Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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It is not revisionism.
Not only did Britain and France not do enough to oppose Nazism, they actually gave diplomatic cover for Hitler's aggression against Czechoslovakia. And Poland and Romania together prevented the Red Army from helping Czechoslovakia. From the Soviet perspective, the position of the UK and France was that they were absolutely fine with Hitler marching east and the Soviet Union facing him alone. So they looked out for themselves.
I know, I know. You'd prefer that in doing so, they didn't deny any part of Poland to Hitler. That's your prerogative, I guess.
What I find interesting is that Trump's Gaza policy is just Bush in a more unhinged package. Trump floated the idea of having US troops violate the region, this being yet another millitary misdadventure in the Middle East with a terrorist attack as the casus beli. Trump even repeated Bush era talking points about it ''helping'' the people who live there.
And the facinating thing is that the MAGA crowd who spend years swearing to us they hated Bush for his foreign wars(despite them likely having supported it at the time) all seemed to agree Trump's ideas was great. Almost as if they're a bunch of NPC's who need to get their talking points from daddy Trump before having an opinion.
I'd prefer that they didn't ally with Hitler to carve Europe up between them, assisting them with joint conquest and promising them more. Which is what happened.
Describing overt Nazi collaboration as heroic resistance is some wild revisionism, but I suppose it's consistent with how you've approached Russia's latest conquest-- reimagining the world's biggest sponsor of far-right and neo-fascist movements worldwide (with the single largest Nazi paramilitary under its control) as somehow fighting against Nazism.
Sure. This is true and a problem.
Unfortunately, there a major practical problem. Russia is squatting on a large chunk of Ukraine's territory and grinding out a very slow advance over more. Russia will not be evicted unless someone very substantial (the USA or Europe) commits a military force in support of Ukraine. Russia is not going to give up anything it has easily, because it's winning - even if incredibly slowly and expensively.
So what's it to be? Commit troops in support of Ukraine, or a peace treaty?
A peace treaty is effectively going to have to be a compromise. A compromise looks very much like it will have to involve Ukraine permanently conceding territory, and at minimum that's going to be Crimea. It might be able to fudge an acceptance of the status quo for the other four oblasts in partial occupation, without formally ceding them.
As a repudiation of the UN principle that countries should not take territory by force, Ukraine ceding land is appalling. On the other hand, what better option is genuinely available?
Sure.
And Ukraine might be willing to settle for that if it gets NATO peacekeepers on the ground and a NATO guarantee to actually properly join the next defensive war.
Ukraine can reasonably argue that ceding land would not represent a solution at all, unless accompanied by real guarantees-- emboldened by success, Russia would inevitably invade again in a few years. It's what they did last time they were allowed to seize territory. And the time before that.
Option one would be for Ukraine's backers to pursue economic isolation of Russia alongside the military assistance they need to defend themselves. So far the material assistance they've provided to Ukraine has been insufficient and late, and the economic isolation of Russia has been staggered and half-assed, all while still funnelling billions to Russia for their oil addiction.
Option two would be a defensive pact between Ukraine and other Eastern European countries that are threatened by Russia-- separately from NATO.
Option three would be a cessation of hostilities allowing Russia to hold some chunk of the territory but without legally recognising its ownership, with a view to regaining it through diplomatic means in future. Similar to the status of Crimea from 2014 to 2022, or Transnistria, or Abkhazia.
‘Numerous signs of torture’: a Ukrainian journalist’s detention and death in Russian prison
The Guardian, working with media partners, has tracked down first-hand accounts to reconstruct Viktoriia Roshchyna’s final months
www.theguardian.com
Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was captured by Russian forces in summer 2023 when she was reporting in Zaporizhzhia. Her body was handed to Ukrainian authorities alongside war casualties in February 2025 (wrongly labelled but later identified).
She had been severely starved, repeatedly stabbed, electrocuted, & waterboarded. Her body was missing it's brain, larynx and eyes.
Negotiations continue in Turkey between delegations from Ukraine and Russia. Russia has sent only a junior delegation with no senior ministers or diplomats, which has lead Ukraine to accuse it of not taking it seriously. So far there's been an agreement for a 1000 prisoner of war swap, but no other meaningful progress.
Russia's delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, former minister of culture, and ultraconservative pop-historian. He's an outspoken admirer of Stalin, and as minister of culture he produced cultural guidelines encouraging a "rejection of tolerance and multiculturalism". He's also claimed that Russians have an "extra chromosome" which gives them innate superiority (!?).
So far in negotiations, he's just reiterated the same maximalist Russian demands-- presumably he has no authority to compromise. Full Ukrainian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, and more land beyond that to be ceded to Russia. Ukraine gives up its defence forces etc. He's referred to the Swedish-Russian war (which lasted 21 years) to indicate Russia will keep fighting for decades to acquire Ukrainian territory if it's not given it.
Russia's delegation is led by Vladimir Medinsky, former minister of culture, and ultraconservative pop-historian. He's an outspoken admirer of Stalin, and as minister of culture he produced cultural guidelines encouraging a "rejection of tolerance and multiculturalism". He's also claimed that Russians have an "extra chromosome" which gives them innate superiority (!?).
So far in negotiations, he's just reiterated the same maximalist Russian demands-- presumably he has no authority to compromise. Full Ukrainian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, and more land beyond that to be ceded to Russia. Ukraine gives up its defence forces etc. He's referred to the Swedish-Russian war (which lasted 21 years) to indicate Russia will keep fighting for decades to acquire Ukrainian territory if it's not given it.
you’d think a historian would be extra aware Russia has nothing to be proud of. It’s all just tyranny and backwardness in all areas. History is a supremely poor argument for Russian superiority. Quite the opposite really. It’s hard to imagine a country more consistently backwards which raises some unfortunate implications for the “Russian soul”
I would counter that your criteria of what is worth being proud of is colored by your values whereas Medinsky wouldn't have gotten into that position if he didn't have values that aligned with what the Russian regime values.
And there goes the PR of 1.3 trillion dollars in spending. And before any Mainland Europeans come here to gloat against the US and UK, who built most of it, at least it wasn't shot down like the Rafale by India vs Pakistan or Typhoon in Saudi Arabia vs Yemen. Every fourth generation aircraft is under threat, and fifth-generation aircraft soon.
And I am sure the drone people will argue we need more drones, while they are getting shot down a lot more, and the neocons will want to invade Iran when if Yemen could do this, Iran could do more of it. Trump was right not to do more against Yemen in case they parade our aircraft and or pilots in their streets and give the tech to Iran/China/Russia.
Also, I remember in College at OSU when I mentioned that China was gaining in aircraft/aeronautics technology and thanks to their material science they had surplassed Russia, and that the US mainland could come under danger, their resposne was the US navy was going to rule forever, and that Chinese Engines suck.
A trillion-dollar Military budget is well-wardened.
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They didn't. Check the timeline of the invasion of Poland. That's not an alliance nor a joint operation.
Sure.
August 23, 1939: USSR and Nazi Germany agree in Article 2 of the Additional Protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact:
"In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments." It also affords Finland and the Baltic states to the USSR.
August 31, 1939: Supreme Soviet approves the Pact.
September 1, 1939: Nazi Germany invades Poland.
September 17, 1939: USSR invades Poland.
September 28, 1939: USSR and Nazi Germany sign the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, which redraws some territorial aspects of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
February 11, 1940: German-Soviet Commercial Agreement signed, allowing Nazi Germany to circumvent the economic blockade to obtain oil and manganese ore.
June 15, 1940: USSR invades the Baltic states.
12 November 1940: Two-day conference begins in Berlin discussing the possibility of admitting the USSR to the Axis (although Hitler intended to invade the USSR before then).
January 10, 1941: USSR and Nazi Germany sign the German-Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement. Increases the trade, including for raw materials required for war machinery. By June USSR provides well over half of Nazi Germany's imports, including raw war materials. The agreement also includes a transfer of the "Lithuania Strip" to the USSR sphere of influence, in exchange for which the USSR pays Nazi Germany millions of dollars.
Then what was it? A supremely quirky coincidence that they signed a treaty dividing Europe between them and that they just so happened to jointly invade Poland?
Face it. Russia was rotten to the core even back then. Especially back then even.
The revisionist view in Russian nationalist history is that the pact was a necessity to prevent those countries falling fully into the Nazis' hands.
It's horseshit of course: the USSR assisted Nazi Germany in seizing what it did take, provided the Nazis with heaps of war materials, paid them millions of dollars, and handed local communists to the Gestapo. And the USSR continued to do so until early 1941, long after other countries were actively fighting the Nazis.
((The revisionist view isn't even consistent with Stalinist propaganda at the time-- the USSR denied the Additional Protocol even existed until 1989)).
The Polish military had entirely disintegrated in those 17 days. You would prefer the Soviet Union simply let the Nazis take all of it.
I hope you’re not suggesting the red army moving in, slaughtering Polish citizens and then tyranizing the country for decades was some sort of humanitarianism?
The Nazis took what they took with the express advance approval of the Soviet Union in a quid quo pro, you risible clown. They then continued to supply the Nazis with enormous amounts of war material well into 1941 to fuel further conquest, and held rounds of talks to join the fucking Axis. "Together with the Germans we would have been unstoppable", Stalin's daughter reported he said.
You're breathlessly defending Nazi collaboration. Again.
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I'm sure everyone would agree it was fantastic that the USSR managed to save Poland from the grip of Western capitalism, at least for about 45 glorious years. Unfortunately, those Solidarity trade union fools ruined everything and sold out their country to the rapacious USA.