by fasbiner | 2025-12-25 20:04:06+00:00
I am not a party to the conflict and I now restrict my efforts to assisting refugees and deserters on both sides. I supported Ukraine's July offensive because it was still capable of changing the strategic balance, and I hoped for a peace with significant russian concessions to be made at the high-water mark.

Now, because of people like you who are bloody-minded and impossibly idealistic when it's not your blood and you can always walk away, it's far too late.

I regard both sides maximal war aims to be impossible in the short and medium term and that all further loss of life is for nothing other than to accelerate the demographic collapse of both Russia and Ukraine in exchange for a few hundred kilometers of nearly worthless and already-depopulated land.

I think you should contact the Ukrainian authorities and ask them if they believe your advocacy is contributing to their goals. Furthermore, you should consider how things will change if there is a peace deal, at which point it seems like you will be someone who will, from a safe location, be working to undermine the Ukrainian government and to restart a losing conflict.

You are part of a larger conflict and you do not set policy, and when it changes, if you don't change with it, you become an enemy of Ukrainian government and the majority of Ukrainians. This majority and the Ukrainian government have stated they would like to have a democratic election without martial law and press censorship in order to decide their future.

Are you against democratic elections? Would you support a coup against a civilian government in order to continue the war?

You said the invasion of Ukraine was worse than the invasion of Iraq, but you reject all quantitative measures. You also have fatal anomalies in your argument you have not refuted by citing opinion pieces that also ignore this information.

Why did John Mearsheimer say Ukraine should keep its independent nuclear deterrent? Because he regarded a war like this as inevitable and that regardless of the outcome, both sides would lose and a large number of people would die, in addition to strengthening China significantly. And so it is.

I care about the average person who is stuck in this geopolitical clash between military blocs that have no regard for russian or ukrainian lives. You seem to care about achieving a military solution with little or no diplomatic consideration.

You are unwilling or unable to comprehend that people in Venezuela and the Middle East are not in fact, members of a lesser race of humans to whom acts of war and the mass murder of civilians "don't count" and don't fundamentally change the way that 90% of people on earth see western claims of moral principle.

I think you should contact the Ukrainian authorities and prove your commitment to your beliefs by volunteering to serve on the front lines: men willing to kill and die for a field are what is most needed now. Being a propagandist trying to get other people to give their lives while refusing to risk your own shows exactly how you feel about things: your life is more valuable than anyone else's and other people's sons, brothers, husbands, should die for your beliefs.

Putin doesn't care how many Russians from rustbelt towns in central asia and small towns get killed and the strategic military balance is in his favor. It is in his interests that diplomacy be seen to fail but not be his fault, because he does care about the willingness of other countries trying to make sense of the current situation to disregard and circumvent western sanctions. So yes, every word you speak and your point of view aligns perfectly with Russian strategy.

Maybe you're simply a dupe and part of an FSB influence operation, but you could make up for it by serving on the front. Anything else is chickenhawk cowardice or a false friend with murky motives.

Age is no restriction, Ukrainian men in their 50s and 60s are on the front lines. Will you fight for the cause you believe is both realistic and a moral necessity? Or perhaps... their lives are worth less than yours?

Why is it appropriate for a Ukrainian man in his late 50s to be drafted (in a way which resembles kidnapping) to kill and die for what you say you believe in but aren't willing to risk your own life for?

If you're working for the FSB you should be ashamed, and if you're not, you should be even more ashamed!

As for myself, I am an enemy of pointless, unwinnable wars, dictatorship, and coercion, so I am an enemy of both governments and a friend of the common person who had no say in this and is trapped between two corrupt cliques that get other people's families killed while vacationing safely in luxury: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/11648

I hope you provide your personal information to a Ukrainian recruiter and put your own skin in the game, because without that, you are functionally identical to an FSB functionary.