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Notes -
This is nothing compared to other Ukrainian public relation efforts.
First there was picking American transgender woman as official spokesperson for Ukrainian army, who then went on unhinged rant threatening to kill "Russian propagandists" all over the world.
(speaking in English, not Russian, so it is clear that it were not Russians in Russia who were target of this threat)
This speech is there, it is something you will hear from mouth of cartoon Evil Mastermind(TM) in corny B movie, just before Action Hero(TM) storms in and drops the villain into his/her/their/zir/xir own shark tank.
Someone in charge then noticed this does not make Ukraine look exactly like Avengers team and decided to suspend Cirillo.
So sanity prevailed and all will be good (optics) from now?
Well, Zelensky just decided to make honorary "ambassador of Ukraine", of all people, Marina Abramovic, world famous performance artist.
It sounds like 4chan fake news prank, but it is real, reported by mainstream media(and then vanishing from their pages).
Ukraine knows well what it is doing, Ukraine tries hard to signal it is on the right side and win hearts and minds.
Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.
edit: links
Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!" - it's hard to blame Zelensky for betting on the other side. He has people's lives at stake. If sucking up to whatever Western weirdo is what helps to get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives - worth it thousand times over. I mean, the US red tribe can't be both "fuck all those guys over the border" and then be wondering "why those guys over the border suck up to Democrats?!" Because that's their only option, if the right says upfront they want nothing to do with it. Ukraine is toast without Western help, they just don't have the resources to fight Putin alone, especially given they can't afford to get a million of their own killed people like Putin can. So yes, sometimes it would look stupid. Sometimes it will be stupid - desperate people don't always look very attractive.
The implication being that the pro-Ukraine side, by contrast, has a plan?
How'd Syria go?
Libya?
Afghanistan?
Iraq?
Iraq the first time?
Iran?
Afghanistan the first time?
...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?
If you want to defend the interventionist consensus, defend the results it has delivered over the last thirty years through the multiple fucking iterations it has played out, very publicly, at vast economic and social and human cost. Show how all the previous disasters were really just faulty perception, or working the kinks out, or something other than simply a blind-spot in your geopolitical perception the size of the fucking moon. I'll cop to not expecting the Russian army to be a shambolic trash-disaster, and sure, right now we are fairly thoroughly mauling that army for pennies on the dollar, given that Ukranian and Russian lives are considered to have no value in the equation. But what's the endgame, here?
What are you willing to call success, such that we can move on, job well done, no more entanglements and expenditures needed?
What are you willing to call failure, such that you agree that it's time to cut our losses?
Because I have heard this fucking song and dance before, where "these next six months are critical" for ten or fifteen or twenty years at a stretch, and my heuristic is that anyone selling that bullshit is either a braindead incompetent or a literal vampire who requires decapitation and a stake through the heart. I refuse to play this game where we pretend that all those previous disasters and betrayals and massacres and atrocities didn't actually happen or were just crazy random happenstance, where we pretend that American foreign policy and leadership should be presumed to be competent and efficient and generally on the ball. I can't pretend that hard, and I have zero respect for those who can.
It is not a board game. USA will continue to have relations with all involved parties, it does not end.
No, not expecting that. I would settle for Russia defanged enough that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence. And will stop thinking they can take on NATO or countries supported by NATO.
It appears that going through ginormous stockpiles produced by USSR may be needed before that will happen.
(obviously, settling for being corrupt and internally violent and sort-of-useful as sort-of counterbalance against China would be nice, but sadly they actually believed that they are still superpower entitled to rule over central and eastern Europe...)
USSR sized sphere of influence? Ukraine is closer to Moscow than Canada is to Washington.
They also made repeated comments and actions concerning Baltics and Poland. I am well aware that they have not invaded this countries outright, so far.
But I want them to stop completely and cease any military threats whatsoever (for start, stop repeated airspace incursion with their military planes). And ensure that their officials makes threats/jokes/suggestions about invading Poland as often as Germans ones are doing as of 2023.
And I want all US servicemen and equipment brought back to the USA, all foreign military entanglements ended, and for our supposed allies to defend themselves.
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Okay, what's your assessment of what we've achieved versus what we paid from this approach to date?
We defanged Iraq very thoroughly in the first gulf war. Hussein no longer was able to exercise territorial ambitions. Do you find that this made the world a better place?
My knowledge about middle east and wars there is far more limited than of eastern Europe so I do not feel very qualified to answer.
But my expectation was that Russia was going to start serious war with someone at some point (or recreate USSR by repeated invasions and countries surrendering). So funding defence of Ukraine is preferable in my opinion to fighting direct NATO-Russia war that would be far more problematic in many aspects.
That it was worth spending this funds to achieve this, though less innocent lives would be lost if materiel would be provided earlier, on larger scale and more decisively rather then being dripped bit by bit.
(disclaimer: I am from Poland, not from USA - for me aggressive and too powerful Russia is top1 geopolitic problem)
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How do you arrive at this conclusion from Russia invading what was literally their own satellite state for 20 years after the USSR fell until the US took it away? It's just completely out of touch with reality.
I base it on treating Ukraine as own satellite state and on their comments and actions concerning Baltics and Poland.
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This "Russia = USSR" logic doesn't work out the way you think it does.
Firstly, it means inheriting the legacy of the Holodomor. Attempting to claim a moral right to rule a people after you attempt to genocide them is...something.
But even ignoring that, the USSR literally agreed to dissolve into independent states in 1991. If the Soviets "owned" Ukraine, then Russia inheriting their claims means it has no claim as such over Ukraine.
Also, the Budapest Memo had Russia agree to not use military force against Ukraine.
You can talk all you want about "satellite states" and what not, Russia already agreed decades ago it wouldn't do what it has been doing since 2014.
It's geopolitics, who the fuck cares. If tanks and jet fighters required newborns to be put in blenders in order to function, nothing about our world would change.
I think a great many people care about moral justification for a claim of rulership.
Indeed, we are all here because, centuries ago, some opportunistic Anglos and Scots had questions about rulership.
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I'm not claiming that Russia = USSR.
USSR controlled Ukraine more or less directly up until 91.
Ukraine was then it's own state on paper, but in reality a Russian satellite state up until 2014. "A russian satellite state for 20 years" Technically 23.
It only entered the western orbit after the coup in 2014. (Well the western part of it)
Russia isn't trying to expand its sphere of influence to USSR levels, that would mean going as far west as Germany. It's just trying to maintain it at post USSR levels and even that is seen as some extreme aggressive act while NATO bombs and murders everyone outside of the west indiscriminately and people that think they're civilized make endless excuses for the abuse.
Doesn't really matter. Russia signed the agreements to let Ukraine be independent. Can't complain if it actually exercises that status.
Yeah, because it can't. There's no going back in that regard unless NATO itself breaks up, and Putin's invasion literally reversed the flagging support for that organization. Talk about a strategic blunder. What it is doing, however, is trying to gobble up nations while it can to its west. Because once the NATO aegis is established, it's over, that country is not coming back.
Which bombs are we referring to? Bosnia and Herzegovina? Serbia? Afghanistan? The Gulf of Aden? Libya? Syria?
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