> US strategy: What do you want to get out from this war?
Kill as many Russians as possible and use up as many Russian munitions as possible - with the inevitable consequence being the death of a lot of Ukrainians in the process.
Kill as many Russians as possible and use up as many Russian munitions as possible - with the inevitable consequence being the death of a lot of Ukrainians in the process.
With the inevitable consequence being many Ukrainian lives being saved.
Do you somehow think that less Ukrainians would die without our support?
1000% yes. Without our support the war would have been over, even with Russian incompetence, in a few weeks.
Best estimates place the number of dead in the 100's of thousands, that would have been in the thousands.
As an example my friend barely left Russian checkpoint alive after they took his phone for check-up. They were beating him for hours, because they found picture where he stands near the Ukrainian flag. Twist: he was 17 at that time, would he be a bit older, I don't know what would happen. And this is just one example among countless. You can see what happened in Bucha, Izyum, Mariupol, etc. You can learn what happened during the Soviet period after we briefly regained independence. Our population shrinked by double digit percentage pre WWII.
Average homo sovieticus with no sense of identity will be sort of okay, that's true. But Russia probably will use the men for the next war similar to what they did with people occupied in 2014.
People in occupied territories are not safe from the Russians. Rather they became cannon fodder.
Surrender was and is probably not an option for Ukraine. Without Western support, what might an industrialized nation do if cornered with no options -- I don't want to know.
Regardless, if Ukraine wants to fight for freedom, you really think we shouldn't enable them? Or is freedom of no value to you?
- put a fig leaf over Victoria Nuland’s hubris and ineptitude
- create a political football
- make a productive peace with Russia impossible for another century
Who knows. Victory is not a goal. I don’t think it’s possible if it were.
Pretty much. I see you got downvoted because somehow there are still people that believe it's two more weeks and Russia will collapse.
Initially the plan was a rehash of 2014 when the Obama admin encouraged Ukrainians not to fight. It was going to be a media storm and very harsh pronouncements, sanctions and so on. However, from a geo-strategic point of view when Zelensky refused to take the ride offered to him by the Biden admin, it opened this new opportunity, and Americans and Europeans allies took it. Never let a crisis go to waste! They helped Ukraine stay afloat and saved Ukrainian lives as well, no doubt, but that's a bonus for the magazine stories. If we pretend their only goal was grinding down Russia without also letting it collapse or trigger WW3, the playbook would have looked exactly as it did for the last 4 years. So I think it's silly to pretend it was something other than that.