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Apart from the very expensive nuclear early warning radar Ukraine wrecked..what are they hitting that's budget significant? From oil & gas exports alone Russia gets $300 million a day. That can pay for loads of refinery repairs.
Reuters reported that despite all these strikes on refinery, actual refining is down just 3% this year.
They don't have to. They have more shells, more drones and more bombs - they can keep killing Ukrainian soldiers at a favorable ratio until Ukraine agrees not to be a US proxy, which is their goal.
If the Russian goal was 'Ukraine isn't a US proxy' then they could have just not invaded in the first place. The idea that the invasion of Ukraine was really Russia defending itself against the US is a bizarre fantasy. The goal was conquering Ukraine to eliminate it as a sovereign state, and to eliminate the identity of the Ukrainian people as distinct from the Russians. Putin literally wrote an essay on why the invasion was justified, it's nothing to do with America.
Russia is against Ukraine joining NATO because NATO membership might prevent Russia invading again once it has built up more strength.
Ukraine is controlled by US thru selective prosecutions.
What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate?
US rotates an FBI agent through the NABU anti-corruption agency. He has access to all the investigation files. In a massively corrupt country, this allows for selective, discretionary prosecutions.
https://zn.ua/ukr/POLITICS/detektivi-nabu-zustrilisja-z-novim-ahentom-fbr-u-mezhakh-spravi-mindicha-dzherela-.html?
So Russia invaded Ukraine not because of all the reasons that Putin said Russia invaded Ukraine (including in his accidentally leaked victory speech), but actually because the FBI cooperates with the Ukrainian anti-corruption department? And Putin was offended enough by the idea of a neighbouring country engaging in policing cooperation that he needed to invade the country and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
And this is despite Putin never mentioning said police cooperation at any point before or during the war?
Lmao.
As if Zelensky didn't try getting rid of NABU this autumn and failed.
As if NABU hasn't just scored a hit against Zelensky by ousting Yermak.
What on earth are you talking about? We're talking about Russia's war aims. And you haven't as yet defended your original point that all Russia wanted was for Ukraine not to be a US proxy.
If Ukraine had kicked out all American officials, refused all American aid and publicly rejected any help or direction from the US in 2013, do you really think that Russia wouldn't have invaded the Crimea? Do you think that all of Putin's open, long-held revanchist beliefs would have vanished into the air? Because all poor, innocent Russia wanted was to not have a scary US proxy on their doorstep?
They wanted Ukraine because they considered the Ukrainian nation as illegitimate, and its lands as rightfully belonging to Russia. The regime is quite open about this, and yet it still has useful idiots in the west acting as if somehow Russia launching an explicit war of conquest against its smaller neighbour is somehow a defensive move against the US, the only nation in the world that apparently has any agency.
The reason Russia invaded Crimea was the new Ukrainian government was very strongly influenced by happily murderous (and partly nazi) nationalists and would have loved nothing more than to take over a piece of territory that's not only of prime strategic importance to Russians, but that is also very important historically. You can look it up why, or just ask chatGPT about what exactly Crimea was up to before it became Russian. They don't teach you that at your schools, I'm sure.
So please don't act like a leftist who is permanently obtuse.
It's a war of 'denazification', not conquest. Once foreign expansionists and their puppets are removed from power, the rest of Ukraine can keep on being Ukrainian. And yeah, Russians are taking the parts of Ukraine that are historically Russian. You think Ukrainians should be left unpunished for their stupid decisions of deciding to act as proxies for the enemies of Russia?
You seem to lack a theory of mind, so perhaps try to imagine Chinese doing a color revolution in Canada, the victorious revolutionaries installing a government that's half Chinese and then signing a defence pact with China that promises PLA bases on the Great Lakes and both seaboards within a few years. Now that you have imagined it, how does that make you feel, and more importantly, do you really think the US military would be willing to just let it happen? Mhmm?
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