Zelensky getting caught laundering money is nothing new, — boethius

Money laundering? Perhaps you should look at a dictionary first. You're parroting propaganda to the point of embarrassment.

are you calling this Guardian article, the Pandora Papers and ICIJ Russian propaganda? — boethius

Another strawman.

Otherwise why would we assume new allegations of the same is Russian propaganda? — boethius

Claims need to be supported by evidence.

Honesty would be taking into account more Ukrainians fighting do not do so voluntarily than volunteer, — boethius

And do you have evidence for this or are you once again simply making up stuff as you go along?

and therefore the "Ukrainian soldiers' will to fight" is not an argument as it is not willing for most cases — boethius

Again, no evidence and also bad logic.

You're a master at closing the door to communication yourself. Both you and Bobo have had closed doors several pages ago and have just been talking to a screen and projected caricature of each other. And thus really only talking with one's self. — Vaskane

A fair assessment, but some effort to expose the dishonesty and propaganda seems warranted.

His best friends just bought 75 million worth of yachts for example, to add to his collection of European and African property. — boethius

A false claim invented by russian propaganda. You're staying current on that front I see.

People here could have proposed a way Ukraine could "win" on the battlefield; no one could — boethius

You not listening isn't the same as there not being an argument. You don't care to entertain any notion that goes against your fixed assumptions, but that is your problem.

Your incessant repetition of how it's impossible for Ukraine to win is not getting any more convincing, especially since you're still unable to even conceive of Ukrainian geopolitical interests.

And as for regular Ukrainians, this simplistic model that they are all just valiantly rushing to the front to defend Ukraine! and happy to lay down their lives on principle, is completely stupid. — boethius

Which only proves that you're unable to have an intellectually honest discussion.

The crybaby position references non-Ukrainians cheerleading Zelensky from a far without skin in the game and approving of or creating apologetics for NATO's policies that led to the war. — boethius

A fairly transparent fig-leaf, since you ascribe the same argumentation to Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian leadership.

At some point, you should lend some credit to the person who makes correct predictions: — boethius

You seem to be vastly overvaluing the novelty of your predictions. "You need heavy weapons to prevail in a high intensity conflict" and "breaking through a prepared, tiered defense will be difficult" is not exactly ground breaking stuff. Such analysis was widely available for anyone who cares to look.

I would give you credit for looking if it wasn't painfully obvious you're simply repeating whatever the current Kremlin propaganda is, and your correct predictions are an incidental result of russian success.

I predicted not only would it not be easy but Ukraine would not make any progress at all. — boethius

In which case you would be wrong, but again incidental to you simply repeating the Kremlin line.

It's only circular because at some point you understand that Ukraine is not going to reconquer all the territory (not that that would end the war anyways, as I explained at length at the start of the conflict) and that therefore the only resolution to the conflict is a diplomatic one. — boethius

Yes, Ukraine won't be able to conquer Moscow and force a peace. In case you think this is somehow some big revelation.

We then discuss the diplomatic and political problem Ukraine has (that it turned down a far better offer at the start of the conflict — boethius

I reject this claim as fundamentally unlikely and not supported by available evidence.

has the political problem of Ukraine fighting to a far worse negotiating position. — boethius

This is irreconcilable with facts on the ground, namely that Ukraine controls far more territory and has a much smaller disadvantage in Artillery and Armor as well as the West collectively having far greater economic reserves.

You even have no problem agreeing that Ukraine had more leverage at the start of the conflict than it does now, just quibbling over exactly which day — boethius

This is a distortion, you're substituting "at the start" for "at some point during the last year".

Although you're wrong about making a negotiation position public never being a good idea — boethius

That's not a claim I have made.

Not willing to accept the implications of what you yourself agree to, you retreat into your habitual way of resolving cognitive dissonance in just inventing whatever would be convenient if it was true and stating that as a fact. — boethius

I'm not willing to accept your version of what I say. That's not cognitive dissonance, that's just a result of you lying about and distorting what is said.

you simply invent that Ukraine is actually doing well in the war — boethius

In relative terms. They have managed a number of surprising feats.

Ukraine cannot retake the lost territory and that is clear now even to Zelensky and the whole west.

Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition against Russia. — boethius

It is my estimation that, in strategic terms, the war is already a net loss to Russia, so if we look at the status quo we're looking at an operational defeat for Ukraine insofar as the objective of reconquering all territory is concerned, but a strategic victory insofar as Ukraine has retained an independent government in Kiev and continues to posses the ability to contest the battlefield against the best troops Russia has to offer.

Continuing to fight therefore brings Ukraine further away from any sort of "victory", destroys remaining leverage, and brings Ukrainian military closer to collapse. — boethius

Russia cannot currently replace it's losses in heavy weaponry which, as you so astutely pointed out, is necessary to pierce heavy defenses unless you're willing to take massive casualties.

Therefore Russia is also loosing leverage with every tank or artillery piece destroyed. Taking Avdivka will no more end the war than taking Tokmak would have.

Last year Russia needed to survive sanctions, needed to keep domestic population behind the war, and needed time to mobilize and train hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers, ramp up military production — boethius

It still needs to do all these things.

and that offensive capacity (that would be useful to have now in a defensive strategy) is mostly destroyed — boethius

That's just baseless russian propaganda again.

Air defence is not working fine, as Russia can now approach the line of contact close enough to drop glide bombs regularly. — boethius

You still apparently do not realise how glide bombs work.

The only root to a negotiated settlement is the collapse of the current Ukrainian government and essentially just accepting whatever the Russians want. — boethius

That was always the way to peace from the russian perspective. The idea that Russia would have easily given up the gains it made, or that it clearly assumed it could make, out of the goodness of their hearts is simply not credible.

The amount of resources and political capital Russia had already funneled into this project before the invasion even began would make such a solution a death sentence for Putin, both politically and likely in the most direct sense, too.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I'll deal with an argument when I actually see one.

I think you should put some more Russian propaganda lines in your post. Someone might not have gotten the message. Perhaps some carricature of Zelensky as the greedy Jew? Or is that not up your alley?

Anyways it's quite hilarious that the people who decided to actually fight for their country are the "crybabies" while the guy waffling on the internet about how their favourite country is the best and most righteous thinks himself a geopolitical genius.

That's your view, I guess.

Their 'ultimatum' was surprisingly generous, considering what the western propaganda machines have claimed the Russians' goals in Ukraine were.

The peace deal was all but finished when Boris Johnson flew in to announce Ukraine would not be signing any deals with the Russians.

Funny, that. Imagine having Boris Johnson of all people tell you to continue fighting a war - a political walking corpse and who was obviously sent as an errand boy to take the fall in case things went sour, since his political career was already a train wreck.

What a bad joke this Ukraine debacle is. — Tzeentch

It must be very nice living in your head, having all the answers for everything without even needing to bother with evidence or logic. The superior mind simply knows instantly everything that happens.

To get this topic back to less circular territory:

The strategic situation currently seems almost a repeat of last year, Ukraine is on the strategic defensive and Russia seems set for another grinding assault on a fortress city. As last time they seem to be focusing first on encircling/ turning moves on the flanks.

Ukraine's presence on the eastern side of the Dniepr seems more solid, but it's hard to see what can come of that.

Ukrainian air defense is apparently still working fine, despite the various predictions to the contrary. It seems that sources of ammunition were found so far. The F16 project is still on the way, though we'll have to see what happens now with the Dutch political situation. Will a deal still go through with the deal if the Netherlands pull their support?

Germany seems to want to position itself as a major supporter of Ukraine, which seems kinda at odds with the Bild report. The strategy reported in the Bild is of course the kind of thing you can fit all kind of actual events into in retrospect.

I don't expect negotiated settlement quickly in any case.

The key is to navigate risk. — boethius

Your strategy to "navigate" risk involves just handing Russia whatever they want whenever they want it.

But actually even that isn't sufficient, because you have now added yet another wrinkle: other countries also need to act in Russia's interest, otherwise Russia might feel forced to take Ukrainian land in compensation for e.g. a pipeline project.

Everything Russia does is just an obvious common sense thing, while Ukraine is equal parts stupid, crazy, and controlled by the west. On literally any issue you take the most ardently pro russian position, repeating verbatim the official russian positions on the Euromaidan, the Donbas, etc.

You're even inventing entirely new justifications for Russia, like that they might have somehow substituted Nord Stream 2 for Ukraine, never mind that this goes against Russia's public statements and demands. Even Russia's propaganda would not expect anyone to take that one seriously.

To conclude, your proposed solution is to simply hand Ukraine to Russia. Your pretend reason for this is that this would avoid the war. Your statements though make clear that you would simply prefer Russia to win as much as possible.

Russia act vis-a-vis the risk — boethius

Right, but that's the precise problem. If it's the risk that Russia reacts to, then Ukraine's current status is pretty much irrelevant. Ukraine can do whatever it wants to remain neutral. As soon as Russia detects a risk to their interests they nevertheless act.

And since Russia clearly considers some domestic political changes risks, Ukraine would be forever under the threat of Russian aggression as soon as the political situation turns in a way Russia considers too risky.

If Nord Stream was opened, the situation in the Donbas remained unsustainable in the long term, but it seems to me extremely likely Russia would not have invaded in 2022, since it was pretty clear (certainly that's what the Western media understood) that Russia was amassing troops as pressure to open the pipeline, and refusing to open the pipeline significantly angered Putin and the Kremlin and invading Ukraine was one outlet for that anger. — boethius

Russia amassing troops made sure the pipeline would not be opened. The idea that Ukraine was just s convenient "outlet for that anger" is just utterly ridiculous, especially since you acknowledge the invasion must have been planned well in advance.

So there are other factors, but I would argue that military action in Ukraine was inevitable as long as Ukraine has joining NATO literally in their constitution and a conflict in the Donbas, and 3 years is reasonable time frame to prepare an operation as big as the invasion of 2022. In the meantime there's the pandemic as well as the completion of the pipeline. — boethius

It seems unlikely that the pipeline played much of a role. It seemed to still be on track in summer 2021 and was first suspended in November 2021. Invasion plans must have been well underway by then.

The event that seems most likely to coincide with the beginning of definite invasion plans is Putin's success in altering the constitution so he can be president for life. It seems plausible that, at this point, in the middle of the chaos caused by COVID-19, he felt Russia was strong enough to just get rid of the Ukrainian problem permanently.

Ukraine declaring it is going to join NATO, and NATO reciprocating by saying Ukraine is going to join NATO and cooperations and partnerships of various kinds and having NATO training and "advisors", are things that will clearly provoke Russia into invading Ukraine. — boethius

Except the two times when Russia did actually invade Ukraine, nothing concerning NATO had recently happened.

So clearly just not joining NATO isn't actually protection against a russian invasion either.

The point is, yes, trying to establish the 2010-2014 status quo, or even the pre-2019 status quo where joining NATO wasn't explicitly a constitutional goal. — boethius

So Russia gets to cuts off choice parts of Ukraine, and when this happens the best thing Ukraine can do is shrug and act like nothing happened?

Of course, by 2022 there is a significant "extreme nationalist" (some Nazi's, some just super nationalists) contingent in Ukraine that rather war with Russia than peace or any sort of compromise. The Russian language repression being one other clear provocative example of the power of the nationalists. — boethius

That did not happen in 2022 and had in fact long since been rescinded.

simply has a death wish. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think he knows he's a dead man anyways, as Putin will not tolerate any challenger, especially not from the nationalist camp. Might as well drive up the political costs for Putin by declaring himself a candidate. Girkin seems to be a gambler - not an unusual disposition given his background. Had the situation in Ukraine deteriorated sharply for Russia, the kind of attack from the nationalistic right he was making might well have succeeded.

What immediately precipitates the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia is Ukraine amassing troops of their own to finish off the separatists. — boethius

I'm going to call this a straight up lie until I see evidence.

The strategic situation in the Donbas had not significantly changed just before the 2022 invasion.

If Ukraine remained technically neutral, it's only because it has no allies.

Russia's demands was a commitment to neutrality — boethius

Obviously if you declare your intention to join a military alliance and that military alliance not only creates all sorts of military partnerships and support but also reciprocates and publicly declares they'll let you in oh ... some day, that is not neutral.

If "neutrality" language is left in law or the constitution it is clearly irrelevant. — boethius

We were discussing what Zelensky could do to avoid the invasion in 2022.

Obviously Ukraine has no commitment to neutrality in 2022 whatsoever, literally has joining NATO in its constitution, and my point is committing to neutrality may have avoided the war.

More importantly, as Ukraine had and has no allies, committing to neutrality costs Ukraine nothing. — boethius

Which, as you may again note if have that reading comprehension you covet, is not neutrality, but a compromise position of keeping the status quo. Which, as you note, the status quo did not cause Russia to invade, or even make serious threats such as amassing troops on the border.

The status quo changes when the legally elected president who represents the above compromise position is illegally removed in a coup, by anti-Russian forces explicitly backed by Nuland and the CIA. — boethius

So, taking all these together: What Zelensky needs to do in 2022 is to somehow re-establish the status quo before 2014. And doing so would cost Ukraine nothing, because Ukraine has no allies and is practically neutral, while being obviously not neutral and heavily tied to NATO.

The adopted children that already exists are still evaluated under the idea of probability of harm in the future. It becomes an irrelevant factor if they exist or not because both focus on the probability of future harm. A child that isn't born yet will still be a child and we can still evaluate if a probable child will have probable harm or not. — Christoffer

Well, no, it will not be a child because your proposed solution is to not have the child born. So you'll have to explain who is supposed to be the subject whose rights you are protecting in this scenario.

It is primarily to give more support for the sake of children's well being, but you still need to acquire a license and those who are obviously evaluated as having problems cannot get one. For instance, if the psychological evaluation finds that one of the parents or both have violence tendencies, that can block a license.

We can also propose a license system, either as included in this, or it's own, that's basically the same as a driver's license. Meaning, you need to go through education on child care, take tests and pass it in order to become a parent.

Such a system would never block anyone to become a parent, outside of the most extreme cases, and would just push for becoming more educated in the needs of a child. — Christoffer

Some kind of education of monitoring program is a good idea, I'd agree. Schemes like that already exist, like regular checkups for children, where failure to attend leads to an appointment with child protection services. Of course such a scheme must be set up with special care so that it does not further aggravate the situation of families under financial pressure.

At the moment we have education for parents, but it's voluntary... make it mandatory instead. You have to pass tests that makes sure you know what it means to take care of a child and you have everything available to you for educating in the matter.

Think of it as an education degree for parenting. It's not an advanced course, but its enough to ensure that everyone becoming a parent has a knowledge foundation that is necessary to at least mitigate the risk of malpractice. As it is right now, anyone can become a parent, regardless of knowledge of child care. Which means that even among the ones who got good intentions, they can absolutely traumatize a child anyway because of a lack of fundamental knowledge. — Christoffer

Well, sure everyone should have basic knowledge. But at the same time the amount of problems caused by simply lack of basic knowledge seems small. The physical care of children is ultimately not that difficult. It's the emotional/ psychological side that's difficult, and that cannot easily be taught. Parenting is simply such a huge change to your life that you cannot really prepare for it.

This knowledge is also part of the increasing child psychology knowledge base, so with continuing research and science on the subject, we will continue to fine tune the well being for all children, at least mitigate the unnecessary harm that comes out of the naive pretense that all people understand what it means to handle a child over the course of many years. — Christoffer

Well, that's a good plan, but one does need to consider that the knowledge here is still very much in flux. While there may be broad agreement on what the psychological needs of children are, it's much harder to tell what this means in practice.

Even if it wasn't, knowing and doing is very different. It's one thing knowing in the abstract how you want to raise your child. It's quite another to actually deal with children. Parents are exposed to very strong emotions and I'm not sure how preparation for that would even look.

The number of people who are unknowing and ill-equipped to take care of a child is larger than people realize. Even people who seemingly had a good childhood, might not have had one, as we've seen in statistics from adult psychology addressing childhood traumas affecting adult lives.

A mandatory education for all parents can mitigate some of that and at the same time spot unseen patterns of bad parenting by interacting with parents undergoing this education. — Christoffer

Plausibly, education might improve things but I think a lot of bad parenting practices are a result of desperation. So I'd prefer first to improve the resources parents have available. This reduces the focus on the parents as the single point of failure and might be necessary to even provide the kind of time parents need for their education.

Why is this an issue? As a comparison, we do this for adoption parents. They have to prove to social services and go through a psychological evaluation before being approved to adopt a child. Care to explain the difference? — Christoffer

I'd say the relevant difference is that children up for adoption already exist, and since they cannot defend their interests, their guardian has to do it.

This is in contrast to licensing future parents, because their children do not exist. We thus cannot defend this scheme with reference to the interests of the child.

You are making these fallacies based on your own extreme fantasies about what such a system would imply, without engaging with the concept in a philosophical manner. No it's not automatically totalitarian, that is an emotional reaction to the concept and not an honest overview of its potential when built out as an actual infrastructure.

Changing society like proposed isn't a simplified "install license, end problems", it's large infrastructural change for social care and child care systems. It would require that a lot more tax is spent on the well being of children, out of the concept of deterministic strategies to prevent harm towards children, prevent childhood trauma and prevent future crimes that can result in such experiences for children.

Such change in resources throughout society mitigate much the needs for "after the fact" handling of crime and childhood traumas and harm. Some people with childhood trauma and damage have had their whole life being affected by it. Even among considered "balanced and psychologically healthy" adults there are childhood traumas that affect their ability to form relationships or function well in social structures. — Christoffer

The question then is whether the licensing itself has any relevant effect, or whether the actual effective part of the strategy is simply to provide parents with more support and childcare up to child protection services with more resources.

As has been pointed out by @unenlightened, our basic setup for parenting is kind of bad. And that means a lot of parenting traditions will be adaptations for that situation. That means a lot of bad things might be happening as a matter of course that we don't even recognize as "bad parenting".

Interesting yeah, this seems even more deterministic actually because there are enough background sameness to basically steer the trajectory a general way. But then can there ever be huge enough event to cause significant change? And conversely, how many little events add up to the kind of intransigent determinism you are proposing? — schopenhauer1

One of the pitfalls when doing alternative history is that in retrospect, all events seem inevitable. That's just how the notion of causality works. It can be very difficult to get away from the position that sees actual events as the default that was always going to happen unless you introduce huge changes.

You only need to make relatively minor changes and the Nazi invasion of France fails and now World War 2 never happens in remotely the way it did.

How much do you need to nudge events in the Korean war to get nukes dropped on China? Perhaps all you need is a general being a bit more persuasive in some meeting. Then you have a nuclear US-China war in the 1950s.

Had Kennedy not been assassinated, I don't think we'd have seen some hugely different policies in the US. Nor does it seem likely that social trends in general would have been much altered. Certainly the appeal of conspiracy theories seems independent of any specific one.

On the other hand it might easily completely change the entire list of presidents from Kennedy onward. Elections are responsive enough to the moment to moment circumstances that all the results might markedly differ. And that could have let to different decisions in various crises.

We could also bring up this quote from September 23, 2023, by Sergei Lavrov:

Of course, we recognised the sovereignty of Ukraine back in 1991, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, which Ukraine adopted when it withdrew from the Soviet Union. The declaration had a great deal of good written there, including that they will respect the rights of national minorities, Russian language speakers (Russian is specifically mentioned there) and other speakers. That was later reflected in the Ukrainian Constitution. One of the main points for us in the declaration was that Ukraine would be a non-bloc, non-alliance country; it would not join any military alliances. In that version, on those conditions, we support Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

And then in case someone wanted to argue that Lavrov here means that the only condition is Ukraine's non-block status, he says this:

We have no problems with the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It was destroyed by those who carried out and supported the coup, whose leaders declared war against their own people and began to bomb them.

So Russia accepts Ukrainian sovereignty - provided of course the internal politics of Ukraine are agreeable to Russia.

And this is the official diplomatic version.

Ukraine is a de facto neutral country, with zero allies that comes to its aid when Ukraine is invaded, therefore it is of zero benefit to Ukraine to not offer neutrality in exchange for peace. — boethius

As Blinken explained in public long before the war, if to do what you say and arm Ukraine to the point of having a credible deterrent to Russia, then Russia will simply match that capacity and if you continue Russia will invade before the situation got out of hand (from their point of view) which is exactly what has happened. — boethius

So it is not, in fact, the case that neutrality costs Ukraine nothing or that neutrality would be sufficient to satisfy russian interests.

Instead what Russia demands is that Ukraine be not just neutral but (effectively vis a vis Russia) disarmed.

If Ukraine "bent the knee" and committed to neutrality — boethius

So you're well aware that what Russia demands is for Ukraine to submit, yet you blithely go on declaring that this is of no consequence to Ukraine.

In the case of Ukraine, what is clear is that the attempt to not-be-neutral would with near certainty result in the present war, and the strategy of fighting a war from a weaker position so as to avoid fighting a war in the future makes no sense. — boethius

It can make sense to fight a war now to avoid a situation where you'd have to demilitarise and thus be without any defense in the future. If you have the capacity to resist meaningfully and force concessions, which Ukraine clearly has.

You say it was all this Girkin and Russian mercenaries, and there was no popular support. — boethius

I don't, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't lie so much.

Does putting "independent group" in quotes meant to establish this was only Russian mercenaries with zero popular support? — boethius

Who else do you think the fighters were, all upstanding Donbas citizens who just so happened to be on vacation in Crimea?

Zelensky has zero political or military experience — boethius

As opposed to you, no doubt.

I do not claim that if Ukraine committed to neutrality we know Russia would not have invaded.

My claim is that committing to neutrality would have cost Ukraine nothing. — boethius

But this is contradictory, because the cost is right there - if Ukraine is neutral it has much less protection against any future aggression. That is unless you think that for Russia, "neutrality" would mean simply that Ukraine is not officially in NATO but can otherwise get as much western military support as it wants.

Receiving arms from third party is does not compromise formal neutrality; neutral countries can still receive arms. — boethius

And you think that somehow this is an acceptable arrangement for Russia, that Russia would start a war over nothing but a formality?

My main criticism of Zelensky is walking away from peace negotiations entirely, making public ultimatums making public declarations that would be humiliating to walk back, and then committing to further warfare without any realistic military means to achieve military aims. — boethius

Neither side has definetly ruled out negotiations, and if you criticize Zelensky you'd also have to criticize Russia for reiterating maximalists goals.

I'm asking you why would it matter what the Russian terms were if Ukraine goes onto lose the war? Any terms at the time, such as cease fire in place, would be far superior to losing the war. — boethius

It matters because a lot of different scenarios can be called a loss, but that doesn't mean they're all the same. If Ukraine eventually looses some territory that's not remotely the same as, for example, Ukraine being split in two and ceasing to exist as a political entity.

Are you going to substantiate that? The wikipedia article simply describes the talks at that time as being based on 15 points, not some sort of draft treaty presented by Ukraine. — boethius

Neither party presented a draft treaty.

WTF are you talking about? — boethius

Im talking about the right to self-determination as understood in internation al law.

This one. Not an abstract notion of freedom.

Ok, well the way international law works is that the Russian action are de facto legal if there's no security council resolution that says otherwise; that's how international law is setup.

The security council is the authoritative body that has the power to interpret how international law applies to a given situation, and before and until that happens all legal arguments about the situation are merely legal briefs and opinions and are not legal facts.

What the Russians are doing in Ukraine is perfectly legal under international law until there is a security council resolution that says otherwise. — boethius

That's all quite wrong.

The UN-Charta rules out violence in international relations generally, in Art 2 section 3 and 4. The security council has some specific and far reaching powers (theoretically at least), but it is not the authoritative body on how to interpret international law. Nor does it need to declare something an attack in order for it to be one, as among other things Art. 51 of the UN-Charta makes clear. And of course there is an entire body of international law part from the UNC.

So yes please, please source the Igor Girkin movement to support your claim that there is and never was any popular support for the separatists within the separatists territory. — boethius

That is not my claim, nor does your demand make any sense in context.

But anyways here is Igor Girkin telling us about his role in the invasion of Crimea, so Girkin is in Crimea from February 21.

On April 12, the Slovianks Police HQ is taken, apparently by a well organised "independent group". Later interviews from Girkin make clear that he was the leader of that independent group 1, 2, 3.

Two weeks later, Girkin is acclaimed the leader of all separatist forces in Donetsk, and in May declares himself supreme commander of the DPR.

Was there anything more specific you wanted to know?

I do, however, see that if what you claim is true, and Girkin is the key to everything, then Ukraine could have easily won this conflict all the way back in 2014: — boethius

It could. But the russian military started shelling them and send regular army formations across the border to support the "separatists", at which point it became a stalemate as Ukraine wasn't at that point able to push into russian artillery and army formations.

This was the conversation in the Western media at the time. Russia was experiencing defeats and therefore could be pressured into a peace favourable to Ukraine ... though of course needing some compromise so that Russia accepts. — boethius

That military defeats might force russia to accept a peace more facourable to Ukraine is an entirely different argument from the one that russia always intended to offer such conditions.

Zelensky definitely is a stupid crazy person — boethius

Right. And this is why it's so useful to discuss with you.

But if you are conceding that NATO had just-cause in bombing Libya because civilians "might" get shelled, then certainly it follows Russia has just cause in invading Ukraine due to shelling of civilians in the Donbas .. — boethius

I don't think NATO had just cause in bombing Syria, and I think humanitarian interventions in general are highly questionable.

Now, "everyone" at the time in Western media, and also on this forum, discussed under the assumption that Russia would accept peace (that would include withdrawal) with some for of the three main points they kept repeating were critical to them: recognition of Crimea, Ukrainian neutrality, and some status change in the Donbas, where considered the key elements (Ukraine would need to accept) to arrive at a peace. — boethius

This just seems a bizzare and obviously false claim. I can remember no-one making such assumptions.

If you want believe the peace deals that are reported by various parties as getting "close" and Zelensky himself saying terms seemed more realistic, was all either misinterpretation or then Russian bad faith, there's no way to completely prove otherwise. — boethius

This is a massive distortion, as negotiations hadn't ever reached a ceasefire, and all the talk about getting close and being more realistic obviously is in the context of stopping the fighting, not finding some overarching solution to the entire conflict.

But again, how is a cease fire in place at the time not preferable to losing the war? — boethius

We'll know when either side has lost. For now Ukraine holds a good deal more territory than it did at the time.

So if all this discussion is just to come to the fact that Ukraine's refusing neutrality before the war, and refusing Russian demands after the war broke out, is only reasonable (certainly at least in hindsight) if Ukraine can ultimately "win" (at least on the glorious nationalistic territorial dimension). — boethius

If it was so easy to make peace, why did it happen? Your argument is that either Zelensky is a stupid crazy person or he's being controlled by the west. Well in that case I can just argue Putin is a stupid crazy person and would attack anyways.

If we assume both leaders are reasonable and somewhat informed about the situation the only conclusion is that Russian and Ukrainian interests were fundamentally irreconcilable. And this happens to be exactly what the evidence suggests, from the rhetoric of demilitarise and denazify to the annexation of Ukrainian territories before they're even under russian control.

First, you completely ignore that obviously Russia's offer before the invasion even took place would require no withdrawal.

Had Ukraine accepted neutrality before the war, the war may not have happened, and Russia may not have seen enough sufficient cause to invade given the main point of contention was resolved. — boethius

And again it's an entirely unsubstantiated claim that russia would have accepted a simple pledge of neutrality. Various Ukrainian governments have expressed their willingness to accept neutrality in principle.

In other words, Donetsk and Lugansk would not be annexed by Russia and there's no mention of the other regions Russia occupied in the demands as Russia would be giving them back in such a deal. — boethius

This does not follow. Russia had already decided at that point to annex the "independent" republics, there was a rather humourous episode where a Russian official apparently switched their scripts and argued in favour of a request (as of then nonexistent) to join the RF before the republics had even been recognised by Russia.

Nor would the deal in any way obligate Russia to not demand further territory in subsequent peace negotiations. All they offered here was to halt their operations.

the correct move for Ukraine would be to make a counter offer that explicitly clarifies those points. Which Ukraine never does — boethius

You yourself quoted the 15 point plan that was the Ukrainian counteroffer.

after Boris Johnson flies to Ukraine to convince Zelensky to not make peace). — boethius

Baseless speculation.

Had Ukraine done that, clarified the points you are now equivocating on, and the Russia clearly refused such a peace deal; ok — boethius

Russia has repeatedly restated their goals to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. Why are you not accepting their own words?

Obviously there were chances to negotiate peace at various times leading up to and during the conflict, starting with the Minsk accords, the main point of contention being NATO, and Ukraine consistently chooses to push for joining NATO rather than entertain accepting neutrality.

The war happens. If Ukraine can't win, and instead loses and significant amount of Ukrainians are killed, Ukraine depopulated through people fleeing the conflict, and the economy destroyed and furthermore far more of the coveted territory is lost in battle, clearly those opportunities for peace were preferable, and trying to join NATO did not help Ukraine one bit (just a provocation based on some foolish principle of "having the right to ask to join a club that doesn't want you" without any benefit whatsoever). — boethius

You're welcome to your opinions, but they seem far removed from reality to me.

What does it matter if Russian terms were even worse for Ukraine than what seemed to me, everyone on the forum, and the mainstream Western media, if your interpretation is correct ... but Ukraine loses anyways? — boethius

Stop lying through your teeth.

Because demanding sources of points that you don't honestly disbelieve is just bad faith. — boethius

My main interest is pointing out obvious falsehoods and inconsistencies for the benefit of others. It's quite clear you will not budge one inch whatever I say.

That's exactly how it works: imprisonment within Ukrainian territory and forced conscription to be forced into military service (i.e. taking away people's right to self determination for themselves) in the name of self determination for the "glorious nation". — boethius

The right to self determination doesn't apply to individuals and is generally fulfilled so long as there is some effective form of representation for the people, i.e. the ethnic or cultural group (as a whole) in question

you offer zero citations or evidence or even plausible arguments. — boethius

Well since we haven't talked about it before, it wasn't necessary. Perhaps you'd just have agreed. But here is the overview of the timeline from Wikipedia . Anything specific you take issue with?

Separatism is based on extra-legal moral principles, — boethius

I have zero interest in discussing morality with you, so I'll stick to the international law.

Again, zero sources, which immediately following demanding sources for me to 100% clarify the sources I already cited, is extreme bad faith.

If you don't want to bring your own sources to the table, then it's complete idiocy to demand others provide sources (on-top of the sources they've already provided). — boethius

Sourcing things isn't some kind of weird dick measuring contest. I'm asking you for sources for specific claims, because those claims are false as far as I can see.

What exactly is it you take issue with? I can provide sources for the movements of Igor Girkin if you want.

Again, just inventing things that would be convenient if it were true.

Are you just repeating myths that circulate in "pro-Ukrainian" echo-chambers on Reddit or Facebook and simply assuming they must be based on "something" or do you just do cursory research to get a vague impression of what you're looking for? — boethius

You yourself posted the Reuters report. It said Russia would "halt military operations".

That is what you have offered regarding the russian proposal. Noone doubts the ukrainian proposal involves Russia retreating.

And, obviously, the Russian offer before the war would have occurred without any Russian forces outside of Crimea. — boethius

An offer which we also do not know.

You're also directly contradicting the Reuters article I cited, which clearly describes an offer that it not a ceasefire in place, — boethius

Halting your military operations is a ceasefire.

"Everyone" in the context refers to members of the forum commenting on events and also mainstream media, such as Reuters. But, even so, can you even provide evidence of "someone" understanding the Russian offer different at the time? — boethius

Why would I need to do that? It's your claim not mine.

Again, just thinking backwards to making things up that would be convenient to be true.

"Everyone" in the context refers to members of the forum commenting on events and also mainstream media, such as Reuters. But, even so, can you even provide evidence of "someone" understanding the Russian offer different at the time? — boethius

I'm doubting the analysis says what you claim it does.

Where do you get that Russia was only ever offering a ceasefire in place? Especially before the 2022 war even occurred? — boethius

This is not a claim I'm making. I'm saying what you quoted describes a ceasefire in place.

Sure, but that is simply agreeing to the main point of contention here: that whatever terms Ukraine was offered, it would have been better to accept compared to losing the war — boethius

That is moving the goalposts a fair bit. You have consistently claimed that Ukraine would have been better off accepting the deal on offer early in the war, rather than keep fighting. That's a very different argument.

The problem Ukraine gets into is that it repudiates negotiations and commits itself to achieving a better negotiation position by military means. — boethius

And this, according to you, is somehow a bad thing?

Russia obviously can demand this, and NATO could agree to it and likewise Ukraine could agree to it. — boethius

Right, they could, but NATO would take a serious hit to its international standing, while leaving Ukraine out in the cold.

I understand you'd hand Russia the keys to the city and the nuclear codes too, if it'd avoid a war, but that is your opinion.

Most previous wars were at least fought over what countries did actually possess before the war started. — boethius

I think you missed the part where Russia annexed significant parts of Ukraine. But I guess the west forced them to do that.

It's not easy at all, first language and cultural repression and shelling the separatists are crimes against humanity committed by overt Nazi's — boethius

If you want to be taken seriously, it'd help if you didn't just repeat russian propaganda. There was no Nazi oppression of Donbas.

but second it is a completely legitimate political action to seek separation after the coup in 2014. — boethius

It's not. There's no recognised right to separation under international law and you haven't made any moral case either.

and I honestly don't see much of a problem waging a war against said Nazi's. — boethius

You cannot wage a war against some political group in another country, and in any event that's not what happened.

But even without the Nazi's, if Ukraine has a right to self-determination so too the separatists. — boethius

Not under current international law.

Who doesn't have a right to self determination is all the Ukrainian men that cannot leave Ukraine and can be forced to fight by the government ... and why? To protect the right of self determination of Ukraine? — boethius

That's not how any of this works.

Or are you saying they lacked popular legitimacy in the Donbas ? — boethius

Yes. The organic separatist movements in the Donbas were very localised and nothing really got off the ground until mercenaries arrived from Crimea. Even then the separatists quickly fizzled out in most areas apart from a few strongholds - notably Donetsk city.

The separatists clearly have a right to self defence and if that requires asking Russia for help and Russia wrecking the rest of Ukraine to protect the separatists, seems perfectly legal to me. — boethius

I have no doubt it seems that way to you, but it is not legal. You cannot declare yourself a separatist and ask your neighbour to invade. It should be obvious why.

The social contract of being in a larger political unit is that the rules are followed. A president was elected to Ukraine and the rules are the president has certain powers and serves a certain term; those rules aren't followed, social contract is broken, perfectly reasonable and legitimate (and therefore just cause) to then secede from an illegitimate national government. — boethius

That might be an interesting question in the abstract but it is not what happened. Most of the unrest in Donbas coincided not with the Euromaidan but with the seizure of Crimea. It was also short lived until Igor Girkin, a Moscow born russian, started taking over cities with a band of mercenaries.

The justification for wrecking Libya was that civilians "might" be shelled. — boethius

And look how well that turned out.

Ukraine was anyways in the separatist regions territory, if Ukraine was of good will about the accords (and had the sense to want to avoid a larger war with Russia) then they would have withdrawn to positions where clashes were no longer possible — boethius

Ah yes more excellent advice from boethius. Just retreat. What's the worst that can happen?

You're claim was that offers in serious negotiations aren't made public, to support your previous claim that "we don't know much about" the negotiations and what, if anything, Russia was offering, which you now just casually move the goal posts to this entirely new claim, that basically it maybe unwise to make your position public. — boethius

This is an insipid and pointless sideshow.

You have claimed Russia offered to retreat to the February 2022 starting points in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. It's upon you to provide evidence of this, which so far you haven't done.

I ultimately don't care one way or the other whether you believe diplomatic negotiations happen in public.

I addressed this in the beginning. Given any theory of truth, whether it assumes the truth criterion is a metaphysical representation or otherwise, its conception and operation depends on a mind. — Sirius

Right, but if only the evaluation of a truth depends on a mind, then it doesn't follow that necessary truths also necessitate a mind.

Ask yourself. Does it make sense to say X statement was always true, but it never always existed. How can a statement be true and not exist ? And if a true statement an an evaluation must exist, it will exist in a mind — Sirius

It does make sense, but it does also easily get confusing. The problem imho is that you're adding another meta layer. Now we're taking about the statement about the statement about X. Obviously if you make a statement about a statement the latter must already exist. But this doesn't tell us that it must always have existed.

True statements are a mental evaluation, but what they represent isn't. A mindless world may have truths, but we cannot speak of them, which is no different from not having any truths.

Let's suppose there is no God. We can do without him actually.

Was "Big bang just occurred" a true statement when the big bang occurred ? Here is the tricky part. We can say it is a true statement from an evaluation in our time w.r.t the time when the big bang occurred, but it involves us taking our mind to the time when the big bang occurred CONCEPTUALLY. But even if we didn't exist, It is neccesary condition for this universe that there be a mind in the relative distant future which can evaluate the conditions of the past when there were no minds.

How is this possible ? — Sirius

Well it's possible because this universe is the one with humans in it. This is an application of the anthropic principle. From the perspective of a mind experiencing their universe, that universe must necessarily contain the conditions for minds to exist.

There could be a universe where that isn't the case, but we wouldn't be experiencing it.

As you know from special relativity, the past/present/future exists on the same ontological plane. So when the big bang occurred, we were thinking of it having occurred in the future from the refrence of big bang. But even if we didn't exist, there must have been someone in the future who was thinking of the big bang. As we have eliminated God, we will need to take this universe to be infinite to have all the minds represent the infinitely many true mathematical statements and have them evaluated.

To sum it up, the existence of a mind is a neccesary condition for the existence of neccesarily logical truths, but not a sufficient condition. — Sirius

The big bang is a human concept though, so as such it only exists in a universe that has humans (eventually).

And saying that there are infinitely many true mathematical statements to be evaluated seems to be at odds with your position that truth is created by evaluation. Since the statements don't all already exist, they're merely indefinite, not infinite.

I never claimed all contingent truths must exist, only logically neccesary truths. I have already given reasons why mathematical truths can not depend on material representation ( refuting logicism ) — Sirius

What does it mean for truths to exist? Are truths metaphysically real "states of affairs"? Or are they constructions of a particular mind?

If a statement is logically neccesary, then it exists irrespective of whether there is a physical world or not, since it isn't about the physical world. — Sirius

This does not make sense to me. The content of a statement doesn't change its ontological status.

Here is a proof of the existence of neccesarily logically true statements and a mind :

Definition :

Existence for neccesarily true statements means "X is neccesarily" exists as an evaluation.

If it doesn't, then we can't say "X is neccesarily true", but X is neccesarily true, so an evaluation neccesarily exists. But if an evaluation neccesarily exists, a mind neccesarily exists for the evaluation. — Sirius

This proof only works conceptually if truths are the results of evaluation, which is to say truths are (mental) constructs.

But this means also that necessary truths only ever exist for specific minds, and a mindless world has no truths, necessary or otherwise. So a mindless world is perfectly self consistent, and necessary truths only arise for specific minds.

Well that would the the utilitarian perspective. My problem with that is that "improving our lives" is subjective and utilitarianism doesn't itself provide any framework to reconcile the different positions people might have on "the greater good". Hence I prefer the deontological approach.

I would still say that the purpose of moral philosophy is to make the world better, just not in the sense of trying to optimise any particular metric.

If your enemy isn't abiding by the Geneva Conventions, why should you? Does a nation have a moral duty to take the "high ground" in a conflict? — RogueAI

Generally, nations are not moral subjects, individuals are.

But yeah I'd say you have the moral duty to take the high ground, always and in every situation. That is
what moral philosophy is ultimately about, isn't it? To have a framework that applies over and above what your current desires or interests are.

If we can throw it by the wayside when it doesn't suit us, why have it in the first place?

Even if it increases their chances of losing the conflict? What about if their existence is truly at stake? — RogueAI

Morality in war is a tricky business, especially since there's not necessary a good argument to treat your enemy at large differently than your allies. You might have taken extra obligations towards your allies, but those could hardly result in your enemies having less moral standing.

I think we would need to employ the logic of self defense, expanded to groups since against an organised attacker, only an organised defense could succeed. And in that context we could argue that, in a justifiable cause, one does not need to accept undue risks. Since those that are fighting for the aggressor have by this act placed themselves outside the moral framework themselves, and thus cannot demand for themselves it's full protection.

But it's a difficult argument to carry forward without contradiction, as obviously not all victims of war really chose to be on either side in a meaningful way.

If the Axis had used chemical weapons, wouldn't the Allies have been justified using them in retaliation? — RogueAI

I think you could make the case that a counterattack is justified if it has a plausible military objective that you judge you could not meet any other way.

Or suppose Germany had gone through with Sea Lion and invaded Britain after the fall of France. Would the Brits have been justified in using gas against the German invaders? Doesn't the British high command have a duty to its people to fight a Nazi invasion with every means at their disposable? If the British generals decide that chemical weapons will give them a decisive edge against Nazi soldiers, don't they have a duty to use those chemical weapons in defense of their citizens? — RogueAI

They probably have that duty, but I do think they'd also have to weigh their duty towards humanity in general, which even includes the enemy soldiers.

If the use of a gas weapon provides the decisive edge, and you have also considered the probable long term consequences, maybe such use could be justified. At the same time we can probably conclude that lobbing gas grenades at starving and undersupplied Germans who are barely holding their perimeter might be a step too far.

Can you point out the specific flaw. Saying the conclusion doesn't follow isn't helpful. — Sirius

The content of a statement is mental content. This includes the "truth" of the statement, or the truth evaluation.

But not all possible statements already exist. You would need to show that the statement about the necessary truth also necessarily exists.

It doesn't follow from any of this that any particular statement (concerning a necessary truth or something else) necessarily exists.

4. All neccesarily true statements exist as cognitive content (from 1,2) — Sirius

How does it follow from your premises that the statements (already) exist?

I've provided accounts of the people directly involved, accounts of people indirectly involved, — Tzeentch

Which either did not say what you claim they did or merely noted their "impressions"

reports by prominent UN and NATO representatives, etc. — Tzeentch

"Prominent" as in claim to have worked for them in the past. Posting their views on some obscure blog, quoting themselves.

This is why you're not taken seriously. You don't seem to realize that reality won't budge any further to accomodate your narrative. — Tzeentch

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

This is why discussion with you oompa loompas is pointless. — Tzeentch

You could simply provide evidence of your claim.

This was Russia's offer as reported at the time. — boethius

Russia's offer was a ceasefire in place.

But that's just straight up rewriting history. Everyone at the time understood the Russian offer to be pulling their troops back to Russia and Crimea if the offer was accepted. — boethius

No, they didn't.

There was huge amount of analysis at the time; — boethius

Then no doubt you can provide relevant evidence.

the three main points are neutrality, recognizing Crimea and some sort of status change in Donbas (but not integration into Russia, which has happened since if you haven't noticed). — boethius

And these are their demands for a ceasefire.

but it was understood Russia was offering to pull their troops from the rest of Ukraine including the Donbas (it's not really a "retreat" if it's part of a peace agreement). — boethius

No, that was not understood. You seem to be confusing a ceasefire with a peace treaty.

which is that Ukraine had far more leverage to try to negotiate the best deal they could ever get back then compared to now. A point you don't seem to agree with. — boethius

Correct.

it strengthens your diplomatic position to accept an offer that is then reneged on — boethius

Unless you had already made concessions and got nothing in return. As would have been the case in this scenario.

Well then, what "good news" do you even see in even mainstream Western media? — boethius

Russian offensive capabilities don't seem to have markedly improved, so they seem unable for now to do more than grind forward at a snail's pace.

Well, at the time, the West was framing this as giving Putin what he wants rather than punishing him for breaking the "rules based order" over annexing Crimea and the West refused to negotiate directly with Russia to try to come to a larger deal over European security architecture as a whole and so on. — boethius

Which is a reasonable position to take generally, western hypocrisy notwithstanding.

For a while talking heads and social media were continuously repeating that "Ukraine has a right to join NATO" and that "Russia can't demand Ukrainian neutrality as Ukraine is a sovereign nation" as justification for repudiating any peace agreement, which are absolutely moronic points — boethius

The argument was that Russia cannot demand that western nations bar Ukraine's NATO entry.

We can come back to this point, as no one so far as actually provided an argument of why the Ukrainian cause is just. — boethius

But that's relatively easy. They're fighting an aggressor who violated their undisputed borders repeatedly (and who also has a treaty obligation to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine), and they have not committed any kind of crime against humanity which might in extreme cases justify a war of aggression.

one has answered the question of how many Nazi's in Ukraine would be too many Nazi's — boethius

Well I'm glad to hear people here had enough sense not to.

explain why the Donbas separatist cause is not just on exactly the same grounds as the Ukrainian cause of "self determination — boethius

Separatism is a thorny issue at the best of times, and the Donbas separatists lack any convincing popular legitimacy.

even if we ignore that issue then why shelling civilians was justified — boethius

Even if it wasn't, it was not remotely significant enough to be cause for an invasion.

reneging on the Mink accords was justified. — boethius

At the least Russia also failed to implement it's obligations under Minsk.

What are you talking about? Offers in serious negotiations can and often are made public. Making an offer public can put further pressure on the counter-party if the offer is clearly reasonable to take, — boethius

Or it can blow up the negotiations because now one side is compelled to accuse the other of lying to avoid fatally compromising their position. It's a dangerous game to play.

Russia's conditions for a peace settlement were made public — boethius

You seem to have ommitted the part where you show Russia's pledge to retreat and return all territory, (which would include the parts of Donetsk & Luhansk not occupied prior to the 2022 invasion).

This is exactly what "the West" (officials, mainstream media, zillions of commenters on social media) was insisting on, that any peace (in which Putin keeps Crimea and Ukraine accepts neutrality, which was the only deal the Russians would consider accepting) would be a win for Russia: they wanted Ukraine neutral, they want recognition of Crimea by Ukraine, so if they get that then they "win". — boethius

Sure, a win, but a relatively minor one which offers no long term strategic advantage to Russia.

My diagnosis of your philosophical disease is that you've, until now, happily swallowed what Western media was selling you about this war — boethius

I have a pro-Ukraine bias, but I do try to avoid looking away when bad news for Ukraine surface.

their cause must be just — boethius

Their cause is just.

If Russia's offer was "not quite good enough" ... then why don't we have a Reuters citation of Ukraine's counter-offer, such as neutrality and keeping the Donbas with more limited cultural protections for Russian speakers (since that's important for "some reason")? — boethius

Actual offers in serious diplomatic negotiations are not made public, much less when actual lifes are at stake. Sure Ukraine could publish the offers made, but then why would we believe Ukraine was telling the full truth, and any such move could jeopardize further negotiations.

However, the main issue is not "what exactly" Russia was offering, but that Ukraine walks away from negotiating, makes absurd ultimatums public and so on, rather than strive to get the best deal they can when they have maximum leverage. — boethius

I guess we'll have to trust their judgement on when they have "maximum leverage" for now. The war isn't over.

The fact is there was a peace deal on the table in March / April, in which Ukraine reneged on their plans to join NATO, and Russia returned all the territory it occupied at that time. This deal was blocked by the US and Britain. — Tzeentch

That's not a fact, it's a wild flight of fantasy.

The deal was blocked because the US knew it would be seen as a Russian victory. — Tzeentch

Of course, Russia camped his force on Ukraine's border for months, then invades, looses men and materiel, gets absolutely nothing in return but the US blocks it because it'd "be seen as a russian victory".

This is a good point. You’re forgetting two things, though: first, I’m not trying to justify Russia’s actions. In fact I’ve condemned them all along. I think it’s both morally wrong and strategically stupid, as they’ve now pushed even more countries into the hands of the US. — Mikie

That's fair. But I do think it changes the moral judgement a fair bit whether we think of the US invasion of Iraq as a misguided and ultimately tragically counterproductive attempt at fighting terrorism or as a cynical move to exploit a tragedy in order to reshape the middle east according to the US' geopolitical interests.

For similar reasons, it does rankle me if Putin is called a "reactive leader" in this context for, even if it's not meant to exculpate him, it seems to nevertheless distract from the fact that had he not given the order, thousands victims of this war would be alive today (though this is ultimately tangential to our discussion).

Secondly, when analyzing the justification given by the aggressor state, you look at the evidence. The justification for invading Iraq (connections to 9/11, weapons of mass destruction, etc) turned out to be completely bogus. And the goal wasn’t to conquer Iraq anyway. The actual reason, in my view, was economic.

So in Russia’s case, is there any evidence that NATO is a major factor? Yes, there is. Doesn’t make it correct or rational. Furthermore, it doesn’t make it the only cause. — Mikie

Sure, it's a different case with different facts. The analogy only goes so far.

Mostly what I'm interested in at this point isn't debating an individual point - we have tried that at length. But I do (obviously) also think I'm looking at the evidence.

You're drawing a direct line from NATO expansion to the war of Ukraine. I'm saying at some point in the 2000s the line entered a bundle of causes we might label "Russian resentment towards the west", which ended up one of the causes of the war. These views aren't really fundamentally opposed. I'm not saying "no actually, there really were WMDs in Iraq".

I think it's more useful to understand Putin's decision as an expression of his geopolitical goals. The include keeping Ukraine neutral, but they also go much beyond that.

Saying the US invaded Iraq because the US is evil and George Bush is a madman wouldn’t be a strong argument. Likewise, rejecting that thesis wouldn’t justify the actual (well supported) reasons. — Mikie

From where I sit, only a madman would have thrown Russia's entire available armed forces at Ukraine if they did not intend for this to result in a seismic geopolitical shift in their favour. Neutrality for Ukraine for some indefinite period doesn't strike me as such a shift.

The Gulf War campaign had about a million coalition troops. The Iraqi Army was no longer considered nearly as well supplied or competent in 2003. Sanctions and the collapse of the USSR as an arms provider had crippled their military, as had a decade of a US enforced no fly zone. During the Gulf War, the US essentially defacto partitioned a whole third of Iraq, which was under Kurdish control and rule after. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I confess I have not really looked into this in detail. I checked the troop dispositions for Iraq out of curiosity and noticed that they didn't actually seem in an entirely different ballpark (only looking at the initial invasion force). The comparison is flawed in many ways, and yet I don't think it's entirely out of the question that Russian commanders also looked at the US invasion in Iraq as a model for their planned campaign.

Another comparison might be Vietnam. South Vietnam had about half the population of Ukraine but the SVA and US forced for COIN operations there peaked at 1.4 million.

However, in general, the size of military deployments has been decreasing. Modern warfare has shown a definite trend towards quality beating quantity. Military hardware is significantly more expensive when adjusting for inflation than during WWII and soldiers now require more training.

Russia's invasion was largely predicated on the prediction that Ukraine's would collapse. The low troop numbers represent Russia's (over)confidence in this collapse, over confidence in the effectiveness of bribes they had paid to Ukrainian leaders, corruption (they thought they had more men than they did, there have been multiple trials over under strength formations and "ghost soldiers"), and general poor planning skills, more than anything relative to their war aims IMO. That and their relative inability to mobilize and support a much larger force. After all, they couldn't support the men they went in with. Having more unsupported columns wouldn't have helped them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No disagreement here. One can say the russian invasion forces were much too small, yet on paper they still represented one of the most formidable forces in the world. The number of nations who could have assembled something similar is small.

I'd rather call it pro-Russian propaganda. Indeed, these people have no problems to whine over American imperialism EVEN WHEN American didn't "conquest" anything. While refrain from talking about Russian imperialism when the territorial conquest actually happens before they eyes while they are denying it. The intellectual misery is cosmic. — neomac

I would rather turn this around and point out that @Mikie and presumably also the other posters would never accept this kind of argument If we were talking about an US invasion.

They'd scoff at the notion that the US didn't intend to "conquer" Iraq but only to fight terrorism. If we tried to argue that the US had no imperialist ambitions in Iraq and merely reacted to "reasonable security concerns", that really the "most direct cause" of the invasion was the alignment of Iraq with the supporters of radical Islam, they'd laugh us out of the room.

The invasion of Iraq is also an interesting analogy as far as the numbers are concerned. The population of Iraq is 43 million. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had a large army that was considered relatively modern and effective. Yet the initial invasion forces also numbered "only" some 160.000.

If, for some wild reason, the invasion had failed, would we now be talking about how the US couldn't possibly have intended to conquer Iraq, since clearly it didn't have the troops?

There were other reasons for invasion. Conquest wasn’t one of them. — Mikie

Except for the parts of Ukraine actually conquered and annexed, right?

I think for the Ukrainians, the distinction between "conquest" and a "special military operation to demilitarise and denazify" is rather academic.

Right, fair enough. We could also say his legitimacy was forged in a war. War, or perhaps we should be more neutral and call it direct military action, has worked for Putin.

Supposedly he was chosen because he demonstrated that he was corrupt, so Yeltsin, who was also corrupt, believed Putin wouldn't prosecute him for his crimes. War increased his power? — frank

Well I'm sure the word Putin would use is not "corrupt" but "loyal". But yes that is what I read as well, and also that he was a bit of a blank slate politically. Noone knew what he really stood for. At the time, he might have simply been considered an interim solution. Someone not offensive, who would make sure the Yeltsin family got off free, and then make way for someone with more of a political profile. But Putin quickly made his mark by taking a hardline stance on Chechnya and is to this day suspected of having orchestrated terror attacks to have a pretext for a second Chechen war. That brought him into his own as a political figure in his own right.

Another allegation is that Putin was essentially always a KGB trojan horse, who played the role of the loyal vassal long enough to get into power, and then started to enact the kind of policies his KGB clique had wanted to employ since the days of the USSR.

Do note that all this is based on somewhat hazy rememberings on books I read / listened to. So it's quite possible I muddled something, Perhaps @Jabberwock can correct any glaring mistakes, since they seem knowledgeable.

Just do armchair speculation. Good enough. :up: — Mikie

Are you doing your speculation from a footstool? If so, you should upgrade!

He rose to power originally by starting a war. More war would pull the country behind him? — frank

That's not quite true, Putin was elevated to power by the Jelzin family. But his success in the second Chechen war did much to secure his rule.

I think if the invasion was just a land grab, Putin's timing is a little strange. Why wouldn't he have done that a few years earlier when Trump was president of the US? Trump would have cheered him on. — frank

But that would have damaged trump, possibly beyond repair. Which would probably have not been in Russia's interest. Or Putin might have considered the west especially weak in the wake the COVID pandemic. Also possible is that Putin intended his invasion in 2020, coinciding with political turmoil in the US, but COVID stopped that plan. In the early days of COVID, some estimates had the mortality way higher than it actually was.

Waiting until Biden, a hawk, to become president, makes it seem that he wanted to engage the US military somehow. — frank

Putin seems to have overestimated the strength of his military, but I doubt he overestimated it by that much.

Since he also declared some sort of new world order after the invasion, indicating that the US was no longer in charge of global affairs, it seems like he thought he was going to easily conquer Ukraine and flaunt this win in spite of Biden's public threat to punish Russia for interfering in US elections. — frank

Something along these lines. Deal US prestige a crushing blow, demonstrating it's weakness as an ally, while restoring Russia's great power status and cementing his reputation in Russia.

What's not to like? But it was not to be.

In other words, I don't believe the invasion was about NATO, but I think it may have partly been about demonstrating Russian military strength and simultaneously demonstrating that US supremacy was over. He just miscalculated his own military capability? — frank

Arguably, he had some reason to overestimate his chances for success. In Georgia the russian forces did poorly, but were overall successful and western reactions were muted. In Ukraine in 2014, russian forces were spectacularly successful and Ukraine was even briefly staggered by a ragtag bunch of mercenary "separatists". The western reaction was less muted, but still far from unified and effective.

Taken together Putin might well have assumed that his military would pull off a blitzkrieg campaign so shocking that the Ukrainian military would be unable to respond, while the west would look on helplessly and just pile on some more toothless sanctions.

The russian military isn't some incompetent bunch of conscripted farmers, as pro Ukrainian propaganda sometimes suggested. They had much improved from their nadir in the first Chechen war. But apparently they, like some many others before them, did not sufficiently account for the effect of determined resistance aimed at their logistics and c&c.

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that.

So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”

Yeah and Austria-Hungary went to war to get a proper investigation of the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.