[starkd]

Yeah, noticed "walks back". He just said he is now "unsure". Why did he say it in the first place? Sounds like the US put the squeeze on him, so he "walked it back". Nevertheless, there was SOMETHING on the table that could have been the basis for talks. They ruled it out of hand.

Business Insider is a rag, not credible.

[mopsi]

His words were initially taken out of context; he meant that allies stopped pressuring Ukraine into a peace deal after mass graves were uncovered in Bucha. That's the only source for this conspiracy theory.

It goes against your whole narrative of how the US is forcing Ukraine into a war.

[starkd]

There was still a basis on which talks could have been opened up. The fact they were entirely nixed shows they are not interested.

200,000 Ukrainian deaths when they can't even define what victory looks like beyond slogans. They are trying to fight a war on the cheap so long as no American casualties happen, but they are perfectly fine so long as they are Ukrainian casualties. At least, they could at least define what victory looks like and provide the means to do so.

[jcranmer]

> There was still a basis on which talks could have been opened up. The fact they were entirely nixed shows they are not interested.

It is important to note that the party least interested in a workable peace deal at this point is Russia. After all, they annexed last October a large swath of Ukrainian territory in such a rushed manner they couldn't even properly explain what they annexed. Given that Russia seems uninterested in any peace deal which does not include Russian annexation of at least some portions of Ukraine, any argument that what Russia really cared about was NATO enlargement is laughably incorrect.

[mopsi]

There's nothing to negotiate at this point. Either Russia moves its guns and tanks and soldiers out of the whole Ukraine like they retreated from around Kharkiv, or Russia gets defeated on the battlefield. Anything else would leave Ukrainians in occupied territories to be wiped out by Russians. Russian hopes of a favorable peace deal is nothing but a coping mechanism, just like top Nazis hoped to reach a peace deal in 1945. Better prepare your cyanide pill.

[starkd]

And that completely ignores how the world really works. You are perfectly content to risk WWIII. It is not 1945 anymore. You are risking a nuclear conflict that would be absolutely horrific.

[mopsi]

What difference would a nuclear strike make anymore, several Ukranian cities have already been hit with more TNT equivalent than Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wiped from the earth: https://twitter.com/OstapYarysh/status/1632282407578611712

[yesenadam]

Geez, that is just chilling, horrifying.