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

Hey, it's the actual reason to have a militia!

That's actually @Paladin's Ukranian cousin.

Thanks. My xHamster search plans for later were "Ukrainian cousin" and now I'm gonna have some uncomfortable mental images.

I'm not saying it's impossible to fap to.

IT specialists would be better used elsewhere:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/...l-far-from-ready-for-russian-hackers-00010373

Do you even pay attention to what people post or do you just respond to the narrative you've built in your head? I started this thread and in the very first post I said that we shouldn't be putting boots on the ground. I have been consistent on being against war so you calling me a warmonger is laughable.

You say conflicting things all the time. You seem to be well aware of what to say to try to make yourself look like a decent human being, but there is a reality to you that is not decent. Please do not include me in your self delusion. You support war and fighting, you just do not want to admit it.

Then it should be easy for you to find a quote of me supporting war and specifically war over Ukraine. I'll wait.

If I thought people needed a sign to your pile of shit I would show it. I am perfectly fine with you being you and making it obvious.

In other words, you got nothing. That's what I thought.

To be honest, if it's genuinely what you think, your OP isn't all that far from my take.

Act as peacemakers, but keep well away from even a hint of direct provocation.

I’m not opposed to sending anything they need, including munitions.

Munitions becomes a sticky one for me. You're going beyond humanitarian support to arming a faction.

That starts to look a lot like a proxy war.

A Private Little War, one might say.

Are we the Federation or the Klingons here?

Either way, we're not arming the Hill People against the Villagers.

We really need to back down on that. The Polish border is our line in the sand, not imposing our perceived authority on the internal affairs of former Russian states.

It all depends on what our treaty obligations are. I honestly don't know what those might be. Do you?

Either way, it's going to be Crimea 2.0. Germany Russia is illegally valiantly seizing freeing the oppressed German Russian speaking peoples of the Sudetenland Ukraine

The broader, historical, question is this: 75 years from now, will people be saying, "If they had blunted him in Ukraine, would all those people have died in Poland and Germany?"

The main relevant treaty is the Minsk Agreement between Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE.

If that is not being observed I don't know of (or can imagine a reason for) the US or NATO as a whole having any specific remit or responsibilities.

Specifically Russia agreed not to intervene in Crimea provided Ukraine abided by a set of conditions regarding their conduct towards the Crimean population in general and the separatists in particular.

They have consistently failed to meet those conditions.

Yes, you read that right.

The human rights issue in Crimea is not how Russia would treat it's reconquered territory, it's how Ukraine is treating the people of a region they refuse independence to.

When we talk about protecting Crimea from Russian occupation we are literally getting it the wrong way round. It's currently occupied by Ukraine.

Minsk (and Minsk II) have nothing at all to say about Crimea.

EDIT: and Russia has most definitely been in violation of the Budapest memorandum since annexing Crimea.

My mistake, they refer only to Donbas, not Crimea, however that does nothing to undermine my suspicion that "we" likely have no legitimate treaty obligations in Crimea or Ukraine as a whole.

My point was that the Minsk Agreement was effectively abandoned at this point by multilateral non compliance not that it is the roadmap to peace per se.

As for the Budapest Memorandum correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not aware of any stipulations requiring us to intervene if another party violates it?

Ukraine abandoned it's nuclear stockpile and we are thus duty bound to respect it's borders, not protect them.

This is basically the end of the NPT if neither the US nor Russia will act to protect countries that give up their nuclear weapons programs voluntarily, even in the face of aggression from the other. And more to the point, that trying to paint this situation as Ukraine’s fault is highly disingenuous.

Putin's speech was fairly chilling. Reviving the ideology of Imperial Russia under the Tsars.

Nobody covering themselves in glory in this situation.

Anyone got any thought on the likely consequences of this potential sanctions package, excluding Russian from the international payment system and so forth?

I'm wondering if we're thinking about this wrong. Being Russian, Putin, of course, knows how to play chess. He's also a student of judo. He rolls into Ukraine ala Germany in 1941, the world would go bugfuck. If, OTOH, he merely makes everyone think that he's going to invade Ukraine, what happens? Well, for starters, fossil fuel prices spike. What's the single largest source of revenue for Russia? Fossil fuel sales. Hmm. Cutting off Russia's ability to sell fossil fuels before they invade Ukraine removes any incentive for him to stay out of Ukraine if he's really intent on invading. During the time when the Ukrainians are freaked out about the possibility of invading, if Western nations don't firmly commit to doing something significant to protect Ukraine, the Ukrainians are going to feel like their ass is just hanging out there for Putin to bite off. It'll also make them question what good it is to be allied with the Western nations if they're not going to do anything to significantly help Ukraine when Putin's knocking at their door.

So Putin then undermines support for the Ukrainian President, Western allies, and gives separatist groups incentives to break away. Remember, the Ukrainian President is a sitcom star. Dude was basically in their version of "That's My Bush!" and people thought that it'd be a hoot for him to actually get elected President. And I'm not belittling the guy, but no matter how smart he is, and how well he was plugged into politics, he's still at a disadvantage when going up against folks who've spent years holding political office. Ukraine implodes into civil unrest, and Putin can pick off segments of the country at his leisure, since NATO is unlikely to send a massive peacekeeping operation to restore order.

Would you prefer rancid bear or human feces for dinner, sir? There is no "good" here. There's "bad" and then there's "worse."

Serious question limited to the realm of major global powers. Have sanctions ever, you know, actually hurt the government or just the poorest citizens? Putin, the general staff, and the oligarchs are still going to get three squares a day and sleep under silk sheets. But, the peons in the street that rely on microtransactions from the west to fill gaps in their income are going to be hurt.

Depends what you mean by "this".

Russia is an aggressor, quite clearly, but that doesn't really need stating and frankly Ukraine made a strategic blunder in disarming unilaterally. They lost a material deterrent in return for promises and concessions on oil.

However painting Ukraine as an innocent victim state (which really is disingenuous) overlooks the availability of legitimate bargaining opportunities where both sides can maintain face.

Ukraine has acted in bad faith towards Donbas and Crimean separatists including numerous incidents which have led to massive civilians deaths.

There's a legitimate case for stating Crimea is rightly Russian and an overwhelming portion of it's population support that.

Let that go.

Let recognition of Russian Crimea be a trade off for sitting down and discussing how Minsk II, or some modified version thereof, could be made to work.

Do you have any better suggestions?

What course of action do you propose?

Do you really want a shooting war between NATO and Russia triggered in the territory?

Would that benefit anyone in Ukraine?

Best assessment of Putin's thinking we've had posted here.

http://wordforge.net/index.php?thre...-by-us-doj-and-fbi.121640/page-9#post-3348747

Supposedly this sanctions package is specifically targeting the regime barons. When all your western accounts are frozen, your yacht in Corsica is seized, along with your penthouse in Manhattan, mansion in London, your kid can no longer go to boarding school in Switzerland and your vacation options are limited to Belarus, China and North Korea maybe the deal with the devil you’ve made doesn’t look so good.