Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648956#Comment_120648956

Must be about a year since we heard of negotiations.

Have to laugh at the Russian terms, this isn't 12 months ago. They have been shown to be a paper tiger and they are not negotiating from a position of strength.

Kermit.de.frog

Ukraine should definitely push for return of the Donbass and withdrawal of Russian forces in any negotiations as an absolute minimum but Crimea is a different kettle of fish entirely. The inescapable fact of the matter for Ukraine is that in Crimea over 76% of the population are Russian. This will have to be accepted by Ukraine one way or another.

grumpyperson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120646995#Comment_120646995

I feel sad looking at this. They seem like nice people and will likely suffer huge casualties if they go back to fight.

The Ukraine never should have listened to Boris Johnson in April 2022, any deal will likely be much worse now but still it seems wiser to negotiate and at least save some lives than continue the way they have been going....

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648971#Comment_120648971

Each time Ukraine attacks Russian targets in Crimea the % of illegal Russian squatters reduces.

If Ukraine focus attacks on the bridge, the inescapable fact of the matter for Russia is they won't be able to hold it (assuming Ukraine cut off the land bridge)

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648986#Comment_120648986

Crimea has always been vast majority Russian population. They aren't "squatters". Only 7% of the population is Ukranian. What you seem to want is coercion of that population in to another state. Crimea should never have been part of Ukranian territory following the fall of the Soviet Union. That was a mistake.

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648992#Comment_120648992

Coercion?

Over 50% of the population of Crimea voted for Ukrainian independence in 1991.

If you want to talk about coercion, talk about the vote after it was illegally annexed.

Crimea has always been vast majority Crimean Tatars, not Russians.

Like 18 countries (and yourself) recognize Crimea as Russian territory, the rest of the world don't. Have a wee think about that.

grumpyperson

Just reading an amalgamation of war news.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/latest-headlines-digest-the-wests?

I'm not there, maybe people here can refute the conclusion of the New Yorker et al

Homelander

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648981#Comment_120648981

I think it's time to put this pathetic playbook to bed.

More in Russia's interest to stop throwing lives into the meat grinder at this stage. Their pathetic invasion has failed, they are the laughing stock of the world, sanctioned to the hilt, the US throwing pocket change at Ukraine to witness the tattered remains of the Russian army being pounded.

They are locked into an unwinnable war with a country that doesn't really want to be brutally subjugated and annexed, their will to fight isn't going to magically evaporate. It wouldn't if they were losing, it certainly won't when Russia is clearly not winning.

You are right, it is better that Russia negotiates now rather than continue this pathetic war that's set them back decades militarily, politically, diplomatically and socially.

Russia does not care about lives, but as the invading country behaving like a mongol horde, perhaps you might say a few words of encouragement that might sway their minds.

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648981#Comment_120648981

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9d34G_eyM

Another video they made prior to the successful Kharkiv counter offensive. Nobody foresaw how that unfolded.

dennis72

Crimea is more a part of Ukraine than it has ever been to Russia both physically and historically.

Russia has used it to invade a sovereign country and harassed international shipping after it illegally annexed it.

Sooner Ukraine finishes off the kurse bridge the better

Russia annexes its neighbours now Belarus is about to receive it fate another reason for the west to increase it resolve against this monster

Cajoling and appeasing Russia has been a waste of time they are pure evil.

riddles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120647487#Comment_120647487

A lot of it is psychological when this thing started a lot of people thought Russia would be on the Polish border is a week.

a year in Russia has expended significant resources to get moderate gains. That said they still have a huge numbers advantage on the Ukraine. Posturing on a counter offensive is like saying you’ve thrown a lot at us now we are hitting back. A bit like Ali’s rope a dope strategy except Ukraine doesn’t really need to do it. The border incursions force Russia to think about spreading resources to a defensive mode which further reduces the offensive momentum.

it also makes Russia think about how much offensive momentum they can generate if the Ukraines is introducing a whole new weaponry with trained crews.

in fairness Sun Tzu came up with this fifteen hundred years ago “first have to make yourself look strong, then look for your opponent to make a mistake and then attack.”

The midget man Putins has made so many mistakes already. 100s of thousands of Russians who have left are surely channeling to family back home the truth about how he thinks about the lives of ordinary Russians and also how’s Russias reputation such as it was is now at a historical low. Add in the fact Russia has spent its 2023 budget already which puts Putin’s on a more time sensitive challenge than people would have thought. Also falling gas and oil revenues etc and the cumulative impact of sanctions.

Given Putin spent years crafting this plan it’s been a pretty awful one given his strength in numbers. It’s a sad sad indictment of the Russian people’s spineless cowardice that they can’t remove him. A 70 year old midget so insecure he has to wear high heels and hides in bunkers, is sending the country to the ha’ penny place and they just accept it.

RoyalCelt

It feels like Russia has an endless supply of drones from Iran.

Kermit.de.frog

If only the Ukranians had the German army from WW2. As then they'll just throw bodies at it.

https://youtu.be/1CqGeAmVu1I?t=239

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649119#Comment_120649119

The Russians might be inclined to just throw bodies at that kind of a fight, but it seems that the AFU are better armed & trained for this kind of thing. Crimea is historically a difficult place to invade, but Ukraine have a shot at taking it if they’re smart about how they fight.

If they can fight their way to the Azov Sea and disable the Kerch bridge, then all bets are off. The Russians would seriously need to up their logistics to keep the peninsula stocked for a fight, especially if that bridge is gone. Airfields and ports can be disabled, robbing them of resupply, troop rotation or escape. I don’t have much faith in the resolve of a trapped Russian garrison on that peninsula. Some might choose to die for Putin or Mother Russia, but when it comes to it I think they’d surrender.

But all of that depends on a successful summer offiensive that retakes the southern coast and eleminates the land-bridge between Donbass and Crimea.

rogber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649085#Comment_120649085

Yes, another massive terror attack overnight. Scumbags. Shows again: there will never be peace as long as the Putin regime is in place. These terror attacks will go on and on. The only hope is regime change/revolution/assassination

WheelieKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648968#Comment_120648968

Actually Russia holds a hell of a lot of Ukrainian territory so holds a lot of strength for negotiations.

Seanmadradubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648992#Comment_120648992

What about the 1991 vote of the majority in Crimea to join an independent Ukraine, seems you take as much notice of the Ukrainians voting preferences as Putin does.

Seanmadradubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649235#Comment_120649235

You can only have strength in negotiations if negotiations occur, and Ukrainians aren't negotiating because Russia can't be negotiated with, hence no strength whatsoever.

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648981#Comment_120648981

Yeah Kremlin types love the idea of negotiations before a counter offensive gets underway.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648981#Comment_120648981

This is complete nonsense. You keep repeating this canard about Boris Johnson without foundation.

There was no tangible peace deal.

What happened was that Boris Johnson said Russia can't be trusted to abide by any deal based on past record. Also given the security assurances of Budapest failed, he was doubtful of a security framework outside NATO.

Zelensky and his advisors shared that concern and further, had no mandate to give up Donbas etc

So can you explain why this was a tangible peace deal, why it wouldn't have been a Budapest mark 2, and why you keep denying Ukraine agency in making the decision?

This article is a good summary about the realities and some of the myths that have grown up around it. To suggest there was a tangible peace deal somehow nixed by Boris Johnson is a gross misrepresentation, if not outright disinformation.

Britain’s prime minister hadn’t come to Kyiv to order a termination of the peace deal; this was advice at best, and as such, his scepticism about Russia’s trustworthiness wasn’t unique. There were strong concerns within Zelensky’s closest entourage that the Kremlin wouldn’t stick to an agreement for any longer than it suited its interests. The risks of signing the Istanbul agreement were high for Ukraine: key provisions, to do with the status of Donbas and Crimea, couldn’t be agreed until a later meeting between the presidents of the two states. Zelensky and his negotiators’ most important worry about the Istanbul agreement was, Romaniuk said, that “Ukrainian society might not accept such a deal”... With Ukrainian officials and commentators speaking out against the deal at the time, Zelensky must have understood that he had no mandate for territorial concessions to Russia.

https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7852

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649235#Comment_120649235

The Russians are tentatively maintaining a hold on a smaller percentage of the land they originally grabbed illegally and are having to expend a lot of what is left of their GDP, Soviet era stocks and what remains of their collective moral just to maintain that. It is yet to be seen if they can withstand another serious assault on the frontline and have focused all of their hopes & blood on a small rail-hub town that took them the guts of a year to slowly and painfully take.

All while Ukraine has been progressively upgraded to a NATO standard and pretty much guaranteed a future within European logistics mechanisms. Russia cannot maintain this, and their outlook gets worse the longer this goes on. Russia come to any negotiation, even now, from a point of weakness. They must find out what the price would be to be let back in from the cold and into the international community. Minimum price should be the full withdrawal beyond the 2014 borders. Ukraine & the West can afford to wait until Russia this concept into their heads….but they cannot.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648981#Comment_120648981

This act again. Did Bucha make you "sad" as well? Because that's what life looks like under Russian occupation, systematic murders, rapes, disappearances, totalitarian rule by the occupier, cultural and national identity erased, children being forced to speak only Russian, perpetual occupation.

The Ukrainians are more aware of this than any of us.

There isn't any "dispute" here, Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine, and hasn't deviated from that, bombing and attacking the country 24/7 since February 2022. The only choice forced on Ukraine was to capitulate or defend themselves. They've decided to defend themselves and grind down Putin's war machine. They are the ones bleeding and dying, that's their decision. Since April 2022 they've driven the Russians back and regained a significant portion of their country from the invaders, as well as severely depleting the Russian military's ability to take territory.

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649336#Comment_120649336

+1

Like most people, I hate the idea of war, conflict and terrible violent death. But there times, when it is necessary to fight. We live in a Western Europe where democracy and peace are the norm. If people hadn’t been willing to take up arms against the dictatorships that threatened to enslave and harden the continent into racial hysteria, we would not have any of this. We probably wouldn’t even be able to chat openly about this kind of thing, like we are doing now.

If we truly love and believe in our freedoms, we must willing to fight any facist state who wishes to take them away. This is unfortunatly the price of those freedoms, and it is what Ukraine must do. This is what Ukraine are doing now, and for our own sakes, we must help them.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648996#Comment_120648996

Putin has never, and I mean never, held a free fair and democratic election or referendum. The results are always organized and known in advance. Crimea is and will remain a part of Ukraine.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120648981#Comment_120648981

You mean any deal will be much worse now, but for Putin. And rightly so that murderous invader Putin has to be put out of business once and for all, and Russia reformed.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649008#Comment_120649008

What the rest of the world thinks will not affect Ukrainian thinking. Feb 2022 when they had little or no support at all, they took on Russia with the supposedly 2nd best army in the world. And not only took them on, but pushed them way back to a fraction of the territory they had held. They, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, Poland etc. know full well what the Russians are like and have no intention to be controlled by the by them again, ever. And they wont either, because they are prepared to die rather than submit. But that's a price Putin is unable to pay, because the Russian death toll extracted by the Ukrainians will be so high, that it will bring down the Kremlin and the Russian Federation.

Elessar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649008#Comment_120649008

Some difficult and uncomfortable truths in here. Much like the Russians, we are also under a certain amount of polished narratives in the west, or dare I say it, "propaganda". Russia has a history taking massive casualties and being incompetent at the beginning of wars only to adapt and return with huge force. I really hope Ukraine gets to take back all its territory but I fear that Putin and co will outlast, outman and out produce both Ukraine and the west, with enough time.

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649554#Comment_120649554

Russia today is not the Soviet Union. It doesn't have the population, brute force, resources or huge forces. Russia is spent.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649572#Comment_120649572

And in the first four months of this year, the entire budget has been spent, so reserves are being eaten up at a high rate, and gas/oil profits are way down. So while the economy is moving along, its only because its buoyed up by the military spending. It's like the dog eating its tail, and sooner or later, that particular economics plan, falls asunder. It seems like Putin's army is not the only paper tiger, the economy is pretty much the same. There's a lot of negative points converging on Russia at the moment, and not all of them from the Ukraine direction.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649554#Comment_120649554

In your example of truth you have referenced a blogger who has cherry-picked reductionist information from dubious sources. A cursory look at any of their blogs reveals their partisan views immediately:

"None of the tricks worked. All the endless distractions, diversions, deflections, and myriad attempts to pry our eyes from the inevitable, massive humiliation for NATO forces in Bakhmut—or is it Artemovsk now?—using every tool in their possession, from diversionary strikes on civilians on Russian border towns, to outright political assassination to steal headlines and steer public attention: none of it worked.

Bakhmut today has fallen on the exact one year anniversary of the fall of Mariupol on May 20th, 2022. And not surprisingly, the posture adopted by the UA supporters is the same exact energy as before: cringe, cope, excuse-making. “Bakhmut’s mission is accomplished,” they say, swallowing sobs.

Probably not the best way to make a point about propaganda.