A decision to negotiate over the heads of the Ukrainians would reveal just how Trump sees Ukraine and Europe.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
The article only summarizes it shortly, but the parallels to the Munich Agreement from 1938 are really scary.
Hitler’s aim was to take over all of Czechoslovakia by breaking it apart. The subject of the Munich Agreement was the Sudetenland, the region bordering Germany. Before there were some votes and local political forces expressing the wish of the German minority in the Sudetenland to create an independent state (See the parallels with DNR, LNR and Crimea). This was used by Hitler to justify taking over the region. Suddenly it wasn’t about independence anymore, but about inclusion into Germany.
The Czechoslovakian government in Prague obviously hated the idea, but they were not invited to the talks in Munich. Only afterwards were they made aware of the decision that would be imposed on their nation. Who was invited was fellow fascist Mussolini from Italy, as well as France and UK, who gave in and signed this agreement, giving international support to Germany just taking over parts of neighboring nations.
Their reasoning was, if they were to disagree, Hitler would assert his will by force and take Czechoslovakia militarily, starting a large European war (that is also the reason Prague was forced to accept the decision: the alternative was a war they could never win, they could not count on any outside help). This was the so-called appeasement policy by the UK. They bought “peace” in exchange for territories they didn’t own but felt the right to decide over. We all know how this heavily-priced peace turned out. At most it gave the allied forces one more year to prepare for WWII.
Meanwhile there are also western Oligarchs doing business with both sides so they can get dynasty-rich off of the deaths of millions.
I see a better parallel with the partition of Poland in Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with these talks. The Munich Agreement was the Minsk agreements and letting russia have Crimea.
Here’s some additional reading for anyone interested
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Czechoslovakia_(1938–1945)?wprov=sfla1
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those mental gymnastics are occurring on this thread right now lol
Just because Trump wants it to be America’s war doesn’t mean that it is. Trump wants many things to be true, most of which are not.
They’re constructing a new ‘stabbed in the back’ mythology in real time
What was americas war
Zelenskyy has stated that he is not willing to negotiate with Putin as well as that they will not settle for less than getting back all the occupied territories including Crimea. There is no peace deal to be made with these terms as the starting point.
Giving away conquered territory in hopes of peace is called appeasement. Historically, it doesn’t go well.
It worked for Finland (after the Winter War).
What’s the alternative here? Russians going home and giving back all the conquered territories is simply not going to happen.
The alternative is making Russia getting/keeping the territory a worse option than leaving Ukraine the hell alone. I agree that the unfortunate reality is that Putin will never - can never - give up the war willingly without concessions, but the flip side to that is they’ll be back for more sooner or later. We have to make the war such a bad option for Russia that Putin is deposed, whether by his oligarchs or by the Russian people. It’s a difficult fight, but it’s one we’ve fought before on 3 fronts in WWII. The difference, this time, being nukes exist and that understandably makes a lot of people nervous - but again, expansionists never stop. The confrontation has to come at some point unless we want all-out war in Europe.
I’m far removed from the situation, so my opinion isn’t worth much on this part, but I think realistically maybe there could be some concessions around Crimea for a peace deal - sort of a status quo ante or similar - but Russia would have to make some concessions in turn for Ukraine to agree (NATO peacekeeping forces in Ukraine? Still a no-go for Putin though…). Ceding Ukranian territorial losses from the current war, though, will only put off the eventual confrontation, and hurt the West in the meantime.
We have to make the war such a bad option for Russia that Putin is deposed,
You’re right and it might be humanity’s only chance at survival. In the post nuclear era, we must either eradicate all warmongering, or it will likely kill every single one of us.
If Putin wins, no one else can. He chose to start a new war for personal reasons in the post nuclear age. Humanity likely cannot afford to tolerate people who do that, in a post nuclear age.
I’m far removed from the situation, so my opinion isn’t worth much on this part, but I think realistically maybe there could be some concessions around Crimea for a peace deal
If your opinion isnt worth shit dont share it, the notion that Russia will give up any territory, never mind territory it held before the invasion is counter to the reality where the entire ukraine front is currently collapsing and Zelensky isnt even being considered in peace talks because he has no position of strength due to insane losses.
Ceding Ukranian territorial losses from the current war, though, will only put off the eventual confrontation, and hurt the West in the meantime.
‘Millions more must die for my nationalism’
You realize your opinion isn’t worth shit either, yeah? Maybe it’s worth even less, considering where you are posting from.
Only opinion that matters now is the one being signed between Russia and America; Ukraine has already lost, you’re just too stupid to notice that.
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America doesn’t have a say in the war, no matter how much Trump would like that.
If Ukraine doesn’t get a say in a peace talk, then they will just keep killing Russians until they do.
And Europe will keep supplying them until that happens.
There’s nothing that can be done, Russia is winning on the battlefield. At this point negotiating suits Ukraine, not the other way around.
They’re holding more dirt, but taking more losses while they’re economy is not doing so great. If that’s what winning looks like then I wouldn’t want to be a winner.
Conquered territories including Kursk?
What’s the point of ceding part of your country for peace, if you get invaded again a few years later? That’s not peace.
There isn’t. There’s also no point in continuing a strategy that clearly favors Russia (they’re the ones steadily gaining ground every month).
The better strategy (which Trump almost certainly won’t entertain) is to negotiate a peace now and use that time to build a robust defense-in-depth at the current border.
It will be ugly because it will turn miles of border into a dangerous DMZ. But Russia already demonstrated that it works. Dig a crap ton of trenches. Build out bunkers and anti-tank traps. Ignore Geneva a bit and mine the crap out of the area. Lots of surveillance. Probably some experimental infrastructure to make it easier to deploy drones.
That would also need to be coupled with commitments to build out munitions plants in Western Ukraine; primarily artillery shells and drones.
This will work because it dramatically raises the cost of each meter of ground gained by opposing forces. Ukraine can get defensive infrastructure that they can cheaply operate, without significant external assistance.
The downside is that Ukraine would loose parts of its territory. The upside is that it has a far better chance of keeping the territory it still has.
Seems like something that’s atleast worth the shot when the alternative is to continue with the ongoing war while losing more and more territory and soldiers each day. In order to prevent a war from happening again you first need to stop the war that’s already going on.
I feel like it might be a bit better to try to fight on until you have at least some security guarantees, so you know they just don’t attack you right after regrouping than let them disarm you in name of peace and then get fucked right after by their attack.
Leaving yourself at the mercy of your attacker is the sort of lunacy you’d only have to resort to when you have no other choice.
Or your name is Trump.
I don’t see how continuing the fight is going to lead to security guarantees for Ukraine. A peace deal or ceasefire could at least allow individual countries to send peacekeepers independently of NATO. There are ways to deter a future attack outside of full membership. And if a ceasefire ends up being just a chance to regroup, then at least Ukraine gets that chance as well. As we saw during Ukraine’s “counteroffensive,” well-fortified positions are extremely difficult and costly to break through.
Continuing fighting gives more time to get those security guarantees. A peace is worth nothing without them.
A peace deal or ceasefire could at least allow individual countries to send peacekeepers independently of NATO
That’s assuming that’s the sort of peace deal or ceasefire Russia would agree to.
And if a ceasefire ends up being just a chance to regroup, then at least Ukraine gets that chance as well.
Not only would that give a better position for Russia who has better means to regroup with Ukraine’s support faltering, for that too, that’s assuming that’s the sort of peace deal or ceasefire Russia would agree to.
If Russia did say that we should just pause the fighting, I’d imagine Ukraine would go for that. But it’s not likely Russia is going to do that when they have the upper hand.
Continuing fighting gives more time to get those security guarantees.
I don’t see the logic here
Gives more time for negotiations
Zelenskys voice doesn’t matter. Thats the point. What matters is the people funding him with money and weapons.
What, you think Ukrainians are going to stop defending their homes just because Trump stops sending them fancy weapons? That’s not how this works. The war isn’t going to end. It’s just going to get a lot nastier.
At some point all of them will die. That’s how colonialism works.
The power dynamic just isn’t skewed enough here for that. Ukraine is not exactly a major world power, but Russia’s not exactly looking like a superpower either. Even if the US switching sides is enough for them to plant a flag in Kyiv, the simple fact of the matter is that Russia does not have the capacity to occupy a country the size of Ukraine. Planting a flag in Kyiv is the EASY part. It only gets harder from there. You only have to look at any war the US has been involved in to see that in action.
That’s not how genocide works. After the population is gone, its easy. Look at what the US and Canada did to North America. Look at what the US is doing right now to Gaza.
That’s not military occupations work. There are tens of millions of people in Ukraine. Even if you could kill them at a rate of 1 per second and they never fought back that would still be decades of killing. North America started with a lower population before white guys showed up and had every plague on the planet hitting the Americas at the same time to do most of the dirty work and it still took centuries. The sheer logistics of trying to kill everyone in Ukraine are just beyond the capacity of Russia to achieve, even if they didn’t resist. And that’s even assuming they lose the war, which got a lot more likely, but still isn’t a given. There just isn’t the political will in Russia to commit to centuries of genocide against serious opposition, no matter how much Putin wants it to be true.
That is how colonial genocide works.
There were tens of millions in America that were almost completely exterminated (some estimates range up to 100 million)
Yes, biological weapons help. And Russia has many weapons of mass destruction in their arsenal.
This. Especially Ukraine won’t just roll over anyway, they are still VERY aware of their suffering in the USSR and stuff like the Holodomor. The only thing that would happen is for Ukraine to become another country in a constant state of insurrection and civil war (I’m lacking the english vocabulary to properly describe it, but you get the point).
It isn’t a peace deal.
It is a deal to bully someone else together.
It is. Trump gets this piece. Putin gets this piece. And so on.
Europe needs to stand together on this and cut ties with USA.
Trump is a Russian asset.
AP headline: “Russia and US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war in a remarkable diplomatic shift”
They mention that Ukraine isn’t even at the table several paragraphs in. Jolly.
And that’s still too left wing for the trump white house.
History is full of such examples
If the Poles and Czechs haven’t figured out who their enemies are with this, nothing else will help.
I don’t think Ukraine will get Donbas and Crimea back. The Donetsk & Luhansk republics would violently resist any attempt by Kyiv to absorb them back into Ukraine.
Yes, unfortunately the situation with the conquered territories seems pretty grim.
The Donetsk & Luhansk republics would violently resist any attempt by Kyiv to absorb them back into Ukraine.
LOL
You know that whole rebellion thing was created by Russia right?
It’s funny to me how both sides say this about the other. There were two rebellions in Ukraine backed by foreign powers, and which one you think is legitimate and which one was created by foreign meddling doesn’t seem to have anything to do with any facts on the ground, it’s entirely about which global hegemon you support.
In reality, both the succession movement and Euromaidan involved a combination of foreign agitation and popular support, and it’s nowhere near as black and white as either side pretends.
Fuck your disingenuous bothesidesism.
Western support of Euromaidan (what you erroneously call “meddling”) isn’t remotely comparable to the straight acts of war that Russia committed in the Donbas.
Of course not. It’s not meddling when we do it, because we’re the good guys.
Our support of an organic democratic movement to overthrow the old corrupt regime, their meddling support of proxies to undermine the legitimate government.
Hey fuckwit, you didn’t reply to a single thing I said.
Europe supported the Ukrainian people vocally, but verbally during the Maidan.
Russia armed and funded extreme Russian nationalists, you know like actual nazi scum, and sent them to Ukraine led by FSB officers, controlled directly from the Kremlin. Nobody in the Donbas asked for this, except for retarded nazi scum.
Ah fuck, I just see that you are lemmy.ml tankie scum. Of course you are siding with autocratic fascists. blocked
Yes, I do know that. What difference does it make to my point?
Everything, because the people of D&L will not violently resist. They were peaceful citizens of Ukraine, who overwhelmingly voted for Ukrainian independence in 1991.
Define the “people”. Currently, the separatists in charge in the republics are openly pro-Russian and welcomed the annexation with open arms. They won’t step down quietly and accept reintegration into Ukraine. In the event that Ukraine officially claims victory in Donbas, there will be an insurgency there for years, backed by the Kremlin. There’s already been one since 2014.
I hope you don’t believe it won’t be similar the other way around, because it will. Citizens loyal to Ukraine won’t just roll over and accept the annexation no matter what the US and Russian regimes are saying. They’ll most likely keep fighting as they do now.
Honestly, the best that could happen to resolve the issue and not causing it to become a century-long problem with “generational hate” fueling a lasting conflict would be for EU countries as well as other allies (Australia, Japan, South Korea etc) to go all-in and keep supporting Ukraine, in a way it overwhelms Russia. Of course I know how unrealistic that sounds right now…
When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
War needed to end years ago, any end in sight should be welcomed and anyone preventing that from happening investigated.
any end in sight should be welcomed
Russia could stop the war any day by just going back to their country. No such possibility for Ukraine, they could only stop by being subjugated by Russia.
Ukraine could have prevented the war in the first place by adhering to the terms of the peace treaties they signed beforehand.
Russia could have prevented the war by, you know, not invading Ukraine. It’s not hard not to attack and invade your neighbors, most countries manage that.
Ironic to say that in the context of Ukraine starting a war of ethnic cleansing within its own borders
It’s ironic to tell Russia not to invade other countries because Ukraine didn’t invade other countries? Sorry but don’t see the irony.
Oh cool you’re literally doing the exact same nazi apologia Candice Owens did when she said the only thing they did wrong was export their genocide. So fucking crazy that Ukraine supporters always end up quacking like ducks.
I just said I don’t see the irony though.
I bet you say the same regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, right? Trump’s plan to end that war and build villas in Gaza should totally be “welcomed and anyone preventing that from happening investigated” /s
Europe is about to learn the deveststing reality of your home being picked apart in peace deals or whatever by foreign superpowers without any real say. I don’t feel bad for Ukraine in the slightest, they supported Israel since the early days, and felt no remorse, I feel no remorse if all of Ukraine was annexed
I’m pretty sure Ukraine is already used to being invaded and picked apart by superpowers without any real say
By superpowers plural? Today yeah, 3 years ago, also sorta yeah but more hidden. Besides Ukraine wants to be aligned with the west and now America and Russia are the only two who have any say
I was thinking more about their history of being occupied for the last millennium, invaded by the mongols, then occupied and partitioned by many states, including the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, the Ottomans, the Austrians, then finally conquered by the Russian tzars, then having their independence dreams being shattered by the Soviets, then being invaded by the Nazis and now by Russian Federation, with the latest nail being Trump’s actions.
So yeah, superpowers plural
I see what you mean and I guess it’s because of it’s vital position connection mainland Europe to the steppes of Eurasia and into Anatolia.
It’s the same with my ethnic region of the Punjab so Im aware of what happens with such a history
If they didnt start sending arty shells into east ukraine after being emboldened by fascists flooding into their country we wouldnt we in this position.
