this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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I kind of surprised at the outburst happening in the first place. His Western relations have been slick as hell up until this point and are probably the most impressive thing about the war effort you can attribute just to him personally.
If you're watching your country lose ground in a war, have difficulties taking it back, and all the help is just enough to prolong the pain - and you're told to celebrate and be grateful while calling a non-collapse a win...
You get to have a bad day, in my book. God help him, I don't want his job for a God damn day.
And, I agree, he's been so consistently on point. Maybe that's part of what makes this a story.
That and people who just want the Ujraine to stop resisting and allow the ethnic cleanse. It happened, it would resume (if it stopped).
I mean, are you surprised? Russia's military spending is pitiful and their equipment is held together by hopes and dreams and corruption.
Yet, the largest, most advanced, and most expensive military in the world (by far) can't find a way to beat them. Ukrainian people are losing their lives every day the war wages on.
This is, of course, all while the West is ignoring the treaty they signed for Ukrainian denuclearization that said that American troops would be sent in the event of an invasion.
If I were Zelenskiy, I'd be livid. I'm impressed by how composed he's been thus far.
Dude, it's not the United States fighting against Russia here. It's the Ukraine military, which is held together on a shoestring budget with donations from NATO. The Ukrainian armed forces military structure is based on Soviet doctrine, with large parts still reflect the Soviet era force structure. Little has changed since then, although they have adopted in NCO structure like you see in NATO forces.
However, many reports out of NATO in the United States have pointed out that Ukraine armed forces still have a long ways to go before they can be ready for NATO integration. Not to mention that the huge variety of equipment that they are currently running, which includes massive amounts of Soviet era weaponry armor and aircraft, on top of a hodgepodge of NATO equipment simply exacerbates their issues.
The only reason Ukraine is still a country is because of NATO intervention. This stretches from early US intelligence informing Ukraine of the invasion to NATO equipment to NATO training. This war is basically a proxy war between NATO and Russia, with Ukraine stuck in the middle.
It's a proxy war fully initiated by Russia. They did the same bullshit to us in Vietnam, and they stuck their dick into Afghanistan back in the 1980s. Same shit sandwich, different decade.
If Russia doesn't want to get wrecked, they are free to withdraw anytime they like. No one is forcing Russia to invade another country and to murder thousands of people.
So, regarding the USA's commitment to Ukraine during denuclearization- Is that really what the US agreed to in the Budapest Memorandum?
The way I'm reading, the text of the memorandum implies the USA, Great Britian, and Russia won't invade and will respect Ukraine's border, and will represent Ukrainian interests on the UN security council if they're threatened by nukes.
I don't see agreements to provide direct military intervention unless I'm missing something important.
https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-budapest-memorandum-at-20-the-united-states-ukraine-and-security-assurances/
Pifer claimed that the US implicitly suggested that "lethal military assistance" was the type of support that would be provided.
Also, since all veto-holding members of the UNSC provided similar assurances, it was expected that direct UNSC peacekeeping intervention would be possible. For obvious reasons, it wasn't.