I want to remind everyone that “autonomy” is functionally what the political provision in the Minsk Accords is. Every single western government has been actively pushing Minsk as the “only path forward”, with the EU sanctions regime connected to this toxic “peace” deal.
The only difference now is that it appears the Biden administration has said the “quiet part” out loud, and is skipping with the fake niceties of the Minsk Accords. This is in effect kind of a version of the Steinmeier Formula, which Zelensky’s admin has long been contemplating.
The big scandal here is not proposing what is always being imposed on Ukraine via the Minsk Accords, but that it may potentially be that the US is now on board with the interpretation Moscow wants all along. And this spells the end of independent and sovereign Ukraine.
Considering that Ze campaigned on changing the order of the steps of the Minsk Accords, and even endorsed the deadly Kremlin crafted “Steinmeier’s Formula”, it’s conceivable Kyiv will accept.
Then watch Ukrainian civil society explode in justifiable outrage. It’ll be disastrous.
Of the 1.607 reported cases in Ontario today, 864 are 2x dosed, 623 are unvaxxed, 31 are partially vaxxed, & 89 have unknown vax status.
This should tell us that double dosed are taking far too many risks because they don’t understand the risks.
Massive communication failure.
Many are to blame here, including every single person who states simply without all necessary caveats that “vaccines work”.
No, they HELP prevent severe illness & death.
That’s important. But it isn’t enough considering the long term effects after even asymptomatic cases.
It was wrong and plain old unethical to present vaccines as a panacea. As every expert worth a lick will tell you, they are important tool of *layered* protection.
But vaccines been presented as all the prevention one needs, and as thorough “mild” COVID is trivial or harmless.
I keep thinking about how the Biden admin was considering Matthew Rojansky as the Russia Director of the National Security Council. I wonder if someone didn’t reach out to Rand for Charap’s appeasement piece to see what reception it would receive if adopted as US policy.
The public response to the prospect of the Wilson Center’s Rojansky being the NSC Russia director was a resounding “hell no”. Did they reach out for an appeasement pusher to use it as a test balloon? See how big a commotion the policy would cause? Acceptance from enough people?
I also can’t help but continue to feel that no matter the rhetoric from the Biden admin, he is cut from the same cloth as Obama who was a disaster on foreign policy. The man of the “reset” admin may not be all that different on Russia. Decisions to date have largely sucked.
“If Ukraine is so irrelevant then why are we talking about it?” Because EVEN IF you are immoral and don’t care about Ukraine’s existence, MOSCOW cares about it a great deal. It makes or breaks the Russian imperial project. So the Q is: Do you want Russia on steroids to exist?
I know people like to reduce it to “moral” vs “sphere of interest” argument. This is masturbatory jargon. It’s simple: Either you believe in the international security order and the right to self determination, or you believe in might makes right and imperialism.
There’s no big “benefit” to the newest push promoting Ukrainian surrender and capitulation to Russia. The arguments for & against appeasement have been made over and over again. The only “opportunity” that has arisen has been for the Russophile set to have their voices amplified.
The Kremlin agents, useful idiots, and Russophile club has had a spotlight shone on their immoral, anti-facts and anti-Ukrainian arguments again. Think: “There’s no such thing as bad press”.
No new facts or arguments have been made. The bad one just got a boat load of attention.
In fact, I’ve seen a great deal of variations of the same tired appeasement articles from the usual suspects consolidated into threads so you can see the arguments get whitewashed and validated by academic and expert “authority”. Yeah, it’s been an “opportunity” all right.
I see the Kremlin agents are once again pushing the narrative that “Ukraine should let occupied Donbas go to Russia ‘temporarily’.” “Make Moscow pay for it and get your shit together in the meantime, Ukraine! Then try to get it back when you are reformed!”
It’s just too good. You get to promote surrender and capitulation; rewarding Russian aggression as an “undesirable pain in Moscow’s ass”; the narrative that Ukraine’s biggest problem is corruption, NOT Moscow; under the guise of “concern for Ukraine’s well-being”.
“Ukrainians will never accept appeasement” is not true. Zelensky came to power on the appeasement platform in his presidential campaign. We’ve witnessed 2yrs of concession policies.
We should not confuse the patriotic and devoted nation building minority with the “what’s the difference?” majority.
We shouldn’t be flippant about the recent appeasement push by the Moscow friendly, Kremlin agents. Ukraine’s Office of the President could pursue such policies.
Ze’s presidency has been grounded in appeasement policy with a clearly discernible pattern of concessions to Russia:
-Gutting UA intelligence & defence sector
-Prisoner exchanges undermining UA’s legal position on the war
-Suberverting UA’s energy independence
-Ceding territory