Ukraine is aware of that despite the rhetoric. They need to be in a far stronger position to get any kind of deal which enables them to get some kind of security guarantee though.

There is no solution until Putin is there, there are only patchwork attempts to reduce the existential threat.

We all know as for Hamas, only with true pivotal regime change we can have peace.

Except that for Putin there is no plausible plan to get regime change anytime soon, nor to put Russia on its knees unless all major world economy fully agree on doing that. As long as china India and others still have pseudo normal economic relationships with Russia, Putin is here to stay.

The USA didn't want to go nuclear vs Russia, imposing all countries in the world a complete blockade of Russia under the threat of being cut off completely of all dollar access.

Until they do so, Ukraine best hope is to barely survive under constant existential threat.

Ukraine has options. Credibly threatening Crimea was one.

China cannot prop up Russia alone, their economy is struggling. Economic collapse is the worse option but it is on the table.

China isn't alone helping Russia stay afloat, India (which I like in general, but here it's acting really rogue in a narrow minded short term self interest fashion) is doing possibly even more.



A Marxist criminal president inimical to the west in Brazil is doing his part as well.

India and Turkey are both moving away as sanctions tighten. Iraq is offering discounts to undercut Russian oil now too. China is carrying most of the weight by far.

Something something the pope

20 Days In Mariupol won best documentary. Everyone should see it.

Saying the Us did not bait the Russians into attacking (at least a little bit) is very suspect. This is classic US strategy. Like when they baited the Japanese to get them to enter ww2 knowing it was a free win and became the rulers of the world for the next 70 years. It may have been the right thing to do both times and the correct strategy and ending imperial japan and and Russia is good. But Its a classic strategy you cant simply just dismiss.

I also don't particularly agree that a cease fire would only help the Russians regroup .They are very happy to send all their expiring warehoused solviet arms and tanks that they would never use in the future just simply because they would be so outdated and expired. The west needs time way more then the Russians do atm to get their artillery production etc going. I am sure the us military industrial complex is salivating at the idea of supplying Ukraine with arms for the next decade and would come out on top of any cold war arms supply race during a cease fire

I kind of laugh when people try to overplay how important it is to destroy so many Russian tanks. Like these tanks are 40-60 years old If they don't use them now they will never use them. Not every country has the luxury of Maintaining 8000 Abram tanks rusting away costing trillions of dollars never to be used which is why I am so bummed the west wont give Ukraine more tanks that they are incredibly unlikely to ever need Especially since we have seen how unimportant tanks will be in modern warfare.

that would be the current battle lines

That is likely but does time actually favor Russia. They are winning now and time favors the west since we have 100x the production power of Russia.

We could simply make peace and arm the Ukrainians so he never comes back. Especially since the us aid is clearly unreliable with an upcoming likely trump victory. Country's like France and Germany need time to catch up

Which is it?


How did USA provoke Russia to invade Ukraine, which both Russia and USA thought would last a few weeks at the most.

Thats been covered enough and you already completely ignored it. I understand not giving it much weight but its clear your not even open to discussing that topic. wish you talked about literally any other point .

moving target I un ironically don't understand your position.

what are you proposing NATO countries should do right now wrt Ukraine?

USA didn't provoke Russia to invade Ukraine. They did the opposite. They chose a poor strategy to do so, and switched to the correct strategy only at the absolute last moment, but they tried.



I don't think there's a single argument I've ignored, but since you won't explain what your argument is I guess it's possible? Seems unlikely.


As far as time favors Russia and time favors the west... I guess? I'm going with time favors the west more. Russia seems to understand this too. 2024 will be rough for Ukraine, that was clear since last summer.

All Russia has to do is bribe/influence our politicians

The west does not have a time advantage, Russia does

PW, do you still think that f16s are the single weapon that enables Ukraine to win?

Russia has the GDP of Spain

f16s would be pretty useless imo

make peace they already accomplished their goals and stalling favors nato not russia

this. its laughable thinking russia will outrearm us in any tempory peace or ceasefire. And this is the main argument against peace by warhawks

I am not a warhawk but i think you aren't considering things in Donbass properly.

With a prolonged ceasefire, Russia can cement it's occupation (which is something it is already doing because we gave it too much time).

They can take ukrainian children and bring them to Russia (which they did already), push the pro ukraine residents to leave (when they didn't kill them already), and secure power among pro-russia residents (russophones and the like) .

I mean i can see your position if we are to accept donbass will be part of Russia , like Crimea.

But if the idea is that we want Ukraine to take back Donbass and Crimea, i don't see how stalling helps with that regard.

Russia does not need to outproduce USA, who clearly wants to move out of Europe to contain China.

It is not clear that EU will continue rearming and even less likely that they send Ukraine enough arms to prevent russia's next attempt at invading. This is why Ukraine wants to fight until they can put themselves into a position to get a favorable peace deal. That's not even mentioning Ukraine's many non military issues.

There is exactly one Warhawk in this scenario: Russia. They don't even want to offer a peace deal right now, Putin made that exceptionally clear.

the republicans who support helping ukraine are war hawks, transparently so. They just want Russia to keep losing men to death or incapacitation as long as possible . That's actually rational for american interests btw (not the same for european interest). Ukrainian losses are irrelevant to them, the quality of live of ukrainians is irrelevant to them.

They don't need Ukraine solved, having Russia bogged down in a Vietnam-like situation is more than enough for them.

EU interests are different ; we share a common advantage in a weaker russia but we need the situation solved because having a vietnam war on the border causes a lot of trouble

What makes you believe that?

I thought the only peace deal Ukraine will agree to is Russia leaves Ukraine including Crimea which is never going to happen . The west already gave Putin Crimea under Obama which sadly was the correct decision and no going back from that