Posted on 12/01/2025 4:47:10 AM PST by MtnClimber
Putin gambled on Western hesitation, and now a war born of miscalculation grinds on because neither Moscow nor NATO is willing—or able—to force a decisive end.
Why did the war in Ukraine start in 2021?
As in 2008 and 2012, but unlike 2017 to 2021, Vladimir Putin sensed an American president would not or could not deter him, so he invaded a former Soviet republic. Under past presidents, Putin saw no downside to grabbing Ossetia, the Donbas, and Crimea.
Putin was also led to believe the West or Joe Biden would not challenge him following the recent humiliating U.S. withdrawal from Kabul. Biden’s unfortunate remark that a “minor” Russian invasion might not invoke a U.S. response did not help.
Based on past experience, Putin saw no real obstacle to a quick victory.
Why didn’t NATO deter Russia?
NATO members have only recently agreed to the earlier Trump demand to meet their 2% of GDP defense spending promises. Most were still poorly armed in 2022 and had mocked Trump’s effort to berate them into meeting their promised defense expenditures.
Europe, Germany in particular, was dependent on cheap imported Russian natural gas. Many European leaders were somewhat compromised by such dependency on and profits from Putin’s oil companies.
Lax and haughty Western Europeans also typically did not heed frontline, less utopian Eastern European warnings about Russian intentions and the need to rearm to meet them.
Additionally, when Trump warned the Europeans in his first term not to buy and become dependent on imported Russian gas, they ignored him. When he bullied and hectored them further to increase their defense spending, they scoffed at him.
Thus, Putin digested all that.
Why does Putin keep fighting when he cannot take Ukraine?
Putin is now in a 1967 Vietnam, no-good-choices dilemma. The stagnant status quo is at least
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VDH ping
“Putin is now in a 1967 Vietnam,”
NATO moved East because of the Russian mongrels.
Gotta say I don’t agree with VDH on any of this
Sounds like he’s writing for The Guardian and the WashPo
I think that's a pretty good analogy, considering the front line for both Russia and Ukraine is basically a meat grinder.
I personally have no dog in this hunt. I don't like either country, both are thoroughly corrupt governments that don't give a damn' about their people or the number of lives each country has lost.
With that said, my own opinion is that Ukraine shouldn't have to give up land for peace. That's a non-starter. Appeasement doesn't work, it simply emboldens one's enemy. (Receipt: Germany, China.)
I also don't know what the solution is here. If I could wave a magic wand and "fix" this, I'd have Russia exit all of Ukraine, including Crimea and put the borders back to what they were. Ukraine would love that, Russia would hate it because it would look like they lost (which would be true.) So that's not a solution either.
Historically speaking, there is (almost) never a lasting peace between two adversaries without a clear cut winner, and a clear cut vanquished. The Russia-Ukraine war if left to continue on, appears to be a long way away from that.
Again, no dog in this hunt, don't really care for either government due to both their corruption. I do care for the Russian and Ukranian people.
Funny, how some people cannot understand why Russia's neighbors, who were previously enslaved by Russia, would be desperate to join NATO.
OTD in 1918 USSR invaded Latvia. This is how Russia became the world's largest country.
The Trump administration is going to throw Ukraine under the bus because it knows damn well that Russia isn’t doing anything the U.S. wouldn’t be doing if we were in the same position. It is entirely reasonable for a country whose foreign policy includes a “Monroe Doctrine” to give Russia the same concession in Eastern Europe.
A divided Ukraine would be a victory for them.
Map lines would be redrawn to correct errors made over the past 100 years or more. By Lenin, Khrushchev and others.
At least part of Ukraine west of Donbas could survive to try nation building free from historic Russian ties. Free from the conflict of forcing this on Crimea and the East. If they accept division.
Nations are not created by past century communist dictators and apparatchiks “gifting” millions of citizens and their lands to a weak corrupt ethnically-ideologically driven political regime..
Kiev since even before WW2 has been ruthlessly trying to create a post-modern era ethnically “pure” national identity built on Russophobia, nurtured by external geopolitically driven powers, exterminating those who resist. “Communists”. “Jews”. “ Russian language speakers and Orthodox Church members”
That’s why Ukraine allied with the Nazis. And continues to glorify their war units. Their flags and insignia. “ Blood and Soil”. Thats why their army brutality horrified even the Germans. Thats why there were more Ukrainians than German nazis at the killing ravine of Babi Yar.
Well said. Good to see someone pulled up “the history”, western MSM will not.
I realize this is going to be wildly unpopular even here.
Good analysis.
No clear end yet, the the terms of an acceptable deal have been visible for a while.
The killing of over 5 million Ukrainians by the Soviet Union should be mentioned in any history of Ukraine.
Ukraine had no good choices in WWII. It worked with NAZIs because the Russians had been so bad.
NATO did not "move East".
NATO did not move one inch.
Russia's former Soviet Empire victims moved West, as far and as fast as they could, to get away from the monstrosity of a country to their East and North.
Why would those Eastern countries move so far West so fast?
Obviously, because they 100% understand that the lunatics in the Kremlin can never be trusted and must always be opposed.
New Hampshire's Revolutionary War hero, Gen. John Stark's advice to "Live Free or Die" applies in spades to every Russian neighbor, and they know it, which is why they moved West as fast and as far as they could, when the opportunity arose.
NATO did not "move East", the East move West to NATO.
Good think talk is cheap, eh?
Cuz Europe is broke.
Perhaps the best summary of the situation regarding the Ukraine-Russian war that I’ve seen. Good read.
You should read more clear honest history of the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the period between WW1 and WW2 to get a better idea of why the nationalists chose the Nazis. The end game pursued by the Germans ( ethnic cleansing) was a primary focus of their goal.
I like it. VDH hits the nail on the head.
Neither the Zeeper GloboHomos nor the Putin Puffers like it, which means it’s right on the money...
You are funny.
“Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe....”
The West lied, and Ukraine died. A good lesson to our Neo Cons and the EU war cheerleaders.
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