by jacquesm | 2025-09-29 00:07:26+00:00
> Israel executes collective punishment of all Palestinians for actions of Hamas. > Putin executes collective punishment of all Ukrainians for actions of certain politicians.

Yes, both are nuts.

> The commenter above suggested that the same principle should be applied to all Russian citizens.

There is a fair chance that if Russia decides to engage NATO that it will in fact end up that way. If that's not something you want then now would be a good time to act.

> Why I should be focused on that? To release the steam? Oh, yes, that’s bad, poor people.

Yes, indeed, poor people. Why gloss over that? It's the main article, not some kind of side dish.

> Their fates are determined not by the preparation of Europe to war, but by the willingness of politicians to discuss realistic peace terms.

Did you entirely miss the previous times that Russia agreed to terms and then violated them, over and over again? If you want people to be willing to discuss peace terms it would really help if you had a good track record of abiding by those terms. Russia does not currently have that track record.

> The sooner the war will end, the less people will die.

No shit. But unfortunately there is one party that seems to want to continue this war, no matter what the cost. The other side has one option: to capitulate, but for some weird reason they seem to think that that is not an option. Mostly because they already know how that part of the story goes just by looking at other places that did just that.

> This war was lost by Ukraine and NATO when counteroffensive failed (not least because NATO failed to provide sufficient help), so the only important thing to discuss is how to minimize the losses, because we are obviously not engaging directly.

You are not as well informed as you seem to think. As we speak 21.7% of russian oil refinery capacity is down, and it will remain down for another 3 to 6 months at a minimum. My guess is that when Ukraine is done going after russian oil infrastructure that number will be a lot higher and then they're going to set their sights on electrical infra. And they're getting scary good at this. Russia is succeeding in grabbing land and killing civilians, Ukraine is succeeding in seriously reducing Russia's capacity to continue to be a power of any kind at all. You must at least be aware of some of this.

> But nobody in Europe is prepared to start this conversation.

Nobody in Europe is in a position to negotiate with russia on this, the only parties that we believe can credibly do this are russia and Ukraine and one of these believes that they should continue the war because they have something to gain from it.

> The money is the only topic where real conversation happens.

Indeed. And you won't be able to sell me on Ukraine's land being worth as much as russia is currently prepared to pay for it. Or rather, to be more precise, than russia is willing to make other parties pay for it because it isn't exactly the crowd from St. Petersburg and Moscow at the front lines. And if it ever should come to that the war would be over very quickly.

> What kind of voice are you expecting and why do you think I’m not using it?

I'm expecting you to speak up against Putin, and to donate as much as you can afford to the defense of Ukraine. If your comments in this thread are a sample of how you really feel about all this then I'm guessing you're not doing either until you provide proof otherwise. You are all but suggesting the EU or Ukraine are at fault here when clearly it is russia that is the aggressor, and which continues to commit one warcrime after another with complete disregard for human rights and what is considered civilized in general.