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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 10, 2024 17:47:02 GMT
Ukrainian drones hit Moscow airport last night.
Sadly some apartment building was also damaged. Not clear if an off course drone, debris or failed air defence missile. Looks like it was a small payload.
I wonder what they're trying to do. If they could damage passenger jets it would be useful. They're used for military purposes and it's not a vital thing for civilian safety so that could make sense?
Alternative: they're setting up the threat on Moscow so Russia sends air defence there. Then they'll attack somewhere else?
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 10, 2024 19:44:38 GMT
Russian sources say they began a counteroffensive in Kursk. They regularly lie about their advances so we'll have to wait and see what's going on.
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 11, 2024 0:14:00 GMT
In Kursk where Ukraine was blowing up the bridges to isolate russian forces, Russia still managed to get a bunch of armour over the river and launch a new attack on the west flank of Ukraine's positions.
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 11, 2024 14:43:25 GMT
Followed this guy's reporting for ages. Sounds like Russia dropped cluster munitions in a civilian area. Again.
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 12, 2024 15:06:03 GMT
Seems like Russia shelled a Red Cross convoy. Volunteers are dead, according to the RC. 😢
Russians intentionally target civilians and aid workers all the time. Maybe the Red Cross will get more attention?
Then again, in Syria the russians intentionally targeted civilian medical facilities and no one really seemed to care. Even the people who talk a lot about the middle east - tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed gets a lot more of their attention than hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
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Post by lordb on Sept 12, 2024 15:08:47 GMT
Seems like Russia shelled a Red Cross convoy. Volunteers are dead, according to the RC. 😢 Russians intentionally target civilians and aid workers all the time. Maybe the Red Cross will get more attention? Then again, in Syria the russians intentionally targeted civilian medical facilities and no one really seemed to care. Even the people who talk a lot about the middle east - tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed gets a lot more of their attention than hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Utter disaster for Syria but Obama's inertia re Syria has been a disaster for everyone Doubt Putin would have invaded Ukraine if US had acted in Syria
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 12, 2024 15:53:03 GMT
Seems like Russia shelled a Red Cross convoy. Volunteers are dead, according to the RC. 😢 Russians intentionally target civilians and aid workers all the time. Maybe the Red Cross will get more attention? Then again, in Syria the russians intentionally targeted civilian medical facilities and no one really seemed to care. Even the people who talk a lot about the middle east - tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed gets a lot more of their attention than hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Utter disaster for Syria but Obama's inertia re Syria has been a disaster for everyone Doubt Putin would have invaded Ukraine if US had acted in Syria I don't know if it would have stopped the Ukraine invasion but Obama was generally weak on Russia. It was a big fuckup, I remember him talking about red lines then doing almost nothing. What should he have done exactly? I don't remember which options were on the table.
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 12, 2024 15:54:59 GMT
Likely a good number of russian casualties here.
This is why I keep talking about logistics and things. People look at the maps and the media but journalists barely ever show how important this stuff is!
If Russia wants forces over the river in Kursk it has to set up bridges. Then Ukraine knows where the russians are going and can wait to hit them.
In Kharkiv where Russia is attacking I think Ukraine is ok with Russia staying in Vovchansk for now. Because every supply run is like 5 km on an open road or field and they get to blow up russians every day for the cost of a few cheap drones.
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Post by LDE76 on Sept 12, 2024 16:40:16 GMT
Likely a good number of russian casualties here. This is why I keep talking about logistics and things. People look at the maps and the media but journalists barely ever show how important this stuff is! If Russia wants forces over the river in Kursk it has to set up bridges. Then Ukraine knows where the russians are going and can wait to hit them. In Kharkiv where Russia is attacking I think Ukraine is ok with Russia staying in Vovchansk for now. Because every supply run is like 5 km on an open road or field and they get to blow up russians every day for the cost of a few cheap drones. Russian logistics are shit as it is. You only have to cast your mind back to the early days of the invasion, when armoured columns were running out of fuel on the road to Kyiv and millions of pounds worth of military hardware ended up getting nicked by Ukrainian farmers and their tractors. On top of that, I've read plenty of comments from British service personnel, serving and retired, and they're always perplexed by how the Russians have never, to this day, discovered or adopted palletisation. That's why you see loads of videos of young conscripts chucking live shells to one another off the backs of trucks, without an apparent care in the world. I think Trent Telenko, he of the cheap Chinese tyres fame, produced a long Twitter thread devoted to this subject.
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 12, 2024 18:41:34 GMT
The Trump campaign looks like trying to do as expected.
They want to force Ukrainian capitulation so their mass murdering dickhead ally can get a win. The plan includes giving Russia breathing room to rebuild and leaving Ukraine defenceless so Russia can finish the conquest later.
And of course that will means millions more desperate Ukrainian refugees flooding into Europe, including betrayed and angry young men, that will help pro-dictator parties in European elections.
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Post by gawa on Sept 12, 2024 18:57:44 GMT
During the fall of 2022, Western support for defending Ukraine was achieving results that few had thought possible. A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive had pushed Russia out of Kharkiv, and it was on the verge of being forced out of Kherson too.
The successes were so rousing that President Joe Biden began to worry about Russia getting desperate and the potential risk of a nuclear escalation. In private remarks at a fundraiser, Biden reportedly said that the risk of nuclear “armageddon” was the highest it had been since the Cuban missile crisis.
After news of the comments broke, 30 progressive Democrats issued a letter echoing Biden’s concerns and urging the administration to pair support for Ukraine’s successes with a “proactive diplomatic push” to seek a ceasefire. The signatories were unequivocal that they supported Biden’s commitment to Ukraine. A draft of the letter had even come in for criticism from the grassroots supports of diplomacy for its staunch support of sending billions in arms to Ukraine.
It all seemed very reasonable, especially amid talk of nuclear war.
The lawmakers were torn to shreds.
The mild-mannered letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus provoked wild political attacks, recriminations, and resignations. Factions of progressives, liberals, and Democrats feuded on Twitter. Headlines and talk shows took up the issue. The anti-diplomacy voices won the day: The letter would eventually be retracted, with its supporters taking a huge political hit.
Today, however, the war is stuck. The momentum has shifted. And tens of thousands more Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives. And even members of the foreign policy establishment are coming to realize it.
“I think it’s safe to say that Ukraine is unable to generate the combat capability needed to achieve military victory, and right now the momentum on the battlefield, despite Ukraine’s push into the Kursk region of Russia, favors Russia,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and international affairs professor at Georgetown University. “Because of that reality, I think that the Ukrainians themselves and Ukraine’s supporters in the West need to have truthful, even if painful, conversations about how to end this war sooner rather than later.”
In 2022, the progressives had been pilloried and cowed. Today, they look more prescient than ever.
At the time of its release, the CPC’s letter provoked a furious backlash. Washington’s foreign policy establishment, and even members of the progressives’ own party, melted down.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., went as far as to accuse his fellow House Democrats of offering an “olive branch to a war criminal who’s losing his war.”
Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official, said that progressives had just given “Republicans, the Kremlin and Russian propaganda networks an absolute gift with this letter.”
Joe Cirincione, a Washington national security analyst and figure in the progressive foreign policy world, called the letter an “incoherent mishmash of contradictory positions based on an outdated analysis of the war.”
“It was written when the war was stalemated, released when Ukraine is winning,” said Cirincione, who resigned from the Quincy Institute over the think tank’s call for diplomatic talks. “Of course the positions don’t make sense.”
Within 24 hours, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the caucus chair, withdrew the letter and issued a “clarification statement.” Other signatories acted like they were walking the letter back, though they were merely reiterating the unequivocal support for Ukraine’s defense that the letter itself had made clear. (Many of the lawmakers involved did not respond to my requests for comment.)
In a nearly 900-word statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blamed “unfortunate timing” and doubled down on the idea that the U.S. should help Ukraine fight until the end. “All champions of democracy over autocracy — whether they call themselves progressives, conservatives or liberals — should be doing whatever we can to ensure that Ukraine wins this just war as quickly as possible,” he said.
A few voices of reason emerged, as a few members of Congress held fast. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, were among the few who publicly defended their call for diplomacy. “History shows that silencing debate in Congress about matters of war and peace never ends well,” Khanna said at the time.
Even some former Obama officials were shocked by the response. Ben Rhodes criticized the “circular firing squad” against pro-diplomacy advocates on the left, saying there was “nothing objectionable in this letter whatsoever.”
Far from being an “outdated analysis,” as critics like Cirincione claimed, the letter’s strategy of using war successes to get a ceasefire seems today like it was far-sighted.
Since the ill-fated letter, the war has ground on — with devastating results for the people of Ukraine. Ukraine is not in a position to win the war, nor does it have a stronger bargaining position in talks than it did in late 2022 when the CPC letter came out.
A New York Times report in August cited U.S. officials estimating the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Ukraine has lost a fifth of its population to migration, and many able-bodied men have been killed, severely injured, or are currently fighting and out of the workforce. CNN reported this week that desertion is a major problem for Ukraine.
Despite the heavy toll, Ukraine lost territory to Russia over the course of 2023, and Russian advances have only gained steam since then.
Former CIA Russia analyst George Beebe said that the conflict has become a war of attrition, so Ukrainians are losing bargaining leverage by the day. “They’re going to need Western help” to strike a compromise settlement with Russia, he said, adding that it would take robust U.S. involvement.
Has it benefited Ukraine to keep fighting? “No, I don’t think so,” Beebe told me. “Actually, Ukraine has lost a lot more people. It is on a path toward becoming a failed state.”
Despite the criticisms, despite many of its members caving, the CPC letter had been on to something. Now, Washington is playing catch-up, with Ukraine bearing the brunt of the lack of U.S. foresight and no one standing to gain as much as empowered Vladimir Putin.
Though the controversy around the CPC letter was almost immediately memory-holed, it would only be a few weeks before it started to look like pro-diplomacy advocates would eventually be vindicated.
A Washington Post report revealed that the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine to show that it’s open to negotiations. Gen. Mark Milley, the since-retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the growing group of people advocating for diplomacy to end the war. Citing the lesson of World War I, where the failure to negotiate led to millions of unnecessary deaths, Milley called on Russia and Ukraine to “seize the moment” and consider peace talks that winter.
For all the purportedly pro-Ukraine motivations behind the meltdown over the ceasefire letter, it is Ukrainians themselves who have most acutely felt the pain of continued war.
Many Ukrainians seem to understand this better than backers in Washington: Ukraine’s government reportedly charged nearly 19,000 soldiers with abandoning their positions in just the first four months of 2024. The same could be said for conscripted Russians forced to serve under Putin’s authoritarian drive to win the war.
“There are no protections for conscientious objectors in Ukraine or in Russia through this war,” said Bridget Moix, the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a progressive group that supports diplomacy. “We have to look at how we can support other ways to end this war, other ways to protect civilians, other ways to find a solution out of the violence now. We’re in a cycle of persistent violence that’s costing tremendous lives on both sides.”
Though Ukrainian and American leaders have come to terms with Ukraine’s reduced negotiating leverage, Washington national security elites have not reckoned with the stances they took earlier in the war. After experiencing what former State Department official-turned-commentator Tommy Vietor called a “strangely vicious controversy,” former proponents of diplomacy are now steering clear of the topic.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., one of the CPC members who signed the initial 2022 letter, disavowed it in October of that year.
“Timing in diplomacy is everything. I signed this letter on June 30, but a lot has changed since then. I wouldn’t sign it today,” Jacobs wrote on X. “We have to continue supporting Ukraine economically and militarily to give them the leverage they need to end this war.”
Today, asked if Jacobs stands by her decision to withdraw support for the letter, her office replied, “Decisions about if and when to negotiate an end to this war are up to Ukraine. I have and will continue to support Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.”
For some experts, there was a missed opportunity to stand firm behind the letter.
“That was the moment to just sort of say, ‘OK, let’s split the baby here, and you’re going to be able to get this, and we’re going to be able to walk away and not have our infrastructure destroyed,’” said Keith Darden, a comparative politics professor at American University and Russia–Ukraine expert. “If you think about the destruction that’s been visited on Ukraine, both just sheer death toll and in the destruction of the power grid and infrastructure since that time, the fall of 2022, it’s just really tragic that there wasn’t more of a push made then.”
The negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in the early weeks of the Russian invasion — which were held predominantly in Turkey — were another chance to end the war, Darden said. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine had agreed on the outlines of a tentative agreement to halt the conflict. The U.S. and U.K. governments, however, worked to sabotage the deal and prolong the war, according to multiple reports.
By May 2022, Ukrainska Pravda, a pro-Western Ukrainian outlet, reported that former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the West would not support a peace deal even if Ukraine was ready to sign one. The West, Johnson said, preferred to fight Putin because he was less powerful than they thought.
“We always say that it’s for the Ukrainians to decide, but really we make Ukrainian decisions possible by our support,” Darden said. “Without our support, Ukrainians wouldn’t be in a position to make decisions — these things would be forced on them by Russian victory.”
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 12, 2024 19:00:13 GMT
Russian anti-ship missile hit a civilian grain ship.
The "standard" guidance for that missile is to hit the single biggest target it spots in terminal approach. So it's not clear if that ship was the precise target, but the russians know these missiles constantly hit civilian targets.
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Post by plug on Sept 12, 2024 21:03:33 GMT
During the fall of 2022, Western support for defending Ukraine was achieving results that few had thought possible. A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive had pushed Russia out of Kharkiv, and it was on the verge of being forced out of Kherson too.
The successes were so rousing that President Joe Biden began to worry about Russia getting desperate and the potential risk of a nuclear escalation. In private remarks at a fundraiser, Biden reportedly said that the risk of nuclear “armageddon” was the highest it had been since the Cuban missile crisis.
After news of the comments broke, 30 progressive Democrats issued a letter echoing Biden’s concerns and urging the administration to pair support for Ukraine’s successes with a “proactive diplomatic push” to seek a ceasefire. The signatories were unequivocal that they supported Biden’s commitment to Ukraine. A draft of the letter had even come in for criticism from the grassroots supports of diplomacy for its staunch support of sending billions in arms to Ukraine.
It all seemed very reasonable, especially amid talk of nuclear war.
The lawmakers were torn to shreds.
The mild-mannered letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus provoked wild political attacks, recriminations, and resignations. Factions of progressives, liberals, and Democrats feuded on Twitter. Headlines and talk shows took up the issue. The anti-diplomacy voices won the day: The letter would eventually be retracted, with its supporters taking a huge political hit.
Today, however, the war is stuck. The momentum has shifted. And tens of thousands more Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives. And even members of the foreign policy establishment are coming to realize it.
“I think it’s safe to say that Ukraine is unable to generate the combat capability needed to achieve military victory, and right now the momentum on the battlefield, despite Ukraine’s push into the Kursk region of Russia, favors Russia,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and international affairs professor at Georgetown University. “Because of that reality, I think that the Ukrainians themselves and Ukraine’s supporters in the West need to have truthful, even if painful, conversations about how to end this war sooner rather than later.”
In 2022, the progressives had been pilloried and cowed. Today, they look more prescient than ever.
At the time of its release, the CPC’s letter provoked a furious backlash. Washington’s foreign policy establishment, and even members of the progressives’ own party, melted down.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., went as far as to accuse his fellow House Democrats of offering an “olive branch to a war criminal who’s losing his war.”
Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official, said that progressives had just given “Republicans, the Kremlin and Russian propaganda networks an absolute gift with this letter.”
Joe Cirincione, a Washington national security analyst and figure in the progressive foreign policy world, called the letter an “incoherent mishmash of contradictory positions based on an outdated analysis of the war.”
“It was written when the war was stalemated, released when Ukraine is winning,” said Cirincione, who resigned from the Quincy Institute over the think tank’s call for diplomatic talks. “Of course the positions don’t make sense.”
Within 24 hours, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the caucus chair, withdrew the letter and issued a “clarification statement.” Other signatories acted like they were walking the letter back, though they were merely reiterating the unequivocal support for Ukraine’s defense that the letter itself had made clear. (Many of the lawmakers involved did not respond to my requests for comment.)
In a nearly 900-word statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blamed “unfortunate timing” and doubled down on the idea that the U.S. should help Ukraine fight until the end. “All champions of democracy over autocracy — whether they call themselves progressives, conservatives or liberals — should be doing whatever we can to ensure that Ukraine wins this just war as quickly as possible,” he said.
A few voices of reason emerged, as a few members of Congress held fast. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, were among the few who publicly defended their call for diplomacy. “History shows that silencing debate in Congress about matters of war and peace never ends well,” Khanna said at the time.
Even some former Obama officials were shocked by the response. Ben Rhodes criticized the “circular firing squad” against pro-diplomacy advocates on the left, saying there was “nothing objectionable in this letter whatsoever.”
Far from being an “outdated analysis,” as critics like Cirincione claimed, the letter’s strategy of using war successes to get a ceasefire seems today like it was far-sighted.
Since the ill-fated letter, the war has ground on — with devastating results for the people of Ukraine. Ukraine is not in a position to win the war, nor does it have a stronger bargaining position in talks than it did in late 2022 when the CPC letter came out.
A New York Times report in August cited U.S. officials estimating the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Ukraine has lost a fifth of its population to migration, and many able-bodied men have been killed, severely injured, or are currently fighting and out of the workforce. CNN reported this week that desertion is a major problem for Ukraine.
Despite the heavy toll, Ukraine lost territory to Russia over the course of 2023, and Russian advances have only gained steam since then.
Former CIA Russia analyst George Beebe said that the conflict has become a war of attrition, so Ukrainians are losing bargaining leverage by the day. “They’re going to need Western help” to strike a compromise settlement with Russia, he said, adding that it would take robust U.S. involvement.
Has it benefited Ukraine to keep fighting? “No, I don’t think so,” Beebe told me. “Actually, Ukraine has lost a lot more people. It is on a path toward becoming a failed state.”
Despite the criticisms, despite many of its members caving, the CPC letter had been on to something. Now, Washington is playing catch-up, with Ukraine bearing the brunt of the lack of U.S. foresight and no one standing to gain as much as empowered Vladimir Putin.
Though the controversy around the CPC letter was almost immediately memory-holed, it would only be a few weeks before it started to look like pro-diplomacy advocates would eventually be vindicated.
A Washington Post report revealed that the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine to show that it’s open to negotiations. Gen. Mark Milley, the since-retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the growing group of people advocating for diplomacy to end the war. Citing the lesson of World War I, where the failure to negotiate led to millions of unnecessary deaths, Milley called on Russia and Ukraine to “seize the moment” and consider peace talks that winter.
For all the purportedly pro-Ukraine motivations behind the meltdown over the ceasefire letter, it is Ukrainians themselves who have most acutely felt the pain of continued war.
Many Ukrainians seem to understand this better than backers in Washington: Ukraine’s government reportedly charged nearly 19,000 soldiers with abandoning their positions in just the first four months of 2024. The same could be said for conscripted Russians forced to serve under Putin’s authoritarian drive to win the war.
“There are no protections for conscientious objectors in Ukraine or in Russia through this war,” said Bridget Moix, the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a progressive group that supports diplomacy. “We have to look at how we can support other ways to end this war, other ways to protect civilians, other ways to find a solution out of the violence now. We’re in a cycle of persistent violence that’s costing tremendous lives on both sides.”
Though Ukrainian and American leaders have come to terms with Ukraine’s reduced negotiating leverage, Washington national security elites have not reckoned with the stances they took earlier in the war. After experiencing what former State Department official-turned-commentator Tommy Vietor called a “strangely vicious controversy,” former proponents of diplomacy are now steering clear of the topic.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., one of the CPC members who signed the initial 2022 letter, disavowed it in October of that year.
“Timing in diplomacy is everything. I signed this letter on June 30, but a lot has changed since then. I wouldn’t sign it today,” Jacobs wrote on X. “We have to continue supporting Ukraine economically and militarily to give them the leverage they need to end this war.”
Today, asked if Jacobs stands by her decision to withdraw support for the letter, her office replied, “Decisions about if and when to negotiate an end to this war are up to Ukraine. I have and will continue to support Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.”
For some experts, there was a missed opportunity to stand firm behind the letter.
“That was the moment to just sort of say, ‘OK, let’s split the baby here, and you’re going to be able to get this, and we’re going to be able to walk away and not have our infrastructure destroyed,’” said Keith Darden, a comparative politics professor at American University and Russia–Ukraine expert. “If you think about the destruction that’s been visited on Ukraine, both just sheer death toll and in the destruction of the power grid and infrastructure since that time, the fall of 2022, it’s just really tragic that there wasn’t more of a push made then.”
The negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in the early weeks of the Russian invasion — which were held predominantly in Turkey — were another chance to end the war, Darden said. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine had agreed on the outlines of a tentative agreement to halt the conflict. The U.S. and U.K. governments, however, worked to sabotage the deal and prolong the war, according to multiple reports.
By May 2022, Ukrainska Pravda, a pro-Western Ukrainian outlet, reported that former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the West would not support a peace deal even if Ukraine was ready to sign one. The West, Johnson said, preferred to fight Putin because he was less powerful than they thought.
“We always say that it’s for the Ukrainians to decide, but really we make Ukrainian decisions possible by our support,” Darden said. “Without our support, Ukrainians wouldn’t be in a position to make decisions — these things would be forced on them by Russian victory.”
Theoretical question, Gawa. What would your reaction be if Israel, after negotiations, agreed to a ceasefire tomorrow? Caveats being Israel will retain Gaza and whatever of the West Bank they are in control of and absorb this land into a larger Israel. They'll stop bombing the shit out the bits they don't control, and they won't harm any of the residents remaining in their new territories, honest guv. The bits they leave to the Palestinians must then agree not to sign any treaties with other states that may offer them protection from future attacks, basically leaving them vulnerable when Israel decides it wants a bit more land. Do you imagine a majority of Palestinians, who may have lost a lot of their family during the conflict, being happy with such an agreement for the sake of 'peace'? Nobody actually wants war, apart from a few particularly evil bastards who happen to be in charge, but if I were a citizen of one of those countries, I wouldn't expect us just to roll over. And nor should they, despite terrible cost. Sorry, not meaning to derail the thread, just finding your arguments very conflicting and confusing.
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Post by gawa on Sept 12, 2024 21:41:31 GMT
During the fall of 2022, Western support for defending Ukraine was achieving results that few had thought possible. A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive had pushed Russia out of Kharkiv, and it was on the verge of being forced out of Kherson too.
The successes were so rousing that President Joe Biden began to worry about Russia getting desperate and the potential risk of a nuclear escalation. In private remarks at a fundraiser, Biden reportedly said that the risk of nuclear “armageddon” was the highest it had been since the Cuban missile crisis.
After news of the comments broke, 30 progressive Democrats issued a letter echoing Biden’s concerns and urging the administration to pair support for Ukraine’s successes with a “proactive diplomatic push” to seek a ceasefire. The signatories were unequivocal that they supported Biden’s commitment to Ukraine. A draft of the letter had even come in for criticism from the grassroots supports of diplomacy for its staunch support of sending billions in arms to Ukraine.
It all seemed very reasonable, especially amid talk of nuclear war.
The lawmakers were torn to shreds.
The mild-mannered letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus provoked wild political attacks, recriminations, and resignations. Factions of progressives, liberals, and Democrats feuded on Twitter. Headlines and talk shows took up the issue. The anti-diplomacy voices won the day: The letter would eventually be retracted, with its supporters taking a huge political hit.
Today, however, the war is stuck. The momentum has shifted. And tens of thousands more Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives. And even members of the foreign policy establishment are coming to realize it.
“I think it’s safe to say that Ukraine is unable to generate the combat capability needed to achieve military victory, and right now the momentum on the battlefield, despite Ukraine’s push into the Kursk region of Russia, favors Russia,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and international affairs professor at Georgetown University. “Because of that reality, I think that the Ukrainians themselves and Ukraine’s supporters in the West need to have truthful, even if painful, conversations about how to end this war sooner rather than later.”
In 2022, the progressives had been pilloried and cowed. Today, they look more prescient than ever.
At the time of its release, the CPC’s letter provoked a furious backlash. Washington’s foreign policy establishment, and even members of the progressives’ own party, melted down.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., went as far as to accuse his fellow House Democrats of offering an “olive branch to a war criminal who’s losing his war.”
Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official, said that progressives had just given “Republicans, the Kremlin and Russian propaganda networks an absolute gift with this letter.”
Joe Cirincione, a Washington national security analyst and figure in the progressive foreign policy world, called the letter an “incoherent mishmash of contradictory positions based on an outdated analysis of the war.”
“It was written when the war was stalemated, released when Ukraine is winning,” said Cirincione, who resigned from the Quincy Institute over the think tank’s call for diplomatic talks. “Of course the positions don’t make sense.”
Within 24 hours, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the caucus chair, withdrew the letter and issued a “clarification statement.” Other signatories acted like they were walking the letter back, though they were merely reiterating the unequivocal support for Ukraine’s defense that the letter itself had made clear. (Many of the lawmakers involved did not respond to my requests for comment.)
In a nearly 900-word statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blamed “unfortunate timing” and doubled down on the idea that the U.S. should help Ukraine fight until the end. “All champions of democracy over autocracy — whether they call themselves progressives, conservatives or liberals — should be doing whatever we can to ensure that Ukraine wins this just war as quickly as possible,” he said.
A few voices of reason emerged, as a few members of Congress held fast. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, were among the few who publicly defended their call for diplomacy. “History shows that silencing debate in Congress about matters of war and peace never ends well,” Khanna said at the time.
Even some former Obama officials were shocked by the response. Ben Rhodes criticized the “circular firing squad” against pro-diplomacy advocates on the left, saying there was “nothing objectionable in this letter whatsoever.”
Far from being an “outdated analysis,” as critics like Cirincione claimed, the letter’s strategy of using war successes to get a ceasefire seems today like it was far-sighted.
Since the ill-fated letter, the war has ground on — with devastating results for the people of Ukraine. Ukraine is not in a position to win the war, nor does it have a stronger bargaining position in talks than it did in late 2022 when the CPC letter came out.
A New York Times report in August cited U.S. officials estimating the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Ukraine has lost a fifth of its population to migration, and many able-bodied men have been killed, severely injured, or are currently fighting and out of the workforce. CNN reported this week that desertion is a major problem for Ukraine.
Despite the heavy toll, Ukraine lost territory to Russia over the course of 2023, and Russian advances have only gained steam since then.
Former CIA Russia analyst George Beebe said that the conflict has become a war of attrition, so Ukrainians are losing bargaining leverage by the day. “They’re going to need Western help” to strike a compromise settlement with Russia, he said, adding that it would take robust U.S. involvement.
Has it benefited Ukraine to keep fighting? “No, I don’t think so,” Beebe told me. “Actually, Ukraine has lost a lot more people. It is on a path toward becoming a failed state.”
Despite the criticisms, despite many of its members caving, the CPC letter had been on to something. Now, Washington is playing catch-up, with Ukraine bearing the brunt of the lack of U.S. foresight and no one standing to gain as much as empowered Vladimir Putin.
Though the controversy around the CPC letter was almost immediately memory-holed, it would only be a few weeks before it started to look like pro-diplomacy advocates would eventually be vindicated.
A Washington Post report revealed that the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine to show that it’s open to negotiations. Gen. Mark Milley, the since-retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the growing group of people advocating for diplomacy to end the war. Citing the lesson of World War I, where the failure to negotiate led to millions of unnecessary deaths, Milley called on Russia and Ukraine to “seize the moment” and consider peace talks that winter.
For all the purportedly pro-Ukraine motivations behind the meltdown over the ceasefire letter, it is Ukrainians themselves who have most acutely felt the pain of continued war.
Many Ukrainians seem to understand this better than backers in Washington: Ukraine’s government reportedly charged nearly 19,000 soldiers with abandoning their positions in just the first four months of 2024. The same could be said for conscripted Russians forced to serve under Putin’s authoritarian drive to win the war.
“There are no protections for conscientious objectors in Ukraine or in Russia through this war,” said Bridget Moix, the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a progressive group that supports diplomacy. “We have to look at how we can support other ways to end this war, other ways to protect civilians, other ways to find a solution out of the violence now. We’re in a cycle of persistent violence that’s costing tremendous lives on both sides.”
Though Ukrainian and American leaders have come to terms with Ukraine’s reduced negotiating leverage, Washington national security elites have not reckoned with the stances they took earlier in the war. After experiencing what former State Department official-turned-commentator Tommy Vietor called a “strangely vicious controversy,” former proponents of diplomacy are now steering clear of the topic.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., one of the CPC members who signed the initial 2022 letter, disavowed it in October of that year.
“Timing in diplomacy is everything. I signed this letter on June 30, but a lot has changed since then. I wouldn’t sign it today,” Jacobs wrote on X. “We have to continue supporting Ukraine economically and militarily to give them the leverage they need to end this war.”
Today, asked if Jacobs stands by her decision to withdraw support for the letter, her office replied, “Decisions about if and when to negotiate an end to this war are up to Ukraine. I have and will continue to support Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.”
For some experts, there was a missed opportunity to stand firm behind the letter.
“That was the moment to just sort of say, ‘OK, let’s split the baby here, and you’re going to be able to get this, and we’re going to be able to walk away and not have our infrastructure destroyed,’” said Keith Darden, a comparative politics professor at American University and Russia–Ukraine expert. “If you think about the destruction that’s been visited on Ukraine, both just sheer death toll and in the destruction of the power grid and infrastructure since that time, the fall of 2022, it’s just really tragic that there wasn’t more of a push made then.”
The negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in the early weeks of the Russian invasion — which were held predominantly in Turkey — were another chance to end the war, Darden said. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine had agreed on the outlines of a tentative agreement to halt the conflict. The U.S. and U.K. governments, however, worked to sabotage the deal and prolong the war, according to multiple reports.
By May 2022, Ukrainska Pravda, a pro-Western Ukrainian outlet, reported that former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the West would not support a peace deal even if Ukraine was ready to sign one. The West, Johnson said, preferred to fight Putin because he was less powerful than they thought.
“We always say that it’s for the Ukrainians to decide, but really we make Ukrainian decisions possible by our support,” Darden said. “Without our support, Ukrainians wouldn’t be in a position to make decisions — these things would be forced on them by Russian victory.”
Theoretical question, Gawa. What would your reaction be if Israel, after negotiations, agreed to a ceasefire tomorrow? Caveats being Israel will retain Gaza and whatever of the West Bank they are in control of and absorb this land into a larger Israel. They'll stop bombing the shit out the bits they don't control, and they won't harm any of the residents remaining in their new territories, honest guv. The bits they leave to the Palestinians must then agree not to sign any treaties with other states that may offer them protection from future attacks, basically leaving them vulnerable when Israel decides it wants a bit more land. Do you imagine a majority of Palestinians, who may have lost a lot of their family during the conflict, being happy with such an agreement for the sake of 'peace'? Nobody actually wants war, apart from a few particularly evil bastards who happen to be in charge, but if I were a citizen of one of those countries, I wouldn't expect us just to roll over. And nor should they, despite terrible cost. Sorry, not meaning to derail the thread, just finding your arguments very conflicting and confusing. It's all good mate. I know my views are a minority and quite controrian on this topic so I don't expect people to agree. I don't really follow the day to day military stuff to the same extent as most of you and I'm not going to claim to be an expert on day to day conflict. Ultimately though I want peace first and foremost and hopefully lasting peace with that. I obviously disagree with your example but I don't want to go off on too big a tangent here either. For example the palestines living in Palestine would vote to keep it Palestine. In Crimea I don't think we can say with the same certainty they'd vote Ukraine. If a peace deal was found were Ukraine returned to its originally borders and the people in those regions all voted to stay in Ukraine I'd support that too. The world feels incredibly tense right now since covid. This doesn't need to escalate and result in a load of needless deaths.
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Post by scfcno1fan on Sept 13, 2024 6:03:16 GMT
It looks like an agreement will be reached over the weekend and announced towards the end of the month on Ukraine using NATO made long range missiles inside Ukraine.
What is anticipated to be Putins response to this?
Will he attack inside NATOs borders.
He’s upped his rhetoric before and not changed much, but this feels different.
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Post by hcstokie on Sept 13, 2024 6:31:35 GMT
It looks like an agreement will be reached over the weekend and announced towards the end of the month on Ukraine using NATO made long range missiles inside Ukraine. What is anticipated to be Putins response to this? Will he attack inside NATOs borders. He’s upped his rhetoric before and not changed much, but this feels different. The same as always……we know what our red lines are, they know what our red lines are, we have nukes targeting all major western cities, etc. Then nothing will happen.
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Post by emretezzy on Sept 13, 2024 6:52:53 GMT
It looks like an agreement will be reached over the weekend and announced towards the end of the month on Ukraine using NATO made long range missiles inside Ukraine. What is anticipated to be Putins response to this? Will he attack inside NATOs borders. He’s upped his rhetoric before and not changed much, but this feels different. He'd do absolutely fuck all. Sooner we authorise this the better.
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Post by lordb on Sept 13, 2024 8:58:36 GMT
It looks like an agreement will be reached over the weekend and announced towards the end of the month on Ukraine using NATO made long range missiles inside Ukraine. What is anticipated to be Putins response to this? Will he attack inside NATOs borders. He’s upped his rhetoric before and not changed much, but this feels different. Russia is stretched to the limit militarily,he can't attack anywhere else unless he uses nukes which he won't do However he will probably opt for increase in nefarious acts of terrorism in Europe, more hacking and so on
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Post by gawa on Sept 13, 2024 9:07:17 GMT
It looks like an agreement will be reached over the weekend and announced towards the end of the month on Ukraine using NATO made long range missiles inside Ukraine. What is anticipated to be Putins response to this? Will he attack inside NATOs borders. He’s upped his rhetoric before and not changed much, but this feels different. Russia is stretched to the limit militarily,he can't attack anywhere else unless he uses nukes which he won't do However he will probably opt for increase in nefarious acts of terrorism in Europe, more hacking and so on Can we be confident he won't use nukes if pushed into a corner? This could be Russias version of Hiroshimi. They won't be the first to nuke civillians.
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Post by plug on Sept 13, 2024 11:10:41 GMT
Theoretical question, Gawa. What would your reaction be if Israel, after negotiations, agreed to a ceasefire tomorrow? Caveats being Israel will retain Gaza and whatever of the West Bank they are in control of and absorb this land into a larger Israel. They'll stop bombing the shit out the bits they don't control, and they won't harm any of the residents remaining in their new territories, honest guv. The bits they leave to the Palestinians must then agree not to sign any treaties with other states that may offer them protection from future attacks, basically leaving them vulnerable when Israel decides it wants a bit more land. Do you imagine a majority of Palestinians, who may have lost a lot of their family during the conflict, being happy with such an agreement for the sake of 'peace'? Nobody actually wants war, apart from a few particularly evil bastards who happen to be in charge, but if I were a citizen of one of those countries, I wouldn't expect us just to roll over. And nor should they, despite terrible cost. Sorry, not meaning to derail the thread, just finding your arguments very conflicting and confusing. It's all good mate. I know my views are a minority and quite controrian on this topic so I don't expect people to agree. I don't really follow the day to day military stuff to the same extent as most of you and I'm not going to claim to be an expert on day to day conflict. Ultimately though I want peace first and foremost and hopefully lasting peace with that. I obviously disagree with your example but I don't want to go off on too big a tangent here either. For example the palestines living in Palestine would vote to keep it Palestine. In Crimea I don't think we can say with the same certainty they'd vote Ukraine. If a peace deal was found were Ukraine returned to its originally borders and the people in those regions all voted to stay in Ukraine I'd support that too. The world feels incredibly tense right now since covid. This doesn't need to escalate and result in a load of needless deaths. Thanks for the reply mate, but I'm not sure how much choice the people of Crimea or the other annexed regions have. There was plenty of footage during the referendum of people voting with a Russian soldier looking over there shoulder, or two of three heavily armed turning up at someones house with voting slips. It's hard to tell, but the sooner it's over, the better.
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Post by scfcno1fan on Sept 13, 2024 11:46:57 GMT
I also see Biden will allow Ukraine to use our long distance missiles. Not theirs.
Cheers Joe!
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Post by salopstick on Sept 13, 2024 12:01:13 GMT
Is Putin the last russian of the KGB era with the potential to be a mad fucking russian, so when he dies/killed he will be replaced by someone not intent on causing war? Or does he have a line of potential sucessors lined up
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Post by wagsastokie on Sept 13, 2024 12:12:51 GMT
Personally I think what’s stopping the yanks allowing there long range missiles to be used
Is not how putins going to react It’s who’s going to replace him
if simultaneously the Ukrainians took out a couple of dozen refineries and storage depots a few airfields and weapon dumps all inside Russia then putin will be falling out of a window rather quickly
The Americans are a great believer in better the devil you know
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Post by lordb on Sept 13, 2024 12:21:36 GMT
Russia is stretched to the limit militarily,he can't attack anywhere else unless he uses nukes which he won't do However he will probably opt for increase in nefarious acts of terrorism in Europe, more hacking and so on Can we be confident he won't use nukes if pushed into a corner? This could be Russias version of Hiroshimi. They won't be the first to nuke civillians. Yes because for all his faults he's not actually deranged
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Post by OldStokie on Sept 13, 2024 12:25:41 GMT
Putin says that if UKR are supplied with those long range weapons then he will take it that he'll be at war with NATO. WTF does he think has been happening since he invaded UKR two years ago? UKR should be supplied with and allowed to use those long range weapons with the proviso that they should only be used against Russia's military machine and include attacking the power infrastructure just as Russia is attacking UKR ones. Let a few Russian civilians freeze to death as will happen to Ukrainian civilians this coming winter.
OS.
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Post by hcstokie on Sept 13, 2024 12:41:04 GMT
Personally I think what’s stopping the yanks allowing there long range missiles to be used Is not how putins going to react It’s who’s going to replace him if simultaneously the Ukrainians took out a couple of dozen refineries and storage depots a few airfields and weapon dumps all inside Russia then putin will be falling out of a window rather quickly The Americans are a great believer in better the devil you know Tell that to Sadam Hussein and Gadafi.
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Post by gawa on Sept 13, 2024 13:21:26 GMT
It's all good mate. I know my views are a minority and quite controrian on this topic so I don't expect people to agree. I don't really follow the day to day military stuff to the same extent as most of you and I'm not going to claim to be an expert on day to day conflict. Ultimately though I want peace first and foremost and hopefully lasting peace with that. I obviously disagree with your example but I don't want to go off on too big a tangent here either. For example the palestines living in Palestine would vote to keep it Palestine. In Crimea I don't think we can say with the same certainty they'd vote Ukraine. If a peace deal was found were Ukraine returned to its originally borders and the people in those regions all voted to stay in Ukraine I'd support that too. The world feels incredibly tense right now since covid. This doesn't need to escalate and result in a load of needless deaths. Thanks for the reply mate, but I'm not sure how much choice the people of Crimea or the other annexed regions have. There was plenty of footage during the referendum of people voting with a Russian soldier looking over there shoulder, or two of three heavily armed turning up at someones house with voting slips. It's hard to tell, but the sooner it's over, the better. I dont trust the poll done under annexation as 97% seems far too high. Any form of vote would need to be done under supervision from both sides. I personally believe the US/EU/UK and Russia are all interfering in Ukraine for their own benefits rather than due to a deep care for the people. I know some may dispute this but I don't think the reporting is impartial either and i think that our media reports from a "Ukraine most win at all costs" perspective. I don't agree with Russias annexation of Crimea. I don't agree with John McCain and other Western officials rallying people at rallys against a democraticly elected government. The West assisted a coup because they didn't get the result they wanted. Russia assisted an annexation because they didn't agree with the coup. And now lots of Ukranians keep dying over what? Western and Russian interests. When the democratically elected president of Ukraine stalled negotiations with the EU, I believe it was because economically at the time the deal wasn't great for Ukraine. And any benefits from the trade deal would also be lost through loss of trade with cis nations. Russia offering a 15 billion loan with no conditions compared to the IMF with austerity conditions was the straw which broke the camels back. Some may see that as caving unto Russian pressure or them exerting influence, maybe they were. But what was the alternative? These conditions proposed by the IMF on receipt of a loan? 1. Reduction of Energy Subsidies: One of the most significant demands was to cut subsidies for natural gas, which the Ukrainian government provided to households at prices much lower than market rates. This measure was aimed at reducing the government's fiscal deficit, but it would have led to a substantial increase in utility prices for citizens, making it highly unpopular.
2. Fiscal Consolidation: The IMF called for reducing the budget deficit through spending cuts and tax reforms. This could involve cutting public sector wages, pensions, and other social spending, as well as increasing taxes in some areas.
3. Currency Devaluation: The IMF suggested that Ukraine allow its currency, the hryvnia, to float more freely, which would likely lead to a devaluation. While this could make Ukrainian exports more competitive, it would also increase the cost of imports and reduce purchasing power for citizens.
4.Banking and Financial Sector Reforms: The IMF pushed for reforms in Ukraine’s banking sector to improve oversight, enhance transparency, and strengthen the financial system.
5. Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: The IMF often advocates for privatization as a way to improve efficiency in the economy. In Ukraine’s case, this likely involved selling off or reforming inefficient state-owned enterprises to reduce government expenditures.
6. Pension and Labor Market Reforms: The IMF proposed changes to the pension system to make it more sustainable, possibly by raising the retirement age and reducing pension benefits. It also called for labor market reforms to enhance flexibility and improve employment rates.
I don't believe we are involved because we care about human rights. We are helping two of the biggest human rights abusers bomb countries at will (Israel and Saudi). So in my cynical opinion it's simply about the west doing what benefits them rather than acting in Ukraines best interests. And the same goes for Russia. There's no right answers though and some think different solutions are better
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Post by adri2008 on Sept 13, 2024 13:33:41 GMT
Is Putin the last russian of the KGB era with the potential to be a mad fucking russian, so when he dies/killed he will be replaced by someone not intent on causing war? Or does he have a line of potential sucessors lined up Plenty of much worse options - the drunken Medvedev springs to mind. I don't think its really in the West's interests for Putin to be toppled, they just want him weakened.
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Post by lawrieleslie on Sept 13, 2024 13:56:06 GMT
Is Putin the last russian of the KGB era with the potential to be a mad fucking russian, so when he dies/killed he will be replaced by someone not intent on causing war? Or does he have a line of potential sucessors lined up Plenty of much worse options - the drunken Medvedev springs to mind. I don't think its really in the West's interests for Putin to be toppled, they just want him weakened. Not sure of this "plenty of much worse options" though. The likes of Medvedev, Lavrov, Shoigu, Gerasimov etc could all be in fear of their jobs or lives if they don’t toe the party line regarding Ukraine.
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Post by mtrstudent on Sept 13, 2024 14:54:53 GMT
I'm busy moving flats but noticed that Russia raised their official interest rate to 19% today.
Last week they took on over $1 billion in new debt to fund the war and have announced they need to speed up how much they're borrowing.
About a third of their loans were 16% interest but for 15 years. The rest are adjustable rate but they sold them at a special discount so they're on course to be 20% interest next year.
Obviously Russia's fucked if it has to keep up the current war intensity. That's why Putin's ally Trump will try to force a Ukrainian surrender and do what he can to slow things down. So that Russia can afford to rebuild and conquer Ukraine next time.
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