I signed up for a pro-American site
If FR is now FreeRussia, then FR already left me
Leave Leaf🍁 !! Canuck Commies stay away .
So tell me, how is fleecing the American taxpayer for a proxy war “pro-American”?
No one forces you to come here. Maybe the paycheck is just too good. BTW, Jim doesn't take too kindly about a poster ragging on FReeRepublic. Ask me how I know. Your days are numbered here anyway, please OPUS!
Why do so many debates have to be black or white, choose this side or that? Russia or Ukraine? Israel or Palestinian? Everything is much more nuanced than people want to discuss.
The Ukraine war has been a disaster for everyone, especially Ukraine but also for Russia and, frankly for the US and Europe and NATO. Putin has been reckless and bloodthirsty and he never should have invaded and he never should be targeting civilian infrastructure. Ukraine and Russia have so much shared history, and yes of course rivalry, but they could have been good partners. In fact they were for a long time.
There are a lot of problems with Ukraine though, too. Just a quick list - Obama let Putin walk into Crimea in 2014, basically setting some sort of precedent that Putin can take Ukranian land. Why did we allow that then? The CIA led a color revolution to change Ukraine. NATO continued to move east despite promises it wouldn’t, we now have missiles and troops on Russia’s border. And the entire Burisma deal, Hunter’s sweetheart paycheck (and, he also go money from Moscow!?), Biden bragging about blackmailing the Ukrainian prosecutor to drop an investigation, Trump’s phone call which IMHO was a perfectly legitimate inquiry within the enumerated powers of his Office and then subsequent impeachment over that phone call as “election interference” against a candidate who wasn’t even a candidate... You can see why a lot of people have a very bad taste in their mouth about Ukraine, right?
It’s a sad sorry mess. And we didn’t do enough fast enough early enough to repel Russian troops. They spent months amassing tanks and APCs on the Ukranian border and we didn’t help Ukraine prepare proper defenses and counter offenses. Ukraine should have been ready to blow that equipment to smithereens once they crossed the border. It’s almost as if we wanted this war. And some people believe we did; the people who are still in the cold war mentality.
I am no fan of Russia, especially now. But we (America) made a drastic mistake decades ago by continuing to treat Russia like a boogieman after the fall of the Berlin wall. It might not have been easy, but Russia could have been slowly brought into the European fold - they have obvious history, they have reliance on Russian energy, they share borders, they are all basically White Christian and Western. The only reason things have escalated to this point is because of horrible policies going back decades, and unproductive, antagonizing foreign meddling inside Ukraine by both the West and Russia. It’s truly a mess, and so sad the way out it seems is just to keep warring. I fear it will be a pyrrhic victory for Ukraine, though.