I agree. He isnt taking back Crimea. This will likely stagnate for a couple years with a few skirmishes here and there. The Ukrainians will likely capitulate and remove Zelensky if he refuses to make some sort of deal. If other countries get involved directly, this could blow up very quickly.
There Is No Military Path For Ukraine To ‘Defeat’ Russia https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/06/there-is-no-military-path-for-ukraine-to-defeat-russia/ excerpt: It would be a near-impossible feat for the West to provide enough heavy weaponry to Ukraine – and the massive volumes of large-caliber artillery ammunition the howitzers need – that would bring back into balance the major disadvantage Ukraine has in firepower. Even the modern rocket launchers the U.S. and UK recently committed will not materially change the negative balance for Kyiv. Zelensky and the Ukrainian people will soon come face-to-face with the ugly prospect that continuing to fight will only bring more death and destruction to its people, cities, and armed forces – but be insufficient to stave off defeat. The truth is, military fundamentals and simple capacity are in Moscow’s favor. It is unlikely those factors change in time to avoid defeat for Kyiv and its brave people. That is the ugly, bitter reality of war. more at the link
Realistically, unfortunately, a lot of this might be too late. They needed to do this weeks or, ideally months, ago. At this point, Russia has regrouped and fixed their tactics and are likely to take control of Eastern Ukraine. Not sure what the end game is from there because Ukrainians have put their lives on the line to protect the East and it would be difficult to negotiate it away at this point.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...-draghi-before-g7-bild-am-sonntag-2022-06-11/ Why do you think the leaders of Germany, France and Italy are visiting Ukraine? My guess is trying to setup some kind of peace deal.
Absolutely a possibility. But the flipside is that the US seems very much against negotiating away any Ukrainian land. So it will be interesting to see how it would play out. From what I've read, the people in the East have also become far more anti-Russian as well, which is not surprising given Russia is obliterating their cities.
My understanding is that US was against Ukraine giving away any land earlier as weakening Russia was a primary objective of the US. However, as inflation pressure have mounted and the November election is coming up, Biden administration might be OK with peace deal now, we will see soon enough.
That doesn't counter the fact that the government has spent a lot of money domestically the last two years. If anything that says that we should have younger leaders, which I agree with. There are many potential leaders both old and young who are willing to spend a lot of money domestically.
Zelensky is popular because he's publicly stood up to Russia and didn't flee the country when he had the chance. That he publicly told the World where he was even as bombs were falling on Kyiv.
Zelensky has been willing to negotiate. If anything it appears that Ukrainians overall are far less interested in negotiations since war crimes by Russian soldiers have been exposed.
Except that back in January the Biden Administration was putting out a lot of intel that Russia was very likely to invade and the Ukrainians weren't that receptive to them. THis was even discussed early on in this thread.
Doubt Ukraine wants a negotiated peace that surrenders Crimea and Donbas, but they are losing to a stronger opponent. They should decide for themselves, but it seems to me their self-interest lies in trading those regions for peace, provided they can join NATO to help secure the rest of their territorial integrity. Though I get the feeling that Donbas-Crimea is going to be the new Alsace-Lorraine. Not sure what Ukraine was supposed to do about it at that point. Should Zelensky have sworn not to join NATO? Should he have surrendered his claim on Crimea? Should he have stepped down from the presidency? There'd been negotiations at the time, but they didn't bear fruit. Hard to blame Zelensky for that without knowing what was on the table, especially when it's Russia that up and invaded. Ukraine got ready to fight for its existence, its integrity, and its sovereignty. No blame there.
To followup on this, who knows what they talked about as far as peace deal goes, but they did announce full support of Ukraine joining the EU. https://www.axios.com/2022/06/16/ukraine-visit-leaders-germany-france-italy During a joint press conference after their meeting, Macron said that all four leaders were in favor of granting Ukraine "immediate" EU candidate status, Reuters reported.
The criticism back then was that Zelensky was taking the opposite view - that he was NOT prepping his country for war and instead telling everyone that war wasn't imminent. https://nypost.com/2022/01/28/zelen...c-over-russia-invasion-fear-after-biden-call/ As an example, one of the specific criticisms is that instead of preparing his borders and cities, he didn't activate their massive reservist army until after the war had already started.
My impression is that he was trying to manage the Ukrainian public and quell panic, capital flight, and human flight. What he says publicly isn't necessarily a reflection of what he believed. There were other Ukrainian politicians who thought he should do more, but of course its easy to criticize when you aren't the one wearing the risk of being wrong. In any case, if Biden wants to sell that Zelenskyy didn't take his advice enough or somehow failed to avert the war or prepare for war, I'm not buying. I'm sure there are things Zelenskyy did sub-optimally, as does everyone. Blame still goes to Putin for invading a sovereign nation.
Remember the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership that was signed in November 2021? That was an unbelievable provocation towards Russia. What was Biden thinking? Totally unnecessary. Now here we sit amidst a war. Entirely avoidable. Stupid foreign policy leads to death, destruction, and global economic collapse. https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/
