not actually all that close to being a done deal.

https://www.intellinews.com/fresh-evidence-suggests-that-the-april-2022-istanbul-peace-deal-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine-was-stillborn-321468/
https://civilek.info/en/2024/05/03/here-are-the-conditions-with-which-russia-and-ukraine-could-have-signed-a-treaty-in-2022/

Quote (Santara @ May 19 2024 08:19am)

There's still so many people who pretend that populism had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Sweeping generalizations are fun!

Quote (Prox1m1ty @ May 19 2024 10:31am)

Source for 15+ million people leaving?

Best I can find is over 6 million known refugees. Even doubling that for unaccounted numbers, which is ridiculous, we don't even reach 15 million leaving.

Quote

Libanova also warned that once wartime restrictions on men leaving the country were lifted many could join families abroad.
"A huge risk is that men will leave," she said. "We will lose young, qualified, enterprising, educated people. That is the problem".
With Russia now occupying about a fifth of the country's territory, Libanova estimates the population in areas controlled by Kyiv could already be as low as 28 million, down from a government estimate of 41 million before the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion. The estimates exclude Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, which had around 2 million people at the start of that year.