I always said Russia will probably end up victorious. The only thing Ukraine did is empty first world countries of their money to fill the pockets of the military industrial complex and the people been cheering for that.

Georgian ruling party wins disputed election, near-complete results show

The result is a blow to pro-Western Georgians, who had cast the election as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia and an opposition that had hoped to fast-track integration with the European Union.

The country's four main opposition parties said that they do not recognise the results, with one opposition leader calling the results "a constitutional coup".
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/26/georgia-faces-an-uncertain-future-as-all-sides-claim-election-victory.html

Why does this sound so familiar?

Calling it now

Full annexation and permanent forfeit of claim by Ukraine and international recognition of Crimea Donetsk Luhansk as part of Russian Fed
Russian withdrawal from Zapro and Kherson
UA withdrawal from Kursk if they're still in there
DMZ established in most of Zapro Kherson and parts of Dnipro and Kharkiv
Ukraine security guarantee if some kind but without permanent NATO admission
Russian forfeit of claim on remaining Ukraine territory

This was basically the deal at the start of the war, this is unlikely to be on the table from Russia’s side. Why would they give up Kherson/Zap when they’re clearly winning?

IMO freezing of current lines is more likely I think.

Yeah but I don't think Russia's position is that strong. They're obviously beating Ukraine 1v1 but if the Trumpster offers them up those 3 predominantly Russian-speaking and Russia-supporting oblasts as internationally recognized annexations, then Ukraine doesn't join NATO, that's a huge win for Putin. Maybe the best he can get. If he turned that down, he'd be insane. It would actually make both of them look good - Trump liberated kher and Zap (which have a lot of partisan activity still and aren't pro-Russia) and ended the war, Putin liberated Crim and Donbass and gets to say he won too. The most important part to me, and to anyone decent, is that peace happens.

Well almost as important is proving these delusional pervert leftists wrong. The same leftists who lied about Covid, cheated in 2020, and have been beating the war drums to have Ukraine march into Moscow and absorb a shattered Russian Fed into the imperialist West.

This post was edited by Thebarba on Oct 27 2024 10:25pm

Would Trump actually be more inclined to ship additional weapons to Ukraine? Because if not, where is the leverage supposed to come from, the leverage to stop Russia from advancing? Why the hell would the Russians settle for current lines while they're winning on the battlefield, have high-value targets in sight (Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odessa) and the other side has staked its political capital on stopping, rather than escalating foreign wars?



So say Trump wins the 2024 election, he opens up negotiations with the Russians, proposes a deal in which Russia stops its advance in return for Ukraine and the US officially recognizing Russian ownership of their current territories. Russia says "nah, dat's not good enough", Trump says "this is the best deal you'll ever get, take it or we will equip Ukraine with more drones, missiles and AA and enable them to strike deeper in the interior of Russia", and Putin just calls the bluff - then what? Would Trump, who ran on an explicit message of "no more shitty foreign wars", who owes his support in no small part to his opposition to the MIC, really be willing to expend a ton of his political capital here? I just don't see it.

This assumes that Trump has the same CHA stat as Biden/Harris. Clearly it's much higher, he commands a lot more respect from aggressive foreign leaders. Right or wrong, they think he's crazy. Trump probably wouldn't threaten or strongarm Putin like that. He's a deal maker, not a blustering neocon.

And why would Putin agree to any kind of deal in which he gets less than what he could take on the battlefield? That's the point I've been making for well over a year in this thread: unless the West finds a way to change the calculus on the battlefield, Putin has no incentive to compromise.

Putin needs to be at a position where the incentives of a peace deal outweigh what he can take on the battlefield. Where a combination of lifting sanctions, reintegrating energy imports, regional security guarantees and any land concessions are sweet enough and the impediments to further progress and their lack of value and difficulty to hold are sour enough. He's still absolutely in a position where we could negotiate that kind of deal to split Ukraine in half and end the nu-cold war, because its still a costly war and risks his stability. And we're still favored to hold this same bargaining position since its much more difficult and less rewarding for Russia to move into the hostile west of Ukraine where the population actually opposes him and has no resources to claim. Yet, the danger for us now is that if Ukraine falls into rout after out and implodes, Putin will have a clear shot for Kiev and be able to dictate terms of any deal

The incentives to compromise exist now, but the battlefield gains might make our window fleeting