The Russians are Coming, the Russians are...oh, they're here...

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Can someone translate this into English? It makes no sense to me.

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To put in your own words, you are just showcasing your ignorance.

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Originally Posted by Paladin

To put in your own words, you are just showcasing your ignorance.

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Indeed I am ignorant, of your patois.

That's because you live on the wrong side of the pond!

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Originally Posted by fred41

I would think any negotiations would start off with - what amount of Ukrainian territory would be ceded for guaranteed NATO coverage of the rest. That’s the starting line. There is no way to say how it should end after that, because it comes down to willing negotiations. However, this war can’t go on forever…no matter how much equipment, armaments or global commitments one side has over the other…someone’s going to simply run out of soldiers…period. So it has to start with a cease fire for negotiations. The negotiations are “the plan”.

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How about we discuss this here, rather than divert the Middle East thread.

The big questions are, can Putin be trusted and how credible will any NATO guarantees be, given the views previously expressed by Trump and many of his offsiders about Ukraine and NATO?
The basic contradiction here is that the people putting up this plan are the same people who have been questioning whether it's in the US interest to continue to assist Ukraine.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/e...ntl/index.html

We are being asked to believe simultaneously that the US can't keep arming Ukraine now, but it will be prepared go to war with Russia in future if Putin does not stick to the agreement. Does that sound credible?

Maybe there are no good alternatives, but as Groucho Marx might have said, I'm not sure I would want to make any agreement with Putin that he would be prepared to accept.

PS: negotiations can't really be the plan because you can't have negotiations without some bottom line for what you would be prepared to accept or reject.

Further to this, the basic requirement for successful negotiation is to convince the other party that you will walk away if the deal is not satisfactory. You can't beat down the price if you've already signalled that you are keen to buy. Will Trump be prepared to walk away when he's already bragged about ending the war on day one? I fear that Putin will be able to play him like a violin because he knows that Trump needs to have his triumph.

Good CNN article you posted. Unfortunately, it sounds like Kellogg isn’t even interested in offering a potential NATO inclusion anymore. Without that, it’s tough to see what the Ukrainians can agree to. I got nothing. It seems like the Ukrainians will be handed a shit sandwich. They can’t fight forever, if they can’t replace their manpower. No country is going to supply them with a version of N.Korean meat puppets. I think, early on this war, everyone’s plan was simply to hope for Putin to die. There doesn’t even seem to be a glimmer of hope for that to happen , on the horizon any time soon.

I'm not sure even Putin's death would solve the problem, because his successor will probably be another belligerent Russian nationalist. It's too deeply ingrained as the regime's ideology now, and the Russian people have been conditioned by many years of anti-Western propaganda. Barring some obvious huge setback, it will be almost impossible for any Russian leader to change course as Gobrachev did in the 1980s.

The problem is that Putin (or his successor) knows that the West doesn't want to commit it's own military against him, and it's reluctant to bear the costs of resisting him for more than 2-3 years. He can continue to play his game of undermining neighbouring countries and picking them off one by one. It's obvious that his goal to to recreate the old Soviet bloc and install Russia-friendly regimes in these countries.

1 Putin can't be trusted, that's known.

2. We Can keep arming Ukraine, but where that that got us - Nowhere.

3. I don't think NATO would admit Ukraine - at least not at this time, so the only real hope is that the US & NATO could force putin to back off. The US under Trump can, but I'm not sure about the rest of NATO.

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Originally Posted by Paladin

The US under Trump can, but I'm not sure about the rest of NATO.

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That would be the same Trump who has:
1. Consistently deferred to Putin, praised him and taken his side over the past 8 years. Has Trump ever criticised Putin over anything?
2. Generally blamed everyone but Putin for this war.
3. Criticised assistance to Ukraine and had his cronies block it for several months last year.
4. Recently criticised the relaxation of restrictions allowing Ukraine to strike deeper within Russia.
5. Accepted Putin's word over his own intelligence agencies on election interference.

Are you really blind to all of this?

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Originally Posted by Paladin

2. We Can keep arming Ukraine, but where that that got us - Nowhere.

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Obviously this is not true. It has prevented Russia from over-running the country, which is a pretty big deal.