SonicFlyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w3flBUmOeg

MaxQ

Russia took advantage of the chaos of Yanukovych fleeing to Russia during the Maidan Revolution (or if you prefer The Revolution of Dignity) in 2014 to invade and annex Crimea. At that time Ukraine wasn't really in a position to do anything about it. Though the legitimacy of this bit of piracy was not, and has not, been recognized by the majority of the world, Putin and his little green men have control of Crimea and have declared (through a plebiscite) a "return" of Crimea to Russia. All of this occurring in 2014 put Sevastopol in Russian hands and removed all such niceties as leases etc from any Russian consideration.
Zelensky didn't become President of Ukraine until 2019, long past any time period that Putin would give thought (or care) to leases.
Bit of side trivia that tends to be forgotten. President Trump on two occasions stated that he agreed that Crimea was part of Russia (should be recognized as such). Once while as a candidate, and another time shortly after becoming President. Fortunately it was never made official US policy, but it gives a small glimpse of the chaos that the State Dept had to deal with regarding our relationship with Ukraine vis Russia (Putin). When Fiona Hill referred to Ukraine as "Putin's playground" during those 4 years, that comment was only the tip of the iceberg.
All that said, Sevastopol and its naval base will be a major problem to resolve. At the moment I can not envision any solution acceptable to both Ukraine and Russia.
Without an invasion I have no doubt that Russia could have had it's Black Sea base for the foreseeable future. By annexing Crimea Putin put all that at risk.
I suspect that many a Tatar ghost sees a grim karma for Putin.

Hubcapped

Sonic please don’t post an extremely biased propoganda machine video. They want your money, just like cnn. Ffs man stay away from fox they are crushing you with fear porn.

I cannot believe that any American wouldn’t staunchly oppose Putin and keeping him penned in.

What weird state of affairs, you want to keep weapons here, I oppose that. Yet you want to let Putin expand his CV power by taking one of europes largest breadbaskets, and I would happily jump in an f-16 again and go blow **** up for geopolitical reasons! lolz what a crazy world!

Excargodog

I think it is easy to forget that one of the closest calls we ever had to going toe to toe with the USSR was the Cuban missile crisis. Basically, we just weren’t going to tolerate Russian SRBM on an island only 90 miles from the US. Ukraine and Russia share a 1426 mile border. Toss in Russia’s buddy Byelarus and that’s another 770 mile border. We accept Cuba getting Russian nukes and Russia may well not accept the Ukraine becoming part of NATO. And a lot of Russian weapon systems are dual capable. Putin is getting long in the tooth, allegedly has health problems, and may be entirely willing to go out in a blaze of glory.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/pol...n-says-scholz/

And while we might hate the guy, he has far higher approval in his country than the overwhelming number of US politicians have in this one.



And if somehow he dies, there are still Russian nationalists waiting in the wings to replace him..

Hubcapped

That’s an interesting point about the comparison between Cuba and Ukraine. I can see some validity there. At face value I can think of some nuances. 1, Ukraine wouldn’t be given nuclear weapons, so the threat is a land invasion from nato (nato already has nukes pointing at Russia. I think we can all agree the west wants nothing to do with a ground war in Russia lol) 2. The politics have changed. Ukraine is a bread basket, deep water harbor, and various other economic attributes where Cuba was just a straight launch pad for destruction of us cities.

On a side note, I would very much hope to keep partisan politics out of this thread. Please sonic ( I definitely want to hear what you have to say, just not through the loud mouth of anger management Carlson)

Excargodog

Ukraine has the capability to build their own nukes. When the USSR went under the Ukraine inherited what I believe was the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/t...clear-weapons/

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/10821...putin-invasion

They gave them up in 1994 with the promise that both Russia and the western powers would guarantee their independence.

Pretty foolish in retrospect..

SonicFlyer

I'm not typically a fan of Fox but Thomas Massie is one of the few Constitutional members of the Congress.

And for your comment, you deserve this award:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

Putin is a bad guy, no doubt, but his actions are, in part, responding to perceived aggression by NATO (which should have been disbanded with the Warsaw Pact).

Also the US Constitution doesn't authorize the US federal government to protect the country of Ukraine.

And another award for you: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman



you really suck at this.

Hubcapped

Why do you have to be insulting? Why can’t you just be chill? I made an observation and you provided a reason. Saying “you suck at this” does nothing. Do you like to poo poo every thread? What is so personal about this thread to you?

I’m curious to hear your answers. If you can’t play nice and keep personal insults out of it, I implore you to not be here. We are just discussing interesting points. Please be chill

Hubcapped

Just say something like this “interesting points, I would counter that American should be interested in staying out if Ukraine because of xxx”

Gosh we literally cannot have talks without personal insults. Take your emotions out of this and stop taking it personally.

Try and separate threads. We can be perfectly civil in this thread but at odds on the other. If you are incapable of this then maybe take a break.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate nor out of line to ask you to not bring a propaganda machine into this.



This is not an argument, this is a discussion

rickair7777

Grain of truth, due to Russian paranoia. Yes they tend to think that way.

But Putin's motives are not due to perceived NATO "aggression", which every reasonably educated Russian knows darn well doesn't exist.

His *practical* motives likely have to do with preserving a sphere of influence of corrupt east block nations which RU can dominate, and which will serve as a market for the RU export economy. Former east block countries which drift towards the west tend not to buy from RU, since it's not innovative or open enough to compete with the west economically.

That complements the whole slavic manifest destiny empire building motive.

You sound like my Russian sister in-law. There is no "NATO" in the context which you're using it. It's just a defense treaty not a monolithic societal, economic, or government entity.

The EU and the G7 would still exist without NATO, and there would still be various defense arrangements, including bilats with the US even without an overarching multi-national alliance.

That said, it's not unreasonable that NATO could have been modified or even phased out over time, but at the end of the cold war it wasn't crystal clear where the chips were going to fall so it was obviously very prudent to retain NATO for a decade or two... and guess what, now we see why. NATO is suddenly as relevant as it ever was, just ask Finland and Sweden.

Doesn't say we can't either. But we're not protecting them, we're just giving them aid to enhance the prospects of global stability which is clearly in our interests.

I think we got this one right... would have have been very easy to screw up to one extreme or the other.