Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[mike]

[Soloist]

Or... perhaps we are dangerously close to a deal causing the Russians to halt their progress? one could chose to look optimistically rather then doom and gloom.

[Dan Z]

For Putin to end this war and save face he will need to win something. The question is, what can negotiation give him that he can take home as a win, but that will still allow Ukrainian sovereignty to continue, and the killing and destruction to end.

[Josh]

For Putin to end this war and save face he will need to win something. The question is, what can negotiation give him that he can take home as a win, but that will still allow Ukrainian sovereignty to continue, and the killing and destruction to end.

Why is “Ukrainian sovereignty” so important?

Was it important when the West staged a colour revolution?

Why wasn’t “Iraqi sovereignty” important?

Should a kingdom Christian be focused on “Ukrainian sovereignty”, particularly to the point of advocating in favour of killing?

[temporal1]

For Putin to end this war and save face he will need to win something. The question is, what can negotiation give him that he can take home as a win, but that will still allow Ukrainian sovereignty to continue and the killing and destruction to end.

from mike’s posts on Putin’s “demands,” i think it may be the West that’s having problems with saving face.
(i’m not sure “demands” is the correct or best translated word.) it might be. i don’t know.

we can be sure, the DNC, NYT, et al., definitely want a specifically biden “plum for votes” in this.
for these, beyond question, Putin must be the evil one. now+forever.

am i wrong to think a neutral Ukraine would not be bad?

without details, the public does NOT know what is going on in these talks.

from what has been made public, it sure seems the invasion could have been prevented, or stopped immediately, or early-on, if the West had not been tone deaf. or, worse, wanting conflict.

regarding east Ukraine, if Russia wanted to take Chicago, i think plenty of us would be happy to let it go.

[Bootstrap]

For Putin to end this war and save face he will need to win something. The question is, what can negotiation give him that he can take home as a win, but that will still allow Ukrainian sovereignty to continue, and the killing and destruction to end.

So how does this end? I'm no expert, but here's what I can think of offhand:

1. Ukranians are not welcoming the Russians with as their liberators, not even in most of Russian-speaking Ukraine. We can rule out that ending.
2. Putin could conquer all of Ukraine and they could give in, take on Russian identity, and learn to love the police state. That seems incredibly unlikely at this point.
3. The international community could "offer Putin something" so he can say he won. That seems unlikely unless they offer him something very substantial - this has cost a lot in terms of Russian lives and money and embarrassment at not quickly conquering Ukraine.
4. Putin could take, say, half of Ukraine, offer to withdraw from the rest, some of the international support for Ukraine could erode at that point, Ukraine would have to decide whether to take the deal or not, whether they feel they would be safe under that arrangement, or just waiting for him to take the rest later. Europe would be on notice. Sweden and Finland and some other countries would join NATO.
5. Putin could be ousted. Someone in the Russian government said that the people near to Putin are more likely to oust him than to tell him the truth, because they are scared to tell him the truth. That rings true to me, that's how authoritarian regimes work.
6. The war could grind on and on, like Afghanistan or Syria, with massive human loss and both sides committing atrocities against each other, until Russia finally gives up, or it could become a permanent war. This seems unfortunately likely to me.

I don't see any great endings here. I hope there is a better ending than what I can see. I'm not smart enough to know which of these endings is most likely. I do know how to help refugees - including Russian refugees who are now leaving that country. And I know how to grieve and how to pray and how to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

[temporal1]

It’s probably a good idea to recognize Putin’s proposals:
Not listening has been part of what led to the invasion, to begin.
Not listening shouldn’t become a dedicated career.

Russia's demands

The West has a problem of how to withdraw without revealing Putin may be the most lucid in the room.
How can the West withdraw and save face? .. Most important to them, how to get support for biden/DNC?

Yes. i believe they are that petty.

[Jess77]

Just a little aside to this whole Ukraine/Russia mess...

It was Zelensky who was President of Ukraine when Trump suggested he might want to look into the Hunter Biden situation, a call for which he was eventually impeached. And it was the Russian puppet president Poroshenko who Biden threatened to withhold $1Biliion from if the prosecutor looking into Hunter Biden's connection with the Ukranian energy company Barisma wasn't immediately fired... which he was. It seems as though it is in the Biden family's best interest for Russia to be in power over Ukraine.

I don't know-- or frankly, care-- whether Russia had any legitimate reason to want to invade Ukraine. What I do care about is that there are millions of innocent people who's lives are being forever changed... in both countries. Not only those in Ukraine who will live with the memory of the bombs, the blood and the destruction, but also their family members in Russia who will one day realize what their country did. I fear for the people who will choose Russian prison over being silent in their calls for peace. It all just needs to stop. Now.

[temporal1]

Just a little aside to this whole Ukraine/Russia mess...

It was Zelensky who was President of Ukraine when Trump suggested he might want to look into the Hunter Biden situation, a call for which he was eventually impeached. And it was the Russian puppet president Poroshenko who Biden threatened to withhold $1Biliion from if the prosecutor looking into Hunter Biden's connection with the Ukranian energy company Barisma wasn't immediately fired... which he was. It seems as though it is in the Biden family's best interest for Russia to be in power over Ukraine.

I don't know-- or frankly, care-- whether Russia had any legitimate reason to want to invade Ukraine.

What I do care about is that there are millions of innocent people who's lives are being forever changed... in both countries.

Not only those in Ukraine who will live with the memory of the bombs, the blood and the destruction, but also their family members in Russia who will one day realize what their country did. I fear for the people who will choose Russian prison over being silent in their calls for peace. It all just needs to stop. Now.

i’ve been hoping you might add your thots on this.

i was just reminded of the ugly history of the bidens in Ukraine. how we forget!!
the linked article below goes much further than the part i quoted.

Page 80

i’d forgotten about Hunter Biden’s big job in Ukraine, and other Biden family Ukraine snippets.

Jan 24 2022 / “What Does Vladimir Putin Have on Joe Biden?”
Joe and Hunter Biden’s seedy involvements in Ukraine may have given the Russian leader all the ‘kompromat’
he needs to keep America at bay
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news ... -joe-biden

.. But that doesn’t seem to be all.
You don’t need a secret dossier authored by a British ex-spy for hire like Christopher Steele to understand the possible weird real-world mirror version of Russiagate. This time, it’s basically all out in the open—or at least it was, until the press and social media scrubbed reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop from the internet in the run-up to the 2020 election. The laptop, whose provenance and contents have both since checked out beyond any shadow of doubt, give evidence of Hunter’s financial relationships with foreign officials and businesses, like the more than $50,000 per month he got for sitting on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, starting in the spring of 2014.

The reason that a company like Burisma was willing to pay the drug-addled son of the vice president of the United States so much money for a no-show job wasn’t to buy his expertise in natural gas exploration and drilling, of course.

Hunter Biden’s sordid memoir, Beautiful Things, published last year, makes it clear that, during the period in question, he was a wreck of a human being who spent lavishly on crack and methamphetamine, which he consumed in expensive hotel rooms in the company of prostitutes. It would seem that the obvious point of paying Hunter Biden was to buy protection from the American official in charge of Ukraine policy—Joe Biden. .. ..

it continues ..

[Jess77]

Ha! I got tired and stopped reading at page 32. I guess I should have read a bit further.