Alrighty - so my opinion isn't a popular one. My sincere apologies if I offended anyone, and no I wasn't trying to troll the thread...
And make no mistake, I'm not suggesting in the slightest that what's happened to Ukraine has been justified or reasonable.
I would violently argue that what's happened to Ukraine has been completely unjustified, and straight up awful (awful doesn't describe what I'm trying to convey In the slightest...)
Nor am I justifying Putin doing any of the things he does or has done. Like I said above, this whole thing is beyond tragic & essentially an entire generation of young Ukranian men have been exposed to the horrors of war (as has their entire population)
...
So just to be clear... I am NOT PRO Russia in this...
The fact is, is that all of this bloodshed is happening on Ukranian soil - which confirms it is Russia's aggression & invasion of Ukraine that's responsible for it. It isn't Ukrainian troops dying in Russia, it's Russian troops dying in Ukraine...
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That being said, I think we are being myopic if we ignore some of the fundamental issues/factors that have had an influence throughout all of this...
- Putin is paranoid of the US-led west
- I don't know if any of us know exactly what happened behind the scenes in 2014/2015, but the CIA had a role to play in the outcome of Ukranian elections. (re, the Victoria Nuland leaked phone call)
Whatever it was that actually happened. It certainly didn't help ease any paranoia Putin had at the time or now (Re, Russian invading Crimea shortly after and the hostilities that continued throughout the Donbas since)
- NATO has expanded eastwards since the end of the Cold War. Putin warned Ukraine that joining NATO was a red line he wasn't about to entertain, and Putin enforces his red lines (ie, Georgia)
(I fully understand why various countries want to join NATO & I fully support them doing so. They had to live under the boot of the Soviet Union, and don't want to experience anything like that ever again...so it absolutely makes sense for them to want to join NATO.)
(My mother was also born and raised in Ukraine, and my grandparents on her side were from Ukraine - so I do totally get why all of those eastern European countries eagerly joined NATO
- The fact is though, is that Putin warned Ukraine against doing so, and this has played a major role in why things transpired the way they have...
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We also need to acknowledge some broader facts, which may be inconvenient, but are relevant nonetheless...
- Ukraine's population was 38M in 2021.
- Russia's population was roughly 143M.
- Russia can absorb more casualties than Ukraine can because of their overwhelmingly larger population.
(This is what I mean when I say a Ukranian casualty will have more of an impact on both future military options available to Ukraine than a Russian casualty will. The sheer size difference of the manpower pool each country can draw from is vastly in favor of Russia...)
(As if the population disparity wasn't a big enough problem, but when one breaks down Ukraine's demographics it actually feeds into a bigger future problem they will have - but it's probably been noted in this thread already somewhere along the way)
So none of the above is meant to sound like I'm trolling. None of it is meant to sound Pro-Russian, and certainly not anti-Ukraine.
But the facts are relevant, even if we don't like them.
The Ukranians have given the Russians one hell of a bloody nose I don't think anybody would have expected, and the fight isn't over yet...
The end of this war will happen at a negotiating table, not in total defeat of the enemy for either side. Plain and simple.
(Ukraine wants Russia out entirely, and Russia wants to secure its people and interests in the Donbas...the sooner they sit down and start talking, the better)
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(I'll leave the BRICS stuff for a different time)
I'll just mention that Russia has been able to sidestep some western sanctions because of its alliance with China, and they are selling more oil now than they did prior to the war.
Again, I'm not trolling - but these are relevant things that will play into how this awful mess ends
Cheers lads
Merry Christmas to you all
(If you read some threads from the bottom up, like I do, and see this first...skip this post! It's Christmas, and it's a depressing topic probably best left for another day!)