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Watching the disastrous discussion between Zelensky Trump and Vance I wonder how you guys here feel? The whole thing made me nauseous , treating an ally like that is disgusting , unpresidential and certainly geopolitcally inept. The EU-US relationship is not salvagable and at this point I would clap if US bases were emptied and NATO dissolved. Decouple the EU from the US as fast as possible and be independent. There is no way to talk sense into lunatics like Trump and Vance and Putin's control over them somehow seems to be absolute. What an absolute disaster. I know that there will be differing opinions here but at least most of you must agree that this is too much, or not , maybe Russian propaganda really has you convinced that Ukrainians are stealing money and started the war or some nonsense.
Making Russia pay an exorbitant price for having invaded was the correct call and has long since been accomplished, but any real chance of Ukraine getting its land back evaporated after the 2023 counteroffensive went nowhere. This has to end at some point. If the demilitarized welfare states of the EU want to declare war on Russia to liberate the eastern oblasts then let them do so, but otherwise it's about time to start packing it in.
Unfortunately the brutal lesson the Russians are currently learning is “The Euro-American defense complex is a pale shadow of it’s former self, the buffet is now open”.
This just seems like an insane takeaway. Russia couldn’t capture Ukraine. What makes you think Russia is thinking “and now I can take back say Poland.”
Russia couldn't capture Ukraine (so far because the war is still ongoing) because Ukraine had the largest land military in Europe apart from Russia, had a vast air defense stockpile inherited from Soviet Union, and had a military that fought with some various intensity with Russia since 2014 and had experience. On top of that, Ukraine is large and has a large defense depth. Putin thought Ukraine will just not fight.
Nobody knows what Putin thinks but if he succeeds in Ukraine, he has a war machine, veterans (including criminals that would be better kept in the army), war economy that would crumble if demobilized. At this point, the risk of continuing the conquest may not be larger than the risk of demobilizing. Russia is no match to a unified NATO (even ex-US) but fractured and indecisive NATO is vulnerable.
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