Thing is they weren't officially in Donbass from 2014 onwards

But Russian troops were active in Donbass between the taking of Crimea and the invasion, with a mission to destabilise and create chaos. Google up "little green men", etc.

If there is a DMZ how likely is Russia to respect it in practice not just in theory, and what's to stop them coming back in five years for another slice of a neighbouring country whose citizens were living on the whole better lives than neighbouring Russian citizens because despite the endemic corruption in Ukraine, the system worked much better for the average citizen than the Russian system did or does.

I think the key is credible security guarantees - the Budapest thing was supposed to give UKR that but obviously it wasn't worth the paper it was written on and they are going to want something more concrete. I suspect they know Crimea and Donbass are gone, yes that does reward unprovoked aggression but whose troops are going to right that wrong?

I'd like to think that the whole thing has given Putin pause, at least - he expected to take the whole country in three days to the indifference of the rest of the world (cf Crimea - we all appeased him then, and this invasion was the result).

Is there anything short of NATO membership that will actually deliver concrete security guarantees that Putin won't f**k with (he's never attacked a NATO country, he's attacked plenty of non-NATO countries)?

The irony is that if Putin had waited five years NATO might have imploded on its own, or at least significantly weakened itself to the point of being a paper tiger. He's given NATO new purpose and reason to exist.

Posted By: Old Man on November 11th 2024 at 10:40:49

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