Well the strategic calculus for Ukraine is 100% guaranteed war now or 95% guaranteed war later. I don’t see a practical reason why ceasefire is a bad option here.
I’m sure ww2 Britain would have been quite happy with a simple ceasefire especially if it meant more time for American aid to arrive
Brother the whole reason Putin started this war is he was scared Ukraine was becoming too well armed and he wouldn’t be able to invade it in the future. This isn’t ww2, we both know Russia cannot hope to compete in industrial/military output with the countries supplying Ukraine (if only they would actually supply the gear).
And also I might be misremembering but when has Putin asked for much less gotten a ceasefire of any length of time after 2022? Can you give a source?
I suspect the reason they didn’t take it is more of internal politics, the current government is synonymous with war and growing more and more unpopular as fatigue and stalemate sets in. They don’t understand what drives US foreign policy; The US keeps telling Ukraine to avoid striking at Russia itself, and moderating the flow of equipment so Ukraine never gets too successful.
The United States doesn’t want Ukraine to lose but they really really don’t want Russia to lose either, because that would cause instability (and god knows what could happen when the government of a nuclear superpower collapses). Like, when prigozhin was doing his thunder run to Moscow, they specifically told Ukraine not to rock the boat, even though that’s when Russia was at its most vulnerable with its command structure in total disarray/panic.
In general I feel like they just want the Ukraine conflict to simmer down already so they can focus on China (and also now that it’s about to erupt, on the middle east).
The US is now pushing Ukraine to negotiate and make concessions. I guess the US admin doesn’t actually believe that Putler “will not stop until dead”, or they wouldn’t do that, would they? Maybe they were just saying that to get people like you on board with their escalations.
There are so many differences between Nazi Germany and present-day Russia, between Putin and Hitler, and between this war and WW2. It’s a great rhetoric tool for shutting down discussion though.
No matter how badly the war goes, no matter what the actual things that Russia says they want, no matter that Ukraine is destroyed and hundreds of thousands soldiers dead: They have to keep on fighting. Can’t negotiate with Hitler! Can’t trust anything they say! Have to keep on fighting until Putin is no more or everyone is dead, because, you know, HiTLeR!! Hitler is coming to kill us all and we need to fight to the death!
No need for analysis, no need for evidence. HITLER! Argument over.
Let’s look at some hallmarks of the Nazi regime and compare this to Russia, shall we?
Ethnonationalism? Russian nationalism is multi-ethnic, quite unlike Nazi ideology. The state-promoted Ukrainian Banderites, on the other hand, love to go on about the difference between white Europeans and “asiatic” Russian orcs.
Brownshirts? United Russia does not have a bunch of SA-like street thugs. But in Ukraine I’ve seen pictures of Right Sector & co that look exactly like that.
Anti-communism? Most types of communists are tolerated in Russia to some degree. Ukraine, on the other hand, has outlawed all left-wing parties and criminalized communist symbols.
War as a first resort? Putin was in power for 20 years before he started this alleged master plan of conquering half of Europe. Hitler always wanted to go to war, he wrote that shit down even before he came to power. Putin spent until 2008 trying to get along, then started pleading for Russian security interests to please please please not be ignored. In 2014 he signed the Minsk agreements, even though it would almost certainly have been easier for Russia to roll over Ukraine right then and there. In 2022 immediately started peace negotiations after invading. Clearly didn’t even bring enough troops for a proper war. So no, war was clearly not plan A here.
Genocidal SS death squads trailing the front line and murdering whole villages? Hmm, no. In fact, the amount of civilians killed in Ukraine since Feb 2022 is pretty low for how much fighting is going on. Israel already killed more civilians in 4 weeks. The US invasion of Iraq was a lot worse, by comparison. This doesn’t even come close to the organized mass murder of the Nazis.
In your other comments you did specifically mention Hitler and Nazis, now you’re “ok ok not Nazis more like some other fascist”. Goal-post shifting much? Your logic was basically “Hitler won’t stop and wants to conquer”, but not every fascist set out for world conquest. Even if you conceded this is some kind of fascism, you need to actually analyze what the Russian goals actually are. Just going “that’s just what fascists do” is not enough.
Btw I have heard all this stuff about Ilyin and Dugin or whatever before. This seems like pretty weak sauce to me, I’m sure you can find some influential fascist-ish writer or another in pretty much any liberal’s bookshelf, especially a politician’s. I suggest you try to play your game of “find the fascist influence” with Britain, or France, or the US.
The fact that you then dismiss state-funded and state-promoted Azov as “there are neo-Nazis in all countries” kinda makes it clear you don’t really care about fascism, because no one who looks at this thinks this normal in any way, even for liberals. They declared Bandera a national hero in parliament already in 2010 or so, and that was before they outlawed all the left-wing parties. They put up statues and named streets after these people everywhere. Zelensky himself has done a bunch of photo ops with the Azovs (he even suprise-broadcast Azovs directly into the Greek parliament – they were not happy). They took in full-throated Russian Neo-Nazis that had fled persecution, gave them a bunch Bradleys and other weapons, and told them to raid across the border in the north. The Ukrainian propaganda then celebrated this is as some massive win for all the world to see, and they do this shit in their propaganda all the time. Open fascist propaganda combined with massive repression of leftists.
But according to you, that’s totally normal and not fascism, but I guess Putin might be influenced by some writer, and, to get back on point, that’s why he’s Hitler and you can’t reason with him and we need to fight to the deeeaaath!
You know what actually reminds me of Hitler? It’s this fucking death cult of fighting to the bitter end.
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Well the strategic calculus for Ukraine is 100% guaranteed war now or 95% guaranteed war later. I don’t see a practical reason why ceasefire is a bad option here.
I’m sure ww2 Britain would have been quite happy with a simple ceasefire especially if it meant more time for American aid to arrive
deleted by creator
Brother the whole reason Putin started this war is he was scared Ukraine was becoming too well armed and he wouldn’t be able to invade it in the future. This isn’t ww2, we both know Russia cannot hope to compete in industrial/military output with the countries supplying Ukraine (if only they would actually supply the gear).
And also I might be misremembering but when has Putin asked for much less gotten a ceasefire of any length of time after 2022? Can you give a source?
deleted by creator
I suspect the reason they didn’t take it is more of internal politics, the current government is synonymous with war and growing more and more unpopular as fatigue and stalemate sets in. They don’t understand what drives US foreign policy; The US keeps telling Ukraine to avoid striking at Russia itself, and moderating the flow of equipment so Ukraine never gets too successful.
The United States doesn’t want Ukraine to lose but they really really don’t want Russia to lose either, because that would cause instability (and god knows what could happen when the government of a nuclear superpower collapses). Like, when prigozhin was doing his thunder run to Moscow, they specifically told Ukraine not to rock the boat, even though that’s when Russia was at its most vulnerable with its command structure in total disarray/panic.
In general I feel like they just want the Ukraine conflict to simmer down already so they can focus on China (and also now that it’s about to erupt, on the middle east).
deleted by creator
The US is now pushing Ukraine to negotiate and make concessions. I guess the US admin doesn’t actually believe that Putler “will not stop until dead”, or they wouldn’t do that, would they? Maybe they were just saying that to get people like you on board with their escalations.
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There are so many differences between Nazi Germany and present-day Russia, between Putin and Hitler, and between this war and WW2. It’s a great rhetoric tool for shutting down discussion though.
No matter how badly the war goes, no matter what the actual things that Russia says they want, no matter that Ukraine is destroyed and hundreds of thousands soldiers dead: They have to keep on fighting. Can’t negotiate with Hitler! Can’t trust anything they say! Have to keep on fighting until Putin is no more or everyone is dead, because, you know, HiTLeR!! Hitler is coming to kill us all and we need to fight to the death!
No need for analysis, no need for evidence. HITLER! Argument over.
deleted by creator
Let’s look at some hallmarks of the Nazi regime and compare this to Russia, shall we?
Ethnonationalism? Russian nationalism is multi-ethnic, quite unlike Nazi ideology. The state-promoted Ukrainian Banderites, on the other hand, love to go on about the difference between white Europeans and “asiatic” Russian orcs.
Brownshirts? United Russia does not have a bunch of SA-like street thugs. But in Ukraine I’ve seen pictures of Right Sector & co that look exactly like that.
Anti-communism? Most types of communists are tolerated in Russia to some degree. Ukraine, on the other hand, has outlawed all left-wing parties and criminalized communist symbols.
War as a first resort? Putin was in power for 20 years before he started this alleged master plan of conquering half of Europe. Hitler always wanted to go to war, he wrote that shit down even before he came to power. Putin spent until 2008 trying to get along, then started pleading for Russian security interests to please please please not be ignored. In 2014 he signed the Minsk agreements, even though it would almost certainly have been easier for Russia to roll over Ukraine right then and there. In 2022 immediately started peace negotiations after invading. Clearly didn’t even bring enough troops for a proper war. So no, war was clearly not plan A here.
Genocidal SS death squads trailing the front line and murdering whole villages? Hmm, no. In fact, the amount of civilians killed in Ukraine since Feb 2022 is pretty low for how much fighting is going on. Israel already killed more civilians in 4 weeks. The US invasion of Iraq was a lot worse, by comparison. This doesn’t even come close to the organized mass murder of the Nazis.
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In your other comments you did specifically mention Hitler and Nazis, now you’re “ok ok not Nazis more like some other fascist”. Goal-post shifting much? Your logic was basically “Hitler won’t stop and wants to conquer”, but not every fascist set out for world conquest. Even if you conceded this is some kind of fascism, you need to actually analyze what the Russian goals actually are. Just going “that’s just what fascists do” is not enough.
Btw I have heard all this stuff about Ilyin and Dugin or whatever before. This seems like pretty weak sauce to me, I’m sure you can find some influential fascist-ish writer or another in pretty much any liberal’s bookshelf, especially a politician’s. I suggest you try to play your game of “find the fascist influence” with Britain, or France, or the US.
The fact that you then dismiss state-funded and state-promoted Azov as “there are neo-Nazis in all countries” kinda makes it clear you don’t really care about fascism, because no one who looks at this thinks this normal in any way, even for liberals. They declared Bandera a national hero in parliament already in 2010 or so, and that was before they outlawed all the left-wing parties. They put up statues and named streets after these people everywhere. Zelensky himself has done a bunch of photo ops with the Azovs (he even suprise-broadcast Azovs directly into the Greek parliament – they were not happy). They took in full-throated Russian Neo-Nazis that had fled persecution, gave them a bunch Bradleys and other weapons, and told them to raid across the border in the north. The Ukrainian propaganda then celebrated this is as some massive win for all the world to see, and they do this shit in their propaganda all the time. Open fascist propaganda combined with massive repression of leftists.
But according to you, that’s totally normal and not fascism, but I guess Putin might be influenced by some writer, and, to get back on point, that’s why he’s Hitler and you can’t reason with him and we need to fight to the deeeaaath!
You know what actually reminds me of Hitler? It’s this fucking death cult of fighting to the bitter end.
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