5, I know I announced this weeks ago, but work and a holiday came inbetween; making a post like this takes a lot of effort for me because I actually do research, try to retrace my steps on what I believe to know, read through my sources, and don't just repeat whatever was belched out on Twitter or something I half-remembered from a YouTube video. The following is about a quarter of what I want to say to you, but it already took me two hours to write, I am tired and I have other things to do.
For Crimea I mentioned it in a post above. For Donbas states he didn’t ask to annex them just to be independent which holds some ground and logic as the states were in civil war with Ukraine for 8 years anyway.
The only ones who interpret the conflict in Donbas 2014-2022 as a civil war are Putin and the leaders of the so-called People's Republics of Donezk and Luhansk. In reality, it was already a low-key Russian invasion; the separatist forces are known to have been under direct Russian control and received heavy Russian military support, even if the Putin regime never openly admitted it. There is extensive documentation of Russian forces crossing the Ukrainian border to the Luhansk and Donezk oblasts in the second half of August 2014. The war has been going on ever since. The Moscow regime was always careful to cover up its traces and keep about it an air of plausible deniability, something which negotiation partners such as Germany and France decided to just accept. Putin may not have ever openly announced that he wanted to annex Luhansk and Donezk, but it's ridiculous to think that he wasn't aiming for that.
Considering that big parts of Donbas are heavily Russian, there could be some middle ground I’m sure, this is the meaning of negotiations.
Well, here is the problem: The Moscow regime had and has no rightful claim to the Donbas region, so negotiations such as these would set a dangerous precedent. How can you know that Putin won't pull the same trick again in two years? There is such a thing as history, and we know from history that people like Putin will not play nicely just because they signed a piece of paper. Please,
please read up on two things: 1. Ivan Ilyin, a guy who loved Hitler and Mussolini and hated Ukraine and democracy; Putin turned his tomb into a shrine in 2008, frequently quotes him in speeches and tells his minions to read his books; and 2. The Munich Agreement of 1938: Here, the UK and France accepted Hitler's claim on German-populated territories in Czechoslovakia if that meant he would cease his expansionist agenda. Half a year later, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia anyway.
I'm not making these things up. They are out in the open. Ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχοντες οὐ βλέπετε καὶ ὦτα ἔχοντες οὐκ ἀκούετε;
Actually it’s not even secret, US had very visibly meddled in the coup. There are even leaked conversations where Victoria Nuland handpicking the next government, the famous Fuck the EU quote is from there. Here Jeffrey Sachs explains that despite all parties (Russia, US, EU, Ukraine) had agreed to a certain plan, the very next day when Nationalists did the coup, Obama immediately supported them.
Nuland was an awful diplomat, we can all agree on this. However, from a certain point of view, she did exactly what you otherwise are asking for, pushing for a non-aligned solution for the Euromaidan crisis, in the responsibility of the United Nations, and not the EU - that's what the "Fuck the EU" quote was meant to say. Might I remind you that Russia is part of the UN Security council, and very notably not part of the EU - so in a way, Nuland was supporting a solution that involved Russia.
Now, the next part where you are, and I genuinely assume, unwittingly, using Kremlin propaganda terminology, is by speaking of a "Nationalist Coup". This is the term the Kremlin uses. Ukrainians call it a revolution - hundreds of thousands of people protesting against a government whose policy they disagreed with. After ordering police violence on the protesters, Yanukovich lost political support even within his own party and fled to Moscow; he was voted out of office by the parliament afterwards.
Since you are asking me to listen without prejudice (more on that later), I would like to know why you are uncritically adopting the "coup" terminology used only by pro-Yanukovich and pro-Russian sources as if that was the only term there is for it.
I heard something interesting the other day. US -EU only talk about victory against Russia as if it were the only way.
That would mean direct NATO countries war with Russia, since there’s no way Ukraine can win alone.
Not necessarily, it can also mean increased weapons supply for Ukraine.
Ok let's start from what I've posted today. What about RAND Report & Brzezinski's article? Are they lies & propaganda too? Have you read them?
No, they are not lies and propaganda. But they are also not official US policy. The RAND Corporation is a think tank that does geopolitical analysis to provide advice for policy. The RAND report is providing a resource for potential policy decisions aimed at checking Russia if this is deemed necessary by US policy makers. It's like having a doctor specialising in Parkinson's disease around in case you need someone's opinion on a law concerning Parkinson treatment. It is completely up to US policy makers to decide if and which elements of the RAND report they want to use as the basis for policy.
Good point about fake republics but as you said it is not about territory, or expanding any Empire, Ukraine in NATO is viewed as an existential thread from them something that we knew but we kept pushing anyway. Because it was not about Ukraine in the first place it was and it is about expanding and possibly breaking Russia.
If all you have to back up this claim is an article from 1997 and a think tank report, then you have a very poor case. Let's take a look at what western countries have done to reach out to Russia since 1990:
1990
Message from Turnberry
We, the Foreign Ministers of the Alliance [= NATO], express our determination to seize the historic opportunities resulting from the profound changes in Europe to help build a new peaceful order in Europe, based on freedom, justice and democracy. In this spirit, we extend to the Soviet Union and to all other European countries the hand of friendship and cooperation.
NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner and his wife visit Moscow from 13 to 17 July 1990 and meet Foreign Minister Shevernadze and President Gorbatchev
Treaty of Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
1994
Budapest Memorandum agrees on nuclear disarmament of all post-Soviet states (including Ukraine)
except for Russia
1997
Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and Russia
NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council
1998
Russia is invited to join G7, which is expanded to G8, despite Russia significantly lagging behind all other members in economic and democratic development
2002
NATO-Russia Council is founded
Putin blew all that in 2007 with his Munich speech, in 2008 with his invasion of Georgia, and in 2014 with his annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas. Contrary to what he claims, NATO never committed not to allow members from the former East Bloc to join.
The way I read it, he is very cautious and sometimes views confrontation as the last resort. So he went for Minsk agreements instead of attacking in 2014 -15. Or now, that he fights ultra cautiously without engaging large part of his army at all.
One might wonder why Putin would have negotiated with the west over Ukraine, if he didn't make any claims to it. It also severely undermines your claim that the "west" is not ready to negotiate with Russi. It was done here.
But Russia never even started to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine as agreed, Ukraine continued fighting, and Minsk II was just a worthless piece of paper, and proof that Ukraine's fate is not to be decided on by foreign powers.
As I said, there is much more I want to say, but I'll just leave it with the following:
But when I see you Perun and other people whom I consider bright, repeating politicians' narratives and not being at least sceptical this is what worries me the most.
You simply assume that I'm not sceptical about this. Let me tell you something: I've had the Putin Pill in my mouth. I believed Putin had a point with his Munich speech in 2007. I spat that pill out the first time in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, and the people whom I deemed on my side, the ones calling themselves the political Left, defended the invasion; the same people who denounced independent countries deciding to NATO as an act of US imperialism justified the invasion by literally saying that Georgia had been part of the Russian sphere of influence for 200 years. The following years, I believed the Georgian invasion had been an isolated incident, and once again I had the pill slowly placed into my mouth, without noticing it. In 2013 and even early 2014, I believed that it is absolutely unthinkable that Putin would bring war to Europe. War in Europe was a thing of the past. We were all one now. I even believed that there was a genuine case for Crimean independence. And then Russian boots entered Crimea, and I spat the Putin Pill out again in disgust.
The truth is that Vladimir Putin plunged Europe into a situation that we, from our western perspective, have no hope of solving. The options are grim:
1. We cease support for Ukraine and Russians occupy the entire country,
savagely murder its population and then move towards Moldova, Poland, Latvia or Estonia. And then it's again not worth risking nuclear war over, and the day after tomorrow, either Russian soldiers are at my doorstep in Berlin
or his lackeys have taken power here.
2. We negotiate, give Putin part of what he wants, he comes back in two years, we negotiate again, and then one day we find there's nothing left to negotiate over.
3. We keep supporting Ukraine the way we do now, continuing a war of attrition that will last for years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives, hoping an exhausted Russian population will overthrow Putin before Russia's cyber warfare destroyed the last of our democracy.
4. We increase our support step-by-step, always believing we are controlling the escalation, which as history shows, we never truly do.
5. We go all-out, NATO sends troops to Ukraine and we risk a nuclear holocaust.
We would have to consider none of these options if Putin withdrew his forces from Ukraine.
