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113 sats \ 7 replies \ @petertodd 8 Jul \ parent \ on: Lessons From the Cold War: Now Is the Time for De-Escalation - Antiwar.com history
Who gives a fuck about US/NATO leadership? Obviously they don't have Ukraine's best interests at heart, because they are holding back Ukraine from being able to fight most effectively. The missiles that hit there three hospitals today all came from Russian airbases close to the border that Ukraine could easily blow up if only the US gave Ukraine permission.
Peace talks are idiotic. They've been done before. Russia just uses "peace" as a chance to rearm and try again. They have literally hundreds of years of history invading their neighbors.
How do you think Russia got so big? It's an imperialist culture that loves to invade and subjugate. The only solution is to prevent them from doing that, which is something you do with military force by killing Russians and destroying their industrial infrastructure.
The reason I care is because it sure seems like war could be exactly what some very evil military companies want to see. A long dragging war they can profit from at the expense of the people of Ukraine and Russia.
I'm not expert but it does not seem like the US government wants a resolution. Your characterization of Russia could be made by people that have lived under British rule or people that live under the current world order. I would argue that the US government is imperialist as well. The US method is less ugly but it is an empire. We have seen how the US props up dictators across the globe when it helps US "interests". Usually business interests.
Russia and a few other powers do not bend the knee to the US. Make no mistake though, They are terrible as well. Worse in most ways. But the direction of the West isn't good and we need to look at things from not only our side but other's points of view if we truly want to understand our world.
Even if you are dealing with a mad man nothing I'm saying is a bad course of action. Maybe you come to the conclusion that there is no other option but all out war. I just don't see most people even demonstrating a desire to understand what would lead the Russian people to continuing their support of Putin. Or even Putin's motives besides the typical talking points.
I don't know the truth but I find the usual talking points very suspect.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts.
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If you want the war to end sooner, give Ukraine the weapons they need, and crucially, the permission to use them against Russian targets.
You don't make the war end sooner with "peace negotiations" and "ceasefires". That just sets the stage for Russia to come back again, which is how were in this mess in the first place.
Peace will be achieved when Russia is no longer capable of fighting. That requires us to kill Russians by the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) and destroy their infrastructure. Not a difficult goal – Ukraine has already killed or seriously wounded hundreds of thousands of Russians and has already blown up a non-trivial % of Russia's oil and gas infrastructure. We simply need to keep at it.
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Peter, do you believe the story of the civil war in Ukraine. Those ethnic Russians that wanted to leave the Ukraine and become their own nation?
That's Putin's actual pretext at the start. At least that is what I recall him saying. He's said many other ridiculous things since but I think most people forget that there was a civil war before this all started with Russian and NATO supporting Ukraine.
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The civil war narrative is nonsense. It was Russian troops fighting against Ukrainians.
If anything, Russia has done an excellent job of making "Russian speaking"¹ Ukrainians really hate Russia, as more of them have died in the past three years than any other group of Ukrainians. Mariupol for instance was slaughtered, and mostly Russian speaking.
- Most Ukrainians speak Russian; I don't actually know any that can only speak Ukrainian myself.
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how many troops does Ukraine have?
How many troops for Russia?
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Russia is short enough on troops that they've been forced to bring them in from outside Russia.
The two numbers aren't really comparable anyway as the two countries fight quite differently. Russia is happy to lose large numbers of troops in cheap "meat" attacks to make up for their shortages of decent weapons; Ukraine is not willing to do that, and (in theory) has access to much better weapons.
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Russian meat grinder
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