Posted on 02/02/2025 3:30:52 PM PST by delta7
Much of the death and destruction was avoidable.
It is no longer easy to tell what the Ukraine War was for. Very early on, U.S. goals got grafted onto Ukrainian goals, and the hybrid braid became hard to disentangle. “This is a war that is in many ways… bigger than Ukraine,” the State Department announced in the first weeks of the war. But, whatever those goals, few of them remain: There will be no NATO membership for Ukraine, there will be no recovery of all of its territory, and there will be no weakening of Russia.
Former President Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do, as does Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky will need to explain to his exhausted nation why choosing the path of war over the path of diplomacy after the Istanbul talks in March and April of 2022 was worth the cost. At that time, what still seemed to be the Ukrainian goals—continued sovereignty and the withdrawal of Russian troops to pre-war boundaries—might have been met. Zelensky must explain why he succumbed to Western pressure to pursue wider ones.
He is going to have to explain why pursuing those wider goals was worth the loss of so much life, limb and land. And, if he is to survive politically and, perhaps, even physically, he is going to have to find someone to blame. He already fired Valery Zaluzhny, who served as Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief until last year. Now, Ukraine’s security service has arrested two generals and a colonel on the charge of failing to protect Ukrainian territory from Russian advances.
But blaming the generals won’t be enough to acquit Zelensky. The war went on after Zaluzhny and continued to worsen. And no one will buy the blaming of field commanders. “We were defending a huge swath of the border, we fought to the death in the first hours of the attack,” said soldiers in one brigade after their former commander was arrested. “We were short of people, ammunition and support but we fought, we fought under the leadership of our commander!”
Ukraine no longer has the capacity to field the men nor the weapons to hold off the Russian advance. More land will be lost the longer the war goes on, and more men and weapons are not on their way. “The problem with Ukraine is not that they’re running out of money,” Marco Rubio said at his confirmation hearing for his nomination as secretary of state, “but that they’re running out of Ukrainians.”
Zelensky will need to blame someone higher up than the field commanders. In recent weeks, he’s laid some of that blame on Biden, complaining of insufficient support. “With all due respect to the United States and the administration,” Zelensky said in a podcast interview, “I don’t want the same situation like we had with Biden.”
One day, Zelensky will need to explain to Ukrainians his part in the tragedy. He will have to defend his decision to yield to the West’s pressure not to sign anything with Russia but to “just fight,” as then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly put it. As American President Donald Trump said in his first Oval Office interview, "Zelensky... shouldn’t have allowed this to happen either. He’s no angel. Zelensky decided that 'I want to fight.’” But that does not exonerate the U.S. or mean that Zelensky is unjustified in blaming Biden. Biden, too, is one day going to have to explain what the war in Ukraine was for subsequent to the promising talks in Istanbul.
The Biden administration repeatedly promised Ukraine whatever they needed for as long as it takes. But that promise evolved into whatever we agree to for as long as convenient. And a clear answer to the question “Whatever they need to do what?” was never provided. According to Biden National Security Council official Eric Green, U.S. support for Ukraine was never intended to push Russia out of its territory, recover its lost land, and reassert its territorial integrity.
“We were deliberately not talking about the territorial parameters,” Green said in an interview with Time. “The more important objective,” he explained, “was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.”
But reclaiming territory was all that was left for the Ukrainians after the West pressured them to keep fighting rather than abandon aspirations to join NATO. Neutrality for Kiev was “the key point” for Russian negotiators, according to one Ukrainian lawmaker who participated in peace talks. If an agreement had been made, a still-sovereign Ukraine would remain free to pursue economic and cultural—but not military—integration with the West. Green’s assertion, at first, seems unlikely. The U.S. pushed Ukraine to carry out a counteroffensive in the Donbas and endorsed strikes on military targets in Crimea.
But that was for public consumption. Privately, they knew that Ukraine’s counteroffensive likely couldn’t succeed, that Kiev didn’t have the training or weapons needed to expel Russian forces from the Donbas. And, according to a report from early 2023, they knew it was not “a wise move” to recapture Crimea and were not “actively encouraging Ukraine” to do so. If Biden was not prepared to give Ukraine whatever it needed to reclaim its territory, and if he was not prepared to offer Ukraine NATO membership, then what was American support for the war all about?
Was it really just about weakening Russia or asserting NATO’s unchallenged right to expand wherever it wants, including right up to Russia’s borders? If so, then the people of Ukraine have been cruelly used by America. In the first weeks of the war, there was a plausible hope worth exploring that Ukraine might retain much of its territory while avoiding catastrophic bloodshed and destruction of lives. Washington chose a different path, and it is incumbent on Biden to explain why.
After senile Joe’s dangerous MRNA vax debacle, masks, shutdowns, distancing, etc., it proves Americans aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
Just like vietnam.
The only "deal" Putin has ever offered is essentially capitulation, with a rump Ukraine becoming a Russian protectorate with a puppet government made of of the same gangsters he put in charge of Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea.
it proves Americans aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.Delta7 who promotes Martin Armstrong who hates the US now has the proof.
It’s to make the world safe for Globohomo. Russia is practically the only country left that opposes it.
“Biden Must Explain What the Ukraine War Was For”
It was to PROVE that the Neocons could defeat Russia. Didn’t go quite as planned as the Neocons had NO CLUE as to what they were taking on (hint, it’s no longer 1990, and hopefully the Neocons will understand that after getting spanked in Ukraine).
Zelensky will need to explain to his exhausted nation why choosing the path of war over the path of diplomacy after the Istanbul talks in March and April of 2022 was worth the cost. At that time, what still seemed to be the Ukrainian goals—continued sovereignty and the withdrawal of Russian troops to pre-war boundaries—might have been met.
And here you have the lie repeated. Russia was not offering to withdraw. Rather it was insisting on Ukrainian surrender: that Ukraine would withdraw from lands claimed by Russia, reduce its military to the point that it could not defend itself from Russia, be barred not only from NATO but from any alliance that would protect itself, that Russia would have a veto over any foreign intervention to oppose future Russian aggression, and that it would have to remove any pro-Ukrainian nationalists (the so-called "Nazis") from the government, replace the government with one imposed by Russia. This was not a plan for peace but for subjugation. No Ukrainian government would ever have accepted it.
Joe’s not going to explain anything. He can’t.
I disagree. From the start, it was about $$$.
It was about gaining access to the $12 trillion of resources in Ukraine. It was about corrupt politicians like Biden working with Ukrainian oligarchs to enrich themselves. It was about George Soros and others setting up NGOs. It was about feeding the defense industry.
The two Presidents that setoff and conducted the proxy war in Ukraine BOTH HATE AMERICA -- Obama and Biden.
You apparently back their policies in Ukraine.
Does that mean you hate the country?
No, like the Minsk Accords, would have granted independence to Donetsk and Lugansk.
And, that is something those in both oblasts deserved after an coup that resulted in a President they voted for being illegally removed from office.
The people were under no obligation to be persecuted and murdered by Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi baboons.
We know what it was and we are still seeing it in action.
Half the country doesn't care what their president, congressman or senator does as long as it is a democrat.
Their faith and loyalty is blind and it is to the democrat party first and foremost.
It is not to God, to America, to honesty, to any sense of right and wrong or to what is best for them, their family or the nation.
They know (and knew) that Joe Biden is a lying, corrupt, demented pedophile and that he, son Hunter and the entire Biden clan have been enriching
themselves with crooked deals while democrats in power ignored the constitution and destroyed the nation.
And they don't care.
They know that Kamala Harris is a bumbling, incompetent idiot.
And they don't care.
They still voted democrat by the tens of millions.
And, how has turning down that deal worked out for Ukraine?
A million or so Ukrainians have died and Ukraine has lost more than 20% of its country.
The Minsk Accords did no such thing. And by the way, Ukraine held up its end of the deal. It was Russia that violated them.
The people were under no obligation to be persecuted and murdered by Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi baboons.
Still repeating that lie? I guess that is the only way to justify Russian aggression. Also, how many Ukrainians have been killed by the Russians these past three years?
Biden should have to explain why he only wanted the war to go on, not for Ukraine to beat back Putin’s aggression.
Very simple to everyone. Russia said that they were not going to attack. So, what was there to be diplomatic about?
Once Russia invaded with the idea of killing the leaders and making Ukraine a puppet state, the only recourse is to defend yourself.
Then next would be Poland and the Baltics invaded if they win in Ukraine.. Why would you want all that to happen??
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