if meershimer doesn't know that russia wants all of ukraine then he shouldn't be speaking on this topic at all. nobody that ignorant should speak on this topic.
if meershimer doesn't know that russia wants all of ukraine then he shouldn't be speaking on this topic at all. nobody that ignorant should speak on this topic.
You have completely missed the point if you think Russia wanted to have to deal with any of this war. They certainly don't want to own all of Ukraine because then they have to go bankrupt trying to maintain it. They learned that lesson in the USSR days. They don't want to have to keep parts of Ukraine that aren't ethnic Russian and that don't want to be part of Russia.
You missed the whole point about what they were trying to negotiate for at Minsk and asked to negotiate in Dec 2021, and again in March 2022, which was a neutral NON NATO non hostile state on their border which if it had been allowed to stay that way, Russia wouldn't be involved in any sort of current conflict.
And if Ukraine would have been allowed to complete the negotiations in spring 2022 before the United States and the UK interfered, again there wouldn't be any of this military operation going on.
So for such a numbskull to be positing that Russia wanted to be stuck in this slogging effort to protect their border security is sheer ignorance.
The only reason Russia now has built up their military is that we would not negotiate in December 2021 or March 2022. They didn't go into any of this with the sort of military that was big enough to handle and ongoing war and certainly not big enough to take over all of Ukraine.
They were forced into this by our intransigence and meddling and our refusal to allow us or Ukraine to negotiate with them about their border security. For more about how we interfered in negotiations, please listen to Glenn Greenwald's Rumble interview with Jeffrey Sachs May 15 in the 21 minutes to 50 minutes time period.
Russia didn't even want to have to build up its military because that is very costly. It was not on a path to do that until Biden started his strategic security agreement to put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership in fall 2021, which would have made it not neutral and we were already causing havoc over there since 2014 with our coup.
It is the US that wants to control all of Ukraine. If the neocons Biden/Nuland had not meddled in 2014 and again in 2021, Russia wouldn't have needed to pursue security protection of their border from potential strikes from future ukrainian NATO bases within striking distance of Moscow. To us it's just a game.
To Russia it is an existential threat, especially with our arming neo-Nazi militias after their history losing 22 million people to the Nazis in WW2.
you are still calling this criminal invasion a military operation. you forgot putin's complete title: special military operation, don't make mistakes when you justify putin with his own logic. words are important.
yes, yes, yes, putin was forced into this criminal invasion. just like the school yard bully is forced to attack the little guy, he doesn't want to but the sandwhich or the money that the little boy has made him do it.
i guess the good putin was tempted by the devil in the form of ukrainians, or the US. these things happen.
did you forget russia's attempted invasion of kyiv ? russia entered the road to kyiv with thousands of tanks! what does the esteemed professor think that was? an invitation to a party?
really unbelievable this ability not to see the obvious. they clearly said that they would take over the government in kyiv. they are still saying the kyiv government is illegitimate. what does this mean to the meershimer fans?
why this love for the fascist putin? really, explain please. what makes putin so attractive to you guys?
If Russia really wanted Kyiv, they would have taken it later when they built up their military. The reason THEY DON'T want it has been explained by numerous Russia experts from Ray McGovern to Douglas Macgregor and Scott Ritter, Prof Mearsheimer many times, but some people apparently missed the memo. The reason they DO NOT WANT IT is that they would then have to deal with quelling endless urban warfare conflicts with people that would hate them and they don't want to bankrupt Russia administering the old areas they once had in the USSR. Only their old strategic base in Crimea and ethnic Russians in the Donbas who opposed the 2014 US puppet govt are who they have tried to support. They don't want all of Ukraine but they do want a neutral neighbor.
They only wanted a NEUTRAL border country, and we kept stoking chaos their arming people to provoke war since we don't have to lose any troops doing this. It was an awful, cynical strategy pursued by people who do not care if we fight "to the last Ukrainian" just to "weaken Russia" whom we are actually strengthening at the expense of our own economy. Only the military sector makes money out of this mess. We have set Russia up as the perpetual Bogeyman scapegoat to make money selling weapons in our only apparent industry left.
And a lot of people who don't pay attention buy into anything said of the most mindlessly simplistic way of looking at everything like Russia is not pragmatic when that is exactly what they are. It is our neocon set roosting in the State Dept the past 24 years that are not pragmatic and who have no analytical skills and are an embarrassment as to diplomatic skills. We should have had better but we have poor choices in politics for whatever reason. The major parties aren't interested in running anyone who would do the right thing in foreign policy. We have sell-outs to the military industrial complex arms mfrs, big Pharma, and AIPAC running everything.
No, they did not make a serious effort at invading Kyiv. They made a feint there while focusing on their objectives closer to Russia to prevent Ukrainian forces from all moving to the one place, and furthermore, the original first three months were strictly to try to force negotiation after the US refused to negotiate in Dec. 2021 following their pulling Russia's chain with the strategic security agreement in fall 2021, which had crossed redlines long expressed by Russia and which Biden WELL KNEW would set off alarm in Russia.
Then when Jeffrey Sachs asked the Biden State Dept in Dec. 2021, they answered Jeffrey Sachs that the US wasn't interested in speaking with Russia about their security concerns. Sachs had told them they should talk to them.
Biden made calculated remarks just before the military operation in Feb. that the US would make sure Nordstream would go bye-bye, as though licking his chops planning it with his same old Nuland neocon gang from the 2014 coup.
In March/April, Russia and Ukraine negotiated; a key Ukrainian negotiator was assassinated by Ukrainian security forces; and the UK & US told Ukraine NOT to negotiate.
After THAT Russia finally started building a real force of the type needed for a serious longterm war, after seeing there was no one to negotiate with.
The original operation was NOT done with enough forces to do any sort of 'taking over" of all of Ukraine, and the intention was demanding negotiation after being frightened that NATO was going to place missiles in range of Moscow in the hand of Azov folks who sport tattoos of a type last seen in WW2 for Russia's opponent that killed 27 million of their people. A legit border security concern, and one the "Obama Doctrine" had claimed to understand but which Biden has never cared about.
We singlehandedly, misguidedly goaded and instigated Russia into building up its forces into a much larger force in order to defend their national border security interests. We have been lying about this non stop, which is why I am now an independent after stupidly voting for the instigator of this insanity.
Every calculation has been a miscalculation. Our "sanctions" strengthen the other side and cause other nations to flock to BRICS instead of us, out of fear we will pirate away their money too. We are weakening our ability to be the international currency backbone. We have strengthened their military by forcing them to BUILD IT UP by refusing to use ANY DIPLOMACY.
I have not seen such poor diplomatic policy and skills in an administration in my lifetime.
Even Nixon put a lot of effort into diplomacy abroad. It seems like we are going DOWNHILL since 2000 in the area of diplomacy and have only bully diplomacy. Bullying does NOT help a nation establish widespread international trust needed for leadership/hegemony - it weakens credibility. Trust comes from the strength of peacefulness -- showing the willingness to work together with other nations to build trade ties and peace, not the willingness to stoke chaos abroad and provoke war to sell missiles.
yes, they made a feint!!! OMG and all the letters of our alphabet. who could buy such an "explanation"? what kind of willful lack of normal reasoning does it take to say their tanks were a feint??
if the kyiv regime is so bad for ukrainians why did the russians then calculate that it would be too hard to fight off all the ensuing urban warfare? so the row of tanks going into kyiv was just a feint. OMG the RT propaganda works in spades or in tanks in your case. this is an answer to the various justifications of the putin invasion of ukraine. all the while you guys base your arguments on the belief that ukrainians are just stooges for the US. stooges who are willing to fight urban warfare. you guys are unbelievable in a very sad sad way. how can RT feed you such powerful koolaide. sad for the US, sad for ukraine, sad for the world in general.
look, i should appreciate your attempt to be fair, and i do, and esp your attempt to be understanding. so that's very nice. but you still think you know better than ukrainians themselves. it makes no sense (to me at least) to say that there are so few ukrainians. ukraine is tiny compared to the russian bully. so of course there will be only a few ukrainians. you think the biggest suffering is in the last 30 years? clearly you are not aware of the genocidal famine of the early 30's? ukraine has been a colony of russia for centuries and this is what putin wants to restore. so no, not the US, not nuland, not any of the excuses wiwth which russian propaganda has convinced the folks here.
and even russia has started buying its soldiers in india etc
This complaint that Ukraine has been a colony of Russia rings dully when we can see that what is happening is to make Ukraine a colony of the United States and to not let Yanukovych negotiate with Russia for better LNG prices than they could get from the West like that. See "Ukraine on Fire" with interviews by Oliver Stone and Robert Parry. The US wouldn't even let Ukraine do any business with Russia which is a ridiculous idea since that is their neighbor and we are all the way across the ocean.
This is about big US money going into some pockets over there and hiring a bunch of people to come and harass anybody that criticizes the situation.
The United States has to dominate everything all over the world including at Russia's border which is a ridiculous idea.
Even Obama stated clearly that he knew that Ukraine was more Russia strategic interest being at its border than it would be for the United States to whom it is just a game. Watch Jeffrey Sachs' discussion May 15 with Glenn Greenwald. The long version has a section from 21 minutes in to about 50 or 58 minutes in that addresses it.
Re nsakum - I'm not a "Putin fan" in any way, NOR is Mearsheimer - he is simply explaining zero sum political science realism. You are the biggest doofus I've ever seen. It has nothing to do with "liking" Putin. It's you that keeps talking about Putin not me. You're the one fascinated with him and trying to equate him with Hitler which is ridiculous.
The harassment that some of these vicious Ukrainian paid off people due to keep their money coming in from the US is disgusting. Americans should be able to talk without being harassed by people trying to silence them. This whole thing was drummed up by the US to get energy rights and manipulate the Ukrainians.
Anybody looking in knows that tons of Ukrainians have been fleeing this nightmare forcing them to be drafted by the US war games that Ukrainians and Russians pay the price for.
It has to do with not being a fan of coups we've been participating in for years that you apparently are clueless about.
To Germaine, Russia wasn't trying to "topple the Kyiv government". They were trying to push for negotiations since we wouldn't listen in December 2021.
They wanted to keep the same government to negotiate with because they were afraid of getting a more nationalistic replacement than Zelensky, who originally ran on a unification with ethnic Russians platform.
That platform is why he got support from ethnic Russians originally and a large percentage of the vote. The Donbas people were hopeful that he would bring Ukraine together and stop the bombing of the Donbas.
But then he turned around and outlawed Russian and started doing as told by the Biden crew in 2021 like a puppet instead of staying independent like he came across as when he first ran.
well at least you aren't saying the line of tanks putin sent into kyiv. but it is a kind of hubris to think that we are so smart to fiind the underlying reasons for this and that but ukrainians were just pushed into war, just stupid stooges.
if meershimer doesn't know that russia wants all of ukraine then he shouldn't be speaking on this topic at all. nobody that ignorant should speak on this topic.
You have completely missed the point if you think Russia wanted to have to deal with any of this war. They certainly don't want to own all of Ukraine because then they have to go bankrupt trying to maintain it. They learned that lesson in the USSR days. They don't want to have to keep parts of Ukraine that aren't ethnic Russian and that don't want to be part of Russia.
You missed the whole point about what they were trying to negotiate for at Minsk and asked to negotiate in Dec 2021, and again in March 2022, which was a neutral NON NATO non hostile state on their border which if it had been allowed to stay that way, Russia wouldn't be involved in any sort of current conflict.
And if Ukraine would have been allowed to complete the negotiations in spring 2022 before the United States and the UK interfered, again there wouldn't be any of this military operation going on.
So for such a numbskull to be positing that Russia wanted to be stuck in this slogging effort to protect their border security is sheer ignorance.
The only reason Russia now has built up their military is that we would not negotiate in December 2021 or March 2022. They didn't go into any of this with the sort of military that was big enough to handle and ongoing war and certainly not big enough to take over all of Ukraine.
They were forced into this by our intransigence and meddling and our refusal to allow us or Ukraine to negotiate with them about their border security. For more about how we interfered in negotiations, please listen to Glenn Greenwald's Rumble interview with Jeffrey Sachs May 15 in the 21 minutes to 50 minutes time period.
Russia didn't even want to have to build up its military because that is very costly. It was not on a path to do that until Biden started his strategic security agreement to put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership in fall 2021, which would have made it not neutral and we were already causing havoc over there since 2014 with our coup.
It is the US that wants to control all of Ukraine. If the neocons Biden/Nuland had not meddled in 2014 and again in 2021, Russia wouldn't have needed to pursue security protection of their border from potential strikes from future ukrainian NATO bases within striking distance of Moscow. To us it's just a game.
To Russia it is an existential threat, especially with our arming neo-Nazi militias after their history losing 22 million people to the Nazis in WW2.
you are still calling this criminal invasion a military operation. you forgot putin's complete title: special military operation, don't make mistakes when you justify putin with his own logic. words are important.
yes, yes, yes, putin was forced into this criminal invasion. just like the school yard bully is forced to attack the little guy, he doesn't want to but the sandwhich or the money that the little boy has made him do it.
i guess the good putin was tempted by the devil in the form of ukrainians, or the US. these things happen.
did you forget russia's attempted invasion of kyiv ? russia entered the road to kyiv with thousands of tanks! what does the esteemed professor think that was? an invitation to a party?
really unbelievable this ability not to see the obvious. they clearly said that they would take over the government in kyiv. they are still saying the kyiv government is illegitimate. what does this mean to the meershimer fans?
why this love for the fascist putin? really, explain please. what makes putin so attractive to you guys?
If Russia really wanted Kyiv, they would have taken it later when they built up their military. The reason THEY DON'T want it has been explained by numerous Russia experts from Ray McGovern to Douglas Macgregor and Scott Ritter, Prof Mearsheimer many times, but some people apparently missed the memo. The reason they DO NOT WANT IT is that they would then have to deal with quelling endless urban warfare conflicts with people that would hate them and they don't want to bankrupt Russia administering the old areas they once had in the USSR. Only their old strategic base in Crimea and ethnic Russians in the Donbas who opposed the 2014 US puppet govt are who they have tried to support. They don't want all of Ukraine but they do want a neutral neighbor.
They only wanted a NEUTRAL border country, and we kept stoking chaos their arming people to provoke war since we don't have to lose any troops doing this. It was an awful, cynical strategy pursued by people who do not care if we fight "to the last Ukrainian" just to "weaken Russia" whom we are actually strengthening at the expense of our own economy. Only the military sector makes money out of this mess. We have set Russia up as the perpetual Bogeyman scapegoat to make money selling weapons in our only apparent industry left.
And a lot of people who don't pay attention buy into anything said of the most mindlessly simplistic way of looking at everything like Russia is not pragmatic when that is exactly what they are. It is our neocon set roosting in the State Dept the past 24 years that are not pragmatic and who have no analytical skills and are an embarrassment as to diplomatic skills. We should have had better but we have poor choices in politics for whatever reason. The major parties aren't interested in running anyone who would do the right thing in foreign policy. We have sell-outs to the military industrial complex arms mfrs, big Pharma, and AIPAC running everything.
No, they did not make a serious effort at invading Kyiv. They made a feint there while focusing on their objectives closer to Russia to prevent Ukrainian forces from all moving to the one place, and furthermore, the original first three months were strictly to try to force negotiation after the US refused to negotiate in Dec. 2021 following their pulling Russia's chain with the strategic security agreement in fall 2021, which had crossed redlines long expressed by Russia and which Biden WELL KNEW would set off alarm in Russia.
Then when Jeffrey Sachs asked the Biden State Dept in Dec. 2021, they answered Jeffrey Sachs that the US wasn't interested in speaking with Russia about their security concerns. Sachs had told them they should talk to them.
Biden made calculated remarks just before the military operation in Feb. that the US would make sure Nordstream would go bye-bye, as though licking his chops planning it with his same old Nuland neocon gang from the 2014 coup.
In March/April, Russia and Ukraine negotiated; a key Ukrainian negotiator was assassinated by Ukrainian security forces; and the UK & US told Ukraine NOT to negotiate.
After THAT Russia finally started building a real force of the type needed for a serious longterm war, after seeing there was no one to negotiate with.
The original operation was NOT done with enough forces to do any sort of 'taking over" of all of Ukraine, and the intention was demanding negotiation after being frightened that NATO was going to place missiles in range of Moscow in the hand of Azov folks who sport tattoos of a type last seen in WW2 for Russia's opponent that killed 27 million of their people. A legit border security concern, and one the "Obama Doctrine" had claimed to understand but which Biden has never cared about.
We singlehandedly, misguidedly goaded and instigated Russia into building up its forces into a much larger force in order to defend their national border security interests. We have been lying about this non stop, which is why I am now an independent after stupidly voting for the instigator of this insanity.
Every calculation has been a miscalculation. Our "sanctions" strengthen the other side and cause other nations to flock to BRICS instead of us, out of fear we will pirate away their money too. We are weakening our ability to be the international currency backbone. We have strengthened their military by forcing them to BUILD IT UP by refusing to use ANY DIPLOMACY.
I have not seen such poor diplomatic policy and skills in an administration in my lifetime.
Even Nixon put a lot of effort into diplomacy abroad. It seems like we are going DOWNHILL since 2000 in the area of diplomacy and have only bully diplomacy. Bullying does NOT help a nation establish widespread international trust needed for leadership/hegemony - it weakens credibility. Trust comes from the strength of peacefulness -- showing the willingness to work together with other nations to build trade ties and peace, not the willingness to stoke chaos abroad and provoke war to sell missiles.
yes, they made a feint!!! OMG and all the letters of our alphabet. who could buy such an "explanation"? what kind of willful lack of normal reasoning does it take to say their tanks were a feint??
if the kyiv regime is so bad for ukrainians why did the russians then calculate that it would be too hard to fight off all the ensuing urban warfare? so the row of tanks going into kyiv was just a feint. OMG the RT propaganda works in spades or in tanks in your case. this is an answer to the various justifications of the putin invasion of ukraine. all the while you guys base your arguments on the belief that ukrainians are just stooges for the US. stooges who are willing to fight urban warfare. you guys are unbelievable in a very sad sad way. how can RT feed you such powerful koolaide. sad for the US, sad for ukraine, sad for the world in general.
look, i should appreciate your attempt to be fair, and i do, and esp your attempt to be understanding. so that's very nice. but you still think you know better than ukrainians themselves. it makes no sense (to me at least) to say that there are so few ukrainians. ukraine is tiny compared to the russian bully. so of course there will be only a few ukrainians. you think the biggest suffering is in the last 30 years? clearly you are not aware of the genocidal famine of the early 30's? ukraine has been a colony of russia for centuries and this is what putin wants to restore. so no, not the US, not nuland, not any of the excuses wiwth which russian propaganda has convinced the folks here.
and even russia has started buying its soldiers in india etc
This complaint that Ukraine has been a colony of Russia rings dully when we can see that what is happening is to make Ukraine a colony of the United States and to not let Yanukovych negotiate with Russia for better LNG prices than they could get from the West like that. See "Ukraine on Fire" with interviews by Oliver Stone and Robert Parry. The US wouldn't even let Ukraine do any business with Russia which is a ridiculous idea since that is their neighbor and we are all the way across the ocean.
This is about big US money going into some pockets over there and hiring a bunch of people to come and harass anybody that criticizes the situation.
The United States has to dominate everything all over the world including at Russia's border which is a ridiculous idea.
Even Obama stated clearly that he knew that Ukraine was more Russia strategic interest being at its border than it would be for the United States to whom it is just a game. Watch Jeffrey Sachs' discussion May 15 with Glenn Greenwald. The long version has a section from 21 minutes in to about 50 or 58 minutes in that addresses it.
forgot to finish my first sentence with "was just a feint" as one of the other meershimer/putin fans claimed.
Re nsakum - I'm not a "Putin fan" in any way, NOR is Mearsheimer - he is simply explaining zero sum political science realism. You are the biggest doofus I've ever seen. It has nothing to do with "liking" Putin. It's you that keeps talking about Putin not me. You're the one fascinated with him and trying to equate him with Hitler which is ridiculous.
The harassment that some of these vicious Ukrainian paid off people due to keep their money coming in from the US is disgusting. Americans should be able to talk without being harassed by people trying to silence them. This whole thing was drummed up by the US to get energy rights and manipulate the Ukrainians.
Anybody looking in knows that tons of Ukrainians have been fleeing this nightmare forcing them to be drafted by the US war games that Ukrainians and Russians pay the price for.
It has to do with not being a fan of coups we've been participating in for years that you apparently are clueless about.
To Germaine, Russia wasn't trying to "topple the Kyiv government". They were trying to push for negotiations since we wouldn't listen in December 2021.
They wanted to keep the same government to negotiate with because they were afraid of getting a more nationalistic replacement than Zelensky, who originally ran on a unification with ethnic Russians platform.
That platform is why he got support from ethnic Russians originally and a large percentage of the vote. The Donbas people were hopeful that he would bring Ukraine together and stop the bombing of the Donbas.
But then he turned around and outlawed Russian and started doing as told by the Biden crew in 2021 like a puppet instead of staying independent like he came across as when he first ran.
well at least you aren't saying the line of tanks putin sent into kyiv. but it is a kind of hubris to think that we are so smart to fiind the underlying reasons for this and that but ukrainians were just pushed into war, just stupid stooges.