Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2023 11:06:27 GMT
After reading about the recent Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian cafe, which killed over 50 civilians, the thoughts of the sufferings of the martyred Ukrainian people were impressed ever more deeply upon my mind, although I ponder this suffering frequently.
The question that is always on my mind is: how can we achieve peace in Ukraine? This question is very complicated. Ukraine's population has dropped from 53 million to 29 million in just over 30 years. Every week hundreds of the brightest of Ukraine's youth die at the front. Peace is so necessary and yet nobody talks about it.
Zelensky - Lord, have mercy upon him for persecuting those who believe in you, and correct his errors! - does not seem to want peace any more than Putin. Both leaders are obstinate. Russia does not seem to want peace, because it is hoping to wait out until the West is less unified in its support for Ukraine and until Ukraine's army is weakened by endless fighting. Ukraine does not want peace because 1) it is obsessed with the completely impossible idea of defeating the Russian Army and regaining the occupied territories; 2) Zelensky clearly wants to hold onto power and make any excuse not to hold elections; 3) the war provides a reason for Zelensky to persecute Christians; 4) Ukraine does not really have a choice if the USA and the West want them to continue on fighting, which it seems they do because it fuels the arms industry and weakens Russia.
I believe that there should be an immediate ceasefire. Immediate. All the guns must stop. Then, Russia and Ukraine must sit down together and sort out these problems. Lock Putin and Zelensky in a room if you have to (I am joking, of course, about that but you get what I mean). I think that Russia should withdraw all its troops from Ukraine and recognise the 1991 borders of Ukraine. In exchange, Ukraine must promise not to join NATO, to give autonomy to the Russian-speaking Crimea and Donbass areas (including exemption from decommunisation), stop persecuting Christians, and resume relations with Russia.
These are just some preliminary thoughts.
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Post by theguvnor on Oct 6, 2023 13:32:29 GMT
Where did you get the population figures Luke? The figure I found was around 36 million for Ukraine's populace. It has declined quite a bit but not to that extent. The West already seems to be trying to find an exit route from constantly supplying weapons to this war. Many nations have noted they don't have much more to give. Russia has vast stockpiles of stuff from the era of the USSR. A lot of that is, of course very dated. However, that doesn't really matter a lot as it serves to prolong a war of attrition if it is pulled out of storage. There is also a feeling of compassion fatigue in many nations. Many people here in the UK have reached that point.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2023 20:21:03 GMT
Where did you get the population figures Luke? The figure I found was around 36 million for Ukraine's populace. It has declined quite a bit but not to that extent. The West already seems to be trying to find an exit route from constantly supplying weapons to this war. Many nations have noted they don't have much more to give. Russia has vast stockpiles of stuff from the era of the USSR. A lot of that is, of course very dated. However, that doesn't really matter a lot as it serves to prolong a war of attrition if it is pulled out of storage. There is also a feeling of compassion fatigue in many nations. Many people here in the UK have reached that point. There are a number of articles showing that the 2023 population of Ukraine is only 29 million, for example: ubn.news/ukraines-permanent-population-has-decreased-to-29-million-people/#:~:text=Ukraine's%20permanent%20population%20has%20decreased%20to%2029%20million%20people.,-Tuesday%2C%20June%206&text=According%20to%20the%20Ukrainian%20Institute,members%20of%20the%20working%20population. You are right, the population though originally was more like 51 or 52 million. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2023 20:24:49 GMT
Where did you get the population figures Luke? The figure I found was around 36 million for Ukraine's populace. It has declined quite a bit but not to that extent. The West already seems to be trying to find an exit route from constantly supplying weapons to this war. Many nations have noted they don't have much more to give. Russia has vast stockpiles of stuff from the era of the USSR. A lot of that is, of course very dated. However, that doesn't really matter a lot as it serves to prolong a war of attrition if it is pulled out of storage. There is also a feeling of compassion fatigue in many nations. Many people here in the UK have reached that point. The USA in particular seems to want to prolong the war. It is ridiculous how the West applies double standards to some countries; Saudi Arabia can get away with anything as long as it buys US arms to bomb Yemen, but Russia on the other hand.... This all said, it seems to me that this is turning into a permanent war of attrition. The frontlines have not changed much at all in almost a year. Every days soldiers on both sides are dying, often young conscripts around my age. This can't go on forever - the damage done to both countries is already basically catastrophic. The only thing we hear our leaders talk about is more weapons. Yet we know that sending more weapons will do nothing except possibly hold back a Russian offensive. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2023 20:37:29 GMT
By the way, that opportunist who rules Ukraine persecutes Christians and thinks he can get away with it, which he does, because the West and much of the Christian world is silent about it. Disgraceful. If the West really cared about Ukraine, we would do something about this evil persecution.
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Post by theguvnor on Oct 6, 2023 22:12:52 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2023 22:24:02 GMT
Thank you guvnor, yes, Mark Felton is a very good source and this video has come up multiple times in my YouTube feed. |
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Post by ralfy on Oct 7, 2023 1:52:46 GMT
The U.S. has been doing this for decades, i.e., proxy wars. After WW2, the external reason was to counter Communism, and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, encirclement of rivals like Russia and China. The internal reason is to protect the dollar. That is, make sure everyone else is weaker and thus dependent on it for trade. That increases the value of the dollar and thus allows the U.S. to take on more debt to cover high levels of spending, with a significant portion used for the military. The problem is that after the 1990s, more countries started becoming economically richer and are now trying to move away from the dollar, especially given rising U.S. debts and the perception that they no had economies stable enough such that they no longer needed the dollar and could engage in their own bilateral trade and form new economic blocs. Lastly, according to several political scientists like Melvin Goodman, one reason why Russia attacked is that the U.S. and NATO had been crossing several red lines: www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/18/bill-clintons-role-in-the-crisis-over-ukraine/The gist is that after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no reason for NATO expand or even exist, and the West promised the former members of the Union which were suffering economically that they would not do so. But later, in defiance of his own and Bush's advisors, Clinton did so, and to show that like other politicians he, too, could act aggressively against other countries. This allowed for a continuation of military expansionism and greater tension from others. And attacking other countries for economic and strategic advantages did not help: watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2023 2:05:00 GMT
The U.S. has been doing this for decades, i.e., proxy wars. After WW2, the external reason was to counter Communism, and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, encirclement of rivals like Russia and China. The internal reason is to protect the dollar. That is, make sure everyone else is weaker and thus dependent on it for trade. That increases the value of the dollar and thus allows the U.S. to take on more debt to cover high levels of spending, with a significant portion used for the military. The problem is that after the 1990s, more countries started becoming economically richer and are now trying to move away from the dollar, especially given rising U.S. debts and the perception that they no had economies stable enough such that they no longer needed the dollar and could engage in their own bilateral trade and form new economic blocs. Lastly, according to several political scientists like Melvin Goodman, one reason why Russia attacked is that the U.S. and NATO had been crossing several red lines: www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/18/bill-clintons-role-in-the-crisis-over-ukraine/The gist is that after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no reason for NATO expand or even exist, and the West promised the former members of the Union which were suffering economically that they would not do so. But later, in defiance of his own and Bush's advisors, Clinton did so, and to show that like other politicians he, too, could act aggressively against other countries. This allowed for a continuation of military expansionism and greater tension from others. And attacking other countries for economic and strategic advantages did not help: watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/humanYes, I agree with all this. Now, I am not a fan of Putin at all, but he did have a point in his recent speech when he said: "The West is always warning us saying "don't do this, we're telling you for the last time not to do it", but why do they have the authority to tell us what to?". The West's post-WWII foreign policy has largely been motivated by greed and a desire to control other countries and exploit their resources. We saw it with Iran, with Cuba, with Ukraine, with Russia, with Iraq, with Afghanistan, with the Western support for the Zionist regime, etc. Whenever any of these countries liberate themselves from Western dominance, they have sanctions piled on them and their leaders are ostracised. The West is a hypocrite when it comes to all this, it really is. I am convinced of it. NATO not a defensive organisation. We also forget, that when Russia was suffering in the 1990s after the transfer from the socialist to the capitalist system, which was implemented disastrously by Yeltsin, with Western support, the West lorded it over Russia and said "We won the Cold War, ha ha". The West, in particular the USA, wants to control basically every other country in the world and is angry when any countries throw off the shackles of this control or alternatively refuse to submit to said control - e.g. Iran, Syria, and the list goes on. |
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bluekumul
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Post by bluekumul on Oct 7, 2023 7:52:52 GMT
The best hope for peace is that younger generation of Russians doesn't support Putin and his imperial ideology: www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/long-read-russian-youth-against-warThe situation is symmetrical to the United States, where the young generation strongly opposes neoconservative imperial ideology.
Really there should be a referendum in Ukrainian areas currently occupied by Russia.
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