So you agree that denazification was basically Putin’s propaganda to dupe the Russian masses and the pro-Russian “useful idiots” in the West. — neomac

Each side is going to use information to make their case and mix both truth and untrue information to do so.

Israel has used October 7th to justify their actions, they've lied and exaggerated plenty of things about it, did they therefore "dupe everyone" because they've also used false information?

If you're pro-Israeli genocide then you'll just say "of course they exaggerate and add in some lies where they can!!" they're fighting a war and also fighting an information war!!

Likewise, Ukraine has been caught with a long list of lies and if you're pro-Ukraine you'll just say the same thing.

If you're interested in reality, then separating the fact from the exaggeration and deliberate lies is one first relevant step. An additional step is understanding what impact this information, both true and false, has.

The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia; so, at minimum, the same kind of security concern as armed groups who have no problem chanting "death to America" is to America), but far greater military concern is NATO (a bunch of terrorists are mostly a nuisance to powerful nation states, but where terrorist organizations, such as Azov, can have an outsized impact is in starting a war with another nation state).

So, since the Nazis are definitely there and pre-2022 already fighting a war against Russian speakers in the Donbas (which many Russian speakers in Russia feel some responsibility for) and their explicit objective is to destroy Russia, obviously they are one military concern, but, objectively not as big a concern as NATO.

There are a lot of reasons to go to war of course. A lot of analysis will go into including offices who make long term strategic analysis (which will focus a lot on nuclear weapons as they are "the threat" in any long term view of the position of any of the great powers; hence the resources spent on them).

Of course, resources and spheres of influence and so on are considerations too.

If you bother to read what I wrote, I did not dismiss the idea Russia would have invaded Ukraine come-what-may, I simply put down my reasons why I think that's unlikely (if Ukraine doesn't pose a threat, it's strategically far more advantage to "keep the spice flowing" to Europe; Ukraine really has to create a lot of problems to become a higher strategic priority than the spice flows).

So we can do the analysis and easily come up with most, if not all, the priority considerations in the decision to go to war.

The Nazis are definitely one important consideration.

Exactly how important in purely military terms, I don't know. The one thing that is certain is that it's mainly the Nazis that kept the war in the Donbas going and were killing so many civilians and once it was clear other sectors of Ukrainian society couldn't control them, a bigger war was essentially inevitable for this reason alone.

However, the Nazis also obviously play a role in both Russian legitimate reasons to wage war as well as propaganda to wage the information war.

In this, Ukraine and the West, simply gave Russia an incredible diplomatic and information-war gift.

The Nazis are obviously a much bigger emotional trigger compared to a lot of dry analysis that may require declassifying information to really make the case (information, such as vulnerability to a first strike by the US from Ukraine territory, that would never be declassified).

So, we can understand the Nazis are really there based on top-notch Western journalism before anyone got the memo that the Nazis were the good guys now and of course you need some colourful characters if you want to win!

However, we can also understand that if one side tolerates and basically promotes Naziism then the Russian side is going to be really angry about that and those facts on the ground will be very motivating a lot of Russian and also help consolidate the home front as "we're fighting the Nazis" is an easy argument to make (especially if you have Western journalists on YouTube interviewing those Nazis and there isn't really any doubt the Nazis are there and what they represent).

With they take what's factually true and exaggerate for the purposes of waging the information war, obviously, as does Zelensky and "Ukrainian Intelligence", as does Bibi and the IDF, as does Hamas.

So, in summary, parts of reality are simply necessary to understand a bigger part of reality and a single part can have multiple connections to other parts in different ways and on different scales.

To make the argument that Putin "duped" Russia into prosecuting the war you either need to accept Zelensky and Bibi do an equal, if not more, amount of duping their own populations, or then it boils down to whether you think the war effort is justified.

If you think Zelensky and Bibi are justified then their lies you won't think of as duping but just another aspect to the war.

If you don't think Putins' war effort is justified then you'll conclude the exact same kind of lies are "duping".

Actually determining who's justified in doing what is a complicated task, especially between nation states with a long history of conflict, and I have made it clear over the course of this discussion that I haven't done that analysis nor likely to.

For me, a pre-condition to justified warfare is the likelihood of being able to win. You need really extreme conditions to justify fighting to the death or sacrificing a large number of citizens and still losing; conditions I simply do not see in the Russia-Ukraine war.

I don't think Ukraine can win on purely military terms, I don't think anyone is coming to their aid, and therefore I think they should sue for peace and use their leverage of remaining force application to negotiate as good a deal as they can. If they can, with enough Western money and weapons consistently provided over a long period of time, eventually "tire the Russians out" and achieve some gains that way, I don't think that would be at an acceptable cost.

Ukrainian justification is secondary to whether they can win or not, and at an acceptable cost or not, in my view.

Now, I do not think Ukraine's war on the Donbas was justified, so based on this I'd conclude Russia's war against Ukraine is therefore justified.

As a Canadian we had Quebec separatists as a big issue when I was growing up, at no point did I (or that many Canadians for that matter) believe going and killing Quebeckers would be a justified course of action if they separated, even if we non-Quebeckers largely believed it to be "illegal".

So, to say Ukraine was justified in attacking the Donbas and killing Donbas civilians I would need to accept it would be justified for English-Canadians to go kill French-Canadians if they tried to separate (regardless of what I thought of their provincial run elections or provincial politicians or whatever). And I simply don't see why I'd be justified in going and killing French-Canadians in pretty much any situation of separation or how it was done or "if it was legal" or whatever arguments maybe lying around.

Furthermore, if Quebec was still right next to France and we English-Canadians decided it was a good idea to go kill Quebeckers and force them back into our confederacy, then I wouldn't be surprised nor see much grounds to complain if France, with their far bigger military, decided to spank us back across the Outaouais. And why wouldn't French speakers in France defend French speaking populations in Canada if being shelled by Canadians running around with a bunch of Nazi symbolism all over the place?

You play with fire, you get burned.

Of note, Quebec is still in Canada today and we didn't even have to kill anybody. We did have to recognize they're their own nation and can have all sorts of language laws; so, again, I don't see why Russian speakers wouldn't be as pissed about any language repression as French speakers in Canada would be (we accepted all sorts of pro-French language laws and many still wanted to separate, that votes were really close).

Hmm Shouldn't really need a side-track to (genuinely) try answering the inquiry. Anyway, irredentism and such has come up among others, promoted by the Kremlin circle as justification. But the Kremlin doesn't want Zelenskyy or his government in Kyiv despite having been elected, maybe it was different once. (Euromaidan...?) — jorndoe

I literally have no clue what you're trying to say and how it relates to the conversation.

You state they "covered their bases" and answering that is a side track? Or then you could just answer directly but are deciding to side track? Or is my question a side track?

You make no points, you just spam your articles. Pretty much all your questions are just "maybe this, maybe that" and then spamming all your preferred news sources. That's not arguing any points and thus participating in a dialogue, but just basically microblogging in an inappropriate place.

I honestly don't see why the moderators tolerate these kinds of comments, which I don't say often.

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?), — Jabberwock

For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there.

Furthermore, the US started the dismantling of the non-proliferation architecture (based on mostly treaties that the US didn't ratify anyways, so was never US law to begin with, which doesn't inspire much trust as a starting point) in abandoning both in official "executive policy" (what I guess best describes non-ratified treaties that we're just going to pretend are meaningful) and action (actually developing the weapons systems banned by the treaties) the ABM treaty and then the INF treaty.

The US makes clear they are a "first use" nation.

The US Is the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs on cities. More importantly, US policy makers and citizens aren't too phased by it.

The sort of bullshit you're spinning in your comment definitely works in Western echo chambers (how dare they say our nuclear weapons and expanding our territory are threatening!!) but in the real world outside those echo chambers, people, especially people that US policy makers continuously refer to as "rivals" and "enemies", don't just go ahead and assume US nuclear weapons are not a threat and of course "they would never use them".

Facts on the ground can change. Russia really didn't like the forward positioning of US missile bases in Europe (that can be easily loaded with nuclear warheads). You can say all you want "But they would never load them with nukes!!! It was needed to counter Iran!!!" but what are those assurances worth?

Absolutely nothing.

Of course other powers are going to view US military hardware (of any kind) moving closer to their borders as threatening and will take action to mitigate that insofar as they can.

Additionally, with a long contiguous border with NATO where on the other side there's all sorts of "extremist nationals" anyone charged with analyzing the risks will come up with scenarios where small factions (who have no problem saying their goal is to start a war with Russia) could basically start some shit that then escalates.

It's so incredibly delusional to minimize the weight the threat of nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear escalation impose on decision making that it's almost not worthy of retort.

It's literally "get a clue" level of delusion.

Even stupider is the circle people go in of "of course Ukraine wants to join NATO and be protected from Russia!" and then when it's pointed out that Russia will obviously react to that (regardless of whatever moral speech you may have about it) switch to "Ukraine declared neutrality!!"

It's just dumb.

↪boethius, that was a question, inviting responses (preferably evident/justified), it was even emphasized. :D Get your glasses, try again. — jorndoe

Ok, the context of your question was:

"""
Switzerland and Sweden have a tradition of neutrality, or at least had. Moldova has a constitutional neutrality clause, though sort of impaired by Transnistria. The Baltics have their own stories (2023Jul8).

Similar to what's come up before (2022Mar13, 2022Jul21, 2022Oct8, 2022Nov9), suppose that Ukraine had ... ▸ declared neutrality with respect to international military alliance memberships, formally on paper / constitutionally (2022Mar8, 2022Mar9, 2022Mar11); ▸ retained right to self-defense, e.g. from invaders (shouldn't be controversial), including foreign training and/or weaponry as the case may be; ▸ explicitly stated that others respect sovereignty, self-determination, freedom to seek own path (shouldn't be controversial); ▸ actively pursued EU membership, and perhaps sought other such cooperation ... Something along those lines.

The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?
"""

(↑ for an intact Ukraine) — Sep 26, 2023

... "something along those lines" ... "The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?"

What bases?

Now, if the point of your comment is that somehow Ukraine "was neutral all along!!" we're already discussed that. Ukraine's definition of neutrality was ... doesn't exclude joining NATO which they were trying to do.

If your question was what would Russia have done if a peace agreement was reached, I note above the reasons to expect Russia to follow a peace deal (pre-blowing-up-Nord Stream) is the incentive to keep selling gas to Europe and so if the issues were settled, neutrality and the ongoing Donbas war, then my expectation would be that Russia would not re-invade simply because the risk would be gone and the costs outweigh the benefits (Crimea is important vis-a-vis oil transport across the Black Sea, but there's not really anything else in Ukraine that is worth more than the European gas trade; if that doesn't matter, only conquest, then I guess it's possible to have some convoluted plan to invade, get a peace deal and then reinvade later, but Russia also has other security concerns so I just don't see how invading Ukraine would come back as a priority if the strategic risk is gone).

That would be what I'd expect from the Kremlin if there was a peace deal at the moment in question.

However, for me, the more important question in deciding to fight a war is the ability to win the war. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you're conquered and sometimes you're liberated, throughout history. For me, everyone dying on principle is not sufficient reason for many, many, many deaths.

When you say Ukrainian sovereignty shouldn't be controversial, well neither should Iraq's, Afghanistan's, Syria's, Lybia's, and so on.

More important, "isn't controversial" is not what actually matters, but rather "important enough to send our own troops to defend Ukraine".

The policy I have issue with is sending weapons, which scholarly work on the subject indicates simply causes vastly more deaths without changing outcomes of conflicts. If it's important, we should go fight for it, do the "standing up" and have ourselves a little nuclear standoff and see what happens. If it's not important, but we like to say it is, sending weapons in lieu of honour is a cowards move.

Was Putin also ready to hold hands with Zelenskyi and sing Kumbayah? :snicker:

Again, a bit crazy Putinist apologetics from you, but that's you...

If all that Putin had wanted is Ukrainian neutrality, all it would have taken is for those troops to stay on the border and never invade Ukraine. And oh wait, he actually did get those promises from Germany that Ukraine won't be in NATO.

Yet Ukraine was ready to fall in a few days, just like Crimea had been taken. Without a shot, or just a few.

But that fact isn't your line. Nope, bad boy US had it's evil intensions. :smirk: — ssu

I'll go ahead and assume you're responding to me.

It's literally raining straw these days.

I've spent several long posts (and many dozens at previous junctures in the conversation, explaining the same thing) that precisely you would not simply "trust" Putin to hold hands and sing Kumbayah.

You would assume the peace deal is not worth much more than the paper it's written on and that Russia would reinvade if there was interest and pressure to do so.

However, that is the case in all treaties and other deals between states and obviously is not a reason for states to reject treaty negotiations.

The 4 points I outline are the main points of consideration.

Indeed, you may find it very probable that Russia would just invade later anyways, but you still have to be confident to be able to win the war with Western support (and be confident in that lasting) to justify fighting the war at hand (and also that it would not be over some threshold of acceptable cost to "win").

There is a whole bunch of points needing consideration to justify sending men to die and absolutely wrecking the countries economy and demographics (which were already quite bad, and millions of young people who left as refugees are unlikely to return).

Which should not be a controversial position that wars should be based on more than whims and "bah! Can't trust Putin!"

Now, if you conclude it's probable that Russia would keep its word, it would not be based simply on the fact that they gave their word, it would be based on a projection of the political situation in which one expects Russia to have various reasons not to re-invade.

For example, had there been a peace relatively quickly, the gas flows to Europe would have likely restarted, a "peace dividend" everyone would have been happy to collect. So, this would be one reason putting pressure against Russia re-invading. Likewise, if Ukraine became neutral and wasn't a nuclear threat (of hosting NATO missiles) and Russia obviously kept Crimea, which was and is the major strategic consideration in terms of land, war in the Donbas resolved, and there wasn't really any "problems" anymore, then one may project out that the diplomatic and economic cost of restarting the war is simply far higher than anything Russia would have to gain in re-attacking a Neutral Ukraine.

I point out that Russia may have no interest (or at least one predicts that as likely) in re-invading a neutral Ukraine and so maybe very unlikely to do so for various reasons in addition to having signed an agreement, and you turn this into me saying that Putin wanted to "hold hands and sing Kumbayah".

Yes denazification and Russian-speaking population, and blah blah blah from Putin were cosmetic, political seasoning. But such Russian propaganda arguments to dupe the masses were the ones you cared so much to regurgitate in this thread. Just neutrality was fine for Putin to have peace, go figure. — neomac

Again the Nazi's are definitely there and definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine).

One of those problems I, and others, explained at length was the Nazis are a problem also because they are excellent propaganda material for Russia, which will of course (regardless of the number of Nazis in Ukraine and their actual power) they will be exaggerated by Russia for propaganda purposes as well.

Ukraine and the West tolerating, arming, training, supporting and apologizing for these Nazis is an immense military and diplomatic gift to Russia.

Of course, the war and the reasons for the war are a lot bigger than just these Nazi groups, it's just a super easy sell to the Russian population. Especially at the start of the war, "denazification" is a lot easier sell than preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, which is a fairly abstract menace to a normal person.

At the point of interest here, the negotiation the negotiator is talking about, Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol, delivering the "denazification" PR victory required to sell a peace to the Russian people: We went in, spanked those Nazis and now we can live in peace with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters (would have been the basic narrative had a peace been achieved).

Back to the issue at hand, you're ask was:

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”? — neomac

I provide this evidence.

Instead of being like "oh, my bad, my reading comprehension is indeed pretty low considering we already went over this very topic", you then try to put the words of the Ukrainian negotiator in my mouth.

Obviously in any peace deal (at the start of the war at least) "denazification" would be cosmetic political seasoning as there's no peace agreement Ukraine would accept where banning Banderism or Azov Brigade and implementing that practically is not really feasible anyways.

The Nazis are a critical element to understanding the war, both understanding Ukrainian internal politics as well as understanding Russian internal politics.

A major reason I predicted there would not be a "collapse of moral" or major internal opposition to the war, as many were predicting at the start, because "we're killing Nazis" is a pretty good argument in favour of sufficient reason to prosecutor the war for the average Russian soldier or citizen: are the Nazis there? Yes, even according to the Wests own media!

It's basically their version of "support the troops".

Now, now where have I stated that fighting the Nazis in Ukraine was sufficient reason for Putin or the Kremlin to prosecute the war. Political and military leaders would need more reasons than that: NATO is one, resources another, as well as many other considerations may have gone into the decision (for example doing the war before AI gets out of hand and changes the power dynamic in unpredictable ways could have been one reason to do the war sooner rather than later).

Understanding that the Nazis in Ukraine is an easy and powerful argument for Putin to sell the war to his own people is just pointing out an obvious fact that is required to understand the war (and be able to predict, or then understand in retrospect, why the Russian soldiers were unlikely to flee and the civilians unlikely to topple the government, in addition to simply the regular reason that's unlikely).

Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements. — neomac

Your reading comprehension is really disastrous.

It could only be done if there were guarantees of security.

But we could not sign something, withdraw, everyone would have exhaled there, and then they would have come more prepared.

They would have come, in fact, unpepared to such an opponent.

Therefore, we could only work when there is 100% certainty that this will not happen again.

And there is no such certainty.

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all. And let’s just fight. — Interview with David Arakhamia, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks

Is what he says. He doesn't say "oh, yeah, we were going to do it, but just needed some security guarantees from the West".

He's quite clear that the reason was they would need 100% confidence, which is simply propaganda.

Obviously there's no 100% certainty of anything: winning the war, continued support from the West to even tread water, etc.

He's also quite clear that Boris Johnson tells them to not sign anything and "let's just fight", not that he'd really, really like to arrange a Western security guarantee to increase the confidence the deal would last ... but, shucks, he just can't do that for various reasons.

Obviously when Ukraine rejected the peace deal they imagined things would be better now than they currently are. Maybe they believed the Russian troops really would mutiny and flee, or ATGM's were sufficient to win the war, or that they'd have a numbers advantage.

Unless you're arguing that they sat down and said: "Ok, ok, ok, war game hats, focus, focus we'll go on an offensive that will take a bit of land back on the flanks, then go on another disastrous offensive later that achieves nothing, then our army will be significantly diminished and we'll be at risk of the collapse of the front and the collapse of the government: Let's do it! Break! Hut! Hut! Hut! as our American friends say".

Obviously they did not foresee being in the current situation, therefore seems a mistake to have rejected the peace deal on offer, therefore saying "100% confidence" was lacking sounds a lot better than saying they thought they would have won by now, but turn out to be wrong about that.

It's all very obvious.

What’s that now?! Dude, focus, read and answer my questions, rambling stuff as if you are talking with your imaginary friend is getting boring. I’m not your therapist. And I have no pity for you. — neomac

Truly remarkable.

Intellectual hobbits. You can learn all their ways in a month, and yet after a three hundred lives of men, they still surprise you.

Sure, but I’m more interested in ALL other alleged errors, though. — neomac

It's honestly difficult to keep up and I don't have an over abundance of time at the moment.

But to take your very next sentence under consideration:

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”? — neomac

We literally just went over this:

A few points relevant to our current discussion seem to be clarified about the negotiations by someone who was actually there.

So not only did we know a lot about these negotiations and the Russia offer before, now we know even more!!

Russia's only important interest was neutrality (according to the chief negotiator for Ukraine talking to a Ukrainians journalist), all the other points were "cosmetic, political seasoning" in his words.

He then explains the reasons for rejecting the Russian offer was security guarantees (something we've discussed at length). — boethius

The interview in question:



I totally get it, the policies of America are usually hidden behind a smoke screen of plausible deniability and key actors don't usually just come out and tell us what's up.

I do understand your frustration in trying to hold together your teetering tower of plausible sounding (to at least yourself anyways) alternatives to, if not the obvious facts, what is clearly very likely to be true.

First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? — neomac

Your reading comprehension continues to degrade and I will only fix this first error.

What I stated was:

They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself. — boethius

What I am stating is that Ukrainian politicians are aware, like the US and Russian politicians, that states can break their promises.

How do you go from my literally claiming "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises." followed by "Ukrainian politicians as well." to concluding I am claiming that Russia can therefore be trusted?

What is propaganda is stating the reason to reject the peace deal is a lack of trust.

It sounds like a good reason: We don't like Putin (he's invaded the country after all", he's the enemy, therefore he can't be trusted, therefore it is justified to reject the peace deal.

What I am explaining is that the basic lack of trust between states is always at all times (the US literally got caught spying on Merkel), and relationships between states are not and never all trust based.

Relations are pressures and interest based. Notably, pressures and interests are not the same thing. Your interest can be one thing but I can pressure you to do another.

When states collaborate closely, are "friends", it is not because of simple word giving, but because there are pressures and interests that keep them aligned.

"Saying this peace deal is otherwise good but we can't accept it due to a lack of trust" is simply insufficient reason. No country trusts any other country, yet deals are made all the time.

To give a non-state example, prosecutors cut deals with criminals all the time. Do they trust the criminals? No. If trust was a necessary condition of deals there would by definition never be deals between prosecutors and criminals. What's the basis of the deal from the prosecutors perspective (i.e. why does the prosecutor bet the criminal will stick to the deal)? Pressure and interest.

Why the Zelensky regime requires this myth that "Putin can't be trusted" is because:

1. If they did a proper analysis and concluded continuing the war was the best thing to do for Ukraine, obviously that analysis was wrong. If they were betting they could raise a 1 million man army, get NATO weapons and training, and then just spank the Russians across the Azov sea, in a short amount of time limiting the destruction to Ukraine, they were obviously wrong.

2. If they didn't bother to sit down and do a proper analysis (for example actually war-game out with Boris Johnson what he was suggesting, how it would actually work in practice) but rather just saw Dollars! Dollars! Dollars!!! So many free dollars raining down from the US and EU treasuries they'd be literally barfing with dollars, then maybe they just didn't really give a shit about their intuition that they were unlikely to beat the Russians and they'd be sending a lot of Ukrainians to die so that themselves and their friends could pocket a pretty penny.

Obviously case 1 is more honourable, but they were obviously wrong and admitting that would undermine belief in their competence and fitness to lead. Case 2 is less honourable, but as has been repeated in the media a lot lately, Ukraine does struggle with corruption.

For, if you reject a reasonable peace deal (i.e. not something like "rape all the babies" as a concession), sufficient reason still requires being able to win the war.

This should all be quite obvious. For example, if you're robbing me and pointing a gun at me and offer me the deal "just give me your wallet and you can go" the reason for me to accept is not because I trust you, I honestly don't trust you as hard that maybe before you to believe, but because you're pointing a gun at me and I view the odds of your interest (you want the wallet and don't want to kill anyone) and pressure (the state will hunt you more vigorously if you murder me) outweighs my ability to prevail with fisticuffs in a gun fight.

Now, if I think you're going to shoot me anyways if I give you my wallet (or the keys to the vault or whatever it is that you want), then that obviously changes the calculus.

The difference in relations between states is that losing a fight does not imply the deaths of all your citizens. It could, such as Genghis Kahn intent to make an example of your defiance, but that's not the case here.

One must evaluate all the potential outcomes, and their respective likelihoods, of battle, as well as the cost of battle, to determine the wisest course.

Simply because the West treats Ukrainian lives as expendable without a second thought does not entail that their worth really is expendable without a second thought.

The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then? — Sep 26, 2023

It's really unclear what your point is.

What I'm pointing out is that evaluating the likelihood for Russia not reinvading Ukraine later if a peace deal is reached would be based on a bunch of factors, one of which is the diplomatic cost of breaking a "guarantee".

You are entirely free to argue that Russia would reinvade later even if Ukraine is neutral. Of course, this is only 1 of the 4 points I mentioned that need evaluating.

If you want to actually participate in the discussion you need to present actual arguments. Just linking to stuff is not a form of argument; you're basically just spamming with your preferred sources while not making any arguments.

To me that’s just a straw man argument: first, you didn’t provide evidence that relevant Ukrainian, Russian, American politicians take “ ‘guaranteed’ as some sort of ontological status” whereby promises are necessarily kept as a reason to enter or not enter into contracts. — neomac

They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself.

Besides you even contradict yourself because after insisting that “guaranteed” is ornamental because it doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" and this would hold for contracts between states and work contracts between individuals, later you deny that the term “guaranteed” is ornamental “between parties subordinate to state power” even though that still doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept. — neomac

You need to really work on your reading comprehension.

The word "guarantee" appearing in a contract subordinate to state power is still ornamental. It simply embellishes the promise as an ornament to said promise, and if you embellish a promise then a judge will take that into account in determining liability.

It is not substantive though because you already promised whatever it is; adding that you guarantee it is simply promising twice, leading to even more actions by the promised party that are reasonable to take assuming you promise (and therefore more damaging if you don't fulfill your "super duper promise").

The issues of substance in such a dispute are "what was promised?", "was the promised fulfilled or not", "if the promise wasn't fulfilled, what are the damages that caused?".

None of the substantive issues relate to a guarantee (because guarantees do not change the ontological status of anything of substance; whatever is actually guaranteed, say "the laws of physics" obviously there would never be a court case where you promise the laws of physics will hold and that doesn't happen".

Where the word "guarantee" becomes relevant is once the substantive issues are settled and the promise has indeed been made but has not been fulfilled and indeed it caused much strife and consternation and rescheduling (aka. damages), then the fact that ornaments were added to the substantive meaning of the promise to embellish said promise will come to bear on the extent of liability or punishment for said damages; as a judge can easily say that when you flex your promises by guaranteeing them, and then don't deliver, I pity the fool!

However, between states, precisely because everyone knows it was an ornament, there isn't really any difference between calling something "security guarantees" or then "security promises"; the diplomatic cost will be the same whatever you call it.

I would question all your four points — neomac

You can question all the points.

My explanation is to expound on the correct analytical framework in which to evaluate a proposed peace settlement. If "security guarantees" (as in promises) can never be "actually guaranteed" (as in an ontological status of necessity), then that begs the question of upon what basis would a peace agreement be reasonable to accept.

The 4 points I list are the main issues of consideration to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal.

Of course, regardless of the evaluations of likelihood of the 4 points, one can always propose a peace deal that is unacceptable. For example, "You must rape every baby as a condition for peace" is arguably, and I would both argue and agree, worth fighting to the death to avoid accepting.

Similarly, one can always propose values in which any given peace offer is unacceptable.

Rather, a better way to think of it is that evaluating the 4 points expands the area of acceptable peace terms.

If one believes all 4 points are very unlikely, then one should be willing to make equally little concessions for peace.

If one believes all 4 points are very likely, then, likewise, one should be willing to make equally graet many concessions for peace.

Obviously, to do it properly you'd need some matrixes representing all possible outcomes and their respective likelihoods and the changes of those likelihoods under all possible peace terms, and so forth until everything we could imagine ever happening is nicely represented in some way we that is almost, but not entirely, meaningless, and then calculate some eigenvalues and eigenvectors and then dabble in multi-variable integration over abstract higher dimensional spaces, and then before you know it bobs you're uncle: QED.

It would all be very mystifying and edify absolutely no-one, I'm sure you'd love it.

That’s irrelevant wrt the point I was making. The argument I was making is that people Tzeench cites mention that Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiations changed after Bucha, so claiming that the peace deal was all but finished but the West blocked it, is twice manipulative: — neomac

Literally no one is claiming that Ukraine was "about" to sign the peace deal and then Bucha happened and that changed Zelensky's mind. Even the Western media recounts that the peace deal was rejected on advice from the West, and in particular Boris Johnson. Furthermore, the Ukrainian lead negotiator literally went on national television and explained what the Russians wanted and the reason they rejected the deal, which was not Bucha, which we've already discuss.

The reason no one mentions Bucha much in any narrative is because there isn't must solid evidence ether Russians even did it. Plenty of factions in Ukraine did not want peace and had the means and opportunity to stage such an event. There are of course plenty of factions in Russia that don't want peace either and likewise would have motive and opportunity. The evidence available does not actually resolve the issue, so best to forget about it, especially as we've learned since that war is so messy and ugly and turns out civilians get hurt in wars all the time.

If the Ukrainian leadership wanted a peace deal (as they had some analytical framework analogous to what I propose above and the calculus was clearly in favour of peace) they would have worked out the deal.

Fact is they either considered the relevant points, in my framework or some comparable framework, and decided they really could "win" or then fight to a better negotiating position at acceptable costs.

However, any analysis by decision makers will also be weighted by what they have personally to gain, so the West's offer of providing hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of a slush fund may have also influenced analytical outcomes of influential people involved in the process. "Getting close" to a deal with the Russians is of course leverage to extract more mulla from the West.

That is another way, a more free and capitalist way, to approach things where profit is the main driver of incentives.

Again this pro-Russian dude is forgetting EVERYTHING ELSE the people he cites are saying: security guarantees from the West and Bucha. — neomac

"Security guarantees" have been discussed for dozens of pages.

The fact that no contract is ever actually "guaranteed" as some sort of ontological status is not a reason to not enter into contracts.

Agreements change probabilities of future outcomes. "Probably" if you sign a contract with an employer and show up for work and do the work you'll get paid as agreed, but there's no "guarantee" that will happen. The word "guarantee" is meaningful only in the sense of being another word for promise, but it is not meaningful in the sense of some necessity a promise will be fulfilled. A guarantee in this context is simply a promise and like any other promise they are not necessarily kept. The word is purely ornamental in agreements between states.

Where guarantee in a contract is not ornamental is in agreements between parties subordinate to state power (or some analogue). There is first the other meaning of guarantee as in a warranty, which has to do with additional promises of maintenance or replacement if something breaks. In terms of simply embellishing promises, at issue here, again guarantee does not mean promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" but a judge would take such wording into account in determining liability. You are arguably less liable for breaking a simple promise compared to a "super duper promise" that includes the word guarantee.

This should be common sense.

That any given company may go bankrupt and have zero assets and be unable to make good on any promises whatever is not a reason to not enter into agreements with said company.

We enter into agreements because it changes probable outcomes.

The reason to enter into a peace agreement is not that someone that elevates promises to some ontological necessary status, but because probably the outcome of a peace agreement is preferable to further fighting.

The main reason for Ukraine to enter a peace agreement, especially before the war or then in the beginning are:

1. Ukraine cannot prevail militarily over Russia even with Western support (that the West is likely willing to provide; so not nuclear weapons, for example).

2. A long war maybe of some harm to Russia but will be absolutely devastating to Ukraine, and not serve the interest of Ukrainians.

3. The West's promises are not "guaranteed" either, if we're talking about some ontological necessary status to the promise, therefore the ability to sustain a long war, even if desired, is cannot be counted on.

4. Russia has pressures to maintain a peace if Ukraine commits to neutrality and repudiates seeking NATO membership and cooperation. One such pressure is the diplomatic cost of breaking a promise, but there would be bother international and domestic pressures that would impose costs on Russia to reinvade.

If one evaluates all 4 points as likely true, then the choice to negotiate a peace agreement is extremely well supported.

However, points 1 through 4, each in itself, would be sufficient reason to accept most kinds of peace deals. The likelihood of each point would inform what would be reasonable to accept.

As for Bucha:

This is war. It is combat. It is bloody, it is ugly, and it's gonna be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt. going forward. — Biden White House

The choice to continue the war is the choice of continuing a bloody, ugly and messy process where innocent civilians are going to be hurt.

Being upset that has happened already is not sufficient reason to continue the war, thus causing more of the same.

X implies Y, I don't like Y, therefore I will insist on X ... is not a valid argument form.

The West, especially the US, wouldn't have at all liked the idea. Hence Ukraine would have become a pariah state thanks to it's strange obsession of having a nuclear deterrent. — ssu

I literally stated:

US didn't want Ukraine to have nukes either and an additional proliferation concern so trying to keep the nukes would have resulted, at best, in international pariah status even if we imagine there wasn't the above problems. — boethius

After explaining all the military and intelligence problems of trying to keep and reverse engineer the nukes while developing a long term nuclear program.

Even if Ukrainian leaders wanted to keep the nukes and didn't believe in non-proliferation as a moral imperative, they were faced with a long list of practical problems and risks of keeping the nukes as well as developing new ones, and then (turns out we both agree) the best case scenario would be pariah status as both the US and Russia would be agreed on the policy.

So, it is was not a matter of "political will".

Nonsense. What Ukraine lacked is simply the political will. If a dirt-poor North Korea can create a nuclear deterrent, obviously Ukraine could have done that far more easily with already existing material and know how. — ssu

The opinion experts on the subject, as cited by Wikipedia, as well as the common sense reasons behind those opinions is "nonsense".

No, it's not nonsense.

I did not argue that Ukraine could not develop a nuclear program, I argued that doing so would risk Russia invading / nuking Ukraine before it could complete the task.

Where you have countries developing nuclear programs, they cannot be practically invaded / nuked by the countries displeased by the development. Both Iran and North Korea are mountainous countries that are difficult to invade.

Furthermore, both Iran and North Korea are very far away from the United States. Although anti-ballistic missile systems don't mean much against a strategic strike by Russia that has a viable triad, such systems could likely deal with a strike by a rogue state.

Remember the Cuban Missile crisis, how the US reacted to nuclear missiles right on its doorstep?

Russia's concerns about nuclear missiles in Ukraine would be exactly the same and the logical choice when faced with that kind of threat that you can do something about is to lower the threat level before it becomes a problem.

Ukraine is not mountainous and is right next to Russia, so it's a totally different scenario.

You're also just skipping over the endless talk of invading North Korea (which could very likely happened); it's not like the US position was "well ... whatayagonnado". The North Korean gamble worked, but arguably just barely and the factors in its favour are a long list compared to Ukraine (China doesn't want North Korea occupied and North Korea only exists because of that Chinese policy).

Likewise the talk of invading Iran that is still ongoing today.

It would also be a difficult sell in the 1990's for Ukraine to ask Ukrainians to fight a war to defend the right to develop nuclear weapons to avoid the war that they would be currently fighting. The former Soviet countries wanted to simply Westernize and get essentially what Westerners had and live in peace with the West ... fighting each other was even farther from any ex-Soviet citizens mind.

In similar vein, no one wanted nuclear war back then, the global mood was full of hope (except maybe in Russia and Ukraine that was spiralling into a corrupt kleptocracy): the great hope was arms reduction and for humanity to pull ourselves back from the spectre of nuclear annihilation in which the peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw pact was seen as a major step in that direction and peaceful coexistence.

No one was thinking "you know what would be cool and a good thing, a lot of small states having nuclear weapons deterrence capabilities in the event larger states decide to invade them in a few decades".

Except for Mearsheimer!! Which I admit is both as prescient as it is ballsy to hold that position.

I disagree with him on this point, as bad as the war in Ukraine is: not only is nuclear war worse but increasing its probability I would argue is worse than an actual destructive conventional war.

The lack of political will in the situation at the time was to fail to fulfil the above aspirations (a failing we can attribute to peoples, factors and processes both within and without Ukraine and Russia) and create a prosperous social democracy: instead of keeping all of the corruption of the Soviet Union without any of the communist handouts while achieving an actual decrease in longevity and quality of life.

As to the subject of nonsense.

The logic of "let's very likely cause a war so as to do something to protect us from war" doesn't make any sense.

Such as "let's try to reverse engineer these nukes so as to very likely cause a war to prevent us from successfully doing so, so as to deter wars". This is the nonsense position.

Likewise, "let's try to join NATO (even though they won't have us) and thus very likely cause a war in which joining NATO would have the purpose to protect us from" likewise is nonsense.

But as Ukraine, or it's leadership at least, clearly believed in the promises from Russia (and from the Western states) in the Budapest memorandum, creating an own nuclear deterrent was out of the question. Not only would it have deeply angered Russia, the US would have been extremely angry too! — ssu

Unlikely.

People with even a little bit of political experience know these sorts of deals aren't eternal.

They got money (that they laundered a bunch to themselves and their friends) and they avoided a war in the short term. The same decision without the corruption we would likely view as just the common sense and essentially default position of every small nation that has joined the non-proliferation architecture.

Moreover, to what extent any of the Ukrainian leaders and policy analysts were confident in a perpetual peace, they certainly did not have in mind "great, we can just go ahead and join NATO" and they all could have easily explained that existing at peace with Russia would be contingent on not doing a few things.

Even if extremely corrupt, corrupt people are generally astute realists that have little trouble understanding and navigating actual reality; the trouble with corrupt kleptocrats is they put their understanding of people, systems and the world to evil purposes.

How bad was it for Ukraine to hand over the nuclear deterrent to Russia? And believe that Russia would keep up it's promises made several times? — ssu

The issue of the nukes is far more complicated than you say here.

Let us consider first just the military aspects.

Ukraine didn't have the arming codes and ability to maintain the nukes.

They would need to develop a nuclear program, where certainly having a bunch of nukes already would be a head start, but this would take a lot of resources.

So, let's assume Ukrainians do that, well to be an effective deterrent then Ukraine would need to likewise develop a nuclear triad of silo, air and sea delivery capability.

And this is where Ukraine clearly just doesn't have the resources to pull that off.

In this alternative history scenario, the more the Ukrainians would try to develop an effective triad, let's say even just 2 of the 3, the more nuclear weapons would be pointed at essentially all of Ukraine on a hair trigger.

Ok, imagine Ukrainians succeed at developing enough of the triad to be just barely effective ... what if it's compromised by Russian intelligence?

It's not as easy as just "we have some nukes lying round", you need a multiplicity of delivery systems that are not likely to be compromised all at once, otherwise you are inviting a first strike to take out your capability.

There is almost no end point we could imagine where Ukraine would develop a robust triad, or part of the triad, to be a deterrent.

To make things worse, developing these systems would take time: would Russia have allowed Ukraine to fiddle around with the triad until they got things working well enough to deter Russia?

So, it's not as "slam dunk" a case as Ukraine should have kept the weapons; had they refused the likely outcome would have been immediate war with Ukraine to retrieve the nuclear weapons before Ukraine could figure out how to hack or rebuild the nukes and setup effective delivery systems. My understanding is also that the nukes Ukraine had were guarded by Russian military personnel, so options were limited.

The deterrent value of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine was also questionable: while Ukraine had "administrative control" of the weapons delivery systems and had implemented measures to prevent Russia from using them, it would have needed 12 to 18 months to establish full operational control. The ICBMs also had a range of 5,000–10,000 km (initially targeting the United States), so they could only have been re-targeted to hit Russia's far east. The Soviet air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) had been disabled by the Russian military during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even reconfigured and made to work by the Ukrainians, they would probably not have had a deterrent effect and had Ukraine done so, it would have faced sanctions from the West and perhaps even a withdrawal of diplomatic recognition by the United States and other NATO allies, and likely retaliation from Russia. Ukraine would also have struggled to replace the nuclear weapons once their service life expired, as it did not have a nuclear weapons program. Ukraine received financial compensation, and the security assurances of the Budapest Memorandum. — Ukraine and weapons of mass destruction, Wikipedia

Then there's proliferation, the US wasn't thinking: hmmm, maybe in 3 decades we want to prop up Ukraine as a proxy force to damage Russia ... while at the same time claiming it's all about Ukrainian sovereignty so what would be compatible with our proposed categorical imperative in 3 decades (Ukrainian freedom is all that matters) we should push for Ukraine to keep it's nuclear weapons and let them, if not help them, develop as much of the nuclear triad as they can ... yeah, that's what we need to do to be men of our word.

US didn't want Ukraine to have nukes either and an additional proliferation concern so trying to keep the nukes would have resulted, at best, in international pariah status even if we imagine there wasn't the above problems.

Ukraine's options were: dash for nuclear weapons and likely be invaded and nuked tomorrow ... to avoid getting nuked, or give up the nuclear weapons in exchange for some things. Ukraine was not in a good strategic position vis-a-vis the nukes.

Furthermore, as the wikipedia article notes, the Russians disabled the cruise missiles and were obviously concerned about the nukes, and certainly had a plan to recover the nuclear weapons by force if need be.

This was not a case of: you can keep the nukes if you want, we don't mind, but we're offering you this deal which maybe you'll take ... but if things go bad later you'll certainly regret it, totally you're choice though, we cool.

The facts are that in 2008 Germany and France blocked MAP, which put Ukraine on hold indefinitely. Then Ukraine declared independence from military alliances and put in its constitution. Then Russia has invaded it anyway. These are the facts, which you again seem unaware of. — Jabberwock

First a "holding pattern" is not a stop.

Ukraine declared both simultaneously that it was neutral and also intent on joining NATO, and that also their definition of neutrality didn't exclude collaboration with NATO.

In your delusional world where real world consequences don't matter, this sort of bullshit is enough to be totally convincing that NATO and the US was therefore doing absolutely nothing in Ukraine, whatever it was doing doesn't matter, and also Frand and Germany put a definitive stop to Ukraine joining NATO.

What the facts and reality actually is that exactly what I describe, a game of footsie a "will they won't they" relationship where everything is declared simultaneously. In the "let's rewrite history league" all the nonsense, such as claiming military collaboration with a military alliance is "neutral", was abundantly clearly not encroachment.

In the real world, what playing footsie indicates to any outside observer is "they might, they really might".

Ukraine's play was "keep thing ambiguous and hopefully jump into NATO one day". The play didn't work. You can argue Ukraine had a right to make such a play. Sure whatever. You can also argue that the play was the best move but unfortunately hasn't worked out so good; sometimes to the best move is foiled by bad luck. I have no problem recognizing people have a right to do stupid things, so the first point is not a problem for me, but definitely I would argue the second point is just plain wrong: if you are situated right beside a much larger power, you need to deal with that and not look to a large power thousands of kilometres away to save the day and protect you: you can play footsie with distant powers all you want, they'll certainly find that flattering and entertaining, but they're never going to be your partner unless there's some massive benefit that is worth the risk; that's just how reality works.

as you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Hint: Germany and France did block Ukraine's accession, hint 2 — Jabberwock

This oscillation is honestly stupendous.

One moment of course Ukraine has a right to join NATO and has a right to form closer military partnerships with NATO and NATO countries, bring in NATO arms and training and so on, all this is just exercising sovereignty and common sense moves of trying to get out of the yoke of Russian sphere of influence.

And the next moment, recognizing NATO is obviously a legitimate threat to Russia, apparently Ukraine would never join NATO so NATO isn't really a threat after all and NATO claiming Ukraine would join one day, and all the military collaboration, and Ukraine putting joining NATO in their constitution was just fliff fluff that meant nothing ... well if it means nothing, the statements and collaborations and arming on the ground, why do it? Why put joining NATO in your constitution if "everybody knows" Ukraine would never join NATO and it's nothing to worry about for Russia.

It's literally schizophrenic levels of delusional contradiction.

What are the facts, NATO declared Ukraine would join, and then Ukraine made a clumsy play to join NATO thinking that would solve its security problem and NATO certainly would need to keep its word ... oh, some day.

The play didn't work and the the thing joining NATO was supposed to avoid, being invaded by Russia, was provoked by the play: exactly the risk such a play entails.

NATO could have saved the day anytime since decades and just marched in and "stand up to Putin" on Putin's own border, but NATO didn't. Why? Because no one in NATO wants to actually pay any cost to "have Ukraine". Why? Because Ukraine isn't important strategically or economically or in any other way for the West to pay an actual cost. Hundreds of billions of dollars (much of it a direct subsidy to the war industry) you may say is a cost? Ha!! 4% of a single 7 trillion bank bailout! Those are rookie numbers.

You gotta get those numbers way up for it to be some real cost to the West ... and who just announced no more dollaridoos, not a single one left, for Ukraine?

Could be they're just working on it ... or could be further support may actually feel like a real cost, and who in the West wants to pay a real cost in Ukraine?

That is hilarious from someone urging me to 'live in the real world'. You clearly have no idea how the real world works... Ukraine joining of NATO required consent of all it members, some of which (mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 (not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on, not to mention subversive influence of Russian on European politics which is only now being disclosed). — Jabberwock

In other words ... what you're saying is ... in the real world Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let Ukraine in ...

Congratulations on expounding on the reasons why Ukraine is not important strategically to NATO.

But lets say Ukraine was strategically important to the US and the UK and not Germany and France, well first note that's another way of saying Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let it in, but even then the US and UK are big boys, they could just go and make a bilateral defence agreement, such as the UK made with Finland to cover the ascension process.

US acts unilaterally all the time, so if Ukraine was somehow strategically important to the US, the US would just march right in, make some bases: as it does everywhere else it says it has "strategic national interest" in.

(mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on — Jabberwock

Is literally just straight up saying "Important members of NATO weren't afraid of Russia in the slightest, didn't even view Russia as a military rival, and just wanted to do business!!"

Not even fearing reprisal is as far as possible as you can get from some strategic military asset required for credible defence.

No, that is not the reason there is a war. The reason there is war is because most Ukrainians, as the constant majority of votes shows, want to get out of the Russian sphere of influence, just like Poland and the Baltics did. — Jabberwock

This is probably true, sure, but most Ukrainians also wanted to avoid a war with Russia in such a process, and so why they kept on voting for compromisers, including Zelensky advertised himself as a compromiser.

Likewise, certainly a majority of Ukrainians would like to be in NATO as a way to avoid being invaded by Russia.

The problem is that NATO doesn't let Ukraine in.

If you put it to Ukrainians anytime in the decades before the war that "would you like to play footsie with NATO for decades, be in a 'will we, won't we relationship' and all cute and shit, but never actually get into NATO and likely be invaded by Russia and the country ruined, millions of Ukrainians permanently leaving, the already terrible demographics totally shot ... oh, and hundreds of thousands of heroes dead or maimed in a war they can't win?", you really saying most Ukrainians would be like "oh! sign me up! Glory to those soon to be dead heroes!".

I don't think so. Rather, people in "less sophisticated" places, such as Ukraine, often put stock in word keeping, as that's the only way society has any sort of structure at all, and they are easily manipulated by more sophisticated civilizations that can see a bigger picture where their word meaning absolutely nothing is of greater benefit to themselves, over the long term; talk to the native Americans if this level of sophistications escapes your imagination.

When NATO started playing footsie with Ukraine, Ukrainians believed it: afraid, hesitant, maybe even disillusioned at times, but believed it enough to prance down the footsie path far enough of provoking a war ... and just guess if by this point on the yellow brick road, of a full scale invasion, Ukraine got their NATO medallion or not from the NATO magician?

Again, as I've said many times, I have zero problem with Ukrainian aspirations.

The problem is the West does not grant those aspirations, but rather cynically uses Ukraine, to its near total destruction, for its own purposes ... all while telling Ukrainians, and Western citizens for that matter, that "yeah, yeah, sure, sure, freedom".

↪boethius, I don't think you quite caught my drift with those couple comments. (Maybe try not to zoom in on individual verbiage while oddly forgetting the rest?) — jorndoe

Well what is your drift then?

If we agree that NATO isn't "making a stand" in Ukraine and no one, outside Ukraine, is actually "standing up for freedom or whatever" then what is NATO doing in Ukraine according to your alleged drift?

And what's your analytical methodology here, that if you say something obviously false (such as people outside Ukraine doing nothing remotely similar to "standing up" are in fact standing up to Putin) ... that I should just zoom out and see that you have some opposite meaning to your false statement?

I'm supposed to just blur my vision and get a general sense of what you're talking about by taking in all the letters as once and just "feeling you"?

How exactly am I supposed to understand your position if I don't zoom in on different aspects of what you say and challenge you on those statements or ask questions.

If your position is people should stand up to Putin, but no one's actually doing that outside Ukraine, certainly not yourself, that's very different to what you wrote initially.

Is Russia a legitimate threat to NATO? — Jabberwock

Obviously, has thousands of nukes.

The problem vis-a-vis Ukraine is that Ukraine is not a legitimate area of strategic defence for NATO.

If Ukraine was of legitimate strategic value to NATO, then NATO would have gone in the night to Ukraine at some point in the 20 years it's been playing footsie with Ukraine and just brought Ukraine into the alliance by surprise and then flooded the country with NATO troops, bases and equipment the next day.

NATO doesn't do this, before the war or even before declaring Ukraine would join ... oh some day, because Ukraine isn't important to the defence of NATO, certainly not the United States.

Therefore, it's irrational to risk nuclear escalation in order to secure territory that you don't care about.

So, why is there a war?

Well there isn't a war between Russia and NATO, that's clear.

There's a war because enough Ukrainians (though not the majority, going by any of the votes in which this was a major topic) are gullible enough to play footsie back with NATO and some of those even gullible enough to think NATO really will "stand up" for democracy and risk something real for themselves (aka. nuclear war) in order to "defend freedom or whatever".

The other reason we have the war is that the US elite saw strategic benefit in provoking tensions, as the RAND document literally entitled "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia" makes clear. Now, it's possible US elite weren't aiming for such a large scale war so destructive to Ukraine, but as RAND makes perfectly clear that is a risk (to Ukraine) of the policy.

Maybe try living in the real world for a couple of hours, the time at leas to review these events.

Sure, NATO can go play footsie with Ukraine and clearly threaten Russia with moving the NATO military system even closer to it and in a country that is unstable with all sorts of armed factions with their own agendas (risk of NATO in Ukraine is not the same as the risk of NATO in Finland, a stable and predictable country).

NATO can do that. Whether you want to argue it's a right or not, doesn't matter; they can do it, and there's real world consequences, whether you want to argue those real world consequences "shouldn't happen" or not, they happen.

Those real world consequences of footsie with Ukraine is Russia invades to, if not put a definite stop to further NATO encroachment, push the border back and severely weaken Ukraine economically and demographically thus structurally lowering the threat over the long term.

This just makes strategic sense in any longish view of history whatsoever and if I worked for the Kremlin I would have come to the same conclusion and recommended the same actions. The US has a history of starting and provoking wars to weaken its rivals, there's no reason it would stop that policy once Ukraine was actually in NATO or then further strengthened in arms and NATO training.

The question the US was putting to Russia was basically "you want to do business with Europe, you have to accept military encirclement on your Western border; you can do business, sure, but only with a gun to your head".

From the US perspective, it's also a good strategy. For, if Russia chooses to do business with Europe, then it does so under greater military threat and pressure and can be more easily controlled; the tension, in turn, would also help control European vassal provinces to the US empire. If it chooses to defend its strategic military interest then the US can completely cut Russia from Europe, weakening both rival centres of power (one economic and one military, and Europe is the greater threat to US power, so if the war turns out to actually benefit Russian military power, that's no biggy if European economic power is sucker punched in the process); Europe as essentially a stable, prosperous "peace vortex" in the land-mass centre of the world, is a far greater threat to US power than Russia and China combined; and what US strategists would fear most would be the EU breaking free of its vassla status and laying the foundation for global trade between Africa, Europe, Russia and East-Asia (stable financial, political and financial systems facilitate stable trade relationships; and Europe, until recently, had the opportunity to essentially leverage its political stability to become the arbiters of a new world trade relations; yes, that would include Russia, but a Russia trading peacefully with the rest of the world, and yes would include China but a China trading peacefully with the rest of the world, and everyone looking to European institutions to keep things relatively cordial and smooth, precisely because Europe has little strategic interest in renewed militarism).

So, a peaceful and prosperous Western Europe was good strategy against the Soviet Union, but a peaceful and prosperous whole Europe!!!! Including the former Soviet states!! Including Russia!!!! Forget about it!!!

We can easily make sense of the strategic decisions of both the US and Russia.

What does not make sense is the decision of Ukraine to be used as a proxy against Russia, completely ruining its economy and demographics and losing significant territory (including valuable industrial and resource territory), and likewise what doesn't make sense is Europes active participation of provoking the war which was easily avoided (plenty of European states in NATO that could have put the breaks on NATO enlargement to Ukraine and even expressed extreme hesitation and wariness, but the US said "hmmm, how about suck it" and that's what they did for decades) in addition to the EU being instrumental in provoking the 2014 coup, it was the EU ultimatum that was the casus belli for the CIA backed protests and then CIA backed coup. It was not in the EU's interest to purposefully create this sort of tension. The Ukrainians just voted in a compromiser with Russia and it would have been both the morally right and politically astute thing to do of letting this democratic mandate of compromise with Russia play out (that would have been respecting Ukrainian sovereignty). Now, the EU did realize its mistake and then rushed to work out a compromise deal between Russia, Ukraine and itself, which succeeded, but by the it was too late and the chaos could be transformed by CIA backed paramilitary forces into a violent coup.

So Russia takes Crimea in response to this uncertainty, an obviously wise strategic move.

Then there's this civil war in the Donbas that two rounds of diplomacy try to resolve, but we're informed later that the effort on the part of Ukraine and the EU states was entirely duplicitous and bad faith.

Then Ukraine elects another compromiser promising to make peace with Russia (as normal Ukrainians don't want a war with Russia that would be immensely destructive to Ukraine, in a best case scenario), and Zelensky is elected with a mandate to fight corruption and make peace with Russia. Zelensky literally said he would go on his knees to Moscow and beg for peace, that's how much of a self-effacing compromiser he was.

Now, I think Zelensky's words were genuine. The problem with Zelensky is he's an idiot without any political experience and easily controlled and manipulated.

1 - If the formation of a military block bordering with Russia on its eastern front was perceived by Russia as an intolerable existential security threat , this would hold for NATO as much as for a European military alliance. Even more so, if one remember that the US has NEVER EVER invaded Russia proper. France, Germany and Poland did. — neomac

Russia hasn't invaded a NATO country nor an EU country.

Ukraine is neither in NATO nor the EU.

Ukraine also (in the before times) owned Crimea which was home to an important Russian military naval base.

Ukraine is also politically unstable with plenty of armed factions willing to cause trouble and explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Russia.

Furthermore, and this responds to @ssu as well who seems often mystified that Russia views NATO as a threat, NATO is not just an alliance where parties commit to mutual defence, it is also a military hardware system.

Moving weapons closer to someone or something is by definition a threat.

If I put a gun to your head, you'd view that as threatening even if I was "promising" to not harm you and if fact only putting a gun to your head to defend myself!

Now, you can argue that Russia shouldn't invade Ukraine even if NATO is indeed a legitimate threat to Russia, but arguing NATO is not a legitimate threat is just dumb.

It is such an obvious legitimate threat that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely predictable if the push / game of footsie to integrate Ukraine into NATO continued.

Which makes that policy either completely idiotic or then entirely for the purpose of provoking Russia into invading Ukraine.

Since obviously NATO isn't going to risk any of its precious little soldiers to "defend Ukrainian sovereignty" and Ukraine has no hope of defeating Russia, the purpose of the policy is not the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty, preservation of Ukrainian lives nor really preserving anything "Ukrainian" whatsoever.

Now that the copium highs are wearing off, such as belief in the great counter offensive and "cutting the land bridge", I really hope cheerleaders for Ukraine fighting, repudiating any compromise whatsoever, rather than negotiating and compromising and really able to take a long honest stare at the dead so far and simply ask themselves if its fair that these people died on false premises and false promises.

What happened to the US promise of "whatever it takes"?

Oh right, it's turned into we've completely run out of funding for Ukraine ... but other people are to blame for that!

Everyone is a hypocrite, so what? Hypocrisy is an ad hominem charge. — Echarmion

Again with the marketing, never stops, but I'll unpack your commercial for the benefit of anyone following along.

An ad hominem attack is a fallacy in two cases:

1. When we're talking about timeless eternal truths, in which case the character of anyone doesn't matter.

2. In the case of contigent facts, when attacking the person proposing an argument rather than the content of the argument, when the argument is not related to their character. Character maybe relevant to contingent facts, but for the character of the speaker to be relevant they need to be making some claim to authority, either as some sort of expert or then a witness to events.

The classic example of the first case is mathematics. Obviously makes no sense to attack a mathematicians character to argue a proof they put forward is invalid.

In the second case, character is extremely relevant to all sorts of factual investigative processes (police and courts deal with this issue all the time), but, nevertheless, character needs to be relevant; aka. some sort of premise ("I am an expert so what I say is more believable than non or less-expert opinion" or then "I saw these things happen with my very eyes!") that is legitimate to attack and undermine. We may charge the expert with a conflict of interest and we may charge the witness to the crime with being an unreliable heroine addict.

Now, back to our own discussion.

First of all, pointing out the hypocrisy of US policy is not an ad hominem attack on @jorndoe, as perhaps you meant to imply a little slight of hand, but rather a ad hominem attack on US government policy and decision makers.

Evaluating the character of these actors in the conflict in question is entirely relevant to analyzing the situation and evaluating the intentions and likely future decisions of parties to the conflict.

One may even go so far as to say perspicacity requires having a clue of what you're talking about.

So yes, that US policy makers are hypocrites and aren't making any sort of "stand" in Ukraine is essential to understanding the conflict.

What we all have witnessed, regardless of our character, is weaponized enlightenment humanism.

The US military has always been both. The real rebranding is that of the European militaries, which suddenly have gone from necessary evil to integral part of the state again. — Echarmion

Ah yes, the US military has always been both corrupt psychopathic mass murderers as well as valiantly carrying the pillars of world peace on their backs.

I believe you mean to say that the US military has always been corrupt psychopathic mass murderers when it serves elite US perceived interest ... and corrupt noble and caring or whatever when that serves elite US perceived interests.

As for Europe ... what's the evidence of that European change in sentiments. A lot of people like cheering on the war in Ukraine, that's for sure, but the current protests spreading over Europe: Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France and so on, are not to insist on a mad dash to rearm to fight the Russians but on subjects like wages and the cost of living and fuel and so on.

And look on the bright side, you win too!

You get to engage in 2 years of moral masterbation at no real risk or cost to yourself, but rather live true heroism vicariously through the blood spent in Ukraine to "defend the West".

So many people need the war.

Just imagine the horrors of peace.

There should be antagonism towards that. There was towards the Third Reich. Was and is towards apartheid. And this. ... What would you think not standing up does? (Would that be cowardice, complicity, assent, something else?) — jorndoe

Russia is not comparable to the Third Reich.

And, as we've gone over a dozen times at least in this conversation, we are not "standing up" in Ukraine. Our soldiers are not there to do any "standing".

Rather, we are threatening Russia by trying to move arms (which are threats) closer to Russia, and we are supplying arms to Ukraine, but as you yourself seem to now agree, in a drip feed manner calibrated to ensure Ukraine is not a real threat to Russia, at an insanely high cost to Ukraine.

We are not making "a stand".

Furthermore, the sound bite of "making a stand" sounds good, but is not some sort of political or ethical theory.

There's plenty of evil in the world the West condones and profits from and there's plenty other evil any Western decision maker or policy analyst will giddily explain at some length how we don't have practical means to do anything about it and so "making a stand" would be counter productive.

The West has created a theatrical performance in Ukraine (at a severe cost to Ukraine) of pretending to be "standing up" to something, because it serves US interest.

And, to skip over your ignorant retorts, making Russia stronger servers US interests. The US needs enemies. Kremlin hardliners too, and in this both Russian and US hardliners are frenemies getting what they want out of the war.

Russia is building back its war machine.

The US has defeated the Euro as a competitor to the dollar, with plenty of money to throw at the defence industry in the process, which is also now rebranded as intrepid peace warriors almost overnight (rather than the corrupt military industrial congressional complex that ruined Afghanistan and then fled like cowards when it turned into a liability).

Everybody wins.

Everybody who matters anyways.

This is so typical, even in an Philosophy Forum.

Where does this eagerness come from to justify and hail one side from another when both sides could be criticized for disrespecting human rights or international laws? Why this desperate and naive intent to put countries to be either "the bad guys" and those opposing them "the good guys"? There's much criticize all Great Powers, but then again, they sometimes can have good policies too. Apparently this is too much to fathom for many. — ssu

Really, typical? It seems to me @boagie is literally the first participant in this discussion to present things as BRICS are good and America is bad.

@Isaac and myself and others, spent dozens of pages explaining that we're criticizing Wester policy because we are Westerners and therefore responsible first and foremost for the policy in our own Western countries and the political blocks they're a part of.

But, let's say America has some good policies ... does that excuse leading Ukraine to war and then having Ukraine sacrifice so many Ukrainian lives for American (elite) perceived interests, on false pretences?

As for the war "not being lost" yet, we discussed, you and me, t some length at the start of the conflict of how Ukraine has, based on information available to us, essentially zero chance of victory against the Russians.

Your only argument against this conclusion is that maybe Ukrainian generals know something we don't and have some sort of secret tactic, weapons or plan that may surprise us.

Seeing as I couldn't even imagine what that secret thing could even potentially be, I predicted "that not happening" and things going exactly as we agreed are extremely likely based on the available information (that Ukraine will not be able to achieve any significant offensive, such as cut the land bridge much less push Russia to the pre-war border, given Russias far greater capacities, Ukraine would simply have the same problems the Russians had in their Northern offensive, but much, much harder).

So, since that time has slipped away and hundreds of thousands of lives have as well, have you seen since this secret thing that could deliver Ukraine victory?

Because if you haven't, then everything is exactly on course according to your own evaluation sans secret move of some sort: Ukrainians are outmatched in every capacity and therefore are succumbing to attrition.

Russia is not conducting classic highly mobile offensives that rely on airpower, but uses grinding attrition warfare making use of drones and artillery. — Tzeentch

Obviously the no-fly zone is more wishful thinking and will not happen.

However, I don't think the role of the Russian airforce should be minimized. The planes drop glide bombs, "the small one" being 500 kg.

The typical 155mm artillery shell is 45 kg, and FPV drones are still smaller in payload.

This capacity to destroy much more hardened targets on the front shouldn't be dismissed in terms of tactical and strategic impact, especially Urban warfare where concrete buildings are good protection against artillery but are vulnerable to much larger bombs.

Without these large bombs it may not be possible for Russia to advance at more than a snails pace, such as we saw in Bakhmut before deployment of the glide bombs.

Of course, even without the planes the Russians are at a significant advantage, as you say, but not necessarily enough to take heavily fortified positions in acceptable amounts of time, resources and man power.

What will be the goal (in Ukraine) if Trump wins the elections? Can you predict that too? — neomac

My prediction is that if Trump wins the elections, for sure Ukraine will have outlived its usefulness.

To what extent it outlives its usefulness before we even get to the election is a somewhat open question.

Support is already being pulled back but we can presume US / NATO still wants to avoid total embarrassment.

At the same time, that doesn't really matter all that much as even extreme embarrassment can be simply spun away and back page news by the next news cycle.

For example, I have a vague impression, a sort of whisper really, from all the way down the abyss of the memory hole that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was an extreme embarrassment, leaving billions in weapons for the Taliban and "friends and allies" literally falling off the last planes as they skedaddled away. Any political consequence for anyone? No.

Within a few weeks everyone agreed (everyone that matters, everyone white) that Afghans just didn't want freedom hard enough, were giving a magnificent opportunity but were lazy fighters and let freedom slip through their fingers.

So it shall be with Ukraine: We gave them everything and they still lost! Losers! Losers! Losers!

Call it a "special defense operation" if you must (or escalation or both). Doubtful that the Kremlin can withstand such a move (cf their posturing propaganda threats). A fairly straightforward strategy. Can send a message to other would-be invaders, by the way. But, while reasonable enough, it's not likely to happen (giving fuel to things like boethius's "drip feed" hypothesis), at least not with NATO as the combined international air force: — jorndoe

Seems we see eye to eye after all this time.

The no-fly zone idea was analyzed also at length at the start of the war, here and elsewhere, especially as Zelensky and social media spent a considerable amount of energy pushing for it.

I also explained at length how NATO boots on the ground could work in practice (especially before the war started). A move I'd be entirely for if it prevented further deaths; of course that wouldn't happen if it triggered nuclear war, but it's also arguable such a move is actually less risky than the current strategy of a slippery slope towards nuclear war.

Neither a no-fly zone nor boots on the ground happen because protecting Ukrainian land or Ukrainian lives is not the goal.

The goal is to drip feed arms to Ukraine enough to prop it up in order to damage Russia (which may not even be happening), super charge arms profiteering both directly to Ukraine as well as indirectly by creating a new Cold War, protect the USD from the Euro by having the Europeans destroy their competitiveness and fully prostrate themselves as meaningless vassals on the world stage.

Like every other US proxy force, Ukraine will be dropped like a shoe filled with spiders the moment it outlives its usefulness.

Ukrainian partisans will say "But, but, but, but what happened to all our promises! What happened to defending freedom and democracy and all that! How is this possible! How is this honourable! How is this acceptable!"

Cries that will travel all the way to the mountains of Afghanistan and echo there through eternity. The Taliban will smile knowingly and no one else will care. Down the memory hole the war will go.

I love the logic of invoking denialism while posting a bunch of articles to then turn around and claim the articles are thus evidence of a much worse problem. It's the kind of backwards logic common to self-professed "free thinkers". — Echarmion

The articles are written at different times and represent a trend, going from a "danger to democracy" and acting (violently, including murder) with impunity and are totally unaccountable by law enforcement (already before the war, either because they've captured law enforcement or then can already intimidate police and prosecutors into doing nothing) to chaos and insurgency could put jews at risk of their fellow citizens (i.e. the problem is already bad enough that Nazis would have time to kill jews as a side hustle to fighting Russian occupiers).

First, you throw up some plausible deniability bullshit arguing that there's no proof these acts of terrorism actually intimidate people into making different choices, and now you move the goal posts to "it's not that bad".

If the state of things before the war was already unaccountable terrorism, only a fool would believe 2 years of war has been bad for these Nazi and other white supremacy factions. There's plenty of evidence of the Nazis taking advantage of the war to grow their power further.

Now, as I say, there is not evidence they are some significant majority in Ukraine, but if their power grows and the power of non-Nazi regular forces is weakened (for example by fighting a war), then a coup or a credible threat of a coup to extort concessions from the state, is possible.

Likewise, simply the threat of Nazis doing crazy violent things can tip decisions in their favour; even if they don't have enough power for a coup, they clearly have enough power that what they may do if displeased requires mindful consideration.

Of course, they aren't the only power block involved; obviously the West wouldn't want to see a literal Nazi coup in Ukraine, and the West has plenty of leverage (money, arms, prestige, normalizing Nazism as much as possible).

If you look at all the evidence, the videos and the article, and conclude "nothing to see here", I can only categorize that as willful blindness.

The problem of Nazis in Ukraine is and will remain a big problem (in and outside Ukraine), the only thing left to be seen is how big.

This really just seems like more evidence that you are conceited about your own abilities, and that your incessant distortion and outright lies merely serve to protect your ego. — Echarmion

So your problem with correct prediction and warning people in power they should pay special attention, using what leverage I have as a corporate board member (with CEO, managing director and chair experience for oner decade; for whatever it's worth) ... is that being right is wrong because it fuels conceit?

I should try to be more wrong in the future so as to learn humbleness?

Now, personally, I would love humble stupidity ("oh! no! no one could have seen this coming!!") to be rewarded in corporate life as it is in political life, but that's just not the world I live in anyhow. First rule of business is if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will even consider it on your behalf.

The second rule of business is being wrong has terrible consequences.

So maybe we just live in different worlds. In my world there is strong incentive to be right, that is achieved by a sober analysis of all the factors while trying to purge oneself of wishful thinking and emotional immaturity. In your world as long as you have some plausible deniability bullshit you can throw around, no matter how thin a covering of shit it can smear on the truth, all is well ... you work in marketing, per chance?

If one wants to live in the real world, the last thing they should do is believe anything you write. — Echarmion

Really? You go from stating my predictions, such as Ukraine could not possibly retake significant territory without heavy weapons (that Javelins, NLAWS and Stingers aren't going to cut) are the most obvious thing ever that everyone who had a clue knew basically ... to now claiming literally nothing I say is true.

Now I get it, Ukraine isn't in a good position, before nor during the war, and NATO could do more (such as just let Ukraine in and then send in ground troops to teach Putin who's the real tough guys with the real toughest tats) but NATO doesn't.

I also get it, if you aren't a Nazi sympathizer it's difficult to process the level of Naziism in Ukraine, but it's there and it's an important part of any credible analysis.

As NBC puts it:

My own grandparents themselves had to flee western Ukraine to escape persecution, and it is tragic to see this cycle continue. If the country devolves into chaos and insurgency, Jews could once again be at risk from some of their fellow citizens. Not acknowledging this threat means that little is being done to guard against it. — Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, NBC

Now, I'd also be worried about hundreds of thousands dead in a war and everyone else that would be purged in a Nazi takeover as well.

However, the evidence behind the above warning is strong enough for NBC to publish the story even in an environment of general denialism and white washing of the issue.

Really, you expect anyone to believe that you care one whit about peace, or lives? — Echarmion

Where were you at the start of the conflict in spring 2022 when peace was most easily achieved?

I was here.

Arguing for peace.

I even wrote to my country's leadership 3 years before the war started explaining that a lack of international leadership (for example rich countries narcissistically only focusing on themselves, and not creating a mobile medical battalion to bring relief to areas experiencing overcapacity) would lead directly to chaos and conflict, most notably in Eastern Europe.

Now imagine if the West also put resources into mobile hospitals during the pandemic to at least be sure to bring basic medical supplies to areas experience a peak.

Even if it wouldn't be all that successful, it's the kind of thing that would bring people together, symbolize our caring for each other. Of course, the danger of this concept is that it may have worked too well and there'd be no need to wait for vaccines.

My proposal was rejected and I was informed the pandemic was in the hands of the experts, not to worry my pretty little head basically.

Exactly the process I described took place.

Now you may argue my mobile hospital concept would not have prevented the war in Ukraine, but I also explained in my letter that the insular attitude, essentially ignoring international diplomacy, would also contribute to the same.

Again, experts are handling it.

But are they? Are they really?

FYI, reportedly, Ukraine has become the most littered area on the planet — littered with Russian mines, bombs, trip wires and traps, grenades, explosives in kitchen gear and toys, ... — jorndoe

That's what choosing to "win", which I believe is your position, means.

You're genuinely surprised by the result?

Has the cost been worth a small sliver of a chance to retake the Donbas without needing to negotiate any sort of increased autonomy of any kind ... or the even smaller change of retaking Crimea?

Exactly. Hence, the Kremlin circle = serial liars (+ hypocrites). Dis/agree? — jorndoe

You can't just throw in a "hence" to construct an argument.

What's your actual argument here, then I'll answer your question.

Whether you do or not, the Kremlin circle does, and employs that as a rationale for their wretched warring, which hence falls flat. Yes? No? — jorndoe

I've explained several times now that the best propaganda with the longest shelf life is based on truth.

So no, it doesn't fall flat. Whether it was the "main thing" or something else that have motivated the Russians to see the war through this far, certainly the denazification rationale was a contributing factor.

Ukraine has made some progress, where Russia has regressed. Agree or not? — jorndoe

I do not think Ukraine has made more progress than Russia on the freedom and equality scale. Before the war there were arguments for and against "who's more free" that has already been addressed (in the context of how many lives are worth sacrificing to "free" occupied Ukraine).

However, now Ukraine seems to be essentially a police state, political parties banned, critical media banned, lot's of disappearing and murdering by the police state. I wouldn't say Russia is doing much better, but my guess is that Russia is still "more free" than wartime Ukraine. For example, Russians were not barred from leaving the country, so that is a significant freedom. You, to contrast, are free to argue or just randomly say that the "true freedom" will arrive when the war is over, all those forced into the draft and sacrificed will be vindicated in some strange sense.

Especially with long weaving comments, eh? — jorndoe

You mainly micro-blog, call everything you don't like propaganda, provide no commentary or analysis of what you're micro-blogging about, and don't engage in any debate for the most part.

The little argument you do is simply a series of moving the goal-posts. You go from claiming the Nazi problem in Ukraine is "alternative world type stuff" in response to my analysis of the Nazi problem the tis backed up by evidence, to Nazi's are literally "everywhere" and no more a problem in Ukraine, to admitting it's a problem in Ukraine but then just provide links of extremists elsewhere ... where they too are a problem such as jihadi terrorism (the difference being it's tolerated in Ukraine but the French, to take one of your examples, are not tolerating it and trying to keep it in check if not reduce it), and now it's "Russia is just as bad", maybe so, maybe Russia is just as bad ... why would I pick Ukraine in a context of equally bad states?

By the way,

↪boethius, the Kremlin gets their way, or it's the nuclear way...?
— Nov 9, 2023 — jorndoe

I've explained several times that nuclear blackmail obviously works.

What's your solution to nuclear blackmail?

What is your alternative analysis to mine that the principle factor determining the outcome in the war in Ukraine is NATO's desire to avoid nuclear escalation, what could potentially cause nuclear escalation? Ukraine winning obviously. So, how is nuclear escalation avoided? Propping Ukraine up just enough to be able to fight but not enough to be able to win.

NATO associated analysts, mainly the neocons, discussed at length what the US could do in response to Russian nuclear use in Ukraine and didn't come up with any good options.

So yes, the Kremlin will get its way in Ukraine because people genuinely believe the alternative is the nuclear way, which no one wants to risk for Ukraine.

Why? Because Ukraine isn't important to the US, NATO, and the EU, not important to risk nuclear escalation.

I explained over several comments how exactly boots on the ground could have worked to prevent the war, of course at the risk of nuclear escalation, a bold move I'd be completely content with if it worked at preventing a giant war.

Of course, it was never even an option under consideration, because Ukraine or Ukrainian lives is not some sort of priority and the games the US and NATO have been playing in Ukraine are for evil ends that do not benefit Ukraine nor Europe more generally (the EU goes along with it because European leaders have decided to just accept being subordinate tools to the US after all, and the EU institutions used to keep rascal nations in check rather than coordinate any sort of independent European foreign policy; the EU has essentially been transformed into the underwriter of the Ukrainian government and a whip that can be cracked at any politician that dares criticize US foreign policy).

So, if you want to live in the real world, the problem of Nazis in Ukraine was never "an actual problem" for the US and NATO because they served the purpose of provoking the war, and likewise, in the real world, no one's so foolish enough as to provoke nuclear war on behalf of Ukraine.

Which leaves us where? Ukraine is stuck in a war its backers want Ukraine to fight but not win.

Yes, nationalism plays an enormous role in the causes for the war. The Russian one. — Jabberwock

Again, watch the videos, read the articles if the topic interests you.

Ukrainian nationalism is a major factor in 2014 and what has happened since. The West largely ignores this factor because "meh, they're fighting Russians".

Great, so we agree that nationalists inciting genocide are equally bad, no matter whether they explicitly invoke Nazi symbols or not. — Jabberwock

I don't have a problem with that. I have no problem with characterizing Russia as an imperial state with a very strong nationalist block.

I have a problem of using nationalism in Russia to excuse nationalism in Ukraine.

I have a problem with supporting a war strategy that has essentially no chance of succeeding at an extremely high cost to trying.

I have a problem of turning Russian critique into some moral imperative to arm the Ukrainians while pressuring them to reject peace, even if the war is a terrible disaster.

I have a problem of rejecting a reasonable peace proposal when Ukraine had the most leverage to get as many concessions as possible, on the basis of "no guarantee". Is winning the war guaranteed? Is NATO delivering "everything Ukraine needs" guaranteed?

Now that Ukraine has very little leverage, surprise, surprise, Imperialist Russia isn't interested in a truce anymore.

Russia has now already paid the major costs of the war and passed the major risk points, so continuing the war is now far wore for NATO than it is for Russia. NATO's diplomatic and sanctions quiver empty, there's not much incentive for Russia to not take more land and also try to push Ukraine into a failed state status that becomes the EU's problem to deal with (obviously the US will gracefully take their leave of the situation if and when that happens).

This is what pretty much all the realist analysts, such as Mearsheimer, have been predicting, that Russia would not at this stage negotiate peace even if the West wanted to.

Ukraine is on the back foot having burned up a large part of its reserve "NATO trained" battalions in the counter offensive, is behind on mobilization (so they've passed a law allowing foreign bounty hunters to operate in Ukraine and catch draft dodgers) and even if they catch up draftees need to be trained and the quality of draftees is also starting to be a serious problem.

To make matters worse for Ukraine, the US supplied Ukraine with cluster munitions because they "ran out" of normal shells, and this has unlocked the Russians use of cluster munitions on a large scale; especially cluster bombs which are way bigger than cluster shells. Maybe Russia would have started using cluster munitions at scale anyways, but the fact US supplied them has meant little PR consequence to Russia for their use.

Ukraine's air power is severely attritted and the F16 program, if it ever happens, could be literally years away from being fully effective (a lot needs to be done to make that a thing).

New chaos in the Middle East puts pressure on further ammunition support as well.

So for all these reason, Russia is extremely likely to press their advantages.

You're making an unwarranted leap here from arguing that Ukraine's Nazi problem is beneficial to Russian propaganda efforts to concluding that it was actually a reason for the russian government to invade. — Echarmion

It is actually "a reason", if the the Nazis help the invasion of Ukraine by providing both legitimate motivation (we don't like Nazis) as well as plenty of propaganda opportunity to amplify the threat of Nazis, that is "a reason" to invade, that he Ukrainians, at minimum, make the task easier of motivating your own society.

I have no problem with NATO enlargement being the main reason, but why Putin leads with "denazification" is because the NATO threat is very abstract. Now that NATO has sent NATO tanks into Ukraine and Russia is fighting NATO heavy weapons, it's more easy to sell that the conflict is actually with NATO so you see Russian rhetoric shifting in that direction the more NATO weapons arrive in Ukraine.

Now, the Nazis in Ukraine are also a legitimate security threat to Russia and are shelling the separatists (a situation that is not sustainable anyways). These are facts. A just war theory would need to navigate these facts and demonstrate that the separatists deserved to be attacked and shell (Ukraine's war on the separatists had just cause) as well as the Nazis are a threat but not "enough" of a threat for Russia to justify preemptive war.

No one's done, in the hundreds of pages that @ssu bemoaning (which the primary reason is the war continues, so too the discussion), the work of actually producing a just war theory for Ukraine, even less for the aims of reconquering all the territory and Crimea at heavy cost and little chance of success.

People, such as yourself, simply claim it's obvious ... while also claiming separatists are a thorny issue and that it was obvious to anyone who can read that Ukraine cannot possible prevail with NATO's level of support, that plenty of analysis was available that would make that clear.

Since I don't support NATO's policy even assuming Ukraine has just cause, the issue isn't so important to me and I don't have time to get into all the historical details to be "be sure" who has just cause, if anyone, in this conflict. I just don't see how it's obvious. In particular, I don't see how Russias war on Ukraine isn't justified if the US and NATO's various wars are, so I have particular issue with "it's ok when US does it because US hegemony is the bomb"; I don't have much issue with condemning both the US and Russia's imperial wars (although that doesn't resolve the issue of the Donbas).

What does it mean that it is "worrisome"? What exactly is the worry? — Echarmion

You honestly don't find the statement, assuming it's true, that Nazis with "partial control over as well as free rein to terrorize to affect political decisions and processes" worrisome?

If Ukrainian Nazis are murdering and intimidating for political purposes in Ukraine, that wouldn't worry you?

Certainly? No. You have no grounds to conclude that. — Echarmion

You'd have to be a moron to not have any fear of reprisal if you make peace and radical Nazi groups and affiliates disapprove of that, going so far as to murder a negotiator (negotiating on your behalf, you trust enough to send to talk to the Russians) to make the point. You'd have to be a moron to take at face value the reason for the murder was the negotiator was a traitor without evidence.

Now, if you really think Zelensky is that much of a clueless moron, feel free to state it clearly. Even I give Zelensky more credit.

As far as I can see, you have not provided a single example of them actually influencing a political process with violence. — Echarmion

Watch the videos and read the articles.

If people can murder their political opponents as well as agents of the state without consequence that will influence things.

And some more fantasy piled on top. You just can't help but venture forth into the ridiculous, apparently. — Echarmion

It's not at all ridiculous. There can be severe consequences from the security state for anyone who disapproves of the war, so if some stranger phones you up asking what you think about, you may answer more out of intimidation than freely (and this is ignoring the fact the questions are clearly manipulative).

No, it is not one step away from controlling the state. This is ridiculous nonsense. — Echarmion

Once you achieve enough military power that the state no longer applies to law to you (law enforcement are either on your side or too afraid to do anything), you are one step away from taking power. You maybe a minority of the electorate but you may have a majority of the weapons and people willing to use them.

In fact, one reason that you would want to the war to continue even if you know it is lost is so that the Russians destroy the Ukrainian regulars that could protect the state from a violent coup.

And we're in the realm of just baselessly spinning your narrative where you want it. — Echarmion

Again, read the articles. If you just ignore the evidence presented that Ukraine Nazis are unaccountable and act with impunity, or then believe people with that kind of power can't affect people's decisions, you're just a willfully ignorant fool at this point.

Feel free to engage with the evidence posted. But if it's all just "Russian propaganda" produced by Western journalists, I guess feel free to believe that.

An interesting slip, given you just claimed that you're not arguing that Ukraine is a nazi regime. — Echarmion

This is a paraphrase of the Nazi apologist position, here and elsewhere. If it's not quite exact, then feel free to interpret as Russia has the same Nazi problem as Ukraine. The main point in pushing the symmetry even to the extreme, is how would it matter? How does Russian Naziism, assuming it's as rampant as Ukrainian, justify supporting Ukrainian Nazis?

This consistent effort to lie, manipulate and distort is really tiresome. You claim one thing, then a few paragraphs later you're already backtracking, as if you're somehow unable to go through even one post without dialing up your claims again.

Case in point: — Echarmion

My position is Zelensky is not a Nazi but that Nazis at this point basically control everything that matters in Ukraine, such as the police state. So it's a slight distance away from a Nazi coup.

So we went from "there's a Nazi problem in Ukraine that strengthens russian propaganda" to "Ukraine is only one step away from a Nazi regime and a Nazi regime might actually pop up at any time". — Echarmion

Because we're not talking in some timeless vacuum of eternal abstract concepts.

In 2022, before the war, there were strong Nazi battalions that could act with impunity and unaccountability already, but they were small compared to the electorate and the regular Ukrainian army, so they did not have the power to stage a coup.

From 2014 to 2022 the Nazis main affect on history is keeping the war in the Donbas going, shelling civilians and being generally provocative, and frustrating any peace process. I would categorize them as a danger to Ukrainian democracy and clearly an obstacle to peace.

But they did not have the power before the war to just stage a violent coup.

Now, since the war, they grow exceptionally more powerful within the Ukrainian state but, more importantly, Ukrainian regulars are being destroyed.

If the process continues, at some point (which could exist even now) there would be no way for the Ukrainian state to resist a violent coup.

Needless to say that the latter claim barely even qualifies as a slippery slope fallacy. — Echarmion

A slippery slope fallacy requires an end-point that is either absurd or the proposer of the alleged fallacy anyways rejects. For example, that homosexual rights (broadening the scope of legal sexuality) will lead to legalizing beastiality and pedophilia, is a classic slippery slope fallacy.

A violent coup by an extremist group is in no way an absurd end point to the slippery slope that "can't happen". Has happened plenty of times in History.

I also don't anyways reject that it can happen.

It definitely can. I'm not predicting it (we don't have enough information of the various factions in Ukraine and their relative strength to make accurate predictions for this sort of thing), but it is definitely "in the cards", as I say.

It wouldn't be good for Ukraine obviously, and ruin further the economy, and would make further Western support reduce or stop entirely, but the groups in question would not care about that.

Right now the Nazis and other extremists who want the war to continue as long as possible (for example to "purify" society and amass as many weapons and funds as possible) need Zelensky to keep the money and arms flowing.

What I will predict is that as soon as the money and arms stop flowing, these groups would turn on Zelensky. I also predict that they'd also turn on him if he about faced and wanted to make peace with the Russians.

They may not, however, stage a violent coup even if they were capable. They may see the reason to not kill the goose the lays the golden egg.

What seems clear is that factionalism is rising between the major power blocks in Ukraine, Azov and the Nazis being one power block.

Understanding the war, its origins and causes, requires understanding this Nazi power block and its influence in Ukraine as well as provocative affect on Russia (that is both legitimate as well as ripe for cynical exploitation).

The war has greatly amplified all the "street politics" (aka. terrorism) trends that existed before the war.

It is an important factor to consider.

For example, if Nazis now have enough military and police power to simply take over the state, then they could leverage that to keep the war going to essentially extort the West. Obviously an actual Nazi coup in Ukraine would be a PR disaster for all the politicians and officials who have championed the war, so hardliners in Ukraine can hold that over NATO and to keep the money and the arms flowing.

Which would be my guess that they'd use their power for (and even if it's not clear they could take over, the threat needs to be considered) at this stage in the war.

As I say, it's a problem. Nazis aren't the only actor in Ukraine and in the conflict, but they are a significant force with their own agenda and have means to try to bring it about.

↪boethius, if you went over the thread, I think you'd find that there's no denying that Ukraine has a slew of social problems, so don't put words in my mouth. — jorndoe

Also, what's you're implication here, that all the Nazis in the videos I posted and the articles above are just another "social problem" like alcoholism, homelessness or child obesity?

Is it a "social problem" or "alternate world type stuff". So hard to keep track.

For anyone following:

Step one is straight up denialism, any mention of the Nazis in Ukraine is derided as purely Kremlin invented propaganda.

Faced with the evidence from Western sources that this is obviously not the case:

Step two is to claim that there's no more Nazis in Ukraine than anywhere else, it's just totally normal background Naziism levels, or something like that.

Again, faced with the evidence that is also not the case:

Step three is to claim there there's also Nazis in Russia!!

When this false symmetry is pointed out and also the obvious fact that even if true, that's not a justification to support Nazis in Ukraine; they'd just both have Nazis. What's even the argument, "we can have our Nazis if Russia has theirs?" Makes no sense and obviously presupposes there's a pretty bad Nazi problem in Ukraine if co-founders of Wagner also having Nazis tattoos and German nicknames (which is not enough evidence to constitute a Nazi ideology) is needed to desperately try to make the case that Russia is basically a Nazi regime too!!

Step four is to admit there is Nazis (not "alternative world stuff" after all) and admit they represent a pretty dangerous extremist problem, just that saying the whole regime in Kiev is Nazi is a ever so slight exaggeration Russian propaganda has made.

If the war goes badly (for Western policy and geopolitical strategy; obviously Ukrainians don't matter much to us) and also serves as the predicted breeding ground for far-right extremism mentioned above, the West may come to regret doing absolutely nothing about things like:

Another frequent honoree is Roman Shukhevych, revered as a Ukrainian freedom fighter but also the leader of a feared Nazi auxiliary police unit that the Forward notes was “responsible for butchering thousands of Jews and … Poles.” Statues have also been raised for Yaroslav Stetsko, a one-time chair of the OUN, who wrote “I insist on the extermination of the Jews in Ukraine.” — NBC

If there's a literal Nazi coup, which is not out of the cards, and an overt Nazi regime comes to power, it will suddenly be "OMG, what is happening, how did we ignore the Nazi problem".

Which is something, @Tzeentch, you should easily understand the relevance of, having already pointed out that proxies have a tendency to go out of control.

The West assumes Ukrainian democracy is going to survive the war. That is not certain.

The West has a lot of leverage in that Western money is needed to avoid terrible suffering in Ukraine, but fanatical extremists may not care about that. Russia has no intention of conquering the West of Ukraine, as you've likewise pointed out, so one potential end result is that if the war is lost for East Ukraine, the fanatical Nazi elements seize control of power in the West, Russians take what they want in Eastern Ukraine and then there is an actual frozen conflict, and some sort of dystopian nightmare unfolds in West Ukraine.

From what I understand, the CIA-neocons genuinely thought letting the Nazi problem grow wouldn't be "their problem" but Russias problem, be that insurgency they loved talking about. But if Russia doesn't conquer all of Ukraine then it will remain a Western problem.

And what can the West do about it if the worst elements in Ukraine come to power? Intervene militarily to avoid appeasement?

Goodie then, you don't defend/uphold the Kremlin's fabrication, glad to hear it. — jorndoe

Your claim was:

↪boethius, still going on about the Nazi stuff, eh? :)

I guess I can re-repeat. Nah, Ukraine still isn't ruled by a Nazi regime; those claims are straight from the Kremlin's propaganda machine (don't echo them). — jorndoe

I point out that's a straw man, I do not claim Ukraine is ruled by a Nazi regime.

No where do I claim Zelensky is a Nazi, and I wouldn't have a problem with the criteria that your leader needs to be a Nazi for the regime as a whole to be a Nazi; rather have pointed several times to Zelensky's inability to control the Nazis in Ukraine.

I have zero problem believing Zelensky's promises to make peace with Russia in his election campaign was a genuine desire and intention on Zelensky's part. As much as I think Zelensky is a fool, I do not think he's foolish enough to actually want war with Ukraine.

However, there is a powerful actor in Ukraine that did and does want war with Russia, which are the organized Nazi's and their mere "extremist white supremacist" affiliates.

These Nazis represent a problem. In the recent discussion, the main point is that they are a problem that contribute to Russian motivation to prosecute the war. If you simply ignore the Nazi problem (as the Western media did immediately before and then during the war) then arguments like "Russia doesn't know how it's fighting and has low moral" seem plausible.

The main reason for this total denialism of the Nazi problem, is that Nazis in Ukraine fighting Russian speakers, shelling Russian speaking civilians, overtly declaring their life style is one of warfare and their goal is a Great War with Russia, burning people in buildings and all sorts of other "street politics" (aka. terrorism), is an obvious provocation to Russia.

For example, if I go around with a swastika arm band, someone punching me in the face is still assault, but it's obviously not unprovoked. You can't say it's a random act of violence. And even if you want to argue that the assault is illegal and so on, almost no one in Western society will have sympathy for me as a explicit Nazi intentionally provoking aggression towards me by people who don't like Nazis (we're assuming here I'm of sound mind and not going to a halloween party or act in a play or whatever).

So if you want to keep the West behind the war then you need the Western media on board with the propaganda that there's no Nazis in Ukraine, oh ok there is but they're "everywhere" (as you put it), oh ok you got me they are a particular bad problem in Ukraine but they've reformed, all right all right they haven't reformed still Nazi as ever, but Russia has Nazis too!!"

Now what is the Nazi problem in Ukraine?

Since the question of Ukrainian perspectives was brought up, here's a Ukrainian perspective on the Nazi problem:

Far-right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy.
Far-right extremism represents a threat to the democratic development of Ukrainian society. The brief provides an overview of the activities and influence of the far right, differentiating between groups that express radical ideas but by and large operate within a democratic framework and extremist groups, which resort to violence to influence society. — Vyacheslav Likhachev, Freedomhouse.org

A key passage:

During confrontations between right-wing groups and law enforcement bodies, the police show unacceptable passivity when it comes to preventing or suppressing unlawful activities, investigating incidents, and bringing perpetrators to justice. For example, the Svoboda party activists who threw grenades during a rally outside parliament in 2015, killing four national guardsmen, have not yet been convicted. One of the latest examples of the authorities’ tolerant attitude was on display in February 2018, during clashes in Kyiv following a hearing of a case involving Odessa’s mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov. After the hearing, National Druzhina activists and members of other radical groups attacked police officers using gas cartridges and even firearms. The officers reacted rather passively; one activist, who shot and wounded a police officer, has yet to be taken into custody. — Vyacheslav Likhachev, Freedomhouse.org

Now, what would killing a national guardsmen with a grenade outside parliament or congress be called if it happened in the EU or United States?

Terrorism.

What would "activists" shooting and wounding police officers be called in the EU or United States of political messaging motives?

Terrorism.

Well, at least if brown people of whatever shade did it.

This atmosphere has created favorable conditions for right-wing radicals and extremists, despite not being attractive as an electoral option. It has also left the state and society very vulnerable to their expansion. Radical groups no longer have to worry about societal or government reactions when it comes to recruiting members, they also face few restrictions when it comes to spreading their ideas. Effectively, they exist in an environment characterized by lack of accountability and impunity. — Vyacheslav Likhachev, Freedomhouse.org

Let's move onto NBC, a rare example in the Western Media that explains the Nazis in Ukraine are obviously a problem:

Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't

But even though Putin is engaging in propaganda, it’s also true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem — both past and present. — NBC

Obviously, the best propaganda is based on truth.

Imagine if the US actually found some WMD's in Iraq, no matter if they were in terrible condition and basically forgotten or lost by the Iraqi forces (and in no way some imminent threat to the US as was claimed to justify preemptive warfare), the US would be parading those photos around to this day. The problem with the WMD propaganda was that it had no truth to it at all; it was not an exaggeration of some smaller but still concerning fact, but completely fabricated and so didn't stand the test of time.

Likewise, imagine if Trump was not literally a Russian agent, but a pee tape did actually exist completely consensually and in save hands, just that Russia didn't have it and it remained zero evidence Trump colluded with the Russians. People would be going nuts. Indeed, the fact that members of Trumps administration did meet with Russian diplomats, there was at least some communication, was what fuelled Russia gate for years.

Point is, that there is an actual Nazi problem in Ukraine makes the propaganda work of motivating Russians to support the war far easier, even if you personally believe, and is critical to understanding the war and critical to take into account in understanding Western policy.

For example, if you're the US and actually want a war between Russia and Ukraine you would do nothing to stop the arming, funding and training of Nazis in Ukraine, and if your own country passes a law to make that illegal you just ignore that.

Just as disturbing, neo-Nazis are part of some of Ukraine’s growing ranks of volunteer battalions. They are battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin’s Crimean invasion in 2014. One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. In 2018, the U.S. Congress stipulated that its aid to Ukraine couldn’t be used “to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Even so, Azov is now an official member of the Ukraine National Guard. — Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, NBC

Not only will the Nazis in Ukraine themselves take the initiative to provoke Russia as much as possible, but those provocations and the fact they are Nazis gives strong reasons and motivations for Russia to escalate and a factual basis to amplify with propaganda to sustain a larger conflict.

If one is interested in actual peace, obviously literal Nazi actors that have partial control over as well as free rein to terrorize to affect political decisions and processes, is worrisome.

For example, one reason for Zelensky to reject the Russian's offer was certainly Boris Johnson pressuring him to do so, but another reason is certainly fear of reprisal from the Nazis who (as all these articles point out) have very little electoral success (so do not legitimate represent the majority of Ukrainians) but who can affect political process by direct violence, as this Atlantic Council article points out what the actual problem is:

To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of “red herring.” It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity. Whether this is due to a continuing sense of indebtedness to some of these groups for fighting the Russians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real problem and we do no service to Ukraine by sweeping it under the rug. — Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence, Atlantic Council

Or as Washington Post describes the problem:

For the most extreme among these neo-Nazis, the plan is even more sinister. They see Ukraine as a chance to further “accelerationist” agendas, which seek to speed up a civilization-wide collapse and then build fascist ethno-states from the ashes. This school of thought is demonstrated vividly by “Slovak,” whom we at SITE consider one of the most influential accelerationist neo-Nazi voices in the far right. On Feb. 25, Slovak announced that he was leaving an unknown country to fight in Ukraine. “This war is going to burn away the physical and moral weakness of our people, so that a strong nation may rise from the ashes,” he wrote. “Our job is to ensure that conditions remain terrible enough for long enough for this transformation to happen, and happen it must. Our future is at stake and we may not get another chance, certainly not one as good as this.” — Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia’s war in Ukraine for their own purposes, Washington Post

Have the above sort of ideology by powerful factions Ukraine is not a good thing for any peace process.

And not just a problem for Ukraine, but has wider implications for decades to come:

The issue at hand is not a matter of validating or invalidating narratives, though. The issue is security — for Ukraine and for the countries these extremists come from.
In many ways, the Ukraine situation reminds me of Syria in the early and middle years of the last decade. Just as the Syrian conflict served as a perfect breeding ground for groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, similar conditions may be brewing in Ukraine for the far right. Syria became a plotting and training ground for terrorists to mount attacks in the West, such as the attacks in Paris in 2015 and in Brussels in 2016 attacks.

The extremists who successfully make it to Ukraine could return home with new weapons and combat experience under their belts — or stay in Ukraine, where they can further influence their countrymen online. — Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia’s war in Ukraine for their own purposes, Washington Post

So what can we conclude from actual facts.

First, Ukraine has a Nazi problem.

Second, Nazis are able to influence the political process with violence instead of electoral success.

Third, the Nazis are powerful enough in Ukraine that they can commit clear acts of terrorism and face no consequences. They may not totally control the state, but they act with "impunity", so one step away of taking control of the state.

Why all this matters, is not only in understanding events, but also is another "thorny", I believe is the word, issue in terms of Western policy.

The first issue is when terrorist organizations can act with impunity and are fanatically devoted to further warfare, even if it reduces the country to "ashes" as some sort of purifying exercise, this factor in Ukrainian politics must be discounted in any justification for support for Ukraine; especially pressure to keep fighting rather than seek a peace deal. Since we know Ukrainian politics is affected by various Nazi projects through the threat of violence, we have to consider the possibility different more legitimate political actors are influenced by violent extortion.

"That Ukrainians want to fight," for example to retake all the land including Crimea, is not in itself justification for supplying arms to support that cause but certainly a necessary requirement for (at least public) Western political discourse. If that objective is more a Nazi objective than anyone else's, and polls are not only manipulative as we've seen but people can be intimidated to give one answer over another, then the West shouldn't support it. Which doesn't exclude any support at all, but could lead to supporting a defensive posture and negotiations instead of trying to reconquer territory at a massive cost to Ukrainian lives and economy (and may also have no chance of working).

Second policy problem is that even if one completed the complicated exercise of discounting Nazi influence on Ukrainian politics, certainly it would be important to any country that doesn't explicitly support fascism to make sure there are safeguards to prevent the grown (not just in Ukraine but internationally as seen above) of Naziism.

For example, you might want to have mechanisms to track arms and money and a veto on which foreign fighters can openly travel to Ukraine who "see Ukraine as a chance to further 'accelerationist' agendas, which seek to speed up a civilization-wide collapse and then build fascist ethno-states from the ashes," rather than structure support to Ukraine as an untraceable slush fund, both in terms of finance and arms (except of course the money that never enters Ukraine but is transferred directly to arms manufacturers).

Anyone knowing even a bit of Russian history (and from this post it is very clear that it is not you) knows that before Wagner Group started recruiting prisoners, it was an elite PMC who was very strict about its recruiting. I was talking about WAGNER, you know, like in WAGNER Group, i.e. its founder. He is not a random guy from prison, he is a guy who (along with Prigozhin), used his elite troops to medle in various conflicts around the world, with the blessing and financing from Kremlin. — Jabberwock

Yeah I get it, a real tough guy as tough as they come.

One of the first arguments used to apologize for the Nazi's in Ukraine is that they are just tough guys and having some spooky SS symbolism is just boys will be boys kind of things, doesn't mean anything.

The videos I posted clearly demonstrate the groups adoption of "Nazi stuff" is far deeper than just tattoos.

However, if there wasn't evidence of organized groups who are happy to explain their "Aryans will rise again" ideology, then it's a fair complaint that you're going to find these sorts of tough guy tattoos on tough guys the world over, may not mean more than that.

If your point is that Wagner is also a Nazi organization similar to Azov, you need that evidence you keep talking about.

Now, if your point is that Wagner is a tool of the Kremlin to advance its state policies where violence is needed, seems legitimate political process to me. How is Wagner different from American PMC's?

Putin since his second term have been coveting support from Russian nationalists (I have given tons of links with my exchange with Mikie). It happens so that many of the 'mainstream' (if you can call them that) nationalists have close relations with definitely-not-mainstream far-right nationaiists many of whom are neo-Nazi. They have been pampered, supported and financed by Putin for his political gain. — Jabberwock

Nationalists there definitely are in Ukraine. But please demonstrate there are groups that honour Nazi collaborators and are clearly organized around an explicitly Nazi ideology, not just have a few "bad apples". Now, if you want to say the nationalism is a different flavour, not explicitly Nazi, but just as bad, sure, I don't have a problem with that.

Lol. You clearly have no clue how propaganda in Russia works. I recommend watching some excerpts prepared by Julia Davis. — Jabberwock

You're telling me that Putin calls the military campaign major objective "denazification" and that didn't play well in Russia.

Normal Russians were just like "pfff, plenty of that over here, denazify Russia already".

It's simply obvious fact that the Nazi groups that rose to positions of power and prominence (though not through legitimate electoral means) and openly talked about their desire to destroy Russia (I believe one slogan was "first Moscow, then Berlin!") does not help motivate the Russian population to get behind the war (which a large majority of Russians support).

It's also an obvious fact that when you have fanatical groups willing to use "street politics" (what terrorism is called when white people do it) to kill opponents and intimidate everyone, murder a negotiator in a peace process, it both clouds political legitimacy and frustrates peace processes.

Both points are essential to understanding the war: there are very motivated forces in Ukraine that do not want any peace and are willing to use violence to prevent peace, and those forces also provide some reasonable basis for regular Russians to support the war.

Since we're on a philosophy forum and no one has actually detailed a just war argument for Ukraine, explaining how the separatists deserved to be shelled, etc. the Nazi's in Ukraine must also be touched on in a just-war theory for Ukraine. I keep on being told that the answer to this issue is there "is not enough Nazis in Ukraine", I ask "what would enough be?" and this question is never answered, but apparently just asking for a little expansion of the just war theory, to clarify a key term, is "pro Putin".

However, this whole business of trying to prove there's "just as much Nazis in Russia" is completely absurd as it clearly accepts what the posted reporting shows, there's a Nazi problem in Ukraine.

How is there being a Nazi problem in Russia, assuming that's true, justification to ignore the same problem in Ukraine? And if this is the case, why would we care about either?

Is the logic here that we can support, train, arm and finance Nazis in Ukraine, that's justifiable and honours all the forebears who fought or resisted the Nazis, as long as Russia too has some Nazis?

My position honestly doesn't seem to warrant any controversy at all, as a Canadian I don't want to see Canadian money and arms and training in the hands of Nazis. Indeed, there were laws passed to make sure the government wasn't inadvertently arming Nazis in Ukraine in support of the "legitimate government there" ... and a reporter goes and demonstrate exactly that is happening and ... nada.

The West could have made a real tangible distinction between the Nazis and the Ukrainian government (which would have limited significantly the growth of the Nazi organization and the "street politics"; aka. terrorism) but the West doesn't, that's my main issue. And why does the West (as in Governments) not even try to distinguish between Nazis and not-Nazis in Ukraine? Because it's only the Nazis willing to shell civilians and keep the conflict going in the Donbas come what may!

Well that presupposes that you know what is pro-Ukrainian. BTW positions that get hundreds of thousands of Palestianis killed and do not accomplish the war aims, is not pro-Palestianian, right? — neomac

Go on, explain how hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dying for war aims that are not accomplished and seems clear to everyone now was completely obvious to everyone all along that the war aims wouldn't be accomplished with the means supplied ... is "pro-Ukrainian"?

BTW positions that get hundreds of thousands of Palestianis killed and do not accomplish the war aims, is not pro-Palestianian, right? — neomac

I have no problem saying that if the war aims are not accomplished at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, knowing the disastrous result ahead of time was guaranteed, positions that supported such a military disaster are not "pro-Palestinian".

However, if you want to talk about Hamas here, I am not in favour of terrorism: Palestinian terrorism nor Israeli terrorism, as terrorism frustrates legitimate political process and the mutual cycle of terrorism in Israel and the occupied territories demonstrates exactly why terrorism is so toxic to solving things through dialogue.

Fortunately, Hamas is competent and savvy enough to avoid a path that gets hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed, only mere tens of thousands.

More importantly, likely Hamas has achieved its war aims of demonstrating to the Arab world that Israel can be humiliated on the battlefield, this will motivate additional fanaticism for decades to come.

With enough irregular forces with enough asymmetric assets borne from modern technology, irregular forces that can't practically be deterred with nuclear weapons, there very well may come the day when the IDF loses to a ragtag collection of groups originally created, trained, financed and incubated in the wars of the US.

It seems that the exchange of violence in this war disfavours the Palestinians, but that isn't their calculus. Hamas killed a meaningful percentage of the total Israeli population, whereas Israel has killed a meaningless percentage of the total Muslim population, of which, along with Israeli merciless reprisal and the anger that fuels, the other aim of the operation is to rekindle the dream of a Muslim-Isreali war (or then at least enough Muslims to raise enough funds to attract enough jihadists to the holy land to give the IDF a run for its money).

As a racist and genocidal group, I do not support Hamas, but their strategy does make sense.

Anyone who knows anything about Russian history (that one made me laugh out loud!) knows perfectly well that there are quite a few people branding Nazi symbols in Russia as well, in nationalistic circles quite close to Kremlin in particular. — Jabberwock

Complete false symmetry.

What you describe is called actual cherry picking (what the people complaining about Ukrainian Nazi's were accused of, that of course among "tough guys" you're going find the odd Totenkopf or two and maybe even a Swastika).

Wagner is recruiting hardened criminals from prison.

What the reporters reveal in the videos I posted (did you watch them?) are organizations with a sophisticated Nazi ideology, not just a few "tough guys" with some tough symbols.

So on the substance, unless you can provide more than some cherry picked tough guys with tough tattoos to signal their toughness, it is simply false to say Naziism is as popular and influential in Russia as it is in Ukraine, as tolerated in Russia as it is in Ukraine.

Are there parades of torch holders with pictures of Nazi collaborators in Moscow, or are there?

On the substance, you are simply wrong, but feel free to provide comparable evidence as the series of videos I posted (all by reputable Western news organizations).

Now, on the point you are responding to, my point is exactly that Putin can make a simplistic argument!

Doesn't matter how complicated you think it is, a lot of Russians will be sympathetic to Putins justification they are fighting Nazi's in Ukraine. You're saying regular Russians hold your view that it's more complicated, that of course Russia has just as many Nazi's?

Think about it, obviously not.

I focus on the symbolism these groups use in that statement just because that's what will be used by Putin to communicate this to the public. I specifically explain that this factual based motivation is going to be even stronger with propaganda.

You just said you wanted to understand the war:

Yes, I do have a problem with that. I am trying to understand the conflict, not cheerleading for a side. — Tzeentch

Well evaluating Russian motivation is part of understanding the war.

We were sold on the idea that Russian soldiers and society were poorly motivated and so would collapse and that was an essential advantage of the Ukrainians.

"Nazis in Ukraine is baseless Kremlin propaganda!" is the common refrain to the subject of the nominal purposes of the war "denazification".

Or you need to actually get deeper into this and see it is a bit more complicated than that. — Jabberwock

My argument is that Nazis in Ukraine is an easy motivator for Russians.

As for just-war clearly Russia has arguments there war is just, my position on the matter is that it is not obvious and I don't accept "pro-Ukrainians" here simply stating the just-warness for Ukrainian fighting is "obvious".

The issue doesn't matter to me as I'm already a war skeptic and my compatriots are difficult to imagine more pro war, and my position is that it's immoral to send arms and not soldiers.

I am for the path that minimizes suffering.

If NATO sent soldiers and ended the war that way (ideally before the war happened) and avoided nuclear escalation and so on and "stood up" to Putin and talked his "language of strength" I'd be all for it.

My position would be that NATO may have done bad things in the Middle East, but at least they avoided this particular war from happening.

Obviously at no point was NATO even contemplating sending troops to Ukraine to stop anything but using Ukrainians for their own purposes, a policy I'm against.

"Is Ukraine's war against the Donbas justified?" and "is Russia's invasion of Ukraine justified?" and "is Ukraine attempting to regain the lost territory justified given the risks and the costs" are all questions that would be relevant to me personally if NATO was sending troops, which is obviously not going to happen.

The position of "Ukraine is righteous!!!!! .... but ... we don't want to escalate" is obviously a recipe to have Ukraine destroyed and attempt to maximize suffering. As "escalation" is code for "Russia losing on the battlefield".