I don’t want to make Ukrainians do anything. If they choose to keep fighting, they should be enabled to do so. If they choose to make peace, great, but they should be armed sufficiently that they can actually negotiate instead of just capitulate. Either way they need to be armed, because if they don’t have the capacity to make the status quo costly then they have no leverage. There is no negotiation if we neuter Ukraine beforehand, there are only Russian demands.
Also, most of the aid is not weapons. A lot of it is, but more of it is housing Ukrainian refugees and funding the Ukrainian govenment to keep the basics of civil services going.
How may of them chose to fight in the first place, aside from the neo-Nazi ones? Many of them were conscripted and forced to fight.
How many of the women & children & old men want the fighting to continue? The Ukrainian government is a shit government; how committed even are they to its survival? This is a post-US coup government that has banned opposition parties and is auctioning the country off to foreign capitalists. All of the aid they’re getting is lend-lease, which they will be repaying for generations. This is going to be full-on neoliberal shock therapy.
To what extent does the Ukrainian government have a choice in whether to continue fighting, when the US clearly has a lot of say in the matter despite its claims to the contrary?
1: Enough that there aren’t mass desertions at the front lines.
2a: Continuing to fight typically has 2:1 support in what polling I have seen. My country’s governnment is absolute dogshit, but if Russia invaded my country you’re damn fucking right I’d want to fight them about it even with our shit government.
2b: Your article assumes a US coup, it does not show that there was a US coup. It is not weird that the American embassy wanted to negotiate with potential new leaders, doing so does not mean they masterminded a coup, and Zelenskyy was never even mentioned in the Nuland-Pyatt call. There have been two elections since then. It is also not difficult to believe that the protests against Yanukovych were legitimate considering his massive unilateral lurch in policy just beforehand.
2c: Absolutely shocking to suspend pro-Russia parties while literally being invaded by Russia. It should be noted that the incumbent party has a majority either way and suspending parties did not grant them any power they didn’t already have. Further, the parties suspended represent a minority of the opposition.
2d: Sorry to tell you this but fighting a war is actually quite expensive. Is this approach the best one? I have no idea. It hardly seems relevant to what your second point started as. If you’d rather Ukraine didn’t do this, it’s going to need alternative financing, which means more support from its backers, not less.
2e: I do think that it should just be gifted, and some of it is. If your preference is that they get nothing at all then Ukraine could equally just refuse the lend-lease. Again, the better solution here is more support, not less.
2f: You know Ukraine was a capitalist country before this war started, right? But once again, if you don’t want this to happen, Ukraine needs more unconditional support, not less.
3: How much say do you think the US has? This article is literally about Russia trying to get the US to decide on Ukraine’s behalf and the US saying “that’s not our choice”. What is the US going to do if Ukraine decides to stop fighting? Stop supplying arms that the Ukrainians don’t need anyway if they’re at peace? The thing that I assume you want the US to do anyway, given the comment you’re responding to?
A pretty fair point but I still think you are neglecting a few things.
Firstly, while according to this study by the Kiev international institute of sociology most Ukrainians do still support the war it also indicate that the portion that peace at the cost of losing territory is definitely growing since the start of 2023, if I were to try giving admittedly loose and uncertain bound based on those numbers and assuming the rate of change don’t shrink, I would expect this portion to reach 50% of the population 2 months from now at the soonest, 11 months from now at the latest.
An other related thing to consider is how accurately is the state of the war depicted in Ukrainian media? A state at war that don’t plan to surrender has incentives to make their war effort as good as possible and the enemy’s war effort as bad as possible and Ukraine is obviously no exception.
Depending on how distorted the narrative about the war is, these figures could be drastically different from what they would be if the Ukrainian public got a more neutral account of the war.
So do the Ukrainian want to continue fighting? For now yes, but I don’t believe it will last.
Your leverage point is moot in my opinion.
As I said, it is a fact that Russia is winning the war and that Ukraine has decisively failed to push them back before the Russian entrenchment in their position and the dwindling military supply to Ukraine made doing so impossible going forward.
I’m not saying that Russia could just roll over to Kiev any day if they wanted, that would obviously be absurd, but the military situation in Ukraine, the state of western weapon manufacturing compared to Russia’s and the sheer difference in manpower reserve and moral make it such that even if the west threw every last weapon in their stockpile at Ukraine, it would not change significantly what a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev could look like. I repeat therefor once again that the ONLY thing continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons is increasing the death toll on both side and prolonging the was for nothing, it’s literally not doing anything more, let alone helping Ukraine in any tangible way.
You are right, though, that most of the aid to Ukraine is humanitarian and not military, and those absolutely should continue, but that’s one reason more to not prolong the war uselessly, the end of the war would make helping the Ukrainian people way easier and would allow Ukraine to start rebuilding.
If arming Ukraine does not substantially impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, how does it prolong the war? In your assessment, Ukraine would be forced to make peace at the same point either way. Could you expand on that?
If arming Ukraine does not substantially impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, how does it prolong the war?
This is not exactly what I said. I didn’t say that it didn’t impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, I said it doesn’t change the outcome of the war.
Of course, arming Ukraine adds difficulty for Russia, but it only at most delay Russia getting what they want since because of the way the war is going and the west’s inability to outproduce Russia, Russia has time on their side. Russia can largely afford to just wait until western weapon supply to Ukraine can’t keep up with theirs anymore, which is exactly what they have been doing since their retreat from the siege of Kiev in 2022, that’s why the front line has barely moved since then, Russia know they are in a position where time will do most of the work for them.
I’m not sure this holds. To me that very delay is the valuable point of negotiation I’m talking about; this war is also costly in lives and materiel for Russia. Being able to eventually outlast Ukraine on that front doesn’t negate that. But I think that’s getting towards too subjective a point for us to find common ground on.
I’m sure it is, but Zelenskyy is an adult and capable of making his own decisions either way and I don’t see what leverage the US could possibly have to force him to keep fighting. What are they going to do if he makes peace, stop giving Ukraine weapons for the war they aren’t fighting any more? Even if the US deposed him, Zelenskyy has said openly that he doesn’t want to run the country after the war. Can’t say I blame him, I’d want a holiday too.
Regardless, none of this changes the fact that if you had read more than the headline, you wouldn’t have said “per the article”, would you?
I don’t want to make Ukrainians do anything. If they choose to keep fighting, they should be enabled to do so. If they choose to make peace, great, but they should be armed sufficiently that they can actually negotiate instead of just capitulate. Either way they need to be armed, because if they don’t have the capacity to make the status quo costly then they have no leverage. There is no negotiation if we neuter Ukraine beforehand, there are only Russian demands.
Also, most of the aid is not weapons. A lot of it is, but more of it is housing Ukrainian refugees and funding the Ukrainian govenment to keep the basics of civil services going.
1: Enough that there aren’t mass desertions at the front lines.
2a: Continuing to fight typically has 2:1 support in what polling I have seen. My country’s governnment is absolute dogshit, but if Russia invaded my country you’re damn fucking right I’d want to fight them about it even with our shit government.
2b: Your article assumes a US coup, it does not show that there was a US coup. It is not weird that the American embassy wanted to negotiate with potential new leaders, doing so does not mean they masterminded a coup, and Zelenskyy was never even mentioned in the Nuland-Pyatt call. There have been two elections since then. It is also not difficult to believe that the protests against Yanukovych were legitimate considering his massive unilateral lurch in policy just beforehand.
2c: Absolutely shocking to suspend pro-Russia parties while literally being invaded by Russia. It should be noted that the incumbent party has a majority either way and suspending parties did not grant them any power they didn’t already have. Further, the parties suspended represent a minority of the opposition.
2d: Sorry to tell you this but fighting a war is actually quite expensive. Is this approach the best one? I have no idea. It hardly seems relevant to what your second point started as. If you’d rather Ukraine didn’t do this, it’s going to need alternative financing, which means more support from its backers, not less.
2e: I do think that it should just be gifted, and some of it is. If your preference is that they get nothing at all then Ukraine could equally just refuse the lend-lease. Again, the better solution here is more support, not less.
2f: You know Ukraine was a capitalist country before this war started, right? But once again, if you don’t want this to happen, Ukraine needs more unconditional support, not less.
3: How much say do you think the US has? This article is literally about Russia trying to get the US to decide on Ukraine’s behalf and the US saying “that’s not our choice”. What is the US going to do if Ukraine decides to stop fighting? Stop supplying arms that the Ukrainians don’t need anyway if they’re at peace? The thing that I assume you want the US to do anyway, given the comment you’re responding to?
A pretty fair point but I still think you are neglecting a few things.
Firstly, while according to this study by the Kiev international institute of sociology most Ukrainians do still support the war it also indicate that the portion that peace at the cost of losing territory is definitely growing since the start of 2023, if I were to try giving admittedly loose and uncertain bound based on those numbers and assuming the rate of change don’t shrink, I would expect this portion to reach 50% of the population 2 months from now at the soonest, 11 months from now at the latest.
An other related thing to consider is how accurately is the state of the war depicted in Ukrainian media? A state at war that don’t plan to surrender has incentives to make their war effort as good as possible and the enemy’s war effort as bad as possible and Ukraine is obviously no exception.
Depending on how distorted the narrative about the war is, these figures could be drastically different from what they would be if the Ukrainian public got a more neutral account of the war.
So do the Ukrainian want to continue fighting? For now yes, but I don’t believe it will last.
Your leverage point is moot in my opinion.
As I said, it is a fact that Russia is winning the war and that Ukraine has decisively failed to push them back before the Russian entrenchment in their position and the dwindling military supply to Ukraine made doing so impossible going forward.
I’m not saying that Russia could just roll over to Kiev any day if they wanted, that would obviously be absurd, but the military situation in Ukraine, the state of western weapon manufacturing compared to Russia’s and the sheer difference in manpower reserve and moral make it such that even if the west threw every last weapon in their stockpile at Ukraine, it would not change significantly what a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev could look like. I repeat therefor once again that the ONLY thing continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons is increasing the death toll on both side and prolonging the was for nothing, it’s literally not doing anything more, let alone helping Ukraine in any tangible way.
You are right, though, that most of the aid to Ukraine is humanitarian and not military, and those absolutely should continue, but that’s one reason more to not prolong the war uselessly, the end of the war would make helping the Ukrainian people way easier and would allow Ukraine to start rebuilding.
I don’t understand your reasoning behind:
If arming Ukraine does not substantially impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, how does it prolong the war? In your assessment, Ukraine would be forced to make peace at the same point either way. Could you expand on that?
This is not exactly what I said. I didn’t say that it didn’t impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, I said it doesn’t change the outcome of the war.
Of course, arming Ukraine adds difficulty for Russia, but it only at most delay Russia getting what they want since because of the way the war is going and the west’s inability to outproduce Russia, Russia has time on their side. Russia can largely afford to just wait until western weapon supply to Ukraine can’t keep up with theirs anymore, which is exactly what they have been doing since their retreat from the siege of Kiev in 2022, that’s why the front line has barely moved since then, Russia know they are in a position where time will do most of the work for them.
I’m not sure this holds. To me that very delay is the valuable point of negotiation I’m talking about; this war is also costly in lives and materiel for Russia. Being able to eventually outlast Ukraine on that front doesn’t negate that. But I think that’s getting towards too subjective a point for us to find common ground on.
Well as per the article that choice is clearly not theirs, it’s the United States’. And the US says war
Read the fucking article. The US response was “it’s not our choice to make”
You don’t think the US is privately egging Zelensky on while publicly putting on a face of “oh it’s totally their choice to make”?
If I had stock in Raytheon that’s certainly what I’d like to see… just saying.
I’m sure it is, but Zelenskyy is an adult and capable of making his own decisions either way and I don’t see what leverage the US could possibly have to force him to keep fighting. What are they going to do if he makes peace, stop giving Ukraine weapons for the war they aren’t fighting any more? Even if the US deposed him, Zelenskyy has said openly that he doesn’t want to run the country after the war. Can’t say I blame him, I’d want a holiday too.
Regardless, none of this changes the fact that if you had read more than the headline, you wouldn’t have said “per the article”, would you?