Comments by "Stephen Jenkins" (@stephenjenkins7971) on "Negotiations Between Russia u0026 Ukraine are Failing... why? - TLDR News" video.

@wraith8323 On paper you'd be correct. In reality, we see today that Russia's military is nowhere near what it has advertised. How many of those fixed-winged aircrafts are actually operable? How many are of the same quality as F-16's let alone more advanced aircraft? How much of Russia's capability are crippled by corruption within Russia's military? Obviously far more than anyone could have possibly imagined. And nuclear capability doesn't matter in terms of regional hegemony; North Korea is hardly a regional hegemon despite having it. It has far more to do with influencing the region they are in. Russia effectively doesn't influence anything outside of the Caucuses and Central Asia. Eastern European influence is a joke at this point. No, even when looking at this geopolitically, its pure insanity. It's like Poland demanding that Russia surrender Kaliningrad; just because it's within your "interest" to do so, doesn't mean that the cost of simply trying is beyond anything that should be attempted. Russia does not have the capability to wage total war on Ukraine to begin with. It's economic standing is crumbling and its means to send munitions to the frontlines are shoddy at best. There is a reason they are using civilian trucks to move troops and equipment now. Ultimately though, it's true that Ukraine is outmatched, at least conventionally. Russia will suffer distinctly the more land they take and the insurgency begins. Military superiority on paper, even a MASSIVE superiority still gets hampered by guerilla warfare. Russia is hardly in a comparable state to the US, so it all depends on the Ukrainians. Even if they "lose", they can make sure that Russia suffers far more in victory than it ever could have suffered in a defeat. Again. Putin specifically denied Ukraine's right to exist as an independent entity. There is no arguing this; he spelled it out for you. This alone makes Russia impossible to deal with geopolitically. All that can be done is punishment; no nation-state can ever give Russia an inch after such a speech. Only the most braindead Kremlinbots can unironically act like Russia is being anywhere close to reasonable here, though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't watch the speech.
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@BattlestarZenobia Imagine demanding this when Russia doesn't even have such guarantees for their own minorities. And I'm speaking of de-facto, not de-jure. Saying in a Constitution that "everyone has language rights" doesn't make it a reality, as we see in places like Russia.
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@AlexSmith-ln1tv Most of the US involvements you speak of were either morally justified or flat-out asked for by the local governments themselves, bruh. Fact is thus; US has far more to its credit than Russia does even if you account all of the lives Russia has saved. US security ensures peace for some of the most peaceful and prosperous regions of the planet; though that can change, of course, and it wasn't done out of kindness. For someone crying about hypocrisy, you are a far bigger hypocrite. Talking only about the bad of the US and ignoring the good. Like how it keeps nations like Russia from attacking innocent democracies without a fight, for example. The rest of the world generally agrees with the US, as we saw in the UN. Russia is the one getting nailed here, and people tolerate the US because generally they see that the US is a credit for them, not a threat. Zelensky recognizes that too, which is why he, and so many before him, have sought US help. Cope harder. This is hardly hypocrisy lol
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@AlexSmith-ln1tv Said some, genius. Are you also gonna say that every Russian intervention were evil imperialist actions as well?
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@AlexSmith-ln1tv LOL. No. The US' economy is absurdly massive, and everyone uses the US $ for everything. The idea that the US will collapse because other nations sell oil in other currencies when most currencies don't even use their own currencies for oil is braindead. People like you have been predicting the end of the dollar for decades with no success.
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@AlexSmith-ln1tv 1) All empires rise and fall, but the US isn't an empire, it's a nation-state. It isn't like France shattered into pieces when its empire collapsed. 2) It isn't be any metric in decline. Other nations are catching up to its absurdly massive lead. But even when considering that, the US still maintains an absurd lead, especially with its system of alliances which only seems to be growing. I don't doubt that the US will one day NOT be the pre-eminent power on Earth. But it isn't anytime soon. You're conflating general trends with the here and now. It's like looking at Rome in the 1st century and saying that they're fucked because all empires inevitably collapses. Yeah, no shit; so are all nations. But it isn't for a long time still.
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@AlexSmith-ln1tv I don't recall when, but Saddam opted to do that specifically in response to the US constantly ragging him. The US was already moving to invade post-9/11. Hardly WMD propaganda; everyone believed Saddam had WMDs, especially because Saddam did all he could to convince everyone he had them. Iraqi oil being sold in dollars is a given; almost everything is sold in dollars. It's more costlier to sell it in other currencies, thus its more of a political statement, but a poor economic one.
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@AlexSmith-ln1tv By "everyone" I meant global leaders. Nobody actually condemned the invasion, though some were more wary of just joining in. The protests were far more based on rigid pacifism than anything else; and more specifically due to the public nature of it. Nobody cared for France's wars in Libya or West Africa, in contrast. And Americans would be screeching about fascism when Italians voted in that PM that openly advocated sinking refugee ships. So cry me a river about propaganda. Might wanna look up "United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441". I am not saying that the US invasion followed UN guidelines; but it gave enough of a casus belli that at maximum people only complained about it but did nothing to stop it. Which is the point. If Russia actually managed to convince people that Ukraine did SOME things wrong, then there would be far less people trying to stop it ala Georgia, Syria, and Chechnya. I said initially that MOST were morally justified, I believe. I don't believe the Iraq War was entirely justified, but I also don't believe dictatorships have a right to exist and thus overthrowing them for democracy is hardly a bad thing. The mistake the US made was in leaving Iraq too early in 2011, leaving the door open to ISIS; Iraq wasn't ready to go at it by itself. Iraqi oil and the US Dollar has nothing to do with it, but you're a nutcase and brainwashed so I don't really care what you think. See? You're brainwashed. There was no ratcheting up of propaganda against Iran in 2012; Obama specifically pushed for multilateral actions in his terms. When Libya opted to create the gold standard many years prior, it was France that wanted to jump in while the US specifically refused to do so. You're intentionally mixing up the timeline. US fucks with country, and they try to fuck with the US right back; usually moving away from using the US $ is a meaningless action to get back at the US, it isn't an action that pushes US action to start with. Prior to 2012, the US had plenty of beef with Iran, and vice-versa. The petrodollar theory is a joke, and anyone that follows it are braindead lol
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@TheBooban Those weren't fake polls; they were generally spot-on. Espeically the Trump one. Trump lost the popular vote which those polls polled about. Can't exactly poll how the States would vote via the Electoral College. Brexit was also really close at the end, with the first polls far more lopsided until then. But sure, cry about Western polls, propagandist.
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@666Tomato666 Fox News is pretty bad; but they are generally not supporting Russia anymore, as far as I can tell. Calling them Russian media is disingenuous. At worst, they're conspiracy mongers.
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@666Tomato666 Fox will fire Cucker Tarlson as soon as MSNBC fires Rachel Maddow. Firebrands talking a lot of bullshit unfortunately sells well.
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@wraith8323 There is literally nothing reasonable about Russia. First off; it's hardly a regional hegemon -the likes of Poland can very likely match it in military, let alone in economic power. Secondly, from the start Russia refused to acknowledge Ukraine's right to exist, calling it an artificial nation, meaning that their stance at this war's outset was to DESTROY the very concept of a Ukrainian identity. They are about as reasonable as the N@zi's before them.
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@ghmj2607 Russia never once asked to be a part of NATO. Not once; they were offended that they had to wait in line like all the other "irrelevant" nations.
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@Tracymongo US did not take 7 billion from Afghanistan, what? They also broke no agreement in regards to Afghanistan. The difference with Bush and Putin is that the former attacked a dictator that caused mass destruction and mayhem in the region multiple times in aggressive wars; so nobody cared. If Ukraine was like Iraq, few people would care. But Putin attacked a democracy that was just minding its own business before it was attacked. Twice. It's called context. Putin looks like the worst kind of monster atm.
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@ghmj2607 NATO has no power over their member states outside of the usage of its provisions like Article 5. Nobody has selective memory, we have context; what Russia is doing is unprecedented precisely because they have no actual casus belli to make the invasion anywhere near justified.
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@you-know-who5657 Nations can act like that, be we should not; and democracies have far more power to prevent such conflicts than dictatorships. I don't care about Russia's geopolitical needs; it will starve if it continues this, and no Western citizen will allow their governments to do anything more than tighten the economic stranglehold.
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