No
Putin wants the lot. After this Georgia
He didn’t always want the lot. Maybe that situation could be redeemed
And Moldova
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He did
They might look to form a corridor around to Transnistria, making ukraine completely landlocked.
Seen as the West are letting him at it he might as well. He will inflict maximum destruction on Ukraine as a warning to the likes of Georgia and Moldova not to fight back. The question is will the West do anything even if a NATO state is invaded.
Did he not say today he’d settle for eastern half ? There’s no Russian troops in west of country
You just outlined why he can never have it all. I’d guess eventually about half of Ukraine will become Russian to act as a buffer from NATO, grant land access to the Black Sea and land access to Crimea.
Am i right in thinking he was quite prepared to pump billions into Ukraine on the condition that they didn’t join nato, that he agreed to rent one of their ports and that he sided with the Ukrainian government in not recognising the result of a referendum in donbas…where the majority of the population expressed the wish to join Russia?
Judging by the performance of their equipment so far there’s a decent chance Putins nukes wouldn’t get beyond Bryansk
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The images coming in now are stark reality. It was a great adventure and Ukraine was full of hope a week ago. Now the locals are running out of essentials, are trapped in surrounded by Russians who are indiscriminately bombing them. Bodies pulled out of one building in Kherson were all unrecognisable they were so badly damaged.
The romance is gone from this thing
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I thought he made his point. The full invasion was unnecessary, unlawful and downright evil. The more he thinks he can get away with the more he’ll try
No
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Prepare for a fake “People’s Republic of Kherson” in the same way that happened in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.
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What’s Putins end game here?
The Russian economy was already in the shit. Is he banking on the west not being able to maintain sanctions in the medium term?
I’d say they’d welcome it, they were better off under the Soviet Union. Poorest GDP per capita.
Same could be said for the russians
There was an inevitability about that. Seems most respected military experts were predicting this and while Ukraine would put up a brave fight they would be over run, cities surrounded and the humanitarian catastrophe we are about to witness would unfold.
At which point the pressure on their leaders to
settle is going to become unbearable. Do they fight on and witness large populations of cities starve, run out of medicines etc
If Putin loses the support of China he’s fucked. They are playing it very coy so far
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I don’t even know why we’re talking about NATO. Putin has made it clear he’s invaded because he thinks Ukraine is an illegitimate state and Ukrainian nationalism is illegitimate. He’s trying to rebuild Greater Russia, and ppl like John Mearsheimer are saying, “NATO’s fault!”
Foreign-policy realism prides itself on being tough-minded and, yea, realistic. But it actually offers an incredibly impoverished account of why countries do things, both for good and ill.
And I’m repeating myself, but “I have to invade Ukraine because if they join NATO I won’t be able to invade Ukraine” is not a “legitimate” security concern.