[whoswho]

For people who are interested in this, you might want to follow the Ukraine-Russian war and see some “combat” footage. It’s much different than anything of the past. Lots of drones dropping bombs on unsuspecting soldiers. Many don’t even see any real combat action. They go there, sit in a field somewhere, get their legs blown off by a drone, and have to be evacuated. Gruesome depiction - what war is all about.

[jauntywundrkind]

The WELL's 2024 state of the world with Jon Lebkowsky & sci-fi personage Bruce Sterling has quite the rundown on this war. Part of it is the drone warfare, but the imagery of Russia sending endless hordes of people into slaughter for no good reason (other than to maybe perhaps reveal some targets to fire artillery/missiles at) is crazy wild. https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/540/Bruce-St...

[ceejayoz]

30 injured is a lot more likely to be something like a Shahed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136). More cruise missile than quadcopter.

[303uru]

It is very interesting to watch. I’m no prepper but sure has me thinking a stockpile of DJIs would be more useful than a stocked gun safe.

[ganeshkrishnan]

We could have prevented at least a million Russian/Ukrainian deaths when the peace accord in Istanbul was nearly ratified. Then Boris Johnson marched in and scuttled the peace process.

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms Ukraine’s top negotiator confirms US-UK sabotaged peace deal with Russia

Now with this drone attack and likes of Lindsey frothing at the mouth for one more war, I am not sure how long and how many wars the empire can wage at the same time. But I guess we are about to find out.

[ceejayoz]

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-offered-end-war-if-ukraine-d...

Doesn't sound like much sabotaging was necessary.

> Arakhamia said changing Ukraine's intentions to join NATO would require an amendment to the country's constitution since Kyiv's parliament voted to adopt an amendment in February 2019 that stated Ukraine's goal of becoming a member of both NATO and the European Union. Arakhamia also said that Ukrainian officials did not trust Russia to uphold their end of the bargain.

Russia was, after all, promising not to invade Ukraine just weeks before they went ahead and did exactly that. Trust in Russian promises a few weeks later was justifiably... not high.

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071766987/u-s-russia-dicuss-...

> Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emerged from the nearly eight hours of talks and declared, "There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine." He went on to say, "There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario."

[scotty79]

> Russians “were prepared to end the war if we agreed to – as Finland once did – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.”

Ukraine would never agree to that. There'd be literally nothing stoping Russia from resuming war at their convenience. All the declarations of Russia made thus far about Ukraine has been broken.

[ganeshkrishnan]

You really think declaring neutrality and abandoning NATO was far worse than the current war?

>There'd be literally nothing stoping Russia from resuming war at their convenience

The worst peace is better than the best war.

[ceejayoz]

> The worst peace is better than the best war.

I presume that's a quote from Neville Chamberlain?

[shiroiuma]

I think even Neville wasn't this dumb: he wanted peace with Hitler, for a time, because he knew the UK just wasn't ready for a full-scale war and needed time to prepare.

[analognoise]

> The worst peace is better than the best war.

I’m glad the Nazis didn’t win and I don’t live under what they would call peace.

[scotty79]

There wasn't option for peace for Putin. The choice was either war when Russia is weak (now) or war when Russia is stronger (later). In the meantime Ukraine would be prevented from getting any stronger by recieving weapons or forming alliances.

[shiroiuma]

No, there was the option of not having any war at all, and just being friendly with their neighbors. How is that not an option? Wow, the Putin boot-licking here is incredible.

[scotty79]

I guess my comment was misunderstood. What I meant was that there wasn't option for Ukraine to have peace, because Puting doesn't want peace. Any peace achieved by appeasing him would be temporary and serve only to strengthen him for the next round of this war.

[bearjaws]

Yeah the peace deal ~totally~ would have saved Ukraine from Russia.

[bryanlarsen]

Russia was demanding Ukraine dearm. Ukraine didn't need any help to turn it down.

[hollerith]

Russia made similar demands on Finland and Austria during the Cold War, and those 2 countries complied, and I'd rather live in Finland or Austria during any 2-year interval during the Cold War than in Ukraine these last 2 years.

The point is that maybe fighting was the right choice for Kiev to make on behalf of its constituents, but it wasn't obviously the right choice, like you seem to think it was.

[mopsi]

> Russia made similar demands on Finland and Austria during the Cold War, and those 2 countries complied

Not only those two. Russia also made such demands to southern neighbours of Finland: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. When they complied, Russians invaded each country, murdered their leaders, sent tens of thousands of top public officials, doctors, lawyers, engineers and other people with leadership skills along with their entire families to die in concentration camps in Siberian wilderness, and established repressive Russification policies to wipe out local population and their culture over time. Those policies lasted until the USSR fell in 1991. Of them, Latvia was hit the hardest. By the time the USSR fell, Latvians were about to become a minority in their own country.

And to say that Finland "complied" is a bit generous. Finland and Russia fought two wars during WWII, which resulted in Russians failing to conquer Finland. Russia had even established a puppet government for Finland like they had one prepared for Ukraine with Medvedchuk in 2022, but disbanded it after the failure to capture Finland. Winter War was such a spectacular disaster for Russians that to this day, Finns hold a mythical reputation in Russian collective consciousness.

As to constituents, the constant stream of information about crimes against local population and systematic destruction of Ukrainian culture in the parts of Ukraine occupied since 2014 leaves little doubt what kind of peace Russia is offering.

[hollerith]

>Russia also made such demands to southern neighbours of Finland: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. When they complied . . .

When do you believe the Baltics states were given such a choice by Russia? I thought that every time they ended up under Russian control they were either invaded without warning or ended up in Russia as a result of Russia's winning wars against Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (where before the war they were the property of Russia's opponent).

[bryanlarsen]

Not even close to similar.

Finland did not demilitarize, and Austria was never part of Russia's historical borders.

[hollerith]

Finland consulted with Moscow on all significant defense decisions, didn't join NATO, nor the EU, and Moscow was its biggest trading partner.

>Austria was never part of Russia's historical borders.

And from that you conclude what? I don't see how that supports your point.

[bryanlarsen]

Finland purchased lots of military hardware from the Soviet Union. I'm sure Ukraine would have been willing to sign a deal that enabled/required them to buy lots of military hardware from Russia. That wasn't the deal on the table.

Austria, unlike Finland or Ukraine, has and had a much lower fear of a Russian invasion.

[mopsi]

Finland also built up a massive army to make any further invasion attempts as costly as possible, and with Helsinki Accords, got Russians to agree not to violently change borders in Europe, which they adhered to until Putin chose to invade Ukraine. That changed the calculus for Finland and now Finland is in NATO.

Finland is a very poor example, because for over half a century they did exactly what you recommend, and then re-evaluated and abandoned their strategy in a month when Putin invaded Ukraine.

[foogazi]

> We could have prevented at least a million Russian/Ukrainian deaths when the peace accord in Istanbul was nearly ratified.

On February 24, 2022 only 1 country could have postponed the war

[oneshtein]

Sadly, Russia don't want to retreat from Ukraine, so millions of Russians will die anyway, because there is no other option to force them out.