Sabina Higgins Letter to Irish Times calling for ceasefire on Ukraine

Would need to see the letter.

The politico article is all over the shop and sports a headline as clicky batey as one can muster.

Well, she's certainly right about one thing, NATO are pouring tens of billions into a losing battle.

Have you a map that suggests the state of play if the UK and the USA, etc had not provided arms, supplies and intelligence to Ukraine?

The suggestion that NATO/USA would have been better off doing nothing is absolutely comical.

The president and his wife are the 'first citizens' of the country and put there to represent the common man or woman.

She certainly does not represent my views on these matters.

Her ill thought out intervention has already been seized on by the resident Russian ambassador here to support the heinous acts of war his country have inflicted on their neighbouring state.

Very damaging to the presidents office and should be an immediate withdrawal of the letter/ explanation/ apology.

Grounds for resignation if that represents the view from the Aras.

Who the Hollis she speaking on behalf of - definitely not me. Did someone do a survey on what the Irish think about the war in Ukr and she is basing her letter on that. She certainly is not singing to the same tune as the Irish Gov. No matter what she does she cannot once remove herself from being the wife of the president of the Irish state - there is a kind of a conflict of interest involved here. Look at what happened to that senior An Bord Planala employee who’s brother got planning permission for a development . He apparently did not know that the application was from a close relative of his - yet this caused him ‘to walk’. There might be more to this but the principal still stamds

The letter is an affront to Ukraine and to those who are suffering due to Russia's invasion and aggression.

The attempt to both-sides a war of aggression is the worst kind of specious champagne socialism bullshít.

Sabine needs to retract and apologize IMO. The atrocities visited upon Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin, Mariupol and every other Ukrainian town, village and city that Russia has invaded and put under fire.

Russia is the aggressor and Sabine's letter is akin to asking Poland to negotiate with Germany in 1939.

It's an abhorrent stance and is unworthy of the Aras.

She has no mandate to be writing any letters for publishing in an official capacity advocating anything of this nature.

even if the letter didn’t appear on state headed paper.. which we don’t know if it did.. she is obviously identifying as the wife of the president, obviously making a political statement… of which from her or anyone in her position, currently or in the future is not welcome.

You didn’t hear a peep out of Martin McAleese, Nicholas Robinson, on political matters that I can recall

The idiocy of the self-proclaimed “anti-war” left in all its glory

This is from a report in this week’s New Yorker magazine from Ukraine:

This second phase of the war began the same way the first one ended: with a massacre. On April 8th, while communal graves of murdered civilians were still being excavated near Kyiv, a Russian missile armed with cluster bombs targeted a railway station in Kramatorsk, the provisional seat of Ukrainian-held Donetsk. More than a thousand people were awaiting trains to take them away from the impending offensive in the Donbas. “As soon as I arrived, I saw a little girl lying there with no legs, hugging her Teddy bear,” a police officer who responded to the scene told me, when I visited Kramatorsk this summer. Sixty-one civilians were killed, and about a hundred and twenty were wounded. “There were pieces of people everywhere,” the officer said. “When someone died, we took their tourniquets off and put them on someone else. By the end, my boots were filled with blood.”

Imagine doing a “both sides” on that atrocity. Imagine treating Russian fascist terrorism as the same as the Ukrainians defending themselves. It beggars belief

Michael D is the President not her.

And no matter what the President says, he won't always be speaking for all, there will be those who disagree. As it has always been.

If she has a view she is entitled to express it.

Absolutely you are. Why not write that into the Irish Times.

I'm imaging Bishop Brennan saying that

Maybe she should do an article for Vogue next

You are able to write stuff without reading it? Neat trick. 😮

So what happens if the Ukrainians themselves decide they don't want to continue to be fed into the meat-grinder?

The automatic assumption that Western Europeans eating a box of Pringles and flipping through TV channels are supporting Ukraine by insisting the war continue and that a compromise peace is an act of sabotage against an invaded country leaves me cold.

Zelensky, when first elected, was more 'dovish' than hardliners in the Army and his political rivals. He is pressured from all sides, including Ameroeuropean allies, to prolong the war.

Especially when so many boards posters outright admit on the occasional threads that pop up that they themselves would refuse to fight and surrender right away if Ireland were invaded. IOW they value their own lives far more than national political independence.

I actually disagree with her.

I think Ukraine should never give up the struggle for freedom.

But I also believe Ukraine is a pawn in a costly game.

That's my issue with this sad affair.

See my answer to Dyr above. I have no idea if it tallies with SF's view or not. You seem to know it does.

Compromised like the 6 counties. That worked out well in hindsight... not.

I guess throwing all those Russian conscripts into the meat grinder by telling them they are going on an exercise is a much better demonstration of independent thinking.

Thats not the case. Ukrainians are choosing to fight. The alternative is being massacred like in bucha or women being systematically raped or being shipped out to the Far East of Russia or being castrated by deranged Chechens. They are choosing to fight. Would ya blame them ??? Please tell us what the alternative is?? A return to mother Russia and the Soviet lifestyle or worse ???

Michael Collins and Liam Lynch had plans for an 'Army of the North' to re-take the six counties later on but both were killed before they could get started.

You don't always have the option of fighting to the last man. Are you going to be angry with Zelensky if the war ends short of total victory and recapture of all lost territory?