Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

No doubt Sand believes the civilians of Bucha were combatants in disguise.

Ukraine's defence industry was a significant contributor to Soviet military.

Its population was one third of Russia's.

The USSR collapsed. Ireland left a still functioning British imperial structure that went on to fight a world war.

If the UK and Empire collapsed I would expect an independent Scotland to have laid claim to major warships given it built many of them.

I don't recall the source of the quote, but I recall hearing someone say that a large part of the gaslighting of the "western" public has been the Putinisation of Russia, and the demonisation of Putin. It's an excellent summary of the problem. Russia is entirely dismissed as having any enduring national interests that might need to be dealt with, regardless of who is in power there. Instead all of Russia is reduced to a single person, Putin. And it turns out - surprise, surprise - this Putin guy is a totally evil supervillain dictator who only drinks the tears of orphans, so we have to hate and despise him and not think any more about it. It's the Goldstein/Two Minutes Hate playbook. And look, it works, right?

In reality, Putin is entirely irrelevant. Long before Putin came to power, Russia opposed NATO expansion. Long after Putin is dead, Russia will oppose NATO expansion. There is no state in the world which welcomes a hostile military alliance expanding to threaten it.

Here is former US ambassador to Russia and current CIA director, William Burns predicting the future in 2008:

Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.

Because
membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics,
it created an opening for Russian intervention….. Trenin cautioned strongly
against letting an internal Ukrainian fight for power, where
MAP was merely a lever in domestic politics, further
complicate U.S.-Russian relations now.

Russia's opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine
and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia's interests in
the region. It is also politically popular to paint the U.S.
and NATO as Russia's adversaries and to use NATO's outreach
to Ukraine and Georgia as a means of generating support from
Russian nationalists. While Russian opposition to the first
round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990's was strong,
Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to
what it perceives as actions contrary to its national
interests.

This is in 2008. Burns warned the US what was going to happen - and it happened - and he didn't mention Putin once. Because Putin is irrelevant. I recall Burns said he had spent years in Moscow and hadn't found a single Russian political figure - from the worst knuckle draggers in the Kremlin to the most liberal reformists on the streets - who didn't see NATO expansion as a direct threat to Russian security.

I'm far from sober enough to do a long post but Georgia's Nato aspirations were never a real thing. It had two breakaway enclaves under proxy government control with Russian armed peacekeepers for many years stoking up a storm(even before Russia's official Invasion/war in 2008 )

Before Puttler, much as it is today it is important to have an enemy. With a controlled media and blocking external sources of info you can control the narrative and so control how a population thinks

But then again Putin rewriting history (He is a bastard child of Georgian decent) seems to be order of the day

I think what would happen to the Soviet military (with fate of the nuclear arsenal being the most important part) when the USSR broke apart could have been an open question. Nearly everything including the nuclear weapons ending up with Russia was not as certain as Sand presents it anyway.

As you say definitely the US and Europeans wanted that Russia would take charge of almost all of it, esp. the nukes, rather than having several possibly fractious new states endowed with a very large amount of their own military power.

(On another issue) from what I have read about period of the "collapse" of USSR, there was some desire on Russian side to have Crimea and perhaps the Donbas region in the new Russian state that would emerge. However Yeltsin was not going to get into some row with the Ukrainians over that. Trying to redraw borders would have opened a dangerous can of worms, and could have delayed or even endangered rise of an independent Russia from the remains of the USSR.

I think Putin has reneged on almost everything now, thrown it in the bin (agreements at end of the Cold war between parts of the Soviet Union that became independent states, and also with the US + Western Europe), and is trying desperately to have a "do over", and force the "correct" outcome from his POV before he dies, using the Russian military.

It's insane and deluded of course IMO, there is no hope of building some new Russian empire. He can kill an awful lot of people and do a terrible amount of damage trying though.

I invite you to look at the polling on NATO membership in Ukraine at 2008 when NATO announced Ukraine would join. A majority of Ukrainian voters were against NATO membership before 2008, at 2008 and even after 2008. In fact, I think some polling was done where it showed more Ukrainians viewed NATO as a threat to them over Russia being a threat.

Plus Ukraine was constitutionally committed to neutrality, so joining a military alliance like NATO was clearly unconsitutional.

But when it came to NATO membership, yes the views of the majority of Ukrainians was seen as irrelevant by NATO. The constitutional neutrality of Ukraine was seen as irrelevant by NATO.

Putin has told Russians in New Years speech that everything will be fine?

The Catholic religion is not allowed be practiced in Russia.

But a referendum would be required to change Ukraine's constitution before NATO could even accept an application for accession.

No vote has been conducted by NATO regarding Ukrainians accession.

So how can you say that NATO does not care about the majority views or constitutional neutrality when it cannot proceed without both?

You seem to be on some kind of mission to portray NATO as an offensive non democratic organisation when in fact they bend over backwards for informed democratic consent.

I’m not reading your entire post because it’s Russia approved scut from your masters,

But the below opening line is quite amusing;

The expansion of NATO never made any sense.

I can tell you it made sense to Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia who are under no illusions that without NATO membership they would have long since been ‘liberated’ by mother Russia.

(For ‘liberated’ read invaded, raped, pillaged, genocided…. You know, all that wonderful stuff that comes along with Russian ‘liberation’).

it’s beyond clear & obvious that you are posting your scut on behalf of Russia. You are doing their bidding for them, spreading their version of everything, which makes you fully complicit in everything they do.

You are pathetic.

Mod Edit: Warned for uncivil posting

Predictions for 2025?

Unfortunately I think the best Ukraine can hope for is some kind of freezing of the war involving giving up territory temporarily in exchange for security guarantees from the West while hoping Putin will die some day and try to get territories back then. I predicted this a long time ago and nothing has changed apart from more suffering. Whether such a peace will last is another matter. I imagine guerilla warfare will continue in some form or other with assassinations and other attacks.

But probably better than another year of full on war, more land lost and more dead soldiers and civilians.

If the West had supported Ukraine the way they support Israel it need never have come to this. But it's where we are.

A huge amount will depend on Trump's mood.