Asked the right questions

About the negotiating table... There's a lot of bluster going on here. Trump has been President for just shy of one month.

Russia is still a nuclear power, with a huge population and an extreme war machine. They have more natural resources than any other nation on the planet, though Canada and the US do come close.

Trump wants to resume friendly relations with Russia. I agree with his stance. The war in Ukraine, and even situations with the rest of Europe are only one small aspect of negotiating peace between the US and Russia.

At no point and for no reason should any other Nation expect a seat at the table, for instance, when Trump is negotiating the potential lifting of sanctions that have blocked Russia from trading with the US. That's not Europe's decision.

When it is time for the nations of Europe to be included at the table, they will be. Until then, they can sit down, shut up, or take up their OWN negotiations with Russia. But that really hasn't been their pattern the last few years. Rather than actually talking to the Russians, they make claims about Russian motivations, act based on those claims, and never sit down at the table with Russia at all.

What's to accept or reject?
Its clear that the people of the Donbas overwhelmingly supported separatism, affiliation with Russia and eventual annexation into Russia. They had been aligned with Russia prior to the Maidan and the western revolutionaries took them out of power by force and laid siege to them for years. There's really no credible account where the result is only the product of duress against a captive population, its like saying Palestinians only support jihad because the Hamas knives are at their throat. So is it a question of legitimacy? The legitimate Ukrainian government was overthrown by force and the people of the east disenfranchised. What are their legitimate options? Either be subjects to a hostile power subjugating them by force, or subject to a friendly power allying with them. Perhaps Ukrainians in the east would have preferred the self-determination of the independent DPR/LPR, but they also would have preferred the Party of Regions being in control of greater Ukraine like it was prewar.

Russia has staked itself on a narrative that follows the facts because the facts are in Russia's favor. I said a long time ago that maybe in some alternate history, the people of Ukraine could have moved organically and democratically to ally with the west and Putin would be forced to interfere in their democracy or invade them or otherwise be the instigating bad actor, to maintain his sphere of influence. But that didn't happen, because everything stems from the Maidan. The orthodox position held by the west and parroted by the mainstream media is blatantly false and self-contradictory. We call it a war to preserve democracy and self-determination and say only west Ukraine is legitimate and the referendums are not, even though the legitimate government was overthrown by force and the east voted democratically in their self-interest.

We shouldn't be in a position where we have to drink the koolaid and pretend like the neo-nazis marching with our weapons in Ukraine are a legitimate government after a color revolution took out a democracy. The people of the DPR/LPR should never have been in a position to have Putin micromanage their referendums to get the only result possible. We arrived here because of the incompetency of Biden and the self-destructiveness of ultranationalist zealots

Yes, Europe totally fucked this up. Just like everything else in the last decade (at least).

Europe =/= Europe thanks to mass immigration. Same happening to Canada as we speak. We're legit an India DLC at this point.

Sad but true...

Dats raysist

March 2016

"Fuck off," comments Bohdan Krotevych, one of the Neo Nazi Azov Brigade's commanders, the post of Elon Musk.

Oligarch Akhmetov has just bought an elite apartment for Krotevych in Kyiv. Azov just became Zelensky's favorite unit. War propaganda has just convinced the global community that Azov are not Nazis and that the Wolfsangel and Black Sun are "ancient Ukrainian symbols." And now, a "stab in the back". I don't even know how Musk will respond. Are the Starlinks still working?