Its a rather abstract question to ask depending on whose narrative you accept. Russia definitely has the upper hand, and is strategically surrounding certain pressure points in order to secure supply lanes for their advancing military.
That is the scarier question. China has announced they have a resolution and terms that they will be announcing soon to the the UN council, a very smart and calculated move on Russia’s and China’s part. Of course the West will tell Zelensky to reject their plan, but the point is China is stepping up to take the lead in this negotiating process to end the war.
The Western countries with their media cohorts are basically projecting when it comes to narrative claims that Russia is isolated when in fact the opposite is happening. China and Russia along with many countries are in alliance economically and thus Biden’s hand that has been played is a disaster which is going to leave the EU, the US and its allies in a very bad economic position when its all said and done. With that said, the question is what has the US and its allies or shall we say when the issue of commerce is like a cornered animal do?
When you add in the fact that the US and its allies have been recently called out for sabotaging the NORD-Stream pipeline, the rest of the world is going to be looking at the US as the bad guys if they aren’t already, and will not be willing to go along with the pleads of the west to go after Russia. The worrisome part is if the US will try to do something to provoke a larger conflict in order to mask their already weakened hand to which this administration has already shown.
This entire Ukraine conflict is a tenuous situation for the rest of the world to which they are holding their collective breath over. You should watch the video of the UN Security Council on Nord Stream. Jeffery Sachs and Raymon McGovern give some pretty compelling arguments calling out the CIA, Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, and the Biden administration for their complicit roles in trying to instigate a war with Russia in order to protect the most corrupt country in the world.
Here’s my abstract observation: Let’s say that you own a house and it has ten rooms. I barge in and take two of those rooms away, and I wreck those rooms. And, from those two rooms, I’m wrecking your other eight rooms and you’re trying to beat me back. You’re trying to evict me from the two rooms. You push out a little corner, you push out another corner, maybe. But I’m still there and I’m still wrecking. And the thing is, you need your house. That’s where you live. It’s your house and you don’t have another. Me, I’ve got another house, and my other house has a thousand rooms. And, so, if I wreck your house, are you winning or am I winning?
Ukraine has beaten back the Russian attempt to conquer their country. They have defended their capital. They’ve pushed the Russians out of some of the land that the Russians conquered. And yet they need their house, and the Russians are wrecking it. Putin’s strategy could be described as “I can’t have it of nobody can have it!” Isn’t that’s where the tragedy of this war right now.
I am not sure I agree with your analogy for the simple reason that the role NATO and the US played in provoking Russia to invade Ukraine to begin with. I suppose if Ukraine wasn’t a proxy state for the West where giving a bed to the money laundering that has taken place with US and other allies, setting up CIA black sites, US funded BIO-Labs and NATO not honoring their treaty of non expansionism then I would tend to agree with your observation.
Remembering the “Bay of Pigs” and US not tolerating Nukes close to her doorstep, Russia is pretty much reacting the same way with the double standards that the US is practicing here with funding Ukraine with weapons to protect its military and NATO objectives for regime change. The real tragedy here is the US tax payer is funding this war without its consent when it serves no interest to the average working American in doing so in the first place. Why is that?
Russia as stated is fighting for its very survival, because the West is bent on having a war no matter the cost to you or me.
Russia had no intention of “conquering” Ukraine. Russia wanted security and full autonomy for the Donbass, given 14,000 of its citizens had been murdered.
Russia made strategic retreats but it hardly qualifies as Ukraine winning. Au contraire, Ukraine suffered tremendous losses (in equipment and manpower) in exchange for some land which it is losing again.
This is a video Sanya made 11 days ago. (English translation appears at the bottom if you click the right buttons.) His colleague in Russia is copying it for him.
Highly inconvenient and detailed information for those who believe Ukraine is winning.
German tanks are useless.
Russian remote-controlled tank-killing robots.
Already tested in the Donbass.
Putin is actually a moderate in Russia. There are hawks in Russia too.
America’s worst enemy is neither Russia nor China; It’s the Deep State in DC and Wall Street, represented by the ilk of Clintons (if they are still alive) and the neocons.
Ukraine represents the power base for the enemy of the American people, as well as the peoples of Russia and Ukraine. The enemy is the Khazarian mafia.
Thomas Paine came to America after his struggle with the elite in Britain. He said nobility is no ability. I guess he was right, except the ability to lie through their teeth.
There was a joke making rounds in Soviet Russia during the Cold War. It wasn’t the Americans and western Europeans alone who feared that tomorrow might not come because of WWIII.
Question: What should we do when American intercontinental nuclear missiles are heading toward our city?
Answer: You go to your bedroom, take white sheets and wrap yourselves in them, and start walking to the graveyard slowly.
We never gave thought to how the other side (Russia) might view America due to our own perceptions being hijacked by the pro military hegemonic adventurism that Eisenhower warned us about it. Who would have thought they are people too, with families and their own views of the world?
Even a liberal like Jimmy Dore knows the truth about who is behind the Ukrainian invasion.
talks about Donald Trump’s criticism of Victoria Nuland’s involvement in the ousting of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014: “Nuland is the Fauci of this situation. In the same way that Fauci was supposed to be protecting us from viruses, and then he funded gain of function research, Victoria Nuland was supposed to be our chief diplomat with respect to Russia and Eastern Europe. And what did she do instead? She ginned up this conflict by backing an insurrection in Ukraine in 2014… They brought in these Ukrainian far-right nationalists as the muscle. She was the State Department official who was responsible for backing this insurrection of a democratically elected leader in 2014… Ever since then, the relationship with the Russians over Ukraine has been heading south. If you are wondering why Putin seized Crimea, it was in direct retaliation for the coup that we backed in 2014. This is the origin of the conflict, and the fact that Trump is willing to talk about it is pretty incredible.”
JFK said, “must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Kennedy was 47 years old when he passed along that wise counsel to those who would manage America’s future relations with other nuclear powers. Today it is not taken as a maxim for guiding current American policy towards Russia. President Biden refutes Kennedy. His foreign policy team would hold that Kennedy raised a false dichotomy, and that it is not the case that the only alternatives in an American confrontation with another nuclear-armed power is either a “humiliating retreat” or nuclear war.
This is the great game the United States and its NATO allies are now playing with Russia. It is a game where the bid is being continually raised.
From the context of the speech, JFK puts the burden on American behavior before a crisis arises, and not merely on creatively helping our opponent find a way out during the heat of a crisis. Kennedy meant that restraint should be the guide to policy-making, and not merely an expedient for defusing tension. From this it would follow that the United States should never follow a course where temporary and imperfect solutions are removed from the table, leaving behind the residual choice of humiliation or nuclear war. The U.S. has done exactly that in Ukraine.
We must acknowledge that Russia will continue to wage this war for years. To the Russians, they have already been fighting for close to ten years, since 2014. W should consider the reality that the Russians are there and will remain there
The one point that is the most poignant in your Kennedy reference is this:
From the context of the speech, JFK puts the burden on American behavior before a crisis arises, and not merely on creatively helping our opponent find a way out during the heat of a crisis.
The US, NATO and its allies has painted themselves in a corner with their current disposition and roles being played in this conflict. Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinkin should see the end of a rope for orchestrating this war if it escalates to a point of no return. I don’t see an off ramp for either side, unless other countries start stepping up and insisting on peace talks. Hopefully that will be China and others at this point.
