> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country would not accept any outcome from the talks since Kyiv didn’t take part, and he postponed his own trip to the kingdom scheduled for Wednesday.
every article, when directly quoting, uses weasel words like this. "Ukraine" decided they didn't want to participate because Europe wasn't involved, or Ukraine "didn't get a paper invitation". even though Zelenskyy was supposed to be in country at the time, he decided not to.
I will source the actual facts later, but keep downvoting stuff you don't like.
Downvote this comment too, here, i'll help:
Russia was promised by the US that NATO would not expand. by someone named Baker. Stuff shifted, but under no circumstances was russia going to let Ukraine "join NATO". When Ukraine started saying they were in talks to join NATO and get their own nukes, russia perked up and started fucking with the border. Russia warned Ukraine about the murders occuring in "ethnically" russian "speaking" areas of ukraine, near the border. I bet you can name them. Russia waited eight years to actually respond to this injustice, and it was after Ukraine started talking about joining NATO. Again.
So if you are pragmatic, and you don't want an all out war in europe, you withdraw the US support for NATO. Simple as. Now you don't get to threaten russia with US forces anymore. The US doesn't want to fight Russia, and certainly not for a leader that "loses" hundreds of billions of dollars. "whoops, we can't find half of it" is bad enough when it's an amazon order, it's a lot different when you're talking about sending nearly 400,000,000,000.00 USD to ... Ukraine.
The thing that gets me though, is does anyone really believe this is all russia is capable of? moving a front line 10 meters, or a kilometer?
Europe needs to stop prepping for a war, because Europe is the most war-hungry population on the planet, historically. They can't help themselves.
The rest of the world is about to find out what it's like to not have the US backing up your stupid decisions. We, as taxpayers, are tired of paying for the EU experiment, for sabre rattling from the UK and France and Germany.
It boils down to the need to "read between the lines" and not just accept any article put forth in the last 4 years. there is a lot more nuance than "orange man bad" and "Comedian War Hero", ok?
> Russia was promised by the US that NATO would not expand. by someone named Baker
This is Russian propaganda. Russia claims this was promised verbally. Surely if this was something that Russia wanted why didn't they demand in writing, like they did about many other concessions made to them? The answer is that Putin made that up. It never happened.
As i said, "Stuff shifted, but under no circumstances was russia going to let Ukraine 'join NATO'." - it's just too close to moscow, and there's been issues in that region since the collapse. "We're going to acquire nukes" was sort of the final straw. Let's just hope that Canada saying the same thing doesn't foment the same response from their neighbor, eh?
I sure can, but why do you ask? I just did 25 minutes of research to give a clear reasoning why they want them, and then finding the dates of when Zelenskyy said they "need" or "should get" nuclear weapons. But i'm unwilling to share this research effort without knowing the purpose behind your asking.
To put it better, what year would be an acceptable answer? Is the year that they loudly claimed "we should have never given up our nuclear weapons" not acceptable? the year "we need Nukes or NATO"?
I also remember sabre rattling in 2014 and either 2016 or 2017. NATO already has missiles pointed at Russia, and Ukraine joining NATO would allow missiles to be launched from even closer to Russia.
I don't understand why people don't get the nuance. The US did dirty. I don't know how to solve that, but the answer isn't "war with russia" or "proxy war with russia" the answer is closer to "get the fighting to stop, and tell russia to chill out and report issues to the world, not sit and stew for 8 years over their ethnic brothers, sisters, and children being 'rained down upon' with death and destruction."
> The far-right candidate Oleh Tiahnybok’s last name means pulling one’s side in Ukrainian.
> So his campaign officers have been conveniently running a message of “Tiahnybok is pulling for our side,” but so far managed to get only 1.6 percent of polled voters to declare support for him. A broad-shouldered and towering leader of the right-wing Svoboda Party, he positions himself as a knight on the yellow-and-blue horse – the country’s national colors – on a mission to save Ukraine. His program almost immediately mentions that a section “nationality” should be introduced into Ukrainian passports – a sign of pride to some, yet prejudice to others. Should he be president, Ukrainians will have to obtain visas to travel to Russia and pass a Ukrainian language test to work in civil service. Ukraine would pick up nuclear arms again and take a hard line approach towards Russia. Serving as a lawmaker twice before, Tiahnybok’s ideas have been better received in the more nationalist west. Once allied with President Victor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine faction, he was expelled for anti-Semitic and xenophobic statements.
The idea that Russia were forced to invade Ukraine because a guy who ran for President twice getting less than 2% of the vote who whose political party had no seats, proposed obtaining nuclear weapons over a decade earlier is too stupid for anyone to honestly believe.
"\nI bet this isn't going to be good enough, which is why i didn't want to do this. I have more, i just want to prove this point."
to my prior post, the sha256sum will match.
I merely asked what sort of proof you were looking for, buddy. Evidently a Ukrainian politician saying the exact words you said no Ukrainian politician said prior to 2014 isn't good enough.
here, about the party in Ukraine he's led for decades:
> The party gained increasing popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s, winning 10.45% of the vote in the 2012 parliamentary election. Between 2009 and 2014, it was an observer member of the far-right Alliance of European National Movements. It played a role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Euromaidan protests but its support dropped quickly following the 2014 elections. Since then, the party has been polling below the electoral threshold, and it currently has one seat in the Verkhovna Rada.
oh look, they win parliamentary votes, and hold a seat.
also incaseyoumissedit:
> It played a role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Euromaidan protests
I think it's pretty obvious that the fact a single individual who's ceased even trying to run for office because he can't get the votes and actively despises the actual Ukraine leadership said something 15 years ago is not "evidence" for your claim that '"we're going to acquire nukes" was the final straw'. A guy who literally has less impact on Ukrainian nuclear policy than George Galloway on that of the UK.
But yes, congratulations on predicting that nobody would be impressed by such a stupid irrelevance. The non-stupid thing would not to have posted it in the first place...
When a group of Americans were mad that their preferred candidate didn't win and stormed the Capitol, were they heroes or traitors? When a group of Ukrainians did the same, why does your answer flip?
Euromaidan was a protests because Yanukovych didn't act on his promise to integrate Ukraine with the EU. Protesters were upset because that was not what he promised during his campaign.
The storming of the capital in US was under false claims that the elections were stolen.
There is both evidence that the elections were not stolen, and evidence what Yanukovuch said during his election campaign were not his actions. You can't tell the difference between the two?
Plenty of protests ended in the fall of a government and electing a new one. Why would that be the same as the US storming of the Capital?
If you would have said to compare it to the Georgian protests that don't accept the election results, that would be more difficult. But Euromaidan? That's easy.
Trump lost fairly, so storming the capitol is treason. Yanukovich didn't win fairly, so removing him is warranted. The answer flips because the situations are the opposite.
The people who stormed the Capitol didn't think Trump lost fairly. So the real difference is whether they succeeded. Had the Capitol protesters succeeded, they would have made the media feed people like you and I their narrative and make sure we saw them as freedom fighters.
I'm sure you'll disagree with the above, so here's a thought experiment. What would the Euromaidan protesters be called if they had lost?
The protests started when he switched his stance on getting closer to EU. The protesters got him out and had a new election. How can you compare that to not accepting an election result?
Edit: To answer your question: if the Euromaidan protest didn't succeed, it was just a protest like it was now. They would have had another election a bit later, possibly pissing off Russia again (In 2004 Russia poisoned a pro-EU candidate).
and if we're going to point at everything trump says and react with gusto - like canadian politicians saying they need to arm themselves with nukes to prevent invasion, just to name one - then i question the validity of "oh they didn't sign it so it doesn't matter" The secretary of state said to Gorbachev multiple times "not one inch to the east" of the "NATO" base in Germany.
But none of this matters, because Ukraine is 250 miles from Moscow, and that's a lot different than the nearly 600 miles away Poland is. the closest nato point to moscow as it stands right now is 350 miles away.
if you can't see the difference, i'm sorry. A big point of contention for Russia is the "Ethnic Russian" portions of Ukraine, near the border, who would "gladly" be part of russia, but because of an arbitrary border, they cannot.
Baker and Gorbachev talked about the status NATO forces in East Germany until the Soviet withdrawal in 1994. They agreed that only the forces under direct German control would enter East Germany until the last Soviet forces had withdrawn. Their agreement was formalized in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
The relevant article:
ARTICLE 5
Until the completion of the withdrawal of the Soviet armed forces from the territory of the present German Democratic Republic and of Berlin in accordance with Article 4 of the present Treaty, only German territorial defence units which are not integrated into the alliance structures to which German armed forces in the rest of German territory are assigned will be stationed in that territory as armed forces of the united Germany. During that period and subject to the provisions of paragraph 2 of this Article, armed forces of other states will not be stationed in that territory or carry out any other military activity there.
Germany upheld their part of the agreement, the withdrawal went uneventfully, and the agreement was concluded by the end of August 1994.
As you can see, it has nothing to do with whether NATO would accept new members or not. Gorbachev and many other top Soviet/Russian officials have directly refuted this myth, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43149963
the link i gave, under _Document 5_, is the transcripts from their conversations.
Where baker said "not one inch east of the Elbe."
I am not sure how much clearer it can be than declassified documents. "That is a lie putin told, it's propaganda!"
no, it's right there. has been available to look at for 9 years.
I really do not give one WHIT what happened afterward, all i care about is refuting falsehoods.
to wit:
A United States Secretary of State named Baker, gave a "cascade of assurances" that NATO would not expand EAST of the Elbe. Repeatedly, the same message was given to the russians.
That is literally all i said. You're arguing something completely different now and like i said, good for you, i don't care. it wasn't what i was talking about or responding to.
There is not a single mention of Elbe in the linked document. However, there are numerous references to the 2+4 agreement, which is the informal name for the treaty I previously cited. That's what they were discussing and that's what they agreed upon. Soviet representatives have confirmed that the discussions were limited solely to the placement of foreign forces in East Germany until the Soviet withdrawal was complete.
As the Soviet foreign minister stated in a 2014 interview, there was simply no reason to discuss NATO beyond that. They did not expect the Warsaw Pact to dissolve. The idea that the world would change so drastically that the Warsaw Pact would dissolve and its members would seek to join NATO was unimaginable at the time.
You are clinging to an erroneous understanding of a few transcript snippets against the words of the direct participants and their actual written agreements.
So you're saying that Baker never gave a "Cascade of Assurances" (not my fucking words) to Gorbachev? Even though there's dozens of documents there, i'm sure you scoured them all to make sure "Elbe" wasn't referenced. You think i pulled that out of my ass?
I want you to answer the simple question, because you have refused.
Is the statement:
Baker verbally assured gorbachev that there would be no eastward expansion
True or false?
That is literally, and when i say literally i mean literally the only thing i was talking to, above.
And it's obvious if you follow the historical context.
In 1990, Germany was still formally under Allied military occupation (since 1945). In the final 2+4 treaty, East Germany and West Germany - the "two" - negotiated with the four Allied powers (UK, France, USA, and USSR) to determine the terms of reunification. Their discussions centered on whether a unified Germany would be fully neutral, partially neutral, or entirely integrated into NATO. In the end, they agreed that reunified Germany could remain in NATO, provided that no foreign troops were stationed in East Germany until Soviet forces had fully withdrawn by the end of 1994.
That's it. There was never any discussion about the broader future of NATO because there was no reason to have one. Germany bordered the Warsaw Pact, and no-one on the Soviet side expected it to dissolve.
there's no way the Russians would lie, except to say that there was a cascade of assurances, but only if putin says that. If gorbachev said it never happened, that's the truth. If baker says he said that, he's lying, because Gorbachev is your baseline of truth. Basically, anyone that supports what you're saying is telling the truth, and the declassified national security documents (why would they have to classify such a thing as a verbal "Cascade of Assurances" about nothing further east?) I guess that's all part of this conspiracy that putin put in place. putin put in, hilarious.
so you just ignore the declassified documents, making this whole thing a waste of my time.
It's not just Gorbachev. The minister of defense Dmitry Yazov also refuted this myth, as did the minister of foreign affairs Eduard Shevardnadze and his successor Andrei Kozyrev, along with many others. You are clinging to your interpretation of a few phrases from meeting notes and other insignificant documents while ignoring the actual signed treaties, their historical context and the recollections of the participants in these events.
Shevardnadze, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, was as clear as one could be:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the end of March 1990, Genscher and the then US Secretary of State James Baker, talked about the fact that there was interest among "central European states" about getting into NATO. You knew nothing of this?
Shevardnadze: This is the first I've heard of it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did you have a conversation with your colleagues in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary about a possible eastward expansion of NATO in the spring of 1990?
Shevardnadze: No, that was never discussed in my presence.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The German documents give the impression that Moscow counted on the dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Did you really think that would happen?
Shevardnadze: That may have been discussed after I resigned from the ministry of foreign affairs in December 1990. However during my time in office it was not.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the eastward expansion of NATO ever discussed in the inner circles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990?
Shevardnadze: The question never came up.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did the subject play a role in the ratification process of the Two-Plus-Four agreement (where the signatories included the two Germanys and the four powers that occupied Germany after World War II) that unified Germany?
Shevardnadze: No, there were no difficulties whatsoever with the ratification process.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, the eastward expansion happened a few years later. Did you feel, at the time, that the German diplomats deceived you?
Shevardnadze: No. When I was the minister of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union, NATO's expansion beyond the German borders never came up for negotiation. To this day I don't see anything terrible in NATO's expansion.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the conference in Ottawa on German unity in February 1990, you had five telephone conversations with Gorbachev. Did you discuss a possible NATO enlargement -- beyond the GDR?
Shevardnadze: No. We only had German reunification on the agenda, nothing else.
Thats a report of a conversation, not a legal agreement. If you want a legal agreement, get it in writing. So like I said it's Putin's propaganda that there was some agreement. Thanks for confirming, I'll be sure to use that link in the future.
> Russia was promised by the US that NATO would not expand. by someone named Baker.
This is untrue Russian propaganda. There was no independent Russia at that time and Baker didn't promise Gorbachov anything of the sort, as Gorbachov has publicly stated.
> Stuff shifted,
Right this is an important thing to note. Russia isn't the soviet union even if it claimed to be the successor state. And in the 90s Russia under the Yeltsin (the guy who picked Putin to be his successor) agreed that these countries had a right to join NATO. Of course that wasn't needed since there was no such promise but it happened. Oh people will claim that the Poles gave Yeltsin too much to drink but the reality is that Russia needed US support and good relations with their neighbors in the 90s financial disaster just like Ukraine (which agreed to give away its nukes to Russia)
> but under no circumstances was russia going to let Ukraine "join NATO".
First who is this Russia we speak of. It was Putin's decision to invade, a move that many Russians even those who didn't like Ukraine getting closer to the EU were skeptical of.
> When Ukraine started saying they were in talks to join NATO and get their own nukes, russia perked up and started fucking with the border.
That is incorrect. Russia invaded in 2014 when Ukraine was not seeking to join NATO (only became a goal after the Russian invasion). Plus everyone including Russia and Putin knew there was no chance of Ukraine joining nato in 2014 or 2022. Russia must invade Ukraine to stop it from joining NATO is not just propaganda, its stupid and obvious propagnada.
> Russia warned Ukraine about the murders occuring in "ethnically" russian "speaking" areas of ukraine, near the border.
Is it ethnically Russian or Russian speaking? You know there's a difference.
Much of the area was Russian speaking but not all of it. Many of the more rural areas in the east were primarily Ukrainian speaking. And it had an ethnic Ukrainian majority.
Hell a lot more Ukrainians used to speak russian not just in the south and east. The main driver in the change isn't nationalism or discrimination but Russian invasion.
Either way its ridiculous propaganda. Those areas were largely peaceful despite economic issues and crime. Russia invaded and then set up a couple of local thugs and neonazis as warlords pretending this was a local thing or a civil war.
They blamed Ukraine for a war they started and then blamed them for shooting back. Then they massively enlarged the war killing a lot more people (a significant share of whom were russian speakers or ethnic russians because of the part of Ukraine they invaded).
> I bet you can name them.
Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (sometimes transliterated lugansk via russian)
> Russia waited eight years to actually respond to this injustice, and it was after Ukraine started talking about joining NATO. Again.
Russia could not care less about them or injustice. Russia barely even cares about its own citizens (if it's all for the glory of the modern czar, what does an individuals life or rights matter) and despite claiming area for annexation it does not treat them as citizens. It forced them to be used as a meetshield against their own countrymen(no training and ancient guns).
Did you see how they destroyed the mostly Russian speaking city of Mariupol? Or many smaller cities? But then they changed the sign from Маріуполь to Мариуполь and I'm sure the survivors considered it all worth it /s.
>So if you are pragmatic, and you don't want an all out war in europe, you withdraw the US support for NATO. Simple as.
If you're pragmatic you back them to the hilt and try to prevent Russia starting such a war.
>Now you don't get to threaten russia with US forces anymore.
The one threatening to nuke London is Russia not the other
way around.
> The US doesn't want to fight Russia
Right neither does Europe. Neither does Ukraine. So Russia can get get out of Ukraine (including Crimea and Dpnbas) and everyone will be better off.
>The thing that gets me though, is does anyone really believe this is all russia is capable of? moving a front line 10 meters, or a kilometer?
Yes because that's all they have accomplished. And if we had done more to swiftly back Ukraine it would have been less.
> Europe needs to stop prepping for a war, because Europe is the most war-hungry population on the planet, historically. They can't help themselves.
Europe is prepping because Russia started a major war. And sadly we the US are not reliable allies right now even though Ukrainian and European victory us clearly in our interest.
>The rest of the world is about to find out what it's like to not have the US backing up your stupid decisions. We, as taxpayers, are tired of paying for the EU experiment, for sabre rattling from the UK and France and Germany.
Again the saber rattling is all coming from Russia. Do you even understand Russian? Do you watch Russian by to hear the stuff the state propaganda news put out?
>there is a lot more nuance than "orange man bad" and "Comedian War Hero", ok?
Sure but being more nuance doesn't stop both those statements from being totally accurate and important. Total nuance is not claiming the Donbas is just russian anyway or that Ukraine provoked russia when even Russian newspapers (Moscow times, Medusa) posted many articles disproving state propaganda.
every article, when directly quoting, uses weasel words like this. "Ukraine" decided they didn't want to participate because Europe wasn't involved, or Ukraine "didn't get a paper invitation". even though Zelenskyy was supposed to be in country at the time, he decided not to.
I will source the actual facts later, but keep downvoting stuff you don't like.
Downvote this comment too, here, i'll help:
Russia was promised by the US that NATO would not expand. by someone named Baker. Stuff shifted, but under no circumstances was russia going to let Ukraine "join NATO". When Ukraine started saying they were in talks to join NATO and get their own nukes, russia perked up and started fucking with the border. Russia warned Ukraine about the murders occuring in "ethnically" russian "speaking" areas of ukraine, near the border. I bet you can name them. Russia waited eight years to actually respond to this injustice, and it was after Ukraine started talking about joining NATO. Again.
So if you are pragmatic, and you don't want an all out war in europe, you withdraw the US support for NATO. Simple as. Now you don't get to threaten russia with US forces anymore. The US doesn't want to fight Russia, and certainly not for a leader that "loses" hundreds of billions of dollars. "whoops, we can't find half of it" is bad enough when it's an amazon order, it's a lot different when you're talking about sending nearly 400,000,000,000.00 USD to ... Ukraine.
The thing that gets me though, is does anyone really believe this is all russia is capable of? moving a front line 10 meters, or a kilometer?
Europe needs to stop prepping for a war, because Europe is the most war-hungry population on the planet, historically. They can't help themselves.
The rest of the world is about to find out what it's like to not have the US backing up your stupid decisions. We, as taxpayers, are tired of paying for the EU experiment, for sabre rattling from the UK and France and Germany.
It boils down to the need to "read between the lines" and not just accept any article put forth in the last 4 years. there is a lot more nuance than "orange man bad" and "Comedian War Hero", ok?