Ukraine Thread

[Husar]

And you never told us your recipe. So spill it out.

Where to begin? First of all I wouldn't have given Austria a blank cheque for attacking Russia in 1914...
Then we have the election of Yanukovich by a majority of Ukrainians, the way the Maidan movement acted and was celebrated and a few other mistakes in more recent history. Maybe one could have talked to Putin a little earlier about this whole affair, before he said "Hello, I'm here in Crimea" for example. You know, finding common solution instead of going all "Nyanyanya, suck on this Putin, EU gets Ukraine, *****!" It's not like you would expect a communist overthrowing of the government to suceed in Mexico without the US attempting a counter-coup or an invasion.

By now the entire situation is a train wreck and I'll be happy with any solution that doesn't end up with half of Europe getting nuked, which is why I don't like the jingoist rhetoric. All the West does is talk down to Russia, but the Russians are proud people, much like us, I tend to think that an approach where we don't act like their parents will work better than trying to subdue them with force, threats and so on. It may work for the time being if you go far enough, but consider that they may hate us for it for decades to come...
As for 'the West is only talking down to Putin', he still has enough support even among the population to stay in power, those segments of the population do not like it if we disrespect their president.

If Putin doesn't get reelected for having lost a war and being too weak, which seems to be the plan for some here, then who will the Russians elect instead? Someone who is even more of a strongman?

And who provides the reserves? If Russia decided on stopping rebels their reserves would run short within weeks. And I've heard reports of dissatisfaction among the separatists, as their wages are not always regularly paid, which shows the absence of significant reserves.

Russia provided them stuff and some of it may not have been used up by now = reserves.
And yes, they may run out within weeks, but that's not of much use if the West cries for WW3 after a day already.

As for the second option, the intense fighting that would ensue will be far behind the front lines (as are the non-intense fightings among the separatists that we witness from time to time), so it will in no way be considered a violation of ceasefire between UKRAINE and SEPARATISTS.

If a unit of separatists is breaking the ceasefire at the frontline and Putin wants to stop them he can do that by fighting them way behind the frontlines? How, if they are all on the frontline breaking the ceasefire?