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Interesting developments in Ukraine. Very unclear what's going on, but possibly US supported change of leadership within the near future. That's just a guess.
On Friday the 18th, there were two hit pieces on Zelensky, one in FT and another in Spectator. TL;DR on them is: West is disappointed with Zelensky because he appears to be using the cover of war to attack people who were fighting against corruption in Ukraine and using authoritarian means to go after politicians who aren't seen as fully loyal to him.
That's not new - Ukrainians have been muttering about precisely that for years. But Westerners are reading it now, and as has been pointed out, if you're reading it, it's for you..
There were some Ukrainian and one older Politico.EU articles with a similar tone but all much lower profile. Now the Man wants us to know Zelensky is not the greatest hero since Churchill. Why?
Then, on Saturday, in a surprising move, Zelensky called for negotiations. Here's Guardian reporting on it..
Looking at the previous round of negotiations, those were futile. Without concessions that Ukrainians, especially the nationalists find unthinkable, Russians aren't stopping. In addition last week Trump gave Russia some sort of '50 days' ultimatum.. No idea what that means- threatening tariffs on a country that has had 20 rounds of sanctions imposed on it seems odd.
The last time(end of may '25) they tried negotiating there was no agreement (Russians wanted the 4 oblasts, a little land in them they didn't have yet and ofc Crimea), which Ukraine didn't want to agree too even though they have, at present, a snowball's chance in hell of regaining any territory and are inexorably losing more at an escalating pace. Mind you, this is pretty much 'minimalism' on the Russian side. Ukrainians, just to start proper negotiations wanted an 'unconditional 30 day ceasefire', to which Russians were unwilling to agree because they thought it was just a stalling tactic to get time to build more defensive lines.
There's no reason to believe Russians are going to be in any way more amenable this time -they've taken more ground, their forces are being sustained, unlike the Ukrainian ones.
Town of Pokrovsk (~70k before war) whose supply lines have been interdicted for months now & ofc town itself has been under constant attrition is getting ever more cut off. Russians have massed forces to actually cut off the town and Ukraine doesn't have any reserves to counter that, so there's risk of the city getting wholly cut off.
So what to make of it? Seymour Hersh claims that US wants to replace Zelensky with Zaluzhny. A regime journalist calls that 'Ukrainian disinformation'..
But Hersh also claims US is trying to reach an agreement with Russia while it's still possible. Russians who are confident they can see it through obviously don't want to make any deal that'd be less than full recognition of conquered territory & Finlandization of rump Ukraine. So, why even attempt to negotiate? If Zelensky were to make peace, he'd have to fight the nationalists who won't give up this easily, go against his western sponsors who don't want the war to end either. He clearly doesn't have support to end the war.
It looks like desperate flailing from Zelensky's side. Or is the army personnel/ammo situation so critical that he expects it to be close to collapse within a month? Very little is known about how bad it is for AFU (it's all secret and they rarely say anything). About the best report is this Polish one, which says Ukraine requires 300,000 soldiers to fully staff its combat formations, and that presently there are cca 300,000 men in the trenches.
Fundamentally there's only one way for an invasion to stop and that's for the invaders to either win or give up (either voluntary or by force).
If Ukraine stops fighting back and lets Russia win easily, then the US just has major egg on our face, especially when we've been able to help hold back Russian forces for this long while barely even lifting a pinky. We're supposed to be this big strong global superpower, leader of the free world, and our allies in Asia are watching how we treat our allies in Europe. Taiwan is watching, South Korea is watching. This is one of the big pressures on Trump, a losing Ukraine and a winning Russia is a morale victory for anti-American demagogues and a strong sign to China that we will fold on Taiwan.
We leave the vacuum out of cowardice and fear, our enemies will gladly fill it.
I can't think of a worse set of arguments made by proponents of the US letting Ukraine suffer a defeat.
Yeah it's hard to imagine a situation where giving the egotistical leaders of Russia and China free wins isn't going to empower them and encourage more war.
If you're Putin or Xi and you know America will just walk away bored if you grind out for a few years, then what's the cost of war? Like hell just look at Trump right now, he's giving China high tech AI chips from Nvidia and literally ignoring the law to allow their propaganda site to brainwash teens despite the ban.
Why would Xi have any faith this American apparatus too lazy and scared to even take down Tiktok would actually stick around for long in Taiwan? We're metaphorically bending over and begging for our enemies to fuck us with propaganda and advanced AI capabilities, and yet people are expecting a serious fight when it comes to actual war?
Same exact issue for flinching when Putin talks about nukes.
"Well if he's threatening WWIII I guess we should just let him do what he wants. It's just not worth the risk to confront him."
It's as if a large portion of the American Right has entirely forgotten the lessons of Cold War diplomatic and military strategy. Or very, very obvious game theory re: bluffs and tit for tat.
Trump and his people are very much tit for tat. Look at what they've done to Iran and the Houthis.
Instead what you are ignoring is that the American Right has learned from the past 30 years that if America and/or its Allies are winning a war, the left will start calling American (or other) soldiers, generals, and political leaders war criminals and start calling for disarmament, the end of fighting etc. So until Democrats have approximately the same political power nationally as Republicans currently do in San Fransisco, war is kinda pointless.
The op against the Houthis was kind of a disaster, right?
With Iran, Trump also done fucked up by not letting the Israelis finish the enemy. I suspect that equilibrium will not last.
Yeah, except for the part where I had disagreements with a number of MAGA-pilled individuals who believed that actually Hillary was a hawkish warmonger, basically John McCain in a woman's suit. Vs. Trump, the peacenik. As if liberal interventionists like Hillary were exactly the same as hawkish neocons like McCain.
The Bush Administration was retarded about invading Iraq as a war of choice based on what turned out to be false premises, and then botching the occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Luckily enough, Iraq might just turn out alright in the long run, but Afghanistan is back to being a Taliban paradise.
You're conflating going to war and diplomatic/military strategies around deterrence. The really nice thing about deterrence, is when you're good at it there's no war. And, if deterrence fails, you've already done the prep work to win the war.
You'll note that all my calls for preparation and intervention in these threads have not been: "The US should take military action against an adversary." I would say we should actually blow the fuck out of the Houthis just for being pirates, let alone allies of Iran.
How many people in Gaza should currently be alive?
Every single one that renounces Hamas and acts to end their existence.
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