I always question the impartiality of a commentator who never bothers to mention pretty basic things like,
1. Zhirinovsky announced the precise date and time of the invasion weeks before the Kremlin even issued its demands to NATO 12 months ago, to the whole Russian Duma.
2. The FSB operation tasked with formenting dissent and enabling occupation arrived in Donetsk years ago.
Negotiate neutrality - what a frickin’ joke. Russia’s chauvinist elite has made it abundantly clear that the only reason they demand Ukraine be completely demilitarized and abandoned by Europe and America is because they want a much easier ride.
The empire-building fascist bastards around Putin spent several years unsuccessfully trying to install a Kremlin puppet leader, failed completely, and just as they thought they had a decent stab with Zelenskyy (a Russian Ukrainian who was only a few years ago a celebrity chum of the media in Russia) he turned out to be pro-Western.
A recent survey of Russian Ukrainians showed less than ten percent of them support Russia against Kyiv. Down from more than 50% ten years ago. What do they know that this idiot general doesn’t?
Russia was always going to invade Ukraine. Putin knew it, Poroshenko knew it, even the heads of other eastern European nations knew it. The Polish leader even said so, in 2008 - Russia’s actions in Chechnya and then Georgia signposted the direction of travel.
Screw “neutrality”. The west did absolutely nothing to get in the way of Revanchist fantasies until 2014 and even then the Kremlin was given the kid gloves treatment. Not one thing NATO or the USA did in the last 8 years convinced Putin that invading Ukraine would be a bad idea; before that the West bent over backwards to Not Poke The Bear and that didn’t help either.
What needs to happen is, every nation west of Russia needs to tool up to the eyeballs and the next time even one Vatnik jackboot (assuming they can be arsed to issue boots to their grunts) crosses the border, properly sack St Petersburg, bomb the Kremlin into glass, and perform some extraordinary renditions of the vodka-swilling lunatic fringe.
The problem with the Ukraine situation is, it’ll drag on for as long as Putin, Dugin, Prigozhin and their chauvinist fellow travellers remain (a) obsessed with this empire restoration dream and (b) convinced that their nuclear arsenal gives them carte blanche to realise it because the west is too scared to not back down eventually.
Even if Russia’s leaders could be talked into a ceasefire, that wouldn’t quell their ambition to conquer not just Ukraine but other countries too. Putin’s regime is like the scorpion riding on the back of the frog.
if the frog pisses it off, the scorpion will stab the frog. If the frog does everything the scorpion asks, the scorpion will stab it. Even if it’s suicide to stab the frog, the scorpion will do it.
There is no sane route to negotiation as long as Putin and co are feeding their entire nation with this lunatic quasi-religious, Hitleresque notion that they’re on some kind of mission from God to create an empire in homage to the one that collapsed over 100 years ago. Putin and co are so fervent and so drunk on this vision that they make Al Qaeda look rational.
That is really a lot of words i wish you would print them on toilet paper so they would be useful in some way.