I've read some of HK's comments, but frankly despite his stature and experience in international politics, I think he fails to understand how much things have moved on from cold-war era mentalities, both in eastern Europe (including Ukraine) and in Russia as well.

I don't think the younger generation in Ukraine wants to accept itself as anything else than part of Europe, and the same for the younger generation of western Russia. The cold war era splits between Europe and Russia don't hold water anymore in today's world, other than Putin's mind and his propaganda team.

It is already a stalemate.



None of the sides will be able to advance more than dozens of kilometers from the current positions. Sievierodonetsk may fall but that will not change the big picture a lot, other than provide Putin some much needed pyrrhic victory that he managed to occupy most of Luhansk and Donetsk by razing them to nothingness

Russian propagandists from RT and the likes say that the sanctions against Russia are a wonderful thing because Russian youth won't be exposed to the decadent Western society and if they won't be allowed to study abroad it's much better for them because they'll be "normal" (otherwise turn into drug addicts and homosexuals or something).

I don't know what to say, young people are.....impressionable. They are repeated all the time that the West is decadent and morally putrified. There might be some who don't believe anything yet but once a lie is repeated often enough.....it becomes the "truth".. Who knows what young people from Western Russia might think these days.

Sure. But will you volunteer for the front lines?
Just be sure to duck and cover when the tactical nukes hit. And never look at the flash.

It’s not 1938. You don’t call bluff on someone with five digit numbers of nukes and ICBMs.

And don’t believe what you read about Putin‘s cabal being unwilling to push the button.

That’s what politicians want you to believe.

So what is the politicians endgame then? They wish to live in a bunker eating oats with water without the sunlight until the end of the life?

Well, for one we should remember to question whether politicians are actually still running the show here.

It makes much more sense if you assume they don't.

If you ask me then, who is actually running the show - I don't really know who.
But I believe it's people who themselves believe they can win this conflict, that the prize is worth the causalities and the destruction.

It's not rational - but what indeed is rational about this conflict?

The other day they were discussing on a Russian tv channel how they won't nuke Ukraine 'cause they want it uncontaminated and they won't kill all Ukrainians, just a few, after a rigorous selection... (who said we don't live in fascist times?)
Excad, they talk freely about these topics, them dying like martyrs (and probably live in the afterlife) after nukes and the Occident just...dying. There's a certain degree of fanaticism exposed in their media, don't know if it is a bluff or that Kremlin is indeed out of any control or rationality.

less to lose other than being completely destroyed in a nuclear exchange? that's quite a big downside.

Greenmount - I wonder whether The Barbarians, looking upon the Romans who had 'lost their edge' towards the End of the Roman Empire, looked upon the Roman Empire as soft, decadent, effeminate, morally degenerate and citing their adoption of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine as proof that we Barbarians have nothing to fear from storming the palisades of the Roman Empire, as the Romans will treat us according to whatever the equivalent of the Geneva Convention was back in the 4th century AD ??

Obviously Atilla the Hun & his fearsome tribes would have scarred the living daylights out of these late Roman softies.

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Surely the time has come for Boris to 'circle the wagons' for a bit of herd immunity ?

99% chance they won't go that far, that will ensure their own destruction.

Sure. You just kowtow. Oh hang on ... this dicussion was 100 threads back.

If the West joined in a combined attack against Russia, I'd guess there's more like a 90% chance they would respond with nuclear. Plus a nuclear attack on Ukrainian soil, wouldn't necessarily cross the threshold to respond with nuclear attack on Russia, yet it would wipe out those NATO troops. So a pretty bad idea, IMO.

weak men create hard times.

There is a difference between attack against Russia and attack on Russia. The former would happen on the territory of Ukraine, so even if NATO would be there, they wouldn't risk nuclear option, because that could trigger full-scale nuclear escalation.

Probably the doctrine of proportionate response would apply.

The problem with that line of thinking is that a full scale nuclear escalation is a black-swan-type event: It is not very likely, but in the event it happens, the consequences are very, very grave.
So, in reality, instead of fueling this conflict by throwing ever more troops and weapons at it, everything should be done to avoid further escalation.

So, if you think Ukraine is worth starting (and fighting) WW3 for, then you are exactly in the same line of thinking as certain people in the West (and likely Russia, too) who think a nuclear exchange is winnable.

so what would nato do if russia nukes troops in ukraine in accordance with their nuclear doctrine by considering the combined nato attack an existential threat?

at that point, the nuclear exchange has been limited to ukrainian territory. nato could respond conventionally. maybe even nuclear on ukrainian soil (great let's turn more of UA into a nuclear wasteland - esp. the eastern food basket needed to feed the world). OR then it would be up to NATO to consider whether to respond with nuclear force on Russian soil and escalate.

frankly, the west has a lot more to lose than russia in a nuclear exchange.

for the US, they probably don't care too much if they push russia into using nukes - it would remove any last support from china and india and the US would not be impacted by the radiation - and they might even benefit economically from the consequences on energy and oil.

europeans ought to be more concerned due to the proximity to radiation and the dependence on russia for energy, fertilizers and commodities.

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Yes. It's interesting you chose this analogy because Russia does think that the fall of Byzantium (which by the by, fell long after the Huns camped their tents in Pannonia) made them eligible for getting the "third Rome" status. There is some form of messianism in the Russian culture, true. That thing cumulated with the imperial nostalgia makes them an awful neighbour even these days.
But we digress. What were you saying?

I personally don't think the West is weak...it was very naive for a while imagining all these regional powers want the same things and believe in the same values, but now they're Woke....lol. (sorry, couldn't resist)

Don't think there's any weakness in the West but ( as you say ) a naivety, held by many after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, that the Russian Bear had changed it's spots following the collapse of the Soviet Union and we can all 'let our guard down & our hair down' and reap the supposed rewards of the 'peace dividend'.

I never said that nuclear exchange is winnable.
I am saying, that people with power to decide about nuclear exchange want to live. Otherwise they would be dead already.
And as before - if they want to live, they don't want to do it in a nuclear shelter eating cold oats with water without the sunlight until the rest of their lives.