President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine's partners "are afraid of Russia losing the war" and would like Kyiv "to win in such a way that Russia does not lose," Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine's partners "are afraid of Russia losing the war" and would like Kyiv "to win in such a way that Russia does not lose," Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv's allies "fear" Russia's loss in the war against Ukraine because it would involve "unpredictable geopolitics," according to Zelensky. "I don't think it works that way. For Ukraine to win, we need to be given everything with which one can win," he said.
His statement came on May 16 amid Russia's large-scale offensive in Kharkiv Oblast and ongoing heavy battles further east. In a week, Russian troops managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers in the northern part of Kharkiv Oblast, according to Zelensky.
Ah, yes, the country with the most people incarcerated both per capita and in absolute terms, that is currently genocideing the 2 million people its vassal has in a massive concentration camp, is part of the "free".
To be honest, we'll see about the US. With a Trump present who doesn't like democracy and rule of law, but does like Putin, not sure how much the US can be counted on. Or how long it will stay a free country.
So much of the current internal domestic Russian zeitgeist is the idea of national strength compared to other nations. Pride comes with their strongman. If they are finally faced with the truth that neither Russia or its strongman are strong, it could lead to Russia/Russians trying to assert it in other ways to try to rationalize it. Or Russia could simply collapse from within orphaning hundreds of nuclear warheads leading to opportunists selling warheads to the highest bidders. The only thing worse than Russia having nuclear weapons is every two-bit terrorist or backwater dictator getting their hands on them.
Keep in mind none of this in my mind means we stop supporting Ukraine economically and militarily. Russia made its bed. We can't choose our actions based upon trying to save Russia from itself.
I once mentioned how Billionaires will eventually get Nuclear Weapons and was ridiculed. Turns out it’ll happen sooner than I thought. Truly a carrot and stick situation.
I think that's one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?
I don't think that's a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.
The concern isn't about the consequences faced by Russia, but the impact on the rest of the world. Like, if Russia were to collapse, I think most would agree that Egyptians don't deserve to find out what suddenly not having $1.7 billion in wheat would mean, right? I don't think anyone has any idea what that would mean for, say, Tajikistan and other post-Soviet states with economies closely tied to Russia. Collapse would be chaos and it wouldn't stay confined within Russia's borders.
And, again, I don't think that justifies preventing Russia from losing. There are worse concerns for Russia winning. And the idea that Russia neither winning nor losing could be a sustainable final state is probably a fantasy.
While we really don't want a state with thousands of nukes to splinter, I doubt that any policy writers in DC feel that way, given the eulogies they gave to Navalny, a guy who had politics somewhere around Mussolini's and made Putin look like a dove.
But also the fact that we have like 8000 tanks in the desert that we're not sending tells me that they'd rather fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood than actually break Russia so who knows.
Yeah, circumstances are very different now. Back then the Russian bourgeoisie thought they'd get to join the club. Now they have very little incentive to abide such deals.
i remember several nerds mentioning how theyd see nuclear weapons on the black market around the fall of USSR and notified the feds. apparently it was a pretty major undertaking.
I think this hard divider in history is a false narrative. In a sense, the current war, is a continuation of the USSR falling apart, and exactly 1 of those quickly made treaties is to blame: the one that de-nuked ukraine in return for safety guarantees.
Russia didn't splinter with the fall of the USSR. People who had control of the nukes retained their control. And Ukraine was forced to move theirs to Russia.
Navalny co-founded the National Russian Liberation Movement, known as NAROD (The People), which sets immigration policy as a priority.[437] The movement allied itself with two nationalist groups, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and Great Russia
Those groups are both pretty big on fashy iconography
In the same year, he released several anti-immigration videos,[439][440][441][442] including one where he advocated the deportation of migrants.[443] In one of the videos, in which he advocates for gun rights, he compares Muslims from the Caucasus to cockroaches and mimics shooting one who attempts to "attack" him.
His views on foreign policy evolved over time.[448] He had initially supported the Russo-Georgian War in 2008,[456] having asked the Russian army to strike the Georgian General Staff, calling Georgians "rodents"[457] and requesting that all Georgian citizens be expelled from the Russian Federation.[458] He later apologized for insulting the Georgians, while stating that his principled position remained unchanged.
IKR. The way such easily accessible information was entirely ignored in western media insane.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I say portraying the guy as Putin's biggest rival is sillier than if Russian papers started claiming Pete Buttigeig was Trump's biggest rival, since at least Mayo Pete didn't come in 4th in a mayoral race.
I don't think so, not necessarily. It means that the existence of russia stops some countries from doing some things, if you remove russia, those countries will not be counterbalanced anymore
Probably a broader umbrella of bad stuff. If Putin goes, there's no real successors, so it's kind of anyone's game to be the next dictator, and chaos potential is very high. This is actually by design, as a form of coup-proofing.
It might not be MAD, and in fact probably won't be directly, but massive proliferation? Sure, lots of people would trade a lot of guns for a nuke. One of the splinter states invading NATO directly? Could also happen. Russian oil and gas going off the market really fast, and putting Europe in a tough spot? Almost certain, at least to some degree. And then at the end of it, who knows what the map of Eurasia looks like.
When they say unpredictable, they mean unpredictable, and they have great reason to be wary of unpredictability.