To think the adoration of Zelensky in the UK feels very wrong?

[WarWhatIsItGoodFor]

Exactly that. Why are UK politicians lapping it all up and hanging on to his every word? The laughter from MPs when he said he enjoyed English tea but now wants English planes… in what sense is that funny? He is wanting war planes to cause more bloodshed, death and destruction. I hope this doesn’t lead to Russian retaliation.

ReleaseTheDucksOfWar
Remember that 3 days before the invasion Russian diplomats were saying that there would be no invasion.

Remember too that in December 1994 the Russians were signatories to the Budapest Memorandum.

Ukraine, a nuclear power at that time, voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees.

The US, Great Britain and Russia pledged, among other things, to respect the independence and existing borders of Ukraine.

If you were Ukrainian how much would you trust anything signed by Russia, with that as a precedent and having observed their behaviour since 2014?

Bashir Since you feel what I say is so obviously illogical and not useful, I don't know why you have bothered to respond, as presumably that would be apparent to everybody else too - or at least to those you would consider as right minded.

I note you refer to Putin as an "actor" - the sort of language used by military people, as in describing the "theatre" of war. War is not a play (though some people like to play with little toy soldiers or engage in battle re-enactments) War is bloody and terrifying, and the more weapons that are piled into an area, the more bloody and terrifying it will get. And since we are dealing with someone as unhinged as Putin, do we not run the risk of this escalating to the possible use of nuclear weapons and other major countries becoming involved?

For the person who asked, I am British and live here. I was part of the million+ demonstration against the Iraq invasion, for all the good it did. My friend and I were both accosted on the tube home by men accusing us of being bitches and traitors because she was wearing an anti war badge.

@ellyeth cast your mind back and find out how well appeasing Hitler worked - we're dealing with a similar level evil here.

"War is bloody and terrifying, and the more weapons that are piled into an area, the more bloody and terrifying it will get. And since we are dealing with someone as unhinged as Putin, do we not run the risk of this escalating to the possible use of nuclear weapons and other major countries becoming involved?"

OK @ellyeth what do you think we should do? Leave Ukraine to crumble for lack of supplies (including armaments)? Goodbye independent Moldova, at the very least, but I doubt he'd stop there. Finland and Sweden are not trying to join NATO for fun.

Appeasement doesn't work and it certainly doesn't work with the likes of Putin.

I've responded because your nonsense needed countering. The desperate focus on one word is pathetically obvious, incidentally.

Ultimately, if all you've got to say is Putin is unhinged so we can't apply logic, that applies to any attempt you might make to try and predict his behaviour too. We don't run the risk of other major countries becoming involved in his stupidity either, no. Look at how China have behaved in the last year.

Also, it's simply not true that war is more terrifying with more weapons. Actually it'll be much less terrifying for the Ukrainians if we arm them more. What you're advocating for is leaving them to face genocide with a weapons deficit.

I am connected to the region and I do hate Putin with all my heart, but he ain't no Hitler and I don't think the comparisons are useful. He is a corrupt, greedy, tin-pot dictator, who hates having his power challenged and who, sadly for us, is sitting in a country of vast resources.

He is not an ideologist, however, and this is not a battle of good vs evil and any narrative like that is actually feeding his ego and elevating him to some sort of a mythical 'baddy' status, which he clearly craves.

ellyeth
I note you refer to Putin as an "actor"

In a manner having nothing whatever to do with the stage.

Have you never come across the phrase "bad actor", meaning a person or organization responsible for actions that are harmful, illegal, or morally wrong; an unruly, turbulent, or contentious individual; a mean, ill-tempered, troublemaking, or evil person; an inveterate criminal?

An irrational actor (which was the phrase actually used by Bashir) is one of those, who is also not terribly good at reasoning.

@theadultsaretalking I wasn't saying that Putin = Hitler, I was pointing out that appeasement doesn't work when the powerful are invading the weaker.

Putin however is absolutely an ideologue - his ideology is that of a Greater Russia, a delusion of imperialism not actually that different from what the Nazis came up with. Whether he himself really believes it or whether it is a tool he is using to harness political power is pretty immaterial.

This. Russkiy Mir is an ideology and one that makes Russia's neighbours very, very concerned.

The difference is that he was not elected on the Russkiy Mir ideology platform and this is not something that the vast majority of Russians either subscribe to or, more accurately, even think of. He will start to pushing it more now, I give you that - since his military campaign is not going brilliantly.

Exactly this.

@ellyeth although you have self-identified as neither a bot nor a useful idiot, is English your first language? Did you live in the UK during the Iraq war?

I always felt something was a little off about him, so I get you OP.

For me, it doesn't interest me much whether it's ideology or something else that's driving Putin to behave as he does. The parallel with Hitler is that appeasing him has demonstrably failed, and there isn't an option to make a few concessions in return for him being satisfied and not invading anyone else. For whatever reason that might be. Maybe all the bad Botox has seeped into his brain.

Should we all just nazi sympathisers too? 🙄

You win the record for the most ridiculous comment I’ve ever read on MN

The problem is that that parallel doesn’t factor in that Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons at his disposal, and if he had, I doubt that WWII would have played out the way it did. Putin does have nukes, and the fact that he has even referred to them, to my mind leaves no doubt that he would use them if backed into a corner. So the question in the end, is how far the west goes in support of Ukraine, without inviting WWIII. The rat is never more dangerous than when cornered, so it’s not a question of appeasement, it’s a question of finding an off ramp acceptable to all, to stop the war. The alternative is unthinkable.

Agree they both have to find a way out of it. Both have comprises they can make - zelensky will probably be glad to get rid of his neo Nazis, he's already thrown his backer overboard, so looks like he's moving. Putin can do the climbdown from the greater Russia position (who knows whether he really believes it? I suspect not, he's more concerned with BRICS and China won't wait for him pissing around forever, but it's a useful bargaining chip nonetheless.)

Re nuclear weapons, maybe Hitler would have used them, maybe not. We'll never know. We do know though that the USA did use them and is the only country in the history of the world to do so. So yeah, maybe see how that looks if you live in Russia.

*compromises

What's the compromise that you'd like Putin to make?

We now have a full year of evidence that Russia will not respond to the West arming Ukraine by using nuclear weapons. They know full well we, amongst other countries, have been providing Ukrainians with the equipment that allows them to kill Russian soldiers in vast numbers and attack what they see as sovereign Russian territory, and they've not done it. There's a reason for that.

Russia responded to the West letting them have their own way by becoming more dangerous. They responded to the West indirectly standing up to them by sabre rattling and by not nuking anything. There's a lesson to be learned in there, and it's absolutely and unequivocally about how appeasement doesn't work on Putin. The people telling us that there's going to come a point when we invite WW3 completely ignore this, whereas those of us who understand that the best form of defence here is attack are basing our arguments on what has actually happened.

This off ramp nonsense is wishful thinking. Lots of you would like there to be an option where we could give Putin something and de-escalate the crisis, but none of you can ever tell us what that is or how to deal with the small matter of the Ukrainians not having it. Your appeasement has already failed.

It's just I'm very aware of what the Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, said at the Munich Security Conference before the invasion. She said this about Kremlin aggression over the years, not just Ukraine:

Russia is making the demands. Russia is threatening. And now if we think: “Oh let’s offer them something, then they actually get something that they didn’t have before.”

And I’ve quoted this foreign minister, Alexei [should be Andrei] Gromyko, a Soviet-time foreign minister, several times, who said about the negotiation tactics of the Soviet Union, three things:

First, demand the maximum. Do not ask, but demand something that has never been yours.

Second, present ultimatums. You know, threaten.

And third, do not give one inch in negotiations, because there will always be people in the West who offer you something.

And then in the end, you will have one-third or even one half of something you didn’t have before. So we have to keep that in mind all the time.

twitter.com/munsecconf/status/1512451999622643714

But is the fact that he hasn’t resorted to the nuclear option for a year, any guarantee that he won’t ? He’s not out of conventional options yet. When he is, that will be a different matter. Your argument is a logical one and I agree that the concept of an off ramp is a difficult one, for reasons you’ve laid out pretty well, but is that a reason not to look for one ?

I think Putin probably knows that if he used a nuke, he could say goodbye to the Kremlin and his life; and so do his immediate circle, who would prefer not to be vaporised with him. I strongly suspect that if it looked to them too much as if he would do so, he would fall out of a fourth or fifth floor window.

I don't think there's much he can do that I'd personally "like" as such, because everything is pretty fucked russia included.

But hopefully now zelensky has publicly at least distanced himself from komoloisky, once he takes the Azovs off the payroll Putin can do the whole 'this is not the right time to fight for a Greater Russia but I will protect Russians in the donbas' schtick, it will go back to being a disputed border (that's unavoidable imo, sadly) and Russia can carry on being a key player in the new international banking system, fucking us all up the arse energy wise and eventually BRICS and then wider Africa and couple of generations hence the global south will by dint of manpower if nothing else have completed their ascendency over pension aged Europe, the USA having since collapsed inwards, and we'll all be fucked.

There is never any guarantee that a nuclear weapon won't be used, by any state that has them. There is no option we can take that completely precludes that possibility. I understand wanting that, but you can't have it.

All we can do is base our decisions on the things we actually know. We know that the West can give Ukraine all manner of weapons without Russia using a nuke, and we know that when Putin was given an inch he took a mile.

The reason we shouldn't be looking for an off ramp at this point isn't because it would be difficult, but because none can exist until Russia have been sufficiently well beaten to actually observe it. Until that point, all that would happen even if the Ukrainians would accept one, which they won't, is that Russia would use the time to regroup and rearm, then continue at their leisure.

The Ukrainians, like most countries who border Russia (see the excellent Kaja Kallis explanation above) understand this, and it's why they aren't willing to negotiate a solution that will ultimately involve Russia continuing their aggression. Off ramps, negotiations, those are all nice words for what in reality means you want the Ukrainians to accept a certain amount of torture chambers and forced deportations of children.

But what's the "it" that would be the disputed border?

The Ukrainian provinces which Putin declared to be part of Russia just a few months ago? (Which Russian troops don't even fully control.)

The territory Russian troops control today?

Where the border was before the Feb 2022 Russian invasion?

Where the border was before the 2014 Russian invasion (annexation of Crimea)?