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You left out (4). The west gives you proper weapons and you win the war. 30 years later your children are richer than England.
This has happened before. Poland is on path to be wealthier than England in 10 years. The average dude might already be there.
Your preferred option sounds like I’ll accept be a drunkard and survive my life. (4) provides the option to have a large successful family. The EV is much much higher.
What haven't we given them that would actually make a difference? The First Marine Division?
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What weapons the west gave to Poland that allowed it to beat Soviet military and throw their shackles? What military strategy was used?
Why wasn’t Ukraine on this path before the war? Poland started off around where Ukraine was in early 1990s. It failed to thrive, to put it mildly, and the pre-war trajectory was not optimistic. The neighboring puppet state of Russia, Belarus, has done much better for itself.
If the plan is to build stronger ties with the West, join EU etc similarly to what Poland did, isn’t better strategy to cut the losses, stop the bleed, and negotiate peace with Russia, where you cede some territories in exchange for Russia acceding to your western strategy in future?
Ukraine never left Russias orbit. They only reoriented to economic integration with Europe after Maiden. Poland well the breakup of the USSR made it not possible for them to do war so they had an easier route.
I specifically mentioned the Russian puppet state of Belarus to point out that you can do much better than Ukraine while remaining in Russian orbit. My point was that if Ukraine experienced decades of stagnation while in Russian orbit while Belarus grew, why expect much different outcomes in western orbit?
Poland left the Communist Bloc years before USSR broke up. They managed that through diplomacy and negotiations, not western warmongering. Ukraine should try the same.
They did. Russia invaded.
Twice.
Yeah, they signed agreements, and then didn’t keep to them. That’s not how you conduct diplomacy.
Minsk post-dates the Russian invasion and the Russians didn't even try to uphold their end, so little surprise Ukraine didn't commit to blind trust in an aggressive actor that had repeatedly acted in bad faith.
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Again, though, we're back to the question of why it is that "not surrendering when you're invaded" is "Western warmongering".
The person I replied to suggested that Ukraine should take western weapons and win the war, and gave Poland as an example of this as a successful strategy. I pointed out that Poland achieved success by peaceful diplomatic means. If the West pushed weapons into Polish hands at that time, that would have been clear warmongering, because history proved that peaceful solution was possible. I did not refer to the recent events in Ukraine as western warmongering, only the hypothetical scenario where west pushes citizens of Polish People’s Republic to war with Soviet Union.
Now, let me explicitly say here that the current western strategy of funding Ukrainian military with the explicit, openly repeated goal of weakening Russian state and military, under the assumption of good ROI in terms of monetary spend/materiel relative to achieved damage to Russia, and with zero concern for Ukrainian blood being spilled to achieve these goals, and disregard for ultimate likelihood of Ukrainian victory, very much is warmongering.
Without the western “support”, the (stupid and evil) Russian invasion would be over with by now, and much less blood would have been spilled, and wealth and livelihoods destroyed, for pretty much the same ultimate geopolitical outcome. However, the West has clearly chosen strategy of slow trickle of support to pull in and attrit Russians as much as possible.
Ukraine would accept a peaceful resolution in a second. When has Ukraine invaded Russia? When have they not tried diplomacy.
You are just building strawmen that have no connection to reality.
Peace was never offered to Ukraine. Their choice was subjugation and cultural genocide at a minimum or war. And as ive said War has the higher expected value and that includes in terms of saving life than choosing subjugation.
There only option was being a landless people.
Peace with concessions is still peace, regardless of how much you insist it is not. As it is, they chose cultural and literal genocide in place of a risk of just cultural genocide. The Ukrainians are being killed by tens, likely even hundreds of thousands. With so many emigres, it is highly likely that even after cessation of hostilities, whatever remains of Ukraine will be permanently demographically crippled. It is ridiculous to argue that Ukraine being completely subjugated by Russia would mean more demographic damage than the war has caused: nothing of the sort happened to other nations subjugated by Russians (in fact, Russian nationalists today routinely complain about how often the Russian Federation acts more in the interest of the minority ethnicities than ethnic Russians).
Russia was offering literal genocide. Someone literally said their life would be awful but atleast with Peace they could be alcoholics. That is not a society that reproduces. They would have enough wealth if they win the war for their people to flourish and reproduce.
What is wrong with the right today that they just want to give up and have no hope for a better future.
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So they picked both? This is what happens to the descendants of Ukrainian nationalists in the West per @kurwakatyn
Isn't there a contradiction in a ardently nationalist country striving to join the EU or US orbit?
What if they join the EU and Russian-speaking EU citizens from Finland or Germany start moving in? Or would they start begging the EU to close its borders like Poland?
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deleting old posts for privacy
We keep supplying Ukraine, Russia runs out of will, manpower, or materiel before Ukraine does.
Which doesn't mean they can't be supplied. "Putin might push the button" isn't an insta-win for Russia.
deleting old posts for privacy
My dad recently complained to me that Western artillery has a higher effective range than Russian artillery. Maybe by 50% or so.
How much do you think this means in terms of k/d ratio? 30%? What about a 100% range difference? 200%? At what point does it become clear that technological superiority can, in fact, offset virtually any difference in manpower?
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The Ukrainian government has not generally reported losses but in December 2022 estimated 13k lost. Meanwhile the UK MoD figure for Russian casualty estimates from December 1st 2022 was 89k. If you were to accept their claims then by those loss ratios they could. Which isn't to say the claims are close to accurate but that it is not more absurd if taking those absurd claims as true to believe (or that they could claim) that they would win by attrition.
Doesn't have to. A casualty is no longer combat effective, that's what makes them a "casualty" rather than just "hurt".
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Why you think so? Handful of outdated HIMARS was quite significant, handful of Storm Shadows keeps participating in meetings of Russian generals and so on.
that is blatant nonsense and repeating russian propaganda warmongering
deleting old posts for privacy
no, I specifically not mentioned admiral but more generic term as I wanted to wait till it is properly confirmed before I treat this claim seriously (that some high-ranking people dies is pretty confirmed, as far as I know)
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We’ve given them 1980’s weapon systems and they held their own against Russia. Modern stuff would do it. American has won its wars with air supremacy so modern fighter planes with the proper weapon systems would do that. It’s much tougher to take out all the Russian artillery with artillery.
deleting old posts for privacy
We have more air defense systems too.
400k won’t die if they are properly armed.
400k dead though is a reasonable price to pay to get to exists as a people. We fought our revolutionary war. Every people who have ever existed fought for their lands.
Belarus isn’t do that great.
deleting old posts for privacy
This sums up a lot of Western thinking in a nutshell. I'm not at all advocating for abandoning Ukraine or partitioning the country, but the situation, culture, and history of those two countries is complex.
Making statements that Ukraine would cease to exist as a people if back under Moscovian suzerainty just evinces a lack of understanding of that history and the people themselves.
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