Summary
Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that halting U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine could be “worse than Afghanistan.”
He urged continued support until a ceasefire is reached and announced plans for sanctions on Russia’s banking and energy sectors.
The Trump administration paused aid after a heated Oval Office meeting where Trump and JD Vance clashed with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Russia escalated attacks following the fallout.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss a minerals deal and ceasefire, while Trump seeks further concessions from Ukraine.
I feel like you’d have a different stance on this if you were Ukrainian
Why? I think an Ukrainian would be even more keen on that. Ukrainians bear the main cost of war. It would make sense for the majority of them to wish for a ceasefire even more than for Trump. Bear in mind that many Ukrainians in the Web are refugees elsewhere, so they might seem very emotional and aggressive and irresponsible, it’s very easy to call for total war over the Web from another country.
Why? Russia has never honored a ceasefire. Within a few months or years Russia is back to seize more Ukrainian land. Why on Earth does anyone believe Russia would honor one now?
Because Russia needs a ceasefire “saving face” for its “elite”, in fact it’s, of course, not about saving face, their face is covered with piss, but about persuading themselves. I don’t think there are many war goals to be reached with further fighting. Russian and Ukrainian militaries now have something resembling parity in terms of professionalism and processes. Basically a huge polygon to train two armies. It just doesn’t make sense for them to fight each other IMHO.
Anyway, with what Western-supported jihadist government is now doing in Syria (literally massacring Alawites and Christians on the coast, the EU has literally condemned Alawites for “rebelling”, accused them of massacring themselves and called them Assad supporters, Russia has released something meaningless, France and Greece some good words, but without actions, there’s been a UNSC meeting which ended with nothing ; there are a few thousands of people hiding on the Russian base, but Russia doesn’t have a good history at delivering on at least such expectations ; the last numbers of the dead I’ve seen were 7k-10k, 2 days ago, but nothing has stopped, apparently, and since Syria’s “new authorities” are already trying to persuade those refugees to leave the base, it appears they’ve killed much more), it’s the first time since 2022 that I started doubting that Russia is the bad boy here. Maybe those in Kremlin knew something I didn’t, having intelligence services and all that.
Maybe the West is evil and Russia is virtuous for the sole reason it’s not part of the West.
Russia fights for domestic political reasons. Ukrainians fight to avoid annihilation. If Ukraine stops fighting there will no longer be a meaningful Ukraine. Ukraine doesn’t have the option to stop fighting.
Next for your tangent, that’s a gold medal performance in metal gymnastics to get where you got.
First, we’re talking geopolitics here. There is no single “good” side and no single “evil” side. All sides will do things judged by others as evil. Second, to suggest russia is virtuous even by itself, is insultingly silly.
Wha-ha-ha? I live in Russia, I promise you nobody will demand continuation if they say on TV that Putin got assfucked by Ukrainians and we lost. I also don’t notice anybody speaking about that war much. If by domestic political reasons you mean that independent and well-existing Ukraine is a threat to the regime - then surely. Except not anymore, after what’s already happened it will take a lot of time to rebuild.
No, annihilation is what’s happening in Latakia, done by a former branch of ISIS which is suddenly good and accepted for the West, done in their “Syrian army” uniforms, and their commanders record videos with speeches like “do whatever you want, just don’t record it”, but there already are plenty of videos with empty streets with corpses of civilians lying around, people executed in all manners possible, families murdered together, and all such shit which I avoid since 2 days ago.
Ukrainians fight to avoid something that almost every people on the globe has experienced, they would of course have former servicemen and especially officers jailed and possibly killed, politicians, activists, whoever not, but that’s not the same as genocide.
This sentence looks like an attempt at irony, except it’s just stupid.
You have to pick one. Also there are good and evil deeds, of course you’ll get the impression there’s no such if you listen to what people say.
And compared to the rest of course Russia is virtuous, at some point (being a kid) my opinion of all those sides was that some are evil, but competent and thus make consistent things which eventually combine into something good, while Russia is both evil and incompetent, thus just shitting around. I no longer think so. I prefer incompetent Russia. Except nobody should rely upon it for security.
Because right now it’s still spending enormous resources at trying to defeat its strongest former ally, while the rest of its former allies are somewhere between battered and dead.
My whole theory is that maybe Russian leadership has learned something, had some internal changes, so that now they may be looking for an opening to stop the war and start rebuilding the rest of what they failed to keep operational.
You don’t know what total war means, just FYI.
You should pass the dendropithecus level in this game before giving FYIs.
Hyperbola is a thing in texts.
Exponential graphing? Or do you mean hyperbole?
#2, in my language they are spelled the sameway