greggerypeccary wrote on Feb 20^th, 2025 at 10:21am:


Zelensky had the opportunity to make a deal with Putin, if he had agreed not to join NATO he may have been able to avoid the war. NATO and Europe insistence that Ukraine resist Putin led them down the path of war.

Its not my opinion or apportioning blame but just a fact.

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Ukraine’s complaints about its exclusion from US-Russia talks on ending the war

if he had agreed not to join NATO he may have been able to avoid the war.

chimera wrote on Feb 20^th, 2025 at 1:21pm:


Ukraine has no nuclear weapons, they gave them all up with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.

Thousands of nuclear arms had been left on Ukrainian soil by Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But in the years that followed, Ukraine made the decision to completely denuclearize.

In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine's security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.

Leroy wrote on Feb 20^th, 2025 at 4:54pm:


Other NATO countries share a border with Russia and none have ever been a problem. This is just another furphy. A sovereign country being a member of NATO or not is none of Russia's business.

Why NATO Expansion Explains Russia’s Actions in Ukraine

The Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine has been primarily driven by the threat of NATO’s expansion along Russia’s border. Its strategic objective is to annex some Ukrainian territory and badly weaken the country so it cannot join NATO.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a chorus of government officials, academics, commentators, and retired bureaucrats and diplomats has dismissed all links between the crisis and the decades-long NATO expansion. Moscow’s aggression, we are told, is all about Vladimir Putin’s imperial impulse—his desire to recreate the Russian empire.

In reality, the Kremlin’s conduct has been primarily driven by the threat of NATO’s expansion along Russia’s border. We had some warning of Russia’s strategic sensibilities three decades ago.
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/why-nato-expansion-explains-russias-actions-in-ukraine/

Leroy wrote on Feb 20^th, 2025 at 4:51pm:


NATO membership wasn't even in the cards at the time, doofus. It was all about how Ukraine was supposedly mistreating ethnic Russians and how Putin was moving in to protect them, which was a bald faced lie. You really have to stop listening to Fox News and Trump. It's rotting your brain, what little you have of one.

During the 1990’s debate over whether Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic should become alliance members, many military and foreign-policy experts argued that NATO expansion would lead to big trouble with Russia. It would create the very danger it was supposed to prevent: Russian aggression in reaction to what Moscow would deem a provocative and threatening Western policy.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Feb 20^th, 2025 at 6:36pm:


Silly doofus me.

Quote:

Leroy wrote on Feb 20^th, 2025 at 6:51pm:


UKRAINE, doofus!!! There was no talk of Ukraine joining NATO at that time!!!

2008: NATO countries welcome Ukraine and Georgia’s aspirations to join the alliance, angering Russia. In August, Russia wins a short war with Georgia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognizes as independent states.
In 1994, Ukraine joined the NATO Partnership for Peace program and through it worked with the alliance to fight corruption in Ukraine’s military, improve its military training and get other countries to take its excess and obsolete weapons. This showed that a post-Soviet Ukraine was willing to work with NATO even when membership was not an option.
At the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, member nations agreed that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO. But the alliance suggested conditions, including democratic reforms in both countries, with no clear plan for achieving those reforms.

In 2010, Yanukovych, who campaigned on a promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO, was elected president. Once in office, he abolished a commission that had been established to help Ukraine integrate with NATO. In 2013, Yanukovych ended discussions between Ukraine and the EU for a political and trade deal known as an association agreement. That decision sparked protests in Kyiv and around the country.