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Zelensky dismisses compromise with Putin, pointing to Prigozhin’s death (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by deconstruct@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.

“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.

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[+] Hyperreality@kbin.social -16 points 1 year ago

The UK negotiated with the IRA.

The US negotiated with the Japanese.

The allies negotiated with the Nazis.

[-] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

I’m pretty sure the negotiations consisted on total surrender and heavy controls of power in the three cases, which Zelenskyy agrees on. Just giving more territories to Russia is not what they want. That would only mean a new offensive in a few years.

[-] Hyperreality@kbin.social -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In other words, even Zelensky knows there'll have to be negotiations somewhere down the line.

It's just a question of when and under which circumstances.

It's in Ukraine and Europe's interests, that these negotiations occur when Russia has been pushed back to the border. Otherwise they'll have been rewarded for their military adventurism.

And obviously Russia can't be trusted, so the moment a cease fire is signed, it's imperative that Ukraine gets defacto NATO membership (or something approaching it) and is armed to the teeth.

[-] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

They had been open to negotiations in the past, and surely are open now, but the first step is for Russia to get the fuck off Ukraine and stop the aggression. It's not a negotiation of your have a knife to your neck.

[-] Badass_panda@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The US negotiated with the Japanese.

The allies negotiated with the Nazis.

You know both these groups surrendered unconditionally, right?

[-] Hyperreality@kbin.social -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes. The terms were harsh, but ultimately both parties agreed to them. A negotiated settlement.

Note also how the reality is slightly more nuanced. For example, Hirohito remained in power and all members of the Imperial House were spared criminal prosecution. That was an unfortunate but necessary compromise. If the world was fair, they'd have hanged them all, just like much of the Nazi establishment.

This also why at one point Japanese officials, basing themselves on the Potsdam Declaration, argued to MacArthur that Japan's surrender had in fact been contractual and conditional. Obviously he told them to go fuck themselves, and because the country was by now occupied, there wasn't exactly much they could do about it.

It's unfortunate, but this is almost certainly what will happen with Russia. A ceasefire will be agreed under conditions both parties accept. The better Ukraine does, the worse the conditions will be that Russia is forced to accept. With a bit of luck, the conditions will be so bad that Putin falls out of a window and is replaced with someone slightly more sane.

Once the ink is dry, the west will hopefully arm Ukraine to the gills, perhaps institute a no fly zone, give them NATO membership or something approaching it, etc. etc.

But before that happens there will still need to agree to a ceasefire, hence all wars end with a negotiated settlement, unless you engage in genocide.

[-] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I'm fine with the Japanese solution, which Russian cities should we delete?

The German solution seems awfully similar.

[-] triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I hope the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of murdered Japanese civilians haunt you for the rest of your life. thank fuck even the post-1945 US government isn't as bloodthirsty for war crimes as you are

[-] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

They didn't surrender, they wouldn't surrender, the alternative of murdering them slowly by starvation wasn't magically better.

Sometimes you just have to explain how hopeless things are.

[-] triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

what if we had records of contemporary US top military leaders saying the exact opposite, would you stop cheerleading for mass slaughter then?

because, in an amazing coincidence...

While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.”...

Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.

No one was more impassioned in his condemnation than Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff. He wrote in his memoir “that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender …. In being the first to use it we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

MacArthur thought the use of atomic bombs was inexcusable. He later wrote to former President Hoover that if Truman had followed Hoover’s “wise and statesmanlike” advice to modify its surrender terms and tell the Japanese they could keep their emperor, “the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly I have no doubt.”

Before the bombings, Eisenhower had urged at Potsdam, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs

[-] Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago

You're really ignorant and it's sad to think people like you still exist.

[-] kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

I really don't like how often I see people ok with the idea of nuclear war. I like Fallout as much as the next person but I don't think it's an accurate representation of nuclear apocalypse.