Can we please start de-escalating this situation? Speculative headlines like these do nothing to improve the situation.
Russia's version of "neutrality" is a joke.
Russia's demand for "neutrality" means letting Russia decide Ukraine's foreign and military policies. Russia want to enforce specific limits on the size and capabilities of Ukraine's military. That will never be accepted by Ukraine.
I see basically 3 possibilities. Ukraine agrees to neutrality, Ukraine resists neutrality and has its country destroyed and is eventually forced to agree to it anyway (what is happening now), or the western powers start a hot war with Russia and risk WW3/nuclear holocaust. Given those options I'd go with the first.
- 1 is a joke which cannot be accepted.
- 3 is a bluff.
- 2 is the only option. Ukraine has already beaten you in the north. How long till it defeats you in the east and south?
Ukraine will suffer many dead civilians and hundreds of billion in damages, but Russia is losing thousands of soldiers and the economic impact will last for decades while Ukraine will be rebuilt.
All of the Russian criticism was plainly self serving anyway. You can clearly tell by this war that they had no qualms with anything the US did in Iraq, excluding maybe their own geopolitical interests in the area.
Whatever was done in the past, is something you have to allow everyone else to do?
Surely you see how that is morally untenable?
Errors of the past do not need to be repeated or allowed. (Even though they likely will be as human life is complex and fallible).
What is happening now is the Russian economy collapsing and thousands of Russian soldiers returning home in body bags in just the past few weeks. The same things that caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
[0]: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/into-the-heart-of-darkness-what-russi...
Why would the US willfully feed countries to Russia?
Ukraine is being attacked exactly because it's not allied with major powers.
> Zelenskyy already said he was told in private Ukraine wouldn't be admitted to NATO anyway, making this entire war senseless.
You're living in a parallel reality. Ukraine is fighting for its right to exist. The war is senseless, but that's something you need to tell Putin.
Only Russia can de-escalate the situation.
The irony is that Russia could have taken Donetsk and Luhanks and the war would have been out of the news cycle by now. The West would just have repeated the harmless 2014 targeted "sanctions" on Russian oligarchs and politicians.
Putin's and Lavrov's genocidal speeches about Ukraine being a fake nation that should be "de-nazified" and the Russian attempt at taking the capital Kyiv has escalated this conflict into its current state.
It's kind of a weird question honestly, why do you think India, China and the United States pursue territorial interests and fight wars? History and conventional warfare hasn't ended just because countries have nukes.
The idea of NATO attacking Russia is bonkers. They're barely moving to defend Ukraine. "NATO is a threat" is post hoc rationalization for Russia's own revanchist behavior; even the Russian propagandists who push it don't take it seriously.
There's plenty of examples like the deployment of missile defenses to Eastern Europe (which contrary to the name is strategically an aggressive move, as they're first strike enablers, diminishing strategic deterrents. The one thing Russia is supposed to rely on). The basic point is, no country on earth has stopped deploying its military in the pursuit of national security merely because it is a nuclear power.
NATO is a defensive treaty organization, joined by consent. Warsaw Pact was the result of USSR using military force to subjugate its neighbors. There's no comparison, and I see no reason to engage such tripe further.
The only reason for US military presence in Europe is the Russian threat. The US would gladly move forces to the Pacific and Europe would be happy to have a peaceful and democratic Russia on their border and to see the US go.
Putin chose empire-building by force. He could have chosen peace and economic prosperity instead. Just compare the development of Russia and the former Warsaw pact countries.
Should they avoid true headlines that are actually important, because of the perceived effect on politics / international relations?
Unbiased, truthful news? That would be the day. Until that happens, newpapers always editorialize. They exaggerate. They clickbait. They speculate. It's fine and often harmless. But it's not harmless when sabres are rattling and people are dying.
Newspapers, more than anyone, should check, verify, and double-check before they publish anything pertaining to anything as polarized as an armed conflict. Polarized, in this case, because Russians seem to think they are on the right side of history, while the West obviously feels the same.
Should they avoid publishing true headlines? Maybe. They should at least make sure the headlines are truthful.
Newspapers often delay publication of sensitive issues. See important leaks like the Panama Papers, where many journalists coordinated publication. Same with various criminal investigations, where reports are delayed or initially partially redacted to protect the integrity of the investigation, or to protect the victims.
I totally agree about the "making sure the headlines are truthful" part.
Not sure how I feel about not publishing truthful things because it might escalate the war. Should the press not publish anything about the war in Ukraine, because it might lead to nuclear war? I guess that's a defensible view in some sense, but I sure don't want to live in a world in which that happens.