Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Not so easy for us in regards to the F35, we aren’t just customers, we’re Tier 1 partners with the US in the whole project.

---------- Post added at 18:02 ---------- Previous post was at 18:00 ----------

What concession do think he has to make?

His concession will be to stop fighting, and that’s all it needs to be.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Yes a lot of people don’t seem to have grasped how negotiations work for the losing side in desperate need for a way out of a war it can neither resource by manpower or firepower.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

In return for a de facto recognition of whatever it is granted in the deal (Ukraine will never formally cede anything but it wouldn’t have to - N and S Korea are still technically at war, for example).

The fighting can’t simply stop at the current line of control if, for example, topology and existing infrastructure makes that position indefensible, or unmanageable. Obviously Putin is not going to want to cede anything of significance but he can’t snap his fingers and make Ukraine stop fighting, and frankly neither can Trump. With each passing day, European countries are waking up to the shifting strategic realities and are a day closer to plugging enough of the US’s resource gap to keep Ukraine fighting.

Ukraine simply isn’t going to sign a treaty that gives Russia everything it wants. It believes, with great justification, that it is in an existential fight for survival and won’t stop without good reason. “Sign here” is not a good reason.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

If anyone knows how to drive a soft bargain on behalf of Ukraine, it's Trump.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-ne...r-latest-news/

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

An ‘accident’, or ‘unsanctioned’ or ‘fake’ … take your pick.

You know Putin’s lying because his lips are moving.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Something he has in common with Trump

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Just take the Israeli approach. As long as you target something else nearby the collateral damage doesn’t matter.

The United Kingdom can’t even credibly call attacks on energy infrastructure, if they were to take place, as a war crime. Merely a risk of one.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Putin has no intention of stopping. He’s out on a limb, having declared the annnexation of 4 entire oblasts of Ukraine into mother Russia, which includes vast swathes of land he does not control and has no prospect of controlling in the near future. He needs the war to go on and he needs Ukraine to be starved of resources. Putin will continue to play Trump like a fiddle while he attempts to achieve that end.

The one thing he can’t control is the growing awareness within Europe of the need for a credible security architecture without American involvement. Agent Krasnov let Putin down with that little pantomime with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office because, coming right after Macron and Starmer did their damndest to get Trump onside, it left Europe with no credible way to believe that things might not be as bad as they’d been told. They are worse, and even Germany is adjusting its debt rules to allow itself to buy more arms.

The danger for Putin is that this willingness to rearm and to contemplate a non-Nato security plan against Russia might be generating a coalition of the willing, in which states that are willing to - UK, France, Germany, the Baltics, Poland - are more than powerful enough to press ahead outside of organising bodies like the EU or Nato which Russia has effectively compromised by gaining influence within certain member states (Hungary principally, though he’s working on Romania).

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

There’s no way that coalition of the willing doesn’t flounder as far right governments replace incumbents intent on decimating their own economies for unknown ends in far flung lands. If they last longer than Trump that’ll just be the favourability of the electoral calendar.

I’d not rule out Starmer, who has proven time and again he doesn’t even stand for the principles upon which he stood for leadership of the Labour Party, never mind the manifesto upon which he was elected, being the lap dog to Trump once his posturing is confirmed as an electoral liability.

He’s perhaps the one person Ukraine might be able to rely upon less than the Americans in the long run.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

Well, I’m no fan of Starmer but even on an uncharitable reading of him it is hard to see how he can drop the ball on this one. An epoch is shifting and the European governments Starmer instinctively wants to align with - and which his party prefers to align with - are pulling in a very different direction than the USA. We have a circle that can’t be squared, and I agree with you that sooner or later he is going to have to make a choice, because the ambition to be a bridge between Europe and the US might have been plausible 2 months ago but it really isn’t now. If it’s a question of who he weakly follows, I can’t see him going with Trump over Macron and Merz, especially not after Trump has been so usefully odious as to make distancing from him a simple matter of politeness.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

I think you underestimate the extent Brexit will induce negative sentiment towards anything that even remotely looks like a European army. People voted for Britain to forge its own path in the world and explore trade deals elsewhere. Trump dangles that carrot and Starmer knocks it back for his European buddies and the Conservatives and Reform will be all over him.

We have NATO for our security and despite a lot of scaremongering there is no indication, anywhere, that NATO wouldn’t come to the aid of a member state when (and perhaps more importantly if) required.

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

<cough cough>

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...ift-rcna195089

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-...em-2025-03-07/

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

i have serious doubts that the USA under trump would get involved unless it is attacked.

lets not forget they were a tad late for 2 world wars

Re: Russia has invaded Ukraine
 

It’s straightforward extortion, but not clear that America would follow through with it.