You’re probably right that it would be a stupid idea. On the other hand, it does not feel so much like Europe is choosing to fight Russia head on but rather that Russia is encroaching closer and closer on the European borders every 10 years or so by annexing another part of Ukraine. That was the point I made above:
1994: Give up nuclear weapons, Budapest memorandum, oops, 2014 invasion of Crimea.
2014/15: Give up Crimea, another round of peace talks and agreements, oops, 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now: Should Ukraine give up Donbas and Luhansk and demilitarize to appease Russia? Give it another 10 years and Russia finds a pretense to swallow the remaining Ukraine or make it a vassal republic, which will be greatly aided by their demilitarization. What comes next? The same piecemeal tactic with the Baltics or Poland? Another piece of land every 10-odd years?
Every time Ukraine has appeased Russia, Russia came back to bite it a few years later. And please don’t give me the “NATO is encroaching on Russia” talk: At the beginning of the war, 70-odd percent of Ukrainians were in favor of closer ties with the EU. If one takes self-determination seriously, as a lot of people on this instance seem to selectively do for the self-determination of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, one can’t deny a country to choose its allies free from a threat of invasion by its neighbor, who also happens to be the biggest nuclear power in the world.
Ah, but here’s the difference: Finland, Sweden, and the other Eastern European nations weren’t invaded by NATO. They chose to associate with NATO to protect themselves against Russian aggression. Why should NATO turn them down? To appease Russia? Why does Russia get a say in what treaties or agreements their neighbors enter? What gives them the right to invade and bombard a country for choosing its allies?
Ukraine never had nuclear weapons or the codes. USSR stationed nuclear weapons in Ukraine and Russia is the inheritor state of USSR. And I wonder what might’ve happened in 2014, oh right a western backed regime change that overthrew the legitimately elected government and put literal fascists in charge.
Every time the west pushed Ukraine to keep fighting Russia things got worse for Ukraine. But scum like you doesn’t give fuck about Ukrainians, you’re a parasite cheering on for other people to die for some abstract ideals you don’t actually believe in. If you believed a word of what you said, you’d be signing up for the foreign legion and sitting in a trench. Instead, your just cheer on for other people to die. You’re a piece of human garbage and you have blood on your hands.
You keep bringing up that point but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Sure, they didn’t have the launch codes but they were in the physical possession of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory by the USSR. At the very least, this meant they had weapons-grade highly enriched fissile material, even the possibility of which makes neighboring countries nervous, as we are all learning in Iran. They could’ve disassembled them, reverse engineered them, destroyed them, or whatever, but they chose to give them to the successor state of the USSR for the hollow promise of territorial integrity. They could’ve developed their own nukes, but they didn’t. Instead, they trusted the deal and the security guarantees. For that deal, and for the act of breaking it in 2014 and in 2022, it makes no difference whether Ukraine had the capacity of launching those nukes in the 90s.
Yeah, guess what bud, nobody in the west wanted Ukraine to have nukes either. There was literally no possibility of that happening. They didn’t do it because literally nobody would’ve allowed them to do it. They trusted the west, and the west cynically used them as a proxy. While scumbags like you keep pretending it’s about democracy or some shit.
Welp, there goes the civility. Nevertheless, I wish you a genuinely good day as well as some sense.
As for the actual argument in your comment: Why are you blaming the West for not following through on their security guarantees? A few comments back you had pointed out how stupid it were if they went to all out war against Russia. Why aren’t you blaming Russia for not following through on their security guarantees by, IDK, not invading Ukraine? Double-think…
Edit: Had forgotten to pull apart the quote from the paragraph beneath. Now corrected.
The west never offered any security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine keeping nuclear material was never on the table. So, your whole premise is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, Russia was perfectly fine with Ukraine doing its own thing until the west overthrew the government in Ukraine in 2014. The only double-think here is you avoiding the elephant in the room.
They did though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum#Content:
Russia, the UK, and the US agreed that they would respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, not attack Ukraine except in self-defense, refrain from economic coercion, and immediately seek action in case another signatory attacks Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you insist on the Budapest memorandum being meaningless as an argument to defend Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Might as well play diplomacy like up to WW1 and enter wars over coffee and scones. What’s the point of this all if one hegemon just gets to invade their neighbors willy-nilly? If international agreements don’t have any meaning, then why the heck do we even make them? Why did Russia sign the memorandum? Maybe to buy time in their hour of greatest weakness and gather strength to subdue Ukraine 20 years later?
Yeah that applied when Ukraine was actually sovereign before the coup in 2014 by the west. Shock and surprise, Russia was not attacking Ukraine back then.
You’re probably right that it would be a stupid idea. On the other hand, it does not feel so much like Europe is choosing to fight Russia head on but rather that Russia is encroaching closer and closer on the European borders every 10 years or so by annexing another part of Ukraine. That was the point I made above:
Every time Ukraine has appeased Russia, Russia came back to bite it a few years later. And please don’t give me the “NATO is encroaching on Russia” talk: At the beginning of the war, 70-odd percent of Ukrainians were in favor of closer ties with the EU. If one takes self-determination seriously, as a lot of people on this instance seem to selectively do for the self-determination of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, one can’t deny a country to choose its allies free from a threat of invasion by its neighbor, who also happens to be the biggest nuclear power in the world.
Who exactly is encroaching faster against the other? Russia by occupying parts of ukriane, or EU/NATO by extending multiple countries east?
Ah, but here’s the difference: Finland, Sweden, and the other Eastern European nations weren’t invaded by NATO. They chose to associate with NATO to protect themselves against Russian aggression. Why should NATO turn them down? To appease Russia? Why does Russia get a say in what treaties or agreements their neighbors enter? What gives them the right to invade and bombard a country for choosing its allies?
Sure. It’s our freedom fighters and then the terrorists of the other side. Do people like you never start to think?
Please do tell me when Finland, Sweden, Hungary, the Baltics, Poland, or Slovakia were invaded by NATO.
Ukraine never had nuclear weapons or the codes. USSR stationed nuclear weapons in Ukraine and Russia is the inheritor state of USSR. And I wonder what might’ve happened in 2014, oh right a western backed regime change that overthrew the legitimately elected government and put literal fascists in charge.
Every time the west pushed Ukraine to keep fighting Russia things got worse for Ukraine. But scum like you doesn’t give fuck about Ukrainians, you’re a parasite cheering on for other people to die for some abstract ideals you don’t actually believe in. If you believed a word of what you said, you’d be signing up for the foreign legion and sitting in a trench. Instead, your just cheer on for other people to die. You’re a piece of human garbage and you have blood on your hands.
You keep bringing up that point but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Sure, they didn’t have the launch codes but they were in the physical possession of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory by the USSR. At the very least, this meant they had weapons-grade highly enriched fissile material, even the possibility of which makes neighboring countries nervous, as we are all learning in Iran. They could’ve disassembled them, reverse engineered them, destroyed them, or whatever, but they chose to give them to the successor state of the USSR for the hollow promise of territorial integrity. They could’ve developed their own nukes, but they didn’t. Instead, they trusted the deal and the security guarantees. For that deal, and for the act of breaking it in 2014 and in 2022, it makes no difference whether Ukraine had the capacity of launching those nukes in the 90s.
Yeah, guess what bud, nobody in the west wanted Ukraine to have nukes either. There was literally no possibility of that happening. They didn’t do it because literally nobody would’ve allowed them to do it. They trusted the west, and the west cynically used them as a proxy. While scumbags like you keep pretending it’s about democracy or some shit.
Welp, there goes the civility. Nevertheless, I wish you a genuinely good day as well as some sense. As for the actual argument in your comment: Why are you blaming the West for not following through on their security guarantees? A few comments back you had pointed out how stupid it were if they went to all out war against Russia. Why aren’t you blaming Russia for not following through on their security guarantees by, IDK, not invading Ukraine? Double-think…
Edit: Had forgotten to pull apart the quote from the paragraph beneath. Now corrected.
The west never offered any security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine keeping nuclear material was never on the table. So, your whole premise is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, Russia was perfectly fine with Ukraine doing its own thing until the west overthrew the government in Ukraine in 2014. The only double-think here is you avoiding the elephant in the room.
They did though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum#Content: Russia, the UK, and the US agreed that they would respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, not attack Ukraine except in self-defense, refrain from economic coercion, and immediately seek action in case another signatory attacks Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you insist on the Budapest memorandum being meaningless as an argument to defend Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Might as well play diplomacy like up to WW1 and enter wars over coffee and scones. What’s the point of this all if one hegemon just gets to invade their neighbors willy-nilly? If international agreements don’t have any meaning, then why the heck do we even make them? Why did Russia sign the memorandum? Maybe to buy time in their hour of greatest weakness and gather strength to subdue Ukraine 20 years later?
Yeah that applied when Ukraine was actually sovereign before the coup in 2014 by the west. Shock and surprise, Russia was not attacking Ukraine back then.