Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.
“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
In what fantasy land do you think this is remotely achievable? Seriously? Do the lives of Ukrainians fighting and being caught in this conflict mean this little to you, that you are willing to accept continuation of fighting?
Ukraine surrendering is evidently not happening either. Given that Russia is indisputably in the wrong, maybe that’s the side we should put pressure on. Just a thought.
Put pressure we do, rest assured.
But, just objectively, what’s the endgame here? I saw a lot of people shit on Russian opposition for not stopping Putin. But, what can Ukraine and the entire world that supports it do? Russian state’s position is simple, it wants Donbas and Luhansk IN Ukraine (=take over it) or there would not be Ukraine at all. What’s the move here? Just supplying Ukraine with weapons won’t do. Accepting Ukraine into NATO is impossible. Going all NATO against Russia is suicidal. Real talk, get some ideas, and quick, on how to get more troops on Ukrainian soil, and make them real. The comments just shitting on Russia and chanting the same words on twitter won’t help - we’ve tried already.
It’s going to happen eventually, as they’re going to run out of recruits before the Russians do. This is like playing a game of chess to the bitter end, only the pieces are real human beings. Hundreds of thousands of them.
We don’t live in a “1 soldier = 1 soldier” world, haven’t for several millennia actually. There are weapons that multiply lethality by different amounts on both sides, so it’s more of a question of who gets the better gadgets and manages to use them in better strategies.
Except, at the end of the day, someone runs out of soldiers. If Ukraine keeps wasting resources in a futile counteroffensive, it’s going to be Ukraine. Military doctrine going back centuries has told us that defending is far easier if your technological capability is even marginally close to equivalent.
Ukraine is getting fully functional F-16s, Russia has already shown that they tape down Garmin GPSs to their fighter jet dashboards. That’s… not “marginally close”.
Maybe Ukraine should regroup and stay on the defensive in the meantime, but I wouldn’t bet on Russia in 2024.
Except… It sort of is? GPS was first launched in 1978 (oh look, the year the F-16 was introduced). The F-16 is an ancient platform and Ukraine has already shown that CAS is rather challenging given how advanced modern munitions are. At the start of the war they were literally plucking planes out of the sky.
Plus, NATO doctrine relies on complete battlefield superiority and complex logistics… Things that Ukraine lacks. How exactly is Ukraine supposed to turn the tides with F-16s when the Russians have stealth planes and hundreds of Su-35/34/30s?
It’s not about how old is the platform, it’s about what you put into it. Is the F-35 still randomly rebooting mid flight? The F-16 hasn’t had that problem for decades, and it can run modern hardware just fine.
Stealth planes are irrelevant in a dogfight, or in defending ground assets, and all those Su-* have been shown to be lacking proper maintenance for decades. We’ll see how they manage against a fully operational and updated bunch of F-16s.
Dogfights are an outdated paradigm.
If an Su-57 picks up your radar signature and gets a lock, you better pray to your countermeasures suite because you’re not even going to get a glimpse of it. That’s literally the entire modern US fighter paradigm.
Why would the hastily trained Ukrainian recruits be any better than the Russian ones? Ukraine looks to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, since they’re now also conscripting HIV positive and mentally ill men. It also looks like Ukraine has higher losses, especially now with the offensive, meaning that over time more experienced Russian soldiers are going to be fighting Ukrainian fresh recruits.
Russia also has more equipment and ammunition. And don’t start talking about quality: Most of the stuff that was sent to Ukraine is old stuff, and Russia also has a mix of old and new stuff. Even when you compare the numbers of roughly equivalent types of weapons, Russia comes out ahead in pretty much every category.
These stories about the superior NATO weapons, superior NATO training and whatnot are propaganda. There are warhawks that use this story to dismiss the obvious quantitative difference, bigots that love to believe in Russian inferiority and incompetence, and weapons manufacturers trying to advertise their Wunderwaffen. It’s all bunch of crap.
Of course, it’s a grad user saying this bullshit. The end of fighting means Ruzzia has won. They captured territory, killed tens of thousands, raped women and children alike and you want them to get away with it. It’s not about peace, because Ruzzia will never want piece. All it wants is subjugation of those they deem inferior. This conflict wont end if you end fighting. They will simply regroup and attack in a few years again. If you think ending the fight will end the war you are fucking delusional.
When you make an emotional plea like that, not based in reality, I think of when I was living with my aunt and uncle, and my aunt was so upset I was angering my uncle by not giving in to him.
He was going to abuse us regardless of what we did, I’d been in the situation for a few years by then and saw the patterns, and when you’re in that situation and understand the history of how that individual acts, you don’t fling yourself at the abuser’s feet once again…you fight.
I fought and got free. Got bruises and my hair ripped out of my head for it…but I got out. My aunt put up with a few more years of abuse because she wasn’t willing to put up with that bit, the dangerous bit when he popped off when someone defied him.
The situation in Ukraine is (writ large of course) similar to the dynamics of what goes on in an abusive home. The stakes are higher–more lives lost–but the dynamics underneath are still human dynamics. Which needs to be understood when it comes to negotiation and “civility” and such. It all comes back to the nature of the human animal.
You have a lying abuser at top (Russia) who tries to divert attention by tugging on heartstrings with pretty words while they are placing the blame for the war on the victims who “just won’t stop fighting–don’t they want to stop getting hurt?” as if fighting someone who is already hurting you is abusive, as if fighting back against them is irrational.
You don’t play around with idealism with these people, because they’ve already shown they are not willing to hold up their side of that social contract. (Although they are cunning and know using it on YOU might get you to do things against your own interest.) It’s NOT a given that stopping fighting will stop the loss of lives, that the abusers will keep their word once they’ve given it–with the Wagner dude as an example, who stopped what he was doing presumably because he was given promises if he did stop, then was blown up in an airplane shortly after.
Being civil only works if the other person is also being civil. When they’re not, other methods of dealing with a threat have to be taken. In an individual home, like my situation, I was lucky enough that simply leaving was enough. It was wildly “uncivil”–everyone gets super upset when you say you ran away from home or don’t talk to family…but it was effective to change the situation I was in. I didn’t need to be violent myself, just physically remove myself.
Nations, unfortunately, can’t pick up their borders and walk away to a place where their neighbors can’t reach them, they are by their nature very land-bound. So you get war instead, when civility–diplomacy–doesn’t get the result needed. (Just like talking to my uncle wouldn’t stop him from doing things, it’d only cause more trouble because he’d get even angrier that you’re “back talking” and not giving in.)
BTW, I’m not really responding to this guy, I doubt they’ll read or understand what I’m saying as the wringing fingers appeasement is an emotional ploy meant to get people to stop thinking and start crying inside.
Even if he’s real I’d be surprised if he understood. My aunt never did understand my point when I tried to explain what was wrong in our situation. There’s a reason it takes X amount of years and X amount of tries for abused spouses to get free.
I hope this is interesting enough for lurkers, though.
it is possible to understand something without agreeing with it
with all due respect, using domestic abuse to explain geopolitical events is not a useful analytical approach
Ah yes, because geopolitics is basically child abuse.
Do you think it was acceptable for Texas to fight a war of independence against Mexico to join the U.S.?
If so, why isn’t it acceptable for the Donbas to fight a war of independence against Ukraine to join Russia?
Is that what you think this current conflict is?
Why shouldn’t I? Don’t the people want to join Russia?
I’m pretty sure Ukrainians being bombed have no interest in joining Russia.
You mean the Ukrainians that Ukraine was bombing before Russia even got involved at all?
I mean the Ukrainians being bombed by Russia. I assume you’re aware that thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed by Russia.
The problem you have with the Donbas genocide narrative is that, even if true, it doesn’t justify an invasion, killing even more people.
Why a supposed communist would even want to justify Russia’s actions in this conflict remains a complete fucking mystery.
Putin flooded the Donbas with Russian-born citizens and thousands of the Ukrainian citizens evacuated Donbas, so the elections were always going to be in Russia’s favor, just a sham vote that most of the world laughed off, now we see new voting taking place, and again we already know the winner, I just wish the bookies were giving odds.
Wait, you’re telling me demographics change over time? No way!
You’ve described a failing of democracy, but not of the result. Democracy is susceptible to the people and thus, like Bitcoin, is susceptible to a 50% attack. That doesn’t make the election null and void unless you’re arguing that democracy in general is a flawed concept in any country with open immigration.
It’s not them dying, so why would you expect them to care?
Maybe they do care? Maybe they realize agreeing to terms that give land to Russia means they will be back to take more?
They only care enough to send more Ukrainians to die, I guess…
Are you intentionally ignoring the point?
Wine cave warriors love their murderous state department line of thinking don’t they?