sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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philly1121 said:

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Cal88 said:

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Swiss ambassador who participated in the Istanbul peace negotiations at the start of the war in April 22 confirms that NATO scuttled the peace agreement in order to weaken Russia. They had 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers (and counting) die in that attempt, which has failed.

Another very important testimony on what happened in the now infamous Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations in Türkiye, 6 weeks into the war.

This time by Jean-Daniel Ruch 👇, who was Switzerland's ambassador to Türkiye at the time.

He confirms other accounts that it is the West -… pic.twitter.com/VTA9lTNeQj

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 18, 2024

"Jean-Daniel Ruch, Switzerland's ambassador to Trkiye at the time, confirms other accounts that it is the West - specifically "the Americans with their British allies" - that "pulled the plug on the negotiations" when they were "on the edge" of succeeding. He says they did so because they thought it was too early and they wanted to "first weaken Russia".

As he describes it, he found the decision "deeply immoral" because "it was clear at that time that if the war continued there would be an escalation and the dead would be at least in the tens of thousands, more likely in the hundreds of thousands".

He asks, rhetorically: "why did all these people die?" because now "they may have weakened Russia but they weakened the whole West at the same time, maybe not the Americans but certainly Europe." Also, if a peace deal was done today, it would still "pretty much be based on what was negotiated in Istanbul", assuming the Russians are still willing, a tall order given he's "not so sure that the Russians are prepared to compromise today."

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88, did you light a candle at the passing of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov?

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It might be worth doing this and saying a prayer for this man and the other ~700,000 mostly Ukrainian KIAs from this war, most of whom would still be alive today if NATO hadn't scuttled the Istanbul Peace Treaty.

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They would all be alive if Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine.

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And if NATO didn't
-nurture Ukrainian far right nationalists since the 1950s, including bona fide nazi leaders
-coup the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014,
-set up a radical nationalist government in its place and prime it to marginalize and bomb its Russian minority
-arm and train the Kiev army building it into the 2nd best land army in NATO
-violate the Minsk Agreements
-send an army of 60,000 to crush the Donbas rebels in the winter of 22
-scuttle the Istanbul Peace Treaty

...they would also still be alive.

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And if Russia hadn't started the war.

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And what if they didn't.

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Yeah, they shouldn't have funded those separatist groups either. Alas!

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Do you think the Russian Ukrainians were going to tolerate their language banned, their cultural heritage denied, and their war memorials turned into a celebration of the side their grandparents fought against, which happened to be the largest SS division in the Wehrmacht?

How do two oblasts with a population of 6 million manage hold off the second largest post-Soviet army for 8 years. The Russians never intervened directly in a significant way, and they were very much resented by the Donbas rebels for that.

It wasn't until Ukraine put together a force of 60,000 troops ready to overrun the city of Donetsk that the Russians intervened decisively, as predicted by head of US intell Williams Burns years before that.

Cal88 said:

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philly1121 said:

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Cal88 said:

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philly1121 said:

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Zippergate said:

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ROFL. He was infinitely more credible than our intelligence state. It's a George Constanza world. Whatever they're telling, believe the opposite.

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Zipper siding with the Russian military against his own country. Thanks for weakening America.

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I guess you also "sided with America" on the invasion of Iraq, because you also believed our intell on yellowcake, mobile biolabs and assorted Saddam WMDs...

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No. I was against the invasion of Iraq. Both invasions. But your comparison is pretty weak. It was the Bush Admin that purported to show that Iraq had weapons. But it was our own US Iraq survey group that walked back that intel.

In this instance, its Russia propogating all these lies - which you and others soak up. US Intel is saying, with evidence, that this is, in fact, Russian propaganda.

So, my condolences to you and Igor's family.

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This is what US intelligence was really saying about Ukraine, courtesy of Wikileaks.




The goal all along was to use Ukraine to draw Russia into a costly war, along the same lines of Afghanistan in the 1980s, just as Zbig and his successors at Rand drew it, with the goal of extending Russia:
Extending Russia Competing from Advantageous Ground
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf
.
It didn't work, but it sure destroyed Ukraine. Who cares though, a lot of money was made out of that quarter trillion dollar project.

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Here's something of a geopolitical question for you: why wouldn't we want to extend Russia? Why wouldn't we want to involve Putin in a costly war?

And how has it destroyed Ukraine? Civil war? Laughable. They seem to be getting on fine. Increasing their attacks, killing one of your sources of information. They're trying to do their best before the rug gets pulled from them by Trump. As long as Putin is in power, NATO expansion benefits us. It benefits our allies in NATO. It creates a bulwark against Putin and his goals of expansion into Europe. So, yeah, newsflash, we are siding with Ukraine to stop Russian influence and expansion.

The thing I don't get is, you're parroting all these Russian lies - and you're not getting paid for it. I think you've been cheated! Or, maybe you were part of Tenet Media. I don't know. But I think you need to get some cheddah for all the hard work you're putting in for Putin and Co.

philly1121 said:

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Cal88 said:

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philly1121 said:

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Cal88 said:

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philly1121 said:

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Zippergate said:

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ROFL. He was infinitely more credible than our intelligence state. It's a George Constanza world. Whatever they're telling, believe the opposite.

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Zipper siding with the Russian military against his own country. Thanks for weakening America.

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I guess you also "sided with America" on the invasion of Iraq, because you also believed our intell on yellowcake, mobile biolabs and assorted Saddam WMDs...

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No. I was against the invasion of Iraq. Both invasions. But your comparison is pretty weak. It was the Bush Admin that purported to show that Iraq had weapons. But it was our own US Iraq survey group that walked back that intel.

In this instance, its Russia propogating all these lies - which you and others soak up. US Intel is saying, with evidence, that this is, in fact, Russian propaganda.

So, my condolences to you and Igor's family.

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This is what US intelligence was really saying about Ukraine, courtesy of Wikileaks.




The goal all along was to use Ukraine to draw Russia into a costly war, along the same lines of Afghanistan in the 1980s, just as Zbig and his successors at Rand drew it, with the goal of extending Russia:
Extending Russia Competing from Advantageous Ground
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf
.
It didn't work, but it sure destroyed Ukraine. Who cares though, a lot of money was made out of that quarter trillion dollar project.

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Here's something of a geopolitical question for you: why wouldn't we want to extend Russia? Why wouldn't we want to involve Putin in a costly war?

And how has it destroyed Ukraine? Civil war? Laughable. They seem to be getting on fine. Increasing their attacks, killing one of your sources of information. They're trying to do their best before the rug gets pulled from them by Trump. As long as Putin is in power, NATO expansion benefits us. It benefits our allies in NATO. It creates a bulwark against Putin and his goals of expansion into Europe. So, yeah, newsflash, we are siding with Ukraine to stop Russian influence and expansion.

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This is a very good example of everything that is wrong with American foreign policy, that combination of jingoistic exceptionalism and complete disregard for the welfare of presumed allies.

It is Ukraine that has been paying the price for this costly war, an incredibly heavy price as they have had well over half a million killed, over 100,000 men maimed/dismembered and a million injured, their economy destroyed, all for nothing, as in the end they will lose this war and get terms that are worse than what they had with Minsk and Istanbul, which NATO pushed them to cancel.

The most insidious part of using Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia is that Russia has emerged stronger militarily and economically.

NATO expansion hasn't benefitted most of Europe. Countries like Germany benefit from access to the Russian market and to cheap Russian gas, upon which their industry, which is now crumbling, has been built. Countries in eastern Europe have had long-standing cultural and economic ties with Russia, it is in their own interest to maintain them.

Putin says Russia is ready for a missile duel with the U.S


https://uk.news.yahoo.com/putin-says-russia-ready-missile-101220440.html

"Addressing Western scepticism about the Oreshnik, Putin suggested that both sides select a designated target to be protected by U.S. missiles."

PPV potential with Elon Musk doing Play by Play and Jake Paul doing Color commentary.

Bonus article:

Massacre of the North Koreans on Putin's meat grinder frontline: Bodies of Kim Jong-un's soldiers are lined up in the snow with 100 now perishing in Ukraine war - as Russians 'burn faces of dead comrades' to hide losses | Daily Mail Online


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14209189/Massacre-North-Koreans-Putins-meat-grinder-frontline-Bodies-Kim-Jong-uns-soldiers-lined-snow-100-perishing-Ukraine-war-Russians-burn-faces-dead-comrades-hide-losses.html

sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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NATO funding and backing the Maidan Coup

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None of this is true.

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$5 billion spent backing regime change.
Snipers, neo-nazi thugs taking over Maidan square, the real version of Jan 6
Nuland and co telling the post-Maidan coup organizers who should be in charge.

🇺🇦 A "must watch" exclusive video:

This is how it all started…

Oleg Tsaryov's speech in the Rada on November 20, 2013 announced that the United States was preparing a Maidan coup in Ukraine. Nuland, CIA, USAID, NED and a whole host of other US tentacles

Victoria Nuland… pic.twitter.com/ThZ1CJctyV

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) August 20, 2024

https://t.co/mTWONwlZp9

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) August 21, 2024

Flashback 2014: The “peaceful” protests in Kiev were nothing but.

It involved a geopolitical coup by US/EU, violent attacks by Nazis, and even snipers (Western mercenaries from Georgia) who shot both the police and the protesters.

Maidan Coup in Ukraine: Police under attack pic.twitter.com/nU0SpkS0XK

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) February 25, 2023

https://t.co/nTTIP1qPzi https://t.co/JpgcYF3xPI

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) December 17, 2024

Zippergate said:

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Why do you keep playing the Russian invasion straw man?

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Why do you call it a straw man? A straw man is arguing against something that doesn't exist.

bear2034 said:

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philly1121 is the new bearister. Every other post is about Russia and Putin. LOL.

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Do you have a direct line to the FSB or GRU? I'm curious. Or are you within the "ecosystem" of Russian disinformation/propaganda.

Official State Comms
State Funded Global Messaging
Proxys
Weaponization of Social Media
Cyber Enabled Disinformation

Clearly you are living in one or all of these.

Zippergate said:

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Even if I were to concede that Russia is solely responsible for starting the war, that still doesn't change the fact that the war was set to end when the casualties were still tiny. Then the US/UK entered the fray and scuttled the peace deal. And this was a good thing, right. Just ask neocon sympathizers like Phil. Every death since that failed deal can largely be blamed on the neocons. That's what this recent discussion has been about. Why do you keep playing the Russian invasion straw man?

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Do you even know what neocon means? If you did, you wouldn't label me a neocon. lol far from it. And the Russian invasion 'strawman' as you describe it is a nonsensical redirect of what actually happened. 88 always seems to blame Ukraine for Russia's invasion and how we somehow toppled the Yanukovych government. But that's believing Russian disinfo. Yanukovych decided to not support more integration with the EU - a position that was widely supported by the Ukrainian Parliament and that Yanukovych initially had supported. However, Russia was issuing political and economic threats to reject the deal. Russia stopped imports from Ukraine and Ukraine slid into political chaos. Of course, Yanukovych fled to Russia.

And if you had forgotten, it was Putin who, on the eve of the invasion stated that Ukraine was historically Russian lands and that Ukraine had no basis or right to statehood. Putin even blamed the old Soviet government for "creating" Ukraine.

This is where most of the lies that you, 88 and 34 believe - that Ukrainians were committing genocide in the Donbas region; that Ukrainian officials were neo-Nazis, that Ukraine was developing nukes, that the US was sponsoring and staffing bioweapons laboratories. All reasons Putin gave to invade. All lies. There's no strawman here zipper.

As far as the possibility of an agreement, there was a framework for a deal, but the fine print of that deal placed hard caps on Ukraine's military and personnel. And it also forbade Ukraine from joining NATO. That was never going to be agreed upon by Ukraine or NATO. So, any talk of a peace deal being walked away from in Istanbul, is a fiction.

philly1121 said:

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bear2034 said:

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philly1121 is the new bearister. Every other post is about Russia and Putin. LOL.

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Do you have a direct line to the FSB or GRU? I'm curious. Or are you within the "ecosystem" of Russian disinformation/propaganda.

Official State Comms
State Funded Global Messaging
Proxys
Weaponization of Social Media
Cyber Enabled Disinformation

Clearly you are living in one or all of these.

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Boris, I know you know you are within the ecosystem of American disinformation/ propaganda.

philly1121 said:

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Zippergate said:

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Even if I were to concede that Russia is solely responsible for starting the war, that still doesn't change the fact that the war was set to end when the casualties were still tiny. Then the US/UK entered the fray and scuttled the peace deal. And this was a good thing, right. Just ask neocon sympathizers like Phil. Every death since that failed deal can largely be blamed on the neocons. That's what this recent discussion has been about. Why do you keep playing the Russian invasion straw man?

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Do you even know what neocon means? If you did, you wouldn't label me a neocon. lol far from it. And the Russian invasion 'strawman' as you describe it is a nonsensical redirect of what actually happened. 88 always seems to blame Ukraine for Russia's invasion and how we somehow toppled the Yanukovych government. But that's believing Russian disinfo. Yanukovych decided to not support more integration with the EU - a position that was widely supported by the Ukrainian Parliament and that Yanukovych initially had supported. However, Russia was issuing political and economic threats to reject the deal. Russia stopped imports from Ukraine and Ukraine slid into political chaos. Of course, Yanukovych fled to Russia.

And if you had forgotten, it was Putin who, on the eve of the invasion stated that Ukraine was historically Russian lands and that Ukraine had no basis or right to statehood. Putin even blamed the old Soviet government for "creating" Ukraine.

This is where most of the lies that you, 88 and 34 believe - that Ukrainians were committing genocide in the Donbas region; that Ukrainian officials were neo-Nazis, that Ukraine was developing nukes, that the US was sponsoring and staffing bioweapons laboratories. All reasons Putin gave to invade. All lies. There's no strawman here zipper.

As far as the possibility of an agreement, there was a framework for a deal, but the fine print of that deal placed hard caps on Ukraine's military and personnel. And it also forbade Ukraine from joining NATO. That was never going to be agreed upon by Ukraine or NATO. So, any talk of a peace deal being walked away from in Istanbul, is a fiction.

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The "peace deal" was a deal that would have made it easier to invade Ukraine again in the future.

And while this was going on, Russia did the massacre in Bucha, which kind of cooled the talks.

sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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NATO funding and backing the Maidan Coup

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None of this is true.

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Love how he calls Biden stupid and the cowering dork in all of this

philly1121 said:

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Zippergate said:

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Even if I were to concede that Russia is solely responsible for starting the war, that still doesn't change the fact that the war was set to end when the casualties were still tiny. Then the US/UK entered the fray and scuttled the peace deal. And this was a good thing, right. Just ask neocon sympathizers like Phil. Every death since that failed deal can largely be blamed on the neocons. That's what this recent discussion has been about. Why do you keep playing the Russian invasion straw man?

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Do you even know what neocon means? If you did, you wouldn't label me a neocon. lol far from it. And the Russian invasion 'strawman' as you describe it is a nonsensical redirect of what actually happened. 88 always seems to blame Ukraine for Russia's invasion and how we somehow toppled the Yanukovych government. But that's believing Russian disinfo. Yanukovych decided to not support more integration with the EU - a position that was widely supported by the Ukrainian Parliament and that Yanukovych initially had supported. However, Russia was issuing political and economic threats to reject the deal. Russia stopped imports from Ukraine and Ukraine slid into political chaos. Of course, Yanukovych fled to Russia.

And if you had forgotten, it was Putin who, on the eve of the invasion stated that Ukraine was historically Russian lands and that Ukraine had no basis or right to statehood. Putin even blamed the old Soviet government for "creating" Ukraine.

This is where most of the lies that you, 88 and 34 believe - that Ukrainians were committing genocide in the Donbas region; that Ukrainian officials were neo-Nazis, that Ukraine was developing nukes, that the US was sponsoring and staffing bioweapons laboratories. All reasons Putin gave to invade. All lies. There's no strawman here zipper.

As far as the possibility of an agreement, there was a framework for a deal, but the fine print of that deal placed hard caps on Ukraine's military and personnel. And it also forbade Ukraine from joining NATO. That was never going to be agreed upon by Ukraine or NATO. So, any talk of a peace deal being walked away from in Istanbul, is a fiction.

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I am somewhat on your side on this issue, in the sense that I have been in favor of the military aid that we have supplied to Ukraine. That said, I would love to be able to declare that Ukraine will never join NATO, in exchange for Russia agreeing to let them remain a sovereign nation. Then, the two countries could hammer out some agreement on territory.

Talk of Ukraine joining NATO, which started some 30+ years ago, was one of the main issues that put a bug up the Rooskies' ass and drove Russia away from us.

Russia and the United States are not "natural enemies", but we are enemies because of war hawks on both sides doing stupid things. Ideally, the two countries would not be trying to screw up each other and instead collaborate to fight true natural enemies, such as terrorist states and organizations.

Well, perhaps not 'natural enemies' but adversaries for the better part of 107 years. But Russia has historically reneged on many promises made to Ukraine. In the post Cold War era, most recently in 1994 - with the Non-proliferation Treaty. Ukraine gave up their nukes for security guarantees. Same with the Partition Treaty in 1997. Russia unilaterallly voided the treaty in 2014 when it annexed Crimea. And in 1999 when Russia pledged to honor the direction the former Soviet states chose to go with respect to the EU and NATO.

I don't really think that Russia was ever "with us". When the collapse happened in 91, there was economic collapse. the oligarchs took over from a corrupt Yeltsin government. But I think historically, Ukraine has no reason to trust Russia.

Uneducated. Russian toy u are.

NATO lost the war eh? Love the cheerleading for Russia.

sycasey said:

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Zippergate said:

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See, this is always the argument: a generalized claim that the US does bad things, therefore this latest claim must also be true.

This is pure projection. Substitute Putin for US and we basically have your whole argument.

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What? Putin literally invaded Ukraine with his army. That's the hardest evidence there is, way harder than whatever suggestions or innuendos are being thrown around about the US influencing Ukrainian politics.

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This is exactly the point. There's a huge distinction between political meddling (which the US, Russia, China, and other historical super powers have engaged in forever) vs invading with the intention of acquiring territory.

Zippergate said:

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Welcome to the dark side!

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Careful, I have one of those fancy new flashlights: 1200 lumen!

My position on this situation (even on this board) has been consistent since before this thread was started: Putin/Russia are responsible for this war and I'm for military aid to Ukraine, but we could've played our cards better, back before the turn of the century. The notion that Putin wants to continue westward until he's posing in front of the Eifel Tower was always silly; he wants Ukraine. Now we shouldn't be afraid to encourage Ukraine to be looking for possibilities for peace.