Russian President Vladimir Putin may be open to a cease-fire in his war with Ukraine, so long as the country could still declare victory, a new report by the New York Times found.
Putin, still confident in his forces, said that Russia’s goals have not changed. In his annual year-end press conference last week, Putin warned that there would be no peace solution in Ukraine until Russia achieves its overarching goals, the “denazification” and demilitarization of Ukraine.
Putin’s message might be different now, as he has reportedly signaled he is ready to make a deal. Since September, Putin has signaled that he is open to a pause in fighting along the current lines, which is much shorter than his intention to dominate Ukraine, according to the Times who cited two former senior Russian officials.
According to the United Nations, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed and 18,500 have been injured since the start of the war nearly two years ago.
I think it’s funny that when it first started and Russia tried to negotiate it was all, “boo! Fuck you Putin!”
Now it’s all, “why won’t you negotiate? you fucking asshole!”
“When it first started” is such a weird passive way to say “when Russia invaded Ukraine” that I can’t trust anything else you say is without an agenda. But whatever, I’ll bite:
If people break down your door and murder, kidnap, rape, and torture members of your family and then start living in some of the rooms of your house, you don’t reset boundaries to where they are now! I can demand you “negotiate” with the people that did these crimes, but the negotiations start with them getting completely the fuck out, being punished for everything they did, and you being compensated for all of their crimes. No sane person would say, “well, just let them keep one room as part of a truce.”
Countries cannot profit off of illegally invading other ones. It literally incentivizes more war if they can just keep part of what they invaded, especially when done by countries with large militaries.
Not to mention, Putin had every chance to have a stalemate dozens of times. When he invaded Crimea. When he sent mercenaries into the Donbas. When he shelled the Donbas. When he shot down MH17. Putin had dozens of opportunies to walk away from the war and get away with annexing huge regions of Europe.
He chose murder, rape, torture, war, and there needs to be consequences for the Russian state.
“The negotiations start with them getting out”
Ideally yes… pragmatically no. Ukraine lost how many troops in the 2023 counteroffensive and got essentially nowhere? If Ukraine’s goal is to reclaim all of it’s territory, it’s going to be a pyrrhic victory. It will cost more than the territory is actually worth, the war and conscription policy have already demographically ruined Ukraine (e.g all the young people they need fled the country).
“No sane person would say ‘let them keep a room’”
Because they have the ability to remove that person. Ukraine does not, and it’s corruption and underperformance in the battlefield suggests that it may never no matter how many weapons the West gives them or conscripts they send to the trenches.
You are arguing for a perfect victory at all costs. The real world doesn’t work like this, and it would be deeply immoral if it did.
Absolutely delusional take
The absolutely delusional take was the popular opinion that all that needed to be done was to shove as many weapons as possible into Ukraine and with that they would defeat Russia. I even recall talks of “taking Crimea” (which is kind of silly in retrospect given their inability to retake the donbass region).
Instead of avoiding most of this bloodshed thousands of lives were lost only to end up at basically the same position they would’ve ended up had this just been negotiated early on and that’s me being optimistic & assuming they’ll be offered the same deal as before (which there’s very little incentive for Russia to do given their position, Ukraine’s position, & the west’s appetite to continue funding/arming Ukraine going forward.
So let me get this straight- are you arguing that the smart thing for Ukraine to do is just let Russia take them over?
Your argument is that it was smart to go this route and let thousands be killed only for them to end up (at best) in the same place they would’ve been had they just negotiated a peaceful resolution in the first place.
Negotiated how? Putin just invaded.
Basically. The smart thing for Hussein was to step down. Even if the US wasn’t justified in invading, Hussein was an utter moron and made the situation far worse.
For some reason there is this assumption that “national sovereignty” is morally relevant. It’s not states are not subject to moral harm, you have to show that losing national sovereignty results in worse outcomes for the population.
Ukraine would almost certainly be in a better position if they remained Russia-aligned or even joined them. By virtually every metric the Ukrainian population had worse standard of living than Russia, lower birth rates, higher death rates. That was before the war started in 2014, there situation is even worse now. Millions of people fled, and they aren’t coming back, Ukraine has a very bleak future even if they do win all their territory. And they still don’t have any guarantee of joining the EU or NATO (primarily due to corruption and territorial dispute issues).
You seem to think what is good for Russia is good for Ukraine. I doubt many people who don’t worship Putin agree with you.
No. The policies that lead to higher quality of life in Russia would probably not lead to lower quality of life in Ukraine.
In other words we have no reason to believe that aligning with Russia would have resulted in worse outcomes than Ukraine already had. The reason they aligned with the West was primarily to join the EU, which due to corruption and markets they weren’t even eligible to join (and still aren’t).
This resulted in conflict with Russia and the current circumstances which are far worse than they started with and are essentially irrecoverable at this point (certainly population wise).
In summary it was Ukraine’s pursuit of an idealised goal that resulted in negative outcomes. And you are asserting that this is actually a good thing.
Remember when you admitted to me that you were a total moron? Yeah. Your evaluation of every circumstance is super juvenile.
Then I guess it doesn’t make you look very good to talk to me. No one’s forcing you to waste your time with a moron.
You realise these discussions are public right?
I don’t write to address an audience of one, it’s to publicly refute vapid nonsense.
In fact I immediately block people who DM because if you don’t want a discussion public to convince other people, I’m not going to waste my time convincing a single person.
“We should avoid bloodshed by doing whatever the person shedding the most blood wants! That will definitely lead to peace and not the bloodshedder continuing to shed blood for personal gain.”
Arguing that by conceding some territory you concede all territory (and eventually the world), is literally just the slippery slope fallacy. We have zero basis for thinking that Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Ukraine wasn’t simply an attempt at re-aligning former Russian (and later Soviet) territory. This motivation does not exist for any other territory, and didn’t even exist when Ukraine was Russia aligned, and does not exist in the CSTO.
For some weird ass reason1 the only two positions on this are “Ukraine are NAzis”, or “Russia is trying to conquer the world therefore Ukraine must fight to the death for every m2” and zero evaluation of geopolitics is ever performed.
Oh well if it is just to make Russia big again like the imperial days, I guess all that death and destruction is totally acceptable and a fine course of action, then. What was I thinking, imagining that allowing a naked lebensraum style land grab go off would let world leaders seeking more territory know they can take whatever they want? Obviously that would be fine if you could point to a map from a few centuries ago where it says “we totally own this forever guys”. Gosh, I was so silly, I should pay more attention to geopolitics.
“is totally acceptable and a fine course of action”
Motte-and-Bailey fallacy.
The argument is not that it is okay to invade countries based on historical claims, it’s not. It’s that we have no basis for thinking that Russia’s motivation for invading Ukraine and Georgia applies to invading all other countries of the world, which is the argument you made and repeated here again.
You realise that most invasions in the world are ignored by the global community? They mostly happen in Africa. So you trying to generalize it from Russia to all aggressor states in the world, is also false. Most invasions do not receive major international response, so why would aggressor states look at a lack of response to the invasion of Ukraine for inspiration and not say the Second Congo War?
“Gosh I was so silly”
“Brain-dead” is the term I would use.
“I should pay more attention to geopolitics”
And English class, and elementary logic.
Weird how your incredible “evaluation of geopolitics” that you performed lines up basically word for word what the Kremlin says.
Totally dude, would you like to flex your IR degree and show the world that this statement is correct?
Was that supposed to make sense? You’re in this thread talking down to people and then can’t form a coherent thought to being called out holy shit I’m dying lmaooooooo.
I’m sure your geopolitics knowledge rivals that of people with doctorates but that is so cringe to say . I’m sure.you got all your takes on Rumble lol
I’m sorry what was I supposed to say?
Your comment literally criticised by my argument on the basis that “It was just like Putin’s” which is not only false but completely irrelevant, who else shares my argument has no relevance to it’s accuracy.
So how am I supposed to respond to such a viciously anti-intellectual claim? Is it really so unacceptable to request that you actually produce reasoning for your argument? At the very least to demonstrate that you are mentally capable of holding this conversation?
FYI I never claimed that I was more knowledgeable than IR scholars, I said somewhat cheekily that you need to be educated (which you clearly aren’t) to effectively challenge my statement.
It’s really sad when one has to explain the insult when the recipient party is too stupid to understand.
“Can’t form a coherent thought”
Again I’m going to need some evidence of this, the fact that you failed to understand a statement, does not make it incoherent.
Unlike most people I actually do provide empirical and rational evidence for my core arguments, even the irrelevant insults. My intellectual standards are through the roof compared to you losers (losers because you are willingly too stupid and lazy, to actually learn empirical facts and provide arguments. See I just met a standard that you have still failed to meet).