Is it? Cause in my opinion…this is complete and utter bullshit and appeasement at its finest. Doesn’t seem fair to me in the slightest. Enlighten me, please

You go first, we’ll meet you there.

Just as their offer to remove nukes from their puppet state in Belarus is not a serious thing of any negotiating value - their demands are all absurd.

Agree Russia is speedrunning it’s own collapse, and that’s just fine and dandy.

I think that the Russian Empire is taking the same path as the Ottoman Empire. Long term collapse, in phases. The Ottomans were an expansionist global power spanning Asia, Africa and Europe from the 16th to 20th century. They couldn’t maintain their massive multi-ethnic empire while having the inefficienceies of a centralized Turkish heartland monarchy for government. They went through long term declines of military quality, political corruption, loss of trade networks, loss of presigious outer colonies, massive internal stagnation, refusal to modernize, patronage over competence, and losing wars they were expected to win. They collapsed in stages over 300+ years, finalliy landing as a mostly ethnically homogenous rump state of Turkey after their defeat in WW1.

That’s Russia’s future. They already have had a couple phases of collapse in 1917 and again in 1991. Only a “Rough Daddy” strongman rule has prevented more collapse since. But the bill is coming due - and they will likely end up a reduced city-state republic from Murmask to Rostov, and St. Petersburg to the Urals. Everything else will be gobbled up by China or break away in post-Putin ethno-corporate warlord power struggles. The painful internal migration and rampant banditry will be a turbo-charged version of the devastating Partition of India.

And they deserve it. Hopefully they will fight among each other at a smaller scale instead of invading their neighbours.

They dropped earlier restrictions on Ukraine’s army size. That was unenforceable anyways, and not as relevant on an increasingly automated battlefield. They didn’t expcitly ask for EU membership to be removed. They aren’t demanding snap elections in Ukraine. They deserve NONE of these things, by the way, but that “reality on the ground” as they like to say, has never stopped them from making obscene demands before.

… Did Russia not learn from the last time they invaded Finland?

Yes, the circumstances and societies are different today, but even so that difference isn’t in Russia’s favor.

The Finns are well practiced at dealing with Russia

I don’t know a lot about Finnish foreign policy, but I imagine their response will be something between “lol” and ”go fuck yourself“.

I’m imagining something along the lines of: “Haista vittu, perkele!..”

I don’t know a lot about Finnish foreign policy, but I imagine their response will be something between “lol” and ”go fuck yourself“.

Something along the lines of “so we wouldn’t need to invite all of Europe with us to start killing Russians for sport?”

They don’t know any other way, and their leadership isn’t exactly an active learning organization. They need time, too. If the war ends, they have to try and stay alive having shattered their country so that an overpromoted gangster doesn’t have to admit he made a mistake.

Campists are bastards plus Marxist-Leninism is a dysfunctional ideology to begin. Modern Russia is almost everything that Communists claim to hate but online MLs will support everything they do.

Ya, that’s lemmy’s short bus.

No, they never have. They live by the oddly capitalist idea that if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking.

They have always “negotiated” this way - demand everything, concede nothing, wait in stonewalled silence until the feckless, peace-worshipping pussies in the west give you something.

But that policy, used extensively through the entire 20th centry, was underwritten by the threat of violence. The assumption that Russia was capable of great destruction and that the West wouldn’t be willing to endure any suffering. In short - the threat.

But - Russia has already shown all its cards. Their army is effectively spent and incapable of progress in Ukraine, much less invading the Baltics, Poland or Romania. The threat of what they might do has no teeth anymore. We’ve seen what they can do. We’ve seen their limits. Now, they stamp their feet and hold their breath like a petulant toddler demanding a cookie.

This is a childish tactic, but they’re a childish country. Ukraine will wait them out until Trump is further weakened or something fundamental changes in Moscow or Washington. There’s absolutely no point making a deal with these black hearted lunatics. The suffering goes on, because of the maniacal delusions of an overpromoted gangster ghoul.

Russia is like the mirror image of the US. A small European country that stretched across an entire continent by conquering indigenous peoples, taking their land, settling ethnic Russians, and replacing their languages. Their entire history and national identity is colonialism.

Occam’s Razor is that an attempt to make this a “great power” debate is a convenient cover for a simpler reality.

That his invasion was a complete disaster and he can’t admit it.