Niall Ferguson @nfergus
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"This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait."--George H.W. Bush on August 5, 1990. Full quote from Jon Meacham's biography. Future history students will be asked why this stopped being the reaction of a Republican president to the invasion of a… Show more
7:43 AM · Feb 20, 2025

JD Vance @JDVance
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This is moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say.

For three years, President Trump and I have made two simple arguments: first, the war wouldn't have started if President Trump was in office; second, that neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory. This was true three years ago, it was true two years ago, it was true last year, and it is true today.

And for three years, the concerns of people who were obviously right were ignored. What is Niall's actual plan for Ukraine? Another aid package? Is he aware of the reality on the ground, of the numerical advantage of the Russians, of the depleted stock of the Europeans or their even more depleted industrial base?

Instead, he quotes from a book about George HW Bush from a different historical period and a different conflict. That's another currency of these people: reliance on irrelevant history.

President Trump is dealing with reality, which means dealing with facts.

And here are some facts:

Number one, while our Western European allies' security has benefitted greatly from the generosity of the United States, they pursue domestic policies (on migration and censorship) that offend the sensibilities of most Americans and defense policies that assume continued over-reliance.

Number two, Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages. Again, the aid is currently flowing.

Number three, the United States retains substantial leverage over both parties to the conflict.

Number four, ending the conflict requires talking to the people involved in starting it and maintaining it.

Number five, the conflict has placed--and continues to place--stress on tools of American statecraft, from military stockpiles to sanctions (and so much else). We believe the continued conflict is bad for Russia, bad for Ukraine, and bad for Europe. But most importantly, it is bad for the United States.

Given the above facts, we must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now. President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this. It is lazy, ahistorical nonsense to attack as "appeasement" every acknowledgment that America's interest must account for the realities of the conflict.

That interest--not moralisms or historical illiteracy--will guide President Trump's policy in the weeks to come.

And thank God for that.
1:39 PM · Feb 20, 2025//

People cheered Vance's statement.

David Limbaugh called it "one for the ages."

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said:

Amen. Thank goodness we have a President and Vice President who put America first and acknowledged what has always been the reality in Ukraine. We should pursue a peaceful and realistic outcome, not death, debt, and war.

White House reporter Charlie Spiering said Ferguson "laments the loss of Republican neocons like George H.W. Bush." //

What Ferguson said he took issue with was he thought they were conceding too much off the bat, based on what he was reading, including taking NATO membership off the table, conceding territory, as well as a peacekeeping force that could include China.

I earnestly hope that the Trump administration can negotiate an end to this war. But if we end up with a peace that dooms Ukraine first to partition and then to some future invasion, it will be a sorry outcome. To repeat, I agreed with most of your criticisms of Europe at Munich. I would add that the Europeans have talked for “strategic autonomy” for too long without making a serious attempt to achieve it.

But you and President Trump campaigned last year with a slogan that dates back even further than George H.W. Bush’s words that I quoted. That phrase was “peace through strength.”

I would note a few things. Ferguson is assessing things based in part on what he is reading. He's not aware of what's going on in the private discussions.

Further, I think Trump has already made his "peace through strength" clear.

stickdude90
9 hours ago
Remind me again why we spend so much blood and treasure to protect these blowhards...

jri500 anon-fv7m
6 hours ago
Bill Clinton and his buddy, Bernard Schwartz (LORAL Space) GAVE China our ballistic missile gyroscope guidance technology. Just gave it to them because liberals couldn't stand the fact that the US was the world's lone super power at the time. China's missiles couldn't reach orbit. Clinton moved the gyro technology from Defense to the Commerce department, and put a CIA satellite on a Chinese rocket. And when that rocket crashed, the Chi Coms sifted the wreckage and reverse engineered our gyros. When Clinton took office, China had zero (0) nuclear missiles capable of hitting the US mainland. When he left office, they had 20. //

Dieter Schultz stickdude90
6 hours ago edited
Remind me again why we spend so much blood and treasure to protect these blowhards...
I think you might be looking at the US being forward deployed and allied with nations around the world... through the wrong lens.

Yes we're spending money stationing forces around the world and, yes, some... maybe a lot of these countries... don't appreciate or deserve our protection but... look at it from the point of view of avoided costs.

But, we can't understand avoided costs unless we consider what isolationism might really cost us in the bigger scheme of things.

We were, mostly, isolationists between 1910 and 1940... not spending money with alliances and forward deploying our forces. Because of that the bad guys in the world didn't believe we'd respond as they gobbled up other countries. What they did believe, and what Churchill said so elegantly in some of his writing, was that if the US allowed its natural allies to fall, the position that the US would be in, strategically, would be difficult in the extreme.

So we stayed out of the areas but, when we were finally forced to act the costs in treasure and lives of our youth was great... far, far greater than they would have been if the Germans and Japanese really believed we would fight to stop them.

Since the end of WWII we've made a lot of mistakes and many of those mistakes have cost us 10s of thousands of our youth and untold treasures but, even with Russia's aggressive moves in the world, we haven't had a repeat of the carnage, loss of life, and expenditures of the country's treasures.

But, we should ask ourselves, even if we've helped protect people that didn't seem to appreciate and value our sacrifice, if, like happened to us leading up to WWI and WWII, would we have likely gotten sucked into another one of the continent's or world's battles and cost ourselves 10 or 100 times the loss of carnage, loss of life, and expenditures of our treasure anyway?

I see the discussions about forward deploying our forces around the world much like the Chesterton's Fence and we should ask ourselves, why that fence was needed in the first place?

Many in this country just want to tear down that fence but, as Chesterton might see it: "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”

The obvious question was, who did it? Four suspects emerged: the United States, Ukraine, an undetermined party probably involving Poland, and Russia. But, as stated in Putin’s PR Machine Throws up Smoke as the Nord Stream Pipeline Explosion Investigation Begins, my personal view is that Russia was the most likely culprit.

1. The pipelines were not producing income; they were costing money to operate.
2. The war forced Nord Stream customers to find other sources, and it was unlikely that Nord Stream would operate again.
3. It made it clear to Germany what the price was for helping Ukraine.
4. It avoided breach of contract financial penalties that would hit Gazprom if Germany desired to re-open the pipeline, and Russia refused.
5. The repair cost of the pipelines was insured.
6. Breaching the pipelines at the deepest part means that the shortest area would be flooded, and the damage would be the cheapest to repair.
   In my view, the bonus was that the explosions took place in Scandinavian fishing grounds, and the first explosion was in the vicinity of a new Norway-Poland pipeline which gave it a “nice pipeline you’ve got there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it” flavor.

Two days after the Cuban foreign ministry claimed that the island's regime discovered a human trafficking ring responsible for impressing Cubans into military service under Russian command in Ukraine, The Intercept posted excerpts from documents hacked from an email account belonging to a Russian military officer.

Deputy Defense Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, speaking at the daily Pentagon press briefing, identified the missile as " an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile" based on an existing ICBM design. She also confirmed that Russia had alerted the Pentagon to the launch in accordance with nuclear risk reduction protocols. //

The fact that this was not an ICBM indicates that the strike was not Putin signaling an increase in escalation. Russia has used missiles in the same class since the early days of the war, particularly the Iskander IRBM. //

Russia's use of the existing nuclear risk reduction channels to warn the US of the launch indicates that Putin is concerned about how the United States and NATO perceive his actions. //

Now that we know what the missile was, we still aren't sure what we saw in the video.

The video shows the same attack twice, probably to make it longer. The first problem is that there are no explosions at impact. A MIRV has a lot of kinetic energy; what is missing from the video is evidence of chemical energy. There seem to be about 17 individual warheads. If we use the Iskander as a proxy, this would reduce the throw-weight of each to about 100 pounds.

Compare this video with that of US MIRV tests at Kwajalein Atoll.
https://youtu.be/3ZM3y5qpMgY
https://youtu.be/Eh96NdcgE2Y

The lack of damage and casualties reported from Dnipro also hints that the warheads were purely kinetic, which begs the question of their guidance system.

Had this sort of attack been allowed since the early days of the war, there is a good chance the conflict would have concluded by now. The insanity of allowing Russia to use weapons made from US components to strike deep inside Ukraine while forbidding Ukraine to use American-made weapons to strike military targets supporting Russia's invasion did nothing to prevent escalation and simply ran up the body count on both sides. Even as late as it has started, it increases the chances of President Trump bringing this war to a close in a way that does not resemble the Afghanistan fiasco and further damage US credibility. //

DaleS anon-isiz
6 hours ago
Tell us how the life of Americans was affected by Italy's conquest of Abyssinia in 1935. It wasn't, really, was it. If the outraged nations had stuck together and forced an ignominious withdrawal, it would've cost some money, perhaps even some blood -- not from us of course, as we limited ourselves to mere words. But as it was, all it was some remote Ethiopians losing their lives and their freedom. Hardly worth worrying about for a freedom-loving patriot, don't you think?

But it didn't end there -- not because Italy started WW2, but because every other aggressive nation on the planet saw clearly that the West was weak, and victories could be won cheaply and with little interference. It is in the interest of the United States, and every other non-expansionist country in the world, for wars of conquest to fail, and the quicker they fail, the better. Millions died worldwide, and hundreds of thousands of our own soldiers were killed. All in a war that never should have happened.

If the West turns away and Russia prevails, aggressor nations will be doing the risk/reward calculations for their own shopping list.

It's also worth remembering that Ukraine is only in this mess because our President convinced them good relations with the US was more important than keeping a nuclear deterrent. If Britain and the United States had been willing to guarantee Ukraine's boundaries back then, there would be no war in Ukraine. //

Carey J anon-isiz
11 hours ago
Today, it's give me Kyiv or I nuke the world. Tomorrow it's give me Warsaw, or I nuke the world, Next week, it's give me Berlin or I nuke the world. You don't stop aggression by throwing its victims under the bus. You stop aggression by making it clear that the aggressor will die, if he persists. In this case, you make it clear that Vlad, personally will die, in the first hour, that the Russian-majority regions of Russia will be devastated, and that Kadyrov's Chechen Orcs will rape their way through the radioactive ruins of Moscow and St. Petersburg, if he goes nuclear. Mutual Assured Destruction kept the nukes in the silos, in the First Cold War. I see no reason it won't work, in this one.

We supported MUCH worse bästards than Zelenskyy, during the Cold War. Syngman Rhee, Ngo Dinh Diem (before we assassinated him), Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein (before we deposed him) Shah Reza Pahlavi (before we dumped him, and ended up with Khomeini). The enemy of my enemy is my friend (or at least my ally). "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke. //

Carey J Froge
7 hours ago
I'm not prepared to bet NYC that they don't. But I don't think Vlad the Defenestrator is willing to bet Moscow and St. Petersburg that they do.

any North Korean troops that do come out of this with real-life combat experience and do return to North Korea will be the first Nork soldiers with real combined arms and large-scale combat experience since the Korean War. These troops could be valuable as a training cadre for any future North Korean operations — say, against South Korea.

The Spanish Civil War, we might note, served a very similar role in providing both German and Soviet troops with real-world combat experience.

The statement by DoD notes that there is as yet no confirmation that the North Korean troops have entered into combat operations against Ukrainian forces, but there's literally no other reason to move them into the Kursk region. While their most likely fate will be "cannon fodder," 11,000 fresh troops could make a difference for a while; but it's important to note that the DoD estimates Russia is losing 1,200 troops a day in the conflict, meaning that any numerical advantage provided by this influx will be eliminated in less than ten days.

Especially when Zelensky said this:

And now, through a lot of challenges — Ukraine and the United States. And, of course, I want to discuss with you, I think, where we are together. I think we have common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped, and Putin can't win, and Ukrainians have to prevail. And I want to discuss with you the details of our plan.

Why would he feel the need to do that? Why would he say something like that? //

But Brandon, he also met with Harris and Biden," some might say.

Well... yeah. Of course, he did. He needed to secure another $8 billion for his country. Biden and Harris both wanted to be seen doing that. Harris especially wanted to be seen doing that. She did laps back and forth on the White House balcony with Zelensky to make it look like she was deep in foreign policy talks.

Does this mean Zelensky has confidence in Harris winning? Not necessarily. Keep in mind, he has to do this. This is the monkey dancing for his banana. He's willing to help Harris craft her illusion for it.

But he didn't have to meet with Trump. He did it because he felt compelled to.

And that should worry Democrats.

House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recall Ukraine's US ambassador in a sharply worded letter made public Wednesday.

I demand that you immediately fire Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova.

As you have said, Ukrainians have tried to avoid being “captured by American domestic politics,” and “influencing the choices of the American people” ahead of the November election. Clearly that objective was abandoned this week when Ambassador Markarova organized an event in which you toured an American manufacturing site. //

Support for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to be bipartisan, but our relationship is unnecessarily tested and needlessly tarnished when the candidates at the top of the Republican presidential ticket are targeted in the media by officials in your government.

These incidents cannot be repeated. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter, and I trust you will take immediate action. //

Speaker Johnson is correct. The Ukrainian ambassador either knowingly or unknowingly embroiled her president and her nation's struggle for self-determination in a US presidential campaign on the side of the probable loser. Zelensky should take the "L," fire his ambassador, apologize, and get Hillary Clinton to make him a huge red button labeled "RESET." //

etba_ss Popdaddy
a minute ago
Because Johnson is gaslighting. He doesn't give a crap. Recall an ambassador, which means nothing. This is putting on a show for the rubes to make them think the GOP cares. As long as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc keeps passing them shekels, they won't care. Forever war it is. //

houdini1984
4 hours ago
I don't think that Zelensky was misled here. He made a conscious choice to criticize the Republican candidates and then allowed himself to be flown at U.S. taxpayer expense to an appearance that was basically a Democrat campaign photo op. He did this on purpose, because he views the Republican ticket as less reliable for his country's interests. He wants Harris because Harris is Biden 2.0, but somehow dumber.

In short, he's willing to saddle Americans with four or eight more years of catastrophic misrule if that's what it takes to protect his country's interests. I respect his view on that, since I prefer to look out for my own country's interests over Ukraine -- but it doesn't mean that I have to accept his choice. I'd rather see Ukraine completely disappear than suffer through another four years of Democrat evil.

Why? Because my family is more important than the entirety of Ukraine.

Zelensky arrived in Pennsylvania on Monday, a hotly-contested election battleground state, courtesy of a U.S. taxpayer-funded C-17 Globemaster. What followed looked and sounded much more like a campaign stop than a diplomatic event, leaving onlookers to wonder exactly what the real purpose was. //

Vladimir Putin was never going to start a broader war with NATO because he knew he would lose. The Russian military is largely antiquated, poorly trained, and even more poorly led. He invaded Ukraine under Joe Biden for the same reason he invaded it under Barack Obama. Namely, to seize territory he sees as ethnically Russian. There is no larger plan for world domination if for no other reason than the reality that such a plan would be impossible to carry out.

Regardless, what Zelensky said and did on Monday is simply insane. He flew over to the United States at the behest of the Biden-Harris administration to trash their political opponents in a battleground state. //

Is Zelensky going after Trump and Vance because Democrats have prodded him to do so in exchange for taxpayer-funded support? Short of someone spilling the beans on what has been said behind the scenes, we may never know, but it sure seems like it. The appearance of impropriety is extensive, and the practical aspects of using government resources to have Zelensky come essentially campaign for Democrats six weeks before a major election is highly inappropriate. I get that there will be no impeachment inquiry into this, but in a government that wasn't eaten up with corruption, there would be. //

Frankly Speaking
6 hours ago
Let me get this straight. Ukraine is at war with Russia, yet both Zelensky and Putin have endorsed Kamala...

Trump War Room

@TrumpWarRoom
·
Follow
President Trump UNLEASHED:

"I'm talking now. DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?"

🔥🔥🔥

9:47 PM · Sep 10, 2024

People enjoyed that one, especially when, with Trump going there, if she was planning it, she no longer could use it.

anon-klg1 Leontine
18 minutes ago
Trump said Harris went to negotiate with Russia and 3 days later they invaded Ukraine-

Harris said that wasn’t true - but that doesn’t mean it isn’t.

ABC asked Harris if she’d ever met Putin AND SHE DIDN’T ANSWER THE QUESTION. Starts talking about meeting Zelensky 5 times and then goes into some meaningless word salad.

And they just let her not answer. Didn’t pin her down at all as to whether this happened.

If - as Trump said- Harris was sent to negotiate with Russia and right after that they decide to invade Ukraine—- that’s important for people to know.

To see them not even clarify that point when they’d asked, iirc, repeated follow ups about January 6th, and whether Trump thought the election was stolen, was literally jaw dropping for me….and I didn’t think I had any illusions left about the MSM-

That‘s beyond just bias —- it’s covering for extreme incompetence —- it’s failing to even examine a candidate —

Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that I think the bias has gone so far-( to the point of outright irresponsiblity) that it will be off putting to more than just Republicans and will likely backfire on the Dems.

GEN Jack Keene was in Fox this AM....stated that Ukraine is now occupying as much/more of Russia than Russia does Ukraine.

He then brought up "bargaining chip". //

The Russian reaction so far seems to have been a reluctance to react. There was probably a feeling that this incursion was just like the small-scale penetrations into Belgorod Oblast, particularly because the Russians hadn't received any backchannel warning from Jake Sullivan's National Security Council. When the scope became more apparent, some reaction was necessary, but the Russians were unwilling to commit the troops it would have taken to stop the Ukrainians because that would mean an end to their offensive in Donetsk. Finally, the political pressure to do something has kicked in, and we see 30,000 troops heading there. //

Learning fast streiff
2 days ago
“GEN Jack Keene was in Fox this AM....stated that Ukraine is now occupying as much/more of Russia than Russia does Ukraine.”
Gen Keene after …Ukraine….at 4:05 qualified his statement with “….in the last several months.”
The omitted qualification gives a completely different meaning to the statement.

I'm still seeing this as a very opaque operation where, as was the popular saying on night convoy operations in the Army, "I don't know where we are but we're making good time." //

Seveer of the 95th rifles @Seveerity
·
The russians released helicopter guncam footage of them taking out a convoy with guided missiles.

Their own convoy.
Embedded video
1:17 PM · Aug 14, 2024

Joe Swyers
2 hours ago edited
"the cost to Germans for being forced to rely on alternative energy sources is estimated to be $1 million per day."

Germans need to build over a hundred nuclear power plants to replace that 110,000,000,000 cubic meters per year of natural gas all four Nordstream pipelines could transport.
35,300 BTU per cubic meter
110,000,000,000 cubic meters per year
3,883,000,000,000,000 BTU per year
3,412 BTU per KWH
1,137,995,510,149 KWH
8,760 hours per year
129,908,163 KW
130 GW
1 GW average per nuclear power plant
130 Nuclear Power Plants needed by Germany.

France has 18 power plants with 56 operable reactors.
Germany will need ten times that number by the time they actually get them built and bring them online.
Better get cracking -- atoms, that is.

mopani Joe Swyers
3 minutes ago edited
If Germany had spent $580 billion on nuclear power instead of Energiewiend green energy they would have the cheapest, most reliable, lowest carbon footprint energy in the world.

With Nuclear Instead of Renewables, California and Germany Would Already Have 100 percent Clean Electricity
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/9/11/california-and-germany-decarbonization-with-alternative-energy-investments

How Did It Happen?

You don't give the Tsar unpleasant information. The invasion of Ukraine unfolded the way it did because the FSB directorate responsible for intelligence in Ukraine gave optimistic reports about the desire of Ukraine for an Anschluss and said the Ukrainian Army would not fight. According to Bloomberg, something similar happened this time.

Gerasimov and top officials "seemingly dismissed intelligence warnings that Ukrainian soldiers were gathering near the border with Russia’s western Kursk region as much as two weeks before they began the assault," Bloomberg said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was also not briefed on the troop buildup, the unnamed source reportedly told Bloomberg.

True or not true? It's hard to tell. //

Ukraine's challenge is to convert a tactical and operational victory into something that has strategic impact.

Russia has been knocked back on its heels, and Putin has been made to look rather ridiculous. He's not going to take that lying down because if the Tsar is not omnipotent, well, he's not the Tsar. It is hard to see how Gerasimov and most of the Russian General Staff survive this fiasco.

The episode has also demonstrated a degree of operational brilliance that no one expected. So far, the Ukrainians have seemed as mired in Soviet-era tactics as the Russians.

The CEO of Germany's leading defense industry corporation escaped assassination by Russian operatives earlier this year thanks to the timely cooperation and information sharing between the United States and Germany. Armin Papperger, the head of the massive Rheinmetall conglomerate, was targeted for death by Russia because of his company's central role in arming and supplying Ukraine.

According to reports, US intelligence uncovered the plot and enabled German counterintelligence and security forces to put Papperger under close protection. The missing part of this story is the German GSG9 hauling the Russian assets off to prison. The assassination operatives and planners are still at large.

This episode is not a one-off. It is part of a campaign of hybrid warfare that is being actively waged against the West by Russia as part of its campaign to eradicate Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare involves blending kinetic and non-kinetic actions to exploit an enemy's weaknesses without crossing the line between peace and war. //

In the current case, Russia wants to keep NATO off balance and damage critical assets, but it doesn't want to tickle that fine line between painful annoyance and an Article 5 consultation.

There are two main characteristics of hybrid warfare. First, the level of violence must fall below the threshold the adversary would consider an attack requiring military response. Second, the source of the attack must remain ambiguous and difficult to definitively attribute to a foreign actor. These two factors make it difficult for a state to develop a coherent response to various lines of attack.

For the past months, the Russian OPTEMPO of hybrid operations in Germany has accelerated: //

Natasha Bertrand @NatashaBertrand
·
A senior NATO official said today that Russia's sabotage campaign across Europe is a "more concerted, more aggressive effort, than what we’ve seen certainly since the Cold War...we’re seeing sabotage, assassination plots, arson — real things that have cost human lives.”
1:46 PM · Jul 9, 2024. //

Per-Erik Schulze @PerErikSchulze
·
Nothing to see here. Just perfectly normal russian bottom trawling back and forth repeatedly just on top of the main fiber optic internet cable between Svalbard and the Norwegian mainland. From NRK.

4:29 PM · May 26, 2024. //

All of these are examples of hostile action from Russia becoming gradually normalised because nobody is willing or able to deal with it. In this way, Russia pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable, or at least accepted, by doing something that should be outrageous, and then doing it more when there is no response from the West. //

Russia is engaged in a very aggressive hybrid war against Europe that includes propaganda, economic attacks, cyberwarfare, and kinetic operations on the ground. That war's objectives are to increase internal divisions in European countries, damage their economies, and weaken their resolve to resist Russian demands.

In the case of Estonia, Russia is amplifying a border dispute so that it can become a plausible potential casus belli. As I've pointed out before, Estonia is a particularly tempting target for Putin because it is about 24 percent ethnic Russian. If Putin can successfully encroach on Estonia without consequences, NATO will become very unstable. See How Putin Dismembers NATO Without Firing A Shot: A Scenario From the Cold War for more details.

Europe is treating these attacks as individual data points and not as a coherent Russian destabilization campaign. As long as that goes on, Russia is winning this hybrid war, and it has no reason to stop.

Henrik Kindstedt
@HenrikKindstedt
·
Follow
Replying to @sumlenny
Short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected:

1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014.

2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014.

3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened.

4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened.

5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria.

6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later.

Above is only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. Not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014.

There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase. Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022.

Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny.

Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2024 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022?

7:51 AM · Jun 14, 2024. //

Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
·
The thing about the USSR/Russia is not that it is "not democratic". It is that is not contractual. Any contracts dishonour the Tsar. Why?

If Tsar made an agreement with X, it means:

1) X forced him to limit his own power
2) to secure X's interests

That's a huge dishonour

Kirienko's statement that "Russian state is not based upon agreements" should be read in this context.

Contractual = Limited = Dishonourable

Contractual = You faced the interest of the second party and had to back off, giving them concessions. What kind of Tsar you are? //

Putin's current demands may be serious to him, but no one else should consider them as such. No matter what a ceasefire or even a peace deal looks like, keep in mind that Putin's goal is the eradication of Ukraine as an independent state and that any agreement is a tactical ruse to lay the groundwork for that objective. Peace in Ukraine that is not enforced by Western arms and security guarantees is simply not possible so long as Putin is in power or possibly as long as the Russian Federation exists.

Henrik Kindstedt
@HenrikKindstedt
·
Follow
Replying to @sumlenny
Short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected:

1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014.

2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014.

3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened.

4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened.

5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria.

6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later.

Above is only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. Not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014.

There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase. Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022.

Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny.

Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2024 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022? //

My theory is that it was released today because the Ukraine Peace Summit is kicking off tomorrow in Switzerland. Around 90 countries will be represented, but Moscow has declined to take part. I think Putin's speech was to underscore to the gathering that nothing they have to say matters, as Russia has its own agenda, making the outcome irrelevant.

The takeaway for the West should be that peace isn't possible without handing Putin a crushing defeat on the battlefield and devastating Russia's economy.
7:51 AM · Jun 14, 2024

Negotiations don't start from a position of maximalist demands unless you are able to enforce them. Even the alleged Putin confidants who talked to Reuters for the report admit that Putin is tired of the war and wants to move on.

Let me stop here for a moment and say that anyone who thinks five members of Putin's entourage talked to Reuters about Putin's personal position on peace talks without acting under orders from Putin to do so. Those people are a danger to themselves and to others. The fact that no one in the Kremlin has acknowledged this alleged cease-fire offer on the record tells you all you need to know about its seriousness.

This means that Russia is not only demanding to keep the territory it has overrun, but it is actually requiring Ukraine to relinquish more territory as a condition of negotiations. //

If we look at this offer as anything other than a propaganda ploy aimed at bolstering the spirits and imaginations of Putin's fan club in the West, we are probably idiots who deserve whatever comes next. //

The Russians are simply advancing a narrative ahead of the international peace conference Switzerland is hosting on June 15-16.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice. All the Russian proposal does, to the extent it is even a serious proposal, is reward Russia for criminal behavior, return control of Russian overseas assets to Moscow, remove war-related economic sanctions, and set the stage for another Russian invasion. Nothing in the Russian scheme is even vaguely just, and no sane government would consider it. Russia knows that and they don't want it considered, they want big social media accounts and some Republican Members of Congress and Senators to have talking points to advace Putin's agenda.

The bigger problem is the Biden Crime Family's close ties to the Chinese government, and because of those ties, Joe Biden is afraid of pushing the Chinese too hard. Calling them out for providing lethal aid to Russia could very well be a red line in Beijing's relationship with Joe, Jim, and Hunter. //

anon-aqgv Ed in North Texas
6 hours ago
Russia population: 144 million
Ukraine: 38 million

Which side do you think will run out of manpower first?

DaveM anon-aqgv
5 hours ago
1960:
US Population 173 Million
Vietnam Population 30 Million.

Which side do you think will run out of manpower first?

JSobieski anon-aqgv
5 hours ago edited
Population of American colonies in 1776: 2.5M

Population of Great Britain in 1776: 8M

Which side did YOU think ran out of manpower first?

JSobieski anon-aqgv
5 hours ago edited
Population of USSR in 1989: 286.72M

Poulation of Afganistan in 1989: 10.67M

Which side did YOU think ran out of manpower first?

JSobieski anon-aqgv
7 hours ago
Non-symmetrical demands for manpower, which shouldn't be too hard to understand.

Russia cannot apply 100% of its manpower to Ukraine, while Ukraine can and does apply 100% of its manpower to fighting Russia.

Russia has extended supply lines, while Ukraine does not.

Ukraine is fighting in its home territory, Russia is the invader.

These concepts are difficult to understand, but I get that some people just refuse to understand.

A great example of non-symmetrical warfare was 9/11. Fewer than 20 people with boxcutters shut down US airspace.

Dieter Schultz JSobieski
7 hours ago edited

These concepts are difficult to understand, but I get that some people just refuse to understand.

I keep recalling one of the most insightful comments I ever encountered on the web, namely: "And now we get to the crux of the matter, I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you."