The reasons me and millions of Americans are skeptical about this war:
1. McCain and Graham visiting Ukraine and pledging support for the country before most of us knew where Ukraine was on a map.
2. Biden being put in charge of the Ukraine situation as VP.
3. Victoria Nuland's actions before the "revolution" and the fact that she is always associated with destabilizing the situation in Ukraine.
4. Hunter Biden making millions from businesses in and around Ukraine.
5. Joe bragging about getting a prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold aid.
6. Americans going almost immediately from the end of funding one forever war in Afghanistan to the beginning of funding the next forever war in Ukraine.
7. Zero accountability for where the aid is going and no interest from Congress in establishing oversight of where the money and equipment is ending up.
8. The fact that BlackRock and JP Morgan are already in place to help "rebuild Ukraine." How many billions of dollars will be given to both companies with no oversight.
Everything about this conflict feels like the Ukrainian people are being used and killed for the financial interests of the west. I don't think Americans unsupportive of funding the war view Putin as innocent, as MSM likes to propose. We can be both skeptical of supporting the war and understand Putin's role in escalation. Both sides did little to avoid the war. The Ukrainian people are paying the price in lives lost and the West (mostly Americans) are footing the bill.
First of all if that were true, Zelensky wouldn’t be increasing penalties for draft dodging and desertion. Second, the question for Americans isn’t whether Ukrainians should keep fighting or not; that’s not up to us. What is up to us is whether we keep arming them. And if you think that’s not the business of American citizens then we just have different perspectives on democracy.
last night in a Notes Q and A, I asked Adam Kinzinger whether he thought that the war in Ukraine was worth starting a nuclear conflict over. he replied:
"It’s worth ever bit of it. And it will end with the collapse of Russia..."
it's still up in his Notes thread.
this is the end game now guys. we managed to avoid nuclear war for 45 years during the Cold War...these psychopaths are completely deranged.
Hollis: FWIW, unlike the Cold War period, the Russian troops in Ukraine are not equipped with the protective equipment needed to fight on a radioactive battlefield.
Respectfully, Hollis, I heard an interview with retired General Jack Keene, the man Trump twice asked to be his Secretary of Defense. When asked about the possibility that Putin might escalate to use nuclear weapons, Keene noted that the Russian army currently wasn't equipped to fight in a nuclear environment and that it would take more than one nuclear weapon to have a significant military influence on the war. I thought it was an important question and that you deserved to hear Keene's answer.
It's not an unreasonable question and don't be performatively obtuse. You know what he was asking. Tell us what your foreign policy would be, especially vis-a-vis a Russian attack on a NATO state or Chinese attack on Taiwan.
I'll also add that your comment above about Zelensky increasing penalties for avoiding the draft is nonsensical, unless you also believe that the US shouldn't have enforced laws against draft dodging and desertion in the 20th century.
Either that comment has been edited or I accidentally responded to the wrong one. Because that wasn't the comment I was confused by. There was another reply that was incoherent.
If Russia attacked NATO it would be an act of war on the United States, obviously. China/Taiwan is too complicated to answer in a comment thread, I'd have to research and write another 5,000 word piece on it.
And no, the comment about Zelensky increasing penalties is not "nonsensical," it's clear evidence that there's a long-term problem with replenishing troops. Your comparison to the US draft is a complete non sequitur. I think you're the one being performatively obtuse.
Without America's abundant surplus arms, the Ukrainians can't keep resisting the illegal invasion. That's pretty obvious. So either you're being intentionally obtuse or actually believe an "America first" isolationist concept of democracy that the Ukrainians' existence as a nation and a people is "not up to us." It is up to us and the Free World.
BTW FDR couldn't allow draft dodging either, including guys who went to remove Hitler from Europe, which some thought was "none of America's business."
So then your position then is that since without us the Ukrainians cannot fight, we're morally obligated to arm them with whatever they need, however long they need it, until Russia packs up and goes home?
Good comprehension skills! We absolutely have a moral obligation to oppose and end genocide, war crimes, theft of land and resources, and enslavement of a people. Moreover, we made security guarantees to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum, which was conveniently ignored, encouraging Putin. A significant fraction of our $800 billion a year to defend democracies around the world has yet to be supplied. And after the barbarians have left or been killed, we have a moral obligation to pursue a Marshall Plan. Making excuses to look away from evil is not my position and I hope it's not yours.
1. that Ukraine acheives total victory and all territory is regained, including Crimea and Putin packs up and goes home with his tail between his legs.
2. some sort of negotiated peace with comprimises to both parties.
3. WW3 and nuclear war.
since 1 is extremely unlikely and would take years and billions of dollars and well over a million lives, this is a pipe dream.
option 3 is unacceptable and unthinkable.
that leaves option 2 as the most humane solution and the least amount of destruction and human suffering.
forget for a moment the decades of NATO expansion and Neo-Con saber rattling and think what road we are going down...for it is the road to Hell...
Mr Deplume correctly raises the issue of the security guarantees given to Ukraine by the U.S. and Russia in return for their surrender of nuclear weapons. Mr. Woodhouse, could you give us your perspective on that?
Zelenskyy didn't ask for the new law. The law isn't new; it was passed in January of 2023 at the request of the military. Those who deserted or broke other rules were being tried in court under judges who imposed non-uniform and somethings negligible penalties. The new law applied uniform penalties for all infractions. making the average penalty somewhat tougher. Zelenskyy received a petition with 25,000 signatures asking for more opportunities for leniency and fairness. A committee may be looking for a compromise.
Then why did the USA donate a $100B in advanced weapons to the Taliban instead of sending them to Ukraine?
Why, when the CIA knew 100% Russia was going to invade, they didn't blow the bridges leading into Ukraine, didn't let a rain of fire come down on all armor at the entrance points to Ukraine and mine all routes into Ukraine? There is ZERO question that they WANTED to trap Russia into a long quagmire war inside of Ukraine, that only caused death & destruction to Ukrainians.
And why didn't they offer up front the obvious deal Russia wanted, Ukraine will never join NATO, give up on Crimea, and stick to the Minsk accords on some protections & rights for Russian speaking Ukrainians in the East? Pretty simple-minded.
Why when they had a peace deal initialed in April 2022 did the West send Boris Johnson to fly to Ukraine demanding the deal be kiboshed?
Inescapable conclusion: The West wanted to trap Russia in another Afghanistan and try to bleed them to death as they did over there. Ukrainians were just useful idiots, cannon fodder in the US/Nato/Davos lust for a One World Dictatorship.
If the $100+ billion spent on Ukraine was really about a proxy war with Russia wouldn't there be interest in minimizing the amount of dollars being ciphoned off to corruption? But there is no interest in minimizing corruption. The war in Ukraine has the same purpose as climate change hysteria, fleecing the US taxpayer, laundering billions through DC power centers. The mainstream media provides the PR for the con.
Undoubtedly, there is a lot of that going round, on all sides, even Russia. The corrupt war money machine has ALWAYS been a big component of war cheerleading likely for a thousand years or more. The Biden regime has no interest in minimizing it because it is funneling cash to their donors, patrons, clients, lobbyists and politicians. The Ukraine War Grift has many tentacles.
If Trump is elected, there will be a lot of pressure on him to keep the gravy train rolling by RINOs and Neocons in the Republican party. A lot of cash flowing their way also.
Whether or not weapons are supplied to defend Ukraine, the U.S. defense budget continues to exceed $800 billion a year. Allowing Ukraine to be crushed by Putin's imperialist fantasy won't change by one iota the fleecing, political payoffs, cost overruns, or waste. Military spending is so entrenched that its budget is voted separately. The destabilization of letting Putin have his way with Ukraine will encourage copycat dictators and more military spending. "We need to nip it. Nip it in the bud." - Barney Fife
Unfortunately for your theory the US was counting on Ukraine folding in 3 days as expressed by the now famous offer to get Zelensky out of his home country.
As for fleecing the taxpayer: the majority of the money is old Cold War stuff (it's not even money but the supposed book value of the equipment which will never become dollars again to begin with). Take a Stinger: costs 10k to decommission it. Ship it to Ukraine.
This is the opportunity of a generation to create a much better world.
If you are so concerned about the taxpayer then you should support this war right now: kill the cancer while it is still small. Putin gets his way we will see many more expensive wars, wars which it only won't be Ukrainian boys dying but Americans.
It really is as if the Obama/Biden admin was looking for a way to draw Putin into a debilitating war, they would do nothing differently than what they did. Syria didn't quite do it, so, next stop --> Ukraine.
So Biden in conservative circles is this senile fool that can barely keep awake....but now he is playing 3D chess with Putin and winning. Which one is it? Can't have both.
Ukrainian patriotism is not in question here. The events leading to the need for Ukrainians to be defending their territory as patriots are. The history here is long and complex. The black and white simplistic narrative fed to the masses to garner support for a bottomless pit of money are what is actually being litigated.
Are you suggesting every Ukrainian citizen wants this war? Perhaps there are Ukrainian citizens that dislike Putin and his actions but recognize the toll this war will take on their country isn’t worth it.
The atrocities committed in the occupied zones of Ukraine suggest that the toll of not repelling the truly barbaric invaders is higher. There indeed were Ukrainians in Donbas who favored Russian rule. Their men have since been conscripted off the streets and sent as suicidal meat waves by Russians and Chechens who don't value their lives because . . . they are Ukrainians. Resisting what would happen is indeed worth it.
Almost Home: FWIW, Victoria Nuland sold out the protestors who had occupied the EuroMaidan for three months in the winter of 2013-4. After the government's last effort to remove the demonstrators resulted in about 70 being killed, she and some Europeans diplomats negotiated an agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders that would have moved up elections, but allowed Yanukovych to remain in power for nine more months and administer those elections. The demonstrators came from a wide variety of groups and were not simply supporters or the opposition parties. At one point, more than 0.5 million demonstrators from a city of 3 million were present. When the Opposition Leaders came to the Euromaidan to present the deal, a public funeral for the dead was being held and the deal was reject by the crowd. The Opposition Leaders fled to safety. By then, Yanukovych had lost the support of all sources of power in Ukraine, including the police. Yanukovych fled Kiev that same night, and called Putin to organize his rescue. The next afternoon, the Parliament voted UNANIMOUSLY to remove Yanukovych from the presidency, including the members of his own party. The same night, Putin would authorize seizure of Crimea by Russian troops out of uniform two nights later.
I recommend that you forget about Biden and focus on what the people of Ukraine want and why. Before the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainian politics was sarcastically summarized as a choice between being ruled by corrupt Pro-Russian oligarchs from Eastern Ukraine and corrupt pro-Western oligarchs from Kyiv. In 2003-4, large number of Ukrainians peacefully occupied the Euromaidan for three months to protest a run-off election that was obviously stolen by Yanukovych (aka the Orange Revolution). Eventually the courts called for a new election, which Yanukovych lost by the expected margin. The pro-Western president was incompetent and Yanukovych won the next election five years later, He changed the constitution, jailed his opponent, and then - unforgivably - backed out of a trade deal with the EU that had taken 5 years to negotiate and that he had pledged sign. The EU has been very successful at dealing with corruption in the post-Communist regimes of Eastern Europe (Ukraine's neighbors) and the people desperately wanted a decent government and not a Post-Communist kleptocracy like Russia's. With hours of canceling, the Euromaidan was again packed with demonstrators.
The problem is that nothing frightens Putin more than seeing people in the streets demanding a better government. He was it in Dresden in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was torn down. He saw it in 1991, when the coup against Gorbachev collapse and the USSR fell apart. He saw some demonstrators when he election after four years of Medvedev serving as his puppet.
Unfortunately, the seizure of Crimea and the Russian-sponsored rebellion in Eastern Ukraine prompted the Ukrainians to elect another oligarch, Poroshenko with supporters in both the East and West, and he installed his ally Shokin as Chief Prosecutor. Burisma's owner, Zlochevsky, was the most infamous of Yanukowych's corrupt official, as the Minister responsible for selling oil and gas leases to the company he owned. When Zlochevsky was never arrested, Poroshenko's government was doomed. The people of Ukraine were so desperate that they overwhelmingly turned to the actor Zelenskyy, an amateur who would need to deal with Putin. His brand new party won a majority in Parliament, most of whom had never served there before. Both the Far Right (Neo-Nazis) and Yanukowych's party were nearly wiped out. Progress against corruption was made. Oligarchs are no long able to make campaign contributions and judges are carefully selected. Putin can not afford to let Ukraine develop into a non-corrupt pro-western democracy.
I recommend an $4 short ebook from Amazon on the Revolution of Dignity by a group of cynical reporters who lived through the event: "Witness to Revolution". These reporters admired the bravery and idealism of the demonstrators, accurately reported on the Neo-Nazi elements in the demonstration, but didn't believe the revolution had changed anything. Under Poroshenko, it hadn't, but they got lucky with Zelenskyy. After reading about the brave people who twice occupied the EuroMaidan for 3 months in winter, I wasn't surprised when the Ukrainians beat back the Russians at the start of the war.
Frank, I don’t pretend to know what’s happening in Ukraine nor do I understand the various groups within the country and their desires. You appear to have much more knowledge than I do. I imagine the history is long, complicated, and full of influence from outside sources. What I fully believe is western (American) interests have helped get Ukraine in a war it cannot win and these same interests stand to profit greatly from both a long conflict and the rebuilding efforts. At some point, it becomes hard to see beyond the billions of dollars that always seem to end up in the same few pockets. I have nothing but respect for the Ukrainian citizens and what they’ve achieved in this conflict. But that respect doesn’t mean I want to see our country continue to fund a war that doesn’t seem to have a clear endpoint. “Weakening Russia” sounds similar to “weakening the taliban,” which clearly was not achieved. The fact that our elected officials boast that this war is weakening Russia with no American boots on the ground sickens me. It feels like the Ukrainian people are being sacrificed for little gain. Knowing Hunter pocketed millions from Ukrainian corporations before his father sent billions to the same country makes me automatically suspicious. I’d be just as skeptical if it was Dontald Trump and his kid. I hope the best for the people of Ukraine but I’m not convinced their interests are the priority for either the west or Putin.
When asked how the United States benefits from supplying Ukraine with weapons. some people reply that this war is weakening Russia. Those are the "realists" who believed Putin when he says his goal is to reverse the outcome of the Cold War and reunite and protect all Russian speaking people in a restored "Russian Empire" (the one founded by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great). That empire included Ukraine, Finland, most of Kazakhkstan, and the Baltic States. If Putin goes after the Baltic States or now Finland, that means war with NATO. IF the future likely includes a war between NATO and Russia, then weakening Russia is really important and keeping 40 million Russian-hating Ukrainians on our side is a very important consideration. Some say that the most experienced and soon the best equipped army in Europe will be Ukraine's.
However, we are not forcing Ukraine to continue fighting Putin. They want to fight and all they are asking for is the equipment to do so. They want to preserve their country and the progress they have made to becoming a prosperous, non-corrupt democracy like their Eastern European neighbors.
BTW, in addition to Hunter, Burisma hired David Archer (to round up investors) for projects outside Ukraine, the former president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, (for his influence and connections in the EU), the lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies (with two principals with extensive connections with Democrats, and, once Trump was elected, Bush anti-terrorism veteran Cofer Black (who was VP of Blackwater, the private military contractor owned by Trump loyalists Eric Prince and Betsy Devos. They ALL pocketed millions, and it is all perfectly legal unless there was a quid pro quo deal. You don't need to worry about Joe and Hunter having been paid to get Shokin fired. Just about everyone in Ukraine except Poroshenko wanted Shokin fired for failure to indict Zlochevsky. Archer has testified Zlochevsky wanted Shokin to remain in office to protect him and others likely can too. And if Joe had been tricked by Zlochevsky and paid to fire Shokin, would he publicly brag about his previously secret role in the firing?
What if Putin's goal is not to create restored Russian empire? Perhaps Putin merely feels that a Ukraine that wants to be part of the EU poses too much danger to Russian security. Actually the most vulnerable place in Russian is Saint Petersburg, which is only about 100 miles from the Estonian border and now the border with Finland too. When a new nation wants to join NATO, unanimous agreement of all existing members is required. Before Russia's invasion, Germany would never have allowed Ukraine to join and they had said so many times. Biden refused to rule out Ukraine joining NATO, but Germany did not.
IMO, there are strong parallels between Putin's program of restoring Russian greatness after losing a great war (the Cold War) by uniting all Russian speakers into a new Russian Empire and Hitler's program of restoring German greatness after losing a great war (WWI) by uniting all German speakers into the Third Reich (Empire). For a long time, no one took Hilter's plans seriously. Chamberlin sacrificed Czechoslovakia for "Peace in Our Time" and ended up trading a war he could easily win for a war he would have lost without Hitlers later mistakes. Without Ukraine, Putin's new Russian Empire an absurd concept, with it, Putin is like Hitler with Czechoslovakia, only far more patient for the past two decades. At 70, Putin's time could be running out.
I might have focused a little bit more in my review on the fact that Crimea is not historically or a part of Ukraine nor has ever contained a demographic majority of ethnic Ukrainians, and that the support we’re therefore giving to Ukraine to reconquer it is arguably questionable from a moral perspective if not necessarily from the standpoint of international legality - which, however, the West was itself quite willing to ignore during the Kosovo and Libya crises a few decades ago. I understand the legal arguments Ukraine is making regarding the restoration of its pre-war territorial integrity but why should US taxpayers be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars to enable Ukraine to take back a territory inhabited by a majority of ethnic Russians since tsarist times and never inhabited by anywhere remotely close to a majority of ethnic Ukrainians, a territory that was arbitrarily transplanted from the Russian to the Ukrainian SSR by an unelected Soviet leader back in the 1950’s without the consent of its inhabitants? I don’t see this as something I should personally support with my tax dollars, nor do I think that if we let Putin “get away with” taking back Crimea, a historically Russian territory, that it somehow follows he’ll want to annex Estonia or Latvia or Poland, i.e., none of which contain ethnic Russian majorities.
The situation in Donbas is less clear-cut than Crimea but there are similar vibes. Perhaps the people living in these territories - all of them, refugees included, need to be asked what they actually want at some point.
Ukraine may have fantasies about taking back Crimea, but that does not seem like a remotely realistic goal. The current war is very different, and Russia thought it could waltz in and take over the whole country in a few days. They did not just invade the Donbas.
There is no realistic way to ask all the people from the Donbas, mostly scattered around the world now, what they want and under whose control they wish to live. I find it very hard to believe a majority would support living under the current occupiers, who have killed, raped, and blown up everything in sight, not a single civilian place off the table - not markets, not apartments, not kindergartens, not hospitals, Russia bombs them all.
I agree with you that the situation in Donbas is much less clear-cut and a potential path to peace much more difficult to visualize but Crimea strikes me as a good deal more straightforward and raises some serious questions in my mind.
As of right now US taxpayers are being asked to fund a Ukrainian military takeover and reintegration of Crimea, a historically and ethnically Russian territory, without being allowed to question whether this is morally just and/or even a reasonable, practical path toward peaceful resolution of the underlying conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I don’t think it is and, beyond the fact that I suspect Ukraine won’t ever have the resources to accomplish that goal, I also believe Russia would fight incredibly hard to prevent it from happening and might well escalate things to a nuclear level if that outcome seemed likely.
I also think Ukraine would ethnically cleanse Crimea of its Russian population if it did succeed in reannexing the territory, which is not something I want my tax dollars to support.
I don't feel like US taxpayers are being asked to fund that - it has close to zero chance of happening. Ukraine has to tell itself stuff like this for the sake of its own morale. In any case, the vast majority of my tax dollars are either wasted or spent on things I don't support, so I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the financial aspect of this (which is a drop in the bucket of our govt's absurd robo-spending).
Maybe this could all have been avoided if we had clearly said Ukraine will never be part of NATO. I read somewhere it was Angela Merkel who came up with the brilliant "you'll be part of NATO someday but we won't say when" formulation, which I can believe is her idea seeing as it is the worst of all possible strategies. I'm never sure how much I buy this argument - all the other NATO countries on Russia's borders didn't cause any "red lines" to be crossed; Russia is a nuclear power and would launch the missiles if NATO tried to invade; there is no conceivable way NATO would ever launch an invasion; if we/they did, it would be broadcast for many months in advance as that's how long it would take to get all the materiel in place.
In any case now we are where we are, and I personally don't want to abandon Ukraine to the vicious and brutal fate that Putin and the Russian state have in mind for it.
“I don't feel like US taxpayers are being asked to fund that - it has close to zero chance of happening.”
I disagree. If that’s NOT what we’re being asked to support, then I’d like my government to explicitly and publicly state that. Instead, what our government is publicly saying is that we’ll support Ukraine unilaterally to the bitter end, whatever objectives they’ve set themselves. And in the meantime Ukraine has explicitly set the ultimate objective of recovering every last inch of lost territory by military force, Crimea included. So it seems to me that US taxpayers have indeed been roped into supporting that particular objective as well.
I don’t support the idea of abandoning Ukraine in such a way as to permit Russia to absorb it but I feel as though that point has already been made. Russia must know by now it can never occupy or even indirectly control the 80% of Ukraine that isn’t currently under its thumb. It’s the status of the remaining 20% that’s in question, and I think US taxpayers are entitled to view that as a separate question that isn’t quite so purely tied to the issue of Ukraine’s fundamental political sovereignty.
Your taxes support the US government, and it was the US government that forced Ukraine to disarm. Under pressure from US President Bill Clinton, Ukraine gave its nuclear weapons to Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the third most nuclear-armed country in the world, after the US and Russia. The US Government forced Ukraine to give up not only nuclear warheads but also missiles to Russia. And now Russia is launching the same missiles, but with simple warheads, into Ukraine and destroying Ukrainian cities. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Budapest Memorandum, which gave Ukraine security guarantees in exchange for the transfer of nuclear weapons to Russia. President Obama continued the policy of disarming Ukraine and presented it to Putin. Would Putin have started a war if Ukraine had nuclear weapons ? Now the war could be ended quickly if the US gave Ukraine enough weapons. So far, the US has not given Ukraine a single battle tank, a single warplane, or a single long-range missile. The Biden administration simply does not want Russia to lose this war. That is the problem. Unfortunately, Putin understands and values only strength and despises the weak and the doubters.
I’m willing to support Ukraine in its quest for political self-determination and autonomy. But I’ll stand by saying I don’t want my taxes to support a Ukrainian crusade to regain territory to which the country has never had a good historical or demographic claim. Regardless of what we argue the US government may or may not have done in the past.
Putin got played, just as chairman Xi got played, suckered into developing SARS-CoV-2. Putin's corrupt intelligence told him Ukraine would be a cakewalk and would collapse in 24hrs. He was quite willing to sign a peace deal after their "blitzkrieg" failed miserably. It was NATO that kiboshed the tentative peace deal.
That is the Russian way of war and we should have anticipated that. I know I'm playing armchair general and now have the benefit of hindsight, but before the invasion, I was writing that the war can be stopped before it starts by the U.S. and EU rapidly deploying armed troops to defend Ukraine's vital energy infrastructure. I figured that's what Putin would seize first, thereby controlling the electricity of most of Ukraine. Putin would never have directly challenged the combined force of the U.S., EU, & Ukraine. That would have been an easy thing to do and would have brought Putin and Zelenskyy to the negotiating table. The parties might have agreed to a UN sanctioned plebiscite of the people of the disputed eastern territories and warrant self-determination.
A plebiscite was already had in 91 and Donbas, Luhansk and Crimea chose to be part of Ukraine. Further, the Budapest Memorandum guaranteed Ukraines security. There is no legal way to justify this war or another plebiscite. Russia only understands force. Like Hitler, appeasement doesn't work. The next best alternative, the one chosen by Biden, is to give all the old Cold War crap that was in stock. With this Russias army already got trounced to 50% of its original fighting capacity. They are caniballizing old artillery pieces as they cannot create new tubes. Source: satellite data from their Omsk depot. They need to beg North Korea for shells. They are this close to cracking. Plus: a weaker North Korea is a side benefit. So the civilized world is getting all this in exchange for mostly old Cold Era equipment, Ukrainian blood pulling the trigger. This is the best investment ever, better than Lend Lease.
The UN? So you think Russia, who has veto power in the security council will vote against itself? And let's say they don't but refuse to leave? Your suggestion is what then? Send the Blue Helmets and evict them by force? Well, wouldn't what we have now be exactly that but without direct US lives at stake?
Those territories just barely voted to remain part of Ukraine, at a historical turning point when Russia was visibly imploding as a functioning alternative entity to “stay married to”, if you will. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, including Ukraine’s attempts to suppress the Russian language in its eastern territories and reintegrate them through use of crude military force after a revolt developed.
Arranging another plebiscite would be challenging in the Donbas but more straightforward in Crimea, provided the Ukrainian diaspora were included in the vote. Problem is, even if the Ukrainian diaspora is included, there have always been way more ethnic Russians in Crimea than Ukrainians, which may be why the West isn’t keen on that idea.
What if Crimea voted to become independent? It’s definitely large enough to find its own way...
Sorry, you don’t suppress people’s language under any circumstances, even during crisis or conflict. Historically, doing that has almost always served as the prelude to more overt campaigns of oppression.
I don’t approve of what Russia has been doing in Donbas. But I also don’t approve of what Ukraine did.
It's an interesting idea, though it strikes me as far riskier than what we're doing now (which everyone complains is in danger of starting WW3). It's hard to imagine selling that strategy to the public either here or anywhere in the EU.
First of all, Crimea was primarily Tatar, not Russian, until the Russians killed or exiled most of the Tatars.
Then, they tried to do the same thing in Ukraine, killing and exiling millions of Ukrainians in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and forcing Russian peasants to emigrate to Ykraine to russify it.
You armchair peacemakers need to go visit ANY nation that abuts Russia and talk to people there.
The past is the past. There’s no rational argument to be made that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine because of the Tatar tragedy any more than swathes of the US should be returned to the Native American population because of the genocide that was perpetrated against their ancestors by the pre- and post-colonial American governments.
By the way, I did spend an entire year of my life working in a former Soviet republic - Abkhazia, a place where Russia happens to be a quite popular political partner. Not necessarily for reasons that I unilaterally support but which I can certainly understand.
The Kremlin masters in Russia have long been saying that Alaska is part of Russia's historical lands, and in fact this is true. In addition, the Russians are presenting the facts that the US Government has acquired Alaska from Russia at an undervalue and by deception. Are you prepared to return Alaska to Putin ?
No. Alexander II’s government engaged in the sale without any deception involved - the US government had no firm knowledge of anything having to do with Alaska’s future potential that the tsarist government didn’t also have.
One does wonder what the wishes of Alaska’s indigenous peoples might have been, but they weren’t consulted by either of the negotiating parties.
My point remains that although the principle of political self-determination as the guiding one to determine political affiliation isn’t perfect, it’s arguably better than any other one including the much more abstract principle of maintaining “territorial integrity”, which if followed precisely would require a herculean revision of political borders amongst nations all around the globe, often in utterly incompatible directions.
So what happened to self-determination as per the referendum in 91? That one didn't count? But this one, when many Ukrainians left or were forced to leave should count? Some determination!
Oh, and I was quite explicit in saying that the Ukrainians who were expelled after 2014 SHOULD be allowed to vote in any new referendum, whereas Russians who arrived after 2014 SHOULDN’T. But you honestly have a habit of putting words into people’s mouths that they didn’t say.
It was respected at the time. Since then, however, a Western-supported coup has happened that overthrew the President that a majority of the Crimean people and a majority of Ukrainians overall voted for in 2010, followed by a Russian invasion and then a war that looks as though it could potentially end with the ethnic cleansing of the Russian population of Crimea if Ukraine achieves its strategic objectives.
So I think a repeat referendum might be in order. Self-determined political affiliation isn’t something that’s necessarily static forever, it’s something that’s very reasonable to reaffirm periodically, especially after particularly convulsive political events.
The Scots should never be allowed to vote again either in your opinion, I take it? Or the Quebecois? Once and done forever?
So you think there was no deception on the Alaska deal. I think the same as you. But what is more important in this context is what the Russians think about it. They are convinced that the price was despicably low and that Russia was deceived and humiliated by the US and that 'historical justice' should be restored. So, if the US were a state the size of Ukraine without nuclear weapons, I can assure you that Putin's army would already be in Alaska.
But Alaska is well defended and so are Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and all the other eastern European countries. Including Ukraine, which, as is quite evident by now, will never be reannexed by Russia.
So the idea that if Crimea is allowed to remain part of Russia Ukraine will also fall and then be followed, in domino-like fashion, by all the rest of the former Soviet possessions / satrapies, doesn’t strike me as very tenable.
I've never believed the killing was worth it. I am appalled and ashamed that our nation is not leading the way to find peace, but is doing the exact opposite and has been so dead set to make this war happen and to continue to enable the feeding of 100,000s of souls into this meatgrinder. There was nothing ever to gain in this war other sticking a thumb in Putin's eye. This is a border dispute in a region that dominantly identifies as Russian. Same with Crimea. Both Crimea and Donbas regions simply ended up on the wrong side of the border as the USSR broke up. I have absolutely no sympathy for Putin. He's a ruthless killer and a bona fide super criminal, but he is rational.
Russia will never give up this war without a negotiated settlement. Where is this potential settlement team? Currently, the U.S. is cursed with that same "settlement team" that delivered to the world the utter catastrophes ongoing in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. It's the same damned people. Evidently, the humanitarian crises they helped create in Syri, Libya, & Afghanistan wasn't big enough for them.
The Ukrainian people have truly outperformed everyone's expectations. Certainly, my expectations. I expected Russia to roll over the eastern half of the country and seize all the major energy hubs first. That's how it started, but then we found that the Russian military significantly underperformed expectations. But the mistakes that the great powers have made have more than rippled across the globe and the grave danger posed by a potential race to make the first nuclear strike is as great as it has been since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. When I look to see who is leading the U.S. effort, I am horrified. Truly, I am horrified.
Thank you. I was in Hiroshima on the day that Putin announced he was stationing tactical nukes in Belarus. He’s not fucking around here. If I see the great comedic actor Zelensky on one more ‘hat out, hugfest, charity tour to the West I am going to puke. Everyone should have to spend a day on Hiroshima or Nagasaki to get into their thick skulls what is at stake here,
The Holodomor killed 60 times more people than Hiroshima. The sequestration of children by Russia is surpassed only by the likes of Pol Pot and Hitler not to mention Stalin.
If you want to quote historical events to justify your historical position at least be complete.
If I quoted every single dictator and their effect on the world would that bolster my argument? I am specifically leaning into the nuclear element here so your comment is a straw man on that basis. Engage with the argument that Putin doesn’t represent a distinctly dangerous situation for the world due to his nuclear arsenal and his stated claim to use them. On that basis our strategic moves need to be made. But what about the Holofomor? Say what?
What I really like about Public is that the content is usually based on careful reporting and is not armchair theorizing. Please - focus on your strengths, the superior reporting, not stuff by someone who just read a bunch of stuff and has an opinion.
You didn’t give any context for the reason that Russia took the Crimea. The Russian Navy had a 30 year lease on the naval base in Sevastopol. The newly formed coup government was planning on rescinding that lease and entertaining the possibility of leasing it to NATO. That’s a pretty severe red line.
Also you kinda glossed over the 10 year civil war that started in 2014. Over 10,000 civilians were killed In the Donbas and other Eastern culturally Russian areas of Ukraine. The Maidan Government was bombing its own citizens. And there were numerous governmental decrees aimed at marginalizing the Eastern Ukrainian citizenry like the banning of Russian as an official language.
NATO has long been irrelevant. The US gains nothing by agreeing to help defend North Macedonia and Finland. Time to leave Ukraine as well. Nothing good is to come
Finland and Sweden don’t seem to think it’s irrelevant. Poland doesn’t seem to think it’s irrelevant. How are any alliances and security agreements countries make with each other "irrelevant"? What does that even mean - irrelevant to whom, under what context?
The EU is quite capable of defending themselves. If they can't even do that, what is the point of having the EU? You don't need NATO. With just the top 3 EU nations having a total GDP 5X Russia, if they can't defend themselves they might as well quit. And defense is always easier than offense. Russia ain't gonna invade Europe, they have more internal problems than they can handle.
Similar question, with 50 and 70 years perspective under our belt, in what way was the national interest of the USA advanced by our adventures in Vietnam and Korea? If we had stayed out of those conflicts I wonder what the world would look like today.
Ukraine is history repeating. We are not changing the outcome of these historic events, only prolonging the misery and possibly risking the very existence of our republic. We should stop now, nothing good can come from this.
Yeah, very good question. My family was closely involved in that conflict. My father did five tours of duty there while we lived on Viet Nam's periphery in southeast Asia and Australia. At the time, my father believed in the war and that the preservation of democracy and the ancient culture was worth fighting for. He had many friends in the ARVN as well as civilian locals. Most of them were probably killed as a consequence of that advocacy. Today, my father is deeply regretful. Afterall, look at Viet Nam today. I don't think the war changed the inevitable outcome of Viet Nam, but simply postponed the modern version at the cost of killing millions.
Jeff, I believe that just like the response to Covid 3 years ago, we did not change the outcome one iota, just prolonged and aggravated the misery. the only people who benefited from these adventures were politicians and the military industrial complex.
The reasons me and millions of Americans are skeptical about this war:
1. McCain and Graham visiting Ukraine and pledging support for the country before most of us knew where Ukraine was on a map.
2. Biden being put in charge of the Ukraine situation as VP.
3. Victoria Nuland's actions before the "revolution" and the fact that she is always associated with destabilizing the situation in Ukraine.
4. Hunter Biden making millions from businesses in and around Ukraine.
5. Joe bragging about getting a prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold aid.
6. Americans going almost immediately from the end of funding one forever war in Afghanistan to the beginning of funding the next forever war in Ukraine.
7. Zero accountability for where the aid is going and no interest from Congress in establishing oversight of where the money and equipment is ending up.
8. The fact that BlackRock and JP Morgan are already in place to help "rebuild Ukraine." How many billions of dollars will be given to both companies with no oversight.
Everything about this conflict feels like the Ukrainian people are being used and killed for the financial interests of the west. I don't think Americans unsupportive of funding the war view Putin as innocent, as MSM likes to propose. We can be both skeptical of supporting the war and understand Putin's role in escalation. Both sides did little to avoid the war. The Ukrainian people are paying the price in lives lost and the West (mostly Americans) are footing the bill.
Leaving Afghanistan to start another forever war wasn't exactly poorly timed, either ...
Wow, it’s like you think the Ukrainians are children who have no mind of their own. The Ukrainians WANT to defend themselves.
First of all if that were true, Zelensky wouldn’t be increasing penalties for draft dodging and desertion. Second, the question for Americans isn’t whether Ukrainians should keep fighting or not; that’s not up to us. What is up to us is whether we keep arming them. And if you think that’s not the business of American citizens then we just have different perspectives on democracy.
last night in a Notes Q and A, I asked Adam Kinzinger whether he thought that the war in Ukraine was worth starting a nuclear conflict over. he replied:
"It’s worth ever bit of it. And it will end with the collapse of Russia..."
it's still up in his Notes thread.
this is the end game now guys. we managed to avoid nuclear war for 45 years during the Cold War...these psychopaths are completely deranged.
God help us...
https://x.com/lwoodhouse/status/1706099766625710575?s=20
Wow.
Hollis: FWIW, unlike the Cold War period, the Russian troops in Ukraine are not equipped with the protective equipment needed to fight on a radioactive battlefield.
go home Frank, yer drunk again...
Respectfully, Hollis, I heard an interview with retired General Jack Keene, the man Trump twice asked to be his Secretary of Defense. When asked about the possibility that Putin might escalate to use nuclear weapons, Keene noted that the Russian army currently wasn't equipped to fight in a nuclear environment and that it would take more than one nuclear weapon to have a significant military influence on the war. I thought it was an important question and that you deserved to hear Keene's answer.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Woodhouse is point on!
So, Leighton, why are we NATO? Why are we in Japan, South Korea, Australia etc? Exactly what is YOUR foreign policy?
What?
It's not an unreasonable question and don't be performatively obtuse. You know what he was asking. Tell us what your foreign policy would be, especially vis-a-vis a Russian attack on a NATO state or Chinese attack on Taiwan.
I'll also add that your comment above about Zelensky increasing penalties for avoiding the draft is nonsensical, unless you also believe that the US shouldn't have enforced laws against draft dodging and desertion in the 20th century.
Either that comment has been edited or I accidentally responded to the wrong one. Because that wasn't the comment I was confused by. There was another reply that was incoherent.
If Russia attacked NATO it would be an act of war on the United States, obviously. China/Taiwan is too complicated to answer in a comment thread, I'd have to research and write another 5,000 word piece on it.
And no, the comment about Zelensky increasing penalties is not "nonsensical," it's clear evidence that there's a long-term problem with replenishing troops. Your comparison to the US draft is a complete non sequitur. I think you're the one being performatively obtuse.
Without America's abundant surplus arms, the Ukrainians can't keep resisting the illegal invasion. That's pretty obvious. So either you're being intentionally obtuse or actually believe an "America first" isolationist concept of democracy that the Ukrainians' existence as a nation and a people is "not up to us." It is up to us and the Free World.
BTW FDR couldn't allow draft dodging either, including guys who went to remove Hitler from Europe, which some thought was "none of America's business."
So then your position then is that since without us the Ukrainians cannot fight, we're morally obligated to arm them with whatever they need, however long they need it, until Russia packs up and goes home?
Good comprehension skills! We absolutely have a moral obligation to oppose and end genocide, war crimes, theft of land and resources, and enslavement of a people. Moreover, we made security guarantees to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum, which was conveniently ignored, encouraging Putin. A significant fraction of our $800 billion a year to defend democracies around the world has yet to be supplied. And after the barbarians have left or been killed, we have a moral obligation to pursue a Marshall Plan. Making excuses to look away from evil is not my position and I hope it's not yours.
I'm asking you if you think the United States has a moral obligation to continue arming Ukraine indefinitely.
there are 3 outcomes of this conflict.
1. that Ukraine acheives total victory and all territory is regained, including Crimea and Putin packs up and goes home with his tail between his legs.
2. some sort of negotiated peace with comprimises to both parties.
3. WW3 and nuclear war.
since 1 is extremely unlikely and would take years and billions of dollars and well over a million lives, this is a pipe dream.
option 3 is unacceptable and unthinkable.
that leaves option 2 as the most humane solution and the least amount of destruction and human suffering.
forget for a moment the decades of NATO expansion and Neo-Con saber rattling and think what road we are going down...for it is the road to Hell...
Mr Deplume correctly raises the issue of the security guarantees given to Ukraine by the U.S. and Russia in return for their surrender of nuclear weapons. Mr. Woodhouse, could you give us your perspective on that?
Zelenskyy didn't ask for the new law. The law isn't new; it was passed in January of 2023 at the request of the military. Those who deserted or broke other rules were being tried in court under judges who imposed non-uniform and somethings negligible penalties. The new law applied uniform penalties for all infractions. making the average penalty somewhat tougher. Zelenskyy received a petition with 25,000 signatures asking for more opportunities for leniency and fairness. A committee may be looking for a compromise.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-zelenskyy-war-military-law/
Then why did the USA donate a $100B in advanced weapons to the Taliban instead of sending them to Ukraine?
Why, when the CIA knew 100% Russia was going to invade, they didn't blow the bridges leading into Ukraine, didn't let a rain of fire come down on all armor at the entrance points to Ukraine and mine all routes into Ukraine? There is ZERO question that they WANTED to trap Russia into a long quagmire war inside of Ukraine, that only caused death & destruction to Ukrainians.
And why didn't they offer up front the obvious deal Russia wanted, Ukraine will never join NATO, give up on Crimea, and stick to the Minsk accords on some protections & rights for Russian speaking Ukrainians in the East? Pretty simple-minded.
Why when they had a peace deal initialed in April 2022 did the West send Boris Johnson to fly to Ukraine demanding the deal be kiboshed?
Inescapable conclusion: The West wanted to trap Russia in another Afghanistan and try to bleed them to death as they did over there. Ukrainians were just useful idiots, cannon fodder in the US/Nato/Davos lust for a One World Dictatorship.
If the $100+ billion spent on Ukraine was really about a proxy war with Russia wouldn't there be interest in minimizing the amount of dollars being ciphoned off to corruption? But there is no interest in minimizing corruption. The war in Ukraine has the same purpose as climate change hysteria, fleecing the US taxpayer, laundering billions through DC power centers. The mainstream media provides the PR for the con.
Undoubtedly, there is a lot of that going round, on all sides, even Russia. The corrupt war money machine has ALWAYS been a big component of war cheerleading likely for a thousand years or more. The Biden regime has no interest in minimizing it because it is funneling cash to their donors, patrons, clients, lobbyists and politicians. The Ukraine War Grift has many tentacles.
If Trump is elected, there will be a lot of pressure on him to keep the gravy train rolling by RINOs and Neocons in the Republican party. A lot of cash flowing their way also.
Once the Ukraine fleece is forced to wind down, another, like the China/Taiwan fleece will be ramped up.
Undoubtedly, but their Wind, Solar, Net Zero Scam fleece is still their biggest money machine. Ukraine/Taiwan is just to keep the MIC happy.
Whether or not weapons are supplied to defend Ukraine, the U.S. defense budget continues to exceed $800 billion a year. Allowing Ukraine to be crushed by Putin's imperialist fantasy won't change by one iota the fleecing, political payoffs, cost overruns, or waste. Military spending is so entrenched that its budget is voted separately. The destabilization of letting Putin have his way with Ukraine will encourage copycat dictators and more military spending. "We need to nip it. Nip it in the bud." - Barney Fife
Unfortunately for your theory the US was counting on Ukraine folding in 3 days as expressed by the now famous offer to get Zelensky out of his home country.
As for fleecing the taxpayer: the majority of the money is old Cold War stuff (it's not even money but the supposed book value of the equipment which will never become dollars again to begin with). Take a Stinger: costs 10k to decommission it. Ship it to Ukraine.
This is the opportunity of a generation to create a much better world.
If you are so concerned about the taxpayer then you should support this war right now: kill the cancer while it is still small. Putin gets his way we will see many more expensive wars, wars which it only won't be Ukrainian boys dying but Americans.
Cutting aid is penny wise pound fool.
Regarding Putin and cancer watch the Secretary General of NATO detail the cause of this war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCfcy9etbyo
It really is as if the Obama/Biden admin was looking for a way to draw Putin into a debilitating war, they would do nothing differently than what they did. Syria didn't quite do it, so, next stop --> Ukraine.
So Biden in conservative circles is this senile fool that can barely keep awake....but now he is playing 3D chess with Putin and winning. Which one is it? Can't have both.
Winning? No. Both men are losers.
🛎️🔨
Ukrainian patriotism is not in question here. The events leading to the need for Ukrainians to be defending their territory as patriots are. The history here is long and complex. The black and white simplistic narrative fed to the masses to garner support for a bottomless pit of money are what is actually being litigated.
Are you suggesting every Ukrainian citizen wants this war? Perhaps there are Ukrainian citizens that dislike Putin and his actions but recognize the toll this war will take on their country isn’t worth it.
Excellent point.
The atrocities committed in the occupied zones of Ukraine suggest that the toll of not repelling the truly barbaric invaders is higher. There indeed were Ukrainians in Donbas who favored Russian rule. Their men have since been conscripted off the streets and sent as suicidal meat waves by Russians and Chechens who don't value their lives because . . . they are Ukrainians. Resisting what would happen is indeed worth it.
🛎️🔨
Seems like you covered most of it. Thank you!
Almost Home: FWIW, Victoria Nuland sold out the protestors who had occupied the EuroMaidan for three months in the winter of 2013-4. After the government's last effort to remove the demonstrators resulted in about 70 being killed, she and some Europeans diplomats negotiated an agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders that would have moved up elections, but allowed Yanukovych to remain in power for nine more months and administer those elections. The demonstrators came from a wide variety of groups and were not simply supporters or the opposition parties. At one point, more than 0.5 million demonstrators from a city of 3 million were present. When the Opposition Leaders came to the Euromaidan to present the deal, a public funeral for the dead was being held and the deal was reject by the crowd. The Opposition Leaders fled to safety. By then, Yanukovych had lost the support of all sources of power in Ukraine, including the police. Yanukovych fled Kiev that same night, and called Putin to organize his rescue. The next afternoon, the Parliament voted UNANIMOUSLY to remove Yanukovych from the presidency, including the members of his own party. The same night, Putin would authorize seizure of Crimea by Russian troops out of uniform two nights later.
I recommend that you forget about Biden and focus on what the people of Ukraine want and why. Before the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainian politics was sarcastically summarized as a choice between being ruled by corrupt Pro-Russian oligarchs from Eastern Ukraine and corrupt pro-Western oligarchs from Kyiv. In 2003-4, large number of Ukrainians peacefully occupied the Euromaidan for three months to protest a run-off election that was obviously stolen by Yanukovych (aka the Orange Revolution). Eventually the courts called for a new election, which Yanukovych lost by the expected margin. The pro-Western president was incompetent and Yanukovych won the next election five years later, He changed the constitution, jailed his opponent, and then - unforgivably - backed out of a trade deal with the EU that had taken 5 years to negotiate and that he had pledged sign. The EU has been very successful at dealing with corruption in the post-Communist regimes of Eastern Europe (Ukraine's neighbors) and the people desperately wanted a decent government and not a Post-Communist kleptocracy like Russia's. With hours of canceling, the Euromaidan was again packed with demonstrators.
The problem is that nothing frightens Putin more than seeing people in the streets demanding a better government. He was it in Dresden in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was torn down. He saw it in 1991, when the coup against Gorbachev collapse and the USSR fell apart. He saw some demonstrators when he election after four years of Medvedev serving as his puppet.
Unfortunately, the seizure of Crimea and the Russian-sponsored rebellion in Eastern Ukraine prompted the Ukrainians to elect another oligarch, Poroshenko with supporters in both the East and West, and he installed his ally Shokin as Chief Prosecutor. Burisma's owner, Zlochevsky, was the most infamous of Yanukowych's corrupt official, as the Minister responsible for selling oil and gas leases to the company he owned. When Zlochevsky was never arrested, Poroshenko's government was doomed. The people of Ukraine were so desperate that they overwhelmingly turned to the actor Zelenskyy, an amateur who would need to deal with Putin. His brand new party won a majority in Parliament, most of whom had never served there before. Both the Far Right (Neo-Nazis) and Yanukowych's party were nearly wiped out. Progress against corruption was made. Oligarchs are no long able to make campaign contributions and judges are carefully selected. Putin can not afford to let Ukraine develop into a non-corrupt pro-western democracy.
I recommend an $4 short ebook from Amazon on the Revolution of Dignity by a group of cynical reporters who lived through the event: "Witness to Revolution". These reporters admired the bravery and idealism of the demonstrators, accurately reported on the Neo-Nazi elements in the demonstration, but didn't believe the revolution had changed anything. Under Poroshenko, it hadn't, but they got lucky with Zelenskyy. After reading about the brave people who twice occupied the EuroMaidan for 3 months in winter, I wasn't surprised when the Ukrainians beat back the Russians at the start of the war.
Weird, couldn't find the book on Amazon. Care to share the author's name or a link?
Thanks a lot.
Frank, I don’t pretend to know what’s happening in Ukraine nor do I understand the various groups within the country and their desires. You appear to have much more knowledge than I do. I imagine the history is long, complicated, and full of influence from outside sources. What I fully believe is western (American) interests have helped get Ukraine in a war it cannot win and these same interests stand to profit greatly from both a long conflict and the rebuilding efforts. At some point, it becomes hard to see beyond the billions of dollars that always seem to end up in the same few pockets. I have nothing but respect for the Ukrainian citizens and what they’ve achieved in this conflict. But that respect doesn’t mean I want to see our country continue to fund a war that doesn’t seem to have a clear endpoint. “Weakening Russia” sounds similar to “weakening the taliban,” which clearly was not achieved. The fact that our elected officials boast that this war is weakening Russia with no American boots on the ground sickens me. It feels like the Ukrainian people are being sacrificed for little gain. Knowing Hunter pocketed millions from Ukrainian corporations before his father sent billions to the same country makes me automatically suspicious. I’d be just as skeptical if it was Dontald Trump and his kid. I hope the best for the people of Ukraine but I’m not convinced their interests are the priority for either the west or Putin.
When asked how the United States benefits from supplying Ukraine with weapons. some people reply that this war is weakening Russia. Those are the "realists" who believed Putin when he says his goal is to reverse the outcome of the Cold War and reunite and protect all Russian speaking people in a restored "Russian Empire" (the one founded by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great). That empire included Ukraine, Finland, most of Kazakhkstan, and the Baltic States. If Putin goes after the Baltic States or now Finland, that means war with NATO. IF the future likely includes a war between NATO and Russia, then weakening Russia is really important and keeping 40 million Russian-hating Ukrainians on our side is a very important consideration. Some say that the most experienced and soon the best equipped army in Europe will be Ukraine's.
However, we are not forcing Ukraine to continue fighting Putin. They want to fight and all they are asking for is the equipment to do so. They want to preserve their country and the progress they have made to becoming a prosperous, non-corrupt democracy like their Eastern European neighbors.
BTW, in addition to Hunter, Burisma hired David Archer (to round up investors) for projects outside Ukraine, the former president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, (for his influence and connections in the EU), the lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies (with two principals with extensive connections with Democrats, and, once Trump was elected, Bush anti-terrorism veteran Cofer Black (who was VP of Blackwater, the private military contractor owned by Trump loyalists Eric Prince and Betsy Devos. They ALL pocketed millions, and it is all perfectly legal unless there was a quid pro quo deal. You don't need to worry about Joe and Hunter having been paid to get Shokin fired. Just about everyone in Ukraine except Poroshenko wanted Shokin fired for failure to indict Zlochevsky. Archer has testified Zlochevsky wanted Shokin to remain in office to protect him and others likely can too. And if Joe had been tricked by Zlochevsky and paid to fire Shokin, would he publicly brag about his previously secret role in the firing?
What if Putin's goal is not to create restored Russian empire? Perhaps Putin merely feels that a Ukraine that wants to be part of the EU poses too much danger to Russian security. Actually the most vulnerable place in Russian is Saint Petersburg, which is only about 100 miles from the Estonian border and now the border with Finland too. When a new nation wants to join NATO, unanimous agreement of all existing members is required. Before Russia's invasion, Germany would never have allowed Ukraine to join and they had said so many times. Biden refused to rule out Ukraine joining NATO, but Germany did not.
IMO, there are strong parallels between Putin's program of restoring Russian greatness after losing a great war (the Cold War) by uniting all Russian speakers into a new Russian Empire and Hitler's program of restoring German greatness after losing a great war (WWI) by uniting all German speakers into the Third Reich (Empire). For a long time, no one took Hilter's plans seriously. Chamberlin sacrificed Czechoslovakia for "Peace in Our Time" and ended up trading a war he could easily win for a war he would have lost without Hitlers later mistakes. Without Ukraine, Putin's new Russian Empire an absurd concept, with it, Putin is like Hitler with Czechoslovakia, only far more patient for the past two decades. At 70, Putin's time could be running out.
Brilliant! Well done, Frank.
~ don't forget Klobuchar was there w/Mccain & Graham
I think this is an excellent synopsis.
I might have focused a little bit more in my review on the fact that Crimea is not historically or a part of Ukraine nor has ever contained a demographic majority of ethnic Ukrainians, and that the support we’re therefore giving to Ukraine to reconquer it is arguably questionable from a moral perspective if not necessarily from the standpoint of international legality - which, however, the West was itself quite willing to ignore during the Kosovo and Libya crises a few decades ago. I understand the legal arguments Ukraine is making regarding the restoration of its pre-war territorial integrity but why should US taxpayers be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars to enable Ukraine to take back a territory inhabited by a majority of ethnic Russians since tsarist times and never inhabited by anywhere remotely close to a majority of ethnic Ukrainians, a territory that was arbitrarily transplanted from the Russian to the Ukrainian SSR by an unelected Soviet leader back in the 1950’s without the consent of its inhabitants? I don’t see this as something I should personally support with my tax dollars, nor do I think that if we let Putin “get away with” taking back Crimea, a historically Russian territory, that it somehow follows he’ll want to annex Estonia or Latvia or Poland, i.e., none of which contain ethnic Russian majorities.
The situation in Donbas is less clear-cut than Crimea but there are similar vibes. Perhaps the people living in these territories - all of them, refugees included, need to be asked what they actually want at some point.
Ukraine may have fantasies about taking back Crimea, but that does not seem like a remotely realistic goal. The current war is very different, and Russia thought it could waltz in and take over the whole country in a few days. They did not just invade the Donbas.
There is no realistic way to ask all the people from the Donbas, mostly scattered around the world now, what they want and under whose control they wish to live. I find it very hard to believe a majority would support living under the current occupiers, who have killed, raped, and blown up everything in sight, not a single civilian place off the table - not markets, not apartments, not kindergartens, not hospitals, Russia bombs them all.
I agree with you that the situation in Donbas is much less clear-cut and a potential path to peace much more difficult to visualize but Crimea strikes me as a good deal more straightforward and raises some serious questions in my mind.
As of right now US taxpayers are being asked to fund a Ukrainian military takeover and reintegration of Crimea, a historically and ethnically Russian territory, without being allowed to question whether this is morally just and/or even a reasonable, practical path toward peaceful resolution of the underlying conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I don’t think it is and, beyond the fact that I suspect Ukraine won’t ever have the resources to accomplish that goal, I also believe Russia would fight incredibly hard to prevent it from happening and might well escalate things to a nuclear level if that outcome seemed likely.
I also think Ukraine would ethnically cleanse Crimea of its Russian population if it did succeed in reannexing the territory, which is not something I want my tax dollars to support.
I don't feel like US taxpayers are being asked to fund that - it has close to zero chance of happening. Ukraine has to tell itself stuff like this for the sake of its own morale. In any case, the vast majority of my tax dollars are either wasted or spent on things I don't support, so I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the financial aspect of this (which is a drop in the bucket of our govt's absurd robo-spending).
Maybe this could all have been avoided if we had clearly said Ukraine will never be part of NATO. I read somewhere it was Angela Merkel who came up with the brilliant "you'll be part of NATO someday but we won't say when" formulation, which I can believe is her idea seeing as it is the worst of all possible strategies. I'm never sure how much I buy this argument - all the other NATO countries on Russia's borders didn't cause any "red lines" to be crossed; Russia is a nuclear power and would launch the missiles if NATO tried to invade; there is no conceivable way NATO would ever launch an invasion; if we/they did, it would be broadcast for many months in advance as that's how long it would take to get all the materiel in place.
In any case now we are where we are, and I personally don't want to abandon Ukraine to the vicious and brutal fate that Putin and the Russian state have in mind for it.
“I don't feel like US taxpayers are being asked to fund that - it has close to zero chance of happening.”
I disagree. If that’s NOT what we’re being asked to support, then I’d like my government to explicitly and publicly state that. Instead, what our government is publicly saying is that we’ll support Ukraine unilaterally to the bitter end, whatever objectives they’ve set themselves. And in the meantime Ukraine has explicitly set the ultimate objective of recovering every last inch of lost territory by military force, Crimea included. So it seems to me that US taxpayers have indeed been roped into supporting that particular objective as well.
I don’t support the idea of abandoning Ukraine in such a way as to permit Russia to absorb it but I feel as though that point has already been made. Russia must know by now it can never occupy or even indirectly control the 80% of Ukraine that isn’t currently under its thumb. It’s the status of the remaining 20% that’s in question, and I think US taxpayers are entitled to view that as a separate question that isn’t quite so purely tied to the issue of Ukraine’s fundamental political sovereignty.
Your taxes support the US government, and it was the US government that forced Ukraine to disarm. Under pressure from US President Bill Clinton, Ukraine gave its nuclear weapons to Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the third most nuclear-armed country in the world, after the US and Russia. The US Government forced Ukraine to give up not only nuclear warheads but also missiles to Russia. And now Russia is launching the same missiles, but with simple warheads, into Ukraine and destroying Ukrainian cities. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Budapest Memorandum, which gave Ukraine security guarantees in exchange for the transfer of nuclear weapons to Russia. President Obama continued the policy of disarming Ukraine and presented it to Putin. Would Putin have started a war if Ukraine had nuclear weapons ? Now the war could be ended quickly if the US gave Ukraine enough weapons. So far, the US has not given Ukraine a single battle tank, a single warplane, or a single long-range missile. The Biden administration simply does not want Russia to lose this war. That is the problem. Unfortunately, Putin understands and values only strength and despises the weak and the doubters.
I’m willing to support Ukraine in its quest for political self-determination and autonomy. But I’ll stand by saying I don’t want my taxes to support a Ukrainian crusade to regain territory to which the country has never had a good historical or demographic claim. Regardless of what we argue the US government may or may not have done in the past.
Putin got played, just as chairman Xi got played, suckered into developing SARS-CoV-2. Putin's corrupt intelligence told him Ukraine would be a cakewalk and would collapse in 24hrs. He was quite willing to sign a peace deal after their "blitzkrieg" failed miserably. It was NATO that kiboshed the tentative peace deal.
That is the Russian way of war and we should have anticipated that. I know I'm playing armchair general and now have the benefit of hindsight, but before the invasion, I was writing that the war can be stopped before it starts by the U.S. and EU rapidly deploying armed troops to defend Ukraine's vital energy infrastructure. I figured that's what Putin would seize first, thereby controlling the electricity of most of Ukraine. Putin would never have directly challenged the combined force of the U.S., EU, & Ukraine. That would have been an easy thing to do and would have brought Putin and Zelenskyy to the negotiating table. The parties might have agreed to a UN sanctioned plebiscite of the people of the disputed eastern territories and warrant self-determination.
A plebiscite was already had in 91 and Donbas, Luhansk and Crimea chose to be part of Ukraine. Further, the Budapest Memorandum guaranteed Ukraines security. There is no legal way to justify this war or another plebiscite. Russia only understands force. Like Hitler, appeasement doesn't work. The next best alternative, the one chosen by Biden, is to give all the old Cold War crap that was in stock. With this Russias army already got trounced to 50% of its original fighting capacity. They are caniballizing old artillery pieces as they cannot create new tubes. Source: satellite data from their Omsk depot. They need to beg North Korea for shells. They are this close to cracking. Plus: a weaker North Korea is a side benefit. So the civilized world is getting all this in exchange for mostly old Cold Era equipment, Ukrainian blood pulling the trigger. This is the best investment ever, better than Lend Lease.
Of course, there's a legal way. You get the parties to sit down and commit to doing it. Both parties are members of the UN, right?
The UN? So you think Russia, who has veto power in the security council will vote against itself? And let's say they don't but refuse to leave? Your suggestion is what then? Send the Blue Helmets and evict them by force? Well, wouldn't what we have now be exactly that but without direct US lives at stake?
I don't know what Russia would think, but I think the powers should try and find out. Isn't this what the UN was meant to do?
It's far too late to send in the Blue Helmets and evict by force.
Those territories just barely voted to remain part of Ukraine, at a historical turning point when Russia was visibly imploding as a functioning alternative entity to “stay married to”, if you will. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, including Ukraine’s attempts to suppress the Russian language in its eastern territories and reintegrate them through use of crude military force after a revolt developed.
Arranging another plebiscite would be challenging in the Donbas but more straightforward in Crimea, provided the Ukrainian diaspora were included in the vote. Problem is, even if the Ukrainian diaspora is included, there have always been way more ethnic Russians in Crimea than Ukrainians, which may be why the West isn’t keen on that idea.
What if Crimea voted to become independent? It’s definitely large enough to find its own way...
Well Trump lost last election and it was a time when the US was visibly imploding. Let's make another election too, shall we?
As for "suppressing Russian language", you do know Strelkov and have read what he had to say about Donbas, right?
Oh. I see.
Sorry, you don’t suppress people’s language under any circumstances, even during crisis or conflict. Historically, doing that has almost always served as the prelude to more overt campaigns of oppression.
I don’t approve of what Russia has been doing in Donbas. But I also don’t approve of what Ukraine did.
It's an interesting idea, though it strikes me as far riskier than what we're doing now (which everyone complains is in danger of starting WW3). It's hard to imagine selling that strategy to the public either here or anywhere in the EU.
First of all, Crimea was primarily Tatar, not Russian, until the Russians killed or exiled most of the Tatars.
Then, they tried to do the same thing in Ukraine, killing and exiling millions of Ukrainians in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and forcing Russian peasants to emigrate to Ykraine to russify it.
You armchair peacemakers need to go visit ANY nation that abuts Russia and talk to people there.
The past is the past. There’s no rational argument to be made that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine because of the Tatar tragedy any more than swathes of the US should be returned to the Native American population because of the genocide that was perpetrated against their ancestors by the pre- and post-colonial American governments.
By the way, I did spend an entire year of my life working in a former Soviet republic - Abkhazia, a place where Russia happens to be a quite popular political partner. Not necessarily for reasons that I unilaterally support but which I can certainly understand.
I’ll leave you to look up the history.
The Kremlin masters in Russia have long been saying that Alaska is part of Russia's historical lands, and in fact this is true. In addition, the Russians are presenting the facts that the US Government has acquired Alaska from Russia at an undervalue and by deception. Are you prepared to return Alaska to Putin ?
No. Alexander II’s government engaged in the sale without any deception involved - the US government had no firm knowledge of anything having to do with Alaska’s future potential that the tsarist government didn’t also have.
One does wonder what the wishes of Alaska’s indigenous peoples might have been, but they weren’t consulted by either of the negotiating parties.
My point remains that although the principle of political self-determination as the guiding one to determine political affiliation isn’t perfect, it’s arguably better than any other one including the much more abstract principle of maintaining “territorial integrity”, which if followed precisely would require a herculean revision of political borders amongst nations all around the globe, often in utterly incompatible directions.
So what happened to self-determination as per the referendum in 91? That one didn't count? But this one, when many Ukrainians left or were forced to leave should count? Some determination!
Oh, and I was quite explicit in saying that the Ukrainians who were expelled after 2014 SHOULD be allowed to vote in any new referendum, whereas Russians who arrived after 2014 SHOULDN’T. But you honestly have a habit of putting words into people’s mouths that they didn’t say.
It was respected at the time. Since then, however, a Western-supported coup has happened that overthrew the President that a majority of the Crimean people and a majority of Ukrainians overall voted for in 2010, followed by a Russian invasion and then a war that looks as though it could potentially end with the ethnic cleansing of the Russian population of Crimea if Ukraine achieves its strategic objectives.
So I think a repeat referendum might be in order. Self-determined political affiliation isn’t something that’s necessarily static forever, it’s something that’s very reasonable to reaffirm periodically, especially after particularly convulsive political events.
The Scots should never be allowed to vote again either in your opinion, I take it? Or the Quebecois? Once and done forever?
So you think there was no deception on the Alaska deal. I think the same as you. But what is more important in this context is what the Russians think about it. They are convinced that the price was despicably low and that Russia was deceived and humiliated by the US and that 'historical justice' should be restored. So, if the US were a state the size of Ukraine without nuclear weapons, I can assure you that Putin's army would already be in Alaska.
But Alaska is well defended and so are Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and all the other eastern European countries. Including Ukraine, which, as is quite evident by now, will never be reannexed by Russia.
So the idea that if Crimea is allowed to remain part of Russia Ukraine will also fall and then be followed, in domino-like fashion, by all the rest of the former Soviet possessions / satrapies, doesn’t strike me as very tenable.
I've never believed the killing was worth it. I am appalled and ashamed that our nation is not leading the way to find peace, but is doing the exact opposite and has been so dead set to make this war happen and to continue to enable the feeding of 100,000s of souls into this meatgrinder. There was nothing ever to gain in this war other sticking a thumb in Putin's eye. This is a border dispute in a region that dominantly identifies as Russian. Same with Crimea. Both Crimea and Donbas regions simply ended up on the wrong side of the border as the USSR broke up. I have absolutely no sympathy for Putin. He's a ruthless killer and a bona fide super criminal, but he is rational.
Russia will never give up this war without a negotiated settlement. Where is this potential settlement team? Currently, the U.S. is cursed with that same "settlement team" that delivered to the world the utter catastrophes ongoing in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. It's the same damned people. Evidently, the humanitarian crises they helped create in Syri, Libya, & Afghanistan wasn't big enough for them.
The Ukrainian people have truly outperformed everyone's expectations. Certainly, my expectations. I expected Russia to roll over the eastern half of the country and seize all the major energy hubs first. That's how it started, but then we found that the Russian military significantly underperformed expectations. But the mistakes that the great powers have made have more than rippled across the globe and the grave danger posed by a potential race to make the first nuclear strike is as great as it has been since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. When I look to see who is leading the U.S. effort, I am horrified. Truly, I am horrified.
Thank you. I was in Hiroshima on the day that Putin announced he was stationing tactical nukes in Belarus. He’s not fucking around here. If I see the great comedic actor Zelensky on one more ‘hat out, hugfest, charity tour to the West I am going to puke. Everyone should have to spend a day on Hiroshima or Nagasaki to get into their thick skulls what is at stake here,
Or perhaps spend a day in the Holodomor museum or Auschwitz?
The perfect example of a strawman argument if ever there was one.
Really?
How so?
The Holodomor killed 60 times more people than Hiroshima. The sequestration of children by Russia is surpassed only by the likes of Pol Pot and Hitler not to mention Stalin.
If you want to quote historical events to justify your historical position at least be complete.
If I quoted every single dictator and their effect on the world would that bolster my argument? I am specifically leaning into the nuclear element here so your comment is a straw man on that basis. Engage with the argument that Putin doesn’t represent a distinctly dangerous situation for the world due to his nuclear arsenal and his stated claim to use them. On that basis our strategic moves need to be made. But what about the Holofomor? Say what?
That's a far from complete list of 20th century mad men.
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of Japanese and American lives as any WWII historian will tell you.
What I really like about Public is that the content is usually based on careful reporting and is not armchair theorizing. Please - focus on your strengths, the superior reporting, not stuff by someone who just read a bunch of stuff and has an opinion.
You didn’t give any context for the reason that Russia took the Crimea. The Russian Navy had a 30 year lease on the naval base in Sevastopol. The newly formed coup government was planning on rescinding that lease and entertaining the possibility of leasing it to NATO. That’s a pretty severe red line.
Also you kinda glossed over the 10 year civil war that started in 2014. Over 10,000 civilians were killed In the Donbas and other Eastern culturally Russian areas of Ukraine. The Maidan Government was bombing its own citizens. And there were numerous governmental decrees aimed at marginalizing the Eastern Ukrainian citizenry like the banning of Russian as an official language.
So you are saying Strelkov lied then? Because he pretty much confirmed on tape the exact he used process to create all this bad blood you speak of.
NATO has long been irrelevant. The US gains nothing by agreeing to help defend North Macedonia and Finland. Time to leave Ukraine as well. Nothing good is to come
Finland and Sweden don’t seem to think it’s irrelevant. Poland doesn’t seem to think it’s irrelevant. How are any alliances and security agreements countries make with each other "irrelevant"? What does that even mean - irrelevant to whom, under what context?
The EU is quite capable of defending themselves. If they can't even do that, what is the point of having the EU? You don't need NATO. With just the top 3 EU nations having a total GDP 5X Russia, if they can't defend themselves they might as well quit. And defense is always easier than offense. Russia ain't gonna invade Europe, they have more internal problems than they can handle.
What a bunch of bullcrap. Need to get a passport and (gasp) set foot in a different country and talk to real people.
We thought it was worth over 3 million lives to try to save South Vietnam from North Vietnam.
In consideration of what Vietnam is today, by your estimation, was it worth those lives?
Similar question, with 50 and 70 years perspective under our belt, in what way was the national interest of the USA advanced by our adventures in Vietnam and Korea? If we had stayed out of those conflicts I wonder what the world would look like today.
Ukraine is history repeating. We are not changing the outcome of these historic events, only prolonging the misery and possibly risking the very existence of our republic. We should stop now, nothing good can come from this.
Yeah, very good question. My family was closely involved in that conflict. My father did five tours of duty there while we lived on Viet Nam's periphery in southeast Asia and Australia. At the time, my father believed in the war and that the preservation of democracy and the ancient culture was worth fighting for. He had many friends in the ARVN as well as civilian locals. Most of them were probably killed as a consequence of that advocacy. Today, my father is deeply regretful. Afterall, look at Viet Nam today. I don't think the war changed the inevitable outcome of Viet Nam, but simply postponed the modern version at the cost of killing millions.
Jeff, I believe that just like the response to Covid 3 years ago, we did not change the outcome one iota, just prolonged and aggravated the misery. the only people who benefited from these adventures were politicians and the military industrial complex.