Ukraine weapons vs UN and sanctions AIBU anonymous vote

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This is an AIBU vote so that people can express how they feel about this by anonymously voting. I hope that this is allowed! Some people feel wary of posting or talking about it but may want to anonymously vote.

My AIBU:

We should be negotiating to send UN peacekeepers to Ukraine NOT weapons or soldiers which are doing nothing but escalate problems, and sanctions should stop as they are not working and might be disastrous for the UK and the UN going in would be more effective than sanctions = YANBU

Weapons and sanctions are good = YABU

I think UN peace-keepers are used in internecine conflict, rather than wars/invasions between sovereign states? Also if we should have done anything it would have been not to try to expand NATO to Russia’s borders then provide no response or support when Russia started annexing territories over the past decade. Anyway looks like this invasion will fail sooner or later anyway.

On a purely practical note, any move to send a UN peacekeeping force would be vetoed by Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Though that isn’t by any means the only issue I have with your position.

You can’t negotiate with a bear, it needs to feel pain or it will keep coming back to eat from your bins.

Russia has asked for international help and UN input in relation to the situation in east Ukraine consistently over the last eight years, and has asked the UN to go in recently, in March or April or around about then.

I think that Russia has no business asking for international help re Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. If they were genuinely asking in good faith, they would not have taken the Crimea and Ukraine in the first place. Putin's Russia is a bad faith actor.

I would need to read the files of the intelligence services, to gain a better analysis of what's happening their, before committing to a specific perspectives.

I think any attempt at UN peacekeeping without sanctions/weapons help would be a “Peace in our time” moment. Putin is not coming from a place of logic, he doesn’t think Ukraine should exist independently of Russia, you can’t negotiate with that as a starting point.

And Russia would withdraw their occupying forces from Ukraine first (including Crimea) to their own borders? And then encourage and facilitate a substantial UN peacekeeping force, mainly made up from Western (i.e. NATO countries) armed forces, as they are only ones who have the credible capability to patrol and enforce the Ukraine/Russia border, and give the Ukraine the security guarantees that’d they’d need?

Well, that sounds brilliant. In that case. I’m with you. Let’s do that.

I'm sorry but this is a ridiculously stupid naive question

There is zero possibility of a genuine UN intervention in Ukraine. Russia will never agree to something that would disadvantage it on the battlefield. When they talk about negotiations and peacekeeping, it is just stalling for time so they can consolidate the territories they have occupied (what do you think they've been doing since 2014?)

This month, Ukraine has recaptured 6000 km2 of its territory. So it's no surprise Russia is pushing all these narratives to undermine Western support for Ukraine, because it's actually working.

Russia has conducted a brutal and horrific invasion of Ukraine, look at the evidence of mass graves and atrocities in the liberated territories. Ukraine has every right to defend itself and we have the right to help them. If Russia wants peace, they can withdraw any time.

There has been a violent and bloody civil war there (as in Ukrainians vs Ukrainians) for eight years. The situation in Donbas has been hell for the people there for eight years, steadily getting worse as the years go by, whichever side you blame it has been internecine for eight years.

In most civil wars over the last 30 or so years you have had Russia on one side and the US on the other, and in relation to all of them the best results in relation to ending a bloody conflict has been where the UN has gone in, though clearly that does require all parties including Ukraine's approval here. Different parties refer to the situation in different ways or blame different parties for the cause. But there are a number of independent sources including the UN and Amnesty reports and OSCE reports, and also a lot of footage including archived footage from the BBC. I assume from these replies that people are just not aware.

The NATO issue isn't going to be resolved by the UN going in, as you say, but the fighting between Ukrainians would stop in eastern Ukraine which would then allow discussions around NATO and geo politics.

You are being disingenuous calling the Donbas a civil war and you know it.

Almost everything in your last post is factually incorrect so yes, I stand by saying your argument is naive and/or ignorant.

Yes, there were local grievances in the Donbas, but war did not break out there until Russia invaded in 2014 and funded local militias. The Russian annexation of Crimea violated the most fundamental principles of international law and was clearly illegal.

Most civil wars of the past 30 years have not involved a US vs Russia aspect. You are thinking of the Cold War.

The UN has been terrible for conflict resolution as often as they've been beneficial.

You are entitled to your opinion but at least be honest that you are repeating Kremlin talking points and not speaking from any in-depth knowledge of Ukraine or indeed modern warfare.

How much is Russia paying you for this propaganda?

Why do think it isn't a civil war? Ukrainians have been killing and harming Ukrainians, how is this not a civil war? I assume what you are suggesting is that Russia caused it. Russia say the US caused it. This has been a recurring theme for many years.

I believe that Russia would support the UN going in because if Russia had wanted to annex Donbas it would have done so in 2014. Instead for eight years it has pursued the Minsk accords which allowed for autonomy within Ukraine - the policy was not imperialistic. The question of NATO vs Russia is quite a different.

When you say I am being disingenuous you are wrong and you are being simplistic. This thread was about stopping the bloody violent conflict which has been going on for eight years and threatens to escalate, I am not being at all disingenuous. (Nor naive or stupid, wrt the previous poster).

Donbas has suffered horrifically, it will not stop unless all parties including Ukraine support the UN going in, whatever side you are on.

What happens there affects us in the UK not just because of the potential escalation, the financial consequences, but also because there is a rise of out of control extreme nationalism/domestic terrorism in western Europe. This is not a simple "Russia is a bear" situation.

Hi Vlad.

Russia might accept the UN coming in to stand on the frontline in the Donbas. This would prevent Ukraine from attacking them and give Russia a permanent presence there. It would create a de facto border there, as has happened in other conflicts around the world where peacekeepers come in. This has the opposite effect of resolving the conflict, it becomes a frozen conflict instead.

Ukraine would absolutely accept UN peacekeepers but on the official Ukraine-Russia border, i.e. Russia needs to withdraw its forces, then you can put peacekeepers on the border while diplomacy does its work.

So what's wrong with that? Why do you object to Russia withdrawing from Ukraine? I mean if you really want peace, why not just push for Russia to withdraw?

OP is either extremely ignorant or a Russian propagandist. It’s not a civil war.

Also I’m chuckling at the big set up for an anonymous poll then giving one of the options as “weapons and sanctions are good”.

As I said in the previous post, my concerns are about the future of the people in the UK as well as what is going on in Donbas.

You are incorrect about what started the conflict in 2014, the referendums in 2014 in Donbas (as distinct from Crimea) were about autonomy within Ukraine. If you think Russia went in in 2014 (even though the OSCE reports say it did not) then what do you think happened in Feb 2022? Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, do you not think it could just have easily annexed Donbas? Why the years and years of diplomatic attempts in relation to the Minsk accords? There is just a lack of joined up thinking here.

In relation to fighting between Ukrainians in Donbas, there have been independent reports about breaches of human rights. This thread was prompted by the lastest video emerging showing people being tied to poles, now in Kharkiv.

You have had Russia vs the US in every single civil war in the last 30 years, and every time it has only been when the UN has gone in that there has been amelioration of suffering for the people. Look it up. The UN is not great, I agree, but its involvement and an arms amensty would be better for the people than sending in more guns and soldiers.

How much are you being paid for writing posts which try to shut down discussion?!

OP I'm a lecturer in conflict studies specialising in civil wars (including those in the former Soviet republics). Everything you are saying is wrong, I'm sorry but it is.

There's obviously no point trying to convince you, and I have to get back to work now, but I'm just pointing out for anyone else reading this thread that the OP's arguments are based on very fundamental misunderstandings of what's happened in Ukraine in the last 10 years, as well as modern civil wars generally.

Thanks for this, I note your points. The value of the UN in other areas has been the cessation of fire in those areas, an arms amnesty which means people are not suffering to anywhere near the same extent. I don't know what Russia would agree to or what Ukraine would agree to here, but for UN peacekeepers to go in there would need to be an arms amnesty.

You ask "so Russia leaves, what is wrong with that?" - basically you have a situation here where no proposals have been put forward by Ukraine or the west about how the bloodbath in Donbas would be ended. Russia is not going to withdraw while people are being tied to poles, for example. That is just one example, obviously.

The UN going in would mean that would stop happening. The problem is, this as a solution isn't even being mooted by the west at the moment.

It may be being mooted by the UN behind closed doors, I don't know.

There is footage and witness statement about hospitals etc being shelled even now in Donetsk by Ukraine. There has been denial by the US that the Ukraine government is responsible for the mistreatment of ethnic Russians - but no solutions put forward for the fact that they are being mistreated, de facto - and again the UN going in with all parties agreement would stop that. There has been denial that there has been a problem with extreme nationalism, but there clearly has been and is a problem.

There are Russian soldiers in Donbas disguised as civilians. It's not really a secret.

I would suggest that Putin is worried that the current Ukrainian offensive will eventually retake Crimea which was illegally invaded by Russia and expel Russian mercenaries from disputed regions. He is playing for time while he trains convicts and conscripts.

Of course all this could also lead to his own people removing him from power.

You can't negotiate in good faith with him.

See my last post which responds to what you have said. What I have said is not wrong, and I have equivalent level qualifications and in addition expertise in high level negotiation. I know exactly what I am talking about here in relation to Ukraine, the issue is that your arguments in the main have been political rather than objective and what you have said is not correct. However, your last post was the most useful one and I have responded in kind.

My question to you - is your solution to keep NATO backing Ukraine in hitting Donbas? And watch escalation and more death and inhumane situations?

The key thing here - if Ukraine is supporting the Ukrainian people, why not propose referendums in Crimea and Donbas and the rest of Ukraine before bombing and get involved to satisfy itself that the referendums are legitimate?

There was no special operation or invasion between 2014 and 2022, that is the point. As well as the fact that much of this was speculation. Russian soldiers disguised as civilians wouldn't be much help on the battle field, as they wouldn't have guns.

Russian hasn't mobilised yet. This is still at SO level. So I think what you are saying is likely to be wrong, but clearly if there is risk to people in Crimea and NATO soldiers and equipment continue to act then it is likely things will escalate.

I think the idea that people will remove Putin from power and that this will solve the problem is complete wrong thinking on many, many levels. Russia is huge and there are people supporting more intensive conflict as well as those supporting less.