GE said:Are you if Russian lineage or did you live there or something? Just seems you are rooting for them to win.RebelE Infantry said:jabberwalkie09 said:RebelE Infantry said:bangobango said:And how do you do that? How do you apply more pressure on him than what he is dealing with already? That man is ready to die to defend his country and its freedom.RebelE Infantry said:rathAG05 said:RebelE Infantry said:LostInLA07 said:
That's already happening. O&G is their last source of outside cash but the impact to everyday Russians from the current sanctions will be substantial, particularly in the cities where many of their citizens are accustomed to daily interaction with western people, products and tech.
The iPhone they are currently holding is likely the last one they will ever have. Most of their apps don't work anymore. Eventually the russian stock market will have to reopen and anyone with capital in that market is going to take crushing losses that they will likely never recover from.
Frankly, the biggest risk here is that we inadvertently re-create a post WW1 Germany and end up with a population in Russia that hates us because of the sanctions imposed by the west. They'll kick out Putin but who knows what the sentiment will be when they are figuring out who the replacement will be. It could be another militaristic nationalist who rallies a desperate and humiliated population.
I'm afraid this is exactly what we're hurtling headlong towards and no one seems to be interested in talking about it. Private corporations are going far beyond the official sanctions and only making this even more likely.
Yeah, but what choice does the global community have? If Putin is unwilling to relent and pull out, and we are unwilling to directly engage, I don't see another option. We can't blame ourselves for the actions of an evil dictator. This totally sucks, but what he is doing is devastating.
You pressure Zelensky to come to the table for a negotiated peace to end a war he can't possibly win.
First of all you stop giving him truckloads of weapons so that he can stop feeding his people into a meat grinder. Then you find a way to structure a peace where Russians strategic interests are addressed in exchange for easing of sanctions. Otherwise it's just the west using Ukraine as cannon fodder for a proxy war against Russia and that's the last thing we should want.
Strategic interests of Russia at this point include but are not limited to: new government in Ukraine, demilitarized Ukraine, effectively control of Donbas region, and Ukraine never joining NATO.
This is supposed to be an acceptable compromise to you?
Not my compromise to make, but if the alternative is utter destruction with the same end result, I'd probably think long and hard about taking it.
Nope. I was (and am) against this war from the start. But I believe that a multipolar balance of power is best for the world, and sometimes the Great Powers will use force to advance or protect their strategic interests. Unfortunately for Ukraine they were caught between two of the Great Powers and in the eyes of one, got too cozy with the other. So when negotiations failed, war is the end result. Now it appears the most likely end result is either a swift Russian victory or a years long total war that winds up turning Ukraine into Mogadishu part 2: Eastern European Boogaloo. Both are very bad, but one is much worse.
I hope this sheds a little light on where I'm coming from in my thinking and analysis.