to be fair we're making the fine distinction here of nazis and things worse than nazis
I mean, at least nazis had hugo boss jackets, cossack's have bert's haircut

In that billboard pic that Malopox posted they covered Himmler with the Galician banner. Weird.

Here's the original pic

No wai

True Cossack looks like this



This post was edited by Norlander on Jul 20 2024 02:39am

It's incredible to imagine that some of the NGO organizations covering the war take themselves seriously. The prerequisites for a "good faith" peace is, per ISW, unilateral Russian withdrawal from occupied Ukraine and Russian Crimea, after which Ukraine and Russia can engage in "good faith" dialogue on whether Putin will face the death penalty in the Hague or perhaps plead to mere life imprisonment.

Treaties reflect reality, and the reality is that Ukraine cannot regain its lost territory, and that Russia appears to be internally stable and in no danger of economic or social collapse. The conditions above are clearly unserious in context of the present reality. The question is whether the West and Ukraine can change the current reality given time, or whether the present situation is likely to get worse.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Jul 20 2024 08:48am

A reminder that ISW are absolute clowns comparable only to anonymous Z meme telegrams:

This is part of setting out their stall for an inevitable negotiation. Russia has and will do the exact same.
Russia's latest ultimatum was the disbandment of the entire Ukrainian military, ceding all oblasts claimed by Putin as part of the RF (none of which Russia can claim to fully control) and assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO.

The more each side has to "give" or relent in negotiation the better from their individual perspective. Ukraine might say well, we can give up our claim to the eastern oblasts in exchange for x; Putin might say well, he relents for Ukraine's military to disband(lol) in exchange for Ukraine accepting Russian control of the eastern oblasts.

It doesn't appear either side is ready or willing to negotiate. Ukraine is not going to retake the eastern parts of the country and Russian is clearly incapable of the massive breakthrough it would require to conquer any of the major cities.
Russia could potentially make Kharkiv unliveable and Ukraine could potentially do the same to Crimea.

Ukraine is heading toward partition. Either as East/West Germany 2.0 or like North Korea/South Korea.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Jul 20 2024 09:35am

A huge bear must have died somewhere for you to finally accept the obvious.

This. Many smart observers already said that this outcome is the most likely one as far back as April 2022, after Russia's initial blitz had failed.

This has been the obvious outcome and my opinion for a long time; Since Russian military failed to capture any large city and Ukraine was never going to push Russia out of Zaporizhzhia.

To be clear, Putin would chalk this up as a "victory" for Russia. God knows he has to, or he is dead meat; But in reality this has been a catastrophe by the Russian military.
Strategically it is barely rational to call this a victory. Considering Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, doubling the land border between Russia and NATO, lost the revenue from pipeline gas sales to swathes of Europe, European military defence spending is increasing drastically and equally as important Russian military tech and doctrine has been exposed to the world markets as sub par.

Shit, Putin has even lit a fire under South Korea recently, one of the largest defence manufacturers and exporters around; He wanted all of Ukraine and he got a flaming bag of shit for half a million casualties, and counting.

Furthermore we know what happened after Germany was partitioned. The western half boomed and eventually the eastern half collapsed economically and socially.
If your in occupied eastern parts of Ukraine, you can have the aspiration to become as wealthy as the impoverished rural regions of Russia at best and become the despotic shithole of North Korea at worst.

Great victory.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Jul 20 2024 12:42pm

If Ukraine loses Crimea and the other oblasts that Russia annexed AND Ukraine is forced to remain neutral then it's a huge victory for Putin no matter how much you try to chalk this up as a loss.

Bolded: Those are the preconditions set by Putin to start the negotiations. Russia is winning on the battlefield, they got a clear advantage in manpower and firepower so it's unlikely they'll suddenly settle for less.

When the dust settles the conclusion will be drawn that all the West achieved was that Ukraine got completely wrecked and a generation of Ukrainians got killed on the battlefield.