Euromaidan demonstrations & Russia's intervention in Ukraine

Art Morte wrote:

Vibe wrote:There is no justification for war, just a lack of surprise.

I'm actually a bit jealous of you after reading that.

Ignorance is bliss.

Can you answer my questions of what threat has NATO been to Russia and what actions has the US engaged in to harm Russia, say, in the last decade? Or is it impossible to know anything, because everything is fake news, nothing can be trusted, games being played in the shadows, proxy wars etc?

I guess Biden is a cunning old fox, after all, if this war between Russia and Ukraine is "the exact outcome the US wanted".

The threat is as followed. A missile launched doesn't teleport itself from A to B, it takes some time to reach its objective. Nuclear missiles stationed (yes nuclear) on the eastern Nato border need 30 minutes to reach their destination. This is called minimal reaction time. During that time, Russia can assert whether attack made, there was a threat or not and the possibility to shoot down the missile before it reaches its objective.
With nuclear arsenal stationed in Ukraine exactly around the corner of Moskau, there is no reaction time in case something happens. I can assure you 200% the US would be even more aggressive than Russia against anyone who'd dare to place nuclear arsenal closer than 30min proximity. You even have an example for that from the past, the Cuba crisis.
Russia warned multiple times. Their warning was ignored, we've got the mess now. They warn again, they'd use nuclear weapons. I wouldn't ignore that one, then not some innocent Ukraines would die, it'd be fucking WW3.

Pedram wrote:

sportsczy wrote:I tell you this though... if Ukraine miraculously pushes the Russians to retreat, the country should IMMEDIATELY become a EU member and a NATO member so that this never happens again.

I also want the US to get its military up to the overwhelming level again.  In the late 80s, the US could handle full open warfare on two fronts anywhere in the world, meant to thwart both the USSR and China if need be.  We're now down to one and not just anywhere.  With this attack, it's obvious that the need for a large military establishment is not something of the past, unfortunately.  As long as you have leaders such as Xi and Putin, you need to make sure that there is a deterrent.

The US needs to get itself back to those levels.  There needs to be a military status quo between the superpowers.  Since Russia and China are collaborating, the US needs to counterbalance both.

It's not how you're portraying it, the level of US militarization hasn't decreased at all since the end of the cold war. i have no statistic to backup this claim but hasn't US military spending been increasing like tenfold since the fall of the Soviet Union? afaik United States has more military bases around the world compared to the 80s.

The way to look at it is as a % of GDP, which adjusts it properly for inflation and other economic factors, not the raw number. Also, USSR couldn't keep up then and China was nowhere. You have to also adjust your spending in proportion to what your adversaries are investing.

In 1985 6.45% of GDP was spent on the defense budget.  In 2019, it was at 3.41%

Babun wrote:
The threat is as followed. A missile launched doesn't teleport itself from A to B, it takes some time to reach its objective. Nuclear missiles stationed (yes nuclear) on the eastern Nato border need 30 minutes to reach their destination. This is called minimal reaction time. During that time, Russia can assert whether attack made, there was a threat or not and the possibility to shoot down the missile before it reaches its objective.
With nuclear arsenal stationed in Ukraine exactly around the corner of Moskau, there is no reaction time in case something happens. I can assure you 200% the US would be even more aggressive than Russia against anyone who'd dare to place nuclear arsenal closer than 30min proximity. You even have an example for that from the past, the Cuba crisis.
Russia warned multiple times. Their warning was ignored, we've got the mess now. They warn again, they'd use nuclear weapons. I wouldn't ignore that one, then not some innocent Ukraines would die, it'd be fucking WW3.

This is neither here or there. I don't ever remember seeing any talk of nuclear missiles hosted in Ukraine. Secondly, Estonia has been a NATO member for almost 20 years, they're right next to St Petersburg and a similar distance from Moscow as Ukraine. No nuclear missiles, no talk about such thing, and a peaceful existence with Russia.

Furthermore, no one (sane) believes that NATO would use nuclear bombs anyway. This war has nothing to do with NATO actually being a threat to Russia - there isn't a nation on the planet that wishes to attack a peaceful Russia. What Putin does time and again is that he claims, for domestic propaganda purposes, that there is a "security threat" or "foreign agents" and then Russia uses force. He longs for the Soviet Union and when an ex-Soviet nation wants too much cooperation with the West (or just actual democracy), he smothers those desires with his military. Happened with Georgia in 2008, happened when Russia helped to beat down the protests in Belarus a couple years back, recently in Kazakhstan, and now an all-out war in Ukraine.

I'm sick of people tip-toeing around Putin's criminal & murderous regime when it's always Russia that resorts to authoritarian violence.

All this NATO talk is ridiculous. Ukraine was never joining NATO. They had an active conflict with Russia for their Eastern provinces, and due to NATO's self defense clause letting them join would have essentially been a declaration of war on Russia by the entire western powers. Even if the US were willing to go down that path, all the European countries would have vetoed it. This is just a justification Putin is using to sell the war to the west, but not the actual reason for it.

Internally he's been selling the war as necessary because there is a "genocide" of Russians ongoing and because Ukraine's government is a "neonazi" led by a "drug addict". Much like Hitler's invasion of Poland, this is pitched as an attempt to "protect" the Russian population of Ukraine.

This is also why you see them handle if with "baby gloves". This is either an attempt to annex what is allegedly rightfully Russia's or to put a puppet government in charge. Neither of these is sustainable if they commit war atrocities against civilians, they want to be seen as liberators, not conquerors .

BarrileteCosmico wrote:All this NATO talk is ridiculous. Ukraine was never joining NATO. They had an active conflict with Russia for their Eastern provinces, and due to NATO's self defense clause letting them join would have essentially been a declaration of war on Russia by the entire western powers. Even if the US were willing to go down that path, all the European countries would have vetoed it. This is just a justification Putin is using to sell the war to the west, but not the actual reason for it.

Internally he's been selling the war as necessary because there is a "genocide" of Russians ongoing and because Ukraine's government is a "neonazi" led by a "drug addict". Much like Hitler's invasion of Poland, this is pitched as an attempt to "protect" the Russian population of Ukraine.

This is also why you see them handle if with "baby gloves". This is either an attempt to annex what is allegedly rightfully Russia's or to put a puppet government in charge. Neither of these is sustainable if they commit war atrocities against civilians, they want to be seen as liberators, not conquerors .

With Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia being NATO members, I'm not sure why you think Russia should discount anything...  If I were them, I would think the exact opposite.

Doesn't mean you invade someone...  but as I said in an earlier post, it would have been very simple to avoid this.  Based on everything I read and listened to, Russia wanted two things:
-  Guarantee that Ukraine would not become a NATO member
-  An arms agreement where Ukraine wouldn't be militarized past a certain level

Just make the agreement with Russia ffs.  But with the US political environment where no president can make a single agreement with Russia without it appearing like Russian collusion, nothing happened.  And now we have this.

Doesn't mean this invasion is in any way justified.  But this conflict is very much at the feet of the West too.

sportsczy wrote:
Doesn't mean you invade someone...  but as I said in an earlier post, it would have been very simple to avoid this.  Based on everything I read and listened to, Russia wanted two things:
-  Guarantee that Ukraine would not become a NATO member
-  An arms agreement where Ukraine wouldn't be militarized past a certain level

Doesn't mean this invasion is in any way justified.  But this conflict is very much at the feet of the West too.

Why shouldn't Ukraine - an independent European nation - be allowed to join NATO (and EU) if they so desire? Why is it fine for Russia to have a superpower army and nuclear missiles, but its neighbours shouldn't "be militarised past a certain level"? Why shouldn't smaller nations be allowed to form defensive alliances in order to maximize their own security? If Sweden and Finland join NATO, will that increasingly lay any future blame of Russian-initiated wars at the feet of the West, too?

Finally, NATO is not a security threat to a peaceful Russia - and Putin knows it very well, too. NATO is only a threat to Russia in the sense that it limits Russia's chances to intimidate its smaller neighbours with military power.

This war is all about Putin's perverse desire to have as many ex-Soviet nations as Russia's puppets as possible.

@Sports Your understanding doesn't match the facts. It doesn't explain why Russia invaded in 2015 when Ukraine sought membership into the EU, without any talk of NATO or militarization.

Ukraine's militarization now is a consequence of Russia's invasion of Crimea and backing of "separatist forces", not a cause. A conflict that was still ongoing before the current invasion, so asking the country you are trying to carve off to demilitarize is a bit rich.

If it were as simple as a promise to not sign on to NATO then diplomacy would've won the day, but it's clearly much more than that.

I can't know Putin's mind, but every move hes taken aims to keep Ukraine on Russia's sphere of influence. Ukraine's "crime" is thinking they could do better with the west instead, maybe experience the kind of growth other ex soviet republics did.

And Putin cannot allow this. Because if Ukraine, a country so integrated and culturally similar to Russia, were to thrive by switching sides instead then it won't be long before Russians turn on Putin and ask why he can't deliver the same results. A successful Ukraine would threaten his own standing internally, and I think this is the simplest explanation for why he's taking such drastic measures.

Btw if you still think this is about avoiding having another NATO neighbor let's wait and see how this gets resolved. If he annexes it he will be now sharing a border with 4 more NATO neighbors than before...

Vibe wrote:

2015.

There's an entire video, it's very good.

That's great and all, but what if Putin doesn't want a neutral Ukraine?



2014 and yes, there is a longer version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIdUSqsz0Io

@BC... no US politician can sign an agreement with Russia.  It's been impossible since 2015-16 actually when we alleged Russian meddling into the presidential elections.  Even if it made all the diplomatic and common sense in the world, making any agreement with Russia was an impossibility for any US politician after that point.

Do you know why Russia invaded Crimea really?  It wasn't even an invasion.  Every person in Crimea wanted it.  No fighting at all.  Very different than the current situation.  It also happened for strategic reasons.  Once Viktor Yanukovych was ousted, Russia could not afford to lose access to the Black Sea.  There was a Russian military presence in Crime already.  They literally had no choice from a military standpoint so they didn't lose their military base.

Not holding conversations with Russia and being tone-deaf to their requirements is squarely on the US.  We refused to talk.  And now we have this mess.

My bigger issue is with the EU.  With the leadership vacuum in the west since the US has fallen apart, nobody in the EU has taken the lead.  All the issues are basically punted.  Didn't help with Brexit and the pandemic... regardless here we are.

This invasion was 100% not a solution at all.  But as Babun put it, one shouldn't paint someone as ruthless as Putin into a corner.  I thought this was actually predictable.  But I never thought the US/EU would be so stupid to let it go this far.

Frankly, Ukrainians themselves never thought it would get his far as early as two weeks ago.  I don't blame them.  Surely the politicians aren't this stupid, they thought.  Well, they are this stupid.

Sports you keep saying "Russia had no choice" (first about current war, then about Crimean annexation), but that's clearly not true. No one forced Russia's hand here or before. Their actions are their own.

And there were talks. For the past month there were talks at all levels of government by many different countries, not just the US. It's not true they were not heard.

Finally can't believe you're defending that sham of a referendum. As a rule of thumb anything that wins with 98% support is fake.

FennecFox7 wrote:It’s ineffective spending.. like everything we do these days, a lot of money is thrown at these contractors like Lockheed with not much end product instead of us focusing on the fundamentals of a strong military.

No sympathy for Russia or China. The free world is under attack right now. Barcalearning put it bluntly and he may have even risked his freedom saying something like that. Is that a world you want to live in? Right; it’s America’s fault, everything’s America’s fault, how about this, Putin will stop at nothing for a unified former USSR, he’s a dictator and a person who holds a grudge. Most of us don’t even watch main stream propaganda news. Let’s blame Russia and China for being aggressors of the free world, or how would you like Serbia to be part of the USSR and not have NATO protection. Without us you’d be fucked. So sit down.


I don’t want to hear this nonsense about the Middle East either. We built our own bed, with this stupid obsession with Israel and dictators. Ukraine and Taiwan for that matter effect the free world directly. Palestine and co, do not. That is 100% on them for thinking they can compete with Israel and the US and not surrendering.

Lol thanks but actually its not that bad, they wont monitor everyone like a bum posting on an English forum surely, negative things about China often gets exaggerated so badly, true they filter content n control ppl, but they cant stop so many educated ppl nowadays with social media n VPNs

Art Morte wrote:Putin's just ordered the nuclear missile forces on high alert.

Failure is not an option to him in this Ukraine matter, so I wouldn't rule out this madman using nukes.

Propaganda again. The Nuclear missile forces are always on high alert. These are empty threats. Mentioning nuclear already 3 days into the invasion might as well mean the invasion isnt going as planned

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Sports you keep saying "Russia had no choice" (first about current war, then about Crimean annexation), but that's clearly not true. No one forced Russia's hand here or before. Their actions are their own.

And there were talks. For the past month there were talks at all levels of government by many different countries, not just the US. It's not true they were not heard.

Finally can't believe you're defending that sham of a referendum. As a rule of thumb anything that wins with 98% support is fake.

Really.  So Russia should just accept whatever the West is feeding them because there's "Talking".  That may work with countries where you have leverage... but not with Russia.

And btw, I expect something very similar with China re Taiwan in the next 12-24 months max.  Same process.  We keep poking them by recognizing Taiwan's independence, saying this and that...  and sooner or later, China is just going to invade.  There's "talking".  But talking doesn't mean you're listening.  I'm taking bets on Taiwan btw..

Thats surprising Sport... what do u think will happen though if China do ahead n invade TW? Will US just do sanctions again? TW is much bigger issue n Im sure there will be hugely more resistance...

BarcaLearning wrote:Thats surprising Sport... what do u think will happen though if China do ahead n invade TW? Will US just do sanctions again? TW is much bigger issue n Im sure there will be hugely more resistance...

I'm not sure that Taiwan will be perceived as "bigger" in the West, because while Taiwan is a stable democracy with a large population, I think everyone in the west has written Taiwan off decades ago, should China choose to invade.

Plus, it's an island. Ukraine borders the EU.

Myesyats wrote:

Art Morte wrote:Putin's just ordered the nuclear missile forces on high alert.

Failure is not an option to him in this Ukraine matter, so I wouldn't rule out this madman using nukes.

Propaganda again. The Nuclear missile forces are always on high alert. These are empty threats. Mentioning nuclear already 3 days into the invasion might as well mean the invasion isnt going as planned

There is a track record that shows that Putin's threat regarding the currrent situation aren't empty. That's the problem when dealing with a madman.

Russia’s demographics are collapsing. It’s even worse than the false data the government puts out to make up a fake baby boom.
Soon the Russian state won’t be able to survive and maintain its territorial integrity. So, my theory here, is that Putin would love to be able to integrate 40 million Ukrainians and their resources into the Russian state while simultaneously ending the threat of democracy-at-my-doorstep. Receiving a demographic and economic windfall. Probably hoping the Ukrainian national identity is not strong enough to resist a forced assimilation into Russia. EXPAND OR DIE is all you need to know to understand the subplot here.

PS it’s also kind of amusing in a dark humour somewhat racist way that Putin is using Chechens to wage psychological warfare.

VivaStPauli wrote:

BarcaLearning wrote:Thats surprising Sport... what do u think will happen though if China do ahead n invade TW? Will US just do sanctions again? TW is much bigger issue n Im sure there will be hugely more resistance...

I'm not sure that Taiwan will be perceived as "bigger" in the West, because while Taiwan is a stable democracy with a large population, I think everyone in the west has written Taiwan off decades ago, should China choose to invade.

Plus, it's an island. Ukraine borders the EU.

Its more along the lines if they ain't white, the west won't give a shite

Biden has vowed to defend Taiwan if china invades..

Its more along the lines of proximity to conflict. War in Ukraine borders with
- 4 EU countries and 1 closely tied/aspiring to join (moldova)
- 4 NATO countries (hungary on paper in NATO but in theory orban seems to be moscow's agent/rat)


It means so much geopolitically to europe that no other conflict does. Decades worth of diplomacy with Russia in the bin. Zelensky is a legend already

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Sports you keep saying "Russia had no choice" (first about current war, then about Crimean annexation), but that's clearly not true. No one forced Russia's hand here or before. Their actions are their own.

And there were talks. For the past month there were talks at all levels of government by many different countries, not just the US. It's not true they were not heard.

Finally can't believe you're defending that sham of a referendum. As a rule of thumb anything that wins with 98% support is fake.

He’s on the money with this sports. This is on Russia. We’re not killing Ukrainians, they are, end of story. Sometimes things aren’t that complicated

I dont know how much to believe of what is being said/reported but US seems to have amazing intel. They knew about the invasion way before everyone, had a detailed plan of it even. Its being reported they have boots on the ground, and their recon helps with knowing where and from Russians will attack.

I think the US, and all their athletes, should retroactively be suspended for the illegal war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even if it's not retroactive, they, along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should be suspended for the illegal war in Yemen.

I don't know of this double standard is because of anti-Russian sentiment or because white people's blood is more important than Arab blood.

Myesyats wrote:Zelensky is a legend already

Is he ? I thought his decision to shove ak47s in the hands of untrained civilians was despicable. I don’t hold him responsible for the invasion but I do hold him responsible for civilians who die because they got baited into guerrilla warfare by Zelensky

adun101 wrote:

Vibe wrote:

2015.

There's an entire video, it's very good.

That's great and all, but what if Putin doesn't want a neutral Ukraine?



2014 and yes, there is a longer version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIdUSqsz0Io

I often get stuck in a loop when trying to figure out who's trying to do what. Is NATO expanding in order to prevent an inevitable Russian land grab or is Russia just reacting to an unprovoked encirclement by the west?

One thing is clear, countries like Ukraine and Georgia are being used as geopolitical pawns by the two superpowers, and it's innocent civilians who end up paying the price.