How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[Copernicus]

...
How about you tell us what you think the appropriate response the US should have towards this state of affairs.

As I have said before, and obviously you missed it, to do nothing. This isn't our fight...

That wasn't the US position when Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal and the US, UK, and Russia all formally promised in the Budapest Memo to guarantee the security of Ukraine in exchange for that agreement. You can argue that the commitment is now null and void, as Russia did, but it is still there for us. Both the UK and the US have a clear obligation to support Ukraine's struggle to remain independent of Russia.

 

[Jayjay]

So tell me what the fuck good this war has done for Russia? How is Russia’s security situation improved by this stupid war? How has it benefited the ordinary Russian?

Complete and utter propaganda garbage.
Mighty US/NATO is currently losing their proxy war with Russia they started.

Who invaded what?

US/NATO invaded Ukraine.

No, it didn't. Sending a few soldiers to train or have a limited military exercise is not an invasion. And those people left before the war anyway.

 

[Copernicus]

The city council of Mariupol has coined a new word in Ukrainian to represent the Russian brand of fascism that is associated with Putin and his delusional take on the history of Belarus and Ukraine: “рашизм.” In English orthography, that would be pronounced "rah-SHEE-zum", but the author transliterates it a bit oddly as "ruscism". That is because the Ukrainian word rhymes with their word for "fascism"--“фашизм.” He is trying to blend the transliteration spelling with the English word "fascism".

See The War in Ukraine Has Unleashed a New Word

Unfortunately, the NY Times is a paywall that limits free access periodically to just a single article, so you may not be able to see the content.

The City Council of Mariupol, Ukraine, was trying to make a point about mass death. Their city had been hit hardest by the Russian invasion, and thousands of corpses lay amid the rubble after weeks of urban warfare. After the revelation of Russian atrocities in Bucha and other cities in northern Ukraine, the elected representatives of the port city wished to remind the world that the scale of killing in the south was still higher. In dry and sober language, they described the fates of Mariupol residents. Occasionally, though, emotion slipped through: In passing, the council members referred to the Russian perpetrators by a term of condemnation that every Ukrainian knows, though it is not yet in the dictionaries and cannot (yet) be said in English: “рашизм.”

It is a long, but amusing article on the creative use of language to describe the sense of cynicism and horror that Ukrainians feel as they see their country systematically destroyed. Here is another excerpt from the article:

The Russian освобождение is also laden with decades of Soviet usage, since it was applied relentlessly to describe every action of the Red Army, including ones where the people in question did not believe that they were being “liberated,” as in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. This is the word now used by Russians to describe their invasion of Ukraine, and it carries with it decades of mendacious use. To Ukrainians it can sound both absurd and sinister; when Russians use it earnestly, Ukrainians might consider it a sign of “zombification,” зомбування, a word they use rather a lot. One Ukrainian explanation for the use of the letter Z by official Russia as the symbol of the invasion is that “the other half of the swastika was stolen in the warehouse,” a joke about the logistics of the Russian Army — but personally, the Z makes me think of “zombie.”

Much of the article is a discussion of the play on words and language differences that make it difficult to understand the nuances, but there is a certain reality underlying all of the linguistic play:

Russian fascism is certainly a phenomenon that requires a concept. The Russian Federation promotes the extreme right everywhere. Putin is the idol of white supremacists around the world. Prominent Russian fascists are given access to mass media during wars, including this one. Members of the Russian elite, above all Putin himself, rely increasingly on fascist concepts. Putin’s very justification of the war in Ukraine, as an act of cleansing violence that will return Russia to itself, represents a Christian form of fascism. The recent publication, in an official Russian news service, of what I consider an openly genocidal handbook, providing a plan for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such, confirms all this. Moscow is the center of fascism in our world.

The author is Timothy Snyder, the Levin professor of history at Yale University. He specializes in the history of tyranny in eastern Europe that goes back to the war between the two tyrants, Hitler and Stalin.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

US/NATO invaded Ukraine.

Really, now? We would have gone in with M1A1s, not T72s!

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Maybe in anarchocapitalist libertopia there are no police or military because everybody simply engages in mutually beneficial voluntary transactions. So Ukraine obviously did something wrong and deserves this. Maybe Putin will make them proper libertarians in the Russian federation of non nazi liberty.

That straw man never stood a chance.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

...
How about you tell us what you think the appropriate response the US should have towards this state of affairs.

As I have said before, and obviously you missed it, to do nothing. This isn't our fight...

That wasn't the US position when Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal and the US, UK, and Russia all formally promised in the Budapest Memo to guarantee the security of Ukraine in exchange for that agreement. You can argue that the commitment is now null and void, as Russia did, but it is still there for us. Both the UK and the US have a clear obligation to support Ukraine's struggle to remain independent of Russia.

So you see I've answered it in the past. Thank you. Finally someone bothers to find out that I've already answered a question when asked it again and again and again.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The lack of a decent moral high ground of the United States isn't enough to try and morally whitewash what Russia is doing, though your posting history does show your propensity to want to defend mob rule and fascism, which explains your ridiculous statement.

There is not a single post of mine where I showed a "propensity to want to defend mob rule and fascism".

 

[steve_bank]

The communists followed by the oligarchs were never able to match the west's capacity for quality design and manufacturing both commercial and military.

In the 80s I had a look at a Russian equivalent to a Sidewinder IR missile. Instead of transistors and integrated circuits it was based in miniature tubes.

Russia's tanks in Ukraine have a 'jack-in-the-box' design flaw. And the West has known about it since the Gulf war | CNN

Russian tanks with their tops blown off are just the latest sign that Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't going to plan.

www.cnn.com

Russia’s tanks in Ukraine have a ‘jack-in-the-box’ design flaw. And the West has known about it since the Gulf war​

CNN —

Russian tanks with their tops blown off are just the latest sign that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t going to plan.


Hundreds of Russian tanks are thought to have been destroyed since Moscow launched its offensive, with British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Monday estimating it had lost as many as 580.


But Moscow’s problems go beyond the sheer number of tanks it has lost. Experts say battlefield images show Russian tanks are suffering from a defect that Western militaries have known about for decades and refer to as the “jack-in-the-box effect.” Moscow, they say, should have seen the problem coming.


The problem relates to how the tanks’ ammunition is stored. Unlike modern Western tanks, Russian ones carry multiple shells within their turrets. This makes them highly vulnerable as even an indirect hit can start a chain reaction that explodes their entire ammunition store of up to 40 shells.


The resulting shockwave can be enough to blast the tank’s turret as high as a two-story building, as can be seen in a recent video on social media.

 

[steve_bank]

Boris Badenov and Natasha Russian spies extraordinaire.

 

[bilby]

In the 80s I had a look at a Russian equivalent to a Sidewinder IR missile. Instead of transistors and integrated circuits it was based in miniature tubes

Vacuum tubes are much better than transistors at surviving EMP, and at operating in highly radioactive environments.

Their use in Cold War munitions isn't necessary risable.

 

[barbos]

So tell me what the fuck good this war has done for Russia? How is Russia’s security situation improved by this stupid war? How has it benefited the ordinary Russian?

Complete and utter propaganda garbage.
Mighty US/NATO is currently losing their proxy war with Russia they started.

Who invaded what?

US/NATO invaded Ukraine.

No, it didn't. Sending a few soldiers to train or have a limited military exercise is not an invasion. And those people left before the war anyway.

They totally did, they totally did.

 

[barbos]

Former US ambassador talks about Ukraine.
Sufficient to say he essentially agrees with ...... Putin.

 

[Hermit]

Here's a wild radical thought that seems to have received too little attention.

Maybe neither side are the "good guys."

So true. In our eagerness to support Ukraine's resistance to being invaded and annexed by Russia we wilfully ignore the simultaneous invasion and annexation of Russia by Ukraine. We really need to take a more balanced view when looking at both sides. We can do that by supporting Russia, whose capital is currently surrounded and beleaguered by Ukrainian tanks, and protesting against the mass killing of Moscow's civilian population

 

[Hermit]

It is US policy that any time any group out there gets cross with any other group out there, we have to figure out which one are the "good guys" and support them.

A more mature perspective is that sometimes, in some conflicts, there are no "good guys".

You are assuming that "good guys" is a criterion by which US foreign policy is conducted. Your naïveté would be touching were it not borne of the fact that you have swallowed propaganda concerning it hook, line and sinker.

The number one criterion of any nation is "What serves our interest best". The number two criterion arises from it: "What can we get away with in order to maximise our advantage?" Number three goes "How can we dress our actions up as being virtuous?"

Sometimes countries do support the good guys, but that only happens when support the good guys coincides with protecting or advancing the supporter's national interest. It may be news to you that the US did not ally itself with Stalin because Soviet Russia was the good guy. It did not provide two or three billion dollars worth of military equipment to the Mujahideen because they were the good guys. The US did not get chummy with Saddam Hussein via special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld, because Iraq's dictator was a good guy...

The list of supporting sides that were not good guys is a lot longer than the list of good guys the US supported. You really need to re-examine your assumption.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Former US ambassador talks about Ukraine.
Sufficient to say he essentially agrees with ...... Putin.

Whippty do. I'm sorry amigo, but most people have busy lives to attend to and don't have the time to pay attention to every little whine that poor Russia complains about. I am sorry that so many have been big meanies to Russia. But the downfall of Russia will be that it ignored reality and underestimated the western world. Tiny little Ukraine is kicking your ass. You'll end up with more of their land. Russia is very good at stealing land and killing people. But you won't take Kyiv. And tiny Ukraine will have degraded your military to the point where you won't be able to invade other countries. The sanctions will bite into your economy deeply and bitterly. Your side has united NATO to the strongest that it's ever been. And the west is doing everything it can to diversify its energy needs and get off your gas and oil black mail.

 

[marc]

Here's a wild radical thought that seems to have received too little attention.

Maybe neither side are the "good guys."

So true. In our eagerness to support Ukraine's resistance to being invaded and annexed by Russia we wilfully ignore the simultaneous invasion and annexation of Russia by Ukraine. We really need to take a more balanced view when looking at both sides. We can do that by supporting Russia, whose capital is currently surrounded and beleaguered by Ukrainian tanks, and protesting against the mass killing of Moscow's civilian population

Yes, we should send 1,000 tanks to Moscow right now. They can protect it from those Ukrainians.

 

[SLD]

So tell me what the fuck good this war has done for Russia? How is Russia’s security situation improved by this stupid war? How has it benefited the ordinary Russian?

Complete and utter propaganda garbage.
Mighty US/NATO is currently losing their proxy war with Russia they started.

Who invaded what?

US/NATO invaded Ukraine.

No, it didn't. Sending a few soldiers to train or have a limited military exercise is not an invasion. And those people left before the war anyway.

They totally did, they totally did.

OK. What regiments? Or air wings? Just curious.

And while you’re at it, answer my original questions: what the fuck good has this war has done for Russia? How is Russia’s security situation improved by this stupid war? How has it benefited the ordinary Russian?

 

[Elixir]

OK. What regiments? Or air wings? Just curious

Barbos only knows what Pootler tells him.

 

[steve_bank]

I expect without a strong response to Ukraine Putin would be emboldened and Sweden/Finland could be in play. He clearly undersestmated the European-American response.

Making Ukraine a Russian proxy state does present a threat to NATO border states. There are old territorial claims with Poland that Stalin played out.

The Budapest Memorandum


Russia agreed
1. Not to interfere with Ukrainian politics.
3. To guarantee Ukrainian integrity.
43 Not to use economic pressure to coerce Ukraine.
4. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non non nuclear state.

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf

It will be a long time if ever when Russia will be trusted on agreements.

 

[Elixir]

The way to make Russia secure from the Western Nazi Threat, is to invade Russia, raze its cities, murder its civilian population and threaten nuclear holocaust if anyone tries to interfere.
What’s good for the goose… right, Pootey?