I'm not at all clear on what Putin gains with expansion. Russia has way more land than they need. Their population has been flat since the 80s. Their military is already depleted and skeletal. Anyone who's played Diplomacy understands that if you spread too thin as you expand into your neighbors, they will keep taking back your gains like we see here. Complete occupation is clearly out of the question at this point, they're going to keep fighting over a stolen sliver here and there. No ego has been satisfied here, nor will it be.
According to Peter Zeihan, it's not so much that Russia needs more _land_ but that its current land is difficult to defend militarily given the facts of its geography. I'm not necessarily defending Zeihan's view, but simply claiming that there is some analysis which suggests there's a strategic benefit for Russia here. (or perhaps there would have been back when they thought the war would be easy) And let's also not forget the importance of Crimea with regard to Black Sea shipping. It's also the case the the "Kievan Rus" has quite a bit of historical and cultural importance to some in Russia.
Now to be clear I'm completely opposed to the war in Ukraine, and I'm quite happy to see Russia getting pushed back. My hope would be that Ukraine takes back all of its remaining territory. But, I think there are at least some justifications that could have made sense for someone who thought the war would be easy, and who did not care about the human cost either side would bear.
Agriculture, industry, even more oil and gas, a pretty big economy and population, a better climate than most of Russia. And a place at the center of Europe instead of the periphery.
Without Ukraine, and probably soon without Transnistria, and maybe even Belarus, Russia can be quarantined and contained. Eventually the Russians will decide they want to be more European than they want to be North Korea.
Personal survival. He needed a war to justify the dismantling of the remaining democratic institutions. That the war lasts plays in his personal interests also.
Why assume it's rational? The Ukraine belonged to the USSR, Russia sees itself as the legitimate successor to the Soviet Union. So the Ukraine and the Baltic states belong to it, as far as Putin sees it.
On the other hand, it is extremely Russian to not surrender no matter how badly it is going and regardless of the cost in human life. Leningrad, Stalingrad, even burning Moscow to keep it from Napoleon. For nationalist purposes, it doesn't matter if the objective is worthless or unachievable.
Like so many other situations, we have to wait for him to die.
What Putin gained was not having a culturally-adjacent country next door with a functioning democracy. That was a threat, not to Russia, but to Putin. He couldn't accept that, because Russians might get ideas about how their culture didn't require a strongman at the top in order to function.
Yet another way in which the US has bungled an overseas conflict. The best time to have strongly supported Ukraine was in the past couple of years leading up to this outcome. Now, if Trump somehow can stop gazing lovingly into Putin's eyes, it will be seen as getting on the bandwagon.
He admires autocrats and aspires to be one, in addition to aligning the US with Russian interests. You think he will get on the Ukraine/NATO bandwagon?
This was one of the rare cases it would have been easier and more in character if the US had just done the right thing. But no.
First Biden's timidity and dithering over arms, which looks ridiculous today and led to so much needless difficulty and suffering for Ukraine. And then Trump, quite clearly favouring Putin and (obscenely) shaking down Ukraine at its most vulnerable point with the 'mineral deal'.
It's hard to imagine any earlier US administration not backing Ukraine to the hilt - pouring in advanced arms, strangling Russia with much harder sanctions, maybe even patrolling the skies of western Ukraine. The chance to take down the worst sort of nationalist tyrant, and one of the world's nastiest troublemakers? And one of the USA's longest standing enemy countries to boot? What President before these last two wouldn't have jumped at it?
>What President before these last two wouldn't have jumped at it?
This ignores/forgets the fact that Biden had the Ukraine crisis directly after Covid ending so he basically couldn't actually go all in on the conflict.
>It's hard to imagine any earlier US administration not backing Ukraine to the hilt
Earlier administrations were operating in a much better economic environment and had a much higher international standing. Don't forget that outside of Europe US standing was dropping already before Trump 2.
But the original question was whether the US should be supporting Ukraine. You keep wanting to make this about the US going head-to-head against Russia or China, but that's not actually the subject under discussion here.
How does my post in any way "cheer" the end of non-proliferation? It is a simple statement of fact that there have been geopolitical changes that demand nuclear armaments for any sovereign nation that wants to remain so. There was a detente that is gone, and it is very much every nation for itself.
There are a dozen+ nuclear capable -- almost overnight -- nations, for whom the inputs have dramatically and irreversibly changed. These nations will, with utter certainty, go from non-nuclear one day to nuclear-armed the next.
Everything could lead to nukes with Russia. There is no "this far and no closer or I will use nukes". They will or won't use them at their own discretion.
Ukraine has long decided that they will not be deterred by the threat of nuclear bombs. They seem to be determined to win back the territory that they have lost or at least put themselves into a better bargaining position.
I am increasingly skeptical as to whether the nukes would actually work if tried, given some of the failures of the start of the Russian campaign, and I suspect they also have that concern. If you're brandishing a gun to threaten people and it goes "click" rather than "bang", suddenly your situation collapses.
Which means there's an intermediate step: carrying out an above ground nuclear test. This obviously violates the Test Ban Treaty, but is a lower step than just blowing away Kyiv.
Uranium and plutonium bombs can tolerate a lot of neglect if conservatively engineered. Even a dud H bomb would make quite a mess and kill a lot of people if exploded over a city.
It is not an existential threat. Ukraine simply does not have the manpower to overtake a country that is many multiples larger and more populous than them.
And territorial expansion and conquest of neighboring countries is Russia's MO, not Ukraine's.
The EU does have air defences and QRA. Eastern Europe is more at risk from this. And then the question people keep failing to ask: "now what"? Russia is then fully at war with Europe and an open field for air strikes.
When the war started, I would carefully watch the news and be excited when they would say something like Himars will change the war, etc.
Now I’m just convinced it is all propaganda and I blocked those YouTubers from my feed.
I'm not at all clear on what Putin gains with expansion. Russia has way more land than they need. Their population has been flat since the 80s. Their military is already depleted and skeletal. Anyone who's played Diplomacy understands that if you spread too thin as you expand into your neighbors, they will keep taking back your gains like we see here. Complete occupation is clearly out of the question at this point, they're going to keep fighting over a stolen sliver here and there. No ego has been satisfied here, nor will it be.
According to Peter Zeihan, it's not so much that Russia needs more _land_ but that its current land is difficult to defend militarily given the facts of its geography. I'm not necessarily defending Zeihan's view, but simply claiming that there is some analysis which suggests there's a strategic benefit for Russia here. (or perhaps there would have been back when they thought the war would be easy) And let's also not forget the importance of Crimea with regard to Black Sea shipping. It's also the case the the "Kievan Rus" has quite a bit of historical and cultural importance to some in Russia.
Now to be clear I'm completely opposed to the war in Ukraine, and I'm quite happy to see Russia getting pushed back. My hope would be that Ukraine takes back all of its remaining territory. But, I think there are at least some justifications that could have made sense for someone who thought the war would be easy, and who did not care about the human cost either side would bear.
Agriculture, industry, even more oil and gas, a pretty big economy and population, a better climate than most of Russia. And a place at the center of Europe instead of the periphery.
Without Ukraine, and probably soon without Transnistria, and maybe even Belarus, Russia can be quarantined and contained. Eventually the Russians will decide they want to be more European than they want to be North Korea.
> What Putin gains with expansion
Personal survival. He needed a war to justify the dismantling of the remaining democratic institutions. That the war lasts plays in his personal interests also.
P.S. Don't forget that he is 73 years old.
Exactly this.
Putin been killing civilians back from 2001. This diagram cleary shows that together with propaganda machine you can drastically shift population opinion https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28383.jpeg.
Simply, they underestimate how much Ukraine is able to resist.
Why assume it's rational? The Ukraine belonged to the USSR, Russia sees itself as the legitimate successor to the Soviet Union. So the Ukraine and the Baltic states belong to it, as far as Putin sees it.
By the same logic, US belongs to the crown.
Yes, and the War of 1812 happened. The US grew too strong to be plausibly taken by the UK.
No one says there is any logic behind it.
On the other hand, it is extremely Russian to not surrender no matter how badly it is going and regardless of the cost in human life. Leningrad, Stalingrad, even burning Moscow to keep it from Napoleon. For nationalist purposes, it doesn't matter if the objective is worthless or unachievable.
Like so many other situations, we have to wait for him to die.
Wait for whom to die?
Only one person was mentioned in this thread.
I hope Peter Zeihan lives a long life.
That’s a different thread
that didn’t even exist when the comment you’re replying to was posted.
So…
Find something better to do.
I’m going to.
That's fair.
What Putin gained was not having a culturally-adjacent country next door with a functioning democracy. That was a threat, not to Russia, but to Putin. He couldn't accept that, because Russians might get ideas about how their culture didn't require a strongman at the top in order to function.
https://archive.ph/QEbgT
Without paywall: https://archive.ph/2026.05.18-115301/https://www.economist.c...
Yet another way in which the US has bungled an overseas conflict. The best time to have strongly supported Ukraine was in the past couple of years leading up to this outcome. Now, if Trump somehow can stop gazing lovingly into Putin's eyes, it will be seen as getting on the bandwagon.
He admires autocrats and aspires to be one, in addition to aligning the US with Russian interests. You think he will get on the Ukraine/NATO bandwagon?
Maybe. Probably late. Transparently lacking credibility. But he'll make a loud noise about it.
This was one of the rare cases it would have been easier and more in character if the US had just done the right thing. But no.
First Biden's timidity and dithering over arms, which looks ridiculous today and led to so much needless difficulty and suffering for Ukraine. And then Trump, quite clearly favouring Putin and (obscenely) shaking down Ukraine at its most vulnerable point with the 'mineral deal'.
It's hard to imagine any earlier US administration not backing Ukraine to the hilt - pouring in advanced arms, strangling Russia with much harder sanctions, maybe even patrolling the skies of western Ukraine. The chance to take down the worst sort of nationalist tyrant, and one of the world's nastiest troublemakers? And one of the USA's longest standing enemy countries to boot? What President before these last two wouldn't have jumped at it?
>What President before these last two wouldn't have jumped at it?
This ignores/forgets the fact that Biden had the Ukraine crisis directly after Covid ending so he basically couldn't actually go all in on the conflict.
>It's hard to imagine any earlier US administration not backing Ukraine to the hilt
Earlier administrations were operating in a much better economic environment and had a much higher international standing. Don't forget that outside of Europe US standing was dropping already before Trump 2.
> It's hard to imagine any earlier US administration not backing Ukraine to the hilt
War started in 2014. Obama did nothing.
Which conflict has the US won in the last 25 years? Strike that: 50 years?
There's a strong case that they didn't even defeat the nazis, that was done by the Soviets.
> There's a strong case that they didn't even defeat the nazis, that was done by the Soviets.
With Lend-Lease equipment. No matter what way you cut it, multiple nations defeated the Nazis together.
30% of trucks and transport 8% of the tanks 0% of the casualties: 27 million
Can you elaborate on what you mean, or did you just want to state those numbers? No one is arguing that the US fought on the Eastern Front.
What conflicts has the US won? Panama. Grenada. Kosovo. Iraq. The latter was a serious regional power, not a lightweight.
The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis with US materiel. Without that, they probably don't get it done.
And even if what you said were true, the US still should have supported Ukraine more than it did, and should do so now.
Oh please. That's like saying a 500 pound gorilla beat the pulp out of a bunch of chihuahuas.
The US can't subdue Iran, leave alone Russia. Or China.
Iraq wasn't a chihuahua.
But the original question was whether the US should be supporting Ukraine. You keep wanting to make this about the US going head-to-head against Russia or China, but that's not actually the subject under discussion here.
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> It crosses both sides of the aisle, and Americans have decided this is ay okay.
What gives you this impression?
> And a number of NATO members need to rapidly become nuclear capable
I don't think we should cheer the end of non-proliferation in the long run.
How does my post in any way "cheer" the end of non-proliferation? It is a simple statement of fact that there have been geopolitical changes that demand nuclear armaments for any sovereign nation that wants to remain so. There was a detente that is gone, and it is very much every nation for itself.
There are a dozen+ nuclear capable -- almost overnight -- nations, for whom the inputs have dramatically and irreversibly changed. These nations will, with utter certainty, go from non-nuclear one day to nuclear-armed the next.
If Russia is truly losing ground and if they see this as an existential threat could this possibly lead to the use of nukes?
Everything could lead to nukes with Russia. There is no "this far and no closer or I will use nukes". They will or won't use them at their own discretion.
Ukraine has long decided that they will not be deterred by the threat of nuclear bombs. They seem to be determined to win back the territory that they have lost or at least put themselves into a better bargaining position.
I am increasingly skeptical as to whether the nukes would actually work if tried, given some of the failures of the start of the Russian campaign, and I suspect they also have that concern. If you're brandishing a gun to threaten people and it goes "click" rather than "bang", suddenly your situation collapses.
Which means there's an intermediate step: carrying out an above ground nuclear test. This obviously violates the Test Ban Treaty, but is a lower step than just blowing away Kyiv.
Uranium and plutonium bombs can tolerate a lot of neglect if conservatively engineered. Even a dud H bomb would make quite a mess and kill a lot of people if exploded over a city.
EMP effects alone.
It is not an existential threat. Ukraine simply does not have the manpower to overtake a country that is many multiples larger and more populous than them.
And territorial expansion and conquest of neighboring countries is Russia's MO, not Ukraine's.
No.
Probably more nuke threats at least though?
If I and everyone I love have to die in WW3 just to know that Putin/his Vatnik allies also died horribly fiery deaths, it will have been worth it.
wat
Russia can obliterate every European HQ with conventional weapons.
Oreshnik alone could decapitate the EU in under 30 minutes.
The EU does have air defences and QRA. Eastern Europe is more at risk from this. And then the question people keep failing to ask: "now what"? Russia is then fully at war with Europe and an open field for air strikes.
What AD? Patriot has shown itself to be incapable of defending itself, leave alone a capital city.
UK deploys Star Streak for protecting critical locations. There was some mild controversy over this being deployed for the Olympics.
Please google what is Oreshnik and what this weapon is capable of.
Spoiler: it's absolutely useless. Russia does have great weapons that CAN hurt a lot, but Oreshnik is not one of them.