this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
178 points (98.9% liked)

World News

41186 readers
3603 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago (26 children)

This is really sad.

Yet again, I can't help but look back towards Biden, who overall seems to have employed a practice of making no plans to safeguard any of his work against an election loss.

I wish he would've negotiated an end to this while Ukraine still had some leverage. I feel like that's been treated as a shocking proposal for the last three years. But it always seemed obvious to me: if Trump wins, you could lose any and everything. He could simply withhold weapons and invite Russia to complete full conquest. He could issue Zelinsky an ultimatum to surrender and live in exile or face a firing squad in St. Petersburg.

Ukraine will be lucky to simply survive these peace talks. Why they didn't negotiate this before the election seems to be another in an endless catalog of hubristic decisions.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

I wish he would’ve negotiated an end to this while Ukraine still had some leverage.

Ukraine doesn't want to give up land, and isn't willing to tolerate not having security guarantees. Russia is convinced that it can ultimately militarily prevail.

Wars end when one side is either unable to continue or the two sides moderate their demands to some kind of meeting point. What's the Biden administration going to do?

The US isn't willing to go to war on the matter, so compelling Russia militarily probably isn't an option. The US could have withdrawn military support for Ukraine, but I don't think that that's what you want. There's more sanctions, but we've already got a lot of sanctions in place, and you want a rapid resolution.

Maybe we could have dramatically ramped up aid for Ukraine, as long as Ukraine could have made use of it. The US is probably willing to do that to some degree, as long as it doesn't compromise its position relative to China. But will that substantively change the situation? Like, if you're Putin, you've probably got a pretty good incentive to try to stick it out, if you feel that Biden and Trump are going to have much of a difference in position.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And Russia has zero interest in working with Biden. Because they knew that between their election interference, their US-based puppets, and general voter dissatisfaction with Biden (and Harris), all they had to do was wait it out to get a much more favorable administration who will acquiesce to their demands.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

No: because that assumes that Putin knew Trump was going to win.

Both sides knew that the outcome of a coin flip election could make or break the terms of any future agreement, so Putin had no way to confidently know that a negotiation in 2025 would yield better terms than 2024.

I mean, it's all hypothetical. Maybe Putin would rather go for broke, because he's insane and an evil asshole. Maybe he'd rather die blowing up the whole world than every accept a stalemate. But the theory that there was no room to negotiate is preposterous.

I can definitely say in this moment, though, that Biden's refusal to even discuss negotiating a ceasefire was certainly a massive, costly mistake.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (23 replies)