@DarthInvader Some of what you say is true..... However, the NATO expansion thing is a red-herring to keep the West at bay....(not that Putin wouldn't start WW3 if Russia were invaded). And I maintain that it is "his war'.... He made it 'his war' whether he wanted that way or not. Now he's stuck in it. It sort of reminds me of the USA and Vietnam (although there was no 'land-grab' there)..., It was just supposed to be to keep a US footprint in the SE Orient.

@JollyRoger When Russian forces crossed the border in February 2022 Kiev had carried out the biggest shelling of the Donbas since 2014.

And that is according to the OSCE, not me. The west loves to forget the OSCE exists because it actually takes impartiality seriously.

@JollyRoger I will also point out what Russia did was a show of force. Not an invasion. Invasion means something specific. Invasions are when you plan to attack a country and hold territory. 100k was not enough to take a large city, forget a whole country of 40 million.

And it worked until the US and UK convinced Zelensky to fight to the last Ukrainian. Supposedly he was told all he had to do is fight for a year and Russia would magically collapse from within. Boris Johnson was sent as the American lap dog to tell him to tear up the Istanbul peace agreement in March 2022.

Without further interference from the west this conflict would have ended in a month and almost bloodless.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow You are right. However I'd like to add that there is an altruistic side to this war: As 'ball-less' as the UN is, the current world order says that no member country will invade another country.... So: Like it or not, member countries of the UN do have a shared responsibility to help Ukraine in it's moment (years) of need to defend itself.

@JollyRoger Nice try. Literally none of the NATO countries have ever followed that ideal. In fact the first time NATO ever went to war was a war of aggression and invasion. So lets drop the US/NATO world police nonsense.

The west created the mess in Ukraine.

If you want to talk about duties. By the same duties that the west has used to justify wars Russia had a duty to protect the people of Donbas when they were shelled yet again by their own government and violated the Minsk Accords.

@JollyRoger If the US had not overthrown the Ukrainian government in 2014 to make it an American vassal state literally none of this would have happened.

@Khenpal1 Not even remotely if you actually have a clue what is going on there.


Online likely if you believe western talking heads who could not find Ukraine on a map before 2014 calling themselves "experts" now.

Most are still living off Yeltsin and soviet era cliches.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow You got the topic right - but it's really the economics (seized assets) and the human losses (if they are not totally exaggerated) that will prevent Russia from a quick recovery. Nobody is saying that Russia will disappear from the map..... it's just that the oligarchy that Putin has established won't be able to hold onto power - too much loss of face, too much explaining of an inexplicable dream.
Bottom line: Do you think Russia should be allowed to annex Ukraine?

@JollyRoger A couple of things here. Most of the stolen assets were only taken from oligarchs many of which fled to Europe and the US to preserve their ill gotten gains and ironically solving the oligarch issue for Putin.

And the Russian economy is actually in better shape now than it was. It is no longer dependent on outside financing and alot of what was lost was replaced by domestic alternatives. In fact alot of foreign companies left factories and offices intact and it was just a matter of restaffing them.

And Russia has 10 times the population of Ukraine and can absorb the loses they are taking. Ukraine cannot. They have already effectively lost their workforce, the average Ukrainian soldier is older than me (I am 43), and millions left the country with no interest to fight for the regime and Kiev and likely will not return because they have new lives elsewhere (including 5 million in Russia btw).

Ukraine also had a very small percentage of the population that are of the cohort that have children because well nobody from the previous generations wanted to have kids in Europe's most corrupt country. So they have a demographic crisis and the west is still trying to pressure them into drafting 18 year olds.

And if you are talking losses as reported by Kiev than you are looking at completely invented numbers.


As for your question. Annexation was never what this was about.

The US and UK tried to turn Ukraine into a forward operating base for yet more NATO expansion and like even American experts told Bill Clinton back in the 1990s that would start a war.

Russians are tired of American proxy wars in Eastern Europe and don't want to be fighting whoever is the new fig leaf in 10 years just because Washington didn't get the cold war is over.

They didn't start this but they will damn well finish it.

And as for the Donbas Region and Crimea, Kiev burned those bridges in 2014.

It amazes me how a decade in people refuse to educate themselves on the history and politics and just blindly believe whatever the news tells them to believe.

@jshm2 Hmmmm??? I wouldn't really want to live in Russia right now! If that's your belief in 'freedom' and 'democracy' and '1st World economics'..... then I'm happy for you alone.

@Roundandroundwego where you going , and when ?

@AthrillatheHunt keep the faith. The West isn't falling.

@degraded I guess you feel that your unelaborated quip should stand as a censure of Francis' analysis? Give us some more 'depth' of why you think it's delusional?
To me it's 'brinkmanship' and Putin has put all of his broken eggs into the one basket of assuring the Russian people that the loss of their fathers, sons and brothers to 'his' war will be the start of remaking the U.S.S.R. Where will Putin go if he loses this gambit? To me the writing is on the wall: He's not suicidal therefore he's murderous. He would 'push the button' if an overt attack on Russia were to occur. Therefore REAL sanctions are the only way to break his piggy-bank. Mr. tRUMP can't do that alone and he's not the type of guy who asks for good advice or who sets a good example for others to follow.

@JollyRoger Think what you will. My words are now gone.