• Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Ukraine has plenty of opportunities to win. It could have chosen to chart a more balanced position between the EU and Russia. It could have given the Donbass some independence referenda and just let them go. It could have actually tried to adhere to the numerous Minsk Agreements to deescalate and prevent war. It could have negotiated for peace while the Russians were pulling back after its previously more successful counter offensives.

    But each time its leaders ignored the off ramp to peace and pursued delusional maximalist goals, egged on by promises of EU and NATO membership which even Zelensky acknowledged publically were just carrots dangled in front of Ukraine.

    Now there’s no pathway to any sort of Ukrainian victory and the most realistic scenarios all involve Ukraine permanently giving up Donbas and Crimea. The only difference between the likely outcome now and just giving them a referendum in 2014 is a couple hundred thousand Ukrainian graves.

    I’d respect the EU and NATO more if they had actually followed through with their promises to Ukraine instead of this Charlie Brown football bullshit.

    • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Ukraine has plenty of opportunities to win. It could have chosen to chart a more balanced position between the EU and Russia.

      I mean they tried to but they got couped by the US for their troubles.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It rules that libs constantly appeal to public opinion of people in Taiwan as an argument for why China should let it be independent but as soon as people from a Western aligned country want to exercise that same self-determination its “surrendering” to let them have a referendum.

        Totally an intellectually coherent ideology and not just “our team (good), your team (bad)”.

      • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Neither of these things he describes are surrendering:

        It could have given the Donbass some independence referenda and just let them go. It could have actually tried to adhere to the numerous Minsk Agreements to deescalate and prevent war.

        In fact both of them would have prevented Russia from annexing donbass. They would be independent territories that would act as a buffer state between the two countries.

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I was coming at it from the sense of both outcomes being the same (Ukraine losing Donbas) but in one scenario Ukraine “wins” because it doesn’t get bombed and lose hundreds of thousands of people, but you raise a great point. There was a chance that letting Donbas go in 2014 would have resulted in a fairly neutral buffer with Russia.

          There was a point where the DPR and LPR were just seeking autonomy within Ukraine to speak Russian and decide local issues but the hardliners in Kiev decided to sic Nazis on them instead.