Questions Without Answers About Ukraine

“Russia’s cruel strategy is to grind down Ukraine and turn its eastern regions into a Verdun-like deathscape.”

Note that Russia is doing it to a part of Ukraine that was majority Russian speaking (but majority ethnically Ukrainian - even if they spoke Ruski!)

“Why is the world Ukraine wanted to get in bed with the US is beyond me. In my opinion they would have been better off figuring out how to get along with their neighbor, Russia.”

As someone who has lived in Poland since 2010 and last year helped with Ukrainian refugees, i’ll endeavour to answer your question

Russia didn’t see any “getting along” with Ukraine - the official narrative (As Medvedev recently repeated) is that Ukraine is an illegitimate country and should be absorbed into “Russia”

—> how do you get along with a neighbor who says that you are actually his property and your house etc are actually his as you mistakenly believe that you own yourself and your land/house

Ukraine, like Estonia, Latvia etc. wanted to escape from Moscow’s imperial ambitions — yes, Moscow sees the Baltics as vassal states that have escaped.

There is the breaking point for “Russia”, the breaking point for ordinary Russians and the breaking point for Putin and his coterie.

The breaking point for urban Russians (a large % of their population lives in St Petersburg and Moscow) has past. They see jobs and money going down. Then the mobilization (which didn’t hit them too hard) and they are close to boiling point. But will they rebel? I don’t think so, not yet

The breaking point for Russia was March 2022 — when they failed at plan A for reducing Ukraine to vassaldom. That burst the bubble of “Russian military strength”, and destroyed the market for Russian military goods. Also it pushes them to being a vassal captive oil and gas supplier to China (giving China a 40% discount)

For Putin the breaking point was, again, in March — now he has no way out, no way to keep the crown

russianloonfaith The Ukraine is world headquarters for the cabal’s crimes of bioweapons (think aerosolized rabies), child trafficking, money laundering and drug trafficking.

Even Putin stopped his false propaganda about "bio weapons"

The Russians found zero evidence of this - and neither has anyone else

You're talking non-reason

actually caver, Chauncey repeated the lie about “expanding NATO” — no promise was made
Gorbachev and the documents show ZERO promise not to enlarge
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/

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:

1. 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.
2. There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.
3. 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
http://nato.int/docu/speech/1990/s900517a_e.htm

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,http://rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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, Chauncey, stop repeating the lie about “promised to not go one inch further east”