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I think that MTG, and a lot of commenters on here, need to realise that Ukraine will not stop this war until Russia are out, regardless of the international support or otherwise. Even if Ukraine is overrun completely the war would not stop, but would go on until Russia leave.
I would add three things to what they need to realize:
It is possible for Ukraine to win.
Russia is a ruthless and incompetent oligarchy, and they cannot be allowed to expand their territory.
Fighting or fleeing are vastly preferable to being subsumed by Russia.
All perfectly correct. However, it is a war that Russia will never win, like Afghanistan.
To elaborate on this point: Russia is trying to 1 take Ukraine and 2 keep it. They have not succeeded in part 1, and part 2 is much much more difficult. Afghanistan, as stated in the above comment, is a good example of this: the war to take Afghanistan took less than a year, whereas the struggle to keep it under control was failing two decades in.
Russia can't even do the easy part.
Of course, this is assuming that they're not just trying to keep hold of Crimea so they have a port on the black sea, which I think is the real reason they're prosecuting the war.
What's funny is that Ukraine was making no moves on the conquered territory of Crimea. They didn't seem to want to fight Russia over it. But now that Russia went and invaded the rest of the country all bets are off...
Yes, very true that.
I think he was referring to the Russian war with Afghanistan not the 2 decades long US war with Afghanistan.
To add on -- we need to recognize that Russia is trying to enforce the old rules of imperialism. In their eyes, Ukraine did not have the right to determine their own future and who they wanted to ally with. Russia had to approve of all their decisions and Russia controlled them.
Defeating Russia is more then Ukrainian independence. It is an unequivocal statement by the West that we will not allow imperialism nor wars of conquest to resurface in Europe. And hopefully with time, this extends to the rest of the world too, and other countries will check Western ones if we begin to forget that.
At the end of the day, a country's sovereignty and right to self determination are sacred, only to be stripped if they use it to deny others of the same. There is a clear leftist geopolitical perspective here for continuing to back Ukraine.
That's great and all, but mostly it's keeping one of their largest geopolitical rivals tied up in a war that saps their strength at relatively small cost.
Multiple things can be true. And we're hardly keeping them tied up in a war when they can unilaterally withdraw and end the war. If they don't want to end up in a protracted, hopeless war, they can stop at any time.
Well that's the thing, they can, but unless leadership changes, they won't. Can't be a strongman if you appear weak, so Putin has kind of cornered himself
And this is after he was given several off ramps. He could've withdrawn before the invasion and just said Western intelligence was paranoid. I believe Macron tried to talk him down too.
To add on -- we need to recognize that Russia is trying to enforce the old rules of imperialism.
Which is absolutely bullshit when you consider that originally Moscow was in Ukraine, not Russia
The fuck are you talking about. The capital of the old Rus was Kiev, hence it being called the Kieven Rus. But moscow was at most an irrelevent village at best during most of the history of the Kieven Rus, it wasnt until the Mongols that you see Moscow become relevent through trade and not getting pillaged.
This is the equivelent of saying Dublin was originally in England not Ireland. Its nonsense.
People refuse to recognize that the Ukrainian people do not want to be taken over by the Russians. There's no good reason why they should be. They refuse to acknowledge the desires of the people, maybe because fighting back against an oppressor is foreign to their own cowardly psychology.
You should rephrase this, almost looks like you believe Ukraine wants to be attacked by war criminals and terrorists.