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Because they have chosen to fight. They can surrender whenever they feel like it. But until they do, they ought to enjoy the full support of people who also don't like wars of aggression prosecuted upon them.
The traditional response to an insult is reprisal, not submission. Indeed, they've probably got very little to lose and everything to gain by continuing to fight.
If Russia is able to win all conflicts by threatening a world war, they're going to spread unchecked. The hell with that, I say. Waiting for the apocalypse is exhausting.
Yes
I cannot speak for everyone supporting Ukraine but that always seemed like a distraction. The reason I want to see Russia get spanked is the arsenal of nuclear weapons they maintain trained at me. They're the guy robbing my convenience store at gunpoint; if they go down in a hail of cop gunfire after stealing a car that's just as well.
Even more of the Russian armed forces taken out of commission. Like 2x what we've seen so far. Perhaps 5x. Russia withdrawing from Ukraine. Putin replaced with someone who's more interested in increasing Russia's GDP than square miles.
Is there a strong reason to believe that Putin is the glue holding together the federation?
The irony when the support comes in the forms of billions dollars of aid and weapons from the American militaro-industrial complex.
A reasonable border conflict, similar to the Cuban missiles crisis.
Again, there's a whole series of convenience store robberies you haven't looked at if Russia is the main perp in your eyes.
Not going to happen unless Russia is destroyed. Having a de facto NATO protectorate on your border is a matter of life or death for Russia.
Russia's GDP is square miles. Square miles of resource-rich land, that Russians have been doing quite a good job at keeping under control, compared to say the West in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Historical precedent. You know what you lose, you don't know what you gain.
How well did the Arab Spring go for liberal democracy in North Africa and the Middle East?
Are there other nuclear arsenals aimed at the US? China's is unimpressive compared to Russia's, but don't get me wrong, when (if?) China invades Taiwan I will have zero problem with the unholy gift basket of armaments my tax dollars will provide them with.
How unfortunate for them. Maybe if they didn't make NATO the only way to avoid getting invaded and instead offered a better deal they wouldn't be in this mess.
Man, it's been a while. i think the fondest hope was that Iran would flip, and it didn't.
But Gaddafi got his, so there's that.
NATO doesn't protect anyone from invasion, quite the opposite actually.
Without NATO wars in North Africa and the Middle-East, there would have been a lot fewer immigrants to Western Europe in the past decade, that many have characterized as 'invaders'.
Gaddafi got what? His fair trial according to the rule-based liberal world order?
NATO countries invaded by RF: 0
Non-NATO countries invaded by RF: 2
Something about the consent of the governed.
How about NATO countries invaded by Syria / Libya / Iraq / Afghanistan etc?
Which Libyans consented to a coalition of NATO countries and Qatar to come in and murder their leader?
Redefining invasion.
The Libyans who bayoneted him and shot him dead.
So all the Russians have to do is :
capture Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders, then deliver them to a Ukrainian (from the East) who shoots them and bayonet them to death
then have them set up a pro-Russia government
Then you would support Russia?
If Russia had limited its intervention to capturing the government instead of staging a full on invasion and all of the death and destruction entailed I think it would be much easier for Russia to avoid international contempt.
But you're missing a key point: Gaddafi was a piece of shit who took down a commercial airliner to fuck with the west. Zelenski isn't.
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