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Whatever, I'm not american. I'm just telling you the rules for little fishes with an italy-size gdp. All the other little fishes in europe think your actions are unjustified, and if that's the way it's gonna be, they'd like karelia and königsberg back to allay their reasonable fear of russian invasion.
Why are you telling those rules to me? You can send a letter to Putin with all those rules. Also include the info that you're not american and you'll totally take Karelia and Konigsberg from him! With all those russians who are living there now. You can also attach some pictures of what will you do to them. It's justifiable as obviously Putin can't do what US of A are doing while having GDP of Italy, you're against that. And those are the rules you just made up.
You seemed to have difficulty comprehending why a vague fear of future invasion is a poor justification for an invasion. The invasion of Karelia and Königsberg is just an example of the principle of land phobia applied to the richer neighbours of russia, presently united in their fear and/or dislike of russia. I of course oppose the principle, and therefore the EU invasion of these lands on those grounds, no matter how important for our security they may be, or how solid the historical claims are.
If you do get it now, then I‘m sure Putin will understand when I explain it to him later.
I was arguing why it's not ludicrous to fear hostile action from NATO as Russia, i wasn't justifying the invasion. But as you've crossed the line of being very minimally polite, as well as obviously straw-manning my words, i'm not sure you'll get anything but further sarcasm from me and from Putin.
Why did you say the following, then:
Seems like a better solution would have been not to invade Ukraine, yet this presents the invasion, where we are, as the west's fault.
Because while one thing leads to another and it's not that hard to anticipate that your unfriendly actions will lead to the further escalation from the other side and it's in your power to avoid it, at the end of that chain of sad and avoidable events still one side crossed the line. That's the end of Q&A for you, thanks for listening.
So russia crossed the line into country-spanning destruction, yet the more peaceful side should have deescalated even more. Reward russia for escalating. Makes no sense. From that point of view, if north korea launches a nuke, it would only mean we haven‘t deescalated enough. Are you a pacifist?
Back in January, if Putin had been offered stable possession (or 'independent' puppetry) of Crimea and Donbas, I expect he would have agreed.
Would he have come back for more? Maybe, but now he has that plus a good deal more -- alongside many dead soldiers on both sides.
Who is 'winning' here? If he can be dislodged, maybe things are better for the Ukranians than having sued for pre-emptive peace -- but this is far from a given, and surely won't happen without a lot more ruin being inflicted on the nation.
(The answer to who is winning of course is the good old US of A -- if they incited the war behind the scenes it was very well hidden, but the surely did nothing to stop it)
All of this is totally unfair to Ukraine ofc -- but at times pragmatism can be better than a search for fairness in the world.
Agreed, and continue salami slicing Ukraine. How that would be preferable to anyone except Putin?
No idea why you see maybe here. Russia fucked up Budapest Memorandum, initially bothered to pretend they have not invaded, later invaded more and more openly, shot down civilian plane, in 2022 Putin openly declared destruction of Ukraine as a goal (:"demilitarization"), annexed area they even do not control...
Why on earth they would stop after Ukraine would surrender and give up territory after being threatened? They would continue after such success.
Admitting Ukraine into NATO would raise a lot of screeching and Turkey/Hungary would block that anyway.
Giving NATO-like guarantees to Ukraine would be quite risky, also politically.
Giving Putin regime what they wanted (rerun of Chamberlain) would not really help anyway.
What USA was even supposed to do? Maybe precomitting to support Ukraine would be a good idea.
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If Ukraine thinks it‘s worth it, and Europe thinks it‘s worth it, there is nothing morally ambiguous in the US (or in your case... Canada, was it?) profiting from the situation. Just take the easy win and lucrative export markets as a bonus of our friendship. There is no point in trying to save us against our will, just be pragmatic.
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