https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/world/europe/zelensky-ukraine-peace-talks.html
"Ukraine’s president met with U.S. negotiators about plans to end the war with Russia. He said he would give up hopes of joining NATO in exchange for security guarantees."
Since allegedly, that is what Putin was after when he STARTED this war, I guess the war will soon be over. (NOT)
And was his invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014 also about NATO?
He wants to resurrect the Soviet empire. He said so multiple times.
I agree with you, joj!
Just agreeing to not join NATO will not end the war.
1. That was Putin's offer/deal in 2021 BEFORE he threatened a war. Also early in 2022, early in the war.
2. NATO/Biden and their puppet completely rejected that, shut down negotiations and told Putin that they would fight him to get Ukraine. Not just for NATO to get into Ukraine anymore but it raised the stakes, which included, potentially land in UKRAINE going to Russia, depending on the results of the war.
3. Russia won. NATO lost at the expense of the Ukrainians they used to weaken Russia.
4. We don't pretend it's 2021 again and go back to the deal before NATO decided to fight a winner take all war against Russia. Russia had suffered tremendous losses to win this winner take all war.
5. There is no venue in which the entities have a battle, where the winner gives back what the battle was over to the loser at the end. In a chess match, for instance an opponent can offer a draw at many points in the battle which would mean both sides get 1/2 point. If the draw is rejected and the game is played out, the side that loses............loses EVERYTHING at the end. They don't get to go back and receive the draw offer from earlier in the game.
6. Russia won decidedly, Ukraine lost decidedly and Putin is exploiting his win and advantage to the maximum right now. It's very sad and I don't like it either but Putin is a ruthless killer that cares nothing except the best interests of Russia against an enemy(NATO) that wants to destroy him. NATO insisting on fighting the war to get Ukraine is evidence of their continued desire to maximize their expansion at Russia's expense no matter what it takes.
7. Zelensky works for NATO. He sacrificed his people and country to fight the NATO war. To be their salesman to sell support for the war in the NATO countries. Putin is a brutal, evil man but people will a lick of military leadership skills or good judgement don't INTENTIONALLY decide to have a war of attrition, using their people against a much more powerful army with more than 3 times the soldiers. A war that was impossible to win from the get go by every reasonable standard.
8. However, NATO counts dead Russians and a weaker Russia as a key metric to measure success in this war..........not caring about the profound damage to Ukraine/Ukrainians.
9. The US Military-Industrial-Political-Media complex has had tremendous profits/ratings and benefits from the war. Their incentives are not really to support Ukrainians. You don't send them on no hope of success, inevitable suicide missions, that gained nothing and lost everything. Again, this was going to be the outcome based on every reasonable assessment of the 2 armies BEFORE the war.
Previous thread:
Trumps latest on Ukraine
43 responses |
Started by metmike - Oct. 17, 2025, 2:46 p.m.
joj,
I realize that on many of these points, we appear to be strongly disagreeing. However, I contend that we agree exactly on the most important ones.
1. For the war to end. I actually voted for Trump, knowing that, as the most powerful person on the planet he had the best chance to end it with his promise to end it indicating his desire to do that.
2. We both mourn the tremendous loss of human lives which have been unnecessarily wasted and I'm certain that you will agree with me, that includes the Russians dying in the war.
3. We both mourn the loss of additional territory from Ukraine to Russia.
4. We both detest Putin and recognize him as a diabolical man that has been committing war crimes in Ukraine for almost 4 years.
5. The only thing we disagree on was the decisions made by NATO (and dynamics) to intentionally fight a winner take all war, using Ukrainians and Zelensky. There is no denying the part of it that Putin is responsible for. We agree with most of that. However, the difference lies in seeing NATO as "the good guys". I see them as diabolical and very much responsible for the consequences of this war. They've been provoking Russia for decades, with a crystal clear objective of destroying Russia based on the authentic evidence.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/114033/#114042
This gave Putin the legit incentive to behave this way. Legit because he's the president of RUSSIA and NATO's objective is to DESTROY Russia. I'm convinced of this. There is no question that Putin is convinced that he is DEFENDING Russia and actually, although I vehemently disagree with his methods, I totally agree that he not only is defending Russia, he just succeeded in defending Russia from NATO, that was, with near certainty going to get Ukraine (the Motherland) if Putin didn't do something extreme to stop them.
Lack of understanding this dynamic FROM PUTIN's perspective is the source of most of our disagreement.
It doesn't mean that I agree with what Putin has done. However, NATO/Biden/Zelensky totally understood/understand where he's coming from and made disastrous decisions by intentionally discarding that view and instead, focused on the "destroying Russia" objective, then completely twisted the facts like a pretzel to make it appear like Putin is a madman and he's coming for Europe next.
There is a near 0% chance that Putin wants this based on ALL the authentic facts. He is finally taking a stand(that he truly considers defensive) after decades of failing to stop NATO and now, the war has provided him an opportunity of uniting the Motherland with Russia.
We had every opportunity of preventing this prior to 2022 but completely ignored Putin, COMPLETELY IGNORED HIM and took him up on the winner take all war instead. We lost.
6. I'm sure you understand the Military-Industrial-Political-Media complex better than anybody and know that much of the propaganda we get comes from message gatekeepers with sources that are benefiting from the war or at least biased/not understanding the true dynamics.
So what was the reason for the Russian military attack and annexation of Crimea in 2014, which was well BEFORE your narrative for this war starting?
joj,
This is a wonderful point!
One that, in all my long winded Ukraine war posts that I've never addressed and I'm very grateful to have people here that make great points that help me and it expands the discussions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Russian_annexation_of_Crimea
I agree entirely with your mindset here. Putin gave no advance warning. He gave no options (like he did before this war). He gave nobody an opportunity to do anything to avoid his annexation of Crimea.
He just TOOK IT!
He took it illegally!
Putin is an opportunist. In his deranged mind as the leader of Russia, he is going to do things for Russia, ABUSING his power at the expense of others, regardless of laws...........if he can get away with it.
In this case, he exploited political instability at the time to justify what he did and to make it look legit so that he could reunite this area that has alot of Russians with Russia.
We agree that this was wrong. What should be the consequence?
I will ask that question again.
What SHOULD be the consequence?
People living the reality of our world know that there's often a difference between true justice (what SHOULD be the consequence) and what makes the most sense to react in a way that doesn't cause a bad situation to be even worse and hurt even more innocent people to gain nothing.
Sometimes, evil dictators with tremendous power get away with doing evil things. I'm not saying just accept it. We can have sanctions and take actions to punish Putin and condemn him but the free world knows it would be a disaster to send in troops to retake Crimea for Ukraine. China does bad things to human beings. Countries in the Middle East do bad things. African countries do bad things. Mostly because of evil people in the world.
Wouldn't it be great if you and me, that care about human lives and human rights could identify the numerous violations around the world and have the ability to take actions to fix them...........WITHOUT MAKING IT EVEN WORSE for the ones being violated.
Since we can't and in fact, so often the ones that we depend on in the United States (the good guys) to right all the wrongs in the world have their own evil agenda's!!!! Like the Vietnam War, for instance!
I contend that NATO is such an entity.
Putin got away with annexing Crimea. We can squawk forever about it being wrong and be correct but there's nothing anybody can do to change it. What we must do, however is make smart decisions about things that WE CAN HAVE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON.
Not make decisions to have EVERYTHING that we want in a perfect (fantasy) world. Smart decisions that result in the best outcome for the side we represent, which sometimes, means doing what the late Pope Francis called "having the courage to raise the white flag" for Ukraine.
Being a smart military leader means knowing how to pick battles THAT YOU CAN WIN!
Then, negotiating to get the best deals on the rest when you have no chance to win......
NATO/Biden and their puppet decided on the exact wrong choice in 2021/22 when Putin gave them 2 choices.
1. NO NATO or
2. A winner take all war
The crime in Crimea was unavoidable. The war in Ukraine was absolutely avoidable.
Which one was worse to Ukraine?
Where would we be if Ukraine had agreed with Putin to no NATO in 2021?
We can't know for sure but it wouldn't be this bad and there's a good chance that there would have been no war. As mentioned previously, Putin is an evil opportunist obsessed with his #1 objective.
This explains his behavior right now. We gasp at his relentless attacks, getting even worse during the peace negotiations. This can't possibly be the actions of a man that wants peace!!! That's what our minds tell us.
Putin is a brilliant military strategist, combined with a brutal, killer, show no mercy mentality that will finish off his opponent after he wins the battle with no conscience to haunt him because all he cares about is gains for Russia not dead people. Not even dead Russian soldiers. They are just units to him. Pawns sacrificed for Russia which DEvalues their lives as human beings.
Putin's army suffered tremendously to get this win. His country has sacrificed everything. He's going to capitalize on it as long as he can to maximize the gains/size of the victory for Russia until the last day that he can do it.
Trump is right (at least half the time when he has this position) when he tells Zelensky that he has no negotiating power with Russia. NATO's demands for anything at this point are asking for things that the loser wants the winner to RETURN BACK even though the winner crushed them and has incentive to keep taking more if the loser won't give up.
Again, this isn't what SHOULD happen in a just world but it's what MUST happen to stop it from getting even worse!
"Peace in our time". - Neville Chamberlain
joj,
I used these sources in a post about Taiwan/China but it really belongs here:
Re: Re: Re: Arms to Taiwan and China
By metmike - Dec. 29, 2025, 8:36 p.m.
If China takes Taiwan using military force, what should we do?
If China wants Taiwan, let's face it, nobody can stop them.
Here's the thing. Trying to slow them down and hurt them doing it with military force, when they WILL win in the end accomplishes what? Other than killing Chinese soldiers at the expense of sacrificing the lives of brave soldiers fighting for freedom and democracy on our side.......to end up with China winning anyway.
I'm for sanctions and penalties imposed by numerous countries working together to oppose this, even though that won't stop them.
Again, the choices are not good vs bad.
They are bad compared to really bad.
Choosing the option that does the least amount of harm.
https://www.funblocks.net/thinking-matters/classic-mental-models/least-harm-principle
++++++++++++++
metmike: Please note #s 4-6 below.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
War
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
Traditional just war theory construes jus ad bellum andjus in bello as sets of principles, satisfying which is necessary and sufficient for a war’s being permissible. Jus ad bellum typically comprises the following six principles:
The biggest disservice that the West/NATO/Media have done for the past 4 years is blatantly MISrepresenting Ukraine's chance to win, then after they were completely decimated in the 100% one sided loss, they continued to feed us propaganda about Ukraine still having a chance to win.......if they just keep fighting long enough.
"They" as in the Ukrainian army doesn't even exist anymore. The worst military leader in the history of wars, Zelensky forced his brave soldiers to go on suicide missions to the point where they had enough and have been desserting in the hundreds of thousands.
Playing exactly into the hands of Putin, who knew that he WOULD win a war of attrition.
Not just Putin, on this forum in 2022 I was showing the difference in the numbers in their military's.
As a scholastic chess coach for 3 decades, I teach my students to use this same tactic to WIN games.
They all start with the same 7 major pieces on each side. If a player goes up by several pieces, let's say 6 to 3, (unless they still have their queen and thats the piece you lost) Trade Trade TRADE!!!!
If you kill their 3 pieces off, even at the expense of you losing 4 or even 5 pieces..........you win.
Having 2 major pieces left in the end game to your opponents 0(even though pawns with a king can win a rare game, despite this advantage) is an overwhelming advance which results in a victory.
The sad thing is that Putin is playing a brilliant game of chess against somebody that has no business leading a military.
However, plastic chess pieces that die on the board will come back to life for the next challenging chess match. Putin is using HUMAN BEINGS instead of plastic pieces and Zelensky was dumb and corrupt enough to ALSO USE HUMAN BEINGS in a game that never started with both sides having the same major pieces.
Zelensky had a near 0% chance to win this NATO war, using his people. NATO, however counts its victory in the number of DEAD RUSSIANS and a weaker Russia.......justifying the DEAD UKRAINIANS to accomplish this.
The US Military-Industrial-Political-Media complex made block buster profits, block buster ratings, block buster stories about good vs evil, pretending with propaganda and lies that we are actually supporting the brave Ukrainian soldiers....by getting all killed off to gain NOTHING.
When all they had to do 4 years ago was to not let NATO have Ukraine.
Putin is a diabolical, killer psychopath but NATO, in their zest to damage and destroy him, along with our morally bankrupt politicians and greedy military industrial complex gatekeepers of messages were even worse because they should have known better!
Putin is obsessed with what he thinks is defending Russia and he is very sincere if such an absurd thing can be stated about a diabolical, killer psychopath.
NATO? They used Ukraine and Ukrainians and every person that paid to support THEIR WAR, trying to destroy Russia vs just agreeing to stay out of Ukraine and peace with Russia. They wanted this war with Russia, make no mistake about it.
++++++
Continues to be a 1 way decimation of what's left of Ukraine's army.
https://apnews.com/article/un-us-russia-ukraine-war-oreshnik-nato-3fa1fda56fe6c537ec762829b145296d
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States accused Russia on Monday of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” of its nearly four-year war in Ukraine at a time when the Trump administration is trying to advance negotiations toward peace
++++++++++++
If Donald Trump had an iota of credibility left before he took over Venuzuala (an ally of Russia/China) and before he insisted that he's going to take Greenland, he has WORSE than 0 credibility left with Putin.
Donald Trump is doing exactly what Putin did but 100 times worse in Putin's mind. Putin considers Ukraine part of the Mother Land, with many Russian speaking people in the eastern parts.
Donald Trump took over a country to get its oil using the most powerful military in the world and is threatening to take over another country he says as a strategic military position against Russia and China.
There's no chance at all for him to be a negotiator for peace in Ukraine now. Donald Trump is now a conqueror of weaker countries using his military force for oil. How can he possibly be lecturing Putin for conquering a country that he feels justified in doing?
Most of Ukraine may be lost now. The only way that Putin will stop now is when HE decides his losses are greatly outweighing any more gains. Now Putin actually has more justification to pour it on. To maximize his gains as much as possible.
WOW. I actually voted for Donald Trump in November 2024 because I thought he was the only person with a legit chance to end the war in Ukraine. This is the ONLY reason that I voted for Donald Trump this time. I voted for him in 2016 for other reasons and vowed to NEVER vote for him again after his first term.
Donald Trump was the only person that could have ended the war last year. As the most powerful man in the world, he could have ended it with the right pressure and tactics. Instead, he's completely lost his ability to think coherently and to use effective strategies based on smart principles and good judgment.
He's turned into a pure bully. The only 2 countries in the world that he can't bully are Russia and China and they eat his lunch on every encounter the past year. So he focuses on abusing his power against weaker countries.
Against the weakest in America. With the only ones that can stop him, the Rs in Congress enabling and supporting him. He maximizes his abuse of power to an unimaginable extreme. Taking away food stamps during a government shut down against the law for instance. Hundreds of examples of him being an opportunist to punish anybody against him and crush the weak, poor and less fortunate while helping his rich and powerful friends.
Putin understands this completely. More than every single person in the MAGA cult.
Putin is a diabolical, psychopathic killer but he's also a brilliant strategist with a keen awareness of the dynamics he faces. He knew how to win the war, when the team of NATO/BIden and Zelensky intentionally made the dumb choice to fight a war with Putin to determine whether NATO got Ukraine or Putin got Ukraine instead of agreeing that NATO would stay out and having NO WAR.
He understands Trump very well. They have plenty of similar psychological traits. That's why Donald Trump ADMIRES Putin. However, Putin does not feel the same way back. He has disrespected Trump over and over and over.
I can no longer imagine a scenario with Donald Trump being an effective negotiator to end the war in Ukraine. As much as I hoped and pray for it and voted for Donald Trump because he once had that opportunity, the window of opportunity has long since passed and Trump's recent actions now feature an even BIGGER threat to NATO than Putin.
Putin is taking a non NATO country that NATO wanted real bad. Trump is threatening to take a NATO country, Greenland which would obligate all the NATO countries, by definition of their agreement to defend Greenland against the United States.
Putin taking Ukraine, just means NATO won't get Ukraine. If Donald Trump took Greenland, it would be the end of NATO. How in tar-nation can somebody seriously threatening NATO and potentially ending NATO be the same person to negotiate FOR NATO against Russia????
Only in Donald Trump's 2nd term could such a ludicrous dynamic be possible.
TwilightZone 2026
Just to pinpoint exactly why Donald Trump has completely obliterated his window of opportunity to seek peace.
With 100% certainty, Putin's biggest concern forever has been the expansion of NATO to surround Russia which actually is a legit threat to Russia.
It's been led most recently by the European nations(and Joe Biden on board as leader of the most powerful country in NATO).
With NATO on the verge of getting part of the "Mother-land", Putin decided to take a stand. NO NATO in Ukraine, no matter what or he would invade Ukraine to stop it.
NATO/Biden and Zelensky intentionally refused to negotiate because they were confident that they would defeat Russia in Ukraine. The worst military leaders and judgment in history. They were crushed and now Putin is taking as much of Ukraine as he can because of how much he's invested in the war that he feels is justifies because of the threat from NATO expansion, amongst other things.
So what does Donald Trump do?
He introduces a 10 times worse threat to Russia, as the most powerful man in the world and part of NATO and declares it ignorantly, defiantly and dangerously.
He wants Greenland, which is on Russia's Arctic doorstep to strategically have a stronger military presence against Russia.
WT (heck)??????????????????????
This is what caused the war in Ukraine but now on steroids!!!!!
1d · Russia issues a warning that “the end of the world” will begin if Trump continues with his plan to acquire Greenland.Russian Senator Dmitry Rogozin, a former deputy prime minister and ex-head of the Russian Space Agency, believes America’s plans to acquire Greenland are linked to a “Golden Dome” missile defense system.Rogozin warns that if the US convinces itself it has achieved nuclear superiority over Russia and China thanks to annexing Greenland, “this will be the beginning of the end of the world.”He believes Trump is “fulfilling the Pentagon’s will—to seize Greenland by force and turn it into a platform for deploying means of both nuclear attack and missile defense interception of Russian ICBMs.”In the meanwhile, Denmark held talks with U.S Vice President JD Vance yesterday in Washington DC, insisting Greenland is not for sale.