Why? Why do we have a duty to defend Ukraine at the expense of our own country? Why continue the farce of sending money and weapons there? Ukraine can’t win this fight. All we are doing is prolonging their pain. Better to negotiate peace as quickly as possible now IMO. I agree with archers. War is awful. I don’t agree with the West’s tactics of turning this into a perpetual war. Putin has called everyone’s bluff and it’s time to accept that.
Can’t allow Russia to capture Ukraine, it’s far more dangerous in the long run as the next move would pit them directly against NATO and can we really trust Putin not to take that step? If we ignore this now, there is a very good chance we will end up fighting them directly later, it’s far more complex than just getting involved in someone else’s fight, we literally can’t afford for Ukraine to lose. It is incredibly naive to think any kind of negotiated peace in Ukraine would last, Russia would just bide their time to rebuild their forces and come after the rest of it and I would imagine they would be straight after Moldova immediately after because they got away with it again, like they did with Crimea. China will also see it as a green light to go after Taiwan, they need to see that there is a tangible consequence.
Thank you for answering this. Yes, this. I mean it's not like Putin hasn't told everyone, on countless occasions, over countless years, what he'd like to do. To stand back from this would be to immediately reward the aggression. So there's absolutely no reason for him not to do the same with the Baltic countries, and then swan into Finland, Sweden etc etc. Where do we draw the line, because a line needs to have been drawn. (And that's without even looking at China and Taiwan, as you very rightly say).
I disagree with this. putin isn’t stupid enough to trigger NATO. He knows exactly where the lines are. He also has all of the commodities. the West’s imaginary paper money won’t create energy out of thin air. The line is already drawn - NATO is the line. We have badly mismanaged policy towards Ukraine which has led to this point. No need to continue making mistakes now and plunge Europe into chaos.
Im obviously not cool with that at all. But I also don’t believe it’s likely to happen. I don’t buy that Putin is a dictator like Hitler wanting to roll across Europe. I believe he is very clever and playing a game to undermine the US dollar hegemony and push nato back. His motive isn’t to conquer the whole of Europe like Hitlers. I believe there will be a point when we have to negotiate with him instead of fanning the flames and making things worse
Im not okay at all with him rocking into Ukraine. Where have I ever said that? I think it’s ****ing awful. But there is a time to accept when you’re beaten. Many more people will die for no reason if we continue to antagonise Putin instead of striving for peace
You want him to get away with it, which is pretty much the same. You're certainly okay with him getting away with it. What about Estonia? Latvia? Should we get involved then? Because if we let him take however much of Ukraine, you can be pretty sure he'll try - because he's told us he wants them. Why not believe him?
It isn’t the same at all that’s an absurd statement. I’m being objective - he has gotten away with it. There is nothing we can do without causing WW3. What I am advocating for is to save as many lives as possible. How best to do that is up for debate
And the UK's post-imperialist military adventures have turned out well, have they? Like the time we armed Iraq in their war with Iran, then decades later we fighting...erm..Iraq, twice? As unintended consequences go, that went nearly as well as US support for insurrectionists fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.
It has been reported that Putin does not travel overseas for fear that he would be toppled in his absence. Eventually he will be ousted in a power struggle, because there must be one going on in the background. I would imagine that the usurpers are waiting for the right moment to trigger the moment. On another issue, Europe should have seen the bigger picture an invited Russia to bedome an associate member of the EU given that 70% of its population live to the West of the Urals, and uniil Russia invaded Ukraine, much of its trade was done with EU countries in terms of goods, services and people.More is the pity that Putin chose to do what he did.
Oh absolutely. That was idiocy to the extreme, and with a ridiculous lack of knowledge of the workings of Middle Eastern politics. However, this is a slightly (massively) different set of circumstances.
It is different, and I don’t claim to know what the best way is of dealing with Putin. But I’m extremely sceptical when our politicians and media start whipping us into a state of war fever - which, incidentally, is how the ruling class in our country have tended to distract the proles from dissent for much of the last 1000 years. Perhaps if we had stayed out of WWI btw, there wouldn’t have been a WWII, then Russia wouldn’t have been scarred by the trauma of invasion
The reality is that he has Europe hostage right now. He can turn off our energy with a whim thanks to ludicrous energy policies which left us vulnerable. (which i was ridiculed on here for pointing out some time ago…) The other reality is that Ukraine can’t win the war, and every day they young men are dying. I think we should be looking at reality and encouraging democracy instead of burying our head in the sand, antagonising Putin and printing more and more paper money. Contrary to media propaganda he isnt a lunatic. He is a clever cold blooded psycho. Which also means he will hopefully listen to some reason.
I would like to think that was the case regarding the line, but I honestly never saw him going for Crimea or the rest of Ukraine. He is unpredictable and will test every boundary, we cannot guarantee that doesn’t mean NATO allied countries as well, it isn’t as if this is in Russia’s best interests either, this conflict has been terrible for Russia and yet he persists, we can’t assume the Russian leadership operates on the same logic as the rest of us and we also can’t assume this ends when Putin goes. Besides the military aspect, allowing Russia to control Ukraine gives them control of grain exports that are hugely important, that is a lot of proxy power in China and the Middle East that they can utilise against NATO aligned countries and the EU. Europe needs to get its act together and finally realise that the future of power is mixed nuclear and renewables, the energy crisis is our collective penance for effing about with limited resources that have tentative supplies for the sake of being cheap. We/they need to get about developing this infrastructure and fast (of course our idling oxygen thief of a new PM thinks fracking is the answer, we need to make sure she is toppled asap).
Russia seizing Crimea was always 100% inevitable, and would have been so under any leadership. Sevastopol is Russia’s only western deep water port that doesn’t freeze in winter, that’s why they fought the Turks, the British and the French for control of the Black Sea and access to the med. Throughout this whole saga, the inability of Western politicians to see history from a Russian perspective has been simply staggering. Every nation has it’s defining stories, it’s moments from history that help to frame how it sees itself in relation to the world; where we have Trafalgar, Waterloo and Dunkirk, Russia has Napoleon’s invasion and retreat from Moscow, the Crimean War, the siege of Leningrad, and the battle of Stalingrad. When historians write the history of this period, the eastern encroachment of NATO to The Vistula, The Dnieper and The Don, will be seen as a hugely significant factor.
As you correctly say Moldova would be an obvious target depending on how Ukraine works out. Then there is Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan all former Soviet Republics and not members of Nato. Putin is known to resent the Soviet break up, who knows what his intentions are in the future? I can understand a reluctance for conflict but how do you reconcile leaving him to get on with it without some sort of resistance?
