Putin offers truce if Ukraine exits Russian-claimed areas and drops NATO bid. Kyiv rejects it

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Friday to “immediately” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and start negotiations if Kyiv began withdrawing troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and renounced plans to join NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected what he called an ultimatum by Putin to surrender more territory… [the offer] didn’t include any new demands. The Kremlin has said before that Kyiv should recognize its territorial gains and drop its bid to join NATO.

Russia occupies most, but not all, of the territory in question. They are winning the war, and this is the type of offer you make when you’re winning. As the article notes, this is not some new request; this has been on the table for a while.

Ukraine is losing, but slowly. They could take this deal now, saving their own people’s lives, or they could continue sending men into the meat grinder and wind up with this or worse in maybe another year.

Besides seeking to join NATO, Ukraine wants Russian forces out of its territory, including the Crimean Peninsula that was illegally annexed in 2014; the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity; and that Russia be held accountable for war crimes and for Moscow to pay reparations to Kyiv.

Compare Russia’s terms to this – a totally delusional offer for the losing side to suggest.

He will now be held in a grim adult detention centre [article later notes he was sentenced to a juvenile facility]

a top performing student at school

no scrap of evidence for this was produced

a hellhole adult detention centre [in the same sentence where the article notes he’s going to juvee]

If this was a story about, say, a January 6 defendant, these types of editorial decisions would jump out at people as an obvious sign of significant bias. Pull the exact same rhetorical tricks against a Bad Country, though, and most simply accept it at face value.

Arseny Turbin, who committed his alleged crimes when he was just 14, has been branded as Russia’s ‘youngest terrorist’ following his conviction…

Judge Oleg Shishov in Oryol found him guilty of ‘participation in the activities of an organisation that is recognised as terrorist’…

[His mother] said ‘We will appeal the verdict….we did not expect this outcome at all.’

There was a trial – “no scrap of evidence” is a bald-faced lie.

If your theory (which really would have no scrap of evidence behind it) is that this was a kangaroo court, why would his mom be talking about appeals, and why would there be an appeal available in the first place?

Real reporting would have been, at minimum, getting a trial transcript and evaluating the evidence yourself. Or finding a Russian lawyer who was familiar with the proceedings and interviewing them. But of course MSN didn’t do any of this, because this isn’t reporting, this is propaganda.

The article mentions that additional missiles were shot down, but it sounds like at least one hit where it was aimed.

Russia has summoned the US ambassador over a “barbaric” missile attack that hit a beach in Crimea, killing at least four, including children, and injuring 151.

I have yet to see even a story from the U.S. about what military target was supposed to be on a crowded beach.

This case’s existence is one indicator that the U.S. is much closer to a decaying empire than a fascist state. In a fascist state your union leaders wouldn’t argue a case before the Supreme Court – your union leaders would be shot. The U.S. will still do all the horrors of fascism abroad, but that’s “just” imperialism. At home, there are still many of the elements of bourgeois democracy.

If they make it illegal to strike and make you punishable in courts for it… Then at what point do people just start killing their boss instead?

Probably after they start with work-to-rule, slowdowns, sabotage, etc.

Today, Biden could:

• End all U.S. military support for Israel
• Veto any bill that contains one cent of funding for Israel
• Publically call a genocide a genocide
• Direct U.S. agencies to cancel contracts with companies that work with Israel, citing existing U.S. human rights laws
• Join the ICJ case against Israel
• Arrest Netanyahu’s son Yair, who’s just chilling in Miami
• Direct the National Guard to protect anti-genocide protesters
• Clean house at the State Department and other NatSec agencies to fire the people who have supported this genocide most vociferously
• Use the vast overseas surveillance power of the U.S. to document Israeli atrocities

How quickly would this stop?

And that’s not even considering options like a decapitation strike on the Israeli government, which should absolutely be on the table to stop a genocide.

Pick one: Russia is running on fumes, or Russia should have won a year ago.

The coherent opinion here is that it’s a slow, grinding war and the side that has lost more and more territory as it continued will continue to do so.

This has been the narrative since shortly after the war began. All that’s happened since is Russia has slowly advanced.

Taking everything you say at face value, the options for Ukraine are:

1. Take a deal that maybe you can’t trust, but it at least gives you time to breathe.
2. Keep fighting, and with the war going how it is eventually lose more than what you’ve already lost.
3. Attempt to draw other states into the conflict so that you have a shot at what might be considered a victory, likely years more down the road under the best of circumstances.

There is no justification for 2, and 3 is highly unlikely – if other states haven’t entered the war already, they’re not going to do so now.

This isn’t capitulation, this is cutting your losses while you have something left to hold onto.

Do you have anything of substance to add?

:smuglord: “you’re from Hexbear” isn’t an argument

Even assuming Russian shells are lower quality (and you have absolutely zero evidence of that), a shitload of weapons that are lower quality can still beat you.

Since taking office in 2021, Biden has yet to meet the Dalai Lama. As a candidate in 2020, Biden criticised Donald Trump for being the only US president in three decades who had neither met nor spoken to the Tibetan spiritual leader.

It’s laughable to cry “whataboutism” when discussing international politics. Comparing how countries act in similar situations is one of the foundations of international law.

Which politicians, and what is your source for popular opinions in Hong Kong?

The ur-gooner

One of the principle contradictions of capitalism is that any capitalist who thinks of heading off long-term problems gets replaced by one who can juice up the numbers in the immediate future. Who cares about sustaining a great position when you can make a shitload of money next quarter?

Love how you counter concrete, material facts like “guaranteed housing, employment, and childcare” with fact-free scare mongering like “political pressure” and “control over the media.”

There’s never any analysis about what this shit really means. “The fucking stasi” gets thrown out there like “the boogeyman” without even a thought towards how the U.S. security state violently repressed a nationwide movement against police violence in 2020, or how right now that same security state is violently repressing people protesting the genocide we’re supplying. You’re supposed to belive the stasi is the worst thing possible without ever digging into how it functioned, and certainly without asking how it compared to other states.

See also:

A new book by Kristen Ghodsee, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that women have better sex under socialism.

If that sounds strange to you, consider this: A survey of East and West Germans after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women (the socialist side of Germany during the Cold War) had twice as many orgasms as Western women.

What in the world accounts for such a wide gap?

According to Ghodsee, it’s about social safety nets. If, she argues, you build a society that supports women and doesn’t punish them for having children or devalue their labor, it turns out they’ll be happier and have better sex.

But it doesn’t matter how many studies or surveys or policy differences you point to – some guy always has an old relative whose story outweighs everything.