TwinkleToes

Of course birth rates fall during wartime. And they usually also explode afterwards, at least in the short term - hence the baby boom in the U.S. and Europe post-WW2. Having kids puts you in a precarious position -logistically, financially, emotionally. It's natural for people to defer this during an existential war of survival.

And even the pre-war state of ukraine, with it's terrible neighbor's corrosive meddling and the apparently well-foudned fear of an eventual invasion hanging over people's heads would create uncertainty that would make you think twice about having kids.

The template for a post-war Ukraine is the same as Poland, Romania & Czechoslovakia's. Namely - integration to the EU and NATO produce sovriegn stability and economic growth. But - as history also shows - economic growth leads to falling long term birth rates, everywhere it's happened. Lots of factors there - economic activity makes people chase opportunity, women have more control of working and reproductive rights, you don't need to have 12 children, expecting half of them to survive, to pick potatoes on the farm.

Point being - this war is like a national divorce. One that has been 1,000 abusive years in coming. Ukraine is not going to be the same as it was before. And neither is Russia. But that's okay. If Ukraine can survive the war, integrate with the EU and NATO, and Russia fucks off into it's murky, corrupt, increasingly irrelenvant future too focused on it's own internal squabbles to spend resources murdering it's neighbours - then Ukraine's new form will, like all the former Eastern bloc colonies, be prosperous and free.

Russia only negotiates when it feels it can longer get what it wants by force. It then switches to maximalist, zero-compromise give-me-something style demands to the point of absurdity.

But what should Ukraine do? The Russians and their U.S. proxies are pushing for concessions, with zero hard security guarantees. The 'realities on the ground', as they're very fond of saying, aren't such that Ukraine should be happy to only lose 20% of it's territory, including all the human, resource and industrial potential that that includes. U.S. material support is barely relevant to Ukraine's ability to resist the 2025 version of the Russian Terrorist Army strategically.

Indeed, what should they do? U.S. leverage is less than Trump would have you believe. Russian capabilities are not getting markedly better by any measure. Their small, slow advances are not adding up to strategic defeat for Ukraine. Ukraine has many more 'cards to play' before they, and Europe, should accept that this is the best time to...well....surrender, and let the russian re-tool for an obvious Next Glorious Invasion in a couple years.

Maybe the wisest plan is to keep fighting. Keep bleeding the Russians until they howl, and their terms get better. They aren't reasonable actors - they're trying to eradicate Ukraine completely. Politicallly, militarily, culturally. And that's not old news - Putin said this last week. Fight until the last Ukrainian is dead. How can you even consider negotiating with such clearly genocidal hatred.

This is very old news, but very telling when you consider the 'peace' that Trump is trying to push for. His quote was “I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart,”.

This is on Feb 24th, just hours into the invasion, and Trump - a private citizen at this point - already knows what Putin's objectives are. When he had explicitly not declared, and was still sitting on the "SMO" nonsense to de-nazify Ukraine.

Yet Trump is already aware that the goal is total conquest, and he's celebrating it. The stalled line of tanks to Kyiv and even Hostomel airport hadn't happened yet.

It's an old, old soviet trick, to get certain useful idiots in the west talk about the need for peace, sow confusion and dissent, while Moscow makes war to achieve it's objectives. What they really mean is - you should surrender. He's not a peacemaker. He's an agent of the enemy. And you should consider that before agreeing to anything he's proposing.

Yes, Ukraine is suffering. And obviously, they want the killing to stop. But Russia's negotiating position here is absurd. Their talking points are just being parroted by U.S. stooges. But - no serious minded person thinks Russia is likely to abide by any agreement anyways, especially one without HARD security guarantees for Ukraine's sovreignty. U.S. and Russian pressure to sign a bad deal seems on it's face desperate, given their obvious original war aims of complete national conquest and annhiliation of Ukrainian society.

Russia only neogtiates when they think they can't simply seize more by force. They appear to be at that point, and post-war russia is going to be a chaotic mess. The reward of Donbas and Crimea, territory they've already essentially controlled for a decade, hardly seems worth all the losses they've taken militarily, economnically, politically and demographically

So what should Ukraine do? If they care about a lasting peace - stalling and continuing to bleed the Russian army might be the better option. These are not good peace terms. Yet.

"Give us what we've stolen, and disarm". Not even a mention of Never NATO. Russia's position continues to erode. Trump, as always, tries to use bullying leverage that he doesn't actually have. Since he already withdrew U.S. support and tried to cause a global recession with moronic trade tarriffs, he is left with nothing else to do but stamp his feet and be a repeater for Russian demands.

Russia always negotiates on ridiculous "terms", and it's helpful to remember that this isn't where they want to be. At all. The fact they are stuck on Give Us Donbas is a colossal shortfall compared to the full conquest they really wanted.

Zero chance Ukraine disarms, and Russia can't do much about that at the time scales this war is moving at, compared to Trump and Putin's life expectancy. This is like negotiating with a pigeon, but - it's a good thing that they think this is the best they're going to get.

The lies they put out are always some degree of absurd, but they do at least attempt to serve an internal or external purpose. This one is so weird - of course Ukraine would like to neutralize the jets attacking them. Since Russia puts this story out unilaterally, the question is 'Why?'. To create a narrative that Ukraine would do a false flag Kinzhal attack against NATO? So that Russia could, in reality, attack NATO to test their reaction and then escalate accordingly?

Start from the top: Of COURSE Ukraine would like to reduce the number of jets that can attack them, by any means necessary. There have been bounties for turning over equipment since the beginning of warfare. Is Russia whining that this is "unfair"? This is a war, and they have of course spend billions to bribe and corrupt Ukranian officials. Not that hypocrisy figures into their thinking, ever, but - there is a reason why they put this obviously ridiculous story out there, and it doesn't seem like one done for the low functioning serfs at home - this one seems like it's a spun narrative aimed outward.

But - take it to an endpoint, and say they want to launch a false-flag attack against NATO, but blame Ukraine for it. What will that achieve? Russia has thrown hundreds of Kinzhals at Ukraine and not broken it. Attacking NATO with 1 missile will achieve nothing strategic and seems more likely to harden NATO resistance rather than break it. They're just so clumsy and stupid with these things. Wouldn't it be nice if these black hearted gangster ghouls all died, and the world just tried to get on improving life, instead of trying to screw everything up for their delusions of glory?

There's lots of talk about what scenarios for Ukrainian victory might be - from total restoration of 2022 or 1991 borders, both of which unrealistic - to simply surviving and continuously degrading the russian military and economy until a collapse. But what is Russia's victory?

At a Tactical level, they are getting limited, slow success by sending in small 2-3 man inflitration teams into forward areas until eventually Ukraine, who value the lives of their soldiers, decides to fall back. But that doesn't necessarily mean Russia has "won" that land and gets to keep it. Even if Ukraine can't re-take territory by force - Russia also can't pacify the largest country in Europe with small infiltratiton teams that can eventually be picked off with snipers, artillery, drones and harassing counterattacks. They seem to think that they're entitled to keep every piece of ground they can shove a soldier onto, and assume the Ukrainians will retreat after everything is obliterated, accept the loss and eventually stop shooting at them. Ask the U.S. how well that worked in Vietnam.

But what if they don't? What if Ukraine continues to trade small slices of land for Russian soldiers' blood - they can do that for a long, long, long time before they start to run out of land at the rate things are moving. Millions more Russian soldiers will die before, or IF they ever reach any kind of control of the land east of the Dneiper river. Russia' Army's options are move fowrard and die quickly, or stand still and die a little more slowly. This doesn't seem to be a great plan. The Trump card (pun intended) has already been played to erode U.S. support, but Ukraine continues to resist strongly on domestic and European support.

What exactly is a lasting victory for Russia? You'd have to think holding what they have and being let to absorb it into their empire as productive territory. But if this is to be a forever war - then maybe Ukraine's best bet is continue to bleed Russia's idiotic hubris, while avoiding operational collapse. That seems a much better plan than whatever Russia is doing at this point.

Russia's Strategic approach SEEMS to be - unrelenteing terror until you submit to enslavement. That doesn't make much sense from Ukraine's perspective. They might as well keep fighting, because the alternative is national destruction anyways. Putin's plan is probably simpler, namely to just survive having made the worst imperial military blunder since Darius decided to go teach Alexander a lesson. But for Russians who can see past Putin's dwindling life expectancy - what's your plan, folks? Conquering the whole country seems both impossible to do militarily, to say nothing of how to do it adminstratively after the fact. You'd have to send in an occupying army larger than what you have now. Even if lines froze today, Ukraine can continue to deny Russia's fruitful use and resettlement of the stolen land. Maybe infinitely. Permanent insurrection, rebuilding territory with money you don't have at the expense of other regions who have gutted their male populations to wage this war, forever sanctions as the junior vassal to China in the axis of authoritarian shitholes.

Well done Vlad. Putin the Fool may end up being the worst Russian in history. And that's saying something.

There's no evidence at all that the Putin regmine is even slightly moved by casualty numbers. Indeed - their losses may well be part of the plan - an expected and accepted trade-off. It's not stated enough how internal ethnic cleansing of trading useless mouths for prime ukrainain lands and population is a perfectly logical conclusion. If you're a completely depraved petromafia gangster ghoul...numbers mean nothing unless you're talking about money and sq. km of stolen land. The numbers shock some people, but pretending the Kremlin cares is like throwing ice cubes at the sun.

Lost in the awfulness of this entire pointless genocidal vanity revenge project is just how historically badly it is going for Russia. From an initial goal of total conquest, in a month their truce startping point has slid from 1) Total Capitulation to 2) All 4 'annexed' regions plus Crimea, disarmament & constitutional neutrality to 3) Give us Donbas, and maybe our stooges in the U.N. can run Ukraine to 4) Please freeze the lines and give us something, and stop hitting our gas facilities. Trump, as always, overplayed his hand with leverage he doesn't actually have, and now has nearly no sway over Ukraine - Zelensky is tellin him flat 'No'. European and domestic support is probably enough to keep Russia from any meaningful strategic wins at this point against a severaly degraded and over rated Russian army.

This is all stalling for something - anything - to change for Russia. He's not going against his boss. Period. And for the love of hot fudge sundaes, we should all stop falling for it.

Understood that Russia always starts with absurd maximalist goals. The U.N. under Putin's stooge Guterres is a do-nothing, completely compromised Russian agency anyways, so this is conquest by other means. While being frequently useless, never in it's history has the U.N. stood by so blantantly during a full scale war and had nothing to say about it. Much less one by a permanent member of the "Security" Council. This perverted old gangster ghoul lives in an utter fantasy planet.

Trolls & bots fail to understand or accept that Russia is anything but infinite and inevitable - but numbers are numbers. They've spent half of their entire Soviet inheritance to steal what they sit on today. The war doesn't end when they get to zero vehicles. The half they've squandered is surely the BETTER half, and they still need an army for territorial defense and internal repression. Ukraine is not about the break, and this is probably the best position Russia is ever going to be in. This is the endgame of this messy, abusive Divorce, and Pootz has to come up with some whopper lies to say it was all worthwhile.