[viccis]

>then EU would become a vassal of Russia

Russia is currently struggling to make inroads on invading its relatively small neighbor, so I really doubt it would be able to make a bunch of nuclear powers who have a nuclear alliance its "vassal"

I understand that Russia's not fighting just Ukraine but rather Ukraine with massive US and EU assistance but my point still stands.

[flanked-evergl]

It's not struggling as much as Ukraine. Russia, if it was struggling, would accept a negotiated peace. It's quite clear that the last thing Russia wants is peace.

[wredcoll]

I love how the constant comeback to this is "well they're sorta-kinda winning the war" as if maybe barely defeating ukraine is some kind of mark of global dominance.

[bigbadfeline]

> winning... defeating...dominance

People really don't understand war and death, they treat them as some silly sports game. As a result they completely miss the boat not only about military conflicts but also about peace politics.

[lawlessone]

>It's not struggling as much as Ukraine.

OK but Ukraine isn't trying to invade a small country next door and claim a global superpower status.

It's expected they would struggle against a much larger neighbor invading them.

Russia is struggling where nobody expected it to struggle.

[wkat4242]

It's because lives are meaningless to the Russian government. They'll just throw more literal bodies at the problem. Nobody's going to stop them as they're a dictatorship. And now they're even getting North Koreans as extra cannon fodder.

Ukraine doesn't have that "benefit".

[holoduke]

Ukraine is used by the west as connonfodder by western institutions that control western politicians. The west literally doesn't care about life's of ordinary citizens. Specialy if its outside of its country. From supporting cruel regimes, to supporting genocide in Israël, to cheap labour without worker rights and so on. The west isnt a grain better than anybody else.

[testrun]

Russia invaded Ukraine. To stop the killing, all Russia needs to do is get out of Ukraine. Ukraine is a sovereign country, Russia has zero authority over Ukraine.

[holoduke]

The west doesn't make Ukraine sovereign. Western companies will extract resources and use the people for cheap labour. Not a single sane Ukrainian person is waiting for this.

[wkat4242]

"The West" wasn't really relevant in this discussion, all I wanted to point out is that Russia has a much larger pool of cannonfodder who can't refuse (the benefit of a dictatorship) so drawing things out is always to their benefit.

That the west is also doing some bad stuff (though really in the EU we're not that bad IMO, most EU countries recognise Palestina now, it's just for a few blocking hard measures against Israel) isn't really a relevant topic in this. We're not going to have boots on the ground in this conflict until an agreement is reached because of the risk of escalation.

[wredcoll]

'The west' can do bad things while not actually being worse. It's a complicated world.

[netsharc]

I was going to say "you're nuts!", but... I wouldn't say Ukraine is being used as cannonfodder, but the EU is very interested in Russia not winning in Ukraine, because if Putin wins, the EU will have a big refugee crisis (although "slightly better" refugees since they're white and share a similar culture, compared to the reception of brown and Muslim refugees).

Also the EU pays for countries like Turkey and Libya to prevent refugee ships from coming to their continent. If that means sinking those ships with people on them, well...

[scotty79]

Dictators, not unlike markets, can stay irrational way longer than you (or a country) can stay solvent.

That's why democracies are so good. Because it's hard to do too stupid things in them persistently.