I think it is time to think about that again. Give Ukraine a few thermonuclear bombs that can reach Moscow. Maybe this could convince the Russian government that it is better to stop the offensive and go back to diplomacy.
> I think it is time to think about that again. Give Ukraine a few thermonuclear bombs that can reach Moscow. Maybe this could convince the Russian government that it is better to stop the offensive and go back to diplomacy.
No, that's a really stupid idea. Upside: maybe the Ukraine war ends sooner. Downside: global thermonuclear war.
I wonder if bringing in NATO forces to Ukraine, not to fight at the front, but to free up reserves, training/supply/other non-combat units to serve on the front lines would work as the first step. It wouldn't bring NATO forces to direct contact with Russians, but help Ukraine squeeze out the last troops for the battlefield.
Putin would of course cry wolf with his nuclear weapons, but the provocation would still be so limited that it would be hard to justify such a major move.
I think NATO should directly engage with Russia within the boundaries of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Putin is demanding that everyone stand by the sidelines and allow him to abuse people. It’s like a schoolyard bully who threatens bystanders into tacitly supporting their actions through their inaction. China is watching this closely and it’s clear that if a bully wants to abuse someone all they need to do is make threats and the West will demonstrate cowardice and allow the bully to do whatever they please. The West should grow a pair and slap that shit down with extreme prejudice. If we don’t do it now it will just enable other bullies to test the meekness of the West.
The way to deal with someone who abuses people is to take their power away, not act meekly, which just empowers them.
Yeah it's all been a bit wishy washy. The west should have stood up for the principle that you can't just invade democracies and take their land because your army is bigger.
> “I think we all have to admit, we should have given them more weapons pre-invasion.”
Absolutely.
Pre-2022, it was largely US, Canada, UK, and Turkiye taking unilateral action in helping Ukraine rebuild military capacity, along with Poroshenko's reforms.
The rest of NATO remained aloof of Ukraine until 2022
Germany especially did too little by placing irrationally high expectations about Poroshenko's ability to reform Ukraine [0] while ignoring the strides he made in building administrative capacity within Ukraine [1].
Furthermore, it might be heresy on HN/Reddit, but Zelensky's administration is extremely lackluster (even before the war began), and most of the recent missteps that Ukraine has done recently are due to Zelensky and his cabinet (eg. UKR-PL relations being lead by a UKR AgBusiness oligarch, politicization of upper levels of the military administration, active procurement corruption scandals, not arresting Ihor Kolomoisky until arm-twisted by the US, Pandora Papers).
Once this war is over, Ukraine will need to work hard to build it's institutions. They have the capacity, but it will require having to finally end the oligarch model, which will be extremely difficult politically.
If it does not, it will stagnate like Serbia and BH - which is something the oligarchs might gladly accept.
I personally don’t believe the millions of Ukrainians who have left are going to return.
Secondly how does the Ukraine military recruit new young troops when the prospects of victory are so slim and Ukraine is slowly being ground down and losing territory.
1. Do the Ukrainian get to be a self determining people? Are the free to join any alliance or economic group that will have them? Are they the ones who get to decide how much land they will trade for this?
2. What does the outcome tell other would be invaders? Does the Western alliance defend their ideals or cave to using force to take what you want?
One cannot evaluate the end game of Ukraine independent of the other global hot points in the Middle East and Asia. The autocrats have formed an alliance and seek to undermine democracy wherever and whenever they can.
I think number 1 is the essential point for anyone supporting democracy. Ukrainians, not Russians, decided who they elect as their leaders (1) and which organizations they want to join. It is depressing to hear people in democracies arguing otherwise.
As for point two: Yes it is also massively in the interest of democracies, that Ukraine wins and Europe is strengthened.
I think Stoltenberg summed up it up nicely in (2)
>So supporting Ukraine is not only the morally right thing to do.
It is also in our own security interest.
(1) Queue Russian non-sense about Maidan being a western coup.
At this point, it looks like outside countries are pushing for Ukraine and Russia to at best return to pre-2022 borders, or at worst current borders with Ukraine as part of NATO.
That said, either option is political suicide in both Ukraine and Russia.
> Secondly how does the Ukraine military recruit new young troops when the prospects of victory are so slim and Ukraine is slowly being ground down and losing territory
Big picture, borders have remained consistent and there aren't going to be significant changes one way or the other.
It's become a stalemate.
Russia or Ukraine can mobilize and mobilize, but both sides are too dug in to have a significant impact one way or the other.
I wasn't familiar with this acronym, so just putting this here for others like me - A2/AD(Anti-access/area_denial) is the strategy of preventing your opponent from entering an operational area and maneuvering within it[0].
No one is pushing too hard for any change to the status quo at present, unfortunately.
But you're ignoring a 3rd option: a working cease fire with no change in positions of forces on the ground -- but no recognition of Russia's sovereignty claims either. A classic frozen conflict, in other words. The latter option is getting some discussion among Ukrainians. It is a minority position, but it's perfectly possible discuss it as an option.
It also doesn't have to be a permanent arrangement: Sooner or later Putin will expire or become enfeebled, and the RF will likely enter a period of stagnation and instability. Which will open the door for a possible resolution to the question of final borders and positions of forces.
Perhaps something along the lines of what Croatia did to Serbia in 1995 (but at a much larger scale -- perhaps not retaking all of the occupied territories at once, but it may suffice to reclaim a large enough chunk to persuade whoever is running the RF by the point see that the writing is on the wall, and that the time is up on their optional colonial project):
If you believe http://www.nato.int then "NATO does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia."
If you live in a real world then a country with 10-100 times less military/economic power has no chance of not being dismantled with 10s of millions dead in the aftermath, and a few individuals become even richer exploiting the remains.
Russia would have had more decisive steps, then too. Most Russians criticize Putin for not taking this too seriously. Just like America in Iraq, Russia could've destroyed all energy infrastructure on day one, all airport fields, etc. Russia has a lot more capacity unlike Ukraine.
"Just like America in Iraq" what the hell are you on about?
The US invaded on March 20th. Iraq's head of state was captured on April 9th.
Russia isn't even close to having the same problems that America encountered after its obscenely successful invasion. When/if they do actually have to occupy Ukraine and sustain insurgency, it's going to be an absolute nightmare for decades.
Russia mustered all the might it could in an attempted shock and awe campaign against Kiev, the problem is that Russia is a 3rd world country that acts like it's not because it 1) used to be a 3rd world empire and 2) it has nukes. Russia and its military have been thoroughly gutted by decades of kleptocracy.
Most Russians criticize Putin for not taking this too seriously.
Largely out of the entirely unsupported belief, which you seem to share, that Putin could easily unleash huge reserves of untapped offensive potential any moment he wanted to (aside from nukes, which are of course completely useless for what he's trying to do in Ukraine).
The simple fact is, though, he just doesn't have that capacity. If he had it, he would have certainly made use of it by now, now nearly 3 years in. It's simply preposterous to suggest he's sitting on some massive potential, but hasn't been using it yet for some mysterious reason.
The fetishization of Putin you see on here is absolutely bonkers.
Guys... he's just a dictator like all the others through history: fundamentally confused by an information environment of his own making, undermined by systemic corruption and a culture of distrust, and dangerously delusional in his ambitions.
He's just a complete loser, and his clowncar of an invasion is an extension of that fundamental loserness.
Their goal was never to occupy Ukraine. They got what they wanted, the land corridor to Crimea and a nearly permanent quagmire blocking Ukraine from EU and NATO membership.
The US has always had to contend with the risk of coming up too hard and collapsing Russia. No one wants rogue generals with nuclear armed ICMB.
This seems pretty naive. Crimea and Ukraine's NATO membership was already quagmire since 2014. Only thing that has changed here is that Finland and Sweden are now in NATO.
Ukraine wanted to rearm with nuclear weapons already in 2021: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/4/16/ukraine-may-see...
I think it is time to think about that again. Give Ukraine a few thermonuclear bombs that can reach Moscow. Maybe this could convince the Russian government that it is better to stop the offensive and go back to diplomacy.
> I think it is time to think about that again. Give Ukraine a few thermonuclear bombs that can reach Moscow. Maybe this could convince the Russian government that it is better to stop the offensive and go back to diplomacy.
No, that's a really stupid idea. Upside: maybe the Ukraine war ends sooner. Downside: global thermonuclear war.
NATO is afraid to move the nukes to even Poland. Putin moved the nukes to Belarus.
As I see, such constant displays of weakness may provoke Putin to some wider war. Russian society has transformed. There can be only war in the future. Just look at his government budget: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/30/russias-defenc...
Russia already keeps nukes in Temporary occupied Królewiec.
Then we should allow Iran to build nukes, which means Turkiye, KSA, and UAE need to build nukes, which means....
Nuclear Proliferation only increases the risk of conflict, not decreases it.
50 years of cold war proof otherwise. Better a new cold nuclear war, than a hot conventional war.
> 50 years of cold war proof otherwise. Better a new cold nuclear war, than a hot conventional war.
The Cold War was a bipolar conflict. Rampant nuclear proliferation will not result in a similar situation and will not have the same result.
I probably missed it, but is someone invading Iran?
They should have and now they should put boots on the ground to rectify the mistake.
I wonder if bringing in NATO forces to Ukraine, not to fight at the front, but to free up reserves, training/supply/other non-combat units to serve on the front lines would work as the first step. It wouldn't bring NATO forces to direct contact with Russians, but help Ukraine squeeze out the last troops for the battlefield.
Putin would of course cry wolf with his nuclear weapons, but the provocation would still be so limited that it would be hard to justify such a major move.
I think NATO should directly engage with Russia within the boundaries of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Putin is demanding that everyone stand by the sidelines and allow him to abuse people. It’s like a schoolyard bully who threatens bystanders into tacitly supporting their actions through their inaction. China is watching this closely and it’s clear that if a bully wants to abuse someone all they need to do is make threats and the West will demonstrate cowardice and allow the bully to do whatever they please. The West should grow a pair and slap that shit down with extreme prejudice. If we don’t do it now it will just enable other bullies to test the meekness of the West.
The way to deal with someone who abuses people is to take their power away, not act meekly, which just empowers them.
Yeah it's all been a bit wishy washy. The west should have stood up for the principle that you can't just invade democracies and take their land because your army is bigger.
> “I think we all have to admit, we should have given them more weapons pre-invasion.”
Absolutely.
Pre-2022, it was largely US, Canada, UK, and Turkiye taking unilateral action in helping Ukraine rebuild military capacity, along with Poroshenko's reforms.
The rest of NATO remained aloof of Ukraine until 2022
Germany especially did too little by placing irrationally high expectations about Poroshenko's ability to reform Ukraine [0] while ignoring the strides he made in building administrative capacity within Ukraine [1].
Furthermore, it might be heresy on HN/Reddit, but Zelensky's administration is extremely lackluster (even before the war began), and most of the recent missteps that Ukraine has done recently are due to Zelensky and his cabinet (eg. UKR-PL relations being lead by a UKR AgBusiness oligarch, politicization of upper levels of the military administration, active procurement corruption scandals, not arresting Ihor Kolomoisky until arm-twisted by the US, Pandora Papers).
Once this war is over, Ukraine will need to work hard to build it's institutions. They have the capacity, but it will require having to finally end the oligarch model, which will be extremely difficult politically.
If it does not, it will stagnate like Serbia and BH - which is something the oligarchs might gladly accept.
[0] - https://www.dw.com/en/poroshenkos-promises-merkels-disappoin...
[1] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-histo...
What is the end game for the war?
I personally don’t believe the millions of Ukrainians who have left are going to return.
Secondly how does the Ukraine military recruit new young troops when the prospects of victory are so slim and Ukraine is slowly being ground down and losing territory.
Two points of consideration for the end game
1. Do the Ukrainian get to be a self determining people? Are the free to join any alliance or economic group that will have them? Are they the ones who get to decide how much land they will trade for this?
2. What does the outcome tell other would be invaders? Does the Western alliance defend their ideals or cave to using force to take what you want?
One cannot evaluate the end game of Ukraine independent of the other global hot points in the Middle East and Asia. The autocrats have formed an alliance and seek to undermine democracy wherever and whenever they can.
I think number 1 is the essential point for anyone supporting democracy. Ukrainians, not Russians, decided who they elect as their leaders (1) and which organizations they want to join. It is depressing to hear people in democracies arguing otherwise.
As for point two: Yes it is also massively in the interest of democracies, that Ukraine wins and Europe is strengthened.
I think Stoltenberg summed up it up nicely in (2)
>So supporting Ukraine is not only the morally right thing to do. It is also in our own security interest.
(1) Queue Russian non-sense about Maidan being a western coup.
(2) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_212041.htm
At this point, it looks like outside countries are pushing for Ukraine and Russia to at best return to pre-2022 borders, or at worst current borders with Ukraine as part of NATO.
That said, either option is political suicide in both Ukraine and Russia.
> Secondly how does the Ukraine military recruit new young troops when the prospects of victory are so slim and Ukraine is slowly being ground down and losing territory
Big picture, borders have remained consistent and there aren't going to be significant changes one way or the other.
It's become a stalemate.
Russia or Ukraine can mobilize and mobilize, but both sides are too dug in to have a significant impact one way or the other.
This is how an A2AD war will be fought.
> A2AD war
I wasn't familiar with this acronym, so just putting this here for others like me - A2/AD(Anti-access/area_denial) is the strategy of preventing your opponent from entering an operational area and maneuvering within it[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-access/area_denial
No one is pushing too hard for any change to the status quo at present, unfortunately.
But you're ignoring a 3rd option: a working cease fire with no change in positions of forces on the ground -- but no recognition of Russia's sovereignty claims either. A classic frozen conflict, in other words. The latter option is getting some discussion among Ukrainians. It is a minority position, but it's perfectly possible discuss it as an option.
It also doesn't have to be a permanent arrangement: Sooner or later Putin will expire or become enfeebled, and the RF will likely enter a period of stagnation and instability. Which will open the door for a possible resolution to the question of final borders and positions of forces.
Perhaps something along the lines of what Croatia did to Serbia in 1995 (but at a much larger scale -- perhaps not retaking all of the occupied territories at once, but it may suffice to reclaim a large enough chunk to persuade whoever is running the RF by the point see that the writing is on the wall, and that the time is up on their optional colonial project):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm
Assuming it isn't resolved by diplomatic means somehow (possible, but unlikely).
If you believe http://www.nato.int then "NATO does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia."
If you live in a real world then a country with 10-100 times less military/economic power has no chance of not being dismantled with 10s of millions dead in the aftermath, and a few individuals become even richer exploiting the remains.
Russia would have had more decisive steps, then too. Most Russians criticize Putin for not taking this too seriously. Just like America in Iraq, Russia could've destroyed all energy infrastructure on day one, all airport fields, etc. Russia has a lot more capacity unlike Ukraine.
"Just like America in Iraq" what the hell are you on about?
The US invaded on March 20th. Iraq's head of state was captured on April 9th.
Russia isn't even close to having the same problems that America encountered after its obscenely successful invasion. When/if they do actually have to occupy Ukraine and sustain insurgency, it's going to be an absolute nightmare for decades.
Russia mustered all the might it could in an attempted shock and awe campaign against Kiev, the problem is that Russia is a 3rd world country that acts like it's not because it 1) used to be a 3rd world empire and 2) it has nukes. Russia and its military have been thoroughly gutted by decades of kleptocracy.
I agree with everything else, but just wanted to nitpick that by definition, Russia used to be a *2nd* world empire.
Definitionally true, you're right :) trying to counteract the tendency to overplay the "glory days" of the USSR.
Most Russians criticize Putin for not taking this too seriously.
Largely out of the entirely unsupported belief, which you seem to share, that Putin could easily unleash huge reserves of untapped offensive potential any moment he wanted to (aside from nukes, which are of course completely useless for what he's trying to do in Ukraine).
The simple fact is, though, he just doesn't have that capacity. If he had it, he would have certainly made use of it by now, now nearly 3 years in. It's simply preposterous to suggest he's sitting on some massive potential, but hasn't been using it yet for some mysterious reason.
The fetishization of Putin you see on here is absolutely bonkers.
Guys... he's just a dictator like all the others through history: fundamentally confused by an information environment of his own making, undermined by systemic corruption and a culture of distrust, and dangerously delusional in his ambitions.
He's just a complete loser, and his clowncar of an invasion is an extension of that fundamental loserness.
Their goal was never to occupy Ukraine. They got what they wanted, the land corridor to Crimea and a nearly permanent quagmire blocking Ukraine from EU and NATO membership.
The US has always had to contend with the risk of coming up too hard and collapsing Russia. No one wants rogue generals with nuclear armed ICMB.
That's bs, I remember their articles and anticipation of Shock and Awe style regime change in Kyiv: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240
This seems pretty naive. Crimea and Ukraine's NATO membership was already quagmire since 2014. Only thing that has changed here is that Finland and Sweden are now in NATO.
Nah bro that’s 15 dimensional chess. Only in dimensions 2 through 14 does “Finland and Sweden join NATO” sound like a bad thing.
Putin’s 15th degree of chess is where it all is revealed as strategic genius.
I guessed sarcasm only after seeing your other comment.
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