Posted on 06/27/2024 4:55:18 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The only practicable way to avoid another near-one million dead and wounded would be a settlement, however unpopular.
Nearly eleven months ago, in August 2023, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials had estimated that some 500,000 Russians and Ukrainians had been killed, wounded, or missing in the then 18-month Ukrainian War.
Both Russia and Ukraine underreport their losses. Hundreds of thousands of additional casualties have followed in the 28 months of fighting.
In the West, the mere mention of a negotiated settlement is considered a dangerous appeasement of Russia’s flagrant aggression. In Russia, anything short of victory would be seen as synonymous with the collapse of the Putin regime.
Yet as the war nears two and a half years this summer, some facts are no longer much in dispute.
Controversy still arises over the circumstances of the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Russia charges that the West engineered the “Revolution of Dignity”—an effort to westernize the former Soviet republic, to expand the borders of Europe right to the doorstep of Russia, and eventually to fully arm Ukraine as a member of NATO.
Westerners counter that most Ukrainians wished to be part of Europe and independent from Russian bullying—and they had a perfect right to ask to join either NATO or the EU or both despite anticipated escalating tensions.
After the heroic Ukrainian defeat of the 2022 Russian bid to take Kyiv, there have been few significant territorial gains by either side.
Like the seesaw bloodbath on the Western Front of World War I, neither side has developed the momentum to force the other to negotiate or grant concessions.
As nuclear Russian threats against Europe mount, NATO is seeking to regain deterrence capabilities by boosting defense budgets, incorporating robust frontline nations Sweden and Finland....
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
History is laughing hysterically at that post!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/ukraines-struggle-independence-russias-shadow
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9476/CBP-9476.pdf
“the Minsk Agreements are essential to the current diplomatic process surrounding Ukraine for two reasons: First, they are the most recent formal, written document to which Russia has subscribed, which affirms Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”
WIKI
“VII. In order to reestablish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all subject of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannick Majesty and those of his Most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence, by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea; and for this purpose, the Most Christian King cedes in full right, and guaranties to his Britannick Majesty the river and port of the Mobile, and every thing which he possesses, or ought to possess, on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated, which shall remain to France, provided that the navigation of the river Mississippi shall be equally free, as well to the subjects of Great Britain as to those of France, in its whole breadth and length, from its source to the sea, and expressly that part which is between the said island of New Orleans and the right bank of that river, as well as the passage both in and out of its mouth: It is farther stipulated, that the vessels belonging to the subjects of either nation shall not be stopped, visited, or subjected to the payment of any duty whatsoever. The stipulations inserted in the IVth article, in favour of the inhabitants of Canada shall also take place with regard to the inhabitants of the countries ceded by this article.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1763)
“Being defeated by the British in the French and Indian War more than a decade earlier, France found an opportunity to undercut British power and ultimately of revenge by aiding the colonists throughout the Revolutionary War. Prior to the Battle of Saratoga, France did not fully aid the colonists. However, after the Battles of Saratoga were conclusively won by the colonists, France realized that the Americans had the hope of winning the war, and began fully aiding the colonists by sending soldiers, donations, loans, military arms, and supplies.”
Reader comments (unverified):
“the baby United States of America is well on its way to being born.”
“The French bankrolled everything from 1777 to 1783, spending more in six years than the entire American federal tax base for the next 30 years, which succinctly sums up why the French were necessary for the Revolution to succeed.”
“Post-Saratoga anti-war members of Parliament were proclaiming the war to be over and there was serious despair inside the government after Burgoyne’s army’s surrender there. So Britain decided to test the waters right after Saratoga and send a Peace Commission, known as the Carlisle commission, to negotiate a possible peace with the American rebel Congress, which was still alive and functioning in York, Pennsylvania after the fall of Philadelphia.”
“French Foreign Minister Vergennes, the driving force of the war party, was watching Parliamentary debate in London on a constant basis, fearing that reconciliation efforts by the government with the Americans might become serious and successful. We know now that the Peace Commission’s authority did not extend to granting full independence, but just an autonomous federation of sorts, and that the Americans’ “redline” was independence. That made any negotiation unlikely to achieve success.”
They’re here!!! Posting more rewrites of history!!!
If he said that Putin was reconstituting the Soviet Union beginning in Ukraine, he was incorrect. He started with Georgia, as I recall.
I thought he was wanting to reconstitute the old Russian Empire, and had been planning how to regain Ukraine for decades.
The western intel agencies and leftist NGOs fomented the Ukrainian color revolution in 2014, known as the Maidan Revolution or “Revolution of Dignity”, that was the real beginning of this conflict.
“I thought he was wanting to reconstitute the old Russian Empire, and had been planning how to regain Ukraine for decades.”
He didn’t quite state that, although the Neocons and Zeepers have been claiming the above and/or claiming he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union. I always ask them for links, but they never seem to be able to find any.
What Putin did say was that when the Soviet Union broke up, there was some 20 Million Russians trapped in now-foreign countries...which did bother him (as an American, the idea of our government giving a crap about trapped Americans is a foreign concept, though). That was it.
If Putin had been plotting to take Ukraine, as the Zeepers claim, he would have at least doubled the size of his military as the force he sent there in 2022 was never going to have a chance against a country of 40 Million people, three-quarters of them hostile (to see the least) to Russia. So it’s important to understand that what happened in 2022 was an attempt to get Ukraine to negotiate, but the Neocons never wanted that - after all, they had the war against Russia that they dreamed of, or at least the justification needed to sink the Russian economy and thus overthrow Putin...obviously things didn’t turn out was they planned!
Well, that was exactly what Putin and his Prime Minster were saying, so why would VDH disagree?
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-is-russia-medvedev-reveals-imperial-ambitions-fueling-invasion/
WIKI
The first deaths occurred on Unity Day, 22 January, during riots on Hrushevskoho Street in Kyiv, where three activists: Serhiy Nigoyan, Mykhailo Zhyznevskyi and Roman Senyk [uk] were shot dead by security forces. On the same day, the dead body of activist Yuriy Verbytsky [uk] was found on the city outskirts; he had been kidnapped a day before with Ihor Lutsenko, who was released.
then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov in a BBC interview said that police had not been issued firearms, and said no police officers were located on the rooftops around the protest area. He stated that the shooting of protesters was a provocation by extremist forces aimed at escalating violence
On 18 February, protesters attempted to march from Independence Square to the parliament building, to urge politicians to vote for constitutional amendments. Clashes broke out as their path was blocked by riot police, who tried to push them back to Maidan. Eleven protesters were killed or fatally wounded. Three of them were shot dead by police; the rest died of other injuries. Four police officers were also shot and killed.
Later that evening and into the early hours of 19th February, the security forces launched an operation to clear Independence Square. Small groups of titushky (government loyalists) also gathered nearby. Clashes broke out between the security forces and protesters, resulting in the deaths of seventeen protesters and five police officers. Most of the protesters were shot by police. Two others died when police set the Trade Union building on fire, and another was found dead with his throat slit. A journalist, Viacheslav Veremii, was beaten and shot dead by titushky for filming them. The five police officers died from gunshot wounds.
On the morning of 20 February, riot police massed at the edge of the Maidan camp on Independence Square. At around 9am, two Berkut officers were shot dead. Around the same time, protesters tried to push the security forces away from the Maidan and back up Instytutska Street. The security forces fired indiscriminately on the protesters from ground level, while snipers fired on protesters from above. By midday, 48 protesters had been shot dead on Instytutska Street, as had two other police officers. According to the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, special forces (Berkut) and Interior Troops snipers shot at people on Maidan and/or snipers located in nearby buildings, with the special forces firing AK-47 assault rifles. 20 February was the bloodiest day of the clashes, with at least 21 protesters killed.
The final death toll from these clashes in late February was 103 protesters and 13 police. According to Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Oleh Zalisko in February, 184 people sustained gunshot wounds in Kyiv and over 750 suffered bodily injury. On 20 February, the (then) opposition parties (Batkivshchyna, UDAR and Svoboda) stated “To hold talks with the regime, the policies of which led to the deaths of many people, is an extremely unpleasant thing but we must do everything possible and even the impossible to prevent further bloodshed”.
In June 2016, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced that forensic examinations had matched bullets removed from the victims’ bodies with the assault rifles of the Berkut. In the years since the revolution, the Office of the Prosecutor General has identified 27 Berkut officers involved in the 20 February shootings of protesters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidan_casualties
NOTE: I doubt the police shot themselves. Who did?
100% Horsehockey.
Same page. Yup.
I listen to VDH regularly. He seems to have bought in to some bad propaganda about how the war is going. He has made statements to the effect that the Russians are largely using human wave assaults like in the first world war and are losing massive numbers of people. The reality is very much the reverse. It is the Ukrainians who are suffering more casualties than the Russians given Russia’s huge advantage in artillery and air power. Ukraine cannot hope to achieve a stalemate. It had a smaller population to begin with, something like 1/4 of its population has left the country and it has suffered well north of the 300,000 casualties VDH claims. Ukraine has had more than 500,000 soldiers killed.
We can assume it has had hundreds of thousands more gravely wounded and unfit for combat. This is drawing on a population base of perhaps 30 million once you factor in those who have fled and those in the Donbas who are ethnic Russians and thus sided with Russia. I think VDH’s idea of Russia settling for what it has taken in the Donbas so far is off the table. That’s the deal that could have been made 2 years ago. Now that Russia has had to incur the expense in blood and treasure of grinding Ukraine down, they’re probably not going to settle for anything less than all of the Donbas and they may even go for all of the Black Sea coast including Odessa.
Its like in the middle ages when an army would besiege a city or castle. The rule was if you surrender, we’ll let you march out with your weapons and there will be no sacking. If you make us break you in a siege, we will have no mercy at all.
So Spain once had a coup, therefore the current freely elected government is illegitimate?
“One of Ukraine’s former leaders once said Ukraine is not Russia. That concept needs to disappear forever...Ukraine is definitely Russia.”
At one time Kiev was the ‘head’ and Moscow the ‘tail’ of the Rus nation.
The long expanding Grand Duchy of Moscow ‘tail’ calling itself in time Russia wagged the ‘dog’ until 1918, when Ukraine became independent for a few years before Lenin reincorporated it as a “Soviet Socialist Republic” under the control of Moscow.
Ukraine has long had a culture and language of its own.
I suppose you may not know that our intelligence community suppressed our news in 2020.
You may not have heard that the Supreme Court just announced that our government can continue censoring social media and the news.
51 intelligence officers said that the Hunter Biden laptop was fake in 2020.
Maybe you didn’t know that our intelligence community was behind the steele dossier.
That they were spying on Trump and releasing false information to the news media.
Do a search on the “Twitter Files”.
https://freerepublic.com/tag/twitterfiles/index?tab=articles
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were approved by congress.
In the 2014 Ukraine War we backed the rebels.
In the 2011 Arab Spring Wars of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria our CIA backed the rebels.
We used Twitter and Google to agitate people in those countries.
Twitter and Google were funded by the CIA while the founders of those companies were still in school.
Don’t underestimate the power of our media.
People don’t know what women are.
They think bathing the White House in rainbow colors is normal.
They think carbon dioxide is dirty and can heat our world.
They took experimental Covid shots.
They hid in their homes for two years.
They call Trump a fascist while a judge silences him and Biden tries to send him to prison.
No, not necessarily. But the Maidan Revolution had the purpose of removing a leader because he had good relations with Russia and installing a puppet who would provoke Russia by instigating turmoil on the border. This proxy war was the goal of the coup.
No, Obama refused to send weapons to Ukraine for two years. It was Trump who at the start of his administration, first sent weapons to Ukraine - javelins.
-President Barack Obama stuck to his refusal to provide weapons or other lethal military gear to Ukraine, despite a passionate appeal Thursday for help in fighting pro-Russia rebels by Ukraine's president. 2014
LOL, if that was anywhere near the truth the war would be over with Russians in Kyiv and not trying to take some towns in Ukraine's southeast on day 853 of the invasion.
My suggestions:
armistice
plebiscites for all disputed areas
(voting boundaries in Russian-held areas to be set by Ukraine)
(voting boundaries in Ukrainian-held areas to be set by Russia)
all areas to end at a front line
all boundary points of an area not of a front line to be at least two kilometers apart
front lines to be those of the ISW as of an agreed date (or those of say 14/06/2024) except in cases justly deemed by the UN General Assembly to be off by more than a kilometer
no foreign troops in what is left of Ukraine
no ex-foreign troops in what is left of Ukraine
no Ukrainian membership in NATO
Ukrainian missile warheads limited to 50kg. maximum
Ukrainian missiles limited to 50km. range maximum
The part you’re missing here is that our intelligence community incites wars, mobs and protests.
Tucker Carlson did a great 2 hour 24 minute interview with Jeffrey Sachs.
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-jeffrey-sachs
They talked in length about how the CIA and neocons were disrupting and overthrowing countries for no apparent reason.
Jeffrey Sachs personally knows all these foreign leaders.
He didn’t mention George Soros’ involvement.
He didn’t mention Trump.
He didn’t mention how Google, Facebook and Twitter were created by the
CIA to agitate mobs in those countries and ours.
He did estimate that 500,000 Ukrainians have lost their lives to the war between the
U.S. and Russia.
He didn’t mention how many refugees have changed the demographics of the world.
The Syrian war was mentioned, 600,000 people were killed in the Obama backed war.
6 million Syrians were made refugees.
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