- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Deeply unserious.
This is the Russian way. The way of the terrorist. Maximalist demands completely detached from reality. Stonewall until they give you something you didn’t have before.
Russia’s “position” is -
- Ukraine can never join NATO.
- All land as it sits today is ceded.
- And the fortress belt and rest of Donbas territory and population is surrendered.
- Finland has to leave NATO for some reason.
- Economically vital Odessa and Mykolaiv are demilitarized and therefore hostage to Russian bombardment.
- NATO has to remove Baltics bases and the protection they give
- Return of $300B frozen assets
- Transnistria in Moldova is formally annexed
What does Russia offer?
- We will remove the tactical nukes we put into Belarus in 2023.
That’s it. Never mind that those nukes are both unusable and their location is completely irrelevant in a world of ICBMs and Cruise Missiles. And that “moving” them is an afternoon of loading them on trucks back and forth.
So - Russia demands literally everything, for literally nothing. **This is all revealing of what Putin’s plans were in the first place. **
They clearly intended to seize the Baltics, Finland, Poland, Romania…everything in the Warsaw Pact and as much beyond that as they could possibly grab. We are lucky they are so stupid, and that the ukrainians are so brave.
I mean - what do you even say? Ok Russia. Game on. Keep dying then. If Peace is the same as Death, why would anybody want it?
Maybe don’t invade other countries russia, ever thought about that?
No, they never have. They live by the oddly capitalist idea that if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking.
They have always “negotiated” this way - demand everything, concede nothing, wait in stonewalled silence until the feckless, peace-worshipping pussies in the west give you something.
But that policy, used extensively through the entire 20th centry, was underwritten by the threat of violence. The assumption that Russia was capable of great destruction and that the West wouldn’t be willing to endure any suffering. In short - the threat.
But - Russia has already shown all its cards. Their army is effectively spent and incapable of progress in Ukraine, much less invading the Baltics, Poland or Romania. The threat of what they might do has no teeth anymore. We’ve seen what they can do. We’ve seen their limits. Now, they stamp their feet and hold their breath like a petulant toddler demanding a cookie.
This is a childish tactic, but they’re a childish country. Ukraine will wait them out until Trump is further weakened or something fundamental changes in Moscow or Washington. There’s absolutely no point making a deal with these black hearted lunatics. The suffering goes on, because of the maniacal delusions of an overpromoted gangster ghoul.
Russia is like the mirror image of the US. A small European country that stretched across an entire continent by conquering indigenous peoples, taking their land, settling ethnic Russians, and replacing their languages. Their entire history and national identity is colonialism.