Zelensky is starting to sound like he's open to considering some of Russia's stated terms (no pursuit of NATO membership and cession of eastern Ukraine). That doesn't sound like things are going especially well for him.
Case in point: Vietnam. uSA and allies lost between 1/3 and 1/2 lifes than the North. And the USA loses were small (60.000 in a total of 1.5 million deaths). But it was a total defeat of the USA because none of the strategic objectives were achieved.
Ukraine: strategic objectives are being an independent country with a fairly working democracy. Russia: conquer and create a puppet state in Ukraine and keep pressing west againt NATO countries.
In the end we should measure against that, not by body count. I don't like it either.
Also, please try to Vietnam. The US is very favorably perceived, more than China or Russia, although probably below European countries.
In the sense, the US lost the war, but won in the end, at a very steep price, of course
US is perceived more favourably than China because their war with China was more recent and they have active disputes with PRC threatening island territories in South China sea.
Moreover, US has massive influence in terms of their media and their brands, something which China still doesn't match. Same reason even South Korea has massive appeal in Vietnam.
And USA defeated the whole communist block using the same weapons. Also, don't dismiss tourism as a _weapon_: it's would be more effective to send millions of frienly tourists to Cuba than to embargoe them for decades.
But that's disgressing. Vietnam was only used as a sample of strategic millitary defeat albeit losing less people. I don't think anyone in the Whitehouse has planned the vietnamese frienship ahead.
This has nothing to do with US intervention. China is also a market economy, the US never won a war there.
when will this be exactly?
Putin was living on borrowed time due to the move away from fossil fuels
and his main customers are now willing to pay more explictly not to use his exports
their military ambitions are now finished, permanently
China will buy Russia's fossil fuels.
I'd like to think that if Russia fails to subjugate and absorb Ukraine then it will put an end to Russian dreams of restoring empire, for at least one generation and perhaps for longer. Recalling Zbigniew Brzeziński "It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire."
The EU and NATO are voluntarily breaking away from dependence on Russia on many fronts as we speak.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine galvanized this process.
Peace would have been far less devastating to all the countries involved.
Could you link to an article which shows a Russian official making such concessions or reducing their demands?
From my own reading, Russia has just been reiterating the same demands they had all along: for Ukraine to recognize the breakaway republics and for Ukraine to give up hopes of ever joining NATO.
If I was President of Ukraine, and wanted to convince the West of the urgency of a radical step escalation in military assistance, I might want them to perceive me as starting to waver in the face of the assault.
If I was President of Ukraine, and wanted to convince the Russians that good faith humanitarian corridors that weren't simply routes to captivity in Russia/Belarus and maybe even a general cease fire for negotiations while the Western sanctions continued to hollow out their war capacity were good ideas, I’d want to project the prospect of an acceptable resolution through negotiations.
> Along with "cooling down" to the idea of joining NATO, Zelensky told ABC News that there's room for negotiating on the occupied territories and unrecognized republics.
Read between the lines.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/zelenskyy-interview-david-mu...
Demilitarization of Ukraine, NATO membership and relations with the west in general are all going to be very contentious, and it's hard to see a solution here that both sides will accept.
That's what it means on paper. But we already see that in practice NATO is not willing to start WW3 to protect Ukraine.
How is that not clear?
If it comes to preventing the end of the world or protecting Ukraine, NATO has already shown it would rather prevent the end of the world.
That's because NATO hadn't committed to protecting Ukraine.
If it had, Putler wouldn't have dared attack.
Again: How is that not clear?
The motivation to save the world from utter destruction gives greater reason than ever before to not start WW3... at least not over Ukraine.. treaty or no.
Zelensky has said he is open to neutrality, but the problem is that he would need some sort of security guarantees moving forward. Demilitarization of the sort Russia originally envisioned is probably out of the question in any case, so that would solve part of it.
Maybe some solution involving international peacekeepers and demilitarized zones could work. Or escape clauses where Ukraine is permitted to annul their neutrality in the event of future aggression by Russia.
If what you say is true about Ukraine being willing to trade away Crimea and the eastern territories, then I don't think an agreement is necessarily that far away. Your initial demands in a negotiation are rarely your red lines.
The most contentious point (again, assuming you are correct that Ukraine is willing to cede the above-mentioned territories) will be bloc membership. Zelensky could possibly give some informal guarantee that he has no interest in NATO membership, but having your own foreign policy is a fundamental part of being a sovereign state, so being coerced into promising they will never join this or that bloc is kind of incompatible with Ukrainian statehood. And down the line they will definitely be eyeing EU membership.
Personally I would be sad to see territory ceded to Russia as it would reward their brutal and criminal tactics. I am also highly sceptical of Russia's willingness to abide by its obligations under any peace agreement. However, I appreciate that for Ukrainians especially, ending the bloodshed is the most important thing.
Particularly one next to Russia. (And Ukraine, in particular, after this?!?)
The Chutzpa negotiation approach would of course be, "OK, let's discuss demilitarisation. How and when do you propose to start yours?"
Before the recent escalation of the 8-year war it controlled Crimea and the breakaway “People’s Republics” in Donbas and Luhansk each controlled a small fraction of the territory they claim; before the war Russia and their pawns controlled nothing in Ukraine's claimed and generally internationally recognized borders, that was the proximate problem Russia (which shortly before that time had controlled the Ukrainian government as a puppet) sought to rectify with the war.
"Better a scanty agreement than a robust battle"
Which Russia cannot provide since they already promised not to invade.
I'm not sure how much that matters in practice, since nukes can be delivered by submarine or through ICBMs, but regardless, that's what Russia wants and a DMZ won't address that demand.
(Disarmament was one of the Russian asks during yesterday's negotiations. It was rejected ofc.)
The world is connected like never before and there are no unipolar winners or losers any more (if there ever were, considering the squandered individual, society-wide, and world-wide human potential when people die).
At the very least this is likely to lead to a global depression.
That's if we avoid WW3, which would devastate the entire world if it happened.
Such guarantees are worthless.
It's also clear that the rest of NATO is not willing to directly fight against Russia to save Ukraine, so NATO membership for Ukraine is just as worthless.
Like he said to NATO in regards to the no-fly zone “How many civilians need to die? Give me a number, I’ll start counting.”
Similarly here; how many civilians are Crimea and the two eastern provinces worth? If you have a number we’ll start counting. We’ll get there before Putin falls.
In otherwords he can still ramp up, then the west simply continues squeezing Putin and Russia for a year, or 3... then he can either go take back Crimea/Donbask regions, or perhaps wage a coup inside Russia -- get the oligarchs to agree to a Democratic Merging of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia with Zelenskyy as President for the first two terms, and with a path towards NATO and EU membership - which would be a HUGE finger to China and a big win for Democracy.
This essentially gives both sides a ceasefire but western pressure on Russia slowly strangles them to the point of collapse, and Zelenskyy can then basically take over, as he's basically a Hero for many in Ukraine and Russia and even Europe and USA. I mean a comedian turned President against Putin and he's holding his own pretty well - it's David vs Goliath.
IMHO that's the best option. As for this war, whether Zelenskyy does this or not. Putin has lost Russia. It's a matter of time before he's deposed after this blunder. Russia will never win in Ukraine.
Option B: Hold out a month, and basically Russia might be at the point they'd give him Crimea, Belarus, and Donbas if the west just eases up a tiny fraction on sanctions.
I'm not happy about it and can't sleep right for days anymore, because I fear a nuclear escalation. But I don't want to live in a world where such a situation could happen again and again. There are many slavic countries this fascist hungers for.
And what do you think would be the outcome?
The replacement could then spin it as being a good replacement and play by the rules of the west.
Kruschev --> Brezhnev
Brezhnev --> Andropov
Andropov --> Chernenko
Chernenko --> Gorbachev
Gorbachev --> Yeltsin
Yeltsin --> Putin
Putin --> Medvedev
Medvedev --> Putin
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_leaders_of_Russia
What's your point?
Also, if you haven't seen "Death of Stalin", it's an excellent dark comedy, if a bit historically inaccurate.
Lets say Putin nukes a carrier group at sea. This wont trigger an immediate counter attack like launching ICBMs would. Biden/whoever would have to order launching the nukes. Follow this for any usage of tactical nuclear weapons.
Will he decide to end life in America and most of the world over a carrier group? There's a non zero percent chance he would flinch at that.
Your argument is that nobody would have anything to do with Putin, but we already pretty close to that point. Backing Putin in a corner makes him MORE dangerous, not less.
Putin could do all kind of things to completely undermine as well. What happens if he decides that the world uniting against Russian means Russia no longer need to adhere to the Non Proliferation Treat and offers "free" nukes to whoever aligns with his new order? It's already understood geo politically that "no nukes" means the West and China get to bully you whenever they want. So why not take the offer? There's all kinds of ways this could get worse without all life ending.
I really doubt it. At the bare minimum a nuclear strike on military targets would provoke nuclear strikes on military targets in response. Excepting the middle of oceans, that's going to involve major civilian casualties. And then we're back to doomsday.
Not to get all Dr Strangelove on you, but once the nukes start flying there's really only one option - immediately take out as many of your enemy's weapons as possible. Sink all submarines, nuke all silos, hope for "no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks."
Especially if a purely military target was hit like a carrier group and it was all soldiers that died?
Its not so obvious to me that every leader could do that.
Now look at the opposite. You are a leader who is about to be killed/ousted/lose everything if current course continues. No matter what you are probably dead in 10 years anyways due to old age. Why not? Especially if you think Putin is how he is portrayed by Western media?
Not sure what culture you grew up in, but I grew up in the "progressive" side of the US and I'm quite certain that even the folks out here would demand immediate retaliation. The folks that grew up in red states are even more bloodthirsty. At minimum we'll be using nukes against Russian military targets, and I just don't see that de-escalating.
We don't know what he would do. A desperate dictator might just use nukes.
There's also the greatly increased risk of accidentally starting a nuclear war -- something we've come close to multiple times, even in peace time. In war time that's just short of WW3, the risk is increased exponentially.
No sane person wants to gamble with the literal fate of the world. Yet both sides are doing this by getting this close to WW3... that doesn't lend confidence to the possibility of staying out of a nuclear war if NATO "calls Putin's nuclear bluff".
I think if Russia backs them into fully rejecting all security agreements with the West as part of a settlement, they're just in for a takeover by other means, once Russia has its near-term concerns addressed by the peace settlement and can afford to sit back and wait. I think the most likely way out of that (assuming Ukraine achieves one) is a novel arrangement of some kind, more likely with with the EU than NATO, or (waaaay less likely) a new bloc & mutual defense agreement with Sweden and Finland.
Neither is possible. Ukraine does not control its borders so can't join NATO and is not economically viable enough to enter EU. And under that scenario trying to take Crimea starts a world war between Russia and NATO.
Ukraine joining NATO is just not ever going to be allowed to happen.
I believe a lot will depend on the outcome of this war as well as its ramifications for Putin's grip on power. Ukraine has so far defied all the odds and I wouldn't bet against them at this point. If given a bloody enough nose Russia may not be in a position to never allow NATO membership to happen.
As long as "full access" is defined as "except for any actual defense guarantees", that is. The EU one isn't actually that.