Why would Ukraine want to warm up to the wars endgame...their winning and beating Russia? I’m guessing another 8-10 years they’ll be marching through Moscow.
President Trump is keeping his promise to end the war.
And even the facts are bent or suppressed to show this narrative.
Reality has the Russian economy growing and Ukraine with an economy that despite some growth this year that has net imploded by 1/3 since wars begin. Reality has the Russians gaining land in a slow creep (intended to keep the pressure on) and sitting in Ukraine, having taken the heart of Ukraine's steel industry and a port city, a major industrial area, and about 20% of Ukraine's landmass. Roughly 8 million Ukrainian's have fled as refugees, and with a birthrate among the worst on the planet (1.26), Ukraine has committed demographic suicide (unsustainable even for one generation), and that does not include the dead and crippled. Ukraine has an infrastructure that is heavily damaged, is massively indebted (to us of course), and the cost of this war will have a reverb that will last for a generation at this point (crippled, etc).
***And yet we have these victory speeches.***
This war was lost in 2023 and our politicians avoiding a black eye have simply kicked the proverbial can down the road since then.
This is not a Ukraine winning, it's not even a stalemate. It's Ukraine losing. It's us failing to achieve our stated military (hold onto Ukraine territories we knew Russian would go for - ethnic Russian areas) and political objectives (NATO expansion), entirely. In fact, this failure has expanded to include EU membership which was well in reach for Ukraine before the war. The EU (Germany and France) won't want this economic and political basket case in their union.
Time for another western non-propagandist and fact checked news article about a Ghost of Kiev, battle for Snake Island, a victorious Ukrainian counter offensive, western military hardware that will turn the tide, and of course Times Person of the year, Mr Z., who we installed, ran on a peace platform and is a dictator today.
However, all that said, there is a scenario where this war in Ukraine is a 100% success.
Assuming we have an entirely Machiavellian approach, the argument can be made (there is a lot of evidence which supports this theory), that we wanted this war, that we knew we would cause a war.
Our policy makers can’t be so naive to believe that brining Ukraine into NATO won’t cause a major Russian reaction, ESPECIALLY post Georgia 2008, and our first attempt with Ukraine in 2014 (same reason, NATO expansion). The Russians have drawn a big fat red line and when we made our decision in October 2021 we essentially stone walled the Russians and never even discussed any sort of security assurances or force and equipment limitations etc.
Why would we want a war?
Russia is our global competitor in oil and gas and we have both been jockeying over control of nations that produce such. In the last few years, Venezuela, Syria, Iraq and Libya have been in our sight.
That said, imagine this scenario:
Russia is at war with Ukraine and for Russia this is a major problem especially after we armed and trained Ukraine for 7 years prior to the war.
In this scenario, Ukrainian’s do the bleeding (except some proxy spill over in Iraq etc. and our PMCs), and the Euros flip 1/2 the bill, but we benefit from a weakened Russia on the world stage where they have a hard time projecting force.
Forget Ukraine. Forget the Republic of Georgia who we also tried to drag into this (we wanted to open a second front for the Russians). In this scenario Ukraine is a mere means to a much larger end, and if you look at what’s going on in Libya, Syria, Venezuela that does appear to be what is happening.