Opinion International Geopolitics

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She’s definitely getting paid in rubles.

Apparently Putin is trustworthy and has no intention of building his empire further into Europe. 🤥

She is another one of Putin’s useful allies who wants Americans to believe she understands Putin better than Ukraine does, better than Poland, better than the Baltic nations.

I wonder if she licked lead pipes as an infant or is just basically a corrupt lying pos, or perhaps both.

 
OneGreatClub said:
Click to expand...

Some believe that agreeing to russia’s demands would save lives. They think that this would be an end to the war.
Russia will wait for focus to shift elsewhere before regrouping its forces and launching another war which would lead to an even greater conflict in Europe.
Russia has repeatedly violated ceasefires and treaties. History has shown that they cannot be trusted to honor any commitment. They have no credibility in making agreements.

Even members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (Putin’s own version of the NATO) fear becoming Russian targets.
 
wannabejack said:
Some believe that agreeing to russia’s demands would save lives. They think that this would be an end to the war.
Russia will wait for focus to shift elsewhere before regrouping its forces and launching another war which would lead to an even greater conflict in Europe.
Russia has repeatedly violated ceasefires and treaties. History has shown that they cannot be trusted to honor any commitment. They have no credibility in making agreements.

Even members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (Putin’s own version of the NATO) fear becoming Russian targets.
Click to expand...
Yes. The only way to save more lives is to defeat that greedy POS once and for all.
 
OneGreatClub said:
Yes. The only way to save more lives is to defeat that greedy POS once and for all.
Click to expand...

I have a bit of a personal/historic interest in this conflict as my first wife was Ukrainian by nationality but identified primarily culturally and linguistically as Russian, as do many (probably the majority) in the southern and eastern regions of the country.

Prior to meeting my first wife, I had a previous relationship with a woman from Donetsk and spent much time there and in places like Mariupol with her. I travelled to Ukraine a lot in those days and met many people from different regions and all them were wonderful people. They all saw the flaws in their country and the difficult starting hand they inherited from the Soviet era, but they all believed in the future of their country as a pluralist nation where Ukrainian identity could take many forms, a nation that could be a peaceful bridge between East and West and benefit from both.

There was however one group of people that everyone I met in Ukraine seemed to be wary of. That group was the Ukrainian nationalist movement, based in the west of the country, the ideological descendants of the fascist, Banderite OUN and UPA murder gangs of WW2 and of those who had escaped justice for their crimes and fled to places like Australia, the US and Canada, where they formed diaspora groups and attempted to preserve their poisonous ideology. A group that only accepted one version of Ukrainian identity and demanded everyone submit to it on threat of violence.

(Just to add one more personal note here, I have ancestors on my Jewish grandmother's side of the family who were murdered by OUN nazis in Poland in WW2. This is documented at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.)

These people, they told me, were the ones who could ruin Ukraine in the future if they were given the opportunity. And sadly, that is exactly what has transpired since the violent coup in 2014 that overthrew the democratically elected government and installed an illegitimate vassal regime that is effectively run from Foggy Bottom.

You know, you don't get to burn people alive in Odessa, slaughter them in Mariupol and bomb them in Donetsk and expect to just get away with it without resistance from the local people. And furthermore, you don't get to sign an agreement like Minsk 2 in bad faith and then ignore it for seven years and expect no response from the large country next door that was a guarantor of that agreement.

Sadly, everything that has happened since 2014, and also since 2022, has been entirely predictable. The crazy ultranationalists have led the country into the abyss and it is the ordinary, good, honest people of all regions of Ukraine who are paying for it with their lives. With the friendships and emotional ties that I developed with people there over the years, I find the events of the past 10 years personally distressing at some level and really hope for a peaceful settlement. I want my friends there and all their loved ones to have peace and healing in their lives and I don't care if that happens at the expense of some neocons in Washington, London and Brussels losing face over the failure of their favourite vanity project.

I don't read this thread often but in skimming it today, I got the impression that you seem to be the self-appointed spokesman for the post-2014 western Ukrainian nationalist regime on this thread. You seem to be enthusiastic for everything this regime has done and quite strongly Russophobic in your outlook.

Well, these things are up to you but I guess what prompted me to write my response was the impression you gave that you are happy for the slaughter to go on indefinitely if it means there might be a chance for your chosen 'side' to 'win' at some undetermined point in the future. And this is what I find beyond the pale. To put it in football terms, it would be like David Koch going to the PAFC members and asking for 10,000 people to submit to euthanasia each year for the next three years in return for a 'guaranteed' premiership in 2027. Would you be up for that? Or would you think that Koch was off his rocker?

See, this is the problem I have with the warmongering NATO crowd and their enthusiastic supporters. It's easy to talk big while hiding behind someone else. Easy to play geopolitical games with other peoples' lives and no risk to your own.

Thus my final thought and suggestion to you is this: If you feel so passionate about your 'side' in this conflict then why not put your own skin in the game, your own arse on the line and go there to Donbass and fight the good fight yourself and make sure that people in places like Donetsk and Lugansk are never allowed to speak their native language again? You see, you'd be a much better fit for purpose than some poor bastard who got dragged off the street in Odessa or Kharkov and was forced to fight for a cause he doesn't believe in - someone who would prefer the whole debacle to be over with so he can have peace and the opportunity to vote in a referendum to choose which country he wants to be a citizen of in the future.
 
An interesting post of your experience and opinions.

Of course the Ukrainian Russian situation is complicated, especially in the border regions but Putin had demonstrated that his goals go beyond Luhansk and Donetsk.
History has shown this.

Do you honestly believe that if he is given what he demands he will stop?


Giving in to his demands will just further embolden him. The Baltics understand this, Poland understands this and the killing will not stop. It is a very sad situation.

It sounds like your family are in the pro Russian camp.

Mine are not. We have family in Ivano Frankivsk. Not violent people , not Nazis, not Banderites , just kind good generous and some are simple poor people in village of Perehinsk . Others in Lviv.

You make it sound like only one side was tortured and murdered in the border regions. Thousands on both sides were killed. You say the locals rose up? Putin sent in his own operatives and militias to agitate..

As for the ‘democratically elected’ government..Yanukovych?
Really?

Referendums and voting where Putin is involved are hardly genuine.

When our family visited Ukraine they were surprised there was only one Ukrainian tv station, all the rest were in Russian. So was it the Russian language being suppressed or the Ukrainian language?


Minsk you say. Russia did not keep up their end of the deal, did they.


As for skin in the game does not the same go for you?
You could join the Russian forces.

We do donate a lot to the cause financially though. We want the war to end as soon as possible and for Putin’s army to leave, After all, it is not Russia’s land,


abcnews.go.com

What are the Ukraine 'separatist' regions at the crux of the Russian invasion

Explaining the "separatist" regions in Ukraine that have been the crux of a Russian invasion.
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com
 
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There is one way for the slaughter in Ukraine to stop and that is for Putin (“war criminal”) to leave Ukraine to the Ukrainians.

Maidan Revolution (pro russian people will call it a coup)
“Thousands of people have staged fresh protests in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, at President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign an EU association agreement.
Some 10,000 Demonstrators in Independence Square carried Ukrainian and EU flags late on Friday and chanted "Ukraine is Europe".
Mr Yanukovych, who attended an EU summit in Lithuania on Friday cited pressure from Russia for his decision.”
The violence from the Maidan Revolution (pro russian people will call it a coup) in 2014 came from Yanukovych.
“The deadliest day was 20 February 2014, when armed riot police including snipers are thought to have killed at least 50 people. The total death toll among the protesters is generally placed at 108”
New presidential elections were held in Ukraine on 25 May 2014.

Influence of ultra nationalists in Ukraine
Presidential elections in Ukraine on 31 March 2019.
"The right-wing Freedom Party (which also included representatives of the other two major ultra-nationalist groups, the Right Sector and National Corps) received 2.15 percent of the vote-a result roughly equal to, or even below, what many single far-right parties in European countries receive in national elections."

Though the Ukrainian language is promoted as the national language, due to the many centuries of being oppressed by russia, people are allowed to speak their “native” language.
"On August 8 [2012], Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych signed a new law, “On the principles of language politics,” that allows cities and regions to pass legislation that would give Russian (or any other minority tongue) the status of an official language if 10 percent or more of the population of that region speaks it as a native tongue.
Most Ukrainians speak and understand both Ukrainian and Russian, and it is not uncommon to hear conversations in which one speaker uses Ukrainian and the other answers in Russian."
 
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OneGreatClub said:
An interesting post of your experience and opinions.

Of course the Ukrainian Russian situation is complicated, especially in the border regions but Putin had demonstrated that his goals go beyond Luhansk and Donetsk.
History has shown this.

Do you honestly believe that if he is given what he demands he will stop?


Giving in to his demands will just further embolden him. The Baltics understand this, Poland understands this and the killing will not stop. It is a very sad situation.

It sounds like your family are in the pro Russian camp.

Mine are not. We have family in Ivano Frankivsk. Not violent people , not Nazis, not Banderites , just kind good generous and some are simple poor people in village of Perehinsk . Others in Lviv.

You make it sound like only one side was tortured and murdered in the border regions. Thousands on both sides were killed. You say the locals rose up? Putin sent in his own operatives and militias to agitate..

As for the ‘democratically elected’ government..Yanukovych?
Really?

Referendums and voting where Putin is involved are hardly genuine.

When our family visited Ukraine they were surprised there was only one Ukrainian tv station, all the rest were in Russian. So was it the Russian language being suppressed or the Ukrainian language?


Minsk you say. Russia did not keep up their end of the deal, did they.


As for skin in the game does not the same go for you?
You could join the Russian forces.

We do donate a lot to the cause financially though. We want the war to end as soon as possible and for Putin’s army to leave, After all, it is not Russia’s land,


abcnews.go.com

What are the Ukraine 'separatist' regions at the crux of the Russian invasion

Explaining the "separatist" regions in Ukraine that have been the crux of a Russian invasion.
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com
Click to expand...
Thanks for your carefully considered response and I hope your family and friends in the west will stay safe and get through this.

As I said, mine are in the east and it has bothered me for many years that their side of the story is not told or, if it is, it is misrepresented and the people there are demonised by western propaganda, which is accepted without critical thinking by those who live in the western msm bubble.

You made some points above which I would consider typical of the common narrative put out by the west with which I disagree. I won't go through everything as I know it's pointless as neither of us is going to convince the other of our interpretation. I will however make a couple of points.

No, I do not and never have believed in the so-called 'domino theory'. It was rubbish invented by the Americans to con their public into supporting (with blood and money) continuous escalation of the war against Vietnam. The charlatans got away with it for 10 years. We'll see how long the scam lasts this time.

As for Baltic 'leaders', I wouldn't pay any attention to what they say. They all seem to be batshit crazy! And I say that as someone of direct Baltic heritage myself, through my father.

Russia was not a party to Minsk, it was a guarantor. The Kiev authorities were a party to Minsk and they did have obligations, which they failed to uphold. Signing Minsk in bad faith was apparently the plan all along as later revealed by Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko.

I will pose a question here for those who believe as an article of faith that Putin is hellbent on nothing but conquest. If that is so, then why did he agree to set up Minsk at the exact moment the DPR/LPR militias were about to crush the Kiev forces?

Implementation of Minsk would have kept the Donbass in Ukraine with a status similar to that of Quebec in Canada. That was a good deal for Kiev but apparently not for their puppetmasters in Washington.

Even the deal offered in March 2022 would have been good for Kiev. As I understand it, the severance of the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces would have been at the February line of contact, so that would have kept Mariupol and the southern coast under Kiev's control. In my opinion, signing that deal at that time would have put Putin's political position in Russia under some serious pressure and he may well have been shunted out of office by now. But those geniuses Biden and Johnson told Zelensky not to sign and we are where we are.

Re your comment about me putting skin in the game too, sure I take your point but I'm not the one campaigning for the conflict to go on indefinitely, at all costs. I want it to end ASAP as I want eastern Ukrainians to have peace in their lives and western Ukrainians to stop being pushed into the meat grinder.

I get that you and many others who support the Kiev regime feel affronted about potentially having to do a deal that will involve the loss of some provinces and a 'victory' for people you don't like. But that's an emotional position, not a logical one. Logically, what is the alternative? Do people seriously believe that one of the three largest militaries in the world can be forced out of areas it holds, areas where it is seen by most of the local population as a liberating force, not an occupying one? Maybe there are people who really do believe this but, after two and a half years, I don't see any evidence of it. All I see is things continuing to deteriorate for the Kiev authorities such that future peace deals they get offered will get progressively worse.

I'll leave it at that. I know my opinions are not popular in the western groupthink bubble and I will probably get attacked for them. That's fine, I'm too old to care who likes me and who doesn't. As you may have noticed, I'm not such a frequent visitor to this forum anymore, for various reasons that don't need to be discussed. I've been quite ill for the past week and stuck in bed so found some time to skim the forum after the game yesterday. This thread caught my attention and since the topic hits close to home I decided to make a post and put the other side of the story on behalf of people who have had their voices suppressed in the west. I knew I would be on a hiding to nothing, but sometimes you just gotta try and do what you think is right!

Peace to you and your loved ones and peace to the world.
 
70sDinosaur said:
Thanks for your carefully considered response and I hope your family and friends in the west will stay safe and get through this.

As I said, mine are in the east and it has bothered me for many years that their side of the story is not told or, if it is, it is misrepresented and the people there are demonised by western propaganda, which is accepted without critical thinking by those who live in the western msm bubble.

You made some points above which I would consider typical of the common narrative put out by the west with which I disagree. I won't go through everything as I know it's pointless as neither of us is going to convince the other of our interpretation. I will however make a couple of points.

No, I do not and never have believed in the so-called 'domino theory'. It was rubbish invented by the Americans to con their public into supporting (with blood and money) continuous escalation of the war against Vietnam. The charlatans got away with it for 10 years. We'll see how long the scam lasts this time.

As for Baltic 'leaders', I wouldn't pay any attention to what they say. They all seem to be batshit crazy! And I say that as someone of direct Baltic heritage myself, through my father.

Russia was not a party to Minsk, it was a guarantor. The Kiev authorities were a party to Minsk and they did have obligations, which they failed to uphold. Signing Minsk in bad faith was apparently the plan all along as later revealed by Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko.

I will pose a question here for those who believe as an article of faith that Putin is hellbent on nothing but conquest. If that is so, then why did he agree to set up Minsk at the exact moment the DPR/LPR militias were about to crush the Kiev forces?

Implementation of Minsk would have kept the Donbass in Ukraine with a status similar to that of Quebec in Canada. That was a good deal for Kiev but apparently not for their puppetmasters in Washington.

Even the deal offered in March 2022 would have been good for Kiev. As I understand it, the severance of the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces would have been at the February line of contact, so that would have kept Mariupol and the southern coast under Kiev's control. In my opinion, signing that deal at that time would have put Putin's political position in Russia under some serious pressure and he may well have been shunted out of office by now. But those geniuses Biden and Johnson told Zelensky not to sign and we are where we are.

Re your comment about me putting skin in the game too, sure I take your point but I'm not the one campaigning for the conflict to go on indefinitely, at all costs. I want it to end ASAP as I want eastern Ukrainians to have peace in their lives and western Ukrainians to stop being pushed into the meat grinder.

I get that you and many others who support the Kiev regime feel affronted about potentially having to do a deal that will involve the loss of some provinces and a 'victory' for people you don't like. But that's an emotional position, not a logical one. Logically, what is the alternative? Do people seriously believe that one of the three largest militaries in the world can be forced out of areas it holds, areas where it is seen by most of the local population as a liberating force, not an occupying one? Maybe there are people who really do believe this but, after two and a half years, I don't see any evidence of it. All I see is things continuing to deteriorate for the Kiev authorities such that future peace deals they get offered will get progressively worse.

I'll leave it at that. I know my opinions are not popular in the western groupthink bubble and I will probably get attacked for them. That's fine, I'm too old to care who likes me and who doesn't. As you may have noticed, I'm not such a frequent visitor to this forum anymore, for various reasons that don't need to be discussed. I've been quite ill for the past week and stuck in bed so found some time to skim the forum after the game yesterday. This thread caught my attention and since the topic hits close to home I decided to make a post and put the other side of the story on behalf of people who have had their voices suppressed in the west. I knew I would be on a hiding to nothing, but sometimes you just gotta try and do what you think is right!

Peace to you and your loved ones and peace to the world.
Click to expand...

You have a pro Russian stance and are of course entitled to your view.
So let’s respectfully agree to disagree and I will move on.
Hope you are feeling well soon.
 
I like to stick to facts as much as possible when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Putin is responsible for the kidnapping of Ukrainians fact. Putin is guilty of war crimes fact. Putin is guilty of human rights abuses of not just Ukrainian people but his own citizens and minority groups which are being conscripted against their will to the front lines and sent in the meat waves to be slaughtered like lambs. Listening to intercepted phone calls of Russian soldiers complaining about the war really tells it like it is and also the paid mercenaries making videos. Can't beat listening to those with lived experience. I believe the Russian people's are mainly too scared to criticise Putin due to being arrested. I can confidently state that although the west has an agenda in the media etc that Russians suffer a lot more due to their leaders actions to invade a sovereign country under a dictatorship.
 

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