US army secretary briefs ambassadors at ‘nightmare meeting’ in Kyiv on Friday after talks with Ukrainian leader
US officials have told Nato allies they expect to push president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into agreeing to a peace deal in the coming days, under the threat that if Kyiv does not sign, it will face a much worse deal in future.
The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from Nato nations at a meeting in Kyiv late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. “No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,” he told them, according to one person who was present.
The mood in the room was sombre, with several European ambassadors questioning the content of the deal and the way in which the US had conducted the negotiations with Russia without keeping allies informed.
How exactly is this going to be worse? Putin keeps a bunch of territory, gets welcomed back into the global economy, Ukraine gets hard limits on NATO membership and they’re on military in exchange for a weak non-guarantee of security. You could sum the whole thing up as ‘let’s all agree Russia won’.
It’s bullshit. It legitimizes military conquest of territory. The only compromise should be that Russia stops their illegal invasion, Russia’s internationally held funds are 100% given to Ukraine for reconstruction, and the border territories get to hold a vote to decide which country they want to be a part of.
As this is now, it’s just legitimizing the occupation. As an American I am very disappointed that our President would push such a thing.
Yup. And the only reason for Russia to insist Ukraine never join NATO would be so Russia could attack them again in the future without consequence.
Exactly.
Look, don’t get me wrong here, I’m Ukrainian on my fathers side, but that line of argument doesn’t quite hold water when you look at what the US has been up to for the past 100 years. In some sick sense, I get it, it’s like, Putin is saying, fuck you, if the US can wage wars of conquest, so can we.
Clearly not as successfully, but I understand how you could defend that rationale. Jesus christ don’t think I’m defending the Russians here, I’m just saying, for real like. Slava Ukraini.
US is certainly no angel. Saying that as an American.
At the same time, there’s a difference between shit we did in the 70s (and so did many other nations including RU) and today. In this millennium the closest we came to conquest was Iraq but we dumped that pretty fast.
‘We’re going to conquer this territory by force and add it to our own’ hasn’t been an internationally recognized valid move in decades. We should not validate it.
No, there is not. You literally are funding genocide in Palestine, and every year half a million people are killed by US and EU economic sanctions.
or the argument holds water and also the US has consistently been in the wrong for the same reasons
Well yes. And… yes. But we can’t be telling the Russians to stop being imperalist when the people we’re allied with are the biggest imperialists in the history of the world (more or less/depending on how you quantify it).
The cold war is most certainly still in effect. I’m not too fucking happy with what the US has been doing since the… uh… like, 50’s? That’s three quarters of a century, I could list a few atrocities and name names you know. I’m European. I care about Europe, I care about democracy, I care about peace and quiet and perhaps a naive idealist concept of a (mostly) enlightened way of living.
I don’t know where I’m going with this.
What do you believe in?
geopolitics is consistently hypocritical… especially when it comes to the US… we absolutely can, and should be telling everyone to stop being imperialist but in lieu of that, we can just tell russia to cut the shit
Have you seen Russian ‘democracy’ before ? Gee whiz 100% of people voted to join Russia shocked
Obviously there would have to be some kind of neutral 3rd party overseeing the vote…
Yeah, sorry I think my previous comment was spread with a bit too much of a cunty attitude which was unnecessary. I feel that would be a very contentious and contended event trying to complete a democratic process in an authoritarian state.
Hey I really appreciate that, seems like these days most people double down on the cynicism rather than walking it back. Sending tons of good vibes your way.
I agree it would be difficult to complete a democratic process in an authoritarian state. I think the process would have to be those areas revert to Ukrainian control, and the election will happen in 4 to 6 months or something.
It might also be totally impractical, for the simple reason that those areas have been contested for so long they are probably largely war zone rubble and much of the civilian population has fled. So you would have to restrict voting to anyone who lived in the area before the fighting started, because if you allowed anybody who lived in the area at vote time to vote you no Russia would just pay a whole bunch of people to move there and vote to switch to Russian rule.
Basically my thought is Russia should not get to expand its territory by force, but at the same time if people in those areas genuinely prefer to be part of Russia that should be taken into account too.