Russia could end its invasion of a sovereign nation at the drop of a hat and the war would be over. If Russia was sincere about peace they could just call for a cease fire immediately.
The problem of course with Trump dangling vague “security guarantees” in front of the Ukrainians to try and sell this dumpster fire of a document is that the US admin has spent the last 6 months trashing the credibility of their commitment to NATO and mutual defense pacts with allies like Japan, so that guarantee is not worth the paper it’s written on while Trump is in charge…
In addition, the US, UK, and Russia already gave such security guarantees in 1994, when Ukraine gave up their nuclear arsenal. Absolutely worthless.
Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan and South Africa exist purely because of international defenders and/or military funding. In Russian minds, progress equates to reuniting the old Tzarist Empire or USSR sphere of control. To NATO, progress equates to continued manipulation and erosion of that same sphere of control.
So no, no peace in our time or ever. Ukraine is living on borrowed time and may continue as a runtly little stub. They will not get back one inch of land anytime soon.
I honestly think that he is honestly trying, and it's almost impossible to know what is really going on because the leaks are intended to sabotage the deal and the versions being leaked are probably designed to create the most pushback.
"We must not lose, so let's escalate to WWIII if we have to, the Russian missiles will never work anyway"
"Russia is on the verge of collapse!"
Russia has eleven time zones, maybe twelve, not sure, and all of the resources it needs, it may be the only country in the world that does, which is probably why it keeps getting invaded. Plus, it has an extensive border with China, which will not turn on Russia because China is not willing to play the "maybe the crocodile will eat me last" game.
People who see the punishment that the Ukrainians have taken imagine that Russia will collapse if we manage to create some gas lines. Russia has seen that NATO has waged aggressive wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and is not a "defensive alliance" by any means, and sees this as a fight to the death.
At one point in history, Kyiv was the center of the Russ world, the capital of Kievan Rus', at that time, a nation that covered a huge swath of what is now Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. And it stood for 4 centuries, until the Mongols came through and did what they did best. It was the greatest city in the region and the heart of those people- all of those people. Ukraine and Russia, and their people, have been intertwined throughout centuries of history. Whatever 'peace' we may get in the next week or two, will survive only for a period. History in that region says that no borders stay put.
It's funny that people keep bringing up Chechnya, and yet Chechnya has provided soldiers who have done some of the hardest fighting, they are among the most loyal soldiers, because they believe, and they might be right, that their country was played by the CIA through jihadis. We know that Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Spegniev Brzezinski, has bragged that we armed and trained and funded jihadis in Afghanistan in 1979 in order to provoke the Soviets to invade, why wouldn't we have done the same thing in Chechnya?
There is a school of thought that the Ukrainians will go the same way as the Chechnyans have, in their anger at what NATO has done to their country, and oh, BTW, do you really think that the nationalists in Ukraine want their country run the way Germany, Britain, and France are currently run by the globalists?
“Brzezinski, has bragged that we armed and trained and funded jihadis in Afghanistan in 1979 in order to provoke the Soviets to invade.” Bad Brzezinski. And isn’t it also true the war in Afghanistan was one of the factors that led to the colapse of the Soviet Union. Good Brzezinski?
Its a bit more complicated in the 70s the soviets had two of the presidents killed off before then there had been a resistance with the warlord of herat ismail khan (who is still alive) but here again, just because you catch the car, doesnt mean the war is over. Its just begun
“At one point in history, Kyiv was the center of the Russ world, the capital of Kievan Rus', at that time, a nation that covered a huge swath of what is now Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.“ Bring back the Roman Empire.
The US-USSR Cold War was an entirely different era and the USA was 'mostly' unified in trying to break the USSR. The Jane Fonda North Vietnam and Che Guevara Cuba sympathizers were on the fringe versus the widespread anti-USA Democrat politics of today. Hollywood released a slew of mainstream patriotic films back then, such as James Bond's Thunderball, Rocky III, and Red Dawn.
In the 1970s, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that brought down the USSR was considered good news. This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Repblicans didn't quite accept it.
“This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Republicans didn't quite accept it.” 1. Clinton was elected because Bush Sr lied. Boldly and frequently. “No new taxes.” 2. Reagan’s (Republican) greatest achievement was engineering the end of the Soviet Union.
Good or ill, we used Afghanistan as a battering ram, and probably the women there are going to be condemned to burkhas and 3rd grade educations for the foreseeable future. At least the communists didn't hate women, but that's not the point. The point is that sparking a war in Chechnya using jihadis is right out of our playbook.
Look at Africa, we have military bases all across Africa to "protect" those countries from Islamic terrorists. It's an old racket: "Shame about what happened to your store Mr [Italian surname goes here], I hope you were insured, but for a small monthly payment, my boys can make sure that these punks leave you alone..."
These are the kinds of "strategies" that Kak is so worshipful of, but they just make us enemies around the world.
@Eva Marie: Former Democrat and big spender Reagan also laid the groundwork for future open-border political madness with his 1986 immigration reform act.
“Former Democrat and big spender Reagan also laid the groundwork for future open-border political madness with his 1986 immigration reform act.” Nonsense.
The Soviets gravest error was that they suppressed debate, and drove out and murdered dissenters. The rest of their errors came from that, the huge famine in the early thirties, when they collectivized the farms and withdrew labor from agriculture to concentrate on heavy machinery. People died by the millions all across the Soviet Union, and there were no "Russian Nationalists" in the leadership at the time, Stalin was not even Russian and the Bolsheviks didn't even believe that nationalities were a real thing, kind of like some people today view gender.
It’s always been bad Brzezinski. Just wait till you realize we’ve been the bad guys the last four odd decades. For me personally it’s been spiritually crushing. The best I can get out of it is my wife isn’t alive to come to that same realization.
Enigma said... In the 1970s, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that brought down the USSR was considered good news. This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Repblicans didn't quite accept it.
I have to lean towards Eva Marie's response. Everybody know the USSR was over though the status of Russia was debatable. If anything, the naivety was the belief in both parties (but more Democrat than Republican) that without being able to triangulate them against each other it would be hunky dory to fold both Russia and Red China into the Global Order.
“Former Democrat and big spender Reagan also laid the groundwork for future open-border political madness with his 1986 immigration reform act.” Nonsense.
Reagan had the same deficiency Trump had in 2016. Reagan thought he was working with people who were operating in good faith. He thought the Republican party served Republican voters.
Reagan signed amnesty into law. There is a reason why DC always waited for a Republican to be in charge to sign amnesty or attempt to pass "immigration reform."
The US-USSR Cold War was an entirely different era and the USA was 'mostly' unified in trying to break the USSR.
... In the 1970s, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that brought down the USSR was considered good news. This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Repblicans didn't quite accept it.
And every war that happened after the fall of the Soviet Union was people who grew fat and rich off of the Cold War and now had no more wars to make money off of.
When the Soviet Union fell the average person had a reasonable hope of buying the average house.
The Euros aren't going to send troops to Ukraine. They're also not going to stop buying Russian gas and oil. The US is not going to bomb Russia. The Russians can keep this up for ten years.
It's hilarious to see the American delegation as just a bunch of messenger boys: get a draft from Russia, get a re-write from Ukraine, ship it back. No leadership, no forcing Putin into the negotiations: we know that Russians will reject the latest proposal, and we will be back at square one.
Also, was surprised to see Jared Kushner too - can't even imagine how the Ukrainian delegation reacted!
As Warren Buffet said, "you can't make a good deal with a bad person". Which unfortunately for Zelensky applies to both his "ally" Trump and his enemy Putin.
I lost my home and was bankrupted exactly once. I lived in an area where the primary employers were weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and Honeywell, and the USSR fell and defense spending collapsed. Well, I took my lumps and moved on, but the people who owned those companies? Well, they had a plan and they had friends in Congress and the Pentagon, and so it’s been endless war in an era that should have been a golden age for peace.
I didn’t work at a defense plant, but a lot of my neighbors did, and the economy collapsed and housing prices dropped to the point where you could not finance a move away by selling your home.
..."It's hilarious to see the American delegation as just a bunch of messenger boys: get a draft from Russia, get a re-write from Ukraine, ship it back. No leadership, no forcing Putin ....."
Why don't you give us the prologue to this story, the one that lists all the Peace accomplishments of the Biden administration, first? Maybe go through each one of the peace talks that were had. Then you can follow up by telling us, using Big Boy words, how you would go about 'forcing' Putin to the table, manly man that you are. I feel certain that you've thought it through.
I'm with Trump on the "believe it = see it" advice. It's worth keeping plugging away but it's terrible stale mate. Russia can keep throwing bodies on the pile and US/EU/UK can keep piling up money,
While its continuance raises the odds of WWIII and the death of all of us, I think a decisive outcome in the war might be a more valuable object lesson going forward.
After 3 years of war, Russia has pretty much taken all of the Donbass and will probably take the other 20 percent in the next 3 to 6 months. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have finally run out of boobs wanting to fight and die for nothing. Total deaths in Ukraine 2022-2025 1.5 million. Total births = 600,000. Population loss 900 thousand. Demographic death spiral. IRC, desertions last month were at all time high.
Putin needs to hang tough. We don't need another war in 5 years. Lets make this the first and last Russo-Ukrainian war.
I"m pissed off at the American elite. All these problems at home, and they're trying to get us involved in some crazy war 5000 miles away that has NOTHING to do with our national interest.
If tommorrow Ukraine became a puppet of Russia it would hurt us of how? We'd lose nothing. NATO eastward expansion should have stopped after poland, and romania
It is utterly false to say that "Chechnya has provided soldiers who have done some of the hardest fighting, they are among the most loyal soldiers". The Russian soldiers are constantly complaining that the Chechens avoid the front lines, but are always glad to serve as "blocking troops" shooting any Russians who even look like they might want to retreat. They're also notorious for gang-raping Russian soldiers.
If Kadyrov is glad to provide troops in large numbers, it's most likely because he expects the Russian empire to collapse one of these days, and he wants to be ready to make a third, and final, bid for Chechen independence. As I recall, when Prigozhin, Utkin, and the Wagnerites marched on Moscow, Kadyrov's Chechens did nothing to hinder them, but stood around waiting to see who would win.
The most reliable reporters on the morale of Russia's troops are the Russians themselves, who are all over social media whining about conditions in the trenches. Anyone who understands Russian can easily find out what they're saying among themselves. That includes just about every Ukrainian, but also millions of others aound the world.
Looks like you got nuthin', ImTay. The fact is that the quoted statement about the Chechens is utterly false, and that fact is important in judging what should be done in Ukraine.
The solution everyone is willfully ignoring: Bring back the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth! A massive multi-culti buffer from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Not Russian, not NATO. Population would approach that of Russia, with nice short internal lines for defense. Gigantic breadbasket in the south, huge tech knowledge in the north.
I bet a Ukrainian plebiscite would be 90% "Fuck Yeah! We'll join that!" CC, JSM
"Putin’s Win-Win: Take a Russia-Friendly Peace Deal, or Fight On"
Read it, and I don't see how you can come to any conclusion other than "take the fucking deal now, before it gets worse!"
It seems like what the war is about is Ukrainian pride, they call it "dignity" but small neighbors of great powers would do well by their own people to not have ambitions of dominating their great power neighbor. How has this war benefited the people of Ukraine? Even the Ukrainian speakers, how has it benefitted them to fight this war of NATO expansion. Putin said in 2008 that bringing Ukraine into NATO would put Ukraine's existence as a state at risk, and not much has changed.
But I agree with the New York Times, take the deal, or deal with worse. But I hear that the Ukrainians are killing thousands of Russians a day right now, and suffering almost no casualties, so probably the NYT has their panties in a knot over nothing.
The Ukrainians are just as tough, Mr. Gabuev noted, but “they are under-resourced,” suffering from a dearth of military personnel, weaponry and money, - NYT
Every subsequent deal for Ukraine will only be worse — because we are losing. We are losing people, territory, and the economy. The EU (which by the way has paid Russia more than €311 billion for energy and goods since February 2022) has no real strategy, no way to stop fueling Russian budget or support Ukraine enough to win, no direct dialogue with Moscow, and no meaningful leverage over either the Kremlin or Washington. Arguments that “Russia has gained so little land” sound almost childish when you consider the human cost. We have lost more people in three years than some European nations have as the whole population. My country is bleeding out. Many who reflexively oppose every peace proposal believe they are defending Ukraine. With all respect, that is the clearest proof they have no idea what is actually happening on the front lines and inside the country right now. War is not a Hollywood movie. I will never abandon the values that God and democracy both place at the very foundation of human existence: human life is the highest good, and people — living, breathing people — are the ones who must be saved. - https://x.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1992359920587456588
Read her bio: https://x.com/IuliiaMendel She was Zelensky's press secretary.
An honest man would have offered a reply or acknowledgement to my point about the Chechens. He would also have noticed that one prominent Ukrainian with no direct knowledge of the military situation losing hope of victory is interesting, but hardly probative. The testimony of Igor Girkin is worth twenty times as much. He's the KGB colonel, a Russian from Moscow, who personally led the two coups d'état that seized Crimea and then parts of the Donbas, was Minister of Defense of the puppet 'Donetsk People's Republic', and gave the order to shoot down the Malaysian airliner, killing 298. Yesterday he tweeted, as part of a longer message (link) "If nothing changes - a catastrophe awaits us. And such a catastrophe that our state (in its former 'historical' form) may not survive". Read the whole thing, and the other things that @WarTranslated (an Estonian living in London) writes, if you want to know what's really going on in Ukraine - and Russia.
I tell ya the walls are closing in on Putin. Russia is on its last legs. Sure, Ukraine is "losing" now, but just wait. Russia is running out of men. The Russian economy is breaking down. People are angry at Putin.
So, stay the course. A thousand points of light. And uh... stay the course.
RCOCEAN II thinks he can write a bunch of true things, make it clear that he's being sarcastic, and they will somehow magically become false. As on so many other topics, he knows nothing. At least he didn't blame the Jews this time.
Why did air traffic control in Kiev allow that aircraft to fly over a combat zone where fighter bombers had been recently shot down and active combat operations were underway? Doesn't that seem a bit irresponsible? A cynical person might even wonder if the Ukrainians weren't hoping for a bloody shirt to wave around to whip up support.
Ukraine has been used by the West in the same way that Afghanistan was used, and probably Chechnya, and for the exact same reasons.
No sarcasm, just truth. You cant win a war by retreating. You can't win a war when your country has had 600,000 births and 1.5 million deaths in the last 3 years. You cant win a war if you're outnumbered on land, sea, and in the air. You can't win a war if you're losing more men through desertion than through enlistment. Or when your young men are fleeing the country rather than serve.
There's absolutely no path to victory for Ukraine. All the warmongers can do is fantasize about NATO troops showing up, or Russia somehow collapsing.
The remaining cities in the Donbass under Ukrainian control are hanging on by a thread. They have one supply line that runs north to Kharlov. Once that's cut - its all over. And when the Donbass is 100 percent gone, what is Ukraine fighting for?
Zelensky and his corrupt henchman don't care of course. They all have foreign passports and money stashed away in Swiss Bank accounts. And will be liionized by the Global elite for the rest of their lives. So to them it makes sense that Ukraine should fight to the last man. Because they will then take the last flight out of Kiev and live a life of luxury and ease. Zelensky will no doubt end up in Miami Beach or Israel with a book deal.
If you're counting births and deaths, you need to count the ones outside the country as well. What subset of Ukrainians is most likely to leave the country? Pregnant women, duh! I haven't met a lot of Ukrainian refugees, but the ones I have were two-thirds female and one-third pregnant - way out of line with the national average, though not at all surprising given the Russian habit of slaughtering civilians in their beds every night of the week.
As for the cities "hanging on by a thread", the Russians have been in the outskirts of Pokrovsk for 18 months and still haven't captured it, even when they try to slip their men into town by dressing them in civilian clothes or Ukrainian uniforms, like the war-criminal assholes they are.
Everything else RCOCEAN II says here is a lie, starting with all the "You can't win a war" sentences. Has he ever read a history book? Does he really think the larger country always wins? Hahahaha!
As for Jaq and the Malaysian airliner, I have explained this more than once before but he pretends that he doesn't know he's been refuted more than once. The Malaysian airline thought their plane was safe because it was flying at 33,000 feet, and they believed the Russian assurances that the people fighting Ukraine in the Donbas were all local guerrillas using only weapons captured or stolen from armories, and that Russia was not supplying them with modern weapons, like antiaircraft missiles that could shoot down planes at 33,000 feet. Of course, the so-called "guerrillas" were in fact mostly Russian regulars, commanded by Russian officers like Girkin, and supplied with advanced Russian weaponry. Jaq's attempt to make Ukraine look bad just shows once again how utterly vile the Russians are and how utterly contemptible anyone who supports them is.
The war that happens is always the war that could never happen. When Russia invaded Georgia it was a joy ride of pillage and plunder. That is what Ukraine was supposed to be.
But it became a meat grinder. Every war that is not resolved in the initial offensive thrust turns into World War One. Drones are just the new machine guns. These wars have traditionally, like ww1, ww2, Korea, been resolved by the intervention of a fresh new power, US, China.
The war has been on for 3 years and 9 months. We are in a new paradigm, and have a four year war with no US divisions coming to hit the beach. No Chinese divisions coming over the Yalu. New territory. Whatever will become of us?
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৭৮টি মন্তব্য:
So he did NOT say “Peace in our time” after all. Good to know.
Imagine if the media and our western "allies" wanted him to succeed in making peace.
“Don’t believe it until you see it” is always good advice.
Good to know that Trump is working hard every day.
Hello, Nobel.
Russia could end its invasion of a sovereign nation at the drop of a hat and the war would be over. If Russia was sincere about peace they could just call for a cease fire immediately.
The problem of course with Trump dangling vague “security guarantees” in front of the Ukrainians to try and sell this dumpster fire of a document is that the US admin has spent the last 6 months trashing the credibility of their commitment to NATO and mutual defense pacts with allies like Japan, so that guarantee is not worth the paper it’s written on while Trump is in charge…
In addition, the US, UK, and Russia already gave such security guarantees in 1994, when Ukraine gave up their nuclear arsenal. Absolutely worthless.
I'm pretty sure Kak is actually a bot posting from Bangladesh.
Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan and South Africa exist purely because of international defenders and/or military funding. In Russian minds, progress equates to reuniting the old Tzarist Empire or USSR sphere of control. To NATO, progress equates to continued manipulation and erosion of that same sphere of control.
So no, no peace in our time or ever. Ukraine is living on borrowed time and may continue as a runtly little stub. They will not get back one inch of land anytime soon.
I honestly think that he is honestly trying, and it's almost impossible to know what is really going on because the leaks are intended to sabotage the deal and the versions being leaked are probably designed to create the most pushback.
"We must not lose, so let's escalate to WWIII if we have to, the Russian missiles will never work anyway"
"Russia is on the verge of collapse!"
Russia has eleven time zones, maybe twelve, not sure, and all of the resources it needs, it may be the only country in the world that does, which is probably why it keeps getting invaded. Plus, it has an extensive border with China, which will not turn on Russia because China is not willing to play the "maybe the crocodile will eat me last" game.
People who see the punishment that the Ukrainians have taken imagine that Russia will collapse if we manage to create some gas lines. Russia has seen that NATO has waged aggressive wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and is not a "defensive alliance" by any means, and sees this as a fight to the death.
At one point in history, Kyiv was the center of the Russ world, the capital of Kievan Rus', at that time, a nation that covered a huge swath of what is now Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. And it stood for 4 centuries, until the Mongols came through and did what they did best. It was the greatest city in the region and the heart of those people- all of those people. Ukraine and Russia, and their people, have been intertwined throughout centuries of history.
Whatever 'peace' we may get in the next week or two, will survive only for a period. History in that region says that no borders stay put.
It's funny that people keep bringing up Chechnya, and yet Chechnya has provided soldiers who have done some of the hardest fighting, they are among the most loyal soldiers, because they believe, and they might be right, that their country was played by the CIA through jihadis. We know that Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Spegniev Brzezinski, has bragged that we armed and trained and funded jihadis in Afghanistan in 1979 in order to provoke the Soviets to invade, why wouldn't we have done the same thing in Chechnya?
There is a school of thought that the Ukrainians will go the same way as the Chechnyans have, in their anger at what NATO has done to their country, and oh, BTW, do you really think that the nationalists in Ukraine want their country run the way Germany, Britain, and France are currently run by the globalists?
Time will tell.
Look at pictures of Afghanistan in the 1970s if you want to know what the US destroyed by putting the jihadis in charge there.
“Brzezinski, has bragged that we armed and trained and funded jihadis in Afghanistan in 1979 in order to provoke the Soviets to invade.”
Bad Brzezinski. And isn’t it also true the war in Afghanistan was one of the factors that led to the colapse of the Soviet Union. Good Brzezinski?
Its a bit more complicated in the 70s the soviets had two of the presidents killed off before then there had been a resistance with the warlord of herat ismail khan (who is still alive) but here again, just because you catch the car, doesnt mean the war is over. Its just begun
“At one point in history, Kyiv was the center of the Russ world, the capital of Kievan Rus', at that time, a nation that covered a huge swath of what is now Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.“
Bring back the Roman Empire.
@Jaq and @Eva Marie:
The US-USSR Cold War was an entirely different era and the USA was 'mostly' unified in trying to break the USSR. The Jane Fonda North Vietnam and Che Guevara Cuba sympathizers were on the fringe versus the widespread anti-USA Democrat politics of today. Hollywood released a slew of mainstream patriotic films back then, such as James Bond's Thunderball, Rocky III, and Red Dawn.
In the 1970s, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that brought down the USSR was considered good news. This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Repblicans didn't quite accept it.
“This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Republicans didn't quite accept it.”
1. Clinton was elected because Bush Sr lied. Boldly and frequently. “No new taxes.”
2. Reagan’s (Republican) greatest achievement was engineering the end of the Soviet Union.
"Good Brzezinski?"
Good or ill, we used Afghanistan as a battering ram, and probably the women there are going to be condemned to burkhas and 3rd grade educations for the foreseeable future. At least the communists didn't hate women, but that's not the point. The point is that sparking a war in Chechnya using jihadis is right out of our playbook.
Look at Africa, we have military bases all across Africa to "protect" those countries from Islamic terrorists. It's an old racket: "Shame about what happened to your store Mr [Italian surname goes here], I hope you were insured, but for a small monthly payment, my boys can make sure that these punks leave you alone..."
These are the kinds of "strategies" that Kak is so worshipful of, but they just make us enemies around the world.
@Eva Marie: Former Democrat and big spender Reagan also laid the groundwork for future open-border political madness with his 1986 immigration reform act.
“Former Democrat and big spender Reagan also laid the groundwork for future open-border political madness with his 1986 immigration reform act.”
Nonsense.
The Soviets gravest error was that they suppressed debate, and drove out and murdered dissenters. The rest of their errors came from that, the huge famine in the early thirties, when they collectivized the farms and withdrew labor from agriculture to concentrate on heavy machinery. People died by the millions all across the Soviet Union, and there were no "Russian Nationalists" in the leadership at the time, Stalin was not even Russian and the Bolsheviks didn't even believe that nationalities were a real thing, kind of like some people today view gender.
Why did we let bin Laden go when we had him dead to rights at Tora Bora and had no shortage of bombs to drop and uncontested air superiority?
Everything Biden did is all Reagan’s fault. Got it.
True: The best Republicans are former Democrats. Falls under the category of ‘know your enemy.’
It’s always been bad Brzezinski. Just wait till you realize we’ve been the bad guys the last four odd decades. For me personally it’s been spiritually crushing. The best I can get out of it is my wife isn’t alive to come to that same realization.
The last 4 decades have seen a slow march to power by Democrats through all our institutions.
Enigma said...
In the 1970s, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that brought down the USSR was considered good news. This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Repblicans didn't quite accept it.
I have to lean towards Eva Marie's response. Everybody know the USSR was over though the status of Russia was debatable. If anything, the naivety was the belief in both parties (but more Democrat than Republican) that without being able to triangulate them against each other it would be hunky dory to fold both Russia and Red China into the Global Order.
The Isi with colonel imam was playing the long game, he and others nurtured the taliban deprives shah mahsouds of weapons
ISI pakistani intelligence the boys from aapbara they hosted many of the players including ksm
Unlike fukuyamas facile bon mot 1991 was a reset before 1917
Eva Marie said...
“Former Democrat and big spender Reagan also laid the groundwork for future open-border political madness with his 1986 immigration reform act.”
Nonsense.
Reagan had the same deficiency Trump had in 2016. Reagan thought he was working with people who were operating in good faith. He thought the Republican party served Republican voters.
Reagan signed amnesty into law. There is a reason why DC always waited for a Republican to be in charge to sign amnesty or attempt to pass "immigration reform."
Well Reagan had pledged this in the 1980 and 1984 platforms
Enigma said...
@Jaq and @Eva Marie:
The US-USSR Cold War was an entirely different era and the USA was 'mostly' unified in trying to break the USSR.
...
In the 1970s, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that brought down the USSR was considered good news. This (naive) attitude in part got Bill Clinton elected, as the USSR was over but Repblicans didn't quite accept it.
And every war that happened after the fall of the Soviet Union was people who grew fat and rich off of the Cold War and now had no more wars to make money off of.
When the Soviet Union fell the average person had a reasonable hope of buying the average house.
Now not so much.
I’m going to put the housing shortage at the feet of the over regulation of construction.
The Euros aren't going to send troops to Ukraine. They're also not going to stop buying Russian gas and oil. The US is not going to bomb Russia. The Russians can keep this up for ten years.
I really don't see an end happening soon.
I hate that Biden's war falls on Trump.
The leftist cultist ankle biters want Trump to fail... and also more people to die.
There’s a great discussion with Adam Carolla on the Joe Rogan Show on that subject. #2412
It's hilarious to see the American delegation as just a bunch of messenger boys: get a draft from Russia, get a re-write from Ukraine, ship it back. No leadership, no forcing Putin into the negotiations: we know that Russians will reject the latest proposal, and we will be back at square one.
Also, was surprised to see Jared Kushner too - can't even imagine how the Ukrainian delegation reacted!
As Warren Buffet said, "you can't make a good deal with a bad person". Which unfortunately for Zelensky applies to both his "ally" Trump and his enemy Putin.
Not learned from thd fall of baghdad and tripoli
kak - stop lying.
Where is the EU?
Leland for the win:
"Imagine if the media and our western "allies" wanted him to succeed in making peace."
imagine, indeed.
Too busy destroying itself
Save us the coy shit and just let us know when that 24-hour Ukraine-Russia peace clock starts ticking.
I lost my home and was bankrupted exactly once. I lived in an area where the primary employers were weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and Honeywell, and the USSR fell and defense spending collapsed. Well, I took my lumps and moved on, but the people who owned those companies? Well, they had a plan and they had friends in Congress and the Pentagon, and so it’s been endless war in an era that should have been a golden age for peace.
I didn’t work at a defense plant, but a lot of my neighbors did, and the economy collapsed and housing prices dropped to the point where you could not finance a move away by selling your home.
The mediaswine will sabotage Trump’s efforts.
Joe Bar is correct. European weakness and Russian oil consumption gives Vlad a huge bargaining chip.
..."It's hilarious to see the American delegation as just a bunch of messenger boys: get a draft from Russia, get a re-write from Ukraine, ship it back. No leadership, no forcing Putin ....."
Why don't you give us the prologue to this story, the one that lists all the Peace accomplishments of the Biden administration, first? Maybe go through each one of the peace talks that were had. Then you can follow up by telling us, using Big Boy words, how you would go about 'forcing' Putin to the table, manly man that you are. I feel certain that you've thought it through.
I'm with Trump on the "believe it = see it" advice. It's worth keeping plugging away but it's terrible stale mate. Russia can keep throwing bodies on the pile and US/EU/UK can keep piling up money,
Jaq,
What, you think Islamic terrorism isn't real?
Boko Haram? Al-shabaab?
I do not understand the point you're trying to make there.
While its continuance raises the odds of WWIII and the death of all of us, I think a decisive outcome in the war might be a more valuable object lesson going forward.
After 3 years of war, Russia has pretty much taken all of the Donbass and will probably take the other 20 percent in the next 3 to 6 months. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have finally run out of boobs wanting to fight and die for nothing. Total deaths in Ukraine 2022-2025 1.5 million. Total births = 600,000. Population loss 900 thousand. Demographic death spiral. IRC, desertions last month were at all time high.
Putin needs to hang tough. We don't need another war in 5 years. Lets make this the first and last Russo-Ukrainian war.
I never do. Watch what happens not what they say.
I"m pissed off at the American elite. All these problems at home, and they're trying to get us involved in some crazy war 5000 miles away that has NOTHING to do with our national interest.
If tommorrow Ukraine became a puppet of Russia it would hurt us of how? We'd lose nothing. NATO eastward expansion should have stopped after poland, and romania
Now we know where shabaabs funding comes does qatar finance boko
GWB and the left want WWIII.
Scott Adams has pointed to the fact that the Russian Ukraine war is a war of drones now. It’s kind of a proving ground for the next war.
Depressing
It is utterly false to say that "Chechnya has provided soldiers who have done some of the hardest fighting, they are among the most loyal soldiers". The Russian soldiers are constantly complaining that the Chechens avoid the front lines, but are always glad to serve as "blocking troops" shooting any Russians who even look like they might want to retreat. They're also notorious for gang-raping Russian soldiers.
If Kadyrov is glad to provide troops in large numbers, it's most likely because he expects the Russian empire to collapse one of these days, and he wants to be ready to make a third, and final, bid for Chechen independence. As I recall, when Prigozhin, Utkin, and the Wagnerites marched on Moscow, Kadyrov's Chechens did nothing to hinder them, but stood around waiting to see who would win.
Europe and the US have really treated Ukraine well, and the Ukrainians are the most reliable reporters on the morale of Russia’s troops
The most reliable reporters on the morale of Russia's troops are the Russians themselves, who are all over social media whining about conditions in the trenches. Anyone who understands Russian can easily find out what they're saying among themselves. That includes just about every Ukrainian, but also millions of others aound the world.
I guess you guys got this, then.
Looks like you got nuthin', ImTay. The fact is that the quoted statement about the Chechens is utterly false, and that fact is important in judging what should be done in Ukraine.
The solution everyone is willfully ignoring: Bring back the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth! A massive multi-culti buffer from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Not Russian, not NATO. Population would approach that of Russia, with nice short internal lines for defense. Gigantic breadbasket in the south, huge tech knowledge in the north.
I bet a Ukrainian plebiscite would be 90% "Fuck Yeah! We'll join that!" CC, JSM
This is one of those headlines that make me think of Fox Butterfield
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/world/europe/trump-ukraine-peace-talks-russia.html
"Putin’s Win-Win: Take a Russia-Friendly Peace Deal, or Fight On"
Read it, and I don't see how you can come to any conclusion other than "take the fucking deal now, before it gets worse!"
It seems like what the war is about is Ukrainian pride, they call it "dignity" but small neighbors of great powers would do well by their own people to not have ambitions of dominating their great power neighbor. How has this war benefited the people of Ukraine? Even the Ukrainian speakers, how has it benefitted them to fight this war of NATO expansion. Putin said in 2008 that bringing Ukraine into NATO would put Ukraine's existence as a state at risk, and not much has changed.
But I agree with the New York Times, take the deal, or deal with worse. But I hear that the Ukrainians are killing thousands of Russians a day right now, and suffering almost no casualties, so probably the NYT has their panties in a knot over nothing.
The Ukrainians are just as tough, Mr. Gabuev noted, but “they are under-resourced,” suffering from a dearth of military personnel, weaponry and money, - NYT
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE BLACK, POLSKA-LIETUVA SHALL BE BACK!
CC, JSM
Zelensky's former press secretary has comments:
Every subsequent deal for Ukraine will only be worse — because we are losing. We are losing people, territory, and the economy.
The EU (which by the way has paid Russia more than €311 billion for energy and goods since February 2022) has no real strategy, no way to stop fueling Russian budget or support Ukraine enough to win, no direct dialogue with Moscow, and no meaningful leverage over either the Kremlin or Washington.
Arguments that “Russia has gained so little land” sound almost childish when you consider the human cost. We have lost more people in three years than some European nations have as the whole population.
My country is bleeding out. Many who reflexively oppose every peace proposal believe they are defending Ukraine. With all respect, that is the clearest proof they have no idea what is actually happening on the front lines and inside the country right now.
War is not a Hollywood movie. I will never abandon the values that God and democracy both place at the very foundation of human existence: human life is the highest good, and people — living, breathing people — are the ones who must be saved. - https://x.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1992359920587456588
Read her bio: https://x.com/IuliiaMendel She was Zelensky's press secretary.
An honest man would have offered a reply or acknowledgement to my point about the Chechens. He would also have noticed that one prominent Ukrainian with no direct knowledge of the military situation losing hope of victory is interesting, but hardly probative. The testimony of Igor Girkin is worth twenty times as much. He's the KGB colonel, a Russian from Moscow, who personally led the two coups d'état that seized Crimea and then parts of the Donbas, was Minister of Defense of the puppet 'Donetsk People's Republic', and gave the order to shoot down the Malaysian airliner, killing 298. Yesterday he tweeted, as part of a longer message (link) "If nothing changes - a catastrophe awaits us. And such a catastrophe that our state (in its former 'historical' form) may not survive". Read the whole thing, and the other things that @WarTranslated (an Estonian living in London) writes, if you want to know what's really going on in Ukraine - and Russia.
I tell ya the walls are closing in on Putin. Russia is on its last legs. Sure, Ukraine is "losing" now, but just wait. Russia is running out of men. The Russian economy is breaking down. People are angry at Putin.
So, stay the course. A thousand points of light. And uh... stay the course.
RCOCEAN II thinks he can write a bunch of true things, make it clear that he's being sarcastic, and they will somehow magically become false. As on so many other topics, he knows nothing. At least he didn't blame the Jews this time.
Why did air traffic control in Kiev allow that aircraft to fly over a combat zone where fighter bombers had been recently shot down and active combat operations were underway? Doesn't that seem a bit irresponsible? A cynical person might even wonder if the Ukrainians weren't hoping for a bloody shirt to wave around to whip up support.
Ukraine has been used by the West in the same way that Afghanistan was used, and probably Chechnya, and for the exact same reasons.
No sarcasm, just truth. You cant win a war by retreating. You can't win a war when your country has had 600,000 births and 1.5 million deaths in the last 3 years. You cant win a war if you're outnumbered on land, sea, and in the air. You can't win a war if you're losing more men through desertion than through enlistment. Or when your young men are fleeing the country rather than serve.
There's absolutely no path to victory for Ukraine. All the warmongers can do is fantasize about NATO troops showing up, or Russia somehow collapsing.
The remaining cities in the Donbass under Ukrainian control are hanging on by a thread. They have one supply line that runs north to Kharlov. Once that's cut - its all over. And when the Donbass is 100 percent gone, what is Ukraine fighting for?
Zelensky and his corrupt henchman don't care of course. They all have foreign passports and money stashed away in Swiss Bank accounts. And will be liionized by the Global elite for the rest of their lives. So to them it makes sense that Ukraine should fight to the last man. Because they will then take the last flight out of Kiev and live a life of luxury and ease. Zelensky will no doubt end up in Miami Beach or Israel with a book deal.
The actual Ukrainians wont be so lucky.
If you're counting births and deaths, you need to count the ones outside the country as well. What subset of Ukrainians is most likely to leave the country? Pregnant women, duh! I haven't met a lot of Ukrainian refugees, but the ones I have were two-thirds female and one-third pregnant - way out of line with the national average, though not at all surprising given the Russian habit of slaughtering civilians in their beds every night of the week.
As for the cities "hanging on by a thread", the Russians have been in the outskirts of Pokrovsk for 18 months and still haven't captured it, even when they try to slip their men into town by dressing them in civilian clothes or Ukrainian uniforms, like the war-criminal assholes they are.
Everything else RCOCEAN II says here is a lie, starting with all the "You can't win a war" sentences. Has he ever read a history book? Does he really think the larger country always wins? Hahahaha!
As for Jaq and the Malaysian airliner, I have explained this more than once before but he pretends that he doesn't know he's been refuted more than once. The Malaysian airline thought their plane was safe because it was flying at 33,000 feet, and they believed the Russian assurances that the people fighting Ukraine in the Donbas were all local guerrillas using only weapons captured or stolen from armories, and that Russia was not supplying them with modern weapons, like antiaircraft missiles that could shoot down planes at 33,000 feet. Of course, the so-called "guerrillas" were in fact mostly Russian regulars, commanded by Russian officers like Girkin, and supplied with advanced Russian weaponry. Jaq's attempt to make Ukraine look bad just shows once again how utterly vile the Russians are and how utterly contemptible anyone who supports them is.
Weevil: So Gerkin is saying Russia's in quite a pickle? CC, JSM
The war that happens is always the war that could never happen. When Russia invaded Georgia it was a joy ride of pillage and plunder. That is what Ukraine was supposed to be.
But it became a meat grinder. Every war that is not resolved in the initial offensive thrust turns into World War One. Drones are just the new machine guns. These wars have traditionally, like ww1, ww2, Korea, been resolved by the intervention of a fresh new power, US, China.
The war has been on for 3 years and 9 months. We are in a new paradigm, and have a four year war with no US divisions coming to hit the beach. No Chinese divisions coming over the Yalu. New territory. Whatever will become of us?
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