Pathetic
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Putler took da kidz.
Hez a wor crim i nal.
Got to sort your debts to the banksters that own Ukraine (while the Oligarchs make a killing).
Lots of people say all sorts of crazy shit here. Crazy and stupid is not against the rules. If je were to say any specific poster is a crazy and stupid shit, that’s not supposed to be brought up.
Definitely we have had cheerleaders for Putin’s war of aggression on Forumosa.
Pathetic is what the American people voted for. And blaming Obama. Thanks Obama!
This was reported as soon as the invasion started
Russia claims to have pushed UKF out of Kursk.
How Wars End - Geopolitical Futures
The war isn’t exactly over because the fighting continues. However, unless the Russian army suddenly evolves into a more effective force, or unless the U.S. or Europe sends massive forces to drive Russia out, the lines on the map are more or less fixed. The new borders are a reality. And everyone needs to accept those realities if they want peace talks to succeed. There are other demands the Europeans can make that Russia will not accept – which shows them to be more honorable than the Americans, who just want the war to end and to do business with a weakened Russia – and there are other issues that can be negotiated. Some of these, such as the size of the Ukrainian military, can and will likely be ignored.
There is one last dimension to be considered. Russia is a nuclear power, and during the Cold War, Russia and the U.S. took every precaution to avoid posing a profound threat to each other. They dueled in the so-called Third World, but aside from the Cuban missile crisis, they never threatened to put each other in an untenable position out of fear of a desperate nuclear response. Eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula are simply not worth going to the brink, as we used to say in the Cold War.
And a gift of free article from FA
Today, the weaker rival is Russia. This has become all too obvious as Ukraine has chewed through Moscow’s military resources. The United States should thus aim to use Russia’s depleted state to its advantage, seeking a détente with Moscow that disadvantages Beijing. The goal should be not to remove the sources of conflict with Russia but to place constraints on its ability to harm U.S. interests.
This process should begin by bringing the war in Ukraine to an end in a way that is favorable to the United States. That means that when all is said and done, Kyiv must be strong enough to impede Russia’s westward advances. To achieve this end, the American officials negotiating a peace agreement should learn from the failure of the 2022 Istanbul talks between Kyiv and Moscow, which treated a political settlement as the goal and worked backward toward a cease-fire. Doing that enabled Russia to make its political demands—neutering the Ukrainian state through caps on the size of its army and changing its constitution—a precondition to peace. A better model would be 1950s Korea: to prioritize an armistice and push questions about a wider settlement into a separate process that could take years to bear fruit, if it ever does. Washington should still be willing to push the Ukrainians to cede territory when doing so is necessary. But it should make Ukrainian sovereignty a precondition for talks and use U.S. sanctions, military assistance, and seized Russian assets to bring Moscow around.
It is unlikely that Russia can be cleaved entirely from China.
The United States should pursue a defense relationship with Ukraine akin to the one it maintains with Israel: not a formal alliance, but an agreement to sell, lend, or give Kyiv what it needs to defend itself. But it should not grant Ukraine NATO membership. Instead, the United States should push European states to take responsibility for Ukraine—and for the security of their continent more generally.
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Ukraine building a 1.2 billion pound resort near the Polish border.
Yet another soldier grabbed off the streets.
Average life expectancy of a frontline soldier in eastern Ukraine is less than two weeks. So he’s getting dragged into an almost certain death.
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I thought Trump agreed to resume sending weapons to Ukraine. Don’t tell me he lied:
For more than 1,000 days, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. kept up a regular drumbeat of military support for Ukraine, sending hundreds of howitzers with millions of shells for them to fire, tens of thousands of guided artillery rockets, and advanced air-defense missile systems to help hold Russian invaders at bay.
During all that time, the question was not whether the U.S. would send more weapons, but how advanced would they be, and how far could they reach into Russia?
The exception to that rule was a 119-day period that began in December 2023, when Speaker Mike Johnson prevented a vote on more aid for Ukraine in the House of Representatives. That move nearly led to catastrophe for Ukraine as its troops began to run out of ammunition, prompting outrage from the White House, some members of Congress and the public.
Friday marks another grim milestone for Ukraine — the 120th day since the last new aid package was announced on Jan. 8, outstripping the length of Mr. Johnson’s devastating hold.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/politics/ukraine-military-aid-trump.html
Was his mouth moving?
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In the UK, the virtue signalling clown government had Ukraine celebrating the 80th anniversary of VE day this week. No mention that the western half of Ukraine were fighting for Germany in WW2 of course.
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The last troops defending the Berlin bunker were SS Charlemagne. History, eh? Complicated.
Ukrainian drones destroying Russian missile systems.
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Wtf is NEO why is he dressed like that ?
It’s funny how he’s checking the KGB notes as he proceeds.
Please make him stop talking 
I don’t always agree with his takes (especially regarding Taiwan), but I do like that he brings receipts to his analytical approach.
That being said it’s just one talking head’s opinion. 
Norway and Sweden should be pitching in to support Finland as well. Right now both of their troop levels and readiness are just abysmal.
Let’s take a look at this article. In his defense, he has tried to localize this to the years just before, which is a nice change from usual.
As recently documented by overwhelming forensic evidence, and even affirmed by a Kyiv court […] it was right wing militants […]
He cites the same academic for all of these, which is a rather spurious use of multiple links to demonstrate"overwhelming" evidence. That said, while I don’t necessarily disagree with his findings – I’ve actually read his paper before – I don’t think that the Euromaidan massacre potentially being a false flag has any particular relation to the invasion of Crimea. I’ll go into this more later, but it seems that Yanu was essentially aborted and then went into exile in Russia, and this gave them the excuse needed to begin their hostile activities in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian right wing totally could have done so without the assistance of the west. And it still in no way justified an invasion of Crimea and the paramilitarism in Donbas/Luhansk. I don’t really understand what his point is there.
Especially giving the incredible cherry-picking involved in the next source:
Ukraine had a pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukoyvch, who had won free and fair elections in 2010 […]
Yes, the 2010 elections were regarded by the provided source to be free and fair. However, to classify Yanukoyvch (henceforth Yanu, I’m lazy) at the time in 2010 as solely pro-Russia is really false; he campaigned on greater economic ties with the EU. Can’t find a direct source for this, but it’s fairly widespread. Brookings has an article on issues with integration that begins with this very assertion.
While Yanu’s party was, on the whole, pro-Russia, this alone does not in any way fully represent the just-elected Yanukoyvch completely. This shift probably occured due to increasing political closeness to Moscow within the party, as well as Russian economic sanctions against Ukraine as a response to Yanu’s pro-EU economic integration stances.
Also, there are a shitton of issues with the election and much criticism towards it, not to mention a considerably lower participation rate than in previous elections. Saying it was unilaterally fair and free is a bit of a exaggeration. But significantly better than the last time Yanu ran in 2004, where allegations of unfair election practices were immensely widespread.
The author also gets away on a technicality here:
Had won fair and free elections in 2010
Bolding my own. Within two years, the same source that he cites for the fair and free election claim would release this about the 2012 parliamentary elections. The opposition leader was arrested and in jail since like, 2011 or something by that point, on charges that are incredibly suspicious (and oft alleged to be politically motivated).
Euromaidan only began following Yanu’s choice to pursue deeper economic ties with Russia instead of the EU, despite campaigning on that. And obviously the events of Euromaidan occured, and Yanu was outsted.
But this ousting was not a foregone conclusion. As this article from Foreign Policy describes, there was a significant security apparatus and negotiation towards a compromise actively occuring pre-Maidan massacre that totally could have. Not long after, however, the security forces entirely gave up their positions with incredible speed, leaving Yanu totally vulnerable to a public that – correct or not – believed he (via his admin) was responsible for the Maidan massacre, and this accompanied by Putin essentially abandoning Yanu and, shortly after, his own party members voting for his removal. This is all accompanied by numerous significant visits from Russian state security to Kyiv during the Maidan protests.
Instead, the compromise and Yanu’s desire not crush the largely peaceful Euromaidan protests led Russia to pull the plug on him. And those protests are not argued to be the false flag; the false flag that’s been argued is mostly the massacre.
The failure to bring Ukraine further into the Russian orbit through Yanukoyvch failed partially because Yanukoyvch was not as directly authoritarian as the Kremlin and thus did not crush opposition voices en masse at Euromaidan, and because he was in a political environment which had actual competition and thus required more compromise. Neither of these things favorable to RU, so RU invades instead.
Second, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky contributed to a wider war by violating peace deals with Russia and seeking NATO military aid and membership […] The deals, known as Minsk 1 and 2
Gee, I wonder why anyone would want to do that…
No idea.
Also, there remains plenty of reason to believe that Russia had not held to it’s end of Minsk I/II. Following Minsk I, “seperatist” forces took an airport. Following Minsk II, fighting continued and progressed in favor of the pro-Russian forces, the latter with significant Wagner participation.
Additionally, the OCSE (the same group the Hill contributor cited for the fair and free elections!) noted military gear and convoys continuing to cross into Donbas well after Minsk I/II.
Zelensky instead increased weapons imports from NATO countries, which was the last straw for Putin. So, on Feb. 21, 2022, Russia recognized the independence of Donbas, deployed troops there for “peacekeeping,” and demanded Zelensky renounce his quest for NATO military assistance and membership.
When Zelensky again refused, Putin massively expanded his military offensive on Feb. 24.
Well isn’t that predetermination. He imports NATO weaponry whilst Russia lines up on his border for exercise, backs up for a bit but still remains visible to observers, and then finally invades. This process lasts over a year. Plenty of time for weapon imports to combat what seems an increasingly hostile Moscow.
Mearsheimer made the point significantly better, although I’ve my issues with his geopolitical framework. Laid these down in detail before and y’all ignored that, so I’ll not bother for now.
Third, Joe Biden too contributed crucially to the escalation and perpetuation of fighting. […] Considering that Ukraine already was existentially dependent on U.S. military assistance, if President Biden had insisted that Zelensky comply with Putin’s request
Sure, fair point. Counterpoint, Russia was already lined up on the borders. Additionally, the Minsk accords were only related to Donbas. Hardly justifies a greater scale attack. And I’ve already pointed out the issues with Donbas and what might not have led anyone to grant it greater autonomy when it was, at the time, still the subject of foreign invasion, or most generously foreign sponsored Invasion. So what, foreign sponsored actors are only a problem when the US does it?
The sad thing is that such a plan could have been achieved at least two years ago if only President Biden had made military aid conditional on Zelensky negotiating a ceasefire.
Agreed. I’ve never argued that Biden handled all of it well, just that the beginning element of it was generally handled well. Exposing Russia lining up on Ukrainian borders to the world before any demands put Russia on the back foot and they’ve scrambled through a million different casus belli throughout these few years trying desperately to justify it.
The only one that holds any water, to me, is NATO expansion… But in the words of Thom Yorke, “You do it to yourself, you do / and that’s what really hurts / you do it to yourself, just you / you and no-one else”
Nobody to blame for the hate and distrust of Russia by its neighbors but Russia, and Putin is a huge element of that. And mearsheimer’s argumentation is still stuck in a bipolar worldview on this area, he acknowledges China but only insofar as Russia is important to the US in their geopolitical rivalry in the near east. And I’m not going into that again because it’ll just be ignored, TLDR is mearsheimer still thinks far East Europe is essentially a no-go zone just because Russia says it is to them. Don’t want to say more and be ignored like both times before, because everyone wants to say mearsheimer good/bad but nobody wants to talk about how important geopolitical frameworks are to the analysis of information in IA/PS. Huge difference between history and those two disciplines and the kinds of conclusions one can draw.
Hey, look at me! I used sources in this! Wow, good me 