contricusc
Contributor
Of course it's "basically Russia anyway/Russia Jr" in terms of practicalities. We like to say otherwise, and it's noble, but we're not blowing up the world to salvage Ukraine anymore than Russia's going to die on the hill of Canada or whatever being free of U.S. influence.
You seem to think Ukraine is somewhere far away (like Canada is for Russia), but Ukraine is actually in Central Europe (from a geographical point of view), and it has direct borders witb EU countries. So Ukraine is just as close to the EU (and NATO) as it is to Russia.
Why should the EU and NATO accept that Russia should have the last say in Ukraine, when the Ukrainians themselves want to be part of the EU and NATO?
You seem to not get that "winning this war" is either A) totally amorphous as a goal, no real set clear aims/victory points, and B) likely to be as much of a pyrrhic victory as Russia invading them in the first place. If you go all-in on this, Ukraine "wins" on-paper/legally as an entity but the entire place is fucked for 10 generations and like 5% of their population continues to exist. Not a "win" for them, only a "win" for us outside Ukraine in the sense that Russia's got a serious bloody nose.
Wow, you’re just parroting the same Russian propaganda again. Why would only 5% of Ukraine‘s population still exist if Ukraine wins the war? I don’t see 95% of Ukrainians dead in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions that Ukraine managed to retake from Russia, and of course, not in the rest of Ukraine.
Winning the war for Ukraine means taking back its internationally recognized territory. Of course it would be some sort of a pyrrhic victory, but it would still be better than a defeat. And if NATO would have helped Ukraine more, victory would have been possible. Even now, if the US had a strong and intelligent president (unlike the incumbent or the two candidates), the war could still be won by Ukraine.
The point is smarter people than you know where this leads if we go to a hot war over...fucking *Ukraine* of all places, and said smarter people in general are aware it's not worth a war of the scale we haven't seen since '45. We like Ukrainians, we think they should be free. Also...tough shit at a certain point, life sucks and them's the breaks. Eventually negotiate with them or die, an occupied Ukraine is hardly anything new over the last three centuries and we're not setting the continent ablaze with war to save quasi-Russia.
This is another wrong assumption, to think that politicians are “smarter people” than you and me. I for one am much smarter than 99% of politicians, so the chances for a head of state or other decisionmaker to be smarter than me is close to zero (and I say this with all seriousness).
The fact that they let the situation get into this place shows that they are not smart. NATO should have not allowed Russia to invade, or it should have make it lose the war if it did. Anything else is bad policy.
Russia having a buffer zone on their western flank has always been baked into the cake, it's both unwritten and accepted by everyone as how things have to be. Obama fucking around in Ukraine wasn't smart from the start, now Ukraine pays, it is what it is - even if Putin's "in the wrong" (he is) for the brutal crackdown.
Another point where you are greatly mistaken. It is not “accepted by everyone” that Ukraine should be a buffer zone between NATO and Russia. Ukrainians don’t accept this status quo and they want to be a part of NATO, and many NATO countries support their goal of joining the alliance.
So no, not “everyone” agrees with this “buffer zone” concept. Maybe people in Moscow and Washington agree, but they are far from being “everyone”.
And the ones who should have the last word about what happens in Ukraine are the Ukrainians, not some politicians from far away countries or from the Kremlin.