"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (3 Viewers)

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Let's stop for a moment and look back to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.

Where the hell was the U.S. or UK when artical #1 and #2 were violated in 2014 and again in 2022?

I don't like the current U.S. administration, HOWEVER, the West failed Ukraine twice prior to January 2025 by failing to act on artical #4.

This shitshow could have been stopped dead in it's tracks by getting up in Putin's face at the start, but that would have disturbed the west's comfort zone.

So let's take it easy on pointing fingers ten or three years (take your pick) after the fact.
Sure, I think a few days ago I ventilated my disappointment about incapacity of the international community in general.

But that doesn't excuse the fact that the USA at the moment is making it worse instead of trying to fix things. Mistakes in the past is not an excuse to make new mistakes.
 
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I agree. Chamberlain was both buying time for rearming and was also of the generation that had gone through the devastation of WW1 only 20 odd years earlier. thus would have wanted to avoid that.

Having said that, the references to Chamberlain "peace in our time" is more an allusion to doing a deal that is not a good deal and only delays somethign worse.
And one of his last official acts was to sign before his hospitalization the official creation of the SOE on july 19, 1940, even if its following history is to be credited to Churchill.
 
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The BBC is reporting that Starmer and other European leaders will be attending Trump's meeting with Zelenskyy next week.

Here's a linky to live updates: Ukraine-Russia-US latest: Starmer and European leaders to join Zelensky at White House meeting with Trump

Hopefully this is a positive development. It'll be a lot harder to browbeat Ukraine if its other key allies are in the room.

That said, I can also see a scenario where Trump presents a peace plan so favorable to Moscow that it's entirely untenable for right-thinking people. That will allow Trump to blame Ukraine and Europe for wanting to prolong the conflict, and he'll just wash his hands of the entire problem and cease all aid.

I'm still fearful that Trump is pursuing a "peace at any cost" approach. The problem is he's not paying the price: Ukraine is.
 
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HOWEVER, the West failed Ukraine twice prior to January 2025 by failing to act on artical #4.
First and foremost, Ukrainians as a people failed Ukraine. They've been independent since the early 1990s, and yet allowed their country to remain a quagmire of corruption, unwilling to eradicate the Russian connections throughout its economy, military and government. In 2014 the Ukrainians fled Crimea without firing a shot. One might have asked in 2014, why should the West act if Ukrainians would not?
 
At the end of the day Russia got everything that it wanted. It didn't want a peace deal as they are advancing and time for economic and demographic reasons isn't on their side. It didn't want sanctions from the USA because of the economic strain they are under. They seem to have turned Trump to their way of thinking where an agreement has to be reached before a ceasefire, a key change.
Ukraine got nothing
Hmmm...turned? I would say the alignment in thinking was already there.
 

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