It Took Trump Only Twenty-Four Days to Sell Out Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

It Took Trump Only Twenty-Four Days to Sell Out Ukraine

newyorker.com

67 pointsdotcoma27 comments

There's nothing to sell out.

Ukraine had only two ways to expell Russia from their territory. The mass sanctioning/removal of access to SWIFT causing Russia to economically collapse or U.S/NATO direct military involvement.

The first strategy did not work and the second wasn't tried.

Funneling arms and money was a disaster. It prolonged an unwinnable war that killed probably a million Ukrainians.

Nowhere near a million Ukrainians have died, you’re making an argument with a number that is wrong by at least one zero.

Afghanistan was fighting an unwinnable war against the USSR until the Russians simply gave up.

Similarly the Taliban in Afghanistan were fighting an “unwinnable” war against the even bigger US military for two decades until the Americans gave up and simply left.

Why do you think the situation in Ukraine is wildly different?

Russian is resorting to suicide runs with golf buggies to capture land at the same rate at which a snail moves. Does this sound like an inevitable victory to you?

Is this what winning looks like?

There were about 15000 causalities for USSR during 10 years in Afghanistan. It was a very low intensity conflict in comparison. Current RU-UA conflict has no similarities with the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979.

You are right in that the situation inherently isn't wildly different, and as long as there is a will to resist within the Ukrainian populous, Russia will not achieve their objectives in the long run.

But there is the aspect of potential over reliance on Western support by Ukraine, which if cut, the effects on the moral might even outweigh the effects on the defense capabilities, and both would be reduced given halt/pause of Western support

Funneling arms helps give time to Europe to get their shit together and start building an army.

Stopping that is only helping the russians.

It seems in the last three years only Poland is building an Army (1000 tanks, 500 himars launchers WTF thats more than US operates, 100 apaches etc). There was report from Germany that they actually went from 65% to 50% battle readiness since the war started https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/50-battle-ready-germany...

Yes. That's because Germany is the largest contributor of military equipment and money to Ukraine in Europe.

Didnt Germany readiness lower while they were not sending any hardware from active duty units? Afaik it was all surplus, excess/spare stocks or fully phased out hardware waiting for salvage (Gepards).

If that was true then it wouldn't make sense to drop from 65% to 50%. Also the personnel they train need hardware and ammunition for training. It's a complex problem I'm sure, but the war has played a role here for sure.

Polands >300 tanks (PT-91 and Leos), 200 APCs, 100 Krabs, helis and jets all came from active duty with up to date service records and that somehow didnt have much impact on readiness.

Did Germany stopped replenishing stocks?

Biden double dipped by booking military assistance to Ukraine twice, once as value send and again for replenishment thus creating confusion with Zelensky wondering where the rest of ~$177B go when they received $75B in hardware.

I think that the problem is that Europe does not want to acknowledge that they are at war with Russia. Russia says that they are at war with Europe and they are testing the waters all the time, just last night flying a drone against the Chernobyl dome. Europe is not willing to confiscate the Russian assets in Europe or deal with Russian oligarchs having dual citzenship and still doing bussiness, or with all the sanction avoidance that is going on.

Excuse a small quibble on terminology-- Russia itself is a European country (large empty landmass in geographical Asia notwithstanding).

or Russia crumbles from within.. it happened bwfore

What do you think how many people including Ukrainians die in a World War 3 with nuclear weapons?

I don't think Ukraine would be the only country to suffer a nuclear strike if Russia were to launch one.

That’s why I wrote including Ukrainians, that obviously means other nations too would suffer.

Frankly, that's 23 days more than I expected.

Did he claim there would be already peace for 23 days if gets elected as president?

Yes.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-describes-how-he-coul...

Good. The next step should be to get out of NATO and join BRICS :-)

I think we can have peace talks - like what is happening. Or if we believe Russia is too great a threat we can have all out war against Russia involving NATO. Both those outcomes would be acceptable.

What is not acceptable to me is the current status quo of Ukraine and only Ukrainian lives being lost while the rest of the world funds it with money and weapons while insisting there must be no peace talks

I've never heard anyone insist on there being no peace talks, only that there be no peace talks that don't involve Ukraine. I think most people who support Ukraine are worried about Trump conducting peace talks with Russia, excluding Ukraine from those peace talks, and then coming to some kind of deal that involves Russia keeping the land they've annexed.

It's like that "Myth of Consensual Sex" meme with the two teenagers and Jesus. Isn't there somebody (Ukraine) you forgot to ask?

That would be a reasonable I objection if it looked as if there was a risk of that. Everything I've heard from Zelynski so far tells me that Ukraine will be involved and they will have the final say

A good post with a very strange ending.

The problem is that Trump makes concessions before the negotiations even started.

And it the moment it just looks like Russia gets parts of its winnings, replenish its reserves and then tried it again.

Maybe he should attack the US if the give up territories so easily.

BTW it was Putin who said, why should I negatively as long as I‘m winning.

we had talks.we had inky stained papers.we had concessions. we had all that, yet here we are. how many of these talks do you want to have?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com