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So in fact they did agree to give up their nukes without firm assurance that they could enter US orbit, etc. Glad we're clear on that. That being the case, I hope we can see an end to support-maximalists waving the Budapest Memorandum around as if it says something it doesn't.
Ukraine lacked the ability to launch those nukes and neither the US nor Russia were interested in allowing them to keep them. They gave them up because the alternative was to fight the world, and they received a meaningless deal in exchange because they had no real leverage.
America was never especially interested in Ukraine outright winning this war in the first place. Even the /r/worldnews drones complaining that Biden wouldn't give them the good stuff or let them shoot into Russia had it figured out. Ukraine was always a pawn meant to let the US buy Russian blood on the cheap, like a sale on milk. All we're doing now is arguing over how much money we really need to spend on milk regardless of how much of it we're getting for our dollar.
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