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I said it many times before - no one wants this war to end except for Ukrainians. It's just a very profitable venture for the rest of the world.

This seems to be the sad realpolitik truth. It explains how some of the aid has been given.

Enough to keep grinding down the Kremlin's war machine, not enough to actually take the Kremlin out of the fight.

In a more utilitarian analysis, this might be the best for the greatest number of people. From an empathetic human perspective... it's pretty fucking dark to see young Ukrainian men dying for this. Still better than living under the Kremlin's boot.

Fuck.

I understand the math but disgusted at the moral/ethics.

Destruction would potentially cause post WWI vibe, could create a massive migration issue, cause further suffering or the development of horrible black market bullshit or anything in between, that power vacuum would be awful.

Burn out would probably cause more revolutionary thinking and inspire a change in direction.

Fuck. I honestly just want people to not fuckin die.

I'm assuming the West's analysis is that there's no better political reality inside Russia in sight, even with Putin gone, so they're better off just declawing the bear. Which to a large degree has already happened..

Meanwhile the upside is that the collective West gets to try tactics and weapons for modern warfare (drones, ai, analysis) and get ready for the next fight. They also gained a fight-ready, trained ally in Ukraine and a sharper focus in Europe of what's at stake and everything that that involves (eg energy and supply chain independence).

The downside is obviously the deaths of Ukrainians in the front line, but I don't know how many of them could be prevented without NATO getting properly involved.

The goal is to provide enough aid to Ukraine to defeat the invading army without providing so much aid that Ukraine becomes an existential threat to Russia. There being an existential threat to a nuclear power can have some bad outcomes. So it's a balancing act for the West. This is what Zelensky is alluding to with “to win in such a way that Russia does not lose.”

And of course there's a lot of shenanigans involving Russian assets in the west doing everything they can to sabotage aid efforts. That's a significant factor in all of this that shouldn't be ignored. Providing military aid to Urkaine is a no-brainer for geopolitical interests, but no-brain Russian shills are doing their best to block it.

A long drawn out war of attrition isn't actually in the best interests for the West. Russia gains experience, improves their weaponry and has ample opportunities to test that technology in the battlefield. They've been updating the battlefield doctrine to include ways to effectively use new technologies like drones. This isn't something the West wants.

Best outcome for the West is Ukraine drives out the Russian Military, and there's a peace agreement that resolves all disputed territory which would pave the way for Ukraine to join NATO. The longer the war drags on, the longer it will be before Ukraine is part of NATO.

A large part of this war is centered on propaganda and information warfare- something Russia excels at

when they decided to violate the Budapest Memorandum everything went out the door, including russia's future. it's going to be very, very hard to ever get back to the economic or industrial positions they occupied previously.

their people will suffer, and the only way it will end is if they hang putin from a light pole.

More like money people don’t want their money fucked with anymore than it has been by this war

So much of the current internal domestic Russian zeitgeist is the idea of national strength compared to other nations. Pride comes with their strongman. If they are finally faced with the truth that neither Russia or its strongman are strong, it could lead to Russia/Russians trying to assert it in other ways to try to rationalize it. Or Russia could simply collapse from within orphaning hundreds of nuclear warheads leading to opportunists selling warheads to the highest bidders. The only thing worse than Russia having nuclear weapons is every two-bit terrorist or backwater dictator getting their hands on them.

Keep in mind none of this in my mind means we stop supporting Ukraine economically and militarily. Russia made its bed. We can't choose our actions based upon trying to save Russia from itself.

I think that's one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?

I don't think that's a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.

While we really don't want a state with thousands of nukes to splinter, I doubt that any policy writers in DC feel that way, given the eulogies they gave to Navalny, a guy who had politics somewhere around Mussolini's and made Putin look like a dove.

But also the fact that we have like 8000 tanks in the desert that we're not sending tells me that they'd rather fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood than actually break Russia so who knows.

I was thinking the collapse of the state, and China picking up some of what’s left.

Unfortunately this is a big part of why the first big summer counter-offensive by Ukraine stalled; NATO delayed aid by just enough that it guarunteed the war would drag out.

Personally I think it's about money for the industrial military complex. If the war had ended quickly while Ukraine had men, momentum and the initiative it would mean less money for industrialists.

Even US generals like Patreaus were predicting the delay by the Biden admin on F-16s etc. would lead to a massively protracted conflict.

It makes one ashamed that when our country finally does have a righteous cause for our massive military complex our leaders are still playing grab ass trying to make a buck while Ukrainians are fighting to exist. It's one of Biden's (and NATOs) biggest failures.

Siege of whom? Normally, a siege ends when the sieger goes home. If russia wants to stop bleeding, go home.

How is it a proxy war if it was russia which started it?

a proxy war and a siege meant to exhaust Russian resources slowly and without rapidly escalating to more destructive methods.

funny how Putin started a siege on russia by invading a country they were treaty-bound to protect..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

The minute a NATO member put boots on the ground, it's a bigger can of worms that is opened.