Posted on 11/19/2022 2:57:12 AM PST by Cronos
No one wants to sit down with foes who bomb their homes indiscriminately and target their energy infrastructure, plunging households into darkness and forcing surgeons in hospitals to perform operations by torchlight.
And as the remains of civilians tortured by Russian soldiers occupying the southern city of Kherson are unearthed, the cold fury Ukrainians felt at the documented abuses — from rape to casually gunning down non-combatants in Bucha and Irpin — only intensifies.
.... Nuts!” also fairly sums up the reaction of “ordinary” Ukrainians I spoke with this week, as to whether they would endorse peace negotiations — and whether they’d be willing to trade any land in the Donbas, or the whole of Crimea, for peace.
Yuliya Grigor, whose soldier husband is currently undergoing treatment for severe shell shock, said Ukraine can win this fight, if the West stays true and constant. The 35-year-old charity worker, who is from Mauripol but now lives in Lviv, said, “Russians don’t understand that however many missiles they throw at us, we won’t give in, surrender or negotiate. And they can’t divide us.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about. Putin doesn’t understand Ukraine is a separate, sovereign country and is united. Anyway, he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word peace. So, there is no sense in talking with them,” she added. ...
Yuliya isn’t alone in her vehemence. I interviewed a dozen others in the underground parking lot of a Lviv shopping mall that now serves as a bomb shelter...
“I disagree, and there can be no talks, no agreements because Russia will always break any deals; you can’t trust them. All countries recognized Ukraine’s borders in 1991, and this is our country."
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.eu ...
The power lines are being switched to backup ones.
If some simple piece equipment is damaged, then this can be restored quite quickly. All the stockpiled gear available is used and everything that is possible to fix is fixed within 3-4 weeks. But there is still a category of very complex, expensive and special equipment – like the transformers. Sometimes it takes up to six months to manufacture them.
your predictions of the failure of Ukraine is just like your false predictions over the past year
28th Jan 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4033214/posts?page=21#21
I’d put up a welcome sign if Russia wants to invade the US
27th Feb 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4041997/posts?page=41#41
President Putin picked up his chips, completely cleaning our President out. Vladimir got everything he really wanted. He went all in. Consider what he has accomplished. Putin had already absorbed Georgia and Crimea back into Mother Russia. Soon he will complete the annexation of those Russian-leaning eastern provinces and maybe the whole of Ukraine.
20th July 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4079519/posts?page=96#96
Only someone completely ignorant of what is going on can’t find a daily map of the areas Russia controls and see how much ground the Russians have been gaining week by week.
12th October 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4099922/posts?page=24#24
EVERYTHING changes in 3 weeks as Putin amasses biggest force yet
14th October 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4100455/posts?page=3#3
Russian OWNS the air space has conclusively proven Ukraine’s air defense is non-existent this week.
26th October 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4103469/posts?page=23#23
It’s now well known that a newly-unified, Russian-Belarussian command is planning a winter offensive….. …..a “second front” against unprepared, largely unguarded areas in the Ukraine’s north. There may be some diversionary raids, but it’s understood that the most likely axis of advance is near the Polish border, south to Lutsk and then potentially to Lvov….. …..cutting off the main supply lines into the Ukraine….. …..without which all organized resistance by Ukrainian forces employing large modern weapons, would cease totally in as little as six weeks.
2nd November 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4105258/posts?page=26#26
Ukraine’s military position will continue to erode in the coming weeks
4th November 2022 https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4106075/posts?page=24#24
Russia will control Kherson both next week and for as long as any of us are alive.
Nah, I’m not in Moscow like you to have drugs.
How are your daily feeds from the Kremlin?
Gorbachev and the documents show ZERO promise not to enlarge
What the Germans, Americans, British and French did agree to in 1990 was that there would be no deployment of non-German NATO forces on the territory of the former GDR. I was a deputy director on the State Department’s Soviet desk at the time, and that was certainly the point of Secretary James Baker’s discussions with Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. In 1990, few gave the possibility of a broader NATO enlargement to the east any serious thought.=======================================The agreement on not deploying foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR was incorporated in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which was signed on September 12, 1990 by the foreign ministers of the two Germanys, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. Article 5 had three provisions:
- Until Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the former GDR, only German territorial defense units not integrated into NATO would be deployed in that territory.
- There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.
- Once Soviet forces had withdrawn, German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR, but foreign forces and nuclear weapons systems would not be deployed there.
When one reads the full text of the Woerner speech cited by Putin, it is clear that the secretary general’s comments referred to NATO forces in eastern Germany, not a broader commitment not to enlarge the Alliance.
Former Soviet President Gorbachev’s View
We now have a very authoritative voice from Moscow confirming this understanding. Russia behind the Headlines has published an interview with Gorbachev, who was Soviet president during the discussions and treaty negotiations concerning German reunification. The interviewer asked why Gorbachev did not “insist that the promises made to you [Gorbachev]—particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East—be legally encoded?” Gorbachev replied: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
Gorbachev continued that “The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.” To be sure, the former Soviet president criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990, but he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.
Several years after German reunification, in 1997, NATO said that in the “current and foreseeable security environment” there would be no permanent stationing of substantial combat forces on the territory of new NATO members. Up until the Russian military occupation of Crimea in March, there was virtually no stationing of any NATO combat forces on the territory of new members. Since March, NATO has increased the presence of its military forces in the Baltic region and Central Europe.
Putin is not stupid, and his aides surely have access to the former Soviet records from the time and understand the history of the commitments made by Western leaders and NATO. But the West’s alleged promise not to enlarge the Alliance will undoubtedly remain a standard element of his anti-NATO spin. That is because it fits so well with the picture that the Russian leader seeks to paint of an aggrieved Russia, taken advantage of by others and increasingly isolated—not due to its own actions, but because of the machinations of a deceitful West.
Here is the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany
to summarize , it means that Soviet forces would withdraw from East Germany, and that no foreign forces would be stationed there afterwards. In other words, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, only the German military would be allowed to be stationed in the former East Germany.
NOTE -- not in the former East Germany.
Absolutely NOTHING about going to Poland, the Baltics etc.
So stop repeating the lie about "promised to not go one inch further east"
The growth of NATO, due to central European nations knowing that Russia continuously invades her neighbors, and banding together may very well be Putin’s excuse for invading Ukraine. But that doesn’t justify it.
Independent sovereign nations are free and entitled to make their own security decisions and alliances.
When the USSR collapsed, the ex “Warsaw Pact” countries of Eastern Europe didn’t trust the new, but largely unimproved, Russia to not want them “back in the fold” again, at some point & made a mad scramble to also join this effective defence network. It turns out they were SO right, as Pooptin has proved since 2008
The traditionally non-aligned Sweden & Finland now see the advantages of changing their stance too, thanks to Vladolf’s transparent “World Domination” fetish.
Matlock’s suggestion that Russia which has tons of territory needs buffer states under its thumb to “feel secure” is daft — then by that reckoning Canada should have the northern states as buffer and Mexico should have Texas etc. as “buffer”
“Zakhar Prilepin—who spends a lot of time on the frontlines and previously boasted of “killing many” in Ukraine—admits that Russia wants to negotiate merely to regroup and finish fighting later, any potential peace accords notwithstanding.”
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1594408064337301504?t=7q6jv4c6rMwsLwxPSx8D9g&s=19
The mutt even drew a direct comparison between Minsk 1, Minsk 2, and the Khasavyurt Accord.
This is Russia’s MO under Putin. Stoke unrest, invade, negotiate, regroup, come back harder, salami slice a bit more. As hinted in that interview, even Poland is on the list but they’re not yet allowed to openly confirm it.
Russia will keep doing this, not just to Ukraine but to any country in its shopping list, until either there’s a regime change in Moscow or they push too hard at the wrong target and someone nukes Moscow in retaliation.
So far, Russia’s dough is in escrow but could be released back to them... and so what if they’re sanctioned and they get strongly worded letters of criticism. Russia thinks the gloves are off?! Thick Vatnik mutts don’t even see we’re still giving them the kid glove treatment.
A fellow freeper upthread talked about the conundrum between Nazis and Soviets. That’s a false analogy. Ukraine had a minor internal problem with about 5000 Nazis, blown up out of all proportion by separatists. It was entirely an internal matter.
Russia’s Revanchist Vatnik chauvinism permeates its entire leadership and they’re on a mission that is almost identical to Nazi Lebensraum.
Their diseased 19th century empire building mission combined with late 20th century weapons and a fetish for hypersonic missiles threatens all of continental Europe, and America.
Ukraine’s tiny number of Nazis posed a limited threat to pro Russian separatists in two Oblasts in one country, but nobody else. Not even in Ukraine let alone any other country. There’s no comparison.
You, your cohorts, and the Western media’s defense of Ukraine and its rampant Banderist neo-Nazism in a nutshell...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvgZtdmyKlI
Nah mate. You’re the one playing the Oswald Moseley role.
Serially siding with the most serially oathbreaking nazi-emulating scum of the planet. If Stalinism and Nazism had a baby, that baby would be Duginist led Putinism, and you’d love that baby.
Do you even have a remotely understanding as to why most of the West observes D-Day EVERY YEAR?
It won’t and is not because it was the largest amphibious landing in world history. It won’t is not because it was some memorable even in history.
We observe D-Day EVERY YEAR because that event represented the beginning and inevitable end - the defeat - of FASCISM/NAZISM.
And to think that most of the countries that defeated FASCISM/NAZISM in WWII are no willingly, blatantly, or simply blindly turning a blind eye to it in Ukraine since 2014.
It dishonors the memories of those millions of millions of people who fought against it, who sacrificed so many things against it, who survived it...ALL OF WHOM HAVE ROLLED OVER IN THEIR GRAVES multiples of times with what is occurring now.
even = event
no = now
Hopefully not. But the Russians will have the Ukrainians bleed until they can conquer the country.
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