Ukraine Invasion: Part 40

[MagicFox]

40 threads, still here 🇺🇦

Why, what's your explanation for why Putin doesn't want peace, Liebig?

And what's your plan for what to do about that?

Multiple such attempts made by each side and with brokers. Neither has come to any compromise, so here we are.

As a person from a family with a large military contingent and history up to and including deployments to Camp Bastion, I would rather we stop dicking around and actually get with the halting of hostilities. Especially as all this is currently achieving is changing some parts of a map blue or red at the cost of countless thousands of lives, both military and civvie.

That is to say, there is no way that Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia. And Russia is not taking all of Ukraine (if that was ever even the plan given how it was poorly executed).

Wars that land in quagmire like this do not end with some decisive victory. They grind on, as things have since 2014, endlessly ruining lives and devastating places like Bakhmut and Mariupol to the disadvantage of everyone.

If Trump gets in next year in the US, or some other less than happy to back Ukraine endlessly president, and if the cost of living thing carries on, you're going to see support wind down one way or another. This is something that I'm sure Russia has been expecting, and they're playing that time card. They don't care about throwing countless penal units into the fray, yes, but they probably don't want to mobilise any more people either. That said, the UAF attrition is something awful, and if there was going to be a decisive victory, it would have come far earlier than the point where everyone has fortified their present lines and razed Bakhmut to the ground with a not-so-judicious application of blood.

The constant derailing of these threads is incredibly tiresome. @Liebig I have no idea why you feel the need to be so aggressive, if you don’t like the thread then the door is that way 👉 it’s a shame because sometimes you make a good point then drown it out with a whole load of aggressive bullshit.

From your article:

According to Fiona Hill and Angela Stent writing in Foreign Affairs in September, U.S. officials they spoke with said Russia and Ukraine "appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement", whereby the Russian forces would withdraw to the pre-invasion line and Ukraine would commit not to seek to join NATO in exchange security guarantees from a number of countries. However, in a July interview with Russian state media, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that this compromise was no longer an option, saying that even the Donbas was not enough and that the "geography had changed."

So I'm not sure how you see this as a way forward at the moment.

Why does Putin want so desperately to change those maps from one colour to another? Why has he killed thousands of Ukrainians to do so? And indeed killed thousands of Russians to do so?

I'm sorry my questioning the rah rah band here with hard adult topics like "how would we take back Crimea when it's ethnically mostly Russian" and "sex workers are a new unit of the front" are distracting. I'll try and not break out of line and harm your sensibilities next time.

I'll even post some memes or something.

At this point I'd say he massively miscalculated the commitment needed to this cause, and now he's stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's been too much lost to resort to what was previously asked, so the hard man image is being portrayed for the local peanut gallery in Russia (the frothing at the mouth Slavic FOX News equivalents) so as to save face.

I honestly don't know what the end game is here. I don't imagine anything short of all eastern regions brought into the CIS being recognised will sate Putin, yet the Ukrainians have repeatedly stated they want borders back to pre-2014 levels, including Crimea. That's simply not feasible, with the materiel on supply and the manpower.

This impasse could stretch on way, way longer than anyone thinks unless the Russians do something super dumb and fold, or Ukraine just packs it in and sues for peace.

This was an interesting piece I read a while back on our options.

Liebig, our pet Ukraine-negger.

@Famzonhol
By ruining the career of an athlete I mean banning them from performing because of what people in their country have done.

I take the point that some people think sport and war are separate issues.

But there is an overlap, as others have pointed out. How can Ukrainian athletes compete if they have been killed? How is that fair?

There've been 240+ Ukrainian athletes killed, of varying degrees of fame. The ones below are the most well known.

https://yangoly-sportu.teamukraine.com.ua/en/

On 1 March, Oleksandr Kulyk, an Olympic cycling coach, was killed in the battle near Nyzy in Sumy Oblast.[7]

On 25 March, Senior lieutenantMaksym Kahal was killed during the Battle of Mariupol. He was a kickboxing athlete and world champion in the national team of Ukraine

On 7 April, Oleksii Yanin, the former world kick-boxing champion, was killed in battle in Mariupol.[28]

On 20 April, Ivan Bidnyak, a silver medalist at the European Shooting Championships, was killed in action.[29]

On 7 September, Serhii Balanchuk [uk], a former football player for Dynamo Kyiv and the Ukrainian national football team,

On 11 November, Yevhen Kolesnichenko [uk], Ukrainian handball player and military man, three-time champion of Ukraine as part of Shakhtar Donetsk, player of the Ukrainian men's national handball team, was killed

Andrii KotovenkoAndriy Kotovenko, the prizewinner of the Invincible Games, died in the war with the Russian occupiers.

On 15 January 2023, Taras Strakhiv [uk], a Ukrainian athlete, was killed in Bakhmut.[87]

On 23 January 2023, Dmytro Sharpar [uk], a Ukrainian figure skater, drafted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine, was killed in Bakhmut.[88]

On 31 March 2023, Vitaly Merinov, four-time world champion in kickboxing, died during the battle of Bakhmut.[97]

I mean how can you know you're the best in the world if your competitors have been put out of action because they're in the army or dead? True, they're not there in the competition with you. But it's a very poor way to win, if your country is killing them.

No, if this Ukrainian lady didn't shake the Russian's hand, I can't condemn her.

Liebig, with friends like her who needs enemies.

For the Ukrainians' sake thank God Zelenskyy, Zaluzhnyi, Biden, and NATO isn't so pusillanimous.

Really cool you misgendered me.

I'm afraid - no, actually I am really, really glad - I have no idea who you are and what gender you are or aren't.

The only thing that's relevant is that you're doing the Russians' work for them.

I wonder what a rah rah band is

A cheerleading band.

That's a horribly long list of Ukrainian athletes killed, Ducks.

As you say, many, many Ukrainian athletes are genuinely unable to turn up and compete, thanks to Putin.

It doesn't seem quite right to pretend that a Russian athlete has been banned and that she's had her career ruined, when – unlike those Ukrainian athletes – she is actually present and competing.

Of course.

In fairness to that poster I think a lot of people (specially sports people) think like her. On this thread we're very aware of the losses but most people just go about their daily lives and the war is very much in the background.

These threads have been calming and informative for a year and a half. Good job we've finally got an aggressive man to tell us all how we're all wrong.

It’s a wonder us poor simple women (and the odd decent bloke) managed this long

I say again, dnftt.

Glad to see you're happy to keep up the ad hominems and not discuss the topic. Feel free to change this.

Oh, what's this? Could it be me... posting best part of a year ago?

What amazes me is that apparently I was meant to know without ever having been told! Unless it was somewhere in the long posts of negativity that they come out with.

I fear that as a woman I've failed to identify his wishes without being told. Culpa mea.

bah just saw your post. You're right.

To find out what the background to the likes of LieBig are, have a read of this: https://time.com/6257372/russia-ukraine-war-disinformation/

They are being paid to lie to us.

Just ignore or block them and hopefully MN will ban them soon.