Money laundering? Perhaps you should look at a dictionary first. You're parroting propaganda to the point of embarrassment. — Echarmion

When you transfer an asset into someone else's name to act as a front man in order to avoid legal scrutiny (for example because you're about to be the President of a country), that's already fraud. Transferring an asset in a fraudulent way to avoid accountability is already in itself money laundering.

We don't need more details about what these offshore accounts were used for and the context of the asset transfer, 1 week before assuming office, makes any argument that moving these shares was just a "gift to a friend" impossible to make. But go ahead and make it.

I don't personally need more evidence that Zelensky is corrupt and knows that the proposal of sending hundreds of billions of dollars Ukraine's way he can take a little off the top.

But even if you want to just believe Zelensky is the diamond in the rough and straight as an arrow, my argument applies not simply to Zelensky but all the Ukrainian elites and decision makers, they will all stand to benefit from billions of dollars structured in the form of a slush fund being sent to Ukraine, and Zelensky himself complains about corruption, even in high places.

My point is the money is a de facto bribe to everyone with any sort of power in Ukraine. Zelensky is obviously well positioned to take advantage with his offshore dealings and proven front men for laundering money, and has since chastised any inquiry into the matter, but if you want to believe Zelensky setup secret offshore accounts and holding companies just to "tempt himself" to prove is moral and assetic solidity, it doesn't really change my argument much consider Zelensky himself complains about corruption in Ukrainian politics and governance. Plenty of people in Ukraine are making bank off the war and have a motivation to see it continue, and that is a what corporate people call a "moral hazard".

Another strawman. — Echarmion

What straw man? My argument is that if you're caught laundering money once (especially if you've been criticizing your political opponents of that exact thing, calling it corrupt, without disclosing you also are doing that thing) you shouldn't get much.

The story about the yachts has actual evidence provided, I have not seen anyone actually explain what's fabricated about the evidence or contradicting claims from the other parties involved.

Exclusive: Wife of Ukraine president-elect got penthouse bargain from tycoon

The wife of Ukrainian president-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy bought a luxury apartment for less than half the market rate from business tycoon Oleksandr Buryak, according to official income and property records.

Zelenskiy, a comedian and TV star with no political experience, won the April 21 presidential election after campaigning as someone who stands apart from the wealthy elite that dominates Ukrainian business ...
— 2019, Reuters

Again, before the war and before the memo went out that Zelensky is basically a saint now, the most reputable news agencies in the world had zero problem Reporting on and calling out Zelensky corruption.

So again, when the West offers Zelensky billions of dollars structured as a slush fund without any traceability to do their policy rather than accept a negotiated settlement (or even continue to negotiate "just in case" but rather repudiate entirely negotiations), it is not only a de facto bribe but the West knows Zelensky is "a player" who "does business" that way.

And do you have evidence for this or are you once again simply making up stuff as you go along? — Echarmion

In any discussion there are facts that people who follow the issue should know.

Before the war Ukraine had 250 000 soldiers about and then once the war starts mobilizes over 800 000 total soldiers. The majority of these are not volunteers.

There were a reported total of 250,800 personnel in the Armed Forces in 2015.[64] In July 2022, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated that the Armed Forces had an active strength of 700,000; Reznikov also mentioned that with the Border Guard, National Guard, and police added, the total comes to around one million. — Armed Forces of Ukraine - Wikipedia

Additional fact for you (which should be common knowledge to anyone following the war but I'm happy to spoon feed you basic facts as it makes you ignorant, out of your depth and even more bad faith):

Otherwise why would we assume new allegations of the same is Russian propaganda?
— boethius

Claims need to be supported by evidence. — Echarmion

You do not need supporting evidence for this. If you've been caught money laundering by making a best friend a front man for offshore assets and taking bribes through your wife, you don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. If papers show up purporting to show 75 Million yacht purchases that's credible until proven otherwise as far as I'm concerned.

But only because I don't like corrupt politicians and money launderers.

If you do like them and want to go out to bat for organized crime, by all means explain this philosophy and why this particular evidence (in the context that Zelensky has done this kind of crime) is not credible.

Evidence shows up that supports a claim, making an accusation that someone has done again crime he's already done: it's credible until proven otherwise. No one (that isn't corrupt) has the mental effort resources to operate otherwise.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed decree 24.02.2022 № 64/2022 "On the imposition of martial law in Ukraine" on general mobilization in the country, which would commence on 25 February for a period of 90 days, calling up conscripts and reservists; all male Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 60 were prohibited from travelling abroad, unless they could provide documents that they fulfilled specified conditions for exemption. — Mobilization in Ukraine

If you want to live in a world where taking away nearly half the population's freedom of movement and then calling up conscripts and reservists, was simply to "top things off" and not really needed because Ukraine had and still has hundreds of thousands of volunteers, I guess go ahead. Obviously exact mobilization numbers will be "state secrets" so we'll only have a clear idea of exact numbers after the war.

Again, no evidence and also bad logic. — Echarmion

The bad argument without evidence is the idea that there needs be no justification for the war, no justification for Europe and NATO's financing and arming of the war, because "Ukrainians want to fight", an argument that has appeared numerous times in this forum.

You're incarnation is to rebut the fact that simply supporting a war without any theory of victory is cry-baby logic ... Ukrainians on the front aren't cry-babies and want to fight!

This is the position that has zero evidence. You provide zero evidence that most Ukrainians fighting want to fight and the law banning Ukrainians from leaving the country was totally unnecessary and superfluous because Ukrainians want to fight! at least for the most part, so there wouldn't a problem with recruitment.

You make claims and provide zero evidence and is also bad logic. That Ukrainians want to fight without a theory of victory does not actually rebut that being cry-baby logic.

The only reason I rebutted your claim that Ukrainians want to fight for Zelensky's various cry-baby statements, is because I honestly don't think it's true. A large majority of Ukrainians voted for the peace candidate twice, so I think it stands to reason most Ukrainians knew the dangers of continuing the war in the Donbas (which obviously assumes giving up claim to Crimea as well), and simply because Zelensky starts promising he'll take back all the Donbas and all Crimea in the cry-baby framework of reasoning, I honestly don't think most Ukrainians were convinced that was feasible.

Alternate world type stuff. — jorndoe

Exactly. Especially the nazi stuff. — ssu

They've tossed the "Nazi" word around some, not just regarding Ukraine. — jorndoe

This is called "echoing" each other without making any argument of any kind, nor contending with the evidence that supports the claim you complain about ... all of which comes from the Western media:

As I posted when this subject first came up, posted March 21st, 2022.

Please, watch the videos and then explain how "there are no Nazi's in Ukraine" ... or "if they are they aren't a problem" or "well, maybe they are a problem, but not a big problem" or "they were Nazi!! but since rebranded" or my favourite (aired by the BBC no less) "yes, they are 'extreme nationalists' but they are good fighters".

↪Olivier5

The backlash is people getting into severe cognitive dissonance which disrupts the war horny trance like state they were in previously, when they encounter the fact the "neo-Nazi" problem isn't some fringe skinheads in some seedy bar, but a whole institution.

Which, please pay attention to the "black sun" which doesn't even have any apologist "it's just a rune" or "ancient Sanskrit symbol" whatever explanation, but literally created by the SS for the SS.
— boethius

And also discover, at least the US and Canada (... maybe not other NATO members like Germany, who are the experts on neo-Nazi's after all and arbitrate whether they exist or not in today's media landscape) exposed to be breaking their own laws, which was military aid was contingent on irregular forces not doing any fighting or getting any weapons or ammunition ... which journalists could just go debunk in like, a single day's investigation?



And discover ... that when people talk about this problem going back to 2014 ... there's times and BBC reportings on this very thing:

January First, is one of the most important days in their callender. It marks the birth of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian partisan forces during the second world war.

The rally was organized by the far right Svoboda Party. Protests marched amidst a river of torches, with signs saying "Ukraine above all else".

But for many in Ukraine and abroad, Bandera's legacy is controversial. His group, the organization of Ukrainian Nationalists sided with Nazi German forces [but fortunately we have modern Germany to tell us there's no connection!] before breaking with them later in the war. Western Historians also say that his followers carried out massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.

[... interview with a guy explaining the importance of Stepan Bandera's birthday party ]

Ukraine is a deeply divided country, however, and many in its East and South consider the party to be extremist. Many observers say rallies like today's torch light march only add to this division [really?!?! you don't say...]. — BBC

Or discover this one which interviews the FBI talking about these terrorists training with Azov ... but ... wait, "the war on terror" doesn't extend to white terrorists training "oversees".

And has the quote (recorded on video) from one of the recruiters:

We're Aryans, and we will rise again — totally not a neo-Nazi, according to the German government

But ... the president is Jewish and is allied with these forces, who don't even hate Jews all that much! So obviously you can have Nazi's if their friendly Nazi's (to your side).



This one's just adorable.



If I remember correctly, the main counter argument was that "there are Nazi's everywhere" ... I ask from where else is there similar evidence of so many Nazi's causing such big problems ... nada.

Then it was "ok, there are Nazi's, maybe more than elsewhere, but there aren't 'enough' Nazi's to justify an invasion".

To which my simply question "well, how many Nazi's would be too many Nazi's with too much power and influence that would justify an invasion to denazify said Nazis?"

Is never answered, but I'm simply labeled a pro-Putinist for simply asking the question. It should be simple to follow up an argument that contains the word "not enough" to explain what "not-enough" means. It's not my argument.

Now, for people who want to live in the real world, rather than the entirely fake world created by the mainstream media to comfort the mendacious, why are the Nazi's in Ukraine an obvious problem:

First, that there are Nazi's in Ukraine and they were the primary force fighting the separatists is a problem because they are out of control and want more war and more fighting. So if you do have some negotiation process to try to end the war anytime between 2014 and 2022, the Nazi's aren't going to like that, and if they have plenty of weapons (courtesy of the West) they can use violence to get their way. Paramilitary groups with a fanatical ideology are simply a problem to legitimate political process.

Second, even assuming one of the cry-babies present takes the courage to explain how we'd evaluate "not enough Nazis" to make the distinction with "enough Nazis", the Nazis are clearly visible enough, and documented well by our own Western media (no one got the memo back then that the sun shined out of these Nazis asses) that these Nazis and these clear reports about the Nazis are not going to go down well with Russians. Russians aren't going to split hairs over whether an obvious Nazi symbol is actually "a Nordic rune!" and the association with Naziism in a group that also has Swastikas tats as well, is just coincidence! Russians will obviously be pissed, and so tolerating these Nazi groups and arming them (as the reporting above demonstrates without ambiguity) provides an amazing casus belli for a Russian invasion and strong motivations to fight. Why this matters is not only did Western policy contribute to reasons for the war and contribute to forces that frustrate any peace process, but the motivation is an easy one for any Russian.

Rewriting history after the war begins to conveniently memory hole or rebrand the Nazis leads directly to underestimating, to use NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg word, the Russian motivation to fight.

It's only in the made-up world of Western media that it made any sense at all to go around saying that the "Russian soldiers don't know why they are fighting" and are unmotivated and have low morale and they'll just completely collapse.

Anyone who knows anything about Russian history and then considers this situation where literal Nazis, both proud and openly advocating the destruction of Russia, are shelling ethnic-Russian civilians in the Donbas for 8 years, would not conclude that the Russians would be unmotivated to teach these Nazis a lesson in proper estimation of an opponents strength.

The Nazis were a significant problem and a major contribution to the war, major obstacle to any peace process, and essential to understanding many aspects of the war, such as focus on Mariupol for the Russians at the start of the war.

And the Nazis are causing similar problems to this day.

They may very well be a small percentage of Ukrainian society (who voted twice overwhelmingly for the candidate who promised to bring peace; Zelensky even promised to go on his knees to Moscow to get peace), but when a small group of fanatics get a bunch of arms, NATO training, and key positions in government, the skies the limit (except if your airforce was blown up).

Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead.

Now, feel free or or or to actually go through the above videos and explain why the Nazis in those videos aren't a problem.

If the straight up denialism is immediately dropped (as the other times we've gotten to the exact same deniliasm and I repost the exact same evidence) and the argument is once again "ok, there are some Nazis, concerning stuff, but not enough Nazis!!"

Well, again, what would be enough?

It's a simple question, and it's not my theory that there aren't "enough Nazis" to justify an invasion. I'm just asking the question and pointing out that letting the Nazis in Ukraine grow in power to the point they are a problem has a word for it ... a word we keep hearing from Western media ... what was it ... ah yes, "appeasement".

But go ahead, explain this political theory that establishes the bar of "enough Nazis" and explain why we aren't there yet.

A false claim invented by russian propaganda. You're staying current on that front I see. — Echarmion

The Pandora papers, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian as part of a global investigation however, suggest Zelenskiy is rather similar to his predecessors.

The leaked documents suggest he had – or has – a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote. — The Guardian

Zelensky getting caught laundering money is nothing new, are you calling this Guardian article, the Pandora Papers and ICIJ Russian propaganda?

For me, if you get caught having offshore accounts while accusing your political opponents of the practice, as explained by The Guardian:

On the campaign trail, Zelenskiy pledged to clean up Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated ruling system. And he railed against politicians such as the wealthy incumbent Petro Poroshenko who hid their assets offshore. The message worked. Zelenskiy won 73% of the vote and now sits in a cavernous office in the capital, Kyiv, decorated with gilded stucco ceilings. Last month, he held talks with Joe Biden in the Oval Office. — The Guardian

As with the Nazi's in Ukraine, there is plenty of reporting by Wester media outlets on Zelensky's corrupt practices ... which at that time no one had gotten the memo that he was a war hero and untouchable.

But if you are claiming The Guardian article is also Russian propaganda then I'll at least concede your position is coherent. Otherwise why would we assume new allegations of the same is Russian propaganda? Simply because Zelensky created that incredible weakness before the war ... but is totally clean now, you swear it?

You not listening isn't the same as there not being an argument. You don't care to entertain any notion that goes against your fixed assumptions, but that is your problem.

Your incessant repetition of how it's impossible for Ukraine to win is not getting any more convincing, especially since you're still unable to even conceive of Ukrainian geopolitical interests. — Echarmion

If everything hinges on Ukraine winning, then I agree that we'll just get back to this point.

But then at least concede that if Ukraine doesn't win, and turns out that was obvious, and turns out the West didn't even make an attempt to provide the weapons that would be needed to have a chance, that my arguments do follow from such a state of affairs.

We can wait and see if you prefer.

Which only proves that you're unable to have an intellectually honest discussion. — Echarmion

Honesty would be taking into account more Ukrainians fighting do not do so voluntarily than volunteer, as well as essentially the entire male population being unable to leave Ukraine, and therefore the "Ukrainian soldiers' will to fight" is not an argument as it is not willing for most cases.

A fairly transparent fig-leaf, since you ascribe the same argumentation to Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian leadership. — Echarmion

So you go from countering the cry-baby argument with the fact tough guys with tattoos are on the front lines, to countering my pointing out that the average Ukrainian soldier I very much doubt use the same logic ... to bringing up the fact Zelensky uses the cry baby logic.

Extremely poor rebuttal.

First, is Zelensky fighting on the front line with real skin in the game?

No, Zelensky doesn't even fit the mythological tough guy Ukrainian Azov-type soldier valiantly fighting to defend the motherland

More importantly, Zelensky's primary role is selling the West on the war, so it's no surprise what he sells the West is what the West is buying.

To the extent ordinary Ukrainians also use cry-baby logic of directly connecting complaints about the world to actions that do not realistically have a chance to resolve those complaints, I have not problem calling cry-babies as well.

Even more important, Zelensky is in a position to lie to the Ukrainian people, and, indeed, when he does it's immediately justified here and elsewhere as necessary propaganda for both Ukrainian and Western moral purposes.

So if Ukrainians did think the effort was realistic, well they may think that because they were lied to and all critical media was banned and they risk also being extra-judicially executed if they don't seem loyal enough to the cause (such as the Ukrainian negotiator that was summarily executed without trial and without any evidence ever being presented).

We outside Ukraine do not have such an excuse.

Now, insofar as any Ukrainian does make the same cry-baby arguments, which perhaps some do, I have zero problem calling them likewise cry-babies, no matter how many tats, wounds, cigars and eye-patches they maybe sporting.

Most importantly, however, Zelensky is being paid handsomely for his services of shepherding Ukrainians youth, and old, to the front lines. His best friends just bought 75 million worth of yachts for example, to add to his collection of European and African property.

So, you can't call someone a cry-baby if they are making bank with their disingenuous rhetoric. That's called being an economically rational agent; even tougher than the toughest Azov storm trooper, to launder money during a war while sending hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens to their trauma, mutilation and death. You honestly need to be as hard as what neutron stars are made of, which is the exact opposite of being a cry baby.

The label is only appropriate to people, whether Ukrainian or not, who genuinely believe you can jump straight from a complaint about the world directly to whatever action seems to emotionally satisfy that complain.

For example, jumping straight from "waaahhhh, Russia invaded Ukraine" to the conclusion that directly emotionally satisfies that complaint, which is someone (else) should go kill Russians then!!

I get it, the invasion rouses anger and promoting Ukrainian fighting back without thinking things through satiates that anger. Indeed, the less thought that goes into the more the anger is satiated. The guy who gets angry and immediately throws over a table and hits his girl friend in the face is far more emotionally satiated in the moment than the guy who contemplates life, the table, the girl friend, where all this is going and what everything means, moral duties and the divine light, for a few days and then throws over the table and hits his girl friend in the face ... or, you know, doesn't do that because he's thought it through and although it would satiate his anger it would not serve his soul.

The same with the war. Rebuking those that want to think things through, such as my question in March 2022 to pro-Zelenskyites on this very forum of how exactly do they think they can win which just got cry-baby responses of "they're defending their homeland!!" and "they want to fight!" etc., satiates a deep anger, and I get it, but the consequences of not thinking through decisions in a war are far higher than the tough Azov Ukrainian soldier guy taking his anger out on his table and girl friend when he gets back from the front; anger that is certainly legitimate in itself if many of his comrades are now dead.

However, what is even worse than the above, is not only jumping from a dissatisfaction about the world directly to supporting the actions that most directly address that emotion (though not actually going yourself, just satisfied others are forced to do so) is then jumping again without thought or justification from that first jump to an entirely new leap to Europe and NATO should supply weapons indefinitely (although not too much, though not too little!! ... but just the right amount that they lose anyways).

I say ... hol'up, let's think this through, ask in March 2022 if anyone even has any idea how Ukraine could "win", whatever definition is proposed for that, since if they can't win then clearly that needs to inform decisions about the war. Simply doesn't matter how much people complain, people whine, people hate on Putin and try to cancel him like some YouTuber that says things the establishment doesn't like, if Ukraine can't win then supporting the attempt will get many, many, many Ukrainians killed for nothing. If they can't win then their only realistic option is to use the leverage that they could fight to the end, no matter irrationally, but they are also willing to strike a compromise to avoid that.

If they can't win, then Europe and NATO should (if they care about Ukrainian lives) support a feasible negotiation strategy, which can certainly involve sending arms to support the negotiation process, but would also entail things like talking to Russia (like the West talks to Hamas, because they care about Israel and a deal may at some point be what Israel needs, once they too have satiated their anger they can appreciate cooler heads did the diplomatic work for them), but more importantly using their economic leverage to apply additional pressure on Russia to make more concessions in a peace settlement.

Now, you seem to have turned not-thinking-things-through into what you seem to believe is some clever art form.

It's neither clever nor moral. Sit down and think of everyone who has suffered and died in this war and really contemplate the very real possibility that Ukraine cannot win in the war it was insisting it could, and then review again in your mind Zelensky's choice to repudiate negotiations, make them more difficult to restart according to your own explanation of "making positions in serious negotiations public is a bad idea".

People here could have proposed a way Ukraine could "win" on the battlefield; no one could, yet Zelensky proponents would insist supporting the war was the right thing to do and Ukrainians being prevented from leaving Ukraine is simply "common sense", that of course critical media must be banned, opposition political parties banned, and so on etc.

I simply ask the question of how Ukraine can even potentially win, and the only response I get is this cry-baby logic that reality doesn't matter, thinking things through doesn't matter, how many people will die in these military campaigns don't matter, consequences to Ukraine's population and economy doesn't matter, nor consequences on the world food supply, potentially escalating to WWIII, feeling nuclear proliferation etc. all doesn't matter.

All these questions didn't matter before 2022 when only "ethnic Russians" were dying in the Donbas and Russia would inevitably invade, and none of the questions matter while people see this disaster unfold, as long as they can compress and contain all their emotions into "waaahhhh Putin".

And as for regular Ukrainians, this simplistic model that they are all just valiantly rushing to the front to defend Ukraine! and happy to lay down their lives on principle, is completely stupid. Most Ukrainians fighting are forced into service, so they are not volunteers and if criticizing the war was not a crime that can additionally get you killed in Ukraine, we may hear more diverse views from Ukraine on whether it was a good idea to refuse the Russian's offer and whether it always made perfect sense to them to fight for "the right to join NATO" and other simplistic thought terminating clichés.

Which to remind everyone are:

A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance.[1][2][3] Its function is to stop an argument from proceeding further, ending the debate with a cliché rather than a point.[1] Some such clichés are not inherently terminating; they only become so when used to intentionally dismiss dissent or justify fallacious logic. — Thought-terminating cliché

"Fighting for the right to join NATO" manages to an even stupider thought-terminating cliché as "support the troops".

Perhaps too clearly stating your "pro-Russia party" credentials there, tovarich! — ssu

Well, point out the other roots to a negotiated settlement then.

I've also explained several times that the war can also simply go on.

As @Tzeentch and I have explained numerous times, Russia likely does not want to conquer all of Ukraine and would not have the resources to occupy it anyways.

So, even if Ukrainian front lines collapsed (which there are many signs of that about to happen), that would not be a military end to the war, the Russians would move forward but the war would still be on.

If Zelensky can stay in power, post-pone elections further (also called dictatorship), squash any dissent, then it's unlikely the Russians would conquer all of Ukraine anyways, and just holding on to power at the costs of sending even children and women to the front and even if Russia just takes more and more territory (that could be avoided by negotiation) is the best career move for Zelensky and other Ukrainian elites—as long as the West keeps paying for the show to go on then there's literally a money laundering bonanza and it's possible to make a lot of money (called being rational in modern economics) if the war can be transitioned to not even really pretending to compete with the Russians but the country called Ukraine is still there anyways.

If Zelensky can't hold on to power and the Ukrainian government collapses, I guess it's possible the new leadership would want to "fight the war harder" but my guess is that they'd want to just go and accept whatever is necessary to end the war and then try to pick up the pieces.

However, so much money rides on the war continuing and the nationalists seem to have tight control and they know Zelensky is needed to get the money.

The West could stop sending the required money; unclear to me how Zelensky would stay in power, but that doesn't mean the government collapses; the nationalists could take control and continue the war by whatever means they find and would be unlikely to negotiate.

So lot's can happen that isn't a negotiated settlement.

But please, if it's pro-Russian to point out that neither side is willing to compromise (enough needed to get the other side to agree to a peace deal), then explain some realistic compromise that could end the war tomorrow.

Do you have a different pathway to a negotiated settlement that doesn't involve the collapse of the Ukrainian government? And for clarity we're talking about around now, not in a decade.

Yeah, why didn't my country and my grandparents generation accept the wisdom of not fighting back in WW2 and essentially just accept whatever the Russians want? — ssu

Again, a pointless straw man. My position is that fighting back is useful in this sort of situation, to arrest the initial invasion and then use the leverage of potential further fighting (even potential further irrational fighting) to negotiate a peace.

Finland continuously negotiates with the Soviets to find a compromise and the end result is agreeing to cede over 20% of Finnish territory to the Soviets and pay the Soviets for the cost to the Soviets of invading Finland: the exact opposite logic compared to what is proposed here, the Western media and Western social media generally speaking.

The Finnish leaders do not walk away from the negotiation table (negotiation is near continuous through the whole conflict), do not publicly vow to reclaim all the lost territory and make that the only acceptable standard, do not publicly call Stalin evil and demand the world get rid of him, and do not make laughably stupid conditions for negotiation such as the Soviets much remove all their forces from Finnish territory first, then a negotiation can happen.

The analogy to Finland simply illustrates all the terrible decisions Zelensky makes and why they aren't realistic and a tough situation requires tough choices, which the Finns make in order to end the war, save lives, and preserve as much territory as they practically can given unfavourable circumstances.

The Finns follow common sense pragmatic realism of what is attainable.

Furthermore, the Finnish geography lends itself to one particular point that is easier for a smaller force to defend itself against a larger force, the Mannerheim Line, and so they fall back to where the defender has the advantage rather than vow to fight for every inch.

Oh yes, they were cry-babies. — ssu

Again, no one here as far as I know is Ukrainian and currently fighting.

The cost of the war is immense in terms of lives lost or mutilated or traumatized or upended, having no justification for the fighting more sophisticated than "waaaah, Putin!" is just cry baby logic.

We discussed at length at the start of the war and both agreed that based on the information available that Ukraine had essentially no prospects of retaking the territory and winning in military terms.

From this agreed position, I concluded that Ukraine should use the leverage (that includes even the small chance it had in 2022 of routing the Russian forces, before Russia mobilized significantly more troops) to negotiate a peace, that would require compromise, which the Russian proposal seemed to adequate and preferable to more war with extremely poor prospects.

You conclude that maybe Ukrainian generals know something we don't and will bring out some total surprise. Presumably then, if Ukrainian generals did not in fact know something we don't, which seems to be the case, then it would follow from your position back then that deciding to fight was not a good decision. You did agree once upon a time that military objectives should be feasible to accomplish and lives not wasted for essentially fantastical wishful thinking.

To get this topic back to less circular territory: — Echarmion

It's only circular because at some point you understand that Ukraine is not going to reconquer all the territory (not that that would end the war anyways, as I explained at length at the start of the conflict) and that therefore the only resolution to the conflict is a diplomatic one.

We then discuss the diplomatic and political problem Ukraine has (that it turned down a far better offer at the start of the conflict) which puts sharply into question Zelensky's competence, and, in any case, has the political problem of Ukraine fighting to a far worse negotiating position.

You even have no problem agreeing that Ukraine had more leverage at the start of the conflict than it does now, just quibbling over exactly which day was the maximum leverage attained, but in the context of agreeing that it was higher in the past and is lower now.

This puts into question Zelensky's competence even more, and also the good faith of NATO in encouraging and convincing Ukraine to take this path rather than negotiations.

To make matters even worse, as you note yourself, making negotiation positions public can be a significantly frustrate further negotiations. Although you're wrong about making a negotiation position public never being a good idea (it can be a good idea if your position is reasonable), it definitely can be a bad idea such as Zelensky making promises that can't be kept (reconquering even Crimea) and ridiculous ultimatums to restart negotiations such as he'll negotiate only after Russia leaves all the territory concerned, that he won't talk to Putin and he'll negotiate after Putin is replaced and so on.

Which, again, puts into absolute clarify the incompetence of Zelensky.

Not willing to accept the implications of what you yourself agree to, you retreat into your habitual way of resolving cognitive dissonance in just inventing whatever would be convenient if it was true and stating that as a fact.

So, after debating at length Ukraine's terrible negotiating position and terrible political position for (certainly the existing leaders) to sell a deal to the Ukrainian public ... you simply invent that Ukraine is actually doing well in the war (which would indeed make all Zelensky's choices far better if he can "win on the battlefield") rather than look at the reality:

Ukraine cannot retake the lost territory and that is clear now even to Zelensky and the whole west.

Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition against Russia.

Continuing to fight therefore brings Ukraine further away from any sort of "victory", destroys remaining leverage, and brings Ukrainian military closer to collapse.

The strategic situation currently seems almost a repeat of last year, Ukraine is on the strategic defensive and Russia seems set for another grinding assault on a fortress city. As last time they seem to be focusing first on encircling/ turning moves on the flanks. — Echarmion

It is not a repeat of last year.

Last year Russia needed to survive sanctions, needed to keep domestic population behind the war, and needed time to mobilize and train hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers, ramp up military production, and so their strategy was to attrit Ukrainian ground forces in the symbol of Bakhmut using mercenaries (which are far less problematic casualties for the home audience) and attritted the Ukrainian air defence system with sustained missile attacks. While attention was on Bakhmut and Zelensky was going around repeating "Bakhmut holds" the Russians also built hundreds of kilometres of sophisticated defences so that Ukraine's strategy of "Bakhmut holds" while NATO trained and equipped brigades for an offensive this year would not succeed and that offensive capacity (that would be useful to have now in a defensive strategy) is mostly destroyed.

This year is very different from last year.

Ukraine's presence on the eastern side of the Dniepr seems more solid, but it's hard to see what can come of that. — Echarmion

It is not solid and it is completely delusional to believe that Ukraine could more easily make meaningful gains with the additional logistical problem of crossing the Dnieper than it could where it attacked without needing to cross a river.

This was purely for political purposes and is impossible to sustain in place, much less push towards Crimea. Russia built the same multilayerd defensive lines on this front as elsewhere and it is not some sort of "soft underbelly" of the Russian position.

Makes zero military sense, but if you can only tiny gains then having a tiny bridgehead across the river sounds more impressive than taking a village along the main line of contact, that is more obviously insignificant a change.

Ukrainian air defense is apparently still working fine, despite the various predictions to the contrary. It seems that sources of ammunition were found so far. The F16 project is still on the way, though we'll have to see what happens now with the Dutch political situation. Will a deal still go through with the deal if the Netherlands pull their support? — Echarmion

Air defence is not working fine, as Russia can now approach the line of contact close enough to drop glide bombs regularly.

The F16 project could have been a good idea at the very start of the war (if NATO actually wanted Ukraine to have a chance to do something major, such as cut the land bridge) ... but is too little too late now.

Germany seems to want to position itself as a major supporter of Ukraine, which seems kinda at odds with the Bild report. The strategy reported in the Bild is of course the kind of thing you can fit all kind of actual events into in retrospect. — Echarmion

Or the writing is on the wall now, Ukraine clearly can't "win" and "defeat Russia", and that's clear to everyone, so "forcing Ukraine to negotiate" will repaint NATO as the peacemakers, which the Western public will easily swallow. The new narrative will be that Ukraine makes its own choices, and if Ukraine wants to fight then NATO supported that (giving Zuluzney everything he said he needed for his strategy to work), placing massive sanctions on Russia and since fighting didn't work out then peace is just the unfortunate reality.

I don't expect negotiated settlement quickly in any case. — Echarmion

Well we agree here.

The opportunity for this is long past.

Unfortunately, the dynamic in place is that Russia has lost too much to give back any territory (they had not lost many troops in taking the territory initially, so could have more easily given it back in March-April 2022), and Ukraine has lost too much to psychologically accept it made the wrong choice in fighting for that failed objective.

Furthermore, the pipelines are blown up and there's no way for the West to normalize economic relations with Russia anyways (Putin is Hitler and a "wanted man" etc.), which was the other major piece of leverage in play in 2022, so there is not really any incentive for Russia to concede anything at all.

The only root to a negotiated settlement is the collapse of the current Ukrainian government and essentially just accepting whatever the Russians want.

I think you should put some more Russian propaganda lines in your post. Someone might not have gotten the message. Perhaps some carricature of Zelensky as the greedy Jew? Or is that not up your alley?

Anyways it's quite hilarious that the people who decided to actually fight for their country are the "crybabies" while the guy waffling on the internet about how their favourite country is the best and most righteous thinks himself a geopolitical genius. — Echarmion

Who here has decided to fight for their country?

You?

As far as I know there are no Ukrainians who have joined this discussion and, if so, none currently fighting for their country.

The crybaby position references non-Ukrainians cheerleading Zelensky from a far without skin in the game and approving of or creating apologetics for NATO's policies that led to the war.

I imagine actual Ukrainians were and are still very well aware that trying to join NATO would be baiting Russia into a war and was a dangerous gambit to play, whether they approved of the policy or not.

The cry baby position expressed in your posts and other "war party" (at least as implied by @ssu) Zelensky proponents that simply ignore the obvious danger of trying to join NATO, based on just complaining about Ukraine being ought to join NATO and likewise ought to be free from Russian influence, and now that the war is happening Ukraine ought to get back all their territory.

Welcome to the real world! What ought to happen is not what necessarily happens and it is a fallacy to tie what ought to be the situation in your ideal world to justifying actions that nominally try to achieve that situation.

It is a cry baby position because it does not take into account that there may simply not be a path that gets you what you want, just a like a baby crying over a broken cookie wanting it to be whole again (because the baby does not understand yet how the world works and what they want is impossible).

In the real world there was almost no way to join NATO without causing the very war joining NATO is meant to avoid (so completely idiotic and a dangerous policy that was motivated not by any credible plan to join NATO but to placate nationalists who are either completely delusional thinking NATO would come and save them or then less delusional but actually wanted to escalate the war with Russia; a wish they recieved). If there was a way (in the real world) to join NATO it wasn't declaring the intention to do it "oh someday, it will be so nice" and then let the tensions build for a quarter of a century until the war that essentially every Russian or cold-war-policy expert predicted would occur as a result.

In the real world you may simply not have the military capabilities (and NATO unwilling to even attempt to provide them) to reconquer all the lost territories ... in which case trying to do that is just wasting lives, which is exactly what I said would happen months ago about the "great Ukrainian counter offensive".

Others here predicted it would be easy for Ukraine to cut the land bridge.

I predicted not only would it not be easy but Ukraine would not make any progress at all.

At some point, you should lend some credit to the person who makes correct predictions: I predicted offensive actions would not be possible without supplying the heavy weapons NATO kept saying was basically "common sense" they wouldn't and couldn't supply; I predicted Ukraine might have the offensive capacity to conquer some buffer zones last year (such as the push the Russians back across the river) but that would not indicate they have the offensive capacity to cut the land bridge to Crimea (two very different tasks); I predicted Russian society wouldn't collapse due to sanctions (as history would teach us); Russian partners wouldn't join sanctions (as "the rest of the world" is far closer ideologically to Russia than LGBTQ+ activists, such as Justin "black face" Trudeau, and they need Russian resources and, in particular China, it is an opportunity to attrit NATO): that Ukrainian offensives would have all the same problems as the Russian Northern offensive and burn out (just, you know, a lot more problems as Ukraine does not have much air power, electronic warfare, and a bunch of other capabilities and lacks quantity in capabilities it does have) but that Russia did have a man power problem and had not yet dug in too deep last year so it was at least somewhat possible (but that Russia would simply tactically retreat, inflicting losses that Ukraine could not sustain, so Ukraine would not get very far and they didn't get very far for exactly this reason), whereas this year it is not remotely possible due to both solving the man power issues and building multiple layers of sophisticated defences and minefields and also learning better combined arms integration (of categories of arms that Russia has and Ukraine basically doesn't have).

Why am I able to make these predictions that come true?

Because I concern myself with the real world. And Ukraine's inability to reconquer the lost territories means that a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is the only option they have.

In February-March-April 2022 they had far more leverage (and would have far more armed forced intact to deter future Russian aggression) to get the best deal possible, and ending the conflict then would have avoided mass depopulation (most Ukrainians that left would have returned) and significant economic destruction not to mention the deaths and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers that fought for an unattainable military goal of reconquering all the lost territory.

So yeah, just ignoring the actual facts and the actual situation Ukraine is in and simply justifying the choice to repudiate negotiations because "waaaahhhh Ukraine shouldn't have to!!! Ukraine should just be able to join NATO!!! Russia should just leave!!! Putin can't be trusted!!! waaaaahhh", is both exactly the level of logic of a crying baby simply wanting something that the baby can't have and in many cases doesn't even make any sense (such as fighting a war for "the right to join NATO").

A pledge of neutrality would not resolve the underlying conflict any more than the pledges of Minsk agreements did. Russia denies Ukraine the right to get out of its sphere of influence and is ready to use military means to prevent it. So it is not about NATO membership, it is not about cooperation, Russians will not be satisfied until at least they have a pro-Russian government there, preferably with more direct forms of control (like the Russia-Belarus 'Union State'). — Jabberwock

It is obviously about NATO membership.

But if you want to rewrite history your way, how does striving for NATO membership help?

Your position, and that of and all the previous war and Zelensky proponents here (as in the Western main stream media) is essentially the cry baby approach to geopolitics and international relations. You essentially whine about the fact that Ukraine can't get what it wants (can't be in NATO, can't get Crimea back, can't have Nazi's without criticism, can't get the weapons it wants, can't compete with Russia militarily, can't have nuclear weapons now, can't just disappear Russia somehow) and then whining about Ukraine's situation somehow directly connects to justifying repudiating peace negotiations, repudiating neutrality and committing to a long war of attrition that is incredibly destructive for Ukraine and Ukraine has little hope of winning.

There is no logical connection between whining about Ukraine's unfulfilled desires or whining about Russia's available scope of action that the West can't cancel like some podcaster that angered the LGBTQ+ community in a way that requires no case to be proven, and justification for fighting a losing war.

You're basically explaining how Ukraine could have avoided this destructive war by committing to neutrality ... but!! that won't remove Russian influence from Ukraine!!!

So what? Ahah, it's better to fight to the last Ukrainian?

Russian influence in Ukraine is far less destructive and far easier to deal with than a giant war if you're any normal Ukrainian citizen.

The fundamental fallacy Zelensky and co. use to reject Russia's peace offer and accept neutrality, that Russian promise not to invade later isn't a "guarantee" is that neither winning a war against Russia is guaranteed and, much worse, NATO support required to even have a chance isn't guaranteed.

Boris Johnson's promises of aid and money and whatever weapons Ukraine needs and so on required to fight the Russians, was not anymore guaranteed than Russia's peace offer.

More critically, Boris Johnson's offer could have been easily probed for being disingenuous, as there was zero offer at that time for the weapons systems required to have even a reasonable chance of "beating the Russians".

Zelensky and his generals clearly didn't go through a simple exercise of war gaming out a scenario of the steps required to "beat" the Russians.

Either that or they were explicitly told that they wouldn't be given the weapons needed to go on an offensive, but the idea is Russian society would collapse under sanctions, which didn't happen and now they are essentially trapped in the war.

But considering the Ukrainian leaders, at least Zelensky and Zeluzney, seem genuinely surprised the great big counter offensive didn't work at all and are only now explaining they need better technology to "win", seems to me they genuinely had no idea how Boris was manipulating them.

Obviously there are no guarantees about almost anything.

Saying "we can't trust Russia" is not a reason to reject a deal with Russia. Russia invading anyways later is a risk, but losing the war on hand is also a risk. Russia can't offer some iron-clad guarantee ... neither can NATO of even sticking it through with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year needed to even stay in the war.

Furthermore, even if you can't trust a party doesn't necessarily matter all that much in international relation (especially in international relation when you don't even know who will be in charge later anyways), there would be solid reasons to believe Russia would be simply incentivized to not-invade more than it would be incentivized to invade a neutral Ukraine and also strong reasons to believe there is no winning a war against Russia anyways (and certainly even less at an acceptable cost).

It's so common sense that neutrality is the best strategic option, that completely absurd reasoning is needed to support the war: fighting for a "right to join NATO", fighting to protect other Eastern European countries (that are in NATO), fighting because a peace deal might lead to losing a war later (without a credible plan to win the current war), fighting because "Putin can't be trusted" (NATO being no more trustworthy: go ask the Afghans).

Russia amassing troops made sure the pipeline would not be opened. The idea that Ukraine was just s convenient "outlet for that anger" is just utterly ridiculous, especially since you acknowledge the invasion must have been planned well in advance. — Echarmion

The invasion was certainly planned in advance, that does not mean refusing to open the pipeline didn't anger Putin and the Kremlin and that anger didn't contribute to the final decision to invade.

These sorts of actions are never "locked in". War is an option, diplomacy another option. Diplomacy fails, Germany decides to humiliate Russia by refusing to open a pipeline that took 10 years to build (and plenty of money to German contractors) and Germany didn't make that clear at the common sense time (i.e. before the pipeline is built), so Russia invades to demonstrate, among other things, its not about to be humiliated by Germany.

This is how any business person would read these events.

Imagine if I let you build a bridge across my property, take your money to help build the bridge, but then when the bridge is finished I tell you the paperwork required to actually use the bridge isn't finalized and also go fuck yourself.

You'd be pissed. I guarantee you Putin and all of the elites in Russian business, politics and the military would be equally pissed.

Only to Americans is it "normal" that America can order a country to do some self-defeating thing in order to humiliate another country that it sources energy from to run major sectors of its economy ... while saying it should buy energy from the US instead at way higher cost.

To the rest of the world, having someone build a 10 billion Euro pipeline only to refuse to have it opened is not a normal way to behave.

Russia amassing troops made sure the pipeline would not be opened. The idea that Ukraine was just s convenient "outlet for that anger" is just utterly ridiculous, especially since you acknowledge the invasion must have been planned well in advance. — Echarmion

One interpretation is that the troops started being amassed due to delays in opening the pipeline. It's not so much the physical completion of the project that is the key point but approving the license to open the pipeline on the German side; the physical completion of the project just makes delays on licensing cost money and focuses tension on the issue.

Another interpretation was that Russia would do essentially the same exercise every year (albeit bigger every year) as a show of force to Ukraine (Russia does lot's of readiness exercises) and that it became a media thing in 2022 because the US wanted to put pressure on the Germans to not open the pipeline, with the forces being amassed as evidence the Russians are a hostile.

The pipelines were not merely a strong economic incentive to both the Russians and the Germans to cooperate and maintain peace, but also a symbol of Russian-German "friendship", or whatever you want to call it.

My reading of these events was that the pipeline was absolutely critical and would have informed further decision making. As I explain, the money the pipeline would generate can "finance" the situation in the Donbas at least a little longer (be rationalized as the "cost of doing business") but it would also change the diplomatic situation as Germany would be making a strong signal it has a different foreign policy to that of the US.

This was a huge investment designed to create closer ties and more peaceful relations with Central Europe, and the biggest EU player of Germany, so I think it's common sense Russia would have wanted to reciprocate the good faith act of opening the pipeline with the good faith act of not-invading. The pipelines to Germany dwarf in terms of economic value and diplomatic leverage anything the Donbas has to offer, there is no reason to trade one for the other.

Rather, once not only the Nord Stream 2 is not opened and then Nord Stream blown up entirely, only then does Russia annex the regions as ... if Nord Stream no longer exists then the Donbas and even more of Ukraine is better than nothing.

Right, but that's the precise problem. If it's the risk that Russia reacts to, then Ukraine's current status is pretty much irrelevant. Ukraine can do whatever it wants to remain neutral. As soon as Russia detects a risk to their interests they nevertheless act.

And since Russia clearly considers some domestic political changes risks, Ukraine would be forever under the threat of Russian aggression as soon as the political situation turns in a way Russia considers too risky. — Echarmion

The key is to navigate risk.

Why didn't Russia annex Crimea before 2014?

Because there's also risks to annexing Crimea, so as long as the risks of annexing Crimea, or a full scale invasion, are greater than not-doing-those-things, then Russia doesn't do them.

Hence, you want to minimize risk to your larger neighbour, and the best way to do that is be neutral.

And definitely the position Ukraine is in entails permanent risk and a permanent need to manage that risk.

Joining a military alliance hostile to Russia is a high risk gambit that has enabled (because it provided consolidation of Russian elites about the subject and a justification to the domestic audience) and triggers exactly the war the gambit is designed to prevent.

There is not too many situations in history where this sort of gambit works, and I would honestly be mind-blown if such a gambit has worked in a position analogous to Ukraine.

And if such a gambit ever worked in even remotely similar circumstances, it was because it was entirely prepared in secret, the actors in the gambit knowing that if the large neighbouring power got wind of the plan they would be invaded essentially the next day.

Ukraine has sub optimal strategy at pretty much every critical juncture.

So Russia gets to cuts off choice parts of Ukraine, and when this happens the best thing Ukraine can do is shrug and act like nothing happened? — Echarmion

Pretty much.

The alternative is the war that is currently happening where Ukraine loses far more land, lives, economic power, mass exodus, mass trauma, nothing good.

NATO could send troops into Ukraine at any time since 2008 to protect Ukraine from the current fate, but NATO doesn't because NATO doesn't care about Ukraine nor Ukrainians.

The reason small countries that are close (or close enough) to large powers that they are not friends with (such as Ireland vis-a-vis the UK) often adopt neutral status is precisely to avoid the kind of situation Ukraine is in now. If you don't want to be allies with the large power next door, then the best strategic move is to commit to neutrality and not being allies with anyone. The only exceptions is if there is an imminent or ongoing war between large powers and you are forced to pick sides anyways (can't just stay out of it like Sweden or Switzeralnd).

It's a nice epic fantasy to "reconquer the lost territories" but it was effetively impossible to reconquer Crimea after 2014 and impossible to reconquer the 4 additional oblasts in 2023. It was possible to reconquer at least some of the oblasts in 2023 as the Russians had not yet built extensive fortifications and had a small expeditionary force vulnerable to attack, but that would have required all the heavy weapons that was "common sense" could not be sent to Ukraine in 2022 to as an extension of "whatever it takes" but somehow equally "common sense" needs to be sent now in 2023.

And as soon as the war started I started to explain how offensive actions were not possible without heavy weapons, that it is ridiculous to believe Ukraine could retake significant territory with only shoulder launched missiles.

So, if Zelensky or his generals followed philosophy forum, they would have known my lengthy analysis of why ATGM's and manpads were obviously not sufficient to conduct any sort of offensive, or even counter offensive effectively:

And not just fro me! But this was one point of consensus!

Hence, focus on sending Ukraine anti-tank guided missiles and manpads. These are extremely dangerous weapons for sure, but you can't really assault and take a dug-in position with these weapons; certainly harass supply lines and lay ambushes but they don't really help defend against a concentrated offensive. So, if Russia digs in on the sides of a pincer and has a concentrated offensive to move forward, there's not much Ukraine can do about it with ATGM's and manpads.
— boethius
The basic problem is that for Ukrainians being on the defensive works. But wars are not won just by being on the defensive. Ukraine should make counterattacks and here might be their weak point: to counterattack they should concentrate their forces and firepower and destroy the Russian units. If those Russian units are in a long column in the middle of an urban area, that's easy. If they are in defensive positions, that's hard. And with the concentration the Russian artillery has targets. Likely Ukraine will try to avoid a battle of attrition. Yet the material support coming from NATO countries is substantial. But they would need more than just those ATGMs, but also artillery and medium range Surface-to-Air missile systems. Stingers cannot defend attack from high altitude. And if you are Putin, you don't care about if you hit something else also when destroying the Ukrainian army. — ssu

An exchange from March 10th, 2022.

Except the two times when Russia did actually invade Ukraine, nothing concerning NATO had recently happened.

So clearly just not joining NATO isn't actually protection against a russian invasion either. — Echarmion

A coup getting rid of the person who implemented the "non-alignment" (except cooperation with NATO ) policy is an obvious change the policy. If a political force topples the president due to his "pro Russian policies" it's pretty clear there's a change in both government and thus policies.

Russia act vis-a-vis the risk, the risk that Ukraine is taking a big and, to the Russians, unacceptable step towards NATO is exceeds what they are willing to tolerate, so they mitigate that risk by annexing Crimea and supporting (perhaps causing if the "Girkin is the key" theory is true) the separatists in the Donbas (so there is additional on-going fighting which makes Ukraine joining NATO exceedingly unlikely before it is resolved).

If you want to ague: NO! Ukraine would have remained neutral! Nuland had zero intention to bring Ukraine closer to NATO nor serious cooperation with anyone in Ukraine! She was just riffing bro!! Russia over reacted!!

Ok, I guess you can make that counter-factual argument. But, even so, Russia is reacting to their perception of Nuland's phone calls, other intelligence, and the violent and chaotic nature of the coup.

Then the status is changed in a major way again in 2019, literally putting the aspiration to join NATO in the constitution, and a full scale invasion happens in 2022.

My argument would be that maybe it takes 3 years to prepare a major invasion especially as the pandemic starts in 2019 and is only more-or-less resolved (enough for people to stop caring much about it) in late 2021 (when winter wave fails to be so impressive).

So, unless starting a full scale invasion in the middle of a pandemic is a good idea, it's possible that delayed Russias plans or then 3 years was anyways the minimum to prepare a full scale invasion.

An additional factor is Zelensky is elected in 2019 promising to make peace with Russia, so seeing what Zelensky does, if peace is feasible, is additional reason to wait.

Another big factor is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This is the other major point of contention along with Ukrainian neutrality. They are also closely connected, as refusing to open Nord Stream 2 would be a strong signal of Europe taking an aggressive posture towards Russia. If the pipeline was opened and business continued as normal with Europe, especially against US protest, that would have been a strong signal that at least Europe does not want any hostilities with Russia ... and there's also the money to consider.

If Nord Stream was opened, the situation in the Donbas remained unsustainable in the long term, but it seems to me extremely likely Russia would not have invaded in 2022, since it was pretty clear (certainly that's what the Western media understood) that Russia was amassing troops as pressure to open the pipeline, and refusing to open the pipeline significantly angered Putin and the Kremlin and invading Ukraine was one outlet for that anger.

So there are other factors, but I would argue that military action in Ukraine was inevitable as long as Ukraine has joining NATO literally in their constitution and a conflict in the Donbas, and 3 years is reasonable time frame to prepare an operation as big as the invasion of 2022. In the meantime there's the pandemic as well as the completion of the pipeline. Pandemic has obvious reasons to wait for its resolution, and the pipeline would have changed the situation in significant ways: would signal Europe has a non-hostile position towards Russia and an independent foreign policy to the US as well as bring in significant money (money that you can then rationalize can support the separatists, at least a little longer); so considering this, my guess would be that Russia would want Germany to get used to the new pipeline and prospering more due to that (strengthening, if not pro-Russian, pro-Russian-gas actors in Germany) and then undertake military action at some later time (potentially the exact same plan, just more active pipelines as leverage, or then tried more limited military options that can be presented as more to do with supporting the separatists than invading Ukraine on 4 different fronts).

The above would be an analysis based on actual facts, but if you want to believe that because 2022 is not literally the same year as 2019 then events in 2022 cannot be triggered by events in 2019 ... I guess be my guest on that.

So, taking all these together: What Zelensky needs to do in 2022 is to somehow re-establish the status quo before 2014. And doing so would cost Ukraine nothing, because Ukraine has no allies and is it fact neutral, while being obviously not neutral and heavily tied to NATO. — Echarmion

Exactly, Ukraine has and is attempting to become not-neutral and its problem is that it has and remains neutral.

Ukraine has no countries that send soldiers to its aid when it is invaded and mutually declare war on the invading country, and Ukraine has likewise no obligation to come to the aid of anyone or declare war just because someone else is invaded. The de facto status of a neutral country.

Of course, it would be nice for Ukraine if Ukraine was magically inside NATO anytime since 1991.

The problem is that Russia views NATO in Ukraine as a serious security threat and will act to stop that from happening.

Russia will obviously invade Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

We can discuss the morality of this imperialistic position, but moral arguments would not change this reality.

Ukraine declaring it is going to join NATO, and NATO reciprocating by saying Ukraine is going to join NATO and cooperations and partnerships of various kinds and having NATO training and "advisors", are things that will clearly provoke Russia into invading Ukraine.

It's also a terrible strategy to actually join NATO, but if you (and more importantly NATO who has more experience) wanted to join NATO, you'd want to advance that as much as possible in secret. Then, as happened with Finland, you'd want some countries to commit to bilateral mutual defence during the final ascension process to get all the t's crossed and i'd dotted.

Of course, NATO has had zero intention to let Ukraine in, as it could trigger WWIII which no one wants.

The 2008 declaration was likely to test the WWIII waters to see how Russia would react (of course if Russia just lets it happen, then why not).

Zelensky even asks before the 2022 invasion point blank to the NATO commander, a clear time line for when they'll get into NATO (as pressure is building from Russia), and the answer was there is no time line but "the door will remain open", which was perhaps meant as a clear signal that it would be better to go negotiate a peace with Russia (just because the CIA wants to provoke Russia into a war, doesn't mean military commanders do).

The point is, yes, trying to establish the 2010-2014 status quo, or even the pre-2019 status quo where joining NATO wasn't explicitly a constitutional goal.

Of course, by 2022 there is a significant "extreme nationalist" (some Nazi's, some just super nationalists) contingent in Ukraine that rather war with Russia than peace or any sort of compromise. The Russian language repression being one other clear provocative example of the power of the nationalists.

The constitutional changes to make NATO an explicit foreign policy goal was precisely to make peace nearly impossible and prevent any president, such as Zelensky, from being able to negotiate with the Russians.

So, when I say what are Zelensky's best options, I do not mean they were easy to achieve.

Likely, only pressure from the West would have allowed Zelensky to force through a deal with the Russians. Since people would know Boris Johnson came to commit billions and billions in weapons and hard currency support, likely this made Zelensky's position extremely difficult even if he personally wanted the peace deal.

Why I say his main mistake is having no experience and not understanding that if Boris is pressuring him to continue the war he should negotiate conditions that would actually make the war winnable. Then with a clear refusal to commit the necessary weapons, then maybe Zelensky would have the leverage with enough of the nationalists right to negotiate some sort of peace. Some people, no matter how nationalistic, would see the logic of not losing a war.

But that was not what my quote referred to. You have simply misunderstood it from the beginning. That happens, what is ridiculous that you try to double down on your claims with quotes that clearly support what I wrote (now you have added the third one). — Jabberwock

That's what we are discussing, Zelensky's options in 2022.

My claim is that committing to Neutrality is low cost to Zelensky (and the other leaders needed to make such a change) in 2022 (or before), is low cost because Ukraine has no allies anyways and is not getting into NATO, but high diplomatic cost to Russia.

You then claim that there's no reason to assume neutrality would be sufficient for the Russians because the appearance of "non-alignment" in the 2010 constitutions changes means Ukraine is neutral, and that didn't prevent the annexation of Crimea.

Now, Ukraine is anyways neutral since as well, de facto neutral as it has no allies.

However, neither in 2014, especially during the coup, nor in 2022 is Ukraine making any sort of strong commitment to neutrality.

What we can see is that when there is even vague commitment to neutrality ("non-alignment" appearing in the constitution but paradoxically allowing cooperation with NATO, leaving entirely vague what that could involve), Russia does not invade.

When there is serious ambiguity (serious risk) of what the policy even is, such as in a chaotic coup, Russia annexes Crimea to hedge the risk to its military base there.

The policy then returns to being ambiguous, with 2 Minsk negotiation processes. During these negotiation Russia does not invade.

Then it is only in 2019 that:

On 7 February 2019 the Ukrainian parliament voted with a majority of 334 out of 385 to change the Ukrainian constitution to help Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union.[109] After the vote, Poroshenko declared: "This is the day when the movement of Ukraine to the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance will be consolidated in the Constitution as a foreign political landmark." — Ukraine-NATO relations

It is after this that military and political tensions start to significantly rise leading to the Russian invasion in 2022, during which time Russia repeatedly demands from Ukraine that it declare itself neutral as well as demand NATO commit to not expand further eastward (it would not matter if Ukraine was constitutionally committed to join NATO if NATO officially repudiated further expansion).

Now, if somehow there was some plan to invade Ukraine come-what-may, then Ukraine simply plays into that plan by providing every possible justification (including tolerating literal Nazi battalions going around and doing their thing with NATO provided weapons) Putin would need to sell the war to both partners abroad and the domestic public.

No, not 'some bureaucratic hangups', but a distinct change in the policy, which Yanukovych clearly stated in your own quote, and adopting the law that precluded Ukraine's membership of any military bloc, but allowed for co-operation with alliances such as NATO. That is exactly what neutrality mean according to your own clear criteria of a neutral country, i.e. the Wikipedia article which clearly states that in 2014 Ukraine was neutral. That your own quoted source discredits your view is not exactly my problem, is it? — Jabberwock

Again, "what neutrality mean according to your own clear criteria of a neutral country"?

A neutral country is a state that is neutral towards belligerents in a specific war or holds itself as permanently neutral in all future conflicts (including avoiding entering into military alliances such as NATO, CSTO or the SCO). — Neutral Country - Wikipedia

"Co-operation" with alliances such as NATO does not fit the definition of neutrality according to the above definition. Co-operation could exist between NATO and a neutral country if it was for some clearly humanitarian purposes, but no one would claim that "cooperating" with a military alliance is a country that "holds itself as permanently neutral".

The status is not neutral but instead ambiguous (which is not neutrality).

He said the issue of Ukrainian membership of NATO might "emerge at some point, but we will not see it in the immediate future."[citation needed] On 1 March 2010, during his visit to Brussels, Yanukovych said that there would be no change to Ukraine's status as a member of the alliance's outreach program. — Ukraine–NATO relations

Nevertheless, this ambiguity of intentions, playing footsie with NATO, is sufficient to avoid a Russian annexation of Crimea.

However, you get rid of the person that made this ambiguous "maybe NATO, maybe not, neutral but cooperating with NATO" policy in a coup and it's reasonable to assume that the policy is likewise gone.

You're basically arguing: Ukraine was neutral because Yanukovych made it neutral!

Ukraine was not neutral, but the status was at best ambiguous: declaring simultaneously non-alignment ... but not excluding cooperation with NATO, which is basically a contradiction: "We're not choosing sides, but we're allowed to choose this particular side" is not a constitutional declaration of neutrality.

The actual reality, as I've described, is that Ukrainian society is divided on which way to go, so elects a compromise candidate. Once there is a CIA backed coup, it is clear pretty clear which way things are going.

So Russia annexes Crimea to hedge the risk of a completely belligerent Ukraine.

The issue of neutrality remains unresolved.

From 2014 to 2022, Russia tries to resolve the issue of neutrality diplomatically.

Since there is an active border dispute, Ukraine is exceedingly unlikely to join NATO during this time, so there is time to see if there's a diplomatic resolution but the war in the Donbas can't be sustained forever either.

What immediately precipitates the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia is Ukraine amassing troops of their own to finish off the separatists.

These are the actual series of events, if you want to live in reality.

The argument that Russia would not be satisfied with neutrality since 2008 is an extremely weak one. Even a vague neutrality does not cause any Russian annexations, much less a full scale invasion.

Since Ukraine has no allies, and has essentially zero chance of getting any allies before the war in question (when allies would be useful to have), committing to neutrality is of low cost to Ukraine but would have significantly increased the diplomatic cost to Russia; perhaps enough to deter annexation and later invasion, perhaps not, but there is no point in fighting a losing war anyways in these circumstances. Sending hundreds of thousands of people to die "on principle" of what sovereign countries should be able to do, is not a moral nor politically astute position.

More proper would be to say "was extremely controversial" and "there were large groups".

But of course, that the attacked unified Ukraine naturally is accepted by some here. — ssu

Over a million Ukrainians take refuge from the war in Russia, so even if we ignore political parties and independent journalism and Ukraine becoming a police state with no elections, there are still large groups that want more ties with Russia, enough to move there.

But if you want to believe that all the refugees that fled to Russia are anti-Russian and Ukrainian society has zero dissenting voices to Zelensky's policy, feel free to believe that.

The point, which I assume you agree with, is that in 2008-2014 it is not clear which way Ukraine is going, more towards NATO or more towards neutrality. Ukraine elects a leaders in 2010 that essentially commits to the status quo, which had not caused any hostilities and maintains the status quo without there being any hostilities, until a CIA backed coup changes the status quo, then hostilities begin.

So, we can deduce that Ukraine's being simply "vaguely" committed to NATO "maybe some day" and maintaining the existing relationship with NATO as-is was sufficient to prevent Russia from invading, but a change of the status quo to get rid of the status quo guy, and you get hostilities beginning in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea.

Here is an interview with the chief negotiator of Ukraine in March 2022:



A bunch has circulated online about this interview making the points that all Russia wanted was neutrality and Boris Johnson was the reason to reject Russia's offer, but above are the points in context (which isn't quite as simply as Russia offered neutrality and Boris Johnson ordered Zelensky to reject it; although that is one reasonable interpretation).

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).

Russia was not "pretending to negotiate" but really, really, really wanted a deal.

Boris Johnson did not arrive in Kiev simply for tea or to exchange masterbation tips with Zelensky, but encouraged Ukraine to repudiate negotiations and to fight instead.

I.e. exactly what I have been describing about the negotiations is exactly what happened according to someone who was there.

Now, of course, as I've already analyzed, it is completely possible that the Russian offer was in bad faith and they'd invade again later.

The problem with this reason for repudiating negotiations is that to "fight now rather than later" still required confidence that you can win now, which I would argue had no rational basis.

Especially at that time, the West was only supplying Ukraine with "defensive weapons", at the very least Zelensky should have demanded heavy weapons and air power to accept Boris' proposal of continuing the war.

Boris would have explained they won't get heavy weapons and air power (not anytime soon anyways, not until their current military is absolutely wrecked and advanced weapon systems would only for the purposes of propping up Ukraine a little longer) and then Zelensky would have been able to deduce that the Western offer was a poison pill.

As for taking Russia's offer, certainly there are no guarantees, but if you cannot win now then time is on your side and you should play for time in hopes that "events" transpire in your favour or then to find further diplomatic solutions.

And again, had Ukraine accepted neutrality, the diplomatic cost for Russia to invade Ukraine again would be insanely high. Keeping India, Africa and even China happy to keep trading with Russia would be far harder.

Of course, had the West been discussing also with Russia (as the West does currently with Hamas) then additional guarantees from the West to Ukraine could also have made a peace agreement better for Ukraine.

The West does not hold talks because the West did not want peace and did not want to be in a position to be explicitly refusing any Russian proposals that would make the policy of having the Ukrainians fight the Russians, no peace, perfectly clear.

The West is immediately in talks with Hamas, doesn't remotely have the same policy of "it's between Israel and Hamas" because Western policy is peace in the middle-east is perhaps desirable and this will require negotiations. Of course, the US does not put much pressure on Israel at the moment, but it could become politically costly to support "too much" war crimes and ethnic cleansing and so its important to have peace as an option, and that requires talking to both sides.

Notice how no one criticizes the West for "talking with Hamas".

US reveals ‘excruciating’ five-week negotiations behind Israel-Hamas deal

A secret cell headed by CIA and Mossad chiefs, and multiple contacts between US President Joe Biden and leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt underpinned an "excruciating" five weeks resulting in the truce agreement, a US official said. — France 24

CIA cells, multiple contacts between President Joe Biden, did not, and are not, trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine-Russian conflict, no matter how "excruciating" ... why?

Because the West does not care about Ukraine or Ukrainian lives, and won't do anything whatsoever to contribute to a peace and if it seems like it could happen anyways, actively discourages it by sending Boris Johnson and his sophisticated Oxford debate skills to put an end to such nonsense.

You claim that I 'rewrite history' and then proceed to quote two sources that confirm exactly what I wrote. Are you surprised that I question your reading comprehension? — Jabberwock

And yes, you are simply rewriting history.

What is the actual context:

During the 2010 presidential election campaign, Party of Regions leader and candidate Viktor Yanukovych stated that the current level of Ukraine's cooperation with NATO was sufficient and that the question of the country's accession to the alliance was therefore not urgent.[69][70] Yanukovych's victory in the election marked a turnaround in Ukraine's relations with NATO. On 14 February 2010, Yanukovych said that Ukraine's relations with NATO were currently "well-defined", and that there was "no question of Ukraine joining NATO." He said the issue of Ukrainian membership of NATO might "emerge at some point, but we will not see it in the immediate future."[citation needed] On 1 March 2010, during his visit to Brussels, Yanukovych said that there would be no change to Ukraine's status as a member of the alliance's outreach program.[71] He later reiterated during a trip to Moscow that Ukraine would remain a "European, non-aligned state."[72][73]

As of May 2010, NATO and Ukraine continued to cooperate in the framework of the Annual National Program,[74] including joint exercises.[75] According to Ukraine the continuation of Ukraine-NATO cooperation does not exclude the development of a strategic partnership with Russia.[76]

On 27 May 2010 Yanukovych stated that he considered Ukraine's relations with NATO as a partnership, "And Ukraine can't live without this [partnership], because Ukraine is a large country."[77]

On 3 June 2010 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill proposed by the President that excluded the goal of "integration into Euro-Atlantic security and NATO membership" from the country's national security strategy.[78] The law precluded Ukraine's membership of any military bloc, but allowed for co-operation with alliances such as NATO. — Ukraine–NATO relations - Wikipedia

Which, as you may again note if have that reading comprehension you covet, is not neutrality, but a compromise position of keeping the status quo. Which, as you note, the status quo did not cause Russia to invade, or even make serious threats such as amassing troops on the border.

The status quo changes when the legally elected president who represents the above compromise position is illegally removed in a coup, by anti-Russian forces explicitly backed by Nuland and the CIA.

For those interested in actual reality:

NATO in 2008:

NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations. We welcome the democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia and look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May. MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership. Today we make clear that we support these countries’ applications for MAP. Therefore we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked Foreign Ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting. Foreign Ministers have the authority to decide on the MAP applications of Ukraine and Georgia. — NATO's own website, 03 Apr. 2008

Then, to avoid being invaded right away, as NATO notes:

From 2010 to 2014, Ukraine pursued a non-alignment policy — NATO's own website

There's then a coup in 2014, and Russia annexes Ukraine and separatists in Donbas try to separate following this coup.

One party here, the "war party" as implied by @ssu, would have us believe that Ukraine's status as a neutral country is totally clear 2010-2014.

The reality is that this issue of neutrality or then trying to join NATO or then wanting better ties with Russia (for example to avoid being invaded and destroyed), is extremely controversial in Ukrainian society. There are large groups of people on each side of this policy issue.

Russia does not annex any territory nor invade the time this discussion within Ukraine takes place.

Ukrainians legally elect someone who is a compromiser with Russia, perhaps because a majority of the Ukrainian people understood at the time, as they have been made to understand all too clearly since, that antagonizing Russia by trying to join NATO does not benefit Ukraine and will cause exactly the war that the point of joining NATO would be to avoid.

The "will of the people" on this point is completely irrelevant to the "pro-democracy" NATO proponents: when the coup is "pro-West" then the will of the people is whatever the West says it is; elections certainly don't matter ... and yet the very same people will accuse Trump rioters in Washington of sedition?!?!?

Now, once the side that is literally backed by the CIA and the US is literally choosing who will lead Ukraine, then Russia annexes Crimea.

And people here would have us believe that the annexation of Crimea has nothing to do with the illegal replacement of the Ukrainian government by the CIA, that it was basking in it's "non-aligned status", happy as a clam, coup's having nothing to do with it and the annexation of Crimea was totally unexpected and everyone was all just Pikachu faced about it.

What the evidence actually supports is that Russia waits for a significant period of time for Ukraine to resolve its status as a neutral country or not.

↪boethiusI have specifically stated that Ukraine has been neutral at the time of Crimea annexation. ssu has acknowledged that by repeating your own quote that the policy has been TERMINATED. That specific word means it has ended, was finished, it was no more. How from that you have concluded that ssu (or me) claim that Ukraine has been 'neutral the whole time', only you can know. — Jabberwock

First, you explain yourself that Ukraine and NATO are holding talks, going towards NATO membership:

NATO

True, it has been previously vaguely promised NATO membership, but at the same time it was excluded from the membership action plan, which was the necessary condition for accession. It was supposed to be 'reviewed' in December 2008, but it never was. — Jabberwock

Which does not satisfy the criteria of a neutral country.

Your argument that Ukraine was neutral in 2014 is basically explaining that it wasn't neutral but was "vaguely promised" to join NATO and then some bureaucratic hangups: tada! neutrality!!

Now, the point of "termination" of non-alignment is simply to establish that obviously Ukraine is not neutral in 2022.

We were discussing what Zelensky could do to avoid the invasion in 2022.

Obviously Ukraine has no commitment to neutrality in 2022 whatsoever, literally has joining NATO in its constitution, and my point is committing to neutrality may have avoided the war.

More importantly, as Ukraine had and has no allies, committing to neutrality costs Ukraine nothing.

But let me get this straight, your counter argument is that the war was guaranteed and committing to neutrality would have changed nothing (in 2022, or anytime before) ... because Russia annexed Crimea after an illegal coup by CIA backed forces?

My argument is that declaring neutrality would make the Russian invasion far more costly diplomatically.

The reason the annexation of Crimea (as you note, there's no fighting or invasion as Russian forces are already there) was not difficult diplomatically is because Russia has a giant military base there so partners such as China and India understood the reasons for it.

I.e. neutrality would have real leverage in the real world and significantly increase the diplomatic cost to Russia of an invasion while removing the critical justification (even to the domestic audience) for it.

While hanging on to "we might join NATO someday" is literally zero leverage because NATO isn't going to let Ukraine join anyways.

However, are you really arguing that an illegal coup backed by the CIA is non-alignment, as well as the relationship between Ukraine and NATO prior to 2014 would satisfy the definition of a neutral country as per Wikipedia? (i.e. that Ukraine in 2014 was neutral just like Ireland and Costa-Rica and non-neutrality of Ukraine is just in Russia's head?).

We can discuss this if you want.

What the records actually shows is that insofar as Ukraine had leaders willing to navigate the situation Ukraine is actually in with some common sense, Russia did not invade as the cost of an invasion was far higher than moving forward diplomatically.

You get rid of the compromiser (who was elected legally) and replace the legal president with Nuland's "our man" and obviously Ukraine is no longer neutral in any way (not even some "formal" way) nor striving for neutrality (being taken over by people, that at least the CIA implies, work for the CIA) and you get the annexation of Crimea and the civil war in the Donbas.

As anyone would expect is extremely likely to happen, just as this much larger war is extremely likely to happen if Ukraine continues on it's delusional path towards NATO.

Yes. As the quote you made yourself says: "Ukraine pursued a non-alignment policy, which it terminated in response to Russia’s aggression."

Do you understand what 'in response' means? No?

People in a philosophy forum ought to understand cause and effect. — ssu

This is the point in question:

It should be noted that at the time of annexation of Crimea Ukraine had neutrality clause in its constitution, and the reason given was that the new government might some day allow Western forces to station in Ukraine. Thus the claim that Russia might be satisfied with any 'formal neutrality' is obviously false. — Jabberwock

Disputing my point that Ukraine is obviously not "neutral", but rather Aha!! Ukraine had a "neutrality clause in its constitution"!! and has been neutral the whole time, the Russians have been just delirious as to the political position of Ukraine and invaded a neutral country! OMG hold the presses!!!

A point you then assent to by stating:

Indeed. Formal neutrality hasn't left Moldova safe from Russia's interventions either. — ssu

"Indeed" being an approbation of the referenced points n this context.

Not only is Ukraine not neutral, but I provide further clarification of what neutral means (that anyone of good faith willing to accuse others of lacking "reading comprehension" can easily go read and educate themselves on what "neutrality" obviously means in international relations) with the Wikipedia article that is literally called "neutral country" and I even list the "neutral countries" according to this definition I am Using, but if you were still confused why "Ukraine" doesn't appear on that list, you could easily go to the article and use the power of "reading comprehension" to read it and see that is literally starts with a definition of neutral "country":

A neutral country is a state that is neutral towards belligerents in a specific war or holds itself as permanently neutral in all future conflicts (including avoiding entering into military alliances such as NATO, CSTO or the SCO). —

To which, if you can apply that reading comprehension you covet so much, the definition of "neutral country" on the Wikipedia page literally tilted "neutral country" explicitly clarifies neutrality to be a "permanent" commitment and explicitly lists NATO as an alliance a neutral country would be committing to avoid joining.

Obviously if you declare your intention to join a military alliance and that military alliance not only creates all sorts of military partnerships and support but also reciprocates and publicly declares they'll let you in oh ... some day, that is not neutral.

If "neutrality" language is left in law or the constitution it is clearly irrelevant.

To support my point that Ukraine is obviously not neutral I cite NATO's own webpage.

You then manage to obliviate yourself about what we're even talking about, what the point of contention is, what you previously cheered on as brilliant argumentation, and you then manage to respond that essentially: of course Ukraine isn't Neutral, Russia is annexed Crimea dumb dumb!!!

Let's "read" it again shall we:

Yes. As the quote you made yourself says: "Ukraine pursued a policy, which it terminated in response to Russia’s aggression."

Do you understand what 'in response' means? No?

People in a philosophy forum ought to understand cause and effect. — ssu

You literally go in 2 comments from approving of the idea Ukraine is neutral, and has been neutral this whole time, to just repeating my claim:

Russia's demands was a commitment to neutrality, obviously stronger than NATO literally explaining on their own website that Ukraine abandoned non-alignment and passing laws to make NATO membership a strategic foreign policy objective. — boethius

What do you even perceive yourself to be doing?

Even putting aside your just ignoring the previous discussion, Do (or did) you genuinely believe that I'm claiming Ukraine "abandoned non-alignment" for fun? Or because Zimbabwe might invade at any moment?

Obviously Ukraine wants to be in NATO for protection and deterrence towards Russia.

The problem, as you may have noticed, is that Ukraine isn't in NATO and the process of trying to get into NATO for protection from a war may (and obviously will in this case) cause exactly the war you are trying to avoid.

Joining NATO is at best a gambit with some odds of success, a gambit that has clearly failed (just odds are basically zero, so it's not a gambit but rather defiantly asking to be invaded which is what has happened).

If you want to argue that gambit was a good one, just so happens caused the war it was meant to prevent, go ahead.

If you want to argue that countries should pursue "what they want" in the name of "rights and freedom" even if it will very likely cause the mass trauma, depopulation, economic destruction, and hundreds of thousands of KIA and permanently wounded: feel free to explain this subtle political art that justifies such a course of action.

The only way out of the war for Ukraine before the war and since the war started and now, was and is diplomacy.

Putting in your constitution your goal is to join NATO is simply taunting Russia to invade for no benefit: as probability of NATO letting Ukraine in before the war is exactly the closest value you can get to zero and still be able to perform statistical calculations of some kind in a world ruled by quantum mechanics.

It should be noted that at the time of annexation of Crimea Ukraine had neutrality clause in its constitution, and the reason given was that the new government might some day allow Western forces to station in Ukraine. Thus the claim that Russia might be satisfied with any 'formal neutrality' is obviously false. — Jabberwock

And , and others.

You guys have come to a point of really pure insanity.

Ukraine literally put the intention to join NATO in their constitution, basically declared that as their national mission and NATO reciprocated the fantasy by making partnerships of various kinds and explicitly saying Ukraine would join NATO one day (just left the fine print out that "some day", if it ever comes, is long, long, long after the day it would have been useful to Ukraine to be in NATO).

You can read about the above directly on NATO's website:

From 2010 to 2014, Ukraine pursued a non-alignment policy, which it terminated in response to Russia’s aggression. In June 2017, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted legislation reinstating membership in NATO as a strategic foreign and security policy objective. In 2019, a corresponding amendment to Ukraine's Constitution entered into force. — NATO's official website

The above is obviously not a commitment to neutrality.

If Ukraine remained technically neutral, it's only because it has no allies.

Russia's demands was a commitment to neutrality, obviously stronger than NATO literally explaining on their own website that Ukraine abandoned non-alignment and passed laws to make NATO membership a strategic foreign policy objective.

You guys are literally rewriting history on the fly.

It's truly incredible.

I don't have time today to deal with the rest of the nonsense, but don't worry your pretty little heads, I'll find time in the coming days.

However, you guys should really contemplate what brings you to needing to believe Ukraine was a neutral country all along a la Costa Rica.

Right. And this is why it's so useful to discuss with you. — Echarmion

Oh, and definitely History will remember Zelensky as a stupid crazy person if it turns out it was obviously incredibly foolish to promise a total defeat of Russian forces on all previously help Ukrainian territory and he got hundreds of thousands of his comrades killed in this stupid and crazy pursuit.

But sure, maybe Zelensky is a military genius and is about to deliver victory across the entire front, and casualties have been like super low as Zelensky claims.

However, if Zelensky loses, it will also clearly become even stupider and even crazier the act of publicly making these promises as well as ultimatums to even restart negotiations that, as you point out, only make negotiations far harder (which Zelensky, and moreover Ukraine, would certainly need if they are unable to simply win on the battlefield).

Zelensky has zero political or military experience. He was able to pretend things were going well for a time, but it may turn out to be both stupid and crazy to make decisions based on what you're able to pretend is true rather than trying to see what is actually true.

But this is contradictory, because the cost is right there - if Ukraine is neutral it has much less protection against any future aggression. — Echarmion

This is not contradictory in anyway.

What is contradictory is to fight a war at a significant disadvantage on some principle to join an alliance that would offer protection from said war.

You seem to just want Ukraine to be in a better position than it is, rather than the reality that Ukraine is in a far weaker position vis-a-vis Russia and no way to remedy that without the war in question (no way to sneak into NATO as NATO doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, but rather NATO, at least the US, wants Ukraine to antagonize Russia and then create a "structure" where Ukraine fights Russia to the last Ukrainian).

Ukraine is a de facto neutral country, with zero allies that comes to its aid when Ukraine is invaded, therefore it is of zero benefit to Ukraine to not offer neutrality in exchange for peace.

If Russia accepted it (of course in the context of peace agreement that addressed plenty of other issues as well) maybe Ukraine would have avoided the war from starting or then ended it in the first phase and avoided significant pain, suffering and lost lives.

If Russia rejects it, or then makes other demands that aren't reasonable (from the point of view of being able to very likely win in a war against Ukraine) ... well you have the same war as you have now!! Just that Russia would be in a far weaker position diplomatically in attacking a country that professes it is willing to be neutral.

Insofar as Ukraine refuses to commit to neutrality, other large countries see that if they don't support Russia then they could be next with a similar kind of conflict; therefore, it's in their interest to help Russia win in order for NATO to be extremely hesitant to try to arrange a similar proxy war.

If Ukraine "bent the knee" and committed to neutrality, it would be far harder for Russia to make the case to its partners that the war is justified.

That is unless you think that for Russia, "neutrality" would mean simply that Ukraine is not officially in NATO but can otherwise get as much western military support as it wants. — Echarmion

Obviously Russia would not accept that.

As Blinken explained in public long before the war, if to do what you say and arm Ukraine to the point of having a credible deterrent to Russia, then Russia will simply match that capacity and if you continue Russia will invade before the situation got out of hand (from their point of view) which is exactly what has happened.

There is simply no way to arm and train Ukraine until it can credibly fight a war with Russia without causing said war with Russia.

You may not like it, you may feel Russia is doing something "illegal" (that we can't do anything about in the system of international law), you may feel Russia would not have valid reason to view Ukraine as a security threat, and certainly that Russia's invasion would be immoral in any case, but what you can know for sure is that a process to arm and train Ukraine to compete militarily with Russia will result in a Russian invasion to put a stop to that process.

Now, with incredible levels of support (financing the entire Ukrainian army, government and subsidizing a large part of the economy) you can keep Ukraine on life-support to fight a long war with Russia. You can, and people have, argued that's good for the West: a nice "structure" of having Ukraine fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. You can argue that's a moral and wise political thing to do; I disagree on both points.

Therefore, the only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war and the only way out of it since it started is through a negotiated settlement and offering concessions such as neutrality.

If you think the situation isn't fair for Ukraine: see Captain Jack Sparrow cited above.

If you think international law isn't working correctly ... well, they're more like guidelines ... than actual rules.

And you think that somehow this is an acceptable arrangement for Russia, that Russia would start a war over nothing but a formality? — Echarmion

Yes, this is a huge factor.

Had Ukraine formally declared neutrality, it would be a "diplomatic win" for Russia, certainly still plenty of issues that would need to be resolved, but it would be a huge diplomatic cost to immediately invade a country that just declared neutrality. I would agree if negotiations did not succeed then Russia would invade anyways, but it is a huge disincentive to invade a neutral country. There are plenty of neutral countries that larger countries could easily invade (some have no army at all), it doesn't happen because it would be a massive diplomatic cost, the neutral country presents no threats (no significant military of their own and no alliances or any reason alliances would even happen) so it is easier to do business than invade.

Ukraine could have easily sought a similar path that has worked fine for plenty of other neutral countries.

If you go to wikipedia there is a list of neutral countries:

List of countries proclaiming to be neutral:

Andorra, Austria, Costa Rica, Ghana, Haiti, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Panama, Rwanda, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan, Vatican City — Neutral country

So, you can believe such a similar strategy for Ukraine to remain sovereign would not work, but it clearly has worked for other countries and is a viable strategy. Proclaiming neutrality creates a large diplomatic cost to an invading army and also significantly lowers any "national security paranoia" if you are indeed not a threat to anyone, that may otherwise lead to an invasion.

In the case of Ukraine, what is clear is that the attempt to not-be-neutral would with near certainty result in the present war, and the strategy of fighting a war from a weaker position so as to avoid fighting a war in the future makes no sense.

Im talking about the right to self-determination as understood in internation al law.

This one. Not an abstract notion of freedom. — Echarmion

Sure, I specifically point out that it's not surprising nations create an international law in which only nations have right to self determination.

However, that is not a good argument to support the idea that all separatists movements do not have just cause as they don't have a "right to self determination" under international law. You'd need to argue how that even makes sense considering many of the nations concerned are the result of separatist movements they claim were just. Certainly it's not a some moral universal position.

But if you want a strictly legal view of things: coup of 2014 was illegal, therefore Ukrainian government since is illegitimate. What does the West say about the coup? Illegal but justified as "Ukrainians" wanted it, so is claimed; but even if true, a poll at some random point in time is not a legal process (that's what makes elections different than any poll).

That's all quite wrong.

The UN-Charta rules out violence in international relations generally, in Art 2 section 3 and 4. The security council has some specific and far reaching powers (theoretically at least), but it is not the authoritative body on how to interpret international law. Nor does it need to declare something an attack in order for it to be one, as among other things Art. 51 of the UN-Charta makes clear. And of course there is an entire body of international law part from the UNC. — Echarmion

Go on, please explain how you interpret international law without the security council and how that would mean anything. You're saying Israel left the West Bank decades ago?

That is not my claim, nor does your demand make any sense in context.

But anyways here is Igor Girkin telling us about his role in the invasion of Crimea, so Girkin is in Crimea from February 21.

On April 12, the Slovianks Police HQ is taken, apparently by a well organised "independent group". Later interviews from Girkin make clear that he was the leader of that independent group 1, 2, 3.

Two weeks later, Girkin is acclaimed the leader of all separatist forces in Donetsk, and in May declares himself supreme commander of the DPR.

Was there anything more specific you wanted to know? — Echarmion

You say it was all this Girkin and Russian mercenaries, and there was no popular support.

Does putting "independent group" in quotes meant to establish this was only Russian mercenaries with zero popular support?

It could. But the russian military started shelling them and send regular army formations across the border to support the "separatists", at which point it became a stalemate as Ukraine wasn't at that point able to push into russian artillery and army formations. — Echarmion

Well we've resolved which army is hopeless incompetent if they let this chance just slip through their fingers without even trying.

Girrrrkkkkiiiinnn!!!!!!!

That military defeats might force russia to accept a peace more facourable to Ukraine is an entirely different argument from the one that russia always intended to offer such conditions. — Echarmion

The demands were clearly offered before the invasion, neutrality being the main one and the easiest one to accept (as Ukraine is de facto neutral).

It's entirely possible Russia would have fought anyways to the conclusion of the battle of Kiev or then to the battle of Kharkiv and Kherson or fought anyways until now.

We can't evaluate what exactly Russia would have accepted at any given point to avoid going to war or resolving it once it started. We can evaluate what seems to be the main issues for Russia and what would seem a rational course of action but you can always claim Russia was "pretending" to negotiate.

What we can evaluate is the leverage of the different parties. If Ukraine is losing the war then clearly its leverage was higher in the past and now is much lower and will be lowest if it fights to a collapse of its forces entirely.

We can also evaluate that some concessions Ukraine can make cost nothing. Declaring neutrality costs nothing because Ukraine is already a neutral country with only itself to rely on, and accepting Russia has Crimea and Ukraine can't physically take it back likewise would cost nothing since Ukraine does not have Crimea. With respect to these things Ukraine doesn't have (actual allies, Crimea) we can also evaluate that the diplomatic cost would be incredibly higher for Russia's invasion if Ukraine "gave Russia what it wanted" on these two points, and since Ukraine doesn't have either its position to fight a war is unaffected.

Indeed, maybe Ukraine would have gotten the heavy weapons and air power needed to actually win a conventional war right from the start if Russia violated the "rules based order" even harder by invading a proclaimed neutral country. Certainly sympathy for Ukraine would be far higher if it had neutral status when invaded, rather trying to join a alliance that creates regularly reports, sometimes hundreds of pages long, on how Russia can be damaged in various ways, "extended" for example.

Zelensky is also a stupid crazy person because he does not push NATO into committing better weapons in exchange for repudiating negotiations (which was clearly the deal).

Zelensky does not understand that offensive actions will be impossible (as I explained at length at the time) without armour and air power, two obvious points that Zelensky and his generals have understood far too long into the conflict.

Had Zelensky understood this sooner, he would have seen that NATO was not in fact offering "what it takes" and so either would have pressed for heavy armour in order to commit to reconquer the occupied territories, or then would have made peace with the Russians.

As I discussed in detail at the time, it was likely very possible for Ukraine to at least cut the land-bridge in the first phase of the war if they received more advanced weapons for offensive maneuvers. The "ok, ok, you can have some" sequence of weapons systems was clearly "calibrated" (to use RAND's language) to ensure Ukraine not make any significant gainse that may "provoke" the Russians too much by winning.

I don't think NATO had just cause in bombing Syria, and I think humanitarian interventions in general are highly questionable. — Echarmion

Well then we agree there.

And certainly strengthens your position if you also condemn "when NATO does it".

This just seems a bizzare and obviously false claim. I can remember no-one making such assumptions. — Echarmion

Really?? Bizarre??

Took me literally five seconds to find:

An Off-Ramp for Putin Is Repugnant But Necessary

Russia’s defeats on the battlefield create an opening to bring the war to a close without risking catastrophe. — Bloomberg, September 22, 2022

This was the conversation in the Western media at the time. Russia was experiencing defeats and therefore could be pressured into a peace favourable to Ukraine ... though of course needing some compromise so that Russia accepts.

The article literally starts with the obvious reason to seek a peace:

From the outset of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the crucial question hasn’t changed: Can Vladimir Putin be defeated at an acceptable cost? Despite all we now know about Russia’s military incompetence and the courage and skill of Ukraine’s forces, the answer is still uncertain. — Bloomberg, September 22, 2022

This was the discussion at the time, and given the "Russia’s military incompetence and the courage and skill of Ukraine’s forces" there wasn't much debate about whether Putin would accept a reasonable offramp. The questions of this debate was what offramp would still be adequate punishment for Putin and whether to offer an offramp at all given "the courage and skill of Ukraine’s forces" could simply deliver glorious victory instead of compromise.

We'll know when either side has lost. For now Ukraine holds a good deal more territory than it did at the time. — Echarmion

This debatable, considering Russia did not really occupy any major urban centres in the North.

However, if you want to support general Miley's view that after the battles of Kherson and Kharkiv that Ukraine had achieved all that was militarily practical to achieve and should negotiate.

I'd agree with that too.

However, it can be debated whether Ukraine increased or decreased their negotiation leverage with those battles; it depends on the losses. If Ukraine essentially expended their offensive capabilities then easily their negotiation position decreased rather than increased; they did regain territory but made it more difficult to negotiate withdrawals from further territory and other concessions.

But I'd agree this was the last reasonable military actions by Ukraine.

If it was so easy to make peace, why did it happen? Your argument is that either Zelensky is a stupid crazy person or he's being controlled by the west. Well in that case I can just argue Putin is a stupid crazy person and would attack anyways.

If we assume both leaders are reasonable and somewhat informed about the situation the only conclusion is that Russian and Ukrainian interests were fundamentally unreconcilable. And this happens to be exactly what the evidence suggests, from the rhetoric of demilitarise and denazify to the annexation of Ukrainian territories before they're even considered. — Echarmion

Zelensky definitely is a stupid crazy person who did not understand that a small force can have temporary success against a larger force, and more importantly it's the potential to inflict damage (even if you will still lose) that is the main leverage of a smaller force, and this leverage is only useful before and not after expending said force.

Except for some opportune manoeuvre victories at the start of a war, further fighting decreases, rather than increases, the leverage of the smaller force while also making the larger force "need more" to show for the military effort: creating a dynamic that locks in continued pointless war of attrition (that the smaller force is nearly guaranteed to lose; a terrible dynamic as the more the larger force needs to justify the war effort, the less concessions will be on the table and the less the smaller force will be able to get to justify their own war effort).

And again it's an entirely unsubstantiated claim that russia would have accepted a simple pledge of neutrality. Various Ukrainian governments have expressed their willingness to accept neutrality in principle. — Echarmion

You don't substantiate any of your claims, just throw it out there that it's "relatively easy" to demonstrate Ukraine has just cause ... but then don't bother to do this easy work.

Worse, you're just inventing straw man positions for what I say.

For the benefit of other's I'll point out your clearly purposeful mistakes in comprehension and re-explain the actual point.

I do not claim that if Ukraine committed to neutrality we know Russia would not have invaded.

My claim is that committing to neutrality would have cost Ukraine nothing. Ukraine does not have any formal allies it is already formally neutral. Notice how no other uniformed troops of any other country entered Ukraine. Declaring neutrality when one does not have allies, is only making de jure an existing de facto state of affairs. Ukraine has "friends" and "partners" which neutrality does not exclude. Receiving arms from third party is does not compromise formal neutrality; neutral countries can still receive arms.

Therefore, declaring neutrality changes nothing and I say may prevent the war because it removes the principle Russian motivation of the war.

Now, if you want to argue Russia would have invaded anyways, that's possible, but Ukraine would have lost nothing form committing to neutrality and would be in a far better position diplomatically. Russia would have a far more difficult time justifying their actions to other nations (China, India, Africa, South America) had Ukraine committed to neutrality, sympathy would be even higher for Ukraine and Russia would look far more belligerent than it currently does.

For, simply because the West is happy to just take it for granted that Russia-bad-Ukraine-good, a position requiring zero of your sought after "substantiation", doesn't mean the rest of the world has equally little concern. Especially the large countries (China and India) have zero sympathy for small countries that make trouble for big countries, so had Ukraine actually declared neutrality then things may have turned out very different diplomatically (either far more pressure on Russia or India actually participating in sanctions).

We can't know, but the main point is it would have cost Ukraine nothing to commit to neutrality and would have had only positive benefits.

The only reason for a country without any formal allies to repudiate neutrality would be to then actually join an alliance to have some deterrence and protection.

This does not follow. Russia had already decided at that point to annex the "independent" republics, there was a rather humourous episode where a Russian official apparently switched their scripts and argued in favour of a request (as of then nonexistent) to join the RF before the republics had even been recognised by Russia.

Nor would the deal in any way obligate Russia to not demand further territory in subsequent peace negotiations. All they offered here was to halt their operations. — Echarmion

Again, several different parties, including Zelensky himself, described peace talks at various moments as "realistic" in Zelensky's words or close to successful.

Clearly Russia was at least presenting reasonable positions that could form a basis for peace. If you want to argue they were only "pretending to negotiate" as others (who weren't there) have claimed; sure, that's possible.

My main criticism of Zelensky is walking away from peace negotiations entirely, making public ultimatums making public declarations that would be humiliating to walk back, and then committing to further warfare without any realistic military means to achieve military aims.

As I've stated, a cease fire in place is anyways better than continuing to fight a war that you then lose. Retaining your forces is also preserving your leverage in order to negotiate withdrawal, which, again, you is better to accept won't happen then to embark on a losing war.

Baseless speculation. — Echarmion

Might be speculative to some degree what exactly Boris Johnson said to Zelensky, but it is not baseless that he encourages Zelensky to walk away from negotiations and fully commit to "liberating" all of Ukraine. Several reports by credible journalists describe Boris' purpose as to convince Zelensky to fight and not negotiate. But believe what you want to believe; if you want to believe Boris was there just for fun, or then to convince Zelensky to negotiate peace but, alas, failed, feel free to believe that.

Stop lying through your teeth. — Echarmion

What lie?

You're accusing me of lying in a statement is a question. My question is:

What does it matter if Russian terms were even worse for Ukraine than what seemed to me, everyone on the forum, and the mainstream Western media, if your interpretation is correct ... but Ukraine loses anyways? — boethius

Which is a question. How can a question be a lie?

I'm asking you why would it matter what the Russian terms were if Ukraine goes onto lose the war? Any terms at the time, such as cease fire in place, would be far superior to losing the war.

Now, if you want to argue Ukraine will win the war or then fight to a superior negotiating position than it had at the beginning of the war, we can debate that. However, what prompted all this discussion about the Russian terms is that you explicitly agreed that Ukraine had more leverage at the start of the war than it does now, so should have pushed for a peace deal when it had maximum leverage (which I'd argue was before the war even occurred; but once it did Ukraine still had the most leverage in the first phase than it does since or now).

Which, if you can read, I use the word "if".

If your point is that "if" Ukraine win's that will prove Zelensky a military genius and Glory to Ukraine!

Go ahead, make that clear and we can debate instead Ukraine's military prospects.

You yourself quoted the 15 point plan that was the Ukrainian counteroffer. — Echarmion

Are you going to substantiate that? The wikipedia article simply describes the talks at that time as being based on 15 points, not some sort of draft treaty presented by Ukraine.

But even so, let's say Ukraine did have a reasonable offer at one point, clearly they repudiate their own offer when the walk away from negotiations and then make a public ultimatum (for example they'd only talk peace on the condition of Russia withdrawing all forces from Ukraine including Crimea) that are clearly not reasonable conditions for peace talks.

You're welcome to your opinions, but they seem far removed from reality to me. — Echarmion

These opinions are common sense.

Clearly there were chances to negotiate peace.

Clearly if Ukraine loses the war then it would have been better to have negotiated peace terms before said losing war, and, indeed, would have been better to just accept any Russian demands, no matter how "unreasonable" compared to losing the war.

If you want to argue Ukraine will win the war and therefore not only continuously declaring their intention to join NATO but putting it in their constitution was the right move, cause they are winners on the battlefield, feel free to argue Ukraine is going to win the war.

My main interest is pointing out obvious falsehoods and inconsistencies for the benefit of others. It's quite clear you will not budge one inch whatever I say. — Echarmion

The right to self determination doesn't apply to individuals and is generally fulfilled so long as there is some effective form of representation for the people, i.e. the ethnic or cultural group (as a whole) in question — Echarmion

WTF are you talking about?

Obviously the right to self determination also applies to individuals: freedom of religion, freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of opinion, freedom to choose career or not a career, and pretty much all the freedoms express the freedom of self-determination of individuals.

Indeed, even when it comes to conscription for war, the Western legal tradition has conscientious objection in the name of self-determination.

Of course, all freedoms are limited by a whole bunch of things, but the "freedom" and "liberty" is another word for self-determination, that individuals can (as far as is practical and respecting of the rights of others) choose their own destiny.

In any case, your theory that self-determination is "generally fulfilled" by group decisions is the exact opposite of the concept of freedom and self-determination in the Western legal tradition. To what extent, if any, it's justifiable to remove an individuals right to self-determination by, for example, forcing them to fight in a war is one more of those "thorny" issues of yours.

I have never come across a theory that presents the idea that removing an individuals right to self-determination is justified because it's anyways "generally fulfilled" by an ethnic or cultural group ... which is not even a legal argument that "the law" can take away your right to self-determination because Zelensky needs you to fight the Russians, but has even more problems than that.

However, please elaborate if you have this ethnocultural self-determination general fulfillment theory worked out.

Well since we haven't talked about it before, it wasn't necessary. Perhaps you'd just have agreed. But here is the overview of the timeline from Wikipedia . Anything specific you take issue with? — Echarmion

I have zero interest in discussing morality with you, so I'll stick to the international law. — Echarmion

Ok, well the way international law works is that the Russian action are de facto legal if there's no security council resolution that says otherwise; that's how international law is setup.

The security council is the authoritative body that has the power to interpret how international law applies to a given situation, and before and until that happens all legal arguments about the situation are merely legal briefs and opinions and are not legal facts.

What the Russians are doing in Ukraine is perfectly legal under international law until there is a security council resolution that says otherwise.

If you want to argue that's unfair because Russia can veto any security council resolution: Welcome to international law! You should get together with the Palestinians and voice your extra-legal grievances about how the law works.

Perhaps join Zelensky himself in demanding Russia be removed from the security council ... which, you guessed it, would require Russia's approval to be legally possible under international law.

If you don't care about extra-legal arguments, that certainly can make claims to legitimate interpretations of international law (those legal briefs and opinions mentioned above) then there's nothing to say the Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal as there is no security council resolution that states that, and international law was setup with exactly this in mind.

Sourcing things isn't some kind of weird dick measuring contest. I'm asking you for sources for specific claims, because those claims are false as far as I can see.

What exactly is it you take issue with? I can provide sources for the movements of Igor Girkin if you want. — Echarmion

You've thrown out all sorts of claims without any sources at all.

In your dick measuring contest analogy your dick literally measures zero inches.

So yes please, please source the Igor Girkin movement to support your claim that there is and never was any popular support for the separatists within the separatists territory.

In my own reading up on Girkin I don't see where it's stated that he conquered the Donbas with a band of Russian mercenaries and no effective popular support at all.

I do, however, see that if what you claim is true, and Girkin is the key to everything, then Ukraine could have easily won this conflict all the way back in 2014:

On the night of 4–5 July 2014, during a large-scale offensive by the Ukrainian military, following the end of a 10-day ceasefire on 30 June, Girkin led the Sloviansk People's Militia to an orderly retreat out of Ukrainian encirclement and made it to Donetsk, which they started fortifying on 7 July.[79] Sloviansk was then captured by Ukrainian forces, thus ending the separatist occupation of the city which had started on 6 April.[80] According to Girkin, 80-90 percent of his men had escaped from Sloviansk.[81]

The ultimately successful withdrawal of a considerable force of separatists from the besieged Sloviansk to the large industrial center of Donetsk caused some backlash in Ukraine against the army leadership. General Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, then the commander of the besieging army who was criticized for having allowed Girkin's columns to move out of the city unopposed (and as of 2023 the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), said in 2020 that Girkin's successful escape had longtime consequences for the war, unfavorable for Ukraine — Igor Girkin - Wikipedia

So, if what you say is true, then we can safely conclude that Ukrainian military is totally incompetent and had the chance to simply win all the Donbas territory back in 2014 but let the key man, and his band of mercenaries, escape.

This is a thread of 532 pages, so yes, that was said. And I won't bother to find the direct quote as you continue yourself: — ssu

Which we've both been apart of since essentially the beginning.

The "peace party", as you accurately describe us who have been promoting a negotiated settlement to the conflict and providing both justification for doing so (such as Ukraine having no viable military path to victory) and analysis of potential compromises and why they would be preferable to continued warfare as well as arguing against the "war party" position of using Ukraine as a proxy to harm Russia with little or no concern for Ukrainian welfare, have provided the context that indeed Crimea was part of Russia for a long time and there was certainly strong motivation to want it back.

None of us presented the historical grievance as justification for the annexing Crimea, and I'm sure you know the positions that were elaborated on these various points as you aren't a straight-up denialist of facts and nuance.

Rest my case, tovarich boethius. — ssu

This is the exact opposite of your case of the "peace party" using historical grievance as justification for the annexation of Crimea.

Rather it is the obvious reality: Russia annexed Crimea to secure their military and navel base there, which was a fairly easy task considering they had a massive military and navel base already there.

Whether it was justified or not, Russia is obviously not going to give it back to Ukraine, although, notably, the Wikipedia article on the peace negotiations mentions:

On 14 June 2023, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko claimed, in an interview with Russia-1, that Ukrainian and Russian delegations also discussed the possibility of "some sort of a lease" of Crimea during the March 2022 negotiations — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Which if you're "party" is correct that the invasion was a disaster for Russia and they expected total capitulation and occupation of all of Ukraine in about 3 days, then perhaps Putin really was desperate for some "off ramp" and even willing to return sovereignty of Crimea to Ukraine in exchange for leasing Crimea, which would have resolved the whole "nations don't conquer new territory anymore!! (only the US can go around building bases where it wants!!!)" complaints from the West.

Maybe the offer was genuine, maybe it was some Russian ruse, but my main point on the negotiations is that the start of the war was when Ukraine had maximum leverage and should have pushed for maximum concessions. "Leasing Crimea" to Russia would certainly be the maximum concession Russia would ever make on the issue and the best Ukraine could ever negotiate if military conquest of Crimea is indeed not feasible as it appears to me since then.

But it's interesting to note how the myth of "Russian incompetence" can so easily co-exist with the myth of Russian intransigence and only pretending to negotiate and offering terms that only appeared to people are fairly reasonable (but "actually" there's no evidence for what we believed here and what Western media likewise believed).

Of course. And if it brought up, the "peace-party" immediately tells us that Crimea has been part of Russia, only given away by birthday present inside the Soviet Union. Or then, conveniently, any earlier Russian demands for Crimea are forgotten and the annexation is introduced only as a response to revolution, sorry, "coup" — ssu

Literally no one here has said that.

Everyone here in favour of peace (some compromise that ends the war) has had no problem accepting Russia annexed Crimea due to their military base there coming under threat with an illegal change of government in Kiev.

You seem to be mocking your own point of view by pointing to the fact that one person's revolution is another person's coup.

You yourself posted the Reuters report. It said Russia would "halt military operations".

That is what you have offered regarding the russian proposal. Noone doubts the ukrainian proposal involves Russia retreating. — Echarmion

First, you completely ignore that obviously Russia's offer before the invasion even took place would require no withdrawal.

Had Ukraine accepted neutrality before the war, the war may not have happened, and Russia may not have seen enough sufficient cause to invade given the main point of contention was resolved.

Did refusing neutrality help Ukraine?

No. Ukraine has no allies that sent soldiers to its aid because Ukraine is already de facto neutral.

As for the Reuters article clearly states the terms "change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states".

In other words, Donetsk and Lugansk would not be annexed by Russia and there's no mention of the other regions Russia occupied in the demands as Russia would be giving them back in such a deal.

But if this was bad faith, and only a reasonable offer if there wasn't some sneaky "cease fire in place", the correct move for Ukraine would be to make a counter offer that explicitly clarifies those points. Which Ukraine never does.

Ukraine negotiates based on Russian demands, which at some points are "realistic" even according to Zelensky, but then walks away from negotiations (after Boris Johnson flies to Ukraine to convince Zelensky to not make peace).

Ukraine does not make any counter-proposal of their own that is remotely realistic.

Had Ukraine done that, clarified the points you are now equivocating on, and the Russia clearly refused such a peace deal; ok, the Russian offer was in bad faith, Russia intends to continue the war until all its demands are met without compromise, and Ukraine is in the difficult position of needing to either find some way to "win", accepting Russia's demands no matter how painful, or then losing the war and then accepting Russias demands.

You seem to think that if you "don't like terms" that's reason enough to reject them. That is not how war works.

An offer which we also do not know. — Echarmion

We do know the Russian demands before the war. The main one was Ukrainian neutrality.

Prior to invasion, Russia sought legally binding guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO. — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Of course, we don't have final drafts of such deals because there is no serious negotiation.

Again, just stating whatever fact seems reasonable.

Obviously there were chances to negotiate peace at various times leading up to and during the conflict, starting with the Minsk accords, the main point of contention being NATO, and Ukraine consistently chooses to push for joining NATO rather than entertain accepting neutrality.

The war happens. If Ukraine can't win, and instead loses and significant amount of Ukrainians are killed, Ukraine depopulated through people fleeing the conflict, and the economy destroyed and furthermore far more of the coveted territory is lost in battle, clearly those opportunities for peace were preferable, and trying to join NATO did not help Ukraine one bit (just a provocation based on some foolish principle of "having the right to ask to join a club that doesn't want you" without any benefit whatsoever).

Halting your military operations is a ceasefire. — Echarmion

Which is the first step in any sort of peace plan.

But again, I've asked several times, even if the Russians were only offering a ceasefire as you claim without evidence, what's the point of refusing that offer if you can't win the war?

What does it matter if Russian terms were even worse for Ukraine than what seemed to me, everyone on the forum, and the mainstream Western media, if your interpretation is correct ... but Ukraine loses anyways?

Why would I need to do that? It's your claim not mine. — Echarmion

Because demanding sources of points that you don't honestly disbelieve is just bad faith.

Makes you look purposefully stupid, which is much wore than being actually stupid (the latter not being a moral blemish if you can't help it). So which one is it?

This is not a claim I'm making. I'm saying what you quoted describes a ceasefire in place. — Echarmion

It does not describe a cease fire in place if it goes onto list conditions such as independence for the Donbas, clearly the ceasefire is a first step of resolving the whole conflict. That is common sense interpretation of the list of demands.

But again, if the demands "actually mean" just a ceasefire in place, why is it better to lose the war at massive cost to Ukraine?

Not under current international law. — Echarmion

The key syllables are "national" in "international law". A law created by nation states in their own interest: surprise, surprise, doesn't condone separatism.

However, plenty of existing states exist due to separating from the states they were formerly apart of, so to say separatism is immoral is to claim a significant amount of existing states, including the US, is immoral and should render their territory back to their formal owners.

As you say, separatism is a "thorny" issue.

That's not how any of this works. — Echarmion

That's exactly how it works. "Ukraine" as some sort of "entity", whatever you want to categories it, claims the right to self determination (join NATO, resist Russian invasion) and so on, and furthermore claims the right to remove the right of self determination (freedom of movement) from a large number of its citizens in order to be able to coerce them (including nabbing them off the street) to the front line to defend the national right ... oh and all that without elections anymore as it's common sense that the "freedom side" suspends elections in a war.

That's exactly how it works: imprisonment within Ukrainian territory and forced conscription to be forced into military service (i.e. taking away people's right to self determination for themselves) in the name of self determination for the "glorious nation".

Yes. The organic separatist movements in the Donbas were very localised and nothing really got off the ground until mercenaries arrived from Crimea. Even then the separatists quickly fizzled out in most areas apart from a few strongholds - notably Donetsk city. — Echarmion

You criticize me for not providing further citations to prove beyond any possible equivocation you can bring up about a minor point I don't care much about (if Ukraine can't win, then they should basically accept anything that's on offer whatever it is, so ceasefire in place is perfectly reasonable as well compared to losing a war), but on this critical issue for yourself to support your case that Ukraine has just cause (without citation or argument of any kind when you state it the first time ... and the second time) you offer zero citations or evidence or even plausible arguments.

I have no doubt it seems that way to you, but it is not legal. You cannot declare yourself a separatist and ask your neighbour to invade. It should be obvious why. — Echarmion

Separatism is based on extra-legal moral principles, obviously not legal principles of the country you're currently apart of.

You totally can declare yourself separatists and ask your neighbour to invade.

For example, if the United States of America declared itself separatists and then asked the French for help, and lets say the French even send soldiers to help and not just material, would that make the American Revolution illegitimate in your framework?

Likewise, is every separatists movement the CIA supported over the years unequivocally illegitimate because of the mere presence of foreign assistance?

Obviously if you have just case you will seek to convince others that you have just cause and you are a worthwhile cause to assist, being just.

Whether a separatist movement actually is just cause, or any armed conflict, depends on the circumstances.

Certainly the separatists have good arguments, including language and cultural repression and an illegal coup in the capital, so I do not see how it is trivial to state Ukraine shelling the separatists civilians is "insignificant". At minimum you'd need to do a lot of work to prove that the separatists had no "legitimacy". They certainly fight a losing battle against Ukrainian forces until the Russians assist covertly and stabilize the front, but that has nothing to to with popular support within the separatist territory, just pointing out the obvious that they are a smaller force than the rest of Ukraine.

However, we seem to agree that if the separatists have just cause then Ukraine does not have just cause, and Russia has therefore just cause in assisting the separatists.

That might be an interesting question in the abstract but it is not what happened. Most of the unrest in Donbas coincided not with the Euromaidan but with the seizure of Crimea. It was also short lived until Igor Girkin, a Moscow born russian, started taking over cities with a band of mercenaries. — Echarmion

Again, zero sources, which immediately following demanding sources for me to 100% clarify the sources I already cited, is extreme bad faith.

If you don't want to bring your own sources to the table, then it's complete idiocy to demand others provide sources (on-top of the sources they've already provided).

And look how well that turned out. — Echarmion

NATO bombed everything that could potentially support a plane, no matter how indirectly, and were perfectly content to see the country descend into total chaos and a breeding ground for exporting jihadism to the region.

But if you are conceding that NATO had just-cause in bombing Libya because civilians "might" get shelled, then certainly it follows Russia has just cause in invading Ukraine due to shelling of civilians in the Donbas ... which if the separatists did not have popular support why would you want to shell civilians that are actually on your side but de facto being held captive by Russian mercenaries?

Ah yes more excellent advice from boethius. Just retreat. What's the worst that can happen? — Echarmion

Yes, either fight with confidence you can win or lose and capitulate anyways, so best to try to negotiate while you still have forces and leverage. The only exceptions are extreme circumstances which do not exist in the current conflict.

Forcing men into conscription and to the front lines to be killed in a losing battle is both immoral and terrible national policy anyways.

This is an insipid and pointless sideshow.

You have claimed Russia offered to retreat to the February 2022 starting points in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. It's upon you to provide evidence of this, which so far you haven't done.

I ultimately don't care one way or the other whether you believe diplomatic negotiations happen in public. — Echarmion

Again, the offer made before the war obviously required no retreat as the invasion hadn't happened yet.

Now, "everyone" at the time in Western media, and also on this forum, discussed under the assumption that Russia would accept peace (that would include withdrawal) with some for of the three main points they kept repeating were critical to them: recognition of Crimea, Ukrainian neutrality, and some status change in the Donbas, where considered the key elements (Ukraine would need to accept) to arrive at a peace.

Significant ink was dedicated to analyzing this sort of "off ramp" for Putin, and especially the Western media which assumed the war was a "disaster" and going terrible for Russia, and did not even consider the idea Putin would not take an "off-ramp" if provided one. The debate in the Western media mostly focused on the idea of any peace whatsoever being a "win" for Putin or not (or then an unfortunate compromise for the sake of Ukraine).

However, I do not dismiss the possibility that once Russia conquered the land bridge to Crimea it never had any intention of giving it back. I seriously doubt this but it's possible. If you want believe the peace deals that are reported by various parties as getting "close" and Zelensky himself saying terms seemed more realistic, was all either misinterpretation or then Russian bad faith, there's no way to completely prove otherwise.

But again, how is a cease fire in place at the time not preferable to losing the war?

So if all this discussion is just to come to the fact that Ukraine's refusing neutrality before the war, and refusing Russian demands after the war broke out, is only reasonable (certainly at least in hindsight) if Ukraine can ultimately "win" (at least on the glorious nationalistic territorial dimension).

Then sure, the "war isn't over" and we can return to analyzing the military situation, and everything else depends on that.

The ultimatums Ukraine refused were tied to its"demilitarization," and mechanisms that would ensure it, which would amount to laying down their arms before an enemy that had just invaded them. The "de-Nazification" in practice, was a demand that Russia be allowed to pick who could remain in Ukraine's government. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The point at issue was whether the Russia was offering only a "cease-fire" in place and did not include a withdrawal.

Of course, Russian offers to withdraw clearly never included Crimea, and Russian demands before the war included some form of autonomy for the Donbas region (as the Minsk accords clearly outline) and during the war the language of "independence" started to be used (such as in the Reuters article), but it was clearly understood by not only the people her eon the forum, Western media, but also Ukraine itself that Russia would be withdrawing from the rest of Ukraine and the Donbas status would not be part of Russia but some intermediary status.

Now, the Russian demands of "de-Nazification" as you describe, control over who is allowed to be in the Ukraine government, could be understood as genuine, or then as starting a negotiation "high" and then settling lower. It was pretty popular in Western analysis to assume that Putin was looking for an "off ramp" that allowed ending the war on an acceptable compromise. Especially as the West was taken for granted at the time that the war was going terribly for Russia and therefore Russia could be anyways be pressured into a peace that was "pretty good" for Ukraine; the issue of contention all the way back then was if providing an "off ramp" would be some sort of reward for Putin and if the war was anyways a good thing to harm Russia in the long term.

It could be equally argued that Russia was "starting high" as they never intended to make any peace deal at all and it was all theatre, and therefore always kept terms "just out of reach" of a reasonable compromise, which the West also claimed as presented in the Wikipedia article:

Following the talks, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned that Russia was only "pretending to negotiate", in line with a strategy it has used elsewhere. — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - Wikipedia

But notice now the French Foreign Minister wasn't actually there, and as far as I know no one involved in these negotiations insists on the idea that they were fake.

If we return to the source we seem both content to use as a basis to the discussion, Zelensky is presented as stating:

The two sides resumed talks on 15 March,[6] after which Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the talks as beginning to "sound more realistic" — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - Wikipedia

Followed by a description of the negotiation:

By 16 March, Mykhailo Podoliak was assigned as the chief negotiator for the Ukrainian peace delegation, who indicated that peace negotiations of a 15-point plan would involve the retraction of Russian forces from their advanced positions in Ukraine, along with international guarantees for military support and alliance in case of renewed Russian military action, in return for Ukraine not pursuing further affiliation with NATO — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - Wikipedia

So, clearly there were terms being discussed that seemed "realistic" even to Zelensky at some point.

If the Russians started with some demands that didn't seem realistic, clearly they were flexible on those points, which is how negotiations often go.

Now, what is interesting is that any retrospective narrative placing the blame on Russia for the failure of good faith peace negotiations to find a reasonable compromise, is completely incompatible with the main Western narrative at the time which was that the Russian invasion was a failure and Putin was looking for an off-ramp. Indeed, we've just spent several pages re-discussing this topic of "incompetence".

The claim that there was ever and "offer for peace in exchange for not joining NATO," is patently false. Russia has continued to include these demands relative to neutering Ukraine's ability to resist future invasions and the right to select who can hold political office in the country. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What's the evidence for this? This is literally the first time I've heard of this.

I can go back and start citing what was being discussed at the time, both here and in the mainstream media, but I have zero memory of anyone stating Russia was insisting on deciding who holds office in Ukraine; what I do remember is pages and pages of discussion about the meaning of "guarantee" since at one point Zelensky was complaining that a peace agreement could not be guaranteed in some sort of absolute sense (which is basically the ontological status of guarantee: a promise that may or may not be fullfilled), and we discussed at length to what extent Ukraine could be confident in a peace deal, confident in Western or Russian "guarantees" about it, as at another point it was argued that Putin "could not be trusted" and that was why Zelensky was reasonable in repudiating any peace agreement (and my point was that a lack of 100% certainty is not a basis in itself to reject a peace deal, but must be weighed against the diplomatic, economic and military leverage of the parties involved that would incentivize them to stick to the deal; maybe we can't "trust Putin" but there's plenty of reasons he'd want to keep peace in Ukraine if it was achieved and keep all the gas flowing, and, in any case one needs to military leverage to actually win a war to justify repudiating negotiations).

Certainly Russia would be aiming to neuter Ukraine defensive capabilities as much as possible in negotiations. The reason to accept that is that you cannot win a war with said defensive capabilities.

What is also true is that Russia is the stronger party to the conflict, so can more easily play "hardball" and insist on more concessions from Ukraine than Ukraine could insist on from Russia. The basis Ukraine could negotiate retaining more, rather than less, of a conventional deterrent would be mostly that continued fighting is costly and risky for Russia, even if it has a large advantage, and also the gas issue.

My main point on these topics is not that "I know" what exactly Russia was offering at one points and to what extent, if any, Ukraine could negotiate down the Russian demands.

My point is that Ukraine's leverage was far higher at the start (both before and immediately following the invasion) than it is now, and so should have been trying to negotiate a settlement based on that leverage. Of course, even if one has the leverage to compel "rational parties" to accept a deal, there's no guarantee that would happen.

The only actual evidence of derailment of the negotiations is the assassination (by Ukraine intelligence) of a representative in the negotiation.

The person that makes public statements that render any further negotiations exceedingly difficult is Zelensky in promising to reconquer all of Ukraine, including Crimea, refusing to negotiate until Russia already leaves Ukraine, refusing to negotiate until Putin is removed from office by the West and similar claims that are embarrassing to walk back to resume peace negotiations with Putin on the basis of, at minimum, Russia keeping Crimea.

The party that removes a large part of Ukraine's leverage to end the war is the party that blew up Nord Stream 2. Maybe this was good for US gas interests, but this was definitely not good for Ukraine and any Ukrainians as it significantly reduces the incentive (and therefore potential concessions) that Russia would be willing to make.

Second, the seriousness of Russia's desires for a merely "independent Donbass" is belied by the fact that they officially annexed those regions, and southern Ukraine not long after. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The more the war goes on, the more Russia needs to "show for it".

That Russia annexes the regions after several failed negotiations where Russia was offering not-to-annex-the-regions (it wasn't even a point of discussion that the other 2 regions would be needing independence too, just the 2 Donbas separatist regions).

However, more importantly the Nord stream bombing happened on 26 September 2022, and Russia declared annexation of the territories on 30 September 2022.

In other words, a significant part of Ukraine's leverage in negotiating some form of return of the territories is blown up, and immediately after that Russia annexes those territories.

The credibility of Russia in a deal predicated on "giving up Ukraine's means of self defense," strains credulity considering how they had just vociferously denied that they were going to invade Ukraine, calling the build up for the invasion "military exercises." I recall Lavrov declaring how the West would be "embarrassed" by the fact that all the Russian soldiers would simply return to their barracks, and blamed the US in particular for "building up hysteria" about a possible invasion. That was, in retrospect, obviously just patent lies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is pretty normal demand in these sorts of conflicts. A larger state is threatened by another large state using a smaller adjacent state as a proxy, so an acceptable compromise is that the smaller adjacent state accepts neutrality and few means of conventional deterrence.

The logic of such deals is that the larger state can destroy the smaller state, so it's basically play nice of be destroyed. We can debate the morality of such demands in some absolute moral framework, but it is pretty usual political events in the real world and has happened many times before without anyone going around and crying how "unreasonable it is".

Now, to what extent Ukraine could negotiate retaining a neutral but conventional deterrent I don't know. Maybe Russians would have accepted essentially retaining the relative force parity that existed at the time, so that Ukraine would be no worse off in a future war.

However, the logic of "fighting now rather than later" anyways implies some means to win the war now. If there's no means to win the war, then a deal that postpones conflict to later is still better to take. Maybe favourable events transpire during the delay.

As for the second point, it's also pretty normal to downplay a surprise invasion. Not everyone follows the Ukrainian playbook and makes movie trailers advertising the planned offensive.

Russia's offer was a ceasefire in place. — Echarmion

Again, just inventing things that would be convenient if it were true.

Are you just repeating myths that circulate in "pro-Ukrainian" echo-chambers on Reddit or Facebook and simply assuming they must be based on "something" or do you just do cursory research to get a vague impression of what you're looking for?

By 16 March, Mykhailo Podoliak was assigned as the chief negotiator for the Ukrainian peace delegation, who indicated that peace negotiations of a 15-point plan would involve the retraction of Russian forces from their advanced positions in Ukraine, along with international guarantees for military support and alliance in case of renewed Russian military action, in return for Ukraine not pursuing further affiliation with NATO. — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - Wikipedia

And, obviously, the Russian offer before the war would have occurred without any Russian forces outside of Crimea.

It is quite usual for ceasefires to also be negotiated during a war, for humanitarian purposes (such as we see in the Hamas-Isreali conflict) and / or as an attempt to deescalate the situation to give time for leaders to focus on peace negotiations.

However, trying to present the various Russian offers at different times as only ever involving a ceasefire in place is either a straight up lie or you are totally ignorant of events and have no intention to make yourself not-ignorant.

You're also directly contradicting the Reuters article I cited, which clearly describes an offer that it not a ceasefire in place, so if someone's already presented authoritative evidence to support a claim, your evidence that claim is wrong should be ... well, more than zero evidence.

No, they didn't. — Echarmion

Again, just thinking backwards to making things up that would be convenient to be true.

"Everyone" in the context refers to members of the forum commenting on events and also mainstream media, such as Reuters. But, even so, can you even provide evidence of "someone" understanding the Russian offer different at the time?

Then no doubt you can provide relevant evidence. — Echarmion

Are you really doubting that there was not huge amount of analysis of this war and the Russian peace terms as reported by Reuters?

I can provide you the evidence (already on this forum is a huge amount of analysis at the time), but I'd like to first confirm that you truly doubt there was a huge amount of analysis at the time reflecting what the Reuters report says about Russias offered terms.

No, that was not understood. You seem to be confusing a ceasefire with a peace treaty. — Echarmion

Read the Wikipedia article that's literally called "Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine".

Where do you get that Russia was only ever offering a ceasefire in place? Especially before the 2022 war even occurred?

Again, just making things up, trying to create plausible deniability that there were reasonable terms on offer (reasonable in the sense of preferable to the situation for Ukraine now).

But even so, a ceasefire in place is better than losing the war. Even if your made-up version of history is correct, that Russia was only ever offering a ceasefire in place, that is certainly preferable to losing the war and all the destruction and death that has happened since.

Ok, you claim Ukraine may still win, war's not over.

Sure, but that is simply agreeing to the main point of contention here: that whatever terms Ukraine was offered, it would have been better to accept compared to losing the war, or even accepting a ceasefire in place now or at some point in the future at the current lines (which get worse, and not better, for Ukraine everyday).

If Ukraine was right to reject a ceasefire in place, it needs something to show for that too.

Correct. — Echarmion

Well then we agree on the main point of contention as far as I'm concerned.

In terms of learning something to avoid future disastrous wars, the main thing of interest to me is at what points was peace achievable through talking.

The problem Ukraine gets into is that it repudiates negotiations and commits itself to achieving a better negotiation position by military means.

When I say Zelensky repudiates further peace negotiations is because he starts making both public conditions and public ultimatums to even have further peace talks.

President Zelenskyy denounced suggestions by former US diplomat Henry Kissinger that Ukraine should cede control of Crimea and Donbas to Russia in exchange for peace.[75] On 25 May, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would not agree to peace until Russia agreed to return Crimea and the Donbas region to Ukraine.[76] Zelenskyy stressed that "Ukrainians are not ready to give away their land, to accept that these territories belong to Russia." He emphasized that Ukrainians own the land of Ukraine.[77] As of September 2022, these peace negotiations have been frozen indefinitely.[citation needed]

Peace talks: Third phase of invasion (6 September to present)
September 2022
In September, Ukraine rejected a peace plan proposed by Mexico.[78]

On 21 September, Zelenskyy addressed the UN General Assembly with a pre-recorded video, laying out five "non-negotiable" conditions for a "peace formula", comprising "just punishment" of Russia for its crimes committed against Ukraine, protection of life by "all available means allowed by the UN charter", restoring security and territorial integrity, security guarantees from other countries, and determination for Ukraine to continue defending itself.[79][80] Speaking to Bild, Zelenskyy stated that he saw little chance of holding talks with Putin unless Russia withdrew its forces from Ukrainian territory.[81] Following Putin's announcement of Russia annexing four regions of Ukrainian territory it had seized during its invasion, Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine would not hold peace talks with Russia while Putin was president.[82] — Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine

So, ok, Zelensky can insist on the return of Crimea or stating Russia should withdraw first and then peace talks can maybe happen, but this is incredibly foolish if you are unable to improve your position on the battlefield.

Henry Kissinger is obviously correct in his assessment at the time.

Well I'm glad to hear people here had enough sense not to. — Echarmion

This is what people here would claim, that there was not "enough' Nazi's in Ukraine to justify invasion. I simply asked if there's not enough to justify invasion, what's the definition of enough.

People make a claim with the term "enough" in it, and I simply ask for the definition of this term in the context.

For, unlike yourself, other interlocutors here wouldn't simply wantonly invent facts and rewrite history wantonly for their own convenience, and did recognize that clearly the overtly Nazi battalions in Ukraine were not a good thing, they just claimed there weren't enough of them to justify invasion. The question of what would be enough to justify invasion is a pretty common sense question.

The argument was that Russia cannot demand that western nations bar Ukraine's NATO entry. — Echarmion

Russia obviously can demand this, and NATO could agree to it and likewise Ukraine could agree to it.

Fighting a war for the right to join an organization that has had 3 decades to let you in at anytime but hasn't, is just completely dumb.

The neutrality of states in between larger powers is a common theme of negotiation throughout history and happens all the time, precisely to avoid the kind of war that is currently happening.

Nazi Germany and Japan were both sovereign nation in WWII, why should they need to accept terms of surrender and accept enemy troops on their lands!?!?

Because they lost the fucking war!! Obviously no nation "wants to" accept any concessions to a hostile force, the whole thing about war is resolving what you can't actually have just because you want it.

Ukraine can't have NATO, which is just as much NATO's doing as it is Russia's.

Which just makes the whole war even more stupid, as Ukraine has consistently refused to give up what it doesn't even have, and the key point of contention leading up to war (and to make matters worse, the whole point of wanting to be in NATO is to avoid precisely the war that is currently happening; and NATO encouraging Ukraine to fight a war with a geopolitical rival for "the right to join NATO" and maybe actual protection by NATO from Russia if Ukraine first goes and "earns it" by defeating Russia first on behalf of NATO ... it's just ridiculous reasoning).

Most previous wars were at least fought over what countries did actually possess before the war started.

This is just reality. If you want to fight a war to protect some possession or right (in this case a meaningless symbolic "right to want to join NATO"), the critical question is whether you are going to win or not.

Even Disney understands this:

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day. — Captain Jack Sparrow

But that's relatively easy. They're fighting an aggressor who violated their undisputed borders repeatedly (and who also has a treaty obligation to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine), and they have not committed any kind of crime against humanity which might in extreme cases justify a war of aggression. — Echarmion

It's not easy at all, first language and cultural repression and shelling the separatists are crimes against humanity committed by overt Nazi's (that even the Western media would go and report on before they "got the memo" that the Nazi's were the good guys actually), but second it is a completely legitimate political action to seek separation after the coup in 2014.

Ukraine elected a president, the "will of the people" spoke, and that the president can negotiate foreign policy are part of the democratic rules. If the president is removed in an illegal coup, it's perfectly reasonable to call the new government illegitimate and secede. Once you've seceded it's perfectly legitimate to seek allies to come to your defence.

From 2014 to 2022 it is Ukraine that is waging a war of reconquering the separatist territories. If it's perfectly just cause to secede after an illegal coup, then Ukraine's war of aggression against the separatists is not just cause, making the separatists invitation of Russian forces to enter the war completely legitimate.

Western countries literally had to pass laws specifying that lethal aid to Ukraine was not to go to the Nazi's and Western journalists go and report that definitely lethal aid is going straight to the Nazi's. The Nazi's were not some marginal and illegal gang but had official support from both Ukraine and the West, and I honestly don't see much of a problem waging a war against said Nazi's.

My grandfather fought the Nazi's, nearly all his friends he had in the airforce died, and I'd be spitting on his grave if I'd view a conflict with literal and overt Nazi's as "relatively easy" to prove the side with said Nazi's has just cause.

But even without the Nazi's, if Ukraine has a right to self-determination so too the separatists.

Who doesn't have a right to self determination is all the Ukrainian men that cannot leave Ukraine and can be forced to fight by the government ... and why? To protect the right of self determination of Ukraine?

So, we can get into the philosophy of just war if you want, but that seems secondary to the issue of whether there was reasonable terms on offer and, whatever terms were on offer, if Ukraine had more leverage to get a better deal before or at the start of the war, compared to now.

What should be perfectly clear is that fighting for the right to join a club that doesn't let you join, is not just cause but a stupid cause.

Separatism is a thorny issue at the best of times, and the Donbas separatists lack any convincing popular legitimacy. — Echarmion

What are you even talking about?

Convincing popular legitimacy in all of Ukraine?? Obviously not, that's what makes them separatists.

Or are you saying they lacked popular legitimacy in the Donbas ?

But yes, it is a thorny issue at the best of times, and therefore it is not a relatively easy issue, but a thorny issue at the best of times, to conclude Ukraine has just cause.

To blanket condemn separatism would of course be a condemnation of the United States and their little revolution and that they did not have just cause, the US of A is an immoral and illegal enterprise, and Biden should go and kneel before King Charles tomorrow and kiss the ring and give back to the crown what is rightfully his majesties property.

So, certainly just cause for the separatists is on the table, and the separatists cannot be said to be attacking the rest of Ukraine (as the front line was pretty deep in separatists terriroty), so it is clearly a war of aggression by Ukraine against the separatists to reintegrate the breakaway regions.

The separatists clearly have a right to self defence and if that requires asking Russia for help and Russia wrecking the rest of Ukraine to protect the separatists, seems perfectly legal to me. If the seceding is triggered by an illegal coup, seems entirely legal to me.

The social contract of being in a larger political unit is that the rules are followed. A president was elected to Ukraine and the rules are the president has certain powers and serves a certain term; those rules aren't followed, social contract is broken, perfectly reasonable and legitimate (and therefore just cause) to then secede from an illegitimate national government.

If you want to argue that following an illegal coup in Kiev there were equally illegal coups in the Donbas, I fail to see how such an argument, even if true (which I don't think it is), would establish anything other than both the Kiev National government and the local governments in the Donbas lack just cause.

Even if it wasn't, it was not remotely significant enough to be cause for an invasion. — Echarmion

It's completely enough justification. If you shell civilians you should expect anyone with a sense of duty to protect said civilians to do so.

The justification for wrecking Libya was that civilians "might" be shelled.

At the least Russia also failed to implement it's obligations under Minsk. — Echarmion

I don't know all the details of the Minsk process, if both parties were bad faith then the weaker party is far stupider for being bad faith than the stronger party (see Captain Jack Sparrow's analysis above), but what is an overriding consideration is the West simply admitting that the whole process was in bad faith to "buy time" for Ukraine. So if you have one side literally admitting the process is bad faith, seems irrelevant to try to nitpick about the other side "starting it" in terms of clashes and so on.

Ukraine was anyways in the separatist regions territory, if Ukraine was of good will about the accords (and had the sense to want to avoid a larger war with Russia) then they would have withdrawn to positions where clashes were no longer possible.

There's also video of Zelensky going and trying to order the Nazi's about, saying he's the president and so on, which they just openly defy him about. Nazi's who explicitly say they want a larger war with Russia.

So, maybe consider the possibility that the side with the literal Nazi's who want to escalate the war to be directly with Russia (believing this will collapse Russia somehow and Ukraine superiority will win somehow) is the side that frustrated peace accords previous to the larger war the Nazi's were explicitly trying to cause.

Or it can blow up the negotiations because now one side is compelled to accuse the other of lying to avoid fatally compromising their position. It's a dangerous game to play. — Echarmion

You're claim was that offers in serious negotiations aren't made public, to support your previous claim that "we don't know much about" the negotiations and what, if anything, Russia was offering, which you now just casually move the goal posts to this entirely new claim, that basically it maybe unwise to make your position public.

But you don't know what you're talking about. Making a negotiation position public does not compel a counter-party to call you a liar, why would it? If you outright say in public your position on selling your pants is 10 dollars, why would I call you a liar? If it's some "more serious" negotiation, again why would I call you a liar?

You seem to have ommitted the part where you show Russia's pledge to retreat and return all territory, (which would include the parts of Donetsk & Luhansk not occupied prior to the 2022 invasion). — Echarmion

This was Russia's offer as reported at the time.

You're trying to create some sort of plausible deniability scenario that we "don't actually know" that Russia was offering something so obviously reasonable and so obviously preferable to continued fighting.

But that's just straight up rewriting history. Everyone at the time understood the Russian offer to be pulling their troops back to Russia and Crimea if the offer was accepted. There was huge amount of analysis at the time; the Reuters citation is just the most authoritative "Newspaper of record" of what the substance of the Russian offer was. We can of course debate exactly what Reuters is meaning by "independent" or then exactly what Russia's meaning is in their actual offer, as well as what Russia may have been willing to accept, but what is clear is the three main points are neutrality, recognizing Crimea and some sort of status change in Donbas (but not integration into Russia, which has happened since if you haven't noticed).

Now, obviously "all territory" does not include Crimea, but it was understood Russia was offering to pull their troops from the rest of Ukraine including the Donbas (it's not really a "retreat" if it's part of a peace agreement). Certainly Russia was not offering to abandon their allies in the Donbas, so to that extent they were not offering Donbas seperatists to be conquered by Ukraine, but rather a peace that protected the separatists as well.

However, the minutia of how a peace plan would be implemented and the exact status of the Donbas is clearly irrelevant compared to the actual point of contention here which is that Ukraine had far more leverage to try to negotiate the best deal they could ever get back then compared to now. A point you don't seem to agree with.

If you want to argue (as other posters have already done) that the Russian offer was maybe in bad faith and they would have continued the invasion even if the offer was accepted, that is not reason to reject the offer: it strengthens your diplomatic position to accept an offer that is then reneged on and would seriously weaken Russia's diplomatic position to be seen reneging on a clear offer that was clearly accepted by Ukraine (a big reason the "rest of the world" hasn't joined the West and implemented sanctions is that Russia is able to say they kept on offering reasonable peace deals that Ukraine and the West rejected: so pressure the West, not Russia, if you want peace and lower food prices).

I have a pro-Ukraine bias, but I do try to avoid looking away when bad news for Ukraine surface. — Echarmion

Well then, what "good news" do you even see in even mainstream Western media?

Sure, a win, but a relatively minor one which offers no long term strategic advantage to Russia. — Echarmion

Well, at the time, the West was framing this as giving Putin what he wants rather than punishing him for breaking the "rules based order" over annexing Crimea and the West refused to negotiate directly with Russia to try to come to a larger deal over European security architecture as a whole and so on.

For a while talking heads and social media were continuously repeating that "Ukraine has a right to join NATO" and that "Russia can't demand Ukrainian neutrality as Ukraine is a sovereign nation" as justification for repudiating any peace agreement, which are absolutely moronic points and do not justify war fighting (precisely because Ukraine can't join NATO, it should not fight a war for the "right to join NATO" and precisely because Ukraine is a sovereign country it can accept neutrality to avoid war if it wants).

Their cause is just. — Echarmion

We can come back to this point, as no one so far as actually provided an argument of why the Ukrainian cause is just. For example, in nearly 2 years of debate no one has answered the question of how many Nazi's in Ukraine would be too many Nazi's (people have admitted that there are Nazi's, just not enough to justify invasion, but then refuse to explain how many Nazi's would be too many and therefore not-invading Ukraine would be an actually accurate analogy of appeasement; a force that can stop Nazi's going and stopping Nazi's), and furthermore, not a single "pro-Ukrainian" has been able to explain why the Donbas separatist cause is not just on exactly the same grounds as the Ukrainian cause of "self determination", and even if we ignore that issue then why shelling civilians was justified, reneging on the Mink accords was justified.

However, let's assume none of that matters and it's all very simple and Russia is fundamentally in the wrong in their invasion of a sovereign nation and Ukraine is fundamentally in the right and exercising self defence.

Even assuming that, once Ukraine rejects reasonable peace terms (which you seem to accept are reasonable) then their cause is no longer just, but fanatical fighting for a hypothetically just cause. It's hypothetically a just cause to take back Crimea in the simplistic framework we are using her, but to be actually just you need to be actually able to take back Crimea, otherwise you are fighting a pointless war and getting people killed for no feasible military objective, which is not just cause.

Actual offers in serious diplomatic negotiations are not made public, much less when actual lifes are at stake. Sure Ukraine could publish the offers made, but then why would we believe Ukraine was telling the full truth, and any such move could jeopardize further negotiations. — Echarmion

What are you talking about? Offers in serious negotiations can and often are made public. Making an offer public can put further pressure on the counter-party if the offer is clearly reasonable to take, and that's why Russia made their offer public. Regardless of the West spinning it this war or that, the rest of the world concluded Russia was being reasonable and did not deserve sanctions and Ukraine was stupid and the West cynical and duplicitous.

Now, definitely Zelensky should have heeded your advice and at least kept his positions secret, such as refusing to talk to Putin and making ultimatums in public that would be a serious loss of face and obstacle to try to reverse if Ukrainian prospects became bleak even for Zelensky's "belief" based approach to the war, but again he did not.

You are trying to create some sort of plausible deniability smoke shield where none existed at the time and last time I checked smoke cannot be blown into the past.

I guess we'll have to trust their judgement on when they have "maximum leverage" for now. The war isn't over. — Echarmion

Sure, this has been the position of every other "pro-Ukrainian" to debate these points: war isn't over, maybe Ukraine will turn things around, wonder weapons and all that.

We shall see.

It should be noted that Russia has voiced concerns about Ukraine joining the EU as well, because the EU features a military dimension such as a mutual defense clause (making it function, on paper, in a similar way to Art. 5 of the NATO treaty). — Tzeentch

This is just meant as an example of what Ukraine could try to get from the West using the leverage of ending the war (which some parties wanted, such as German industrialists) as well as the leverage of threatening to make peace with Russia that maximizes Western embarrassment rather than have some form of spin available for the West to pretend it is a "defeat" for Putin in some sense.

I.e. offer to make peace with Russia in a way that now claims would be "obviously" a Russian defeat:

Of course, Russia camped his force on Ukraine's border for months, then invades, looses men and materiel, gets absolutely nothing in return but the US blocks it because it'd "be seen as a russian victory". — Echarmion

And threaten to make peace with Russia in a way that maximizes Western embarrassment, going so far as to threaten "publicly admitting" Russian talking points such as Maidan was a coup and so on.

This is simply an example of the leverage Ukraine had at the time over the West and things the West has that could be good for Ukraine to get, but I am not arguing it would be trivial to get those things.

The counter-offer of the West could easily be: we'll murder you within an hour if you keep talking this way.

By explaining the leverage Ukraine has, it does not meant to be taken in a vacuum and that other parties have no leverage.

The West's leverage over Ukraine since the beginning of the war is that finance can be pulled at any time and Ukrainian government would entirely collapse, which is a far bigger threat than not sending arms.

However, this leverage was at a minimum at the very start of the war, and so when Ukraine would have had the most room to try to deploy its own leverage in negotiations.

If Ukraine tried to pull what I describe was possible at the start of the war now, his Western counterparts would just laugh in his face.

Another big point of leverage Ukraine had at the start of the war was a functioning economy that did not depend on continuous Western finance (maybe not a "great" economy, but it was functioning), so this is leverage in terms making an economic deal with the EU (which does not need to be full EU membership, there's a large spectrum of possibilities such as status similar to Norway or Switzerland) and likewise threatening (if there is nothing offered by the EU) economic rapprochement with Russia.

Now that the Ukrainian economy is completely wrecked, that leverage is also gone.

Moral condemnation requires analyzing all these things to be sure the condemnation is justified.

Why do I say so? Because I would wish for myself a thorough analysis before I am condemned.

What does not take much analysis is to conclude that ending the war through talking, in some workable solution for everyone, is better than continued warfare.

If Zelensky wins, ok, another intrepid and committed war leader willing to sacrifice any number of his own citizens for glorious victory.

If Zelensky eventually accepts terms that were on offer before and at the start of the war, then it's difficult to justify the lives lost. — boethius

That's not a fact, it's a wild flight of fantasy. — Echarmion

I am in the midst of writing a response to your previous comments, which also contains this same denialism:

The russian offer which we ultimately know very little about. — Echarmion

Which is just so preposterously bad faith that I went all the way back to when we (by which I mean myself and other people, not yourself, actually concerned about the war and Ukrainian lives, regardless of our respective positions, when the war first broke out and a settlement is easiest to reached).

Russia's conditions for a peace settlement were made public, so we do in fact know a lot about Russia's peace offerings, and calling this knowledge "fantasy" is just ludicrous attempt to rewrite history to make the Ukrainian war effort and the West clearly doing everything possible to both start and maintain the war, as less evil and less stupid.

LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) - Russia has told Ukraine it is ready to halt military operations "in a moment" if Kyiv meets a list of conditions, the Kremlin spokesman said on Monday.

Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was demanding that Ukraine cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.
— Reuters

There's zero reason to assume this offer isn't genuine.

Unless Ukraine has some way to "win", then Russia will simply implement these conditions by force. — boethius

This is literally March 7th, 2022 (both the publication by Reuters and my comment citing Reuters in the context of the debate at the time).

Of course, Russia camped his force on Ukraine's border for months, then invades, looses men and materiel, gets absolutely nothing in return but the US blocks it because it'd "be seen as a russian victory". — Echarmion

Again, just inventing whatever that makes Western policy sound better.

This is exactly what "the West" (officials, mainstream media, zillions of commenters on social media) was insisting on, that any peace (in which Putin keeps Crimea and Ukraine accepts neutrality, which was the only deal the Russians would consider accepting) would be a win for Russia: they wanted Ukraine neutral, they want recognition of Crimea by Ukraine, so if they get that then they "win".

You're debate technique is just to think backwards to what would be convenient to be true in order to defend Western prestige (make Western policy look less stupid and evil) and just state it like it was fact.

My diagnosis of your philosophical disease is that you've, until now, happily swallowed what Western media was selling you about this war so could comfortably ignore taking a closer look, confident that certainly if the Western media and social media is so pro-Ukraine their cause and our support for their cause must be just and reasonable and going towards a good result—perhaps some are hurt, even sacrificed but it is all worthwhile, and certainly "casualties are low"—, and now that the war has clearly "gone wrong" as evidenced by radically different facts and opinions appearing in even the Western media (Ukraine can't win, casualties are high, Russia's economy is doing well actually), the cognitive dissonance has pierced your ears and arrived at your brain, and you come here to try to quell your uneasiness and retroactively prove (or then at least throw some shade on the posters who have stated since the beginning of the war the very things the Western media are now admitting, couldn't have been "really right" but just lucky guesses, nothing could have been prevented by wiser decision making, the West meant well and so on) Ukraine and Western decisions made some sort of sense and had good intentions at least, that "maybe" a preferable peace was achievable at different moments but we have little "knowledge" about it.

But feel free to provide a different narrative, personal mythology if you prefer, of why you suddenly take interest in the war now that Ukraine is clearly on the verge "not winning" with the very real risk of total collapse (especially if the dollars stop flowing).

However, the main issue is not "what exactly" Russia was offering, but that Ukraine walks away from negotiating, makes absurd ultimatums public and so on, rather than strive to get the best deal they can when they have maximum leverage.

Now, if you are in a weak position, negotiating when you have maximum leverage doesn't guarantee you get what you want (maybe there was a way to get into the EU, maybe not; maybe Donbas could be fully recovered, "autonomy" watered down, or maybe not), but not getting everything you want (like keeping "the right to join NATO" without actually joining NATO) is not a reason to refuse a deal, even less a reason to refuse continuing to negotiate.

If Russia's offer was "not quite good enough" ... then why don't we have a Reuters citation of Ukraine's counter-offer, such as neutrality and keeping the Donbas with more limited cultural protections for Russian speakers (since that's important for "some reason")?

The reason is that Zelensky is a moron and willing to destroy his country and get hundreds of thousands of his comrades killed to be on vogue ... and have a finger in billions of dollars of currency and arms flowing into the country that he has since said it's insulting to Ukraine for anyone to ask any accounting of.

Now, there is lots of philosophical nuance to analyze but as I said at the time (March 21st, 2022):

What does not take much analysis is to conclude that ending the war through talking, in some workable solution for everyone, is better than continued warfare.

If Zelensky wins, ok, another intrepid and committed war leader willing to sacrifice any number of his own citizens for glorious victory.

If Zelensky eventually accepts terms that were on offer before and at the start of the war, then it's difficult to justify the lives lost. — boethius

It of course goes without saying that if Zelensky eventually accepts terms that are far worse than what was on offer at the start of the war, that is called ruining his country to be on the cover of vogue magazine while Western leaders blow smoke up his ass to do what's in their interest and not Ukraine's interest.

BTW how many rubles do I owe you, prof? — neomac

Me, you owe nothing.

If you have been paying attention, I have already explained several times the basics of negotiation. Attempting to redefine the terms after the deal is concluded is called reneging and an insult to anyone whose word means anything to them.

For example, when Merkel et. al. brag about the Minsk accords being agreed to in bad faith without any intention to implement it in order to "buy time" for Ukraine, it is called reneging. Hopefully that will help you remember the definition.

Had I wanted anything from you in exchange for my services, I would have negotiated that before delivering the goods, because I am a man of honour.

Your reasoning looks rather out of historical circumstances.
First, Ukrainians didn’t refuse negotiation BY DEFAULT. There have been several attempts for negotiations for a ceasefire, all of them ultimately failed. Add to that a long history of failed agreements and reviving historical tensions between Ukraine and Russia. So the refusal of negotiation can very likely be a consequence of past failed negotiation attempts and failed agreements. — neomac

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was asked by a reporter if he would join negotiations mediated by Turkey if Russian President Vladimir Putin came to the table, and Zelensky said, "I don't accept it."

Erdogan "knows my view," Zelensky said. "We discussed this before the war. I told him to put Putin at the table for negotiations. 'Can we please do that? We must avert a full-scale war.' But [Erdogan] was not able to do that. Not only him — he is powerful — but he is not able to do it. And now he thinks that he is? Now we can't," Zelensky said Friday.

Zelensky explained why he cannot speak to Putin anymore.

"It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there," he said. — CNN

This is called repudiating negotiations.

To try to reinterpret what I say as claiming there was never any negotiations is foolish.

I clearly explain that there was a negotiation, nearly successful by some accounts (but clearly happened, was in the news and everything), and then Zelensky rejected the Russian offer and repudiated further negotiations with statements like the above.

Since even normal people intuit there's something wrong with walking away entirely from the negotiation table (the US is in continuous negotiation with Hamas as we speak), some pressure is put on Zelensky about it so he changes his position to he'll negotiation but only after Russia leaves Ukraine, including Crimea, entirely ... which is not how negotiation works. You negotiate the points of contention before an agreement is made and the exchange value actually occurs; simply demanding the counter-party does whatever you want before negotiating is another way of saying one refuses any negotiation.

In diplomatic parlance it's called the "cry baby move of unhinged, immature and reckless politicians that wish to see their own country burn".

Second, hand-weaving at hypothetical compensations for the Ukrainian territorial, economic, security losses while abstracting from relevant historical and geopolitical circumstances is a rather weak argument. — neomac

First, it's not hand waiving, it's what negotiation is about: you seek as much compensation as possible from the parties involved in exchange for whatever you're giving up (money, time, apologies, legal claims, paintings, diamonds, leaving town etc.).

So, if there was a deal on the table that was "sufficient" in terms of being preferable to continued warfare, then the only thing to do is attempt to negotiate an even better formulation of the deal but with the aim of ultimately accepting anyways.

Furthermore, I am not abstracting away from anything, I have routinely and diligently analyzed the battlefield situation using both my own soldiering experience and training (including training specifically designed for a fight with the Russians and exactly the kind of warfare we've seen play out in Ukraine) as well as analysis available elsewhere, to evaluate Ukraine's chance of a battlefield victory.

My conclusion is basically no chance, due to the specifics on the ground (Ukraine lack of capacities the Russians have and Ukraine lack of quantity, such as artillery, where Ukraine does have comparable capacity: how can anyone expect soldiers to prevail in such circumstances?!).

Therefore, if Ukraine has no chance of a battlefield victory then it should strive to negotiate a peace, using the leverage of being able to do further damage to Russia (when you are a weaker party to a conflict, you're leverage is the ability to inflict damage even with little threat of victory; of course, being able to threaten actually victory is better leverage, but people seek to avoid damage if they can so generally offer concessions to terminate the war sooner rather than later; and even when no concessions are offered, such as unconditional surrender, it is still usually better, for real people under your command, to surrender unconditionally than to fight to the death).

Indeed, the idea that the US and European allies would compensate for the Ukrainian territorial, economic, security losses is geopolitically questionable if that implies burdening the US as the hegemon (which has been explicitly and repeatedly antagonised by Russia) and its allies (which can’t easily make concessions to Russia without irritating the hegemon) for the Ukrainian losses (which, notice, would be also Western losses if Ukraine was meant to be more integrated into the Western sphere of influence!), the costs of compensating such losses, and the additional strategic risks (by emboldening Russia, China and Iran witnessing Western weakness) while, at the same time, condoning everything to an anti-Western Russia. And historically questionable: appeasing Hitler just emboldened his hegemonic ambitions (and also encouraged a nasty alliance with the Soviet Union before their great patriotic war, right prof?). — neomac

My oh my oh my oh my.

You've said a lot there from various different perspectives that are not the same.

When I say Ukraine should seek compensation from the West in any peace deal for loss of territory, it is because they have the leverage to get that. If they can get compensation from Russia and from the West in a peace deal, that is clearly better than simply compensation from Russia.

Of course now, Ukraine has very little leverage.

But at the start of the war, for example, in exchange for accepting a peace along the lines of what Russia proposing, Zelensky could have sought various compensation from the West, in particular Europe that has the most to lose from a larger and longer war: such as a fast track into the EU (which Russia explicitly said they did not oppose, only NATO).

True, it would be a compromise where Russia is "appeased".

But as I've explained numerous times, the appeasement argument is totally fallacious and demonstrates a total lack of understanding of history.

The appeasement analogy applied to Ukraine would only be remotely similar if it was about chastising Poland for not fighting to the last Polander.

The criticism of appeasement is not levied at the smaller and weaker countries Hitler gobbled up, accusing them of surrendering or cutting deals rather than fighting to their last man and even worman, but rather the criticism of appeasement is levied at the far larger and stronger countries (UK, France, US) that had an actual chance of defeating Hitler.

Avoiding "appeasement" has nothing to do with smaller countries stuck in the middle of the great powers. It is always the same: the strong do as they will, the weak suffer what they must. And so weaker countries can only strive to suffer as little as possible in navigating the rivalry and clashes of the great powers.

A situation I do not approve of, but is created out of the system of international relations—in which the key word is "national" and the nationalism from which those nations spring—and insofar as we have a system of nations then we have more and less powerful nations and among them the "great powers" who do great things – terrible, yes, but great.

Great things generally aimed at each other but sometimes also space.

The smaller powers stuck in the middle have no interest in fighting to the death for one side or another; one needs really extreme circumstances for that option to be viable.

Now, that such a peace would be potentially "bad" for the West is from a US and Western perspective, not Ukraine's perspective. You are basically giving up the ghost of your position. You are simply taking it as assumed that Ukraine should do whatever the West wants it to do and is in the interest of the West, with no consideration for Ukraine.

And indeed, even if you are correct (which I don't think you are) in assuming any peace between Ukraine and Russia would be good for Russia and bad for the West, that's not an argument that Ukraine shouldn't make peace with Russia; only an argument that the West should not want Ukraine to make peace with Russia.

Now, whether this is inherently true or not, that any deal that is or was remotely feasible between Ukraine and Russia is "bad for the West", certainly, depending on the details, a peace deal would be better or worse for the West, and this is exactly the leverage Ukraine has, or at least had at one point.

How Ukraine could get concessions from the West is in threatening to go and make sure of doing exactly what you say would be bad for the West: i.e. threaten to make peace with the Russians in a way that embarrasses and weakens the West the most.

For example, Zelensky could have gone to the US, NATO, the EU, and said "look, you've slow played us into this disastrous war, if you don't give me some additional compensation (such as fast track EU membership), in addition to what the Russians are offering, so that I can do right by the Ukrainian people and we get something for giving up claim to Crimea, then I'm going to declare the West has abandoned us, no Western soldiers are coming, no no-fly zone is coming, we are alone, abandoned by our Western friends, arms and thoughts and prayers won't defeat the Russians, and therefore we will make peace with the Russians (and then imply a bunch of terms even more embarrassing for the West, such as allowing Russia to have military bases in Ukraine, station missiles, or just further economic cooperation with the Russians etc.).

At this stage of negotiation, the West would need to decide whether to play ball or not and participate in negotiations in order to be able to negotiate terms they can better spin as some sort of "victory" for the West (such as "security guarantees" for Ukraine, integrating Ukraine into other Western institutions such as the EU, and so on). If the West refuses to offer anything, well the Russian deal is still better than a disastrous war, and there's nothing to lose in trying to go get concessions also from other parties concerned.

Third, whatever the Russian initial demands were circumstances for peace negotiation worsened within a month: the failure of the Russian special operation in Kiev (if the objective was Ukrainian capitulation) and the genocidal massacres (like in Bucha) became public (as much Russian state media support of Russian genocidal intents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Russia_Should_Do_with_Ukraine). Later, the deal-breaker demands included also the new annexed oblasts. So I’m not surprised that Ukrainians would be compelled to refuse negotiation. — neomac

Ukraine's leverage was likely the highest before the war even started, as it's a big expense and a big risk to even start the war. Now, Russia wanted more a deal with the West, a new European security architecture, which the West refused saying it's between Russia and Ukraine (exactly because neo-cons at least believe that Ukraine fighting Russia, even if irrational for Ukraine, is better than any peace; no a surprise there), that was more comprehensive, but again Zelensky (if he wasn't an idiot) could have gone and threatened the West with peace into agreeing to negotiate with Russia a new framework in which Ukraine is neutral.

Then there is the first weeks of the war where an offer was on the table, Zelensky could have closed a deal had he wanted.

War crimes are definitely usual in any war, and their investigation can be part of a peace deal; it is simply another point to negotiation, and not a reason to refuse to negotiate (even if we are assuming it was indeed the Russians and not elements in Ukraine that don't want any peace).

Another strong reason is that Ukrainians would like to keep the Western alliance and they could likely count on the decades-long support of the US: Ukraine is on the border of Europe, the historical core of the US’s sphere of influence. — neomac

Yeah, sure, and I'd like a toilet of solid gold.

Simply wanting something is not a rational basis to fight a long and costly war that you are very, very likely to lose.

The relevant question here is whether war is a reasonable way of getting what you want. Maybe it is reasonable for Ukraine to "like to keep the Western alliance" (that Ukraine is not apart of), but it does not follow from that to fight a long and costly war to join the alliance of which the purpose would be ... deter said long and costly war?!?!

While Russia explicitly antagonizes the US hegemony and solicits anti-Western regimes to join Russia in this effort, so both the US and its enemies are compelled to see the war in Ukraine as a critical step to establish a new World Order at the expense of the US. So it is reasonable to expect this be of particular concern for the US. — neomac

Sure, maybe it's reasonable for the US to want Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian ...

If you are right about your manipulative interpretation of what Sen. Lindsey Graham said, that proves at best he shares your views of what is rational. — neomac

I am right that the US is manipulating Ukraine. For example "whatever it takes" and "as long as it takes" are both obviously manipulative lies. Likewise, the billions and billions and billions (and many more billions until you've said billions at least 50 times, assuming each billion stands for at least 2 billions) in hard currency and arms the US sends to Ukraine without any tracing or auditing etc. is also a de facto area of affect bribe to all parties in Ukraine who stand to benefit from billion and billion and billions of untraceable currency and arms. That is not only clear manipulation without even attempting to avoid a situation where the money and arms are de facto bribes, but it was well known ahead of times those arms would find themselves in "the wrong hands" (to use RAND's phrasing) and would supercharge terrorism and organized crime around the world.

However, how this would "prove" Graham shares the same definition of rational as me, and what the point would be, I honestly don't see what that argument is or would be, so you'll have to explain it.

Whatever you're trying to say, rationality does not mean "good" only lacking in self-contradiction, and "self" is a key word as a rational position does not imply a universal position.

People who want to cause as much harm as possible and do as much evil as possible in their limited time, can be perfectly rational in such a pursuit. That they may lack self contradiction in pursuing their purpose to murder, rape and torture, does not make those actions good on account of being rational nor lend any weight to the position that such purposes should be universal and adopted by all rational agents.

It may very well be that it is rational for Senator Graham, relative his neo-con ideology and evil purposes, or even just plain-ol' US imperialism in general, to want Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. That being true would not somehow make it true that is rational for Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

But I find questionable your concept of “rationality” roughly for the same reason I find questionable your interpretation of what Sen. Lindsey Graham said. — neomac

How is my interpretation questionable?

If you find something questionable, moreoverso in a philosophical debate, you should explain what's questionable about it and, in the case of interpretation, provide your position on the matter.

How do you interpret Senator Graham's statement?

Before rebutting the rest of your post, I think it is wise to take a hiatus here and see if you even have an alternative interpretation.

For, if you don't (which your failure to support your "questioning" my interpretation by providing an alternative one, very strongly implies that you don't), then your thrashing about in the void is far more easily dealt with as obvious denialism (that even you clearly see in simply denying my interpretation without providing your own) of what Senator Graham obviously has stated (the "quiet part out loud"), and that equally obvious it is a direct and clear statement of US government policy (reinforced further by the lack of anyone from the White House even bothering to contradict Senator Graham, even just for appearance sake ... as it's so obvious an admission of what is so obviously actually happening that it's easier for everyone if the mainstream media simply never cites Graham in full on the US position in the war, much less discuss it).

Exactly. But it’s fun to watch people use sarcasm in such a ridiculous way. No one serious denies US power in world affairs, but in order to feel a fake sense of superiority it’s necessary to reduce this fact to absurdity: “That guy slipped on a banana peel— must be the US, ay guys? Har-har-har.” — Mikie

Agreed.

Western policy has been a complete disaster, it's now becoming obvious, so denialists must retreat into the safety of thought terminating clichés:

A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance.[1][2][3] Its function is to stop an argument from proceeding further, ending the debate with a cliché rather than a point.[1] Some such clichés are not inherently terminating; they only become so when used to intentionally dismiss dissent or justify fallacious logic.[4]

The term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, who referred to the use of the cliché, along with "loading the language", as "the language of non-thought".[5]

The earliest recorded definition of the term was published in Robert Jay Lifton's book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism in 1961 wherein he was describing the structure of language used by the Chinese Communist Party, defining the term as "the start and finish of any ideological analysis". — Thought-terminating cliché - Wikipedia

Meanwhile, our defense industry is loving it to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. But I’m sure that has no “major” influence here either.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to rehash it all again in detail. I really can’t do it anymore. (That’s why I could never be a teacher.) — Mikie

Thanks!

If it is of any use, I write mainly for people who maybe following the discussion and are genuinely curious what arguments can stand up to scrutiny and who can see something as propaganda or the clichés mentioned above but can't quite see the full structure of how it works.

In this light my opponents are very helpful and obliging foils.

My principle project here on the forum is to develop strategies of dealing with bad faith debaters. The first tactic of a bad faith debater is of course to try to both confuse and render the debate tiresome; so rehashing is one such counter-tactic. Most importantly is to call out and clearly explain the ulterior motives; conceding "good intentions" to a bad faith interlocutor is to concede defeat and motivated only by either cowardice or one's own ulterior motive to fraternize with, rather than confront, evil.

I think it's implied. How could it be anything else when US imperialism is the singular force that determines events around the world.

Well maybe only the bad ones. — Echarmion

Why even bother replying if all you're going to do is demonstrate that you really don't want to answer? — Echarmion

may simply not have the time to unpack the obvious, but fortunately I do so I'm happy to dissect all the myths that cloud and manipulate your judgement.

Not only for your own benefit, but also for those following and feel there's been something deeply wrong in the West's policies in Ukraine and are wondering what exactly.

Anyways assuming that Russia views any US support as hostile interference, what is the proper course to take? — Echarmion

Since you're fairly new to the conversation, you are perhaps unaware we've spent significant effort over the 529 pages, 20 comments each, of elaborating the different policy options.

Throughout the first phase of the war—which you seem to agree, however tentatively, that Ukraine's leverage was perhaps higher than it was now and would have gotten a better deal in terms of territory than what's available now while also avoiding all the death and destruction and depopulation that has happened since—, we discussed at length why Ukraine should negotiate (rather than repudiate any negotiation) and why the Russian offer was a reasonable one for Ukraine to take (of course trying to negotiate as many further concessions as possible, and not only from Russia but the EU as well).

So, you seem to already have agreed in this proper course of action, only adding the caveat that there would need to confidence a deal does not simply post-pone the same war. To my caveat to your caveat that you can't possibly evaluate if a deal would be a durable peace or not if you refuse to negotiate but also that having a war now rather than later nevertheless requires confidence one can win the war.

Now, when a war starts it's of course common sense to negotiate and see if it can be ended on acceptable terms, exactly what the West is doing with regard to the Gaza conflict; but with regard to Ukraine, the West (in particular the US and UK) did everything possible to encourage Zelensky to not only reject the Russian's offer but refuse to negotiate entirely.

To make matters worse, Western officials, and particularly the US, do not even hide the logic that Ukraine fighting Russia is a "good investment" as it's a chance to damage Russia without losing any American or other NATO lives. There isn't even any hesitation to simply embrace what they are accused of, manipulating Ukraine into fighting to the last Ukrainian, but rather simply embrace it whole heartedly:

“I like the structural path we’re on here,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham declared in July 2022. “As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.” — Aaron Mate

Again, note that I cite Aaron Mate (not that I have a problem with that), because I have found no main stream outlet that has a single article that cites Sen. Lindsey Graham's statement in full.

Now, from time to time in this conflict it has become quite apparent that Ukraine isn't winning, does not even have a scenario in which it could "win", and the Western talking heads and legions of posters on social media rush to explain exactly the policy explained by Lindsey Graham (he is not explaining what he would like to do but is not policy as far as we know, such as assassinating Putin or providing Ukraine with nuclear weapons as has been suggested by others, but he's explaining the "structural path we're on here", in other words what the policy is and why he supports the policy).

So, to dress up US involvement in Ukraine leading up to the war as simply naive do-gooding, and the policy since the war started to arm Ukraine (but in a drip feed manner that avoids "escalation") and encourage Ukraine to continue fighting and repudiate negotiations and make absurd ultimatums (such as the negotiation can happen after Russia leaves all of Ukraine), as somehow good for Ukraine, is simply living in a delusional mythical echo chamber (that you so happily fill with noise with your fellow US sycophants whenever critical voices are absent from the thread for even a day).

I post RAND's report explaining that support for Ukraine fighting the separatists is "bleeding" Russia (their words) and that further support could "extend" Russia further (notice they don't use the word "defeat") and explicitly say this policy is at the expense of Ukraine (they don't explain how this benefits Ukraine or protects some categorical imperative and just "has to be done" for moral reasons) and furthermore state the obvious that Russia has significant military advantages in the region and warns that such a policy would need to be "calibrated" to avoid escalating into further Russian incursions into Ukraine where Ukraine would lose territory and likely be forced into a "disadvantageous peace". Most interestingly, RAND analysis does not then conclude "oh, but we'll have harmed Russia a bunch so that would be a good thing ... just at the expense of Ukraine so we can feel a bit bad about that, but we get what we wanted! USA! USA! USA" but rather views escalation into a large conflict in which Ukraine loses as a significant strategic defeat for the US and loss of prestige.

The report does explain that supporting Ukraine in escalating the conflict with Russia could be good for US strategy (again, in the context that this is at the expense of Ukraine) ... but only if Ukraine "won"—if Ukraine won there would be wider geopolitical benefits of shoring up US allies, giving confidence that US can and will defend them— but the report goes into some detail of why that is not so possible. Basically this whole business of supporting Ukraine is framed as one additional threat that the US could use in negotiation, not actually do. The RAND report does not even include arming Ukraine in its concluding list of recommended actions.

So, not only do you have US senators explaining exactly what US policy is (fight Russia to the last Ukrainian) but you have in depth analysis by the US "go-to" policy analysis group that explains pretty clearly that Ukraine cannot win a war with Russia and further military support that leads exactly to this war would be at the expense of Ukraine.

Now, other pro-Western policy posters here have often simply explicitly stated that yes this is a war to benefit US hegemony, US hegemony is better than the alternatives and if Ukraine is completely destroyed to advance US interests, then so be it.

You do not seem to have this view, but rather share my view that policy should be based on (in not entirely, then with strong consideration for) reduction of harm, in which case avoiding war is best and once the war starts then negotiating a peace sooner rather than later is also better than continued death and destruction, and that seeking to harm Russia at the expense of Ukrainians is not morally justifiable (I would also argue that this doesn't even seem to be happening, so a "careful what you wish for" warning to the pro-more-war proponents, but rather the war is strengthening Russia, but this is a secondary debate to the issue of whether it is morally acceptable to seek to harm Russia "somewhat" at the expense of near total destruction of Ukraine).

Now, if we agree on the moral fundamentals, then it doesn't seem even up for debate of what the purpose of Western policy has been leading up to the war ("extend" Russia at great risk and peril to Ukraine) and what the Western policy has been during the war (fight Russia to the last Ukrainian ... but not escalate more than that and risk Russia using Nukes).

What would be up for debate is 1. why does such a disastrous policy (at least for Ukraine, if not for the West) get put into place in the first place despite warnings directly from RAND that Ukraine have little chance of "winning" and that their losing will be a significant loss of US prestige and power, 2. how best to end the war now, and 3. understanding how the myth building works and fools people such as yourself into believing that disastrous policy is either somehow necessary or then at least "hearts were in the right place". For example, what exactly is wrong with fighting a geo-political adversary to the last citizen of a non-allied country?

Case in point:

I think it's implied. How could it be anything else when US imperialism is the singular force that determines events around the world.

Well maybe only the bad ones. — Echarmion

Which is simply masterbating with a fellow US sycophant with more myth and propaganda.

If you took interest enough in this war and the plight of the Ukrainians to be discussing here since the beginning, you'd know we've gone over this subject multiple times.

The focus on criticizing Western policy by us critical Westerners in this thread, is because we are Westerners and citizens of countries that are part of the Western institutions organizing the policies in question as well as directly participating in sending arms and thoughts and payers.

As citizens of Western countries we not only feel more responsible for what our governments do, rather than other countries, but we are in a better position to affect the policies of our own countries compared to other countries.

No one here has framed the "US imperialism" as "the singular force that determines events around the world". However, if we look at bad things other countries do—such as Saudi Arabia literally cutting the heads off people in the town square oh and starving the Yemenis, or Ukraine tolerating and arming literal Nazi's, China creating a truly dystopian techno-police state and poised to export that around the world, or indeed Russia invading Ukraine—then again the question for us humanist critical thinkers is what can the countries and the alliances and institutions our countries participate in (i.e. the policies we affect as citizens) do about these problems.

However, if we debated these other "bad things" other countries do, what is the response from US mini-"hegemons" out here on the web? Is the answer "oh, we should definitely implement policies to try to deal with those bad things" or is it "well US power needs the Saudi's as an ally, certainly not an enemy, so we sort of need to arm Saudi Arabia and tolerate whatever bad things they do in their own country and in other countries. You know, US interests, oil, hegemony, it's all very clever. And for the Nazi's in Ukraine, that's ok if they want to fight Russians, and maybe they aren't so many or aren't so bad after all. And of course we need China to make our stuff and profits for US corporations!! So we may disapprove and China does things and maybe China is also a rival in Asia that we try to contain, but there was zero problem in transferring all the means of production to Communist china in order to depress wages and 'socialist' activity at home and make corporations tons of money being able to leverage environmental, working conditions and humans rights arbitrage in any country willing to do business that way ... not our problem if they do bad things to their own citizens!!!."

So where would that conversation go exactly? A total focus on Uzbekistan? With a human rights situation described by Wikipedia as:

Non-governmental human rights organisations, such as IHF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as United States Department of State and Council of the European Union, define Uzbekistan as "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights"[14] and express profound concern about "wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights".[70] According to the reports, the most widespread violations are torture, arbitrary arrests, and various restrictions of freedoms: of religion, of speech and press, of free association and assembly. — Uzbekistan, Human Rights - Wikipedia

Which, as far as I know, is a human rights situation that may indeed have little to do with US imperialism.

So, please, link to where you've been discussing and working towards reducing the bad things being done by the Uzbekistan government, or then if you've "missed it" in your humanitarian mission, then what do you feel about it now and what is to be done about it? The "proper course of action" to use your words.