We are 46 days into Trump ending the Ukraine war in 24 hours, and so far Trump has produced 0 concessions from Vladimir Putin.
But according to Trump, Ukraine must give up Crimea, give up NATO membership, give their minerals to the US, remove their president, and stop fighting Vladimir Putin, while he has time to build up a stronger force for attacking Ukraine.
This is not a peace deal. This is a Putin deal.
@randahl
Putin does not want all of Ukraine.
Ukraine has lost Crimea 10 years ago, Crimeans would refuse to go back to Ukraine.
The president of Ukraine is not a legitimate president (imagine if Trump were in that situation).
Why would Ukraine join NATO, an aggressive alliance that a.o. dreams to dismantle Russia?
Peace and understanding is the only winning way through.
imho
Putin is not a legitimate president. Zelensky absolutely is. And many Crimeans did flee to Ukraine when Russia conquered it. Go ask Crimean Tatars who they'd rather see in control of Crimea.
NATO doesn't want to dismantle Russia, Russia wants to dismantle NATO. NATO just doesn't want Russia to attack NATO members. Or anyone else, really. Why does Russia insist on attacking other countries all the time? Don't you have enough land already? Try using that for a change. But it's all dead poor and undeveloped because Putin would rather waste that money on stupid wars.
NATO is not a country, it's an alliance. Dismantling NATO isn't a big deal. Inside NATO itself there are voices considering putting an end to the organisation.
Dismantling a country is a completely different thing. If NATO, an agressive and powerful military alliance of many countries with a history of dismantling countries, calls and fights for dismantling Russia, one country alone, using Ukraine to do that, why would Russia not use Ukraine to stop NATO?
@randahl @DoomsdaysCW
What's the real different thing here, is the difference between NATO members wanting to leave NATO, and a nearby aggressor wanting to dismantle it because he sees his expansionist ambitions cramped by every target he sets his eyes on joining the alliance.
That's why Putin hates NATO. NATO is not aggressive, it's defensive. It defends the countries he wants to attack, and that limits his ability to act on his own aggressive goals.
That war was well underway before NATO got involved. NATO members just didn't want Serbs to genocide lots of people right on their doorstep. But NATO didn't conquer any land, like Putin is trying to do, and only after Serbian violence had been widely condemned by the entire world. It should have been a UN mission, but that didn't happen because Russia was likely to veto that.
Not the greatest showing of NATO, but hardly comparable to all of the stuff Putin does on a regular basis.
Yeah, that's a thing. Having your own opinions is one thing, but having your own facts is another. And these days everybody wants to have their own facts to justify whatever they want to believe.
So let's discuss a few basic facts: is Russia a threat to Ukraine? Is Russia also a threat to Moldova? To the Baltics? Are you familiar with Russia's long history of conquest? That it dominated and oppressed half of Europe until about 35 years ago?
Because if all of these things are true (and they are), do you really think it's surprising that Russia's neighbours want to join an alliance that can protect them against that aggression?
None of NATO's "expansion" was forced by NATO; all of it was other countries wanting to join. Poland basically blackmailed Bill Clinton into letting them in, because the US originally didn't want to let them in at all. But all those countries that were suddenly free from Moscow's yoke after decades of oppression, wanted to make sure they would stay free, and that they had allies who would protect their freedom.
Ukraine's bad luck is that they missed that boat, and that made them vulnerable to Russia's aggression.
But all the aggression in eastern Europe has always come from Russia, and not from NATO.
Randahl Fink
windy
Martijn Vos