Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Part 5

Kimberly Perez82 said:It is all very easy for you people to act brave when it involves risking someone else's children. Honestly, it’s quite something how much everyone suddenly cares about the democracy of some distant country—a place most of you couldn't even point to on a map six months ago. I will say it again: this is absolutely not the moment for the hawks who would happily sacrifice foreign kids for the sake of a hollow concept of democracy that doesn't truly exist anywhere. No, what we need right now is common sense, extreme caution, and a genuine push for compromise so we don't all end up facing a global catastrophe. The only logical path forward is to provide Putin with a way to step back without looking like a complete loser.

Exactly. Ukraine is corrupt, and honestly, thanks to Putin for stepping in to clean up the mess left behind by Russian players who built that corruption in the first place.

George Robinson43 said:A small-town guy might talk big about shooting, but the moment things get heavy, he'll be the first one hopping on a tractor and heading for the hills.

He's nowhere near the front lines.
He'll just swallow the bullet.
As soon as they get close.

Kimberly Perez82 said:It is all very easy for you people to act brave when it involves risking someone else's children. Honestly, it’s quite something how much everyone suddenly cares about the democracy of some distant country—a place most of you couldn't even point to on a map six months ago. I will say it again: this is absolutely not the moment for the hawks who would happily sacrifice foreign kids for the sake of a hollow concept of democracy that doesn't truly exist anywhere. No, what we need right now is common sense, extreme caution, and a genuine push for compromise so we don't all end up facing a global catastrophe. The only logical path forward is to provide Putin with a way to step back without looking like a complete loser.

If you want to talk reality, there’s already an unwritten compromise happening: NATO stays out of Ukraine directly, and in return, Russia doesn't start hitting NATO bases in neighboring countries.

Sean Doyle8 said:Things are going to get worse. Unless there's a total military defeat—imagine an Abrams rolling through Times Square.

later, right in the middle of Times Square... glad you brought that up... 😵

If the West just lets Russia annex those occupied territories for good, we’re looking at a perpetual war, even if it’s just smoldering in the background...
Peace would be a pipe dream because things would just keep escalating, keeping tensions through the roof constantly.
Maybe giving Crimea to Russia and granting more autonomy to Luhansk and Donetsk within Ukraine could actually work, but anything else is just stalling for time before the next Russian push into Ukraine hits... whether that happens in six months, a year, or two, it doesn't really matter.

I mean, you probably saw that news out of Latvia where some Russian residents painted the city entrance in Russian colors... that's how it starts, with little provocations, then demands, then getting bullied, then calling on Mother Russia to step in because they're being harassed, and before you know it, it’s Lithuania or Estonia's turn next.
So now the West can sit there and decide if they want to cave to Russia or actually bring this thing to an end.

laser said:NATO is shipping tons of military gear to the AFU. Everything from winter uniforms to generators.

The Orcs are going to freeze their asses off.

Winter is coming.

By 2012, the Russians were basically wearing sneakers instead of boots. They even tried convincing me it was better...😵😵😵

Kimberly Perez82 said:It is all very easy for you people to act brave when it involves risking someone else's children. Honestly, it’s quite something how much everyone suddenly cares about the democracy of some distant country—a place most of you couldn't even point to on a map six months ago. I will say it again: this is absolutely not the moment for the hawks who would happily sacrifice foreign kids for the sake of a hollow concept of democracy that doesn't truly exist anywhere. No, what we need right now is common sense, extreme caution, and a genuine push for compromise so we don't all end up facing a global catastrophe. The only logical path forward is to provide Putin with a way to step back without looking like a complete loser.

You're wasting your breath. ☕

Lisa Jackson7 said:Fine, but let's hope he doesn't just get swapped out for some "reasonable" or "cooperative" version of Putin for a little while.

As long as they stay within their own borders, I suppose.

It would be nice if there were a simple manual for dealing with authoritarian regimes and forcing them to democratize, but history shows that interventionism is rarely that straightforward. There isn't some magic formula for imposing massive social shifts from the outside.

Everyone wins if Russia democratizes and opens up. We could focus on trade instead of worrying about nuclear weapons. Both Europe and Russia would come out ahead.

But honestly, a North Korean scenario is also an option.

The real issue is the Saudi Arabia scenario—where you allow a dictatorship to achieve economic prosperity. The problem here is that this particular dictatorship possesses massive military power, making it impossible to manipulate its foreign policy the way the US can with various drug or oil-dependent client states.
I'm not entirely convinced there's a foolproof long-term fix for that either. Even Putin didn't just wake up one day and decide to mass troops at the border; that situation has been simmering for a long time.
Plus, there are too many conflicting state and economic interests at play. Policy tends to soften over time as those interests shift.

In my opinion, if we can manage to prevent further Russian nonsense and force them to focus on their own internal crises over the next few decades, we've done our job. As for what happens fifty years from now? Nobody knows.

A tactical nuclear strike might be the only scenario we can call a certainty right now.
If that happens, the West will lose every single shred of moral high ground used to justify withholding the tools Ukrainians need to defend themselves.

The real weak link? It’s those self-righteous Westerners who will view a nuclear move as definitive proof that Putin isn't bluffing—concluding, therefore, that we should just let him have his way.
In reality, the true vulnerability Putin is exploiting is the pampered class of Westerners: the ones who paradoxically claim to despise Western "decadence" while being the very people responsible for its collapse in the first place.

Lisa Jackson7 said:later, right in the middle of Times Square... glad you brought that up... 😵

fine... we'll see...

there's no face saving this time...

Christian Barnes said:Speaking of language, I feel like Ukrainians bear some responsibility here too, you know? They kind of let the Ukrainian language slide for a while. Even after 2014, if you were looking online—say, a foreigner wanting to pick up some Ukrainian—there was hardly anything out there. Meanwhile, the Russians had already built those massive, polished websites, like that RT network. It was confusing even on TV sometimes; you couldn't tell if people were speaking Russian or Ukrainian. I mean, didn't some people even point out that Zelenskyy speaks Russian in his service to the people?

I agree there have been mistakes since 2014, but hey, it’s never too late to fix things. I'm all for phasing out Russian as a gesture of goodwill toward switching over to Ukrainian. Mind you, we're talking about centuries of attempts to suppress the Ukrainian language, so it won't happen overnight. Still, I really believe that in 5 or 10 years, Russian speakers will be a tiny minority. As for Zelenskyy—he uses both, but personally, I think Ukrainian is much more melodic and beautiful; it has its own distinct sound 😁. A lot of people have already stopped using Russian, and I bet as the war moves forward, that trend will only grow. People from Donbas, Kharkiv, and Kherson just don't want to use Russian anymore. If there's any "Russophobia" happening, you can only blame the Russians for that, and nobody else.

slycobra5 said:It would be fascinating to find out—assuming such data even exists—exactly how many Russian soldiers have been kicked out of service due to liver cirrhosis and related health issues...

Why would they kick them out?
They just need cannon fodder, and someone with cirrhosis is perfectly fine for that job.

Carol Johnson21 said:A tactical nuclear strike might be the only scenario we can call a certainty right now.
If that happens, the West will lose every single shred of moral high ground used to justify withholding the tools Ukrainians need to defend themselves.

The real weak link? It’s those self-righteous Westerners who will view a nuclear move as definitive proof that Putin isn't bluffing—concluding, therefore, that we should just let him have his way.
In reality, the true vulnerability Putin is exploiting is the pampered class of Westerners: the ones who paradoxically claim to despise Western "decadence" while being the very people responsible for its collapse in the first place.

I keep coming back to this when I write about how likely a tactical scenario is—it all boils down to whether Putin thinks he can force everyone to walk away from the war by dropping a nuke somewhere. Sure, it could end the fighting, but it would be a fake peace. Russia would just come back later—plus, it sends a message to plenty of other countries that they can start wars and grab territory whenever they want. It reminds me of how people once tried to negotiate with Hitler, which just ended in millions of deaths. Has anyone actually learned anything? We saw the same thing with Crimea—everyone just looked the other way. I don't know how many politicians realize that giving in to an aggressor just invites more violence. You buy peace today, but you pay for much worse unrest tomorrow.
The best deterrent right now might be the idea that Russia will get too distracted by its own mess—especially with this mobilization stuff going on. I was reading about a village where literally every man has been drafted.

Kate Cook27 said:I agree there have been mistakes since 2014, but hey, it’s never too late to fix things. I'm all for phasing out Russian as a gesture of goodwill toward switching over to Ukrainian. Mind you, we're talking about centuries of attempts to suppress the Ukrainian language, so it won't happen overnight. Still, I really believe that in 5 or 10 years, Russian speakers will be a tiny minority. As for Zelenskyy—he uses both, but personally, I think Ukrainian is much more melodic and beautiful; it has its own distinct sound 😁. A lot of people have already stopped using Russian, and I bet as the war moves forward, that trend will only grow. People from Donbas, Kharkiv, and Kherson just don't want to use Russian anymore. If there's any "Russophobia" happening, you can only blame the Russians for that, and nobody else.

As far as the language goes, I think both sound good, though I definitely understand Russian better than Ukrainian...

I've been watching clips on YouTube where people are flat-out refusing to speak Russian after the invasion, even though they used to use it all the time...

And from what I know, a huge part of Ukraine uses what they call Surzhyk, which is basically this blend of Russian and Ukrainian...

You hear it most in the areas between Kyiv and the east, like Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv...

Amy Parker10 said:Being realistic, we already saw how that "silent" deal regarding Crimea played out, and we know exactly where it led us.

You make a valid point, truly, but I find myself wondering... what is the actual alternative? Everything has escalated so much more intensely now; there is a universal consensus that we are facing the most perilous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It would be incredibly foolish to pour gasoline on this fire right now. We really need to seek a compromise and somehow de-escalate things with Russia. Once that's settled, then we can pivot back to isolation and economic sanctions—you know, things like boycotting their energy supplies—which will gradually erode their economy. It should weaken them down to the level of the USSR in the nineties, where they simply won't have the resources to maintain such a massive military. A weakened Russia would naturally be more open to negotiation. There are just too many nuclear warheads involved here, and honestly, there is far too much irrationality at play; one single misstep could be catastrophic. Furthermore, even a weakened Russia remains a threat because of those thousands of nuclear warheads that could potentially slip through the black market into the hands of even more irrational psychopaths roaming the globe. This was all predictable, wasn't it? We knew this would happen eventually, so now we must act with extreme caution. Unfortunately, my generation and our children are the ones left holding the bag. I would gladly surrender this "privilege" in a heartbeat—let them fight it out for another hundred years if they want to.

Russian propaganda keeps harping on about Nazis—it’s getting old, isn't it? They just can't stop. Now we wait to see if they move to annex those territories immediately. If they do, there’s a real possibility they’ll start waving nuclear threats around as leverage. It feels like the West needs to make a call here: will they actually raise the stakes and threaten Russia with both conventional and nuclear retaliation against their forces in Ukraine?
We've essentially entered a high-stakes game of chicken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)

@ Kimberly Perez82 ...Where on earth were you back in '91?

mistyharbor13 said:Good afternoon, Mr. Chamberlain... it looks like you haven't learned a single thing from history!

I'm actually afraid it's the other way around—that you’re the one who hasn't learned anything. Take the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance; back then, hotheads on both sides nearly wiped out the entire planet. Personally, if there were a spare planet floating around somewhere, I wouldn't mind at all if your sidekicks just tore each other apart until nothing was left. If your only goal is to be the last ones standing, even if everything else burns down, then fine. But that kind of selfish, "my way or the highway" attitude is exactly what drives us into these irrational, dangerous situations we find ourselves in today.

Kimberly Perez82 said:You make a valid point, truly, but I find myself wondering... what is the actual alternative? Everything has escalated so much more intensely now; there is a universal consensus that we are facing the most perilous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It would be incredibly foolish to pour gasoline on this fire right now. We really need to seek a compromise and somehow de-escalate things with Russia. Once that's settled, then we can pivot back to isolation and economic sanctions—you know, things like boycotting their energy supplies—which will gradually erode their economy. It should weaken them down to the level of the USSR in the nineties, where they simply won't have the resources to maintain such a massive military. A weakened Russia would naturally be more open to negotiation. There are just too many nuclear warheads involved here, and honestly, there is far too much irrationality at play; one single misstep could be catastrophic. Furthermore, even a weakened Russia remains a threat because of those thousands of nuclear warheads that could potentially slip through the black market into the hands of even more irrational psychopaths roaming the globe. This was all predictable, wasn't it? We knew this would happen eventually, so now we must act with extreme caution. Unfortunately, my generation and our children are the ones left holding the bag. I would gladly surrender this "privilege" in a heartbeat—let them fight it out for another hundred years if they want to.

So, your argument is that if we give in now, they won't remember they have nukes to use as leverage for the next century? And we should just dance around them, hoping they stay happy and promise not to sell any warheads to anyone else?
Really.🤦

People panicking over nukes clearly have a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation.☕
Ignore.
The nuclear card is the only thing left for those clinging to the losing side.

Larry Sanchez7 said:As far as the language goes, I think both sound good, though I definitely understand Russian better than Ukrainian...

I've been watching clips on YouTube where people are flat-out refusing to speak Russian after the invasion, even though they used to use it all the time...

And from what I know, a huge part of Ukraine uses what they call Surzhyk, which is basically this blend of Russian and Ukrainian...

You hear it most in the areas between Kyiv and the east, like Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv...

Yeah, a lot of folks are moving away from Russian now, even the older generations. Surzhik is basically the standard way of talking in much of Ukraine 😁.