KaiBear said:
sombear said:
KaiBear said:
sombear said:
KaiBear said:
Harris was stupid enough to do almost anything.
Including sending US forces to fight for Ukraine.
The country now is ready to collapse.
All because of Biden and his puppet masters.
I can't recall this last time I defended Biden on anything . . . .
But it's silly to blame Biden or anyone else.
Over 85% of Ukrainians supported defending itself against Russia. When details of Russia's terms were provided, less than 5% supported agreeing.
After almost 4 years of hell, the vast majority still oppose surrendering on Russia's terms.
Ukrainians are proud, tough-as-nails, freedom-loving, God-loving people. They were never going to give up their sovereignty to Russia without fighting.
Anyone with even a middle school level of history study should understand their resolve.
The Biden administration continued to insist on Ukrainian membership into NATO even after Putin had placed 200,000 Russian troops on the border.
The single biggest US foreign policy blunder since the Korean War.
Not true. It was widely reported that Ukraine was willing to take NATO off the table and that Biden was on board.
And, remember, when Russia invaded in 2014, Ukraine did not even want NATO.
This was NEVER about NATO. And it still isn't. No-NATO has been part of every US proposal to end this war, and Ukraine has agreed to it.
It is absolutely true.
I still vividly remember Harris in Europe publicly calling for Ukraine to join NATO even with those 200,000 Russian troops on the border.
I was outraged by her stupidity.
Putin invaded 48 hours later.
Don't try to change history fella.
There are many reports, but here a couple.
The story behind 2022's secret Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations
Published May 6, 2024 at 5:00 AM CDT
CHAKRABARTI: He went on to say the principles include Ukraine's willingness not to join NATO, a renunciation of nuclear weapons, as well as possessing, acquiring, and developing of other weapons of mass destruction. A commitment to hold military drills with foreign military participation only upon agreement with guarantor states among which would be the Russian Federation. Of course, that was what Medinsky said the Ukrainians were willing to do. The same day, the top negotiator for the Ukrainian side. David Arakhamia told reporters that a final agreement could be near.
CHARAP: The bigger picture is that, what I mentioned, the Ukrainian willingness to embrace permanent neutrality, the core of the deal was that in return, Ukraine would get these security guarantees from the United States, its allies and Russia would also be a guarantor, but this sort of concession from the Ukrainians of renouncing its ambitions to join NATO was potentially enough to engender some relatively significant concessions, even if they weren't prepared to give back Crimea, so to speak. Merely putting it on the table was an acknowledgment that they had not been willing to make before and does suggest that they could have imagined, I don't know, some sort of compensation mechanism for having taken it from Ukraine, or something like that.
Exclusive: As war began, Putin rejected a Ukraine peace deal recommended by aideBy ReutersSeptember 14, 2022- Vladimir Putin's chief envoy on Ukraine told the Russian leader as the war began that he had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would satisfy Russia's demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, but Putin rejected it and pressed ahead with his military campaign, according to three people close to the Russian leadership.
The Ukrainian-born envoy, Dmitry Kozak, told Putin that he believed the deal he had hammered out removed the need for Russia to pursue a large-scale occupation of Ukraine, according to these sources. Kozak's recommendation to Putin to adopt the deal is being reported by Reuters for the first time.
Putin had repeatedly asserted prior to the war that NATO and its military infrastructure were creeping closer to Russia's borders by accepting new members from eastern Europe, and that the alliance was now preparing to bring Ukraine into its orbit too. Putin publicly said that represented an existential threat to Russia, forcing him to react.
But, despite earlier backing the negotiations, Putin made it clear when presented with Kozak's deal that the concessions negotiated by his aide did not go far enough and that he had expanded his objectives to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory, the sources said. The upshot: the deal was dropped.
* * *
Two of the three sources said a push to get the deal finalized occurred immediately after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. Within days, Kozak believed he had Ukraine's agreement to the main terms Russia had been seeking and recommended to Putin that he sign an agreement, the sources said.
The investigation was launched by Italian authorities who are probing claims that foreigners paid large sums of money to
"After Feb. 24, Kozak was given carte blanche: they gave him the green light; he got the deal. He brought it back and they told him to clear off. Everything was cancelled. Putin simply changed the plan as he went along," said one of the sources close to the Russian leadership.
The third source - who was told about the events by people who were briefed on the discussions between Kozak and Putin - differed on the timing, saying Kozak had proposed the deal to Putin, and had it rejected, just before the invasion. The sources all requested anonymity to share sensitive internal information.
Moscow's offensive in Ukraine is the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II. It prompted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia and military support for Ukraine from Washington and its Western allies.
Kozak, who is 63, has been a loyal lieutenant to Putin since working with him in the 1990s in the St. Petersburg mayor's office.
Kozak was well-placed to negotiate a peace deal because since 2020 Putin had tasked him with conducting talks with Ukrainian counterparts about the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists following an uprising in 2014.
THE HILLRussia's invasion of Ukraine was never about NATO expansionby Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj
If NATO expansion were truly the trigger, why did
Vladimir Putin wait until 2022 to invade? Why not in 2008,
when Ukraine first sought membership, or in 2014, when NATO discussions resurfaced after
Russia seized Crimea The truth is that Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO. There was no Membership Action Plan, and key NATO members had made it clear they were
unwilling to admit Ukraine any time soon. Ukraine's NATO aspirations were not a provocation. They were a response to Russian aggression: the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Russian
proxy war in Donbas, and Moscow's long-standing efforts to control Ukraine politically, economically and culturally.
In his
Feb. 21, 2022, speech justifying the war, Putin barely mentioned NATO. Instead, he fixated on Ukraine as an artificial state, an accident of history, a wayward part of the so-called "Russian world." His argument had nothing to do with military threats or self-defense; it was an assertion of imperial entitlement. It echoed his 2021
essay,"On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," which outright denied Ukraine's legitimacy as a sovereign nation.
Russia's pre-invasion
demands further expose the hollowness of the NATO excuse. Moscow didn't just insist that Ukraine never join the alliance it demanded NATOwithdrawfrom Eastern Europe entirely, rolling back security guarantees for Poland, the Baltics and other frontline states. This was never just about Ukraine. It was a broader push to reassert Russian dominance over its former empire.
Russia's pattern of aggression is the clearest refutation of the "NATO expansion" myth. Georgia,
attacked in 2008, was not on the verge of NATO membership. Ukraine,
invaded in 2014, had no realistic path to joining the alliance. Russia was not and is not defending itself against NATO it is targeting neighbors seeking independence from its grip.
Witkoff's disgraceful parroting of Kremlin propaganda is not diplomacy in pursuit of peace. It is a demoralizing attempt to undermine Ukraine and weaken Europe. By framing any defensive posture as a "provocation" against Russia while excusing Russian aggression as self-defense, he legitimizes the very logic used to justify war and subjugation.