You mean like when they demand that Ukraine voluntarily retreats from its most fortified, most formidable position in Kramatorsk/Sloviasnk which would take Russia months and tens of thousands of dead soldiers to capture? Or when they annexed oblasts of which they only controlled a tiny strip (Kherson and Melitopol), then used "acknowledge these oblasts as part of Russia" as the starting point for their negotiations? Or when they go "sure, let's talk; in the meantime, we're gonna target your energy and heating infrastructure at the onset of winter, so your people freeze to death while we negotiate"?
More generally speaking, if Russia really wanted to negotiate in good faith, they could stop the shelling for a couple of days as a gesture of good will and to signal that they're serious, couldn't they? The missiles not used this way could be stockpiled and launched all at once if negotiations break down, so they wouldn't even lose momentum or a tactical advantage if they did that.
Agreed. In particular, I think the Trump administration has maximum wiggle room, in a way that a government committed to establishmentarian logic and ways of thinking would not.
You are once again operating from the premise that Ukraine is the side standing in the way of peace, not the side doing the actual shelling and attacking. Only under this premise would putting pressure on Ukraine be a constructive move at the current juncture.
Poland, 1939.
Poland in 1939 illustrates the danger of assuming that refusal preserves sovereignty when the balance of power is overwhelmingly unfavorable. Germany demanded concessions over Danzig and transit rights; Poland refused, relying on legal principle and security guarantees from Britain and France. Those guarantees did not translate into timely military relief. The result was not a better negotiating position but the destruction of the Polish state, occupation by Germany and the USSR, and the loss of millions of lives. Poland’s refusal was morally justified, but strategically catastrophic: once the invasion began, Poland had no leverage left and no meaningful capacity to shape the outcome.
Finland, 1939–40.
Finland’s experience in the Winter War shows the opposite logic. After initially resisting Soviet demands and fighting effectively, Helsinki concluded that prolonged war would end in occupation and loss of independence. Finland therefore accepted a deeply unfavorable peace, ceding territory but preserving its state, government, and army. The concessions were real and painful, but they prevented total defeat and allowed Finland to survive as a sovereign country outside the Soviet bloc. The lesson is not that concessions are fair, but that in asymmetric conflicts, negotiated loss can preserve long-term sovereignty where uncompromising resistance risks annihilation.
None of this denies the moral reality of Russian aggression or shifts responsibility away from the side doing the invading and shelling. The problem is that moral clarity does not translate automatically into favorable outcomes in the real world. International politics is full of cases where the morally right side was still destroyed because power, not justice, determined the result. Treating morality as a substitute for leverage risks confusing righteousness with capability. A strategy that assumes the world will enforce moral claims has repeatedly failed small states; acknowledging this is not cynicism, but recognition of how outcomes are actually produced when one side can escalate indefinitely and the other cannot.
Look at Gaza, Look at Venezuela - they dont deserve shit treatment but the world simply does not care to do anything about it.
This post was edited by ferdia on Dec 25 2025 05:27pm