"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

Whatever the issues in Ukraine, perhaps someone needs to de-Nazify the Kremlin. But Russia would need to have a proper civil society for that.
What a bastard. Reading between the lines it appears his goal is to install a government of his own liking.

After an embarrassingly tepid sanctions package earlier in the week, the oligarchs need to be put out of London - immediately. That means that Chelsea have new owners by the weekend.

Read a thread early (with lots of citations for claims) that Finland will probably end up joining NATO because of this, with Putins words on how letting Ukraine go was a "mistake" could equally apply to Finland.

Again, not about the US.

Most of NATO aren't American.

Paint @Federal Farmer as a child all you want but he's getting something many are overlooking.

If NATO is to mean anything "our" border starts at the Polish border, not Mexico. Push beyond that and NATO goes from being a defensive alliance to a power player in the world stage.

Fair enough. I was just making a joke out of Odessa being in two different countries.

Fuck off.

I got it.

Yea, that Russian ambassador makes a real distinction there. Ukrainian ambassador is correct, the Russian ambassador definitely should step down.

Good to see Gabbard has gone all in on the Russian propaganda. NATO forces are already on Russia’s border, idiot. According to some of my Republican friends she was the only “serious Democrat candidate.”

That's because her ideals more closely align with Republicans than Democrats - as evidenced by the tweet.

You don't think there's an element of truth to that? The horse has apparently bolted now but I'm wondering how historians will look at the times we're living in.

NATO isn't the EU, or the G8, it isn't an economic or political committee, it's literally an alliance of military powers brought together expressly to rival and threaten Russia.

Ukraine was always going to be a sticking point once conversations about membership began.

Nobody in NATO has any intentions of invading Russia. Or threatening Russia. They want to contain Russia because of Russia’s anti-democratic penchant for war. What I find troubling is how many are now siding with Putin, supporting the aggressor, and completely forgetting that Ukraine is a sovereign country with its own right to defend itself.

And Russis has not invaded a NATO member. It had, rightly or wrong, invaded a nation whose sovereignty we recognise but is internally in dispute.

It's not siding with Russia to be analytical about events.

Ukraine split from the former USSR, it's a sovereign nation by our reckoning. Few people in Crimea would agree with that and they welcomed annexation.

Public sentiment in Donbas is not dissimilar.

By encroaching into a nation which is not only on the Russia border but at least partly administered by them NATO is absolutely presenting a threat and for all Russia's genuine warmongering there's no reasonable analysis where the US and it's allies have not been equally aggressive in recent decades.

Both sides refer to "defence "when they discuss power projection and Ukraine is not "ours" to defend. We'll doubtless end up doing so out of necessity at this stage but the events which have led is here could very possibly have been averted.

Neither side trusts the other and nor should they, we are rival powers, plain and simple.[/quote]

A nation still has the right to defend itself, which includes making alliances with other countries (or at least attempting to). I don't think it's fair to blame this on Ukraine and NATO, especially when Ukraine's desire to join NATO increased after 2014 when it was invaded by the very same country that is invading it again. You're essentially victim blaming. It's akin to when a victim stands up to a bully and gets others on the playground to back him up, and a teacher steps in to say hey maybe this bully is targeting you because you ganged up on him. Your causation is all wrong.

The US (and UK as far as I know) also doesn't support China's advances on Taiwan. Granted, foreign policy not one of my interests, but I do not understand why this is different.

It depends on whether you think the government is legitimate.

Should we deal diplomatically with the Taliban, or support anti-Taliban Afghanistan people?

Not liking this analogy at all.

Victim blaming requires to be a well defined victim but who, in this case, is that?

Ukraine is not a person, its a polity consisting of millions of people with differing views. Crimea and to a lesser extent Donbas could just as easily be painted as victims of Ukranian bullying and that would be just as disingenuous.

Yes they can seek alliances and we can either agree or not depending on our own interests as well as theirs.

NATO is widely seen (not just in Russia) as having become a power player in it's own right, or at least an extension of US influence, imperialism by another name.

Given that assessment Ukraine goes from being a collective "victim" to a key strategic region.

So, if I'm following you correctly, you're saying Ukraine annexed Crimea and Donbas (or parts of each) and is now complaining because Russia is doing the same to them? Is that correct?

The US currently has 39 troops in Taiwan. Needless to say they are not engaged in combat operations. Most embassies have larger security details.

Amy deployment in Ukraine will by necessity be full scale with a view to fighting a shooting war with Russia centred on Ukranian soil.

Not only would that cause vastly more damage than the Russians alone, but it would not, could not, remain limited to that arena. Hence the constant use of the phrase WW3.

No, I'm saying Ukraine separated from Russia and we were all too happy to recognise their independence.

Move forward to the 2000s and we are much less willing to recognise Crimean independence.

It hardly needs saying that smacks of projecting our own self interest and calling it freedom.

And a conflict over Taiwan would mostly be on the water. Ok, I get that.

So, how do you think the UN and the rest of the world should deal with situations like is happening in Ukraine? Should we stop Russia? Should we have stopped Ukraine from doing what they did in Crimea and Donbas? As a global community, how do we (the human race) begin to resolve these issues?

Where has supporting rebels led us in the past? Have we really such z great track record of actually improving things?

Except this is no longer a "liberation" of disputed regions like Crimea and Donbas. This is an invasion of Ukraine as a whole. Russian troops are on the ground in places like Odessa and Ukraine's Belarusian border. There are Russian air strikes around Kyiv. None of this is justified. Even if this was a smaller scale "liberation" of Donbas, that wouldn't be justified either.

I honestly feel that a lot more objections should have been raised to suggestions of Ukranian membership of NATO. It was attractive as a strategic gain, not a humanitarian goal. Either is in truth overreach for a supposedly defensive alliance but the former is by far and away the most dangerous and the one best characterised by events.

I also believe the Ukranian authorities have committed both horrendous blunders and sins of their own. They unilaterally disarmed their nuclear arsenal in a deal where they got nothing but empty promises and better oil prices. They mistreated their separatist regions which could have become allies.

Whether that would have altered events to the point we'd be watching different news reports today? I have no idea but the closer we get to get brink the harder it gets to step back and millions of lives potentially hinge on what is happening.

I agree, in no sense am I pro Russia.

What I have been saying all along us that once the shooting starts it will inevitably escalate.

Which is exactly what you are admitting is already happening.

That would not have stopped Putin. It merely gave him additional pretext for this war. This was happening either way.

Also read the edit, we overlapped

However we don't know how things would have played out.

We do know from bitter experience that brinkmanship inevitably has human consequences.

Yep. In 2014, the US and NATO helped another faction come to power in Ukraine. As a result, we also got military forces like ASOV battalion, a militarized Nazi group, to bomb and terrorize Luhansk and Donetsk because there are major separatist groups there who want an alliance with Russia. This broke the Minsk II agreement, and now Putin is acting based on those predications. Again, I don't like Putin, but the US is absolutely full of itself talking about wanting to protect a nation's sovereignty, we violate those all the time, every day, and with thousands of innocents who die as a result. This is about energy markets, and how Russia supplies 30% of eastern Europe's energy needs. It's also a proxy war with Russia. The only people who lose are Ukrainians caught up in the middle.

Oh, I'm certainly not advocating for it. Just pointing out that different international perspectives are sometimes difficult to parse.

It’s really not the time to both sides this or engage in whataboutism because Russia invaded Ukraine. Let me repeat Russia invaded Ukraine. On Putin’s order. Hold him accountable for once.