Russia says West understands ‘Ukraine project’ has begun to fail
^{— Burç Eruygur · Anadolu Ajansı · Jan 30, 2024}

A faint whiff of desperation or anger or something in Lapdog's distractions? Maybe things aren't going as well as others are led to believe? Anyway, who knows.

Russia lawmakers pass bill to confiscate assets of those who discredit army
^{— Al Jazeera · Jan 31, 2024}

Ouch. Say something un-Kremlin'y about the war → your house gone + jail? I imagine people in occupied Ukraine are feelin' it.

Regarding EU support of Ukraine:

Viktor Orbán's interview with the French daily Le Point (in Hungarian)
^{— Orbán Viktor (interviewer Emmanuel Berretta) · Jan 30, 2024}

[...] Hungary is ready to participate in the solution of the 27, if they guarantee that we will decide every year whether we will continue to send this money or not. — Orbán

OK. But then things take a downturn...

[...] the European Union has moved more and more in an imperialist direction in recent years, especially after the withdrawal of the UK. It is a community of less and less sovereign states. More and more, regardless of what rights you have under the Contracts, what reasonable argument you give them, they try to force you to do something you don't want. More specifically: Brussels has been waging an ideological war against Hungary in recent years and is constantly trying to blackmail us.
[...]
I understand Ukrainians. I would like a huge amount guaranteed for as long as possible. I understand, but this is not a European interest. We have to behave differently in Europe. The Europeans also need this much money. In Europe, we are increasingly suffering from the poor performance of the economy. This money would be very useful for the European peoples, the French, the Germans, the Hungarians, the Poles...
[...]
At the time, I said clearly that we need Donald Trump in Europe. Because when Trump says "Make America Great Again" or "America First", it legitimizes us to "Make Europe Great Again" and "Europe First". Put Europe first, put France first, and put Hungary first. — Orbán

To me that’s just a straw man argument: first, you didn’t provide evidence that relevant Ukrainian, Russian, American politicians take “ ‘guaranteed’ as some sort of ontological status” whereby promises are necessarily kept as a reason to enter or not enter into contracts. — neomac


They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe. — boethius

First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? Because I have evidence of Ukrainian politicians and diplomats like Zelensky, Kuleba and Arakhamia making claims supporting the idea that Russia alone can not be trusted in negotiations and, given previous failed agreements, that doesn't sound implausible at all.
Second, your reasoning looks grounded on a self-induced conceptual confusion. That Russians can not be trusted can simply mean that the risks of Russian defection wrt agreements and Russian deceitful dispositions wrt declared intentions have historically proven to be high and costly enough for the Ukrainians, so that security guarantees for Ukraine must hedge against these risks by design and by contrast to previous agreements and security assurances. In other words, “guarantee” can still be understood in terms of perceived probability, not of ontological necessity.
BTW “ontological necessity” is abstract philosophical jargon so of little use for propaganda to dupe masses, one might wish to replace it with “certainty” or “beyond any reasonable doubt” instead. But again, there is absolutely no need to understand “guarantee” as “certainty” or “beyond any reasonable doubt” either, also because the negotiations took place in a context of mistrust due to past agreement failures and rivalry, which later embittered even further.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself. — boethius

Talking about propaganda doesn’t work against me for reasons I repeatedly explained: first, we seem to have a significantly different understanding of the purpose or relevance of propaganda. Second, I can even more easily retort the accusation against you as spinning pro-Russian propaganda to discredit the West. Indeed, you didn’t provide arguments that Russia state propaganda machine and the Russian troll army wouldn’t conceive and spread to dupe the masses. In other words, your getting all frenzy and verbose over deconstructing ONLY Western propaganda (even if we pretend it’s plausible) is at best just expression of your pro-Russian bias, at worst ALSO of intellectual misery due to your populist bias. And I very much suspect it’s the latter.
In any case, I’m less interested in what politicians may say to the masses and more interested in what political decision makers may say to one another, especially behind doors. And the notion of “security guarantees” for Russia was requested by Putin himself to the West not to appease masses but to appease himself since he takes NATO and Ukraine inside NATO to be a security threat to Russia (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-demands-security-guarantees-but-what-putin-really-wants-is-ukraine/), if we want to take Putin seriously and not as someone who says things just to dupe the masses over his actual predatory hegemonic ambitions, right? In any case talking about “security guarantees” is enough intelligible in a context of geopolitical competition, security dilemmas, and historical diplomatic failures WITHOUT ever needing to blabber about “guarantees” as suggesting that promises among states are necessarily or certainly kept to dupe the masses.

Besides you even contradict yourself because after insisting that “guaranteed” is ornamental because it doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" and this would hold for contracts between states and work contracts between individuals, later you deny that the term “guaranteed” is ornamental “between parties subordinate to state power” even though that still doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept. — neomac


You need to really work on your reading comprehension.

The word "guarantee" appearing in a contract subordinate to state power is still ornamental. It simply embellishes the promise as an ornament to said promise, and if you embellish a promise then a judge will take that into account in determining liability.

It is not substantive though because you already promised whatever it is; adding that you guarantee it is simply promising twice, leading to even more actions by the promised party that are reasonable to take assuming you promise (and therefore more damaging if you don't fulfill your "super duper promise").

The issues of substance in such a dispute are "what was promised?", "was the promised fulfilled or not", "if the promise wasn't fulfilled, what are the damages that caused?".

None of the substantive issues relate to a guarantee (because guarantees do not change the ontological status of anything of substance; whatever is actually guaranteed, say "the laws of physics" obviously there would never be a court case where you promise the laws of physics will hold and that doesn't happen".

Where the word "guarantee" becomes relevant is once the substantive issues are settled and the promise has indeed been made but has not been fulfilled and indeed it caused much strife and consternation and rescheduling (aka. damages), then the fact that ornaments were added to the substantive meaning of the promise to embellish said promise will come to bear on the extent of liability or punishment for said damages; as a judge can easily say that when you flex your promises by guaranteeing them, and then don't deliver, I pity the fool!

However, between states, precisely because everyone knows it was an ornament, there isn't really any difference between calling something "security guarantees" or then "security promises"; the diplomatic cost will be the same whatever you call it. — boethius

Some more blah blah blah that doesn’t address the points I’m making AT ALL. To my understanding the SUBSTANTIVE and NON-ORNAMENTAL part is, as I repeatedly said, that all three parties, Ukraine, Russia and the West intend “security guarantees” to be by design something different wrt past failed agreements in terms hedging against risks of Russian aggression or defection from guarantors. So our understanding of “guarantee” doesn’t need AT ALL to go through your rhetoric quibbling over the ontological status of promises to deconstruct and discredit Western propaganda in favour of pro-Russian propaganda. It’s the historical and geopolitical context of past negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the West that can give enough intelligible meaning to the word “guarantees” as concerned decision makers understand them and talk about them between them, even behind doors. Such guarantees likely have to establish as clearly and concretely as possible (namely, to a certain degree of acceptability for relevant decision makers) things like if there are going to be guarantors’ boots on the grounds, guarantors military aid and/or support to the Ukrainian military industry or army, the entity of such support, under what operational and legal conditions, and what preventive measures, will be taken to contain possible future Russian aggressions etc., in CONTRAST to past failed agreements. These concerns are intelligible and strategically plausible under certain geopolitical and historical assumptions, no matter whatever else the Western propaganda to dupe the masses claims.

I would question all your four points — neomac


You can question all the points.

My explanation is to expound on the correct analytical framework in which to evaluate a proposed peace settlement. If "security guarantees" (as in promises) can never be "actually guaranteed" (as in an ontological status of necessity), then that begs the question of upon what basis would a peace agreement be reasonable to accept.

The 4 points I list are the main issues of consideration to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal.

Of course, regardless of the evaluations of likelihood of the 4 points, one can always propose a peace deal that is unacceptable. For example, "You must rape every baby as a condition for peace" is arguably, and I would both argue and agree, worth fighting to the death to avoid accepting.

Similarly, one can always propose values in which any given peace offer is unacceptable.

Rather, a better way to think of it is that evaluating the 4 points expands the area of acceptable peace terms.

If one believes all 4 points are very unlikely, then one should be willing to make equally little concessions for peace.

If one believes all 4 points are very likely, then, likewise, one should be willing to make equally graet many concessions for peace.

Obviously, to do it properly you'd need some matrixes representing all possible outcomes and their respective likelihoods and the changes of those likelihoods under all possible peace terms, and so forth until everything we could imagine ever happening is nicely represented in some way we that is almost, but not entirely, meaningless, and then calculate some eigenvalues and eigenvectors and then dabble in multi-variable integration over abstract higher dimensional spaces, and then before you know it bobs you're uncle: QED.

It would all be very mystifying and edify absolutely no-one, I'm sure you'd love it. — boethius

Dude, I’ll repeat once more, I’m an anonymous nobody, and never claimed to teach anything to anybody (differently from you) nor to edify anybody with my posts. I’m discussing these things to my personal intellectual entertainment without any concern for anybody else’s edification. I do not give a shit about any self-entitled anonymous nobody’s opinions about me. I don’t take it personally. So the only way you can score points with me is by trying harder to focus on what I’m questioning and provide compelling evidences and arguments in support of your claims against mine. That’s the only game I’m interested in playing here.
Concerning your 4 points “to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal”, even if we assume they are a plausible way of framing the issue from the Ukrainian perspective, still likelihood and costs must be weighed by Ukrainian decision-makers, not me. At best, I can try to speculate or comment other peoples’ speculations about what such decision makers’ assessing process may be (given the available evidences plus certain geopolitical and historical assumptions), and if I find it rationally compelling enough (yet under the assumption that I’m in NO better position to assess what would be reasonable for Ukrainian decision-makers to do). That’s all as far as I’m concerned.

That’s irrelevant wrt the point I was making. The argument I was making is that people Tzeench cites mention that Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiations changed after Bucha, so claiming that the peace deal was all but finished but the West blocked it, is twice manipulative: — neomac


Literally no one is claiming that Ukraine was "about" to sign the peace deal and then Bucha happened and that changed Zelensky's mind. Even the Western media recounts that the peace deal was rejected on advice from the West, and in particular Boris Johnson. Furthermore, the Ukrainian lead negotiator literally went on national television and explained what the Russians wanted and the reason they rejected the deal, which was not Bucha, which we've already discuss. — boethius

You really need to work on your reading comprehension. I didn’t write anywhere nor believe that Bucha was THE reason why Zelensky refused to pursue negotiations. I simply questioned what Tzeench claimed: “the peace deal was all but finished when Boris Johnson flew in to announce Ukraine would not be signing any deals with the Russians” or “the negotiations were blocked by the West”. I find such claims manipulative (especially wrt what else all people he cites claim) and instrumental to spin pro-Russian propaganda with a pretence of being unbiased and impartial. So the problem is not Boris, but what the fuck “all but finished” and “the negotiations were blocked by the West” are supposed to mean, imply, presuppose, or suggest.
And the reasons why I find such claims questionable are the following: first, there is the problem of the security guarantees from the West (but I think also the status of Crimea could have been a reason for concern in the exchange with Boris, and Arestovych gives hints on the issue of Crimea too, among other things which Tzeench overlooks). One can’t reasonably give for finalised an agreement that concerns third parties without third parties’ consensus. Most certainly so if there are such competing interests among relevant parties that even past agreements repeatedly failed. Chalyi too talks extensively about the importance of Western security guarantees for the negotiation from the Ukrainian perspective and the problems to get them.
The second reason why I find Tzeench’s claims manipulative is that the people Tzeench cited (Bennet and Arestovych which were also involved in the negotiations) mention Bucha as having or arguably having a profound impact on Zelensky’s attitude toward the negotiation. Notice though that I do not take this to mean that Zelensky immediately perceived Bucha massacre as a sufficient reason to refuse negotiations (I’m not the one assuming that Zelensky’s choice was impulsive or whimsically indifferent to the long-term national interest of Ukraine!), still Bucha may have “reinforced the perception of the genocidal nature of Russia’s aggression” and “introduced additional political costs to Zelensky’s choice of pursuing over-conciliatory negotiations with Russia” which Zelensky couldn’t ignore either (“In late March, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would consider accepting neutrality as part of a settlement with Russia, but it would need third-party guarantees and approval in a referendum. However, that idea fell by the wayside as Ukrainian government and public attitudes hardened following the discovery of Russian atrocities in liberated towns such as Bucha and Irpin” https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/FP-20231213-ukraine-nato-pifer.pdf), ESPECIALLY if there were no sufficient security guarantees from the right guarantors. So Zelensky who was talking about Russian genocidal war crimes even before the discovery of Bucha massacre (https://www.timesofisrael.com/proof-of-genocide-zelensky-rages-at-russia-for-bombing-ukraine-maternity-hospital/) may have felt even more pressed to address the Russian genocidal crimes after the discovery of Bucha massacres in negotiations with Russia contrary to the text of the Istanbul Communiqué. And indeed at the next round Zelensky revised the conditions of the Istanbul Communique in less conciliatory terms toward Russia:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed in November 2022 a 10-point peace plan, consisting of:
1. Safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
2. Protecting food distribution
3. Restoration of Ukraine's energy infrastructure
4. Release of prisoners and return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia
5. Restoration of Ukrainian borders prior to the 2014 annexation of Crimea
6. Full withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine
7. Prosecution of war crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
8. Remediation of ecological damage caused by the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam
9. Guarantees against future aggression
10. A multilateral peace conference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Besides, the popularity of Zelensky among Ukrainians didn’t fall after negotiations were suspended, so Zelensky’s negotiation approach was approved.
And there is nothing surprising if Bucha plaid a role in Zelensky’s reluctance to pursue negotiations according to the Instanbul Communiqué AT ALL, if one sees how Israelis (the military strong) and Palestinians (the military weaker) react to wide and wild massacres over their civilians. Their first reaction is not: “All right brothers and sisters, let’s take a deep breath and then immediately negotiate a conciliatory peace-deal that would make brother Boethious and brother Tzeench happy, because no amount of killed, raped, decapitated of our own brother civilians and brother children should prevent us from making brother Boethious and brother Tzeench unhappy”. But more like: “Let’s smack the shit out of these genocidal motherfuckers! BTW… who the fuck are these two trolls?!”. That should be common sense, right?
So my understanding is consistent with what people Tzeench cited (Bennett, Chalyi, Arestovych), INCLUDING what Tzeench purposefully misses to mention to manipulatively support the claim that the peace deal was all but finished (and, maybe, the idea that the West is exploitatively dictating to Zelensky what to do and Zelensky executes as a coward, gullible, corrupt, servile lapdog of Western interests?… Just a wild speculation, of course). My understanding is also consistent with later Zelensky’s attitude toward the negotiation with Russia and Zelensky’s popularity trend. So I’m fine with my understanding so far.
And notice that the first to publicly declare that negotiations ”had turned into a dead end” 3 days after Boris visit was Putin not Zelensky! So I find it plausible that by timely and publicly declaring the negotiation as “turned into a dead end”, Putin was pressing Zelensky to either publicly reconfirm his willingness to pursue negotiations strictly according to the Istanbul communiqué or publicly renege it (and Zelensky did neither). Putin’s move was a convenient propaganda move by Putin to present Zelensky either as “a coward, gullible, corrupt, servile lapdog of Western interests” or as a honourable man which resisted Western illegitimate interference (to mess with Ukraine-West strategic alliance). Besides Putin could exploit such propaganda move to dupe the masses (and overlook the problem of Western security guarantees and Bucha massacre) for free, because Putin can count on the fact that Western “useful idiots” will never take Putin accountable for his own propaganda moves, ONLY the West.

Concerning the pro-Russian narrative over the Istanbul communiqué that I keep hearing in this thread, and which I find manipulative for reasons I already explained, let me see if I can even understand its premises:
- If Putin was so organsmic about the Istanbul communiqué (it was certainly conciliatory on the Ukrainian part, wasn’t it?) and the peace deal was “all but finished” why didn’t they call each other and rush into finalising the agreement in person? Two anonymous nobodies like Tzeench and Boethious PERFECTLY KNOW BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT that Zelensky OBVIOUSLY is a Western gullible/corrupt puppet SINCE EVER, how could Putin possibly not know that? Was he duped by the Western propaganda too? Is Putin, an ex-KGB spy and sovereign of the Russian troll factories, more easy to be duped by Western propaganda than two random anonymous nobodies on the internet?
- On the other side, if Putin PERFECTLY KNEW THAT BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, then why was he so orgasmic about the Istanbul communiqué? Why the optimism? After all the Western puppeteers could easily sabotage it since Zelensky is KNOWN TO BE THEIR gullible/corrupt puppet SINCE EVER, couldn’t they? Western puppeteers hate Russia and want to exploit Ukraine as cannon fodder to destroy Russia, besides the Great Satan is treacherous as proven so many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many times, right? The Great Satan is blood thirsty because of the Military-Industrial complex, neoliberal blob, and remember Vietnam-Yugoslavia-Iraq-Afghanistan-Syria-etc? So why the orgasmic optimism of an ex-KGB spy and sovereign of the Russian troll factories concerning a slave of a treacherous and blood-thirsty Great Satan exactly?!
- But then if there was no reason for Putin to be orgasmic and optimistic AT ALL, and even less to be slow at closing the agreement, why the hell did Putin wait for Zelensky’s puppeteers to sabotage the deal exactly? Why not just profit from this opportunity to close the deal as speedy Gonzales fast as possible ONLY WITH ZELENSKY? It would have been also a formidable propaganda weapon against the Western puppeteers from the Russian perspective BESIDE obtaining what he obtained from the Instanbul Communiqué! Because either Westerners accepted the deal as fait accompli, so Russia could proclaim “Russia and Ukraine DID the right thing”! Or Westerners would have vocally protested over a FINALIZED agreement among SOVEREIGN STATE leaders which would have reinforced anti-Western narrative. And even if Westerns, later on, tried YET ANOTHER coup against Zelensky or political kill him with all sorts of fabricated scandals and bad press, this could have still plaid in favour of Putin’s anti-Western narrative while giving himself time to prepare better for the next political/military move, if needed. So, why not just profit from this opportunity and close the deal ONLY WITH ZELENSKY as fast as possible?
- BTW if Zelensky is so corrupt & gullible when he deals with the West, does that mean that Zelensky may still be corrupt & gullible when he deals with Russia as well? Or Zelensky is corrupt & gullible only when he accepts Western conditions and then he immediately turns into a fucking genius and man of honour when he accepts Russian conditions?

no one mentions Bucha much in any narrative — boethius

That’s false. Beside what Bennett and Arestovych (implicated in the negotiations with Russia) say about Zelensky’s reaction to Bucha, and you and your side kick conveniently overlook, here some more “narratives” mentioning Bucha and its possible impact on the negotiations:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/04/us-music-awards-welcome-ukrainian-president-a77202
https://english.nv.ua/nation/bucha-shuts-the-door-on-dialogue-with-russia-zelensky-says-50234254.html
https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/zelensky-visits-bucha-after-mass-slaughter-of-civilians/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/03/ukraine-russia-zelensky/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/russia-ukraine-peace-talks.html
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/16/zelensky-russia-ukraine-mariupol-putin
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/zelensky-says-russian-genocide-in-ukraine-make-negotiations-harder
https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/Ukraine-for-the-Wall-Street-Journal-the-bucha-images-caused-the-negotiations-mediated-by-Turkey-to-fail/
https://thehill.com/homenews/3258673-zelensky-visits-bucha-says-russian-atrocities-will-make-talks-very-difficult/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
According to a May report from Ukrainska Pravda, the Russian side was ready for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, but it later came to a halt after the discovery of War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in particular the Bucha massacre on the 1 April. In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with," and that the collective West was not willing to make a deal with Putin. Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin stated publicly that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end”. Roman Abramovich visited Kyiv in an attempt to resume negotiations. Zelenskyy proposed negotiating two separate documents, one being a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Russia, and the other involving Ukraine and the West. Ukrainian lead negotiator (at this point) Davyd Arakhamia stated in an interview on 24 November 2023 that the neutral status of Ukraine was the key Russian demand during the negotiations and that the western countries were aware of the negotiations and advised Ukraine not to rely on security guarantees. Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality saying that the Ukrainian delegation did not have the authority to do it

there isn't must solid evidence ether Russians even did it. Plenty of factions in Ukraine did not want peace and had the means and opportunity to stage such an event. There are of course plenty of factions in Russia that don't want peace either and likewise would have motive and opportunity. — boethius

And that’s not pro-Russian propaganda to dupe the masses at all, of course.
Here some sources for an instructive comparison:
- “Evidence of staged events in Bucha is multiplying“ (https://tass.com/politics/1436063)
- “War in Ukraine: 'There is irrefutable evidence of war crimes,' concludes Amnesty International investigation” (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/05/07/war-in-ukraine-there-is-irrefutable-evidence-of-war-crimes-concludes-amnesty-international-investigation_5982661_4.html)

However, any analysis by decision makers will also be weighted by what they have personally to gain, so the West's offer of providing hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of a slush fund may have also influenced analytical outcomes of influential people involved in the process. "Getting close" to a deal with the Russians is of course leverage to extract more mulla from the West.

That is another way, a more free and capitalist way, to approach things where profit is the main driver of incentives. — boethius

That could be an interesting point, once we remove the biased framing. The Ukrainian decision makers can very much calculate their moves wrt Western (as much as Russian) expectations and dispositions while pursuing their political agenda, whatever their personal motives are. Like “getting close to a deal with the Russians” as a leverage to solicit more aid from the West and/or as a way to buy time against Russia (as Merkel’s case may suggest). And then Russians and their Western "useful idiots" can exploit such circumstances to spin anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narrative to dupe the masses.

The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then? — Sep 26, 2023

It's really unclear what your point is.

What I'm pointing out is that evaluating the likelihood for Russia not reinvading Ukraine later if a peace deal is reached would be based on a bunch of factors, one of which is the diplomatic cost of breaking a "guarantee".

You are entirely free to argue that Russia would reinvade later even if Ukraine is neutral. Of course, this is only 1 of the 4 points I mentioned that need evaluating.

If you want to actually participate in the discussion you need to present actual arguments. Just linking to stuff is not a form of argument; you're basically just spamming with your preferred sources while not making any arguments.

First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? — neomac

Your reading comprehension continues to degrade and I will only fix this first error.

What I stated was:

They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself. — boethius

What I am stating is that Ukrainian politicians are aware, like the US and Russian politicians, that states can break their promises.

How do you go from my literally claiming "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises." followed by "Ukrainian politicians as well." to concluding I am claiming that Russia can therefore be trusted?

What is propaganda is stating the reason to reject the peace deal is a lack of trust.

It sounds like a good reason: We don't like Putin (he's invaded the country after all", he's the enemy, therefore he can't be trusted, therefore it is justified to reject the peace deal.

What I am explaining is that the basic lack of trust between states is always at all times (the US literally got caught spying on Merkel), and relationships between states are not and never all trust based.

Relations are pressures and interest based. Notably, pressures and interests are not the same thing. Your interest can be one thing but I can pressure you to do another.

When states collaborate closely, are "friends", it is not because of simple word giving, but because there are pressures and interests that keep them aligned.

"Saying this peace deal is otherwise good but we can't accept it due to a lack of trust" is simply insufficient reason. No country trusts any other country, yet deals are made all the time.

To give a non-state example, prosecutors cut deals with criminals all the time. Do they trust the criminals? No. If trust was a necessary condition of deals there would by definition never be deals between prosecutors and criminals. What's the basis of the deal from the prosecutors perspective (i.e. why does the prosecutor bet the criminal will stick to the deal)? Pressure and interest.

Why the Zelensky regime requires this myth that "Putin can't be trusted" is because:

1. If they did a proper analysis and concluded continuing the war was the best thing to do for Ukraine, obviously that analysis was wrong. If they were betting they could raise a 1 million man army, get NATO weapons and training, and then just spank the Russians across the Azov sea, in a short amount of time limiting the destruction to Ukraine, they were obviously wrong.

2. If they didn't bother to sit down and do a proper analysis (for example actually war-game out with Boris Johnson what he was suggesting, how it would actually work in practice) but rather just saw Dollars! Dollars! Dollars!!! So many free dollars raining down from the US and EU treasuries they'd be literally barfing with dollars, then maybe they just didn't really give a shit about their intuition that they were unlikely to beat the Russians and they'd be sending a lot of Ukrainians to die so that themselves and their friends could pocket a pretty penny.

Obviously case 1 is more honourable, but they were obviously wrong and admitting that would undermine belief in their competence and fitness to lead. Case 2 is less honourable, but as has been repeated in the media a lot lately, Ukraine does struggle with corruption.

For, if you reject a reasonable peace deal (i.e. not something like "rape all the babies" as a concession), sufficient reason still requires being able to win the war.

This should all be quite obvious. For example, if you're robbing me and pointing a gun at me and offer me the deal "just give me your wallet and you can go" the reason for me to accept is not because I trust you, I honestly don't trust you as hard that maybe before you to believe, but because you're pointing a gun at me and I view the odds of your interest (you want the wallet and don't want to kill anyone) and pressure (the state will hunt you more vigorously if you murder me) outweighs my ability to prevail with fisticuffs in a gun fight.

Now, if I think you're going to shoot me anyways if I give you my wallet (or the keys to the vault or whatever it is that you want), then that obviously changes the calculus.

The difference in relations between states is that losing a fight does not imply the deaths of all your citizens. It could, such as Genghis Kahn intent to make an example of your defiance, but that's not the case here.

One must evaluate all the potential outcomes, and their respective likelihoods, of battle, as well as the cost of battle, to determine the wisest course.

Simply because the West treats Ukrainian lives as expendable without a second thought does not entail that their worth really is expendable without a second thought.

First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? — neomac


Your reading comprehension continues to degrade and I will only fix this first error. — boethius

Sure, but I’m more interested in ALL other alleged errors, though.

What I stated was:

They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself. — boethius


What I am stating is that Ukrainian politicians are aware, like the US and Russian politicians, that states can break their promises.

How do you go from my literally claiming "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises." followed by "Ukrainian politicians as well." to concluding I am claiming that Russia can therefore be trusted? — boethius

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”?
Either you are playing dumb or you lost focus. I’ll remind you that I’m targeting your argument that “guarantee” in “security “guarantees” is just ornamental and meant to dupe the masses because "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises”. So your argument hinges on the premise that Ukrainian politicians and diplomats believe that “the security guarantees” couldn't actually be “guaranteed”. I’m claiming that the claim your argument hinges on is a manipulated claim that doesn’t show the actual meaning of “security guarantees“ for Ukrainian politicians and diplomats and Russia TOO, for that matter. EVEN PUTIN didn’t have any trouble to use the expression “security guarantees” FROM THE WEST when addressing his concerns to Ukraine and the West. “Guarantees” as ontological necessity of keeping promises plays absolutely NO role in Putin and Zelensky understanding of what they are demanding from the West/US. They want security agreements such that BY DESIGN they can feel MORE hedged against risks of defection from guarantors THAN it was the case in past failed agreements (like the Budapest memorandum, Minsk I and II). The problem is not to dupe the masses, the problem is really to see how Ukraine and Russia can find security agreements FOR THEMSELVES WITH the West/US in a more reliable way than in the past. The problem is not that “the security guarantees” couldn't actually be “guaranteed”, but that for Ukraine that SECURITY GUARANTEES SHOULD NOT BE GUARANTEED BY RUSSIA ALONE. And for Russia, that SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE SHOULD NOT BE GUARANTEED BY THE WEST ALONE.

1. If they did a proper analysis and concluded continuing the war was the best thing to do for Ukraine, obviously that analysis was wrong. If they were betting they could raise a 1 million man army, get NATO weapons and training, and then just spank the Russians across the Azov sea, in a short amount of time limiting the destruction to Ukraine, they were obviously wrong.

2. If they didn't bother to sit down and do a proper analysis (for example actually war-game out with Boris Johnson what he was suggesting, how it would actually work in practice) but rather just saw Dollars! Dollars! Dollars!!! So many free dollars raining down from the US and EU treasuries they'd be literally barfing with dollars, then maybe they just didn't really give a shit about their intuition that they were unlikely to beat the Russians and they'd be sending a lot of Ukrainians to die so that themselves and their friends could pocket a pretty penny. — boethius

So Ukrainians are either dumb or corrupted. No need to talk about their security concerns (as pro-Russian propaganda does with Russian security concerns, right?). Nice manipulative framing.

For example, if you're robbing me and pointing a gun at me and offer me the deal "just give me your wallet and you can go" the reason for me to accept is not because I trust you, I honestly don't trust you as hard that maybe before you to believe, but because you're pointing a gun at me and I view the odds of your interest (you want the wallet and don't want to kill anyone) and pressure (the state will hunt you more vigorously if you murder me) outweighs my ability to prevail with fisticuffs in a gun fight. — boethius

Another manipulative example. Here is another less convenient example (but still kind to you): if I’m pointing a gun at you and offer you a deal "just let me and my friends gang-rape your ass and take a video to post on TikTok and then you can go”, what will you do honourable man? What will Russians do? What will Ukrainians do? And Chinese? And Nigerians? And Iranians? And Arabs? And Mexicans? And Germans? And Jews? And Palestinians? And Afghans?
Again, I’m fine with your examples as long as you are not trying to frame things in such a way that ONLY YOUR way of assessing risks and costs is the acceptable/accepted one. You can’t take yourself as representative of the entire humanity, as far as I’m concerned.

Sure, but I’m more interested in ALL other alleged errors, though. — neomac

It's honestly difficult to keep up and I don't have an over abundance of time at the moment.

But to take your very next sentence under consideration:

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”? — neomac

We literally just went over this:

A few points relevant to our current discussion seem to be clarified about the negotiations by someone who was actually there.

So not only did we know a lot about these negotiations and the Russia offer before, now we know even more!!

Russia's only important interest was neutrality (according to the chief negotiator for Ukraine talking to a Ukrainians journalist), all the other points were "cosmetic, political seasoning" in his words.

He then explains the reasons for rejecting the Russian offer was security guarantees (something we've discussed at length). — boethius

The interview in question:



I totally get it, the policies of America are usually hidden behind a smoke screen of plausible deniability and key actors don't usually just come out and tell us what's up.

I do understand your frustration in trying to hold together your teetering tower of plausible sounding (to at least yourself anyways) alternatives to, if not the obvious facts, what is clearly very likely to be true.

But to take your very next sentence under consideration:

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”? — neomac


We literally just went over this:

A few points relevant to our current discussion seem to be clarified about the negotiations by someone who was actually there.

So not only did we know a lot about these negotiations and the Russia offer before, now we know even more!!

Russia's only important interest was neutrality (according to the chief negotiator for Ukraine talking to a Ukrainians journalist), all the other points were "cosmetic, political seasoning" in his words. — boethius

Yes denazification and Russian-speaking population, and blah blah blah from Putin were cosmetic, political seasoning. But such Russian propaganda arguments to dupe the masses were the ones you cared so much to regurgitate in this thread. Just neutrality was fine for Putin to have peace, go figure.

He then explains the reasons for rejecting the Russian offer was security guarantees (something we've discussed at length). — boethius — boethius

Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements.

I totally get it, the policies of America are usually hidden behind a smoke screen of plausible deniability and key actors don't usually just come out and tell us what's up. — boethius

What’s that now?! Dude, focus, read and answer my questions, rambling stuff as if you are talking with your imaginary friend is getting boring. I’m not your therapist. And I have no pity for you.

Corruption Perceptions Index 2023
(The Wikipedia article has a summary)
Somewhere around "the middle" you'll find Hungary and Moldova

, that was a question, inviting responses (preferably evident/justified), it was even emphasized. :D Get your glasses, try again.

Corruption Perceptions Index 2023
(The Wikipedia article has a summary)
Somewhere around "the middle" you'll find Hungary and Moldova — jorndoe

Seriously, do you really believe in everything those 'sources' and 'indexes' say? Don't you have a bit of criticism of Western metrics and propaganda? It will always be the same. Russia is corrupt and bad. Ukraine is nice and the son we all wish we had.

Yes denazification and Russian-speacking population, and blah blah blah from Putin were cosmetic, political seasoning. But such Russian propaganda arguments to dupe the masses were the ones you cared so much to regurgitate in this thread. Just neutrality was fine for Putin to have peace, go figure. — neomac

Was Putin also ready to hold hands with Zelenskyi and sing Kumbayah? :snicker:

Again, a bit crazy Putinist apologetics from you, but that's you...

If all that Putin had wanted is Ukrainian neutrality, all it would have taken is for those troops to stay on the border and never invade Ukraine. And oh wait, he actually did get those promises from Germany that Ukraine won't be in NATO.

Yet Ukraine was ready to fall in a few days, just like Crimea had been taken. Without a shot, or just a few.

But that fact isn't your line. Nope, bad boy US had it's evil intensions. :smirk:

, check things before you call them (Western) propaganda with a casual handwave.
(Since you make it personal, yep, I'm critical, though there's plenty of that already in this thread, I'll pick up some of the slack.)

Transparency International » Board of Directors (international)
Wikipedia » Corruption Perceptions Index » Assessments (critique)

Given the numbers above (36% is hardly admirable), I'm not convinced you checked or have any particular interest (other than dishing out "Propaganda!" when tickling your funny bone). Feel free to prove otherwise.

Taking a look at Moldova in the present context, there are plausible fingerprints of the Kremlin's grubby hands (modus operandi) across Moldova and Ukraine.
The Kremlin isn't that likely to go at NATO members (or non-expendable partners) the same way as Ukraine Moldova Georgia (at least not currently).
^{(since some posters are adverse to reports, I've just stuffed a bunch into an ignorable attachment; up to the reader to weed out/in whatever im/plausible)}

Attachment: moldova_russia.txt

To what end? (hence remains a pertinent question)
And why would anyone care anyway?
The Baltics have been supportive of Ukraine, and have their reasons, e.g. 2023Jul9, 2023Dec20, that might be applicable to Moldova just the same.

Reports evidence observations commentaries analyses opinions ...

• Moldova–Russia relations
• Moldova and the Russo-Ukrainian War
• 2023 Moldovan coup attempt allegations

Was Putin also ready to hold hands with Zelenskyi and sing Kumbayah? :snicker:

Again, a bit crazy Putinist apologetics from you, but that's you... — ssu

Hum... you are commenting my quote but "you" refers to Boethius, I guess.

Seriously, do you really believe in everything those 'sources' and 'indexes' say? Don't you have a bit of criticism of Western metrics and propaganda? It will always be the same. Russia is corrupt and bad. Ukraine is nice and the son we all wish we had.

It might be helpful to look at how such indicies are developed. No methodology is perfect, but they tend to embody the methodological choices political science suggests for such an endeavor. Labeling them "propaganda" doesn't change this fact. Nor do they seem particularly good for fulfilling that function, since generally the leading stories re Freedom House and other publications have been about the decay and sliding rankings of prominent Western nations on a whole host of metrics, particularly the US (and France to some degree). Generally, when you invent an elaborate propaganda ruse to boost your regime, it's headline story isn't going to be your own failures year after year.

And yes, Russia always ranks very highly in corruption and low on political freedom. It also ranks very poorly in metrics that are less easy to massage, e.g., it's sky high HIV rate, it's low life expectancy, it's high levels of violent crime, etc. That indicies attempting to track political freedom or good governance tend to track quite well with these more "tangible," metrics is hardly surprising.

The part about Ukraine is simply not true though. Ukraine is one of the poorest nations in Europe and routinely rates among the worst for corruption and not particularly well on political freedom either. The most you could say about the difference between Ukraine and Russia is that the former has at least moved up, haltingly and with much backsliding, while the quality of Russian governance has mostly atrophied under Putin. Again, this agrees with more tangible metrics, like the very high rate of emigration out of Russia and into the OECD nations. That is, millions of people have packed up and left Russia for the "degenerate West," particularly younger, more educated residents, exactly the class you'd expect to be most frustrated by poor governance and corruption.

Yes denazification and Russian-speaking population, and blah blah blah from Putin were cosmetic, political seasoning. But such Russian propaganda arguments to dupe the masses were the ones you cared so much to regurgitate in this thread. Just neutrality was fine for Putin to have peace, go figure. — neomac

Again the Nazi's are definitely there and definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine).

One of those problems I, and others, explained at length was the Nazis are a problem also because they are excellent propaganda material for Russia, which will of course (regardless of the number of Nazis in Ukraine and their actual power) they will be exaggerated by Russia for propaganda purposes as well.

Ukraine and the West tolerating, arming, training, supporting and apologizing for these Nazis is an immense military and diplomatic gift to Russia.

Of course, the war and the reasons for the war are a lot bigger than just these Nazi groups, it's just a super easy sell to the Russian population. Especially at the start of the war, "denazification" is a lot easier sell than preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, which is a fairly abstract menace to a normal person.

At the point of interest here, the negotiation the negotiator is talking about, Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol, delivering the "denazification" PR victory required to sell a peace to the Russian people: We went in, spanked those Nazis and now we can live in peace with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters (would have been the basic narrative had a peace been achieved).

Back to the issue at hand, you're ask was:

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”? — neomac

I provide this evidence.

Instead of being like "oh, my bad, my reading comprehension is indeed pretty low considering we already went over this very topic", you then try to put the words of the Ukrainian negotiator in my mouth.

Obviously in any peace deal (at the start of the war at least) "denazification" would be cosmetic political seasoning as there's no peace agreement Ukraine would accept where banning Banderism or Azov Brigade and implementing that practically is not really feasible anyways.

The Nazis are a critical element to understanding the war, both understanding Ukrainian internal politics as well as understanding Russian internal politics.

A major reason I predicted there would not be a "collapse of moral" or major internal opposition to the war, as many were predicting at the start, because "we're killing Nazis" is a pretty good argument in favour of sufficient reason to prosecutor the war for the average Russian soldier or citizen: are the Nazis there? Yes, even according to the Wests own media!

It's basically their version of "support the troops".

Now, now where have I stated that fighting the Nazis in Ukraine was sufficient reason for Putin or the Kremlin to prosecute the war. Political and military leaders would need more reasons than that: NATO is one, resources another, as well as many other considerations may have gone into the decision (for example doing the war before AI gets out of hand and changes the power dynamic in unpredictable ways could have been one reason to do the war sooner rather than later).

Understanding that the Nazis in Ukraine is an easy and powerful argument for Putin to sell the war to his own people is just pointing out an obvious fact that is required to understand the war (and be able to predict, or then understand in retrospect, why the Russian soldiers were unlikely to flee and the civilians unlikely to topple the government, in addition to simply the regular reason that's unlikely).

Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements. — neomac

Your reading comprehension is really disastrous.

It could only be done if there were guarantees of security.

But we could not sign something, withdraw, everyone would have exhaled there, and then they would have come more prepared.

They would have come, in fact, unpepared to such an opponent.

Therefore, we could only work when there is 100% certainty that this will not happen again.

And there is no such certainty.

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all. And let’s just fight. — Interview with David Arakhamia, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks

Is what he says. He doesn't say "oh, yeah, we were going to do it, but just needed some security guarantees from the West".

He's quite clear that the reason was they would need 100% confidence, which is simply propaganda.

Obviously there's no 100% certainty of anything: winning the war, continued support from the West to even tread water, etc.

He's also quite clear that Boris Johnson tells them to not sign anything and "let's just fight", not that he'd really, really like to arrange a Western security guarantee to increase the confidence the deal would last ... but, shucks, he just can't do that for various reasons.

Obviously when Ukraine rejected the peace deal they imagined things would be better now than they currently are. Maybe they believed the Russian troops really would mutiny and flee, or ATGM's were sufficient to win the war, or that they'd have a numbers advantage.

Unless you're arguing that they sat down and said: "Ok, ok, ok, war game hats, focus, focus we'll go on an offensive that will take a bit of land back on the flanks, then go on another disastrous offensive later that achieves nothing, then our army will be significantly diminished and we'll be at risk of the collapse of the front and the collapse of the government: Let's do it! Break! Hut! Hut! Hut! as our American friends say".

Obviously they did not foresee being in the current situation, therefore seems a mistake to have rejected the peace deal on offer, therefore saying "100% confidence" was lacking sounds a lot better than saying they thought they would have won by now, but turn out to be wrong about that.

It's all very obvious.

What’s that now?! Dude, focus, read and answer my questions, rambling stuff as if you are talking with your imaginary friend is getting boring. I’m not your therapist. And I have no pity for you. — neomac

Truly remarkable.

Intellectual hobbits. You can learn all their ways in a month, and yet after a three hundred lives of men, they still surprise you.

Was Putin also ready to hold hands with Zelenskyi and sing Kumbayah? :snicker:

Again, a bit crazy Putinist apologetics from you, but that's you...

If all that Putin had wanted is Ukrainian neutrality, all it would have taken is for those troops to stay on the border and never invade Ukraine. And oh wait, he actually did get those promises from Germany that Ukraine won't be in NATO.

Yet Ukraine was ready to fall in a few days, just like Crimea had been taken. Without a shot, or just a few.

But that fact isn't your line. Nope, bad boy US had it's evil intensions. :smirk: — ssu

I'll go ahead and assume you're responding to me.

It's literally raining straw these days.

I've spent several long posts (and many dozens at previous junctures in the conversation, explaining the same thing) that precisely you would not simply "trust" Putin to hold hands and sing Kumbayah.

You would assume the peace deal is not worth much more than the paper it's written on and that Russia would reinvade if there was interest and pressure to do so.

However, that is the case in all treaties and other deals between states and obviously is not a reason for states to reject treaty negotiations.

The 4 points I outline are the main points of consideration.

Indeed, you may find it very probable that Russia would just invade later anyways, but you still have to be confident to be able to win the war with Western support (and be confident in that lasting) to justify fighting the war at hand (and also that it would not be over some threshold of acceptable cost to "win").

There is a whole bunch of points needing consideration to justify sending men to die and absolutely wrecking the countries economy and demographics (which were already quite bad, and millions of young people who left as refugees are unlikely to return).

Which should not be a controversial position that wars should be based on more than whims and "bah! Can't trust Putin!"

Now, if you conclude it's probable that Russia would keep its word, it would not be based simply on the fact that they gave their word, it would be based on a projection of the political situation in which one expects Russia to have various reasons not to re-invade.

For example, had there been a peace relatively quickly, the gas flows to Europe would have likely restarted, a "peace dividend" everyone would have been happy to collect. So, this would be one reason putting pressure against Russia re-invading. Likewise, if Ukraine became neutral and wasn't a nuclear threat (of hosting NATO missiles) and Russia obviously kept Crimea, which was and is the major strategic consideration in terms of land, war in the Donbas resolved, and there wasn't really any "problems" anymore, then one may project out that the diplomatic and economic cost of restarting the war is simply far higher than anything Russia would have to gain in re-attacking a Neutral Ukraine.

I point out that Russia may have no interest (or at least one predicts that as likely) in re-invading a neutral Ukraine and so maybe very unlikely to do so for various reasons in addition to having signed an agreement, and you turn this into me saying that Putin wanted to "hold hands and sing Kumbayah".

↪boethius, that was a question, inviting responses (preferably evident/justified), it was even emphasized. :D Get your glasses, try again. — jorndoe

Ok, the context of your question was:

"""
Switzerland and Sweden have a tradition of neutrality, or at least had. Moldova has a constitutional neutrality clause, though sort of impaired by Transnistria. The Baltics have their own stories (2023Jul8).

Similar to what's come up before (2022Mar13, 2022Jul21, 2022Oct8, 2022Nov9), suppose that Ukraine had ... ▸ declared neutrality with respect to international military alliance memberships, formally on paper / constitutionally (2022Mar8, 2022Mar9, 2022Mar11); ▸ retained right to self-defense, e.g. from invaders (shouldn't be controversial), including foreign training and/or weaponry as the case may be; ▸ explicitly stated that others respect sovereignty, self-determination, freedom to seek own path (shouldn't be controversial); ▸ actively pursued EU membership, and perhaps sought other such cooperation ... Something along those lines.

The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?
"""

(↑ for an intact Ukraine) — Sep 26, 2023

... "something along those lines" ... "The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?"

What bases?

Now, if the point of your comment is that somehow Ukraine "was neutral all along!!" we're already discussed that. Ukraine's definition of neutrality was ... doesn't exclude joining NATO which they were trying to do.

If your question was what would Russia have done if a peace agreement was reached, I note above the reasons to expect Russia to follow a peace deal (pre-blowing-up-Nord Stream) is the incentive to keep selling gas to Europe and so if the issues were settled, neutrality and the ongoing Donbas war, then my expectation would be that Russia would not re-invade simply because the risk would be gone and the costs outweigh the benefits (Crimea is important vis-a-vis oil transport across the Black Sea, but there's not really anything else in Ukraine that is worth more than the European gas trade; if that doesn't matter, only conquest, then I guess it's possible to have some convoluted plan to invade, get a peace deal and then reinvade later, but Russia also has other security concerns so I just don't see how invading Ukraine would come back as a priority if the strategic risk is gone).

That would be what I'd expect from the Kremlin if there was a peace deal at the moment in question.

However, for me, the more important question in deciding to fight a war is the ability to win the war. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you're conquered and sometimes you're liberated, throughout history. For me, everyone dying on principle is not sufficient reason for many, many, many deaths.

When you say Ukrainian sovereignty shouldn't be controversial, well neither should Iraq's, Afghanistan's, Syria's, Lybia's, and so on.

More important, "isn't controversial" is not what actually matters, but rather "important enough to send our own troops to defend Ukraine".

The policy I have issue with is sending weapons, which scholarly work on the subject indicates simply causes vastly more deaths without changing outcomes of conflicts. If it's important, we should go fight for it, do the "standing up" and have ourselves a little nuclear standoff and see what happens. If it's not important, but we like to say it is, sending weapons in lieu of honour is a cowards move.

In general terms, your text precisely describes what I attempted to write, but I discussed this debate about 'metrics' and 'data' with @jorndoe and others in this thread, and the result is always the same. I think most of the rankings pop up spontaneously.

I don't deny that Russia, as a state, has some issues. As you noted, they always rank very high in corruption, lawfare, low freedom and individual rights, etc. But Ukraine holds similar marks in these issues, yet what the Western media is doing is just 'bleaching' the image of the country because hey! Ukraine is our friend now, and we want them to be a developed nation as quickly as possible.

The conclusion and my criticism of the links provided by @jorndoe is that they have the same result but hidden with a mask: both Russia and Ukraine are very corrupt, and no, the latter is not a consequence because Putin decided to start a war in 2022. Ukraine has always had this issue, as like most of the ex-soviet Republics. It just bothers me how the media is obsessed with manipulating us on the Ukraine issue. Dude, it is a backwards country. Simple.

Precisely, most of these rankings do not have a big impact in the end. Yes, we know Venezuela is highly corrupt, but we still buy their oil. Do we care about their citizens?
Finland always ranks very high in good standards, but @ssu is also critical to the system of his country, so there is nothing perfect.

I will let the time speak for itself and show how Zelensky acts afterward. Will he still be the angel we all wish to have as a friend?

For example, had there been a peace relatively quickly, the gas flows to Europe would have likely restarted, a "peace dividend" everyone would have been happy to collect. So, this would be one reason putting pressure against Russia re-invading. Likewise, if Ukraine became neutral and wasn't a nuclear threat (of hosting NATO missiles) and Russia obviously kept Crimea, which was and is the major strategic consideration in terms of land, war in the Donbas resolved, and there wasn't really any "problems" anymore, then one may project out that the diplomatic and economic cost of restarting the war is simply far higher than anything Russia would have to gain in re-attacking a Neutral Ukraine.

I point out that Russia may have no interest (or at least one predicts that as likely) in re-invading a neutral Ukraine and so maybe very unlikely to do so for various reasons in addition to having signed an agreement, and you turn this into me saying that Putin wanted to "hold hands and sing Kumbayah". — boethius

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?), you are basically stating that if everything went back to the exact state that was in 2014-2022 (the war in Donbas would not be 'resolved' by any measure in March 2022), Russia would have no reason to start the re-invasion.

As to the question of neutrality - sure, Ukraine might pledge not to enter NATO (like it did in 2014, which made exactly zero difference), but it still would most likely arm itself and align itself economically with the West (so it would be like Sweden before 2022 - formally unaligned, but in fact Western-oriented. But that would not satisfy Russia in any way.

But that poses the obvious problem: these were the exact conditions which Russia made to invade in the first place.

There is one underlying cause of the conflict: Ukraine wanting to leave the Russian sphere of influence. And there seem to be only two possible resolutions: Ukraine doing that with Russia unable to stop it, or Ukraine losing its sovereignty to Russia to a much larger degree than before (i.e. Byelarussinization of Ukraine).

Of course, the war and the reasons for the war are a lot bigger than just these Nazi groups, it's just a super easy sell to the Russian population. Especially at the start of the war, "denazification" is a lot easier sell than preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, which is a fairly abstract menace to a normal person.

At the point of interest here, the negotiation the negotiator is talking about, Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol, delivering the "denazification" PR victory required to sell a peace to the Russian people: We went in, spanked those Nazis and now we can live in peace with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters (would have been the basic narrative had a peace been achieved). — boethius

So you agree that denazification was basically Putin’s propaganda to dupe the Russian masses and the pro-Russian “useful idiots” in the West. All right. Still it is false that “Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol): the Istanbul Communique fell in March while the siege in Mariupol ended the 20 May.
Besides the denazification narrative continued long after the siege of Mariupol was over (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220707-live-russia-s-war-in-ukraine-to-dominate-g20-talks-in-bali, https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3625636/russia-says-israel-supports-neo-nazis-row-over-ukraine, https://www.timesofisrael.com/moscow-says-ukraine-must-denazify-demilitarize-or-onslaught-will-go-on/).
Finally, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements express a way in which the Ukrainian society responds to the historical Russian threat in the Ukrainian territories, as much as Hamas expresses a way in which the Palestinian society responds to the historical Israeli threat in the Palestinian territories. So, the Ukrainian society can’t get easily rid of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements as much as the Palestinian society can’t get easily get rid of Hamas. That’s a vicious loop triggered by security and identitarian concerns. Westernisation of Ukraine through NATO and/or EU might have helped reduce the Ukrainian security and identitarian concerns to some extent, and so the political pressure from anti-Russian far right movements, also because the Ukrainian government was/is likely far less influenced by such movements than the government of Gaza by Hamas. The problem is that far right movements are on the rise also in the West, also thanks to Putin.

Understanding that the Nazis in Ukraine is an easy and powerful argument for Putin to sell the war to his own people is just pointing out an obvious fact that is required to understand the war (and be able to predict, or then understand in retrospect, why the Russian soldiers were unlikely to flee and the civilians unlikely to topple the government, in addition to simply the regular reason that's unlikely). — boethius

Such propaganda may have had and still have an appeal to part of the Russian population in supporting the war (especially, among the older generation). That’s plausible, but there are other factors that may have weighed in: the fact that there was no mass mobilisation, that ethnic minorities, convicted, and mercenaries were abundantly used in this war. An additional reason can be that in Russian propaganda the main villain progressively moved from the less threatening Ukrainian neo-nazis to the more threatening West/NATO “aggression” against Russia. So now it’s more about Russia revanchism (for the hawkish Russian elites) or survival from the Western aggression (from the more dovish populace), than saving Russian minorities in Ukraine from the Ukrainian neo-nazis.

Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements. — neomac


Your reading comprehension is really disastrous.

It could only be done if there were guarantees of security.

But we could not sign something, withdraw, everyone would have exhaled there, and then they would have come more prepared.

They would have come, in fact, unpepared to such an opponent.

Therefore, we could only work when there is 100% certainty that this will not happen again.

And there is no such certainty.

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all. And let’s just fight. — Interview with David Arakhamia, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks


Is what he says. He doesn't say "oh, yeah, we were going to do it, but just needed some security guarantees from the West". — boethius

Dude, that’s PRECISELY the gist of the Ukrainian proposal in the Istanbul communiqué: discussing in 10 points the neutrality of Ukraine in exchange for security guaranties (which include the US and the UK). No mention of the Nazis or the Russian speaking people. Also the status of the occupied territories wasn’t addressed in resolutive terms.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/na-peregovorah-iz-rosiyeyu-ukrayinska-delegaciya-oficijno-pr-73933
https://faridaily.substack.com/p/ukraines-10-point-plan

He's quite clear that the reason was they would need 100% confidence, which is simply propaganda.

Obviously there's no 100% certainty of anything: winning the war, continued support from the West to even tread water, etc. — boethius

That’s again a manipulative interpretation.
First of all, you are conflating things: “100% certainty” is NOT used to explain the MEANING of “guarantee” in “security guarantees” but to explain why Ukraine needed “security guarantees” from other actors than Russia, namely because of trust issues. Which worsened after the discovery of what happened in Bucha. “In Istanbul we still didn’t understand the type of war that Russia was waging, its genocidal intent,” Podolyak explained. “Once we returned from Istanbul and the Russians left the Kyiv region, we saw the beastly crimes that they had committed there. And we understood that Russia will try to annihilate Ukraine no matter what.” (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-inside-story-of-russia-and-ukraines-peace-talks-nhbq0fn6k)
Secondly, “100% certainty” doesn’t need to be taken literally, because as I said “talking about ‘security guarantees’ is enough intelligible in a context of geopolitical competition, security dilemmas, and historical diplomatic failures WITHOUT ever needing to blabber about ‘guarantees’ as suggesting that promises among states are necessarily or certainly kept to dupe the masses”. PRECISELY because “there's no 100% certainty of anything” not even of NATO art.5, AND YET states like Finland feel safer by joining NATO instead of remaining out of it under the threat of Russian imperialism, that one can well understand why Ukraine is looking for security guarantees from the West analogous to the NATO ones, even if the degree of confidence would be less than 100% certainty (it should just be sufficiently above past previous failed agreements depending on the design of the agreements, that’s all).
Third, the importance of Western security guarantees rather explicit if one interprets Arakhamia’s comment also in the wider context of other claims by Arakhamia (https://korrespondent-net.translate.goog/ukraine/4462825-arakhamyia-ukrayna-khochet-sdelat-sobstvennoe-nato?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp) and by the head of the legal team in the Ukrainian negotiators O. Chalyi (https://dam.gcsp.ch/files/misc/pb-8-chalyi?_gl=1*capwht*_ga*MTYwNjM3NzE1MS4xNjkzNDg3ODk5*_ga_Z66DSTVXTJ*MTY5NDEwMTgxNC40LjEuMTY5NDEwMTkxNy4yNi4wLjA.).


BTW, just for the sake of your manipulative argument which I reject for the above reasons, I’m not even sure what propaganda effect can ever achieve the usage of the expression “100% certainty” in an interview of Nov 2023 over the Ukrainian masses witnessing a failed negotiation back in March 2022.

He's also quite clear that Boris Johnson tells them to not sign anything and "let's just fight", not that he'd really, really like to arrange a Western security guarantee to increase the confidence the deal would last ... but, shucks, he just can't do that for various reasons. — boethius

He’s also quite clear that they couldn’t sign anything even though the Russians were pressing them, because they need to change the constitution and a referendum. And besides they need security guarantees because they didn’t trust Russia. LATER:
- there was ALSO Boris Johnson who advised Zelensky on the premise that the US/UK will not sign security guarantees ALONG WITH PUTIN and that Putin should not be trusted. Perfectly legitimate move if that was satisfying Western strategic interests, and Zelensky as a leader of a sovereign state was free to decide according to the Ukrainian strategic interests. And he realised that without Western security guaranties the Istanbul communiqué was pointless PRECISELY because the gist of the Ukrainian proposal in the Istanbul communiqué: neutrality in exchange for security guaranties (which include the US and the UK).
- there was also the discovery of Bucha.

That doesn’t exclude the possibility that BOTH Boris and Zelensky made miscalculations at that time (for example about the strength of Russia wrt the Ukrainian resistance plus Western support). But I’m not sure if such miscalculations are enough to support the claim that Ukraine had better to sign an agreement with Russia alone. Besides (geo)political reasons may very much trump the military ones for the good or for the bad. So the miscalculations I would focus on are political ones.

Obviously when Ukraine rejected the peace deal they imagined things would be better now than they currently are. Maybe they believed the Russian troops really would mutiny and flee, or ATGM's were sufficient to win the war, or that they'd have a numbers advantage. — boethius

Ukraine didn’t have time to reject the peace deal, Putin did it first with the claim that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end" 3 days after Boris Johnson met Zelensky. Indeed, after that, Zelensky was still proposing peace deals to Abramovich (who was believed to be directly in contact with Putin).

Obviously they did not foresee being in the current situation, therefore seems a mistake to have rejected the peace deal on offer, therefore saying "100% confidence" was lacking sounds a lot better than saying they thought they would have won by now, but turn out to be wrong about that. — boethius

This is beside the point I was making which is that the expression “security guarantees” makes intelligible sense even without propagandistic intentions.
Anyways, I can’t exclude that there was a propagandistic intent in Arakhamia’s interview concerning responsibilities and miscalculations, as you suggest. Not sure however whether the hyperbolic expression “100% certainty” is what best reveals Arakhamia’s possible manipulative intent. Indeed, also for ordinary Ukrainians who perceive Russia as a threat is pretty much clear that with proper security guarantees like NATO they would hedge better against the Russian threat (see the NATO referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Ukraine and the polls over NATO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Public_opinion_in_Ukraine). So also the ordinary Ukrainian masses may very much have the cultural tools to understand that “100% certainty” can be just hyperbolic in that context.
Besides I think the more plausible propagandistic intent is THE OPPOSITE of what you are suggesting: namely, the intent may be not to HIDE responsibilities and miscalculations, BUT TO “SOFTLY” HINT AT THEM in order to put the blame on Zelensky (he was a committed dude, but made miscalculations; Russia isn’t that bad either, Putin was just happy with neutrality after all; Westerners aren’t that committed allies either; Ukrainian negotiators couldn’t do much since they didn’t have the power or the authority to sign anything, but we informed Zelensky we were so close to a peace deal, etc.) and his reliance on the Western support. Indeed, we have hints that over time and especially after the so-called “failed offensive” internal conflicts within Zelensky’s government and around it Ukrainian vip’s voices started to emerge. So I find more plausible to read the most recent comments of Chalyi and Arakhamia, Arestovych, Klitschko, and Zaloujny as a way of distance themselves from Zelensky. In other words, Zelensky (& the West too, if Zelensky’s not enough) has to be blamed for whatever went wrong, the West needs to be pressed to get more support, or the anti-Russian narrative needs to be softened for future negotiations in a post-Zelensky era.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/swedish-prosecutor-plans-nord-stream-blast-decision-this-week

We'll know more about the Nordstream sabotage soon.

Let me just note (again), NATO nuclear weapons in Ukraine was always and remains unlikely (≈ Oct 16, 2022). Russian nuclear weapons (and rattling) on the other hand... e.g. Belarus (Jun 17, 2023), right next door.

:point: A question: why do Moldovans get nervous and jittery when there's talk of Putin?

The part about Ukraine is simply not true though. Ukraine is one of the poorest nations in Europe and routinely rates among the worst for corruption and not particularly well on political freedom either. The most you could say about the difference between Ukraine and Russia is that the former has at least moved up, haltingly and with much backsliding, while the quality of Russian governance has mostly atrophied under Putin. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah. There are various aspects to the situation. Ukraine freeing themselves from the dominating neighbor to the north + east isn't easy, to the point of war. 2023Jul22, 2024Jan2. They're trying (from bomb shelters or wherever) and has shown willingness to do so. Not an overnight thing though, especially with the Kremlin in the way.

What bases? — boethius

Hmm Shouldn't really need a side-track to (genuinely) try answering the inquiry. Anyway, irredentism and such has come up among others, promoted by the Kremlin circle as justification. But the Kremlin doesn't want Zelenskyy or his government in Kyiv despite having been elected, maybe it was different once. (Euromaidan...?)

The Kremlin has another weapon in its arsenal: Migration policy (archive)
^{— Caress Schenk · The Washington Post · Apr 11, 2022}
The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War
^{— Timothy Snyder · The New Yorker · Apr 28, 2022}
Ukraine's Lightning Counteroffensive Has Russian Teachers Rethinking Plans To Work In Occupied Areas
^{— RFE/RL · Sep 17, 2022}
‘New Russia’ and the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Southern Ukraine
^{— Olivia Irena Durand · Journal of Applied History · Dec 12, 2022}
Understanding Russia’s Actions in Ukraine as the Crime of Genocide
^{— Denys Azarov, Dmytro Koval, Gaiane Nuridzhanian, Volodymyr Venher · Journal of International Criminal Justice · Jun 13, 2023}
Russians actively change ethnic composition of occupied territories' population
^{— Iryna Balachuk · Ukrainska Pravda · Jan 4, 2024}
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 23, 2024
^{— Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, George Barros, Frederick W Kagan · ISW · Jan 23, 2024}

If your question was what would Russia have done if a peace agreement was reached — boethius

Not "a peace agreement", but running with that peace proposal. ("something along those lines" → e.g. toss in a fresh Kharkiv'esque Pact or whatever)

I will let the time speak for itself and show how Zelensky acts afterward. Will he still be the angel we all wish to have as a friend? — javi2541997

No angels around.

Some posters seem to think Ukraine is variously a kindergarten or just another sh¡thole or whatever. :point: Either way, wouldn't it be :up: if Ukraine developed toward something comparable to, say, Estonia, Germany, Czechia, Spain?

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?), — Jabberwock

For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there.

Furthermore, the US started the dismantling of the non-proliferation architecture (based on mostly treaties that the US didn't ratify anyways, so was never US law to begin with, which doesn't inspire much trust as a starting point) in abandoning both in official "executive policy" (what I guess best describes non-ratified treaties that we're just going to pretend are meaningful) and action (actually developing the weapons systems banned by the treaties) the ABM treaty and then the INF treaty.

The US makes clear they are a "first use" nation.

The US Is the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs on cities. More importantly, US policy makers and citizens aren't too phased by it.

The sort of bullshit you're spinning in your comment definitely works in Western echo chambers (how dare they say our nuclear weapons and expanding our territory are threatening!!) but in the real world outside those echo chambers, people, especially people that US policy makers continuously refer to as "rivals" and "enemies", don't just go ahead and assume US nuclear weapons are not a threat and of course "they would never use them".

Facts on the ground can change. Russia really didn't like the forward positioning of US missile bases in Europe (that can be easily loaded with nuclear warheads). You can say all you want "But they would never load them with nukes!!! It was needed to counter Iran!!!" but what are those assurances worth?

Absolutely nothing.

Of course other powers are going to view US military hardware (of any kind) moving closer to their borders as threatening and will take action to mitigate that insofar as they can.

Additionally, with a long contiguous border with NATO where on the other side there's all sorts of "extremist nationals" anyone charged with analyzing the risks will come up with scenarios where small factions (who have no problem saying their goal is to start a war with Russia) could basically start some shit that then escalates.

It's so incredibly delusional to minimize the weight the threat of nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear escalation impose on decision making that it's almost not worthy of retort.

It's literally "get a clue" level of delusion.

Even stupider is the circle people go in of "of course Ukraine wants to join NATO and be protected from Russia!" and then when it's pointed out that Russia will obviously react to that (regardless of whatever moral speech you may have about it) switch to "Ukraine declared neutrality!!"

It's just dumb.

Hmm Shouldn't really need a side-track to (genuinely) try answering the inquiry. Anyway, irredentism and such has come up among others, promoted by the Kremlin circle as justification. But the Kremlin doesn't want Zelenskyy or his government in Kyiv despite having been elected, maybe it was different once. (Euromaidan...?) — jorndoe

I literally have no clue what you're trying to say and how it relates to the conversation.

You state they "covered their bases" and answering that is a side track? Or then you could just answer directly but are deciding to side track? Or is my question a side track?

You make no points, you just spam your articles. Pretty much all your questions are just "maybe this, maybe that" and then spamming all your preferred news sources. That's not arguing any points and thus participating in a dialogue, but just basically microblogging in an inappropriate place.

I honestly don't see why the moderators tolerate these kinds of comments, which I don't say often.

For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there. — boethius

If we are in fantasy land, the US could deploy the nukes everywhere - in Ukraine, whether it was in NATO or not, in Alaska, or in Greenland.

Russia really didn't like the forward positioning of US missile bases in Europe (that can be easily loaded with nuclear warheads). — boethius

Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly?

The fact remains that the US has not deployed the nukes in any new country since 1960s. To claim that it is more likely that the US would do that than that Russia would re-invade Ukraine (which it has already did twice in a decade) is beyond delusional.

Basically, your argument is: 'treaties are not worth the paper they are written on, but if Ukraine pledged neutrality (again), then Russia would not re-invade it'. That is obviously self-refuting.

So you agree that denazification was basically Putin’s propaganda to dupe the Russian masses and the pro-Russian “useful idiots” in the West. — neomac

Each side is going to use information to make their case and mix both truth and untrue information to do so.

Israel has used October 7th to justify their actions, they've lied and exaggerated plenty of things about it, did they therefore "dupe everyone" because they've also used false information?

If you're pro-Israeli genocide then you'll just say "of course they exaggerate and add in some lies where they can!!" they're fighting a war and also fighting an information war!!

Likewise, Ukraine has been caught with a long list of lies and if you're pro-Ukraine you'll just say the same thing.

If you're interested in reality, then separating the fact from the exaggeration and deliberate lies is one first relevant step. An additional step is understanding what impact this information, both true and false, has.

The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia; so, at minimum, the same kind of security concern as armed groups who have no problem chanting "death to America" is to America), but far greater military concern is NATO (a bunch of terrorists are mostly a nuisance to powerful nation states, but where terrorist organizations, such as Azov, can have an outsized impact is in starting a war with another nation state).

So, since the Nazis are definitely there and pre-2022 already fighting a war against Russian speakers in the Donbas (which many Russian speakers in Russia feel some responsibility for) and their explicit objective is to destroy Russia, obviously they are one military concern, but, objectively not as big a concern as NATO.

There are a lot of reasons to go to war of course. A lot of analysis will go into including offices who make long term strategic analysis (which will focus a lot on nuclear weapons as they are "the threat" in any long term view of the position of any of the great powers; hence the resources spent on them).

Of course, resources and spheres of influence and so on are considerations too.

If you bother to read what I wrote, I did not dismiss the idea Russia would have invaded Ukraine come-what-may, I simply put down my reasons why I think that's unlikely (if Ukraine doesn't pose a threat, it's strategically far more advantage to "keep the spice flowing" to Europe; Ukraine really has to create a lot of problems to become a higher strategic priority than the spice flows).

So we can do the analysis and easily come up with most, if not all, the priority considerations in the decision to go to war.

The Nazis are definitely one important consideration.

Exactly how important in purely military terms, I don't know. The one thing that is certain is that it's mainly the Nazis that kept the war in the Donbas going and were killing so many civilians and once it was clear other sectors of Ukrainian society couldn't control them, a bigger war was essentially inevitable for this reason alone.

However, the Nazis also obviously play a role in both Russian legitimate reasons to wage war as well as propaganda to wage the information war.

In this, Ukraine and the West, simply gave Russia an incredible diplomatic and information-war gift.

The Nazis are obviously a much bigger emotional trigger compared to a lot of dry analysis that may require declassifying information to really make the case (information, such as vulnerability to a first strike by the US from Ukraine territory, that would never be declassified).

So, we can understand the Nazis are really there based on top-notch Western journalism before anyone got the memo that the Nazis were the good guys now and of course you need some colourful characters if you want to win!

However, we can also understand that if one side tolerates and basically promotes Naziism then the Russian side is going to be really angry about that and those facts on the ground will be very motivating a lot of Russian and also help consolidate the home front as "we're fighting the Nazis" is an easy argument to make (especially if you have Western journalists on YouTube interviewing those Nazis and there isn't really any doubt the Nazis are there and what they represent).

With they take what's factually true and exaggerate for the purposes of waging the information war, obviously, as does Zelensky and "Ukrainian Intelligence", as does Bibi and the IDF, as does Hamas.

So, in summary, parts of reality are simply necessary to understand a bigger part of reality and a single part can have multiple connections to other parts in different ways and on different scales.

To make the argument that Putin "duped" Russia into prosecuting the war you either need to accept Zelensky and Bibi do an equal, if not more, amount of duping their own populations, or then it boils down to whether you think the war effort is justified.

If you think Zelensky and Bibi are justified then their lies you won't think of as duping but just another aspect to the war.

If you don't think Putins' war effort is justified then you'll conclude the exact same kind of lies are "duping".

Actually determining who's justified in doing what is a complicated task, especially between nation states with a long history of conflict, and I have made it clear over the course of this discussion that I haven't done that analysis nor likely to.

For me, a pre-condition to justified warfare is the likelihood of being able to win. You need really extreme conditions to justify fighting to the death or sacrificing a large number of citizens and still losing; conditions I simply do not see in the Russia-Ukraine war.

I don't think Ukraine can win on purely military terms, I don't think anyone is coming to their aid, and therefore I think they should sue for peace and use their leverage of remaining force application to negotiate as good a deal as they can. If they can, with enough Western money and weapons consistently provided over a long period of time, eventually "tire the Russians out" and achieve some gains that way, I don't think that would be at an acceptable cost.

Ukrainian justification is secondary to whether they can win or not, and at an acceptable cost or not, in my view.

Now, I do not think Ukraine's war on the Donbas was justified, so based on this I'd conclude Russia's war against Ukraine is therefore justified.

As a Canadian we had Quebec separatists as a big issue when I was growing up, at no point did I (or that many Canadians for that matter) believe going and killing Quebeckers would be a justified course of action if they separated, even if we non-Quebeckers largely believed it to be "illegal".

So, to say Ukraine was justified in attacking the Donbas and killing Donbas civilians I would need to accept it would be justified for English-Canadians to go kill French-Canadians if they tried to separate (regardless of what I thought of their provincial run elections or provincial politicians or whatever). And I simply don't see why I'd be justified in going and killing French-Canadians in pretty much any situation of separation or how it was done or "if it was legal" or whatever arguments maybe lying around.

Furthermore, if Quebec was still right next to France and we English-Canadians decided it was a good idea to go kill Quebeckers and force them back into our confederacy, then I wouldn't be surprised nor see much grounds to complain if France, with their far bigger military, decided to spank us back across the Outaouais. And why wouldn't French speakers in France defend French speaking populations in Canada if being shelled by Canadians running around with a bunch of Nazi symbolism all over the place?

You play with fire, you get burned.

Of note, Quebec is still in Canada today and we didn't even have to kill anybody. We did have to recognize they're their own nation and can have all sorts of language laws; so, again, I don't see why Russian speakers wouldn't be as pissed about any language repression as French speakers in Canada would be (we accepted all sorts of pro-French language laws and many still wanted to separate, that votes were really close).

If we are in fantasy land, the US could deploy the nukes everywhere - in Ukraine, whether it was in NATO or not, in Alaska, or in Greenland. — Jabberwock

Yes, obviously, that's why all the focus on nuclear submarines.

However, in any large scale nuclear war, you need a lot of nukes so forward operating missile bases significantly increase the amount of nukes that can be deployed in a short period of time, and if from a short distance that's a big strategic threat.

It's called reality, not fantasy.

US reacted so strongly to nuclear weapons in Cuba because it was close.

You ever hear anyone in the US administration (of on the entire planet) having said "If we are in fantasy land, the Soviets could deploy the nukes everywhere" ... to minimize their deployment to Cuba?

You'd really have the same analysis of the Cuban missile crisis as you have here?

You'd get up in front of your class and be like "the Cuban missile crisis was a big nothing border and all the US intelligence agencies and military and administration and the president were living in fantasy land and totally overreacted because the nukes could have been deployed anywhere anyways".

As I've said, this level of analysis is dumb and almost not worth replying to.

Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly? — Jabberwock

The whole point of exiting the INF treaty (which was never entered anyways, just pretend entering and exiting) is to develop exactly those kinds of missile with size and range to ABM missiles.

You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target.

Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks, which the ABM treaty was negotiated in the first place.

If you're doing actual analysis you care about risks.

There's a risk a combination of ABM and forward deployed missiles (and airplane deployed and sub deployed) could be used in a first strike (that may involve weapons or retrofitting of weapons you don't even know about).

There's a risk the US would want to execute a first strike.

There's a risk of geopolitical tensions going out of control and the US believes they're being, or about to be, first striked.

And so on.

In actual analysis that isn't on the level of "stupid" you list risks and start categorizing those risks and then evaluating those risks.

If you were a no-first-use nation and you evaluated the risk of a first strike on your territory as 0 then you wouldn't have nuclear weapons. Why would you develop a second strike capability to deal with a scenario that is 0 probability. You wouldn't.

Obviously when this sort of risk analysis is done, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange is quite low, but non-zero.

The other aspect of risk analysis (other than evaluating risk) is the impact of the events under consideration. It is risk multiplied by impact that determines actionability mitigation steps. The impact of a nuclear first strike is quite high, therefore the risk can be very low but still yield actionable motivation steps.

Is forward missile bases, either nominally ABM sties that could be fitted with nuclear weapons now or in the future (or then straight up abandoning "we're only concerned about Iran, tee hee hee" and simply overtly forward deploying nuclear missiles), in itself sufficient reason to start a giant war.

Now we know the nuclear first strike risk of these bases was worrisome enough to warrant actionable motivation steps by Russia, as they spent some diplomatic effort to try to stop that happening and then negotiate them being un-deployed and so on. So, obviously this forward deployment of missile bases enters into the Russian calculus.

The second thing any actual analysis of the situation would arrive at is that Ukraine is not such a stable place fill with people who only want peaceful relations with Russia.

It's unstable, so Ukraine entering NATO could lead to a series of escalations that lead to the US forward deploying nuclear weapons because they feel it is "needed" even if they didn't intend to do so from the outset.

Things change, and any analysis of these sorts of issues will go decades into the future. What can we expect the future to be like?

Could be more stable and happier than it is now.

... But ... there's a risk it's much less stable and a lot less happier than it is now.

Any risk analysis will go into those situations and, circling back to the missile bases, conclude it would be better if there was less of them and farther away.

Is nuclear risk the only analysis the nuclear powers do to inform decisions? Obviously not. But it is one dimension that informs their decisions and in particular military decisions (military institution of nuclear powers will have quite a lot of analysis going into nuclear war issues, as that's really the only way they can "lose" a big war and the consequences are much higher than simply losing a war, so it absorbs a lot of attention).

wouldn't it be :up: if Ukraine developed toward something comparable to, say, Estonia, Germany, Czechia, Spain? — jorndoe

Cool! What paradise it seems to live in a developed nation. "Developed" is another word which is very ambiguous, but rather than theorise about what Ukraine would look like if evil Russia were not around, I will show some facts and data (using Western metrics and even Economics Nobel Laurates, when this prize always goes for the USA).

Economics: Russia is the 6th largest economy in the world, while Spain* is very mediocre (16th) and Ukraine is very poor, (60th).

Employment data and metrics: 9.8% of unemployment in Ukraine, and increasing according to the IMF. Spain: 11.6% (June 2023) and 27.9% youth unemployment (15 to 24 year-olds; June 2023). Russia: 3.7% (December 2022). Who is the developed here in economic metrics? https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October/weo-report?c=926,&s=NGDP_RPCH,NGDPD,PPPGDP,NGDPDPC,PPPPC,PCPIPCH,LP,&sy=2021&ey=2028&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

Taking into account more metrics. Who is the one that contributed to the development of the world since the 2000s?
Let's see the Nobel Prizes and compare them...
Spain: ZERO.
Ukraine: ZERO.
Russia: SEVEN. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/

Who is the developed here in the metrics of research?

On education and school metrics: Russia has an adult literacy rate of 100%; (Spain) Spanish 15-year-olds are significantly below the OECD average of 493 in reading literacy, mathematics, and science. Ukraine was ranked 55th in 2023 in the Global Innovation Index. https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/en/2023/index.html

*I will use my country as an example.

Honestly, I think the developed nation here is Russia. :eyes:

FACTS. NO PRESS AND MEDIA.