yogthos

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

Perhaps it’s not so fallacious as you claim. Putin himself wrote a lengthy article (en.kremlin.ru/misc/66182) which was basically his version of Anschluß that Hitler used as reasoning for taking Austria in 1938. And Russian leaders have written a lot about how they would like to reverse the dismantling of USSR at least when it comes to territory – but since those nations are now sovereign that would amount to annexing those countries.

That article doesn’t say what you seem to be claiming here.

I was talking about the precedent of using nuclear weapons to back offensive actions. USA did something like that during Korea in the 50s, but to my knowledge not since. Well ok, there was Trump, but who knows how serious that was.

And as you yourself admit the precedent is set by US which is the only country to actually commit such an atrocity. However, the bigger point here whether might makes right, and that’s the rule that the west has consistently followed.

Didn’t Ukraine remain neutral about NATO until Russia took Crimea? Only after that they reconsidered that position.

No, Ukraine had a violent coup in 2014 where the legitimate government was overthrown and right wing nationalists took power. Russia annexed Crimea in response to that because the regime that took power started doing these sorts of things to the Russian speaking population:

• hrw.org/…/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munition…
• twitter.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

That’s a fallacious argument based on a false premise. Russia has always been clear that their concern has been NATO expansion. Ukraine would have lost none of its territory had it chose to remain neutral.

Furthermore, plenty of western experts warned about this literally for decades, yet those concerns were ignored.

Meanwhile, it’s kind of funny of you to talk about setting some sort of precedent when the west has set it a long time ago.

Western nations have invaded Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria just to name a few. This was done unilaterally without UN authorization. In fact, Russian playbook in Ukraine is directly modeled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where they recognized breakaway regions and had them invite NATO for support.

What you’re essentially saying here is that it’s fine for the west to do these things, but we should bring the world to a brink of a nuclear holocaust when other countries do the same.

The reality is that the west has no moral high ground here unless western countries change their own behavior.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

deleted_by_moderator

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

Obviously you must think that it’s better to make sure hundreds of thousands of people die and millions more have their lives ruined before giving everything to Russia. If Ukraine simply accepted neutrality before the war and implemented Minsk, then it would’ve kept all its territory. Then Ukraine could’ve settled the war back in March last year, but US and UK said no. Now, Ukraine has lost 20% of its territory, and will likely lose a lot more. Yet, the final outcome is going to be the same. Even western propagandists stopped talking about Ukrainian victory at this point.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

I think the reality is that the actual conflict is between Russia and NATO with Ukraine simply being used as a proxy. This is a tragedy for the people of Ukraine as they ended up being cynically used by the west in a misguided attempt to weaken Russia. And I’m not exaggerating here, it’s literally the words of Loyd Austin and what a RAND paper that was published before the war suggested. Russia obviously played the role of the aggressor here and bears full responsibility for that, but the war would not have happened if not for NATO ambition to keep expanding east.

What’s truly tragic is that plenty of western experts have been warning about this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started.

50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:___ https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/6f627aaf-116a-40af-b497-ecf8006fe2db.pnghttps://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/99020793-213d-4451-80d7-295930705738.png

George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.___ https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/832e713d-8963-4ecc-ae1f-8b366830bbd4.png

Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"___ https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/706556d4-ae53-4140-9cb2-bb2cfefd9c52.png

Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.

yogthos OP , 1 year ago to worldnews in The Lula-Xi summit is a real challenge to a US-dominated world

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/4323efeb-91d9-481d-88a7-f4fc3c603c73.jpeg

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

There is actually a lot of information you can read in English language media, but most of it doesn’t make its way into mainstream reporting. However, actual military experts and political scientists give us a pretty good insight into what’s really happening. For example, this analysis from U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin retired after 20 years of service and 12 years working as a modeling and simulations officer in NATO explains that Russian strategy is not about taking territory. Russia is fighting a war of attrition with NATO. The reality is that Russia inherited a massive military industrial complex from USSR, and it is currently able to outproduce NATO militarily. Furthermore, Russia has a much simpler logistics situation in terms of shipping weapons and supplies to the battlefront. Finally, Russia enjoys air superiority over Ukraine and is able to attack deep within Ukraine to destroy supplies and infrastructure. Ukraine has no meaningful ability to do the same within Russia. Furthermore, this is primarily an artillery war and Russia enjoys a huge artillery advantage over Ukraine. This summary of the state of things John Mearsheimer is a very lucid explanation of where the war is at.

Another huge problem for Ukraine is that it’s entirely reliant on western support at this point both militarily and economically. This means that Ukraine has to continue showing results to the west in order to keep support going. This is how Ukraine got pushed into the current disastrous offensive they’re forced to conduct. Russians clearly expected this given that they spent the past 9 months preparing complex multilayered defences that Ukrainian military is throwing itself against as we speak.

Once this offensive burns out, Ukraine will have spent a significant amount of weapons they received from the west, and lost large numbers of their experienced soldiers. This is already happening and it’s being admitted in mainstream western media fairly openly at this point. Russia is already starting a counterattack of their own in the north, and they’ve taken more territory in the past couple of weeks than Ukraine has taken in two months of their offensive. Russia is increasingly fighting against a depleted and demoralized army. All of this was known before the war started, Obama even quipped this in 2016:

Obama declares Ukraine to be not a core American interest and that he is reluctant to intervene in the country, because Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

Regarding political stability, it’s pretty clear that it’s much higher in Russia than pretty much in any western country. The government is consistently polling between 75% and 80%, and most dissidents have fled at the start of the conflict. We also saw evidence of this when Prigozhin’s attempt at a coup happened. All of the government and military immediately pledged loyalty and denounced Prigozhin. I can guarantee you that anybody who appeared to even remotely support the coup has been rooted out at this point. On the other hand, there is significant political instability in Europe, and anti war parties are polling increasingly high.

The reality is that that people care about their economic situation first and foremost. The economy in Russia is doing well, and even IMF is projecting growth. The war has little impact on day to day life in Russia. On the other hand, Europe is now in recession and people are seeing their economic conditions decline. This is the primary driver of political unrest. I expect we’ll see anti war sentiment to continue growing going forward. I recall seeing that Czech president Petr Pavel say that he expects that Ukraine only has around 6 months left, at which point there’s likely going to be collapse of public support in the west. Once western support stops, Ukraine will have no way to continue fighting the war and will have to accept Russian terms. Russia understands this perfectly well, and this is why they’re conserving their resources and fighting a war of attrition instead of making big and costly offensives to take territory. If Russia can grind down Ukrainian army then they can dictate terms.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

I get your point perfectly fine. The reality is that we’re all human, and we react to provocations. That’s why trolling works and why trolls do it. We all react in ways we wish we didn’t because it’s not easy to change your own negative behavior even when you’re aware of it. All I can do is try to interact with people better.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

I appreciate the sentiment, and for what it’s worth, you’ll never find me making personal attacks or insults to people who engage with me in polite discussion. I realize I could do better engaging with trolls, but I find it difficult not to respond in kind. None of us are perfect, all we can do is try to be better.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

That’s the conclusion of anybody who’s been paying any attention and has at least a couple of brain cells to bang together. Soon enough this will become obvious even to the most imbecilic members of western public. In the meantime feel free to keep regurgitating the propaganda you’ve been fed for the past two years like a parrot.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

Except, nobody is solely blaming NATO for Russia’s actions.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

consider yourself enlightened …substack.com/…/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukra…

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

How do you think this all ends exactly?

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

Let’s end human civilization in a nuclear holocaust.

yogthos , 1 year ago to worldnews in Mexican president urges end to 'irrational' Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks

Given that Russia appears to be winning this conflict, seems that the fever dream and delusions of grandeur are in the west.