Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

Who is “we”? Ireland is not in NATO, nor are we providing weapons.

Russia has stated that it does not want to talk peace. That’s how I know.

Heard this going on two decades now about how Ireland is "just about to join" NATO. It isn't happening.

It wouldn't matter to Putin, in any form of (extremely unlikely) nuclear exchange, we'd be wiped out anyway. Our geographical position makes us a strategic target by default.

The rules based international order is the entire eco system of international law and human rights, the UN, the Hague etc, much of which was set up just after WW2. Those who agreed the rules were, in particular the victors of WW2: the USSR, USA, UK, France & China. What "imposing of will" do you think occurred? Which precise human rights abuses, crimes against humanity or acts of genocide do you think people should be allowed to commit? One might also note that it was only by ignoring the agreed rules that the US could invade Iraq.

As regards nuclear war, you may not have noticed but Putin is not a nice guy. Any concessions that anyone give to Russia to avoid nuclear war merely confirms that you are willing to give concessions if Russia threatens nuclear war and confirms Russia was right to threaten you - and should threaten you some more to get more of what it wants (a land bridge to Moldova, a land bridge to Kaliningrad, a new Russian empire). So well done on that.

It also confirms to everyone else with nukes or in the process (China - who want Taiwan, North Korea, Iran) that they should immediately acquire nukes and start threatening you so that you start conceding.

So now you've built a world filled with nukes where the most unpleasant people threaten to use them every other day and you keep making ever greater concessions to them emboldening them further increasing their demands.

I.e. you've engaged in a course of action certain to bring about nuclear war resulting in the death of billions. So well done.

I thought here in Ireland we would be against such a war as we already know what it is like to have a large portion of our population starve to death, which is a likely outcome if there was an all-out nuclear war.

I forgot this thread existed.

What do people think the end game is for this awful war? And in what timeframe?

I personally see peace negotiations before Christmas with Ukraine to lose territory but gain in other ways that protect their future.

The "we" and "our" stuff, and chin stroking concern about diminution of Irish neutrality by the govt. position on Ukraine is odd.

afair adversarial was gleefully capering about on other thread(s) seeking out + posting images and video of Russia's destruction of targets in Ukraine culled off obscure (for average Irish person) Russian social media (with text in cyrillic) when the invasion of Ukraine started. Not very peacknik.

I suppose if Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams can turn to the way of peace anyone can!

I find it comical that people seem to think that there can be negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

Ukraine have made it law that it cannot happen so unless Putin is overthrown, shot a la JFK or just steps down then there isn't a snow balls chance in Lucifer's hell will Ukraine negotiate.

And when you have idiots on RT calling for Ukrainian kids to be drowned on national TV you can sort of maybe see why Ukraine in the next 1.5 months won't be saying "sound Vlad let's just end this yeah?"

Jesus Christ.

Negotiations between who exactly?

No negotiating with Ukraine they are pushing ahead with taking their whole country back,Nato ,the EU the US aren't looking for any kind of negotiations.

The Russians can surrender at anytime they wish,

They'll protect themselves by defeating russia.

I believe your opinion is just that ,

You can see negotiations in the next 6 weeks or so ,

Yet there is no talk anywhere of negotiations,let alone involving Ukraine giving up territory, wishful thinking or day dreaming, seems like a nightmare scenario for the Ukrainian,

But yet they keep pushing and fighting day in and day out taking back their territories occupied by orc's, Russia is free to surrender at any time, failing economy which is mainly based on supplying the eu with energy, which they have permanently lost , meanwhile they are selling at huge losses to the Chinese who in turn will be more than happy to drain Russia for every last drop .then what for Russia more crying to the UN about russopobia

Personally I do not support this war, but I can certainly understand why the Russian leadership have taken this action, not saying it's right or wrong, I'm not a Russian agent. But I am not so stupid as to think that this action was unprovoked and it all started on the 24th of February 2022.

There have been steps taken since the 90s that has led to this, one of the biggest steps came in 2008. In 2010 Ukraine determined that it wanted to be nuetral, albeit friendly with Russia, but this was not good enough for us in the west, and of course we should all be aware of what happened at the end of 2013 to the beginning of 2014 when suddenly there was a western leaning puppet installed in Kyiv.

Whether we like it or not, the Russian leadership see this whole issue (NATO expansion) as a serious threat to their national security. And remember, throughout 2021, on several occasions it was mentioned by NATO that Ukraine would be part of NATO, and again, I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but think about the threat that the Russians see this kind talk as. Sure didn't we ourselves have a huge hissy fit when Russian naval manoeuvres where happening in the Atlantic, didn't we even bring our fishing fleet into it? (cue whataboutery accusations)

It is far too easy (and lazy imo) to label Putin a crazy guy, if he was truly crazy this conflict would be looking more like WW3 right now.

This is not a game. It is bad enough that Ukraine is in ruins, tens of thousands dead and their economy decimated, it can and must stop now and where there are negations there must be compromise as bad as that sounds, particularly to Ukraine.

The west says that Russia cannot win this, Russia says, they cannot lose, so where does this end?

the great JFK said : '...nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. '

Surely to most logical people this rings true today also. I have said it before on here, the leaders in the west could actually stop this right now if they wanted to, there was a great opportunity early on when the talks were being held in Turkey, might have been very difficult negotiations, but remember at that same time NATO held an 'emergency' session in Brussels, and then the announcement came from Biden that this was going to be a long war. Well why the hell did he not take a different approach like encouraging peace talks to continue, offering proposals, whatever, no, the answer was that this must keep going. BoJo flew to Ukraine earlier on than that when there was another potential of a de-escalation, but no, We are with you to the end, we must keep fighting, we will keep sending weapons, we must defeat and humiliate Putin.

Somebody here said Ukraine has passed a law that they will not compromise, or something to that effect. Well, I can tell you that if the NATO leadership really wanted this war to end, they would stop shipping weapons to Ukraine and then that law would be quickly overturned.

now I await the name calling and accusations and God knows what else, although I really would prefer some meaningful engagement.

This is just regurgitated Russian nonsense:

There was no "western leaning puppet" installed in Ukraine. Quite the opposite: Yanukovich on getting into power immediately started dismantling independent parts of the state (judiciary etc) and reneged on promises to the electorate to join the EU - i.e. he was a Russia leaning puppet who the Ukrainians rightly forced to resign so that they could have another election. Read all about it here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan

Furthermore, that was 2 election cycles ago - what part of the Ukrainian electoral system are you criticizing in particular?

As regards "Ukraine just wanted to be friendly with Russia" - that's reasonably true. But (and you may be unaware of this) when a genocidal sociopath invades your country, occupies part and threatens to occupy the rest - as happened in 2014 - many people view it as an "unfriendly act" - and are less inclined to view the genocidal invader as "friendly neighbour".

As regards Russia being concerned about NATO, that's obviously untrue for many reasons. If it were true, then Russia would not have carried out the 2022 invasion.

NATO applicants cannot have hot border disputes as if they joined, it would mean immediate triggering of article 5 and a war between US and Russia. So the 2014 invasion was already more than sufficient to prevent NATO membership. Furthermore, the invasion - and in particular it's genocidal nature was guaranteed to massively reinvigorate NATO ( declared "brain dead" by Macron in about 2019 you may recall - and basically considered on its way to being defunct) and push non- NATO members to join NATO. The Russians aren't stupid and were well aware of these consequences.

Furthermore, Russia has been more than happy to strip its forces from the NATO borders - which is not what it would do if it had any concern about NATO.

Russia's only actual concern about NATO and NATO membership is that NATO membership severely limits (but does not entirely prevent) Russia's ability to wage war/hybrid war/exert undue influence against countries.

I also like how you say "it is for the west to stop this" - yet again conveniently overlooking the Ukrainians and their wishes - a convenient Russian narrative that never regards Ukrainians as human with their own thoughts, feelings, motives, desires. This is their war. They decide what is an acceptable outcome. They are aware of Russia's history of genocide and reneging on more treaties than the British and how likely the Russians are to renege on any agreed outcome here.

The west can either help give the Ukrainians more options so to assist them in their negotiations against a genocidal sociopath - or not support and let the genocidal sociopath win and go on to threaten Moldova and the Baltics next.

Yes you are correct. NATO /Ukr/USA could end this war with the stroke of The Proverbial Pen BUT BUT BUT so could Ru end the war by going back to where they came from. After all Ru started it. And , by the way, what’s all this talk FROM Putin that the gravest mistake ever made ever was the break up of The USSR and that must be restored. All this talk about being threatened by NATO, Ukr nazis’, the West wants to annilate us,, Ukr is not a soverign nation and therefor has no right to exist, or whatever else you are having are just pure 100% deflections and he is 100% allowed to get away with these ‘reasons’

Clearly red pills 💊 have been injested,

It's all the wests fault,it's all Nato's fault, we don't support the war but Ukraine should negotiate and give away their territory,and allow putin to come back in 12 months time, ukraine broke their nutrality, ukraine since independence have always stated they wanted to join the eu and Nato, that's their right to choose and they have repeatedly chosen, freedom over occupation