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Why is it delusional? What I mean is, what has the state of the war to do with Europe's willingness to concede anything? Say countless Ukrainians are dead, and the Ukrainians are nearing collapse. Not Europe's problem. I wouldn't even give russia a guarantee that Ukraine not join nato. All the pressure is on ukraine, and russia. Europe will just go along with ukraine’s decision. All the leverage europe has over russia (sanctions, confiscated assets) has been gifted to ukraine, to do with as they please. I have no idea why everyone acts like europe is the one who gets to decide to keep fighting.
It is Europe’s problem, or at least they feel it is. That’s why they got involved in the first place. There’s a big strategic difference between Russia controlling Donbas, and Russia controlling Ukraine all the way to the Polish border.
But why?
Anyway, the I don’t think Europe was thinking about this as logically as you are, I suspect they just don’t know how bad things really are.
I assume the Ukrainians know more about how much more they can take than us comfortable westerners.
This is what the EU should say, according to you: "Okay, Ukraine, thanks for all your sacrifices defending our sphere from an aggressive rival power, heroic stuff, but based on our 2000 km away expert analysis, you're going to lose everything momentarily, and this hypothetical outcome would be embarrassing for us. So to give you the proper motivation, we're going to cut off aid until you sign a terrible deal where you keep some rump state."
Does that make sense? Or does this EU sound like it’s being fed lines by russia?
Because the better the deal ukraine gets, and the least russia gets, the better it is for us. While we do care about the well-being of ukraine, we also care about damaging russia, because russia is an enemy and a threat. If ukraine wants to keep on fighting, and russia takes some more losses, that is fine with us. We're certainly not going to pressure our vassal to sign a deal favourable to our enemy; that's not how any of this works.
Everybody kinda conspires to ignore the agency of the ukrainians; trump and the americans always have main character syndrome, while putin’s entire ideology, and his main reason for the war, dogmatically depends on ukraine’s lack of agency. So Putin keeps trying to talk to trump, who doesn’t care besides the vanity boost of ‘ending another war’ and certainly doesn’t control zelensky, or the europeans, who have no concession to give to him because they are not hurting, and also don’t control zelensky.
No, what the EU should say is: "it looks like the amount of aid we're giving you is not enough to stalemate Russia completely. We don't want to give more, so tell us which option you prefer: we can just let you keep on grinding and waiting for a black swan or you tell us how much you're willing to give up to stop the war sooner and we'll try and get Russia to accept the smallest amount of concessions possible. It can't be 'nothing', because that's just the first option in disguise".
Instead, it's always the first option is disguise, which makes the EU look either idealistic, stupid or callous, depending on how you want to interpret this.
Should we increase aid to Ukraine? I think so, but I'm not in charge. So based on current realities, I can… still not do anything. Again, what are you suggesting I do, concretely? That I ‘advise’ ukraine? Fine, I will tell them that based on the august opinion of russian and american commenters, a total collapse of their frontline would be bad for them.
And having been so informed, what am I supposed to do if they prefer continuing the war to accepting russia’s terms? Force them against their will, ‘for their own good’, to accept the terms? Withdraw support, threaten war maybe? How much am I supposed to sacrifice to harm my own ally so that my enemy can get good terms?
I'm all for that. But this is achieved by increasing pressure on Russia, not Ukraine. For example, we could be far more open to threatening putin with war, like sending 'peacekeepers' to lviv, for 'security purposes'.
But I appreciate the chutzpah of a russian trying to reframe europe’s unconditional support for ukraine as somehow morally responsible for ukrainian deaths at the hand of russia.
Maybe after we threaten to withdraw support and zelensky tells us to go fuck ourselves, putin will decide he wants all of ukraine anyway, which is far easier now that ukraine has less equipment. I don’t believe putin wants peace. I don’t even believe he wants peace on the terms he just proposed. It’s all a charade for trump’s benefit, putin and zelensky playing hot potato.
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