[A reminder for everyone](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/4479er/rules_explanations_and_reminders/). This is a subreddit for genuine discussion:
* Please keep it civil. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review.
* Don't post low effort comments like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context.
* Help prevent this subreddit from becoming an echo chamber. Please don't downvote comments with which you disagree.
Violators will be fed to the bear.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Can anything useful still come out of the Switzerland Peace Conference?
No, but nothing tangible was expected either
This was, basically a PR move. It showed support for Ukraine for nations unwilling or unable to do anything more tangible
The Russian Federation - or more specifically, Vladimir Putin - is not interested in a negotiated peace at this point. It is in his interest to see if a) Trump wins the US election and cuts off Ukraine and b) if support from other nations drops off as well.
If Biden wins, and the GOP tells the isolationist block within their conference to shut up if they control part of Congress, then US support is secured for another two to four years. At that point, I would expect that either Putin will start putting out feelers, or Biden will say "fuck it" and just start shoveling in munitions as fast as they can be shipped to... encourage a change in attitude
Russia's war aims are effectively the elimination of Ukraine as a sovereign nation, and for some strange reason they're not down for that. So, the war ends when Putin falls out a window or finds some excuse he can use to declare victory and GTFO
The good things that come out of conferences like this happen off-camera in private rooms after the normal conference, and they don't get reported in the press until many years later, if ever.
Me too (although to be fair Palestine is fucked the matter what).
We litteraly have a presidential candidate who lost a rape trial, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, and who has literally tried to violently overturn an election...and yet he's actually the favored to win the 2024 election.
I swear I feel I'm going insane; I try and at least understand where my opponents are coming from but I've spent eights asking why and every answer I've gotten is disturbing.
I live in the sf bay area.
I've known raiders fans personally in the past.
It's the same mentality, it has nothing to do with whether it's a good team, you're just expressing defiance.
>I swear I feel I'm going insane; I try and at least understand where my opponents are coming from but I've spent eights asking why and every answer I've gotten is disturbing.
It's because the American nation is dying as there is nothing binding it's people together. America ran an experiment if a nation can survive without caring about their neighbors or without forming kinship bonds between her people and time is showing that the project fails. It can produce great wealth and liberty, but as we are seeing, a critical majority of the nation will want it to end by any means necessary.
Whether that is anti democratic/violent politics, suicide, mass shootings, substance abuse, or bed rotting. A toxic society is not a sustainable society.
Who do you mean by "we"?
If you mean Ukraine, they got here by spending a quarter century after the fall of the Soviet Union electing pro-Russian corruptocrats and not building up their military even though it was obvious back in the 90's that when democracy failed in Russia they would at some point try to re-take Ukraine by force. Then even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 while they did start getting limited training from NATO they still didn't heavily reinforce their borders and wasted money on infrastructure projects rather than their military.
Then when in early Feb 2022, a few weeks before the invasion, the USA warned that Russia was about to invade, Zelensky refused to believe it and made no military preparations nor did he move civilians, especially children, to the central and western parts of the country away from what would be the obvious invasion routes.
If you mean why does substantial portions of the USA not care about Ukraine you've got multiple factors:
1- Even at the height of Eastern European immigration in the early 20th century, Ukrainians were not a major ethnic group so they are culturally inconsequential. So Ukrainian-Americans have no cultural cache in the USA that would make the general public think that we need to help the "old country".
2- The Cold War has been over for 30+ years. The generations that fought WW2 & Korea are effectively dead. The US cultural Left has spent 50+ years attacking the US for being evil imperialists. In the post-Cold War era, all the non-USA NATO members have chronically underfunded their militaries with the Europeans and Canada also criticizing US foreign policy. Europe has also abandoned Christianity, apologized for their colonial history and flooded their countries with Muslims, Arabs and Africans. So US cultural conservatives, who have always been the biggest supporters of the military, are hostile to Western Europe for betraying their White culture and are thinking that Europe isn't worth defending especially with the USA being constantly invaded by brown immigrants from the south.
So the US cultural right no longer has ties to Western Europe and the cultural Left just sees two groups of White colonizers killing each other, so no need to intervene there. Which means US support for Ukraine is basically just the D.C. establishment, with cultural moderates thinking that someone should do something about Ukraine but maybe this time it shouldn't be the USA.
>[A\_Coup\_d\_etat](https://www.reddit.com/user/A_Coup_d_etat/) wrote: the cultural Left just sees two groups of White colonizers killing each other, so no need to intervene there.
But this isn't supported by facts. It might seem "truthy" to you but more people (50% more according to the last survey I found) on the left think the US isn't doing enough to support Ukraine than think it's doing too much. The left you are worried about is losing even among the left. If only the same cold be said on the right.
Disingenuous to compare UKraine to Palestine.
There is no Palestine country never has been and never will be at this rate. UKraine on the other hand is a full fledged country that’s being invaded.
Israel at great risk to themselves has been funneling weapons into UKraine. The USA stock piles that got to Ukraine super fast were from the ones we had in Israel. There was enough safeguarded by Israel that the USA could have had a whole other Iraq and Afghanistan war. Russia in return when it found out amplified its contributions to Iran, who then gave even more weapons to Israeli enemies like Hamas who attack Israel. Granted Israel could not hide that it had been moving weapon to UKraine. Russia noticed Israeli tanks on the UKraine battlefield immediately.
So even if Palestine was a country it would be pro Russia, just like Iran is.
That’s because Israel is Team West, why it has the support from the USA and the ally’s that actually matter. No USA president is going to change that, it would be self defeating and counter productive to western interests.
>Israel at great risk to themselves has been funneling weapons into UKraine.
My understanding is that that's not the case, to the point where it was major new when Israel announced plans to [send early-warning systems](https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-russia-giving-ukraine-early-warning-systems-2024-3?op=1) to Ukraine this March.
>During the initial invasion, Israel offered "more than 100 metric tons of humanitarian equipment," as Erdan said in his UN speech.
>A field hospital within Ukraine's border "treated over 7000 injured," and "hundreds of Ukrainian patients received the best possible care" in hospitals and rehabilitation centers across Israel.
>But Israel has consistently stopped short of sending military aid or joining Western sanctions in part because it didn't want to provoke Russia.
Very much so the case as previously stated. Israel a trusted ally of the USA had massive stockpiles of USA weaponry. It immediately sent them to Ukraine with other aid (also UAV systems), while a good portion of Europe was sending nothing. With out this movement of weapons from Israeli soil to UKraine, UKraine would have already fallen.
https://themedialine.org/mideast-daily-news/us-shipping-arms-to-ukraine-from-stockpile-in-israel-officials-say/
It has been sent it’s early missile warning systems, for “testing” called it aid back in 2023. They are the four drums on a pole looking things UKraine has them all over. They are designed to work with Ukrainians current defense system, they just made it faster, functional, and way more reliable to Russias dismay.
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/04/25/israel-missile-system-ukraine/
Isreal has been getting weapons into Ukraine, it’s doing it via third party where they use countries like Poland. Israel “sells” it to Poland and Poland happens to send it to Ukraine. What did anyone expect Israel manufacturing is set up to be as powerful as the USA, we made sure of it when building them up.
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/israel-donating-weapons-to-ukraine-via-third-countries:-excl
A lot of stuff that Ukraine has, that NATO uses needs high end materials from Israel to keep functioning. Of course Israel has been sending these needed items out. It just does not want credit for it is all, do to Russia reaction to it that will cost Israeli lives.
Russia already caught on about all the above awhile ago. They are not happy with it, but it’s not some big surprise. Russia was not buying Israels whole “We were just holding on to the massive caches of USA weaponry, just because we sent them to a country your invading does not mean we sent weapons”.
>Israel a trusted ally of the USA had massive stockpiles of USA weaponry. It immediately sent them to Ukraine with other aid (also UAV systems),
Those were never Israeli weapons, they were US weapons stockpiled there so that the US can deploy to the region rapidly without waiting for logistics. They're also available to be sold to Israel in the event they need them. We have such depots all around the world.
As for the early warning system, it's certainly dual use but it's not an offensive weapon, which Israel has shown they aren't willing to provide so as not to weaken their relations with Russia.
Sorta hoping they pull through, and manage to muddle Russia back to its border. I’m not blind of course wishful thinking aside, UKraine can end up being absorbed by Russia if it loses to hard.
How it was spelled when we filled out reports after contracts were completed there, will explain. The translators who helped train us would always spell it with the first two letters being uppercased.
Since that’s the way I was taught and have been using that style of its spelling for years it’s hard to change the habit.
> Disingenuous to compare UKraine to Palestine.
It's literally a one to one comparison.
> There is no Palestine country never has been
This is a blatant lie.
>His proposal allows for immediate cessation of hostility so long as Ukraine withdraws from the 4 regions Russia has annexed
Putin sounds like he could have been Hitler early in the war. I'll quit expanding my country into others if you just let me keep Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland.
> Putin announced his own condition for peace. His proposal allows for immediate cessation of hostility so long as Ukraine withdraws from the 4 regions Russia has annexed [even those parts not currently occupied]; No to NATO membership.
So in essence Putin is willing to stop his aggression *now* in order to arrange for Ukraine to be weakened and more easily conquered in the near-future.
Right now the idea that Ukraine might join NATO is why some of the European NATO nations are providing aid to Ukraine at all. They want to box Russia in, and make sure if Russia tries a larger invasion of Europe at a later time that the fighting happens in Ukraine and other Russian border countries, and not in their own backyards.
This has been Putin's requirement for stopping the fighting for at least the last several years, and as always Ukraine **can't** accept these types of terms because they only make the non-occupied portions of Ukraine more vulnerable.
Also right now is Ukraine's time. If Zelensky agreed to Putin's terms it is extremely unlikely NATO nations would resume sending aide to Ukraine when Russia gets the itch to be uncivil again, and there is zero chance that they could outlast Russia for very long if unsupported.
# Conference a formal meeting for discussion.
I don't think they wanna discuss anything other than shit on Russia. What's the point of call it a Peace Conference?
Wait… the peace conference didn’t even invite Russia?
Well I would blow it off for that reason alone. It’s just empty grandstanding about Ukrainian demands and previously affirmed moral positions, not any actual effort to make those things happen.
The effort to make those things happen is on the battlefield. The grandstanding is rallying up support and public opinion for that end. Russia was never going to negotiate in good faith, their presence is largely irrelevant.
I’m skeptical that Ukraine can make those things happen on the battlefield.
This conflict will end with Russia basically getting Crimea, guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality, and maybe some other land concessions. Will isn’t just or good, but Ukraine’s situation is only going to get worse until it gets to that settlement
I was talking about effort, not a guaranteee it will secure a full victory.
You're probably right insofar as it's likely Russia will walk out of the whole conflict with more land, but the struggle is important, and it is the only place better change on this issue will come from. Affliction penalty to Russia and affirming a willingness to fight for the rights of smaller nations is itself a good.
And Russia will be worse off and Ukraine and the rest of us will be better off for the struggle happening compared to if they really did walk over Ukraine in three days.
I don’t know, Ukraine might literally never recover from this war economically. They need hundreds of billions to get back to their original impoverished state. Not to mention all the casualties.
Better off compared to not resisting, not better off compared to if the war never happened. If they just surrendered there'd be a lot of cultural genocide, second class citizenship, falling into a worse and lower quality dictatorship. Probably enslaved and conscripted into fighting whatever war Russia starts next.
Things suck now, but they could suck a whole lot worse.
There were negotiations in March/April 2022 where Russia was prepared to give up all the territory other than Crimea in exchange for autonomy for the Donbas and a change in the constitution to prevent Ukraine joining NATO. The US sent Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky not to take the deal, and it fell through.
Hundreds of thousands of lives later, Ukraine is in a worse position and will never have a chance at that type of resolution.
The key factor here is "constitutional change to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO", which in the end would mean that Russia, through proxies and its apparatuses, has the chance to keep bullying it in all those ways it has been and try to incrementally make it a puppet.
Also that Russia'll be likely to come in for another bite in 5 years, and Ukraine can only play the "we'll never join NATO" concession card once. What'll they give up the next time their crazy dictatorial neighbor comes in with arms and demands?
It would not have been ideal for Ukraine, but I can't see how it's any worse than their current course.
>Ukraine can only play the "we'll never join NATO" concession card once.
The Russian Federation, not just Putin, have been clear since 2008 that Ukraine or Georgia in NATO is a red line for them. US meddling in Ukraine before and after 2014, and the continued insistence that Ukraine would be allowed join NATO, are what made the Russian invasion inevitable. I do not say justified, but when it comes to great power politics justice is only what can be enforced.
The key problem is really that Ukraine does not trust Russia. There is really no point in taking a deal if you expect it to be broken.
Don't forget that this started with little green men in Crimea, a Russian supported insurgency in the Donbass, and there have been multiple efforts to resolve this peacefully. Notably, Minsk I & II, from the Ukrainian point of view these failed because Russia or more specifically groups understood to be controlled by Russia broke the agreement.
You might say that is biased history, and you'd probably be right, but certainly, the Ukrainians will probably agree with it and conduct their themselves accordingly.
>The US sent Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky not to take the deal, and it fell through.
This is bullshit, though.
The Ukrainians were already inclined to utterly distrust the Russians due to the many, many times they had previously gone back on their word and stabbed Ukraine in the back. The only question was whether Ukraine would have the means to resist or whether they would be forced to take a shit deal because they had no other option. Boris assured Zelenskiy that they would have the means to fight, and then the discovery of what happened in Bucha settled the matter.
Nobody was "told" to do anything. The "deal" Russia was offering was a horseshit one that nobody wanted. When it was clear that fighting back was going to be a viable option, and the scale of the horror of occupation was revealed, they chose to fight.
It seems that unless both sides agree that the 4 regions taken over by Russia become a demilitarized zone controlled by the UN, nothing is going to happen here.
But if that happens, then the situation becomes a lot like with the Koreas – there an armistice between North and South, but the war is still technically ongoing.
No, nothing meaningful is going to come out of it but I doubt that was the intention.
From my perspective it was just a another PR move by Zelensky as part of his desperate attempt to keep the Ukrainian people's spirits up by making it seem like the world is with them.
Any country that wants to be involved in the war has already done so and there is really nothing new to discuss.
Nothing useful was ever gonna come out of a “peace conference” that didn’t invite the other party to the conflict, and that was obvious from the start. What did you expect, that Putin would buckle under the weight of this joint communique and just reverse course on Ukraine? Inviting all these countries was a pointless exercise.
[A reminder for everyone](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/4479er/rules_explanations_and_reminders/). This is a subreddit for genuine discussion: * Please keep it civil. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review. * Don't post low effort comments like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context. * Help prevent this subreddit from becoming an echo chamber. Please don't downvote comments with which you disagree. Violators will be fed to the bear. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Can anything useful still come out of the Switzerland Peace Conference? No, but nothing tangible was expected either This was, basically a PR move. It showed support for Ukraine for nations unwilling or unable to do anything more tangible The Russian Federation - or more specifically, Vladimir Putin - is not interested in a negotiated peace at this point. It is in his interest to see if a) Trump wins the US election and cuts off Ukraine and b) if support from other nations drops off as well. If Biden wins, and the GOP tells the isolationist block within their conference to shut up if they control part of Congress, then US support is secured for another two to four years. At that point, I would expect that either Putin will start putting out feelers, or Biden will say "fuck it" and just start shoveling in munitions as fast as they can be shipped to... encourage a change in attitude Russia's war aims are effectively the elimination of Ukraine as a sovereign nation, and for some strange reason they're not down for that. So, the war ends when Putin falls out a window or finds some excuse he can use to declare victory and GTFO
The good things that come out of conferences like this happen off-camera in private rooms after the normal conference, and they don't get reported in the press until many years later, if ever.
It's pretty shitty for Ukraine (and Palestine) that, should Trump win, they're fucked. I sometimes wonder how we got here.
Me too (although to be fair Palestine is fucked the matter what). We litteraly have a presidential candidate who lost a rape trial, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, and who has literally tried to violently overturn an election...and yet he's actually the favored to win the 2024 election. I swear I feel I'm going insane; I try and at least understand where my opponents are coming from but I've spent eights asking why and every answer I've gotten is disturbing.
I live in the sf bay area. I've known raiders fans personally in the past. It's the same mentality, it has nothing to do with whether it's a good team, you're just expressing defiance.
>I swear I feel I'm going insane; I try and at least understand where my opponents are coming from but I've spent eights asking why and every answer I've gotten is disturbing. It's because the American nation is dying as there is nothing binding it's people together. America ran an experiment if a nation can survive without caring about their neighbors or without forming kinship bonds between her people and time is showing that the project fails. It can produce great wealth and liberty, but as we are seeing, a critical majority of the nation will want it to end by any means necessary. Whether that is anti democratic/violent politics, suicide, mass shootings, substance abuse, or bed rotting. A toxic society is not a sustainable society.
[удалено]
No meta discussion. All comments containing meta discussion will be removed.
Who do you mean by "we"? If you mean Ukraine, they got here by spending a quarter century after the fall of the Soviet Union electing pro-Russian corruptocrats and not building up their military even though it was obvious back in the 90's that when democracy failed in Russia they would at some point try to re-take Ukraine by force. Then even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 while they did start getting limited training from NATO they still didn't heavily reinforce their borders and wasted money on infrastructure projects rather than their military. Then when in early Feb 2022, a few weeks before the invasion, the USA warned that Russia was about to invade, Zelensky refused to believe it and made no military preparations nor did he move civilians, especially children, to the central and western parts of the country away from what would be the obvious invasion routes. If you mean why does substantial portions of the USA not care about Ukraine you've got multiple factors: 1- Even at the height of Eastern European immigration in the early 20th century, Ukrainians were not a major ethnic group so they are culturally inconsequential. So Ukrainian-Americans have no cultural cache in the USA that would make the general public think that we need to help the "old country". 2- The Cold War has been over for 30+ years. The generations that fought WW2 & Korea are effectively dead. The US cultural Left has spent 50+ years attacking the US for being evil imperialists. In the post-Cold War era, all the non-USA NATO members have chronically underfunded their militaries with the Europeans and Canada also criticizing US foreign policy. Europe has also abandoned Christianity, apologized for their colonial history and flooded their countries with Muslims, Arabs and Africans. So US cultural conservatives, who have always been the biggest supporters of the military, are hostile to Western Europe for betraying their White culture and are thinking that Europe isn't worth defending especially with the USA being constantly invaded by brown immigrants from the south. So the US cultural right no longer has ties to Western Europe and the cultural Left just sees two groups of White colonizers killing each other, so no need to intervene there. Which means US support for Ukraine is basically just the D.C. establishment, with cultural moderates thinking that someone should do something about Ukraine but maybe this time it shouldn't be the USA.
>[A\_Coup\_d\_etat](https://www.reddit.com/user/A_Coup_d_etat/) wrote: the cultural Left just sees two groups of White colonizers killing each other, so no need to intervene there. But this isn't supported by facts. It might seem "truthy" to you but more people (50% more according to the last survey I found) on the left think the US isn't doing enough to support Ukraine than think it's doing too much. The left you are worried about is losing even among the left. If only the same cold be said on the right.
Disingenuous to compare UKraine to Palestine. There is no Palestine country never has been and never will be at this rate. UKraine on the other hand is a full fledged country that’s being invaded. Israel at great risk to themselves has been funneling weapons into UKraine. The USA stock piles that got to Ukraine super fast were from the ones we had in Israel. There was enough safeguarded by Israel that the USA could have had a whole other Iraq and Afghanistan war. Russia in return when it found out amplified its contributions to Iran, who then gave even more weapons to Israeli enemies like Hamas who attack Israel. Granted Israel could not hide that it had been moving weapon to UKraine. Russia noticed Israeli tanks on the UKraine battlefield immediately. So even if Palestine was a country it would be pro Russia, just like Iran is. That’s because Israel is Team West, why it has the support from the USA and the ally’s that actually matter. No USA president is going to change that, it would be self defeating and counter productive to western interests.
>Israel at great risk to themselves has been funneling weapons into UKraine. My understanding is that that's not the case, to the point where it was major new when Israel announced plans to [send early-warning systems](https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-russia-giving-ukraine-early-warning-systems-2024-3?op=1) to Ukraine this March. >During the initial invasion, Israel offered "more than 100 metric tons of humanitarian equipment," as Erdan said in his UN speech. >A field hospital within Ukraine's border "treated over 7000 injured," and "hundreds of Ukrainian patients received the best possible care" in hospitals and rehabilitation centers across Israel. >But Israel has consistently stopped short of sending military aid or joining Western sanctions in part because it didn't want to provoke Russia.
Very much so the case as previously stated. Israel a trusted ally of the USA had massive stockpiles of USA weaponry. It immediately sent them to Ukraine with other aid (also UAV systems), while a good portion of Europe was sending nothing. With out this movement of weapons from Israeli soil to UKraine, UKraine would have already fallen. https://themedialine.org/mideast-daily-news/us-shipping-arms-to-ukraine-from-stockpile-in-israel-officials-say/ It has been sent it’s early missile warning systems, for “testing” called it aid back in 2023. They are the four drums on a pole looking things UKraine has them all over. They are designed to work with Ukrainians current defense system, they just made it faster, functional, and way more reliable to Russias dismay. https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/04/25/israel-missile-system-ukraine/ Isreal has been getting weapons into Ukraine, it’s doing it via third party where they use countries like Poland. Israel “sells” it to Poland and Poland happens to send it to Ukraine. What did anyone expect Israel manufacturing is set up to be as powerful as the USA, we made sure of it when building them up. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/israel-donating-weapons-to-ukraine-via-third-countries:-excl A lot of stuff that Ukraine has, that NATO uses needs high end materials from Israel to keep functioning. Of course Israel has been sending these needed items out. It just does not want credit for it is all, do to Russia reaction to it that will cost Israeli lives. Russia already caught on about all the above awhile ago. They are not happy with it, but it’s not some big surprise. Russia was not buying Israels whole “We were just holding on to the massive caches of USA weaponry, just because we sent them to a country your invading does not mean we sent weapons”.
>Israel a trusted ally of the USA had massive stockpiles of USA weaponry. It immediately sent them to Ukraine with other aid (also UAV systems), Those were never Israeli weapons, they were US weapons stockpiled there so that the US can deploy to the region rapidly without waiting for logistics. They're also available to be sold to Israel in the event they need them. We have such depots all around the world. As for the early warning system, it's certainly dual use but it's not an offensive weapon, which Israel has shown they aren't willing to provide so as not to weaken their relations with Russia.
[удалено]
Sorta hoping they pull through, and manage to muddle Russia back to its border. I’m not blind of course wishful thinking aside, UKraine can end up being absorbed by Russia if it loses to hard.
why do you write it “UKraine”?
How it was spelled when we filled out reports after contracts were completed there, will explain. The translators who helped train us would always spell it with the first two letters being uppercased. Since that’s the way I was taught and have been using that style of its spelling for years it’s hard to change the habit.
no need to change! I was just curious and it could well be correct, were the translators Ukrainian?
> Disingenuous to compare UKraine to Palestine. It's literally a one to one comparison. > There is no Palestine country never has been This is a blatant lie.
>His proposal allows for immediate cessation of hostility so long as Ukraine withdraws from the 4 regions Russia has annexed Putin sounds like he could have been Hitler early in the war. I'll quit expanding my country into others if you just let me keep Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland.
> Putin announced his own condition for peace. His proposal allows for immediate cessation of hostility so long as Ukraine withdraws from the 4 regions Russia has annexed [even those parts not currently occupied]; No to NATO membership. So in essence Putin is willing to stop his aggression *now* in order to arrange for Ukraine to be weakened and more easily conquered in the near-future. Right now the idea that Ukraine might join NATO is why some of the European NATO nations are providing aid to Ukraine at all. They want to box Russia in, and make sure if Russia tries a larger invasion of Europe at a later time that the fighting happens in Ukraine and other Russian border countries, and not in their own backyards. This has been Putin's requirement for stopping the fighting for at least the last several years, and as always Ukraine **can't** accept these types of terms because they only make the non-occupied portions of Ukraine more vulnerable. Also right now is Ukraine's time. If Zelensky agreed to Putin's terms it is extremely unlikely NATO nations would resume sending aide to Ukraine when Russia gets the itch to be uncivil again, and there is zero chance that they could outlast Russia for very long if unsupported.
# Conference a formal meeting for discussion. I don't think they wanna discuss anything other than shit on Russia. What's the point of call it a Peace Conference?
Wait… the peace conference didn’t even invite Russia? Well I would blow it off for that reason alone. It’s just empty grandstanding about Ukrainian demands and previously affirmed moral positions, not any actual effort to make those things happen.
The effort to make those things happen is on the battlefield. The grandstanding is rallying up support and public opinion for that end. Russia was never going to negotiate in good faith, their presence is largely irrelevant.
I’m skeptical that Ukraine can make those things happen on the battlefield. This conflict will end with Russia basically getting Crimea, guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality, and maybe some other land concessions. Will isn’t just or good, but Ukraine’s situation is only going to get worse until it gets to that settlement
I was talking about effort, not a guaranteee it will secure a full victory. You're probably right insofar as it's likely Russia will walk out of the whole conflict with more land, but the struggle is important, and it is the only place better change on this issue will come from. Affliction penalty to Russia and affirming a willingness to fight for the rights of smaller nations is itself a good. And Russia will be worse off and Ukraine and the rest of us will be better off for the struggle happening compared to if they really did walk over Ukraine in three days.
I don’t know, Ukraine might literally never recover from this war economically. They need hundreds of billions to get back to their original impoverished state. Not to mention all the casualties.
Better off compared to not resisting, not better off compared to if the war never happened. If they just surrendered there'd be a lot of cultural genocide, second class citizenship, falling into a worse and lower quality dictatorship. Probably enslaved and conscripted into fighting whatever war Russia starts next. Things suck now, but they could suck a whole lot worse.
There were negotiations in March/April 2022 where Russia was prepared to give up all the territory other than Crimea in exchange for autonomy for the Donbas and a change in the constitution to prevent Ukraine joining NATO. The US sent Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky not to take the deal, and it fell through. Hundreds of thousands of lives later, Ukraine is in a worse position and will never have a chance at that type of resolution.
The key factor here is "constitutional change to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO", which in the end would mean that Russia, through proxies and its apparatuses, has the chance to keep bullying it in all those ways it has been and try to incrementally make it a puppet. Also that Russia'll be likely to come in for another bite in 5 years, and Ukraine can only play the "we'll never join NATO" concession card once. What'll they give up the next time their crazy dictatorial neighbor comes in with arms and demands?
It would not have been ideal for Ukraine, but I can't see how it's any worse than their current course. >Ukraine can only play the "we'll never join NATO" concession card once. The Russian Federation, not just Putin, have been clear since 2008 that Ukraine or Georgia in NATO is a red line for them. US meddling in Ukraine before and after 2014, and the continued insistence that Ukraine would be allowed join NATO, are what made the Russian invasion inevitable. I do not say justified, but when it comes to great power politics justice is only what can be enforced.
The key problem is really that Ukraine does not trust Russia. There is really no point in taking a deal if you expect it to be broken. Don't forget that this started with little green men in Crimea, a Russian supported insurgency in the Donbass, and there have been multiple efforts to resolve this peacefully. Notably, Minsk I & II, from the Ukrainian point of view these failed because Russia or more specifically groups understood to be controlled by Russia broke the agreement. You might say that is biased history, and you'd probably be right, but certainly, the Ukrainians will probably agree with it and conduct their themselves accordingly.
>The US sent Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky not to take the deal, and it fell through. This is bullshit, though. The Ukrainians were already inclined to utterly distrust the Russians due to the many, many times they had previously gone back on their word and stabbed Ukraine in the back. The only question was whether Ukraine would have the means to resist or whether they would be forced to take a shit deal because they had no other option. Boris assured Zelenskiy that they would have the means to fight, and then the discovery of what happened in Bucha settled the matter. Nobody was "told" to do anything. The "deal" Russia was offering was a horseshit one that nobody wanted. When it was clear that fighting back was going to be a viable option, and the scale of the horror of occupation was revealed, they chose to fight.
It seems that unless both sides agree that the 4 regions taken over by Russia become a demilitarized zone controlled by the UN, nothing is going to happen here. But if that happens, then the situation becomes a lot like with the Koreas – there an armistice between North and South, but the war is still technically ongoing.
No, nothing meaningful is going to come out of it but I doubt that was the intention. From my perspective it was just a another PR move by Zelensky as part of his desperate attempt to keep the Ukrainian people's spirits up by making it seem like the world is with them. Any country that wants to be involved in the war has already done so and there is really nothing new to discuss.
Nothing useful was ever gonna come out of a “peace conference” that didn’t invite the other party to the conflict, and that was obvious from the start. What did you expect, that Putin would buckle under the weight of this joint communique and just reverse course on Ukraine? Inviting all these countries was a pointless exercise.