Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Take a trip to the DMZ. Then ask yourself, has it ended. Reading your comments, you're either very young, and up to now, have had little exposure to history, historical events or the Geo-political history of the world, or you've lived in a country where history lessons have been very much filtered and polarised. The planets greatest number of artillery in the history of warfare sits poised and ready North of the border during a tentative ceasefire in a war that absolutely has not ended.

Ukraine will tell you to kiss their asses. 10 minutes to pack their bags, arranged one-way trains to ruSSia, 76% of ruSSian population in Crimea issue sorted. Besides, ruSSkies are well used to this method. Bon voyage!

nah, nothing will change. rember its ruSSkies, 'terpilas', they will just bend and accept as always. Its only on the internet where they are ready to fight anyone.

@Virgil° "As much as I'd love to see Luka hung from a lamppost beside Putin when this is all over"

I believe the traditional location for executing side-kicks is the petrol station...

Saw Clare Daly again this morning. She says there must be dialogue. She does not seem to understand that if there is to be dialogue Putin must drop his preconditions. His precondition is that he keeps Donbas/Crimea. You can't have dialogue with someone who wants everything their own way. Why can't someone explain this to her? She is talking like some naive teenager. If she wants dialogue she should go to Russia and tell Putin to drop his preconditions instead of lecturing Ukrainians about talking to someone they cannot have meaningful dialogue with. Go to Moscow Clare and lecture them.

She also said "All wars end in negotiations" Wha? Like WW2 when the nazis were bombed into submission, or WW1 or so many other wars that ended in victory/defeat? She should read some history before speaking like some random Twitter person quoting random Twitter posts. Jesus wept.

CLARE DALY: EDUCATE YOURSELF, YOU ARE AN EMBARRASSMENT.

Probably true but then again a German general during WWII said that the Russians are unpredictable. They can take terrible punishment and abuse beyond the norm but some relatively small thing can bring about revolt or collapse. Cut in vodka rations?

There probably is dialogue, for one thing. As has been pointed out, there are regular negotiations on things like the grain deal and prisoner swaps. This is obviously going into the semantics of the thing because she's presumably talking about negotiating towards some kind of ceasefire and/or lasting peace, but just to point out that the two sides do talk, just not about the biggest question of this or basically any war, while it is ongoing, which is how does it end.

Anyway, as I recall, Zelensky was asking for negotiations when the war begun, and they did commence in Turkey a short time after Russia officially invaded. I suspect as much as I think is possible, short of knowing, that the Russians only showed up to these in order to appear as reasonable as they could in the circumstances, which wasn't that reasonable at all, and they quickly broke down.

In fairness, Ukraine has given out mixed signals on Crimea, from wishing to bring it fully under Kyiv's control to being open to a conversation about it if and when Russia leaves the entirety of internationally-recognised Ukraine. According to the linked article, Zelensky also suggested in the past that he'd be open to diplomacy on the Crimea issue if Russia were to return to its positions predating the 2022 invasion. So, there have been slightly different noises coming out of Ukraine at various times from different officials about negotiation.

The trouble is, now, given Russia's actions in Ukraine by virtually levelling cities and openly massacring civilians, the hatred they've engendered among virtually the whole Ukraine population which remains outside Russian control (at the very least, that is) makes it extremely difficult if not impossible for reasoned negotiations to occur. Russia probably had its best shot at getting things like Ukrainian pledging not to join NATO and conversations about the Donbas/Crimea in the opening weeks when they showed the world how serious they were about these issues, but they thought they could get it all and weren't prepared to settle on that. Huge miscalculation for them. Putin's forces will find an awfully hard slog to make serious advances in Ukraine by military means, but Putin has put all of his political capital at stake in winning this war, so he cannot give up on it either. The way this is going is that until war becomes politically/economically unsustainable for one or both countries, or one country is simply victorious, it won't end. Too dug in, too much at stake.

True. But the situation as it stands now is that it is impossible to have negotiations with Putin. The net effect of Daly's argument is that the west stops supporting Ukraine and Ukraine effectively surrenders to Russia. If that happens 45 million Ukrainians are coming west because they will be slaughtered if they don't. If there cannot be talks there must be weapons. Lots of them. The situation is beyond peace talks unless Putin stops his demands.

The only other option is to cede territory to Russia and this, or complete surrender, is implicit in what she is saying.

I don't think some people fully appreciate the fact that when Ukrainians say they are fighting for their existence they mean it. If things went very badly for Ukraine, Russians would invade and, given that they lost 200,000, they would add vengeance to cruelty. It would be a disaster and the social and political ramifications are beyond calculation. More weapons, NOW.

Was it RTE she was on? What programme? I'd write an objection to them.

Reductionists like Daly, Wallace et al, reduce countries down to "personalities" that they can attack about the past.

For example, Rishi Sunak has nothing to do with Blair's decision to go into Iraq 20 years ago. However individuals like Clare Daly don't distinguish that, for them the "UK' is a person who invaded Iraq two decades ago, and therefore the "UK" is hypocritical in condemning the current invasion. It's a form of black and white thinking.

Likewise, Tony Blair wasn't invading Iraq to plant a flag in it, to force it's children to speak English, to erase it's identity, it's culture, and so on, quite the opposite, he was trying, in a very naive and disastrous way, to liberate the people from a brutal regime. Quite the opposite of what's occurring two decades later in Ukraine. Yet individuals like Daly don't distinguish. To them, history is just a neat narrative they cherry-pick from to attack what they oppose.

They oppose Europe/US, whom they see as the "real villains" of history. Take a look at Daly's voting record, she consistently against Europe in favour of Putin. They aren't anti-war, they are anti-West. Any modern conflict or situation is just an excuse for them to "whatabout" their reductionist views of the past. To once again use a recent term from the internet, they are campists:

"A leftist who supports any country/organization simply for being opposed to the United States or the West, including authoritarian governments who would otherwise not follow leftist beliefs."

And neither did all the Ukrainians want to leave their homes, or the Syrians Putin help displace,,, and its a very long list, due to Russia's bloody history around the world. Sorry, but no sympathy, go complain outside the Kremlin.

Technically, she's correct, but some of those peace talks amounted to, "Do you surrender without conditions?" "Yes."

Also, pretty much all of us listening to Daly:

No, some American guy said it. His name escapes me at the moment.