Comments by "Sean Cidy" (@seancidy6008) on "Ukraine Fog of War: What's Really Happening?" video.

The military aid to Ukraine accelerated massively after 2020 when Ukraine was granted further special status; Ukraine had been referred to by Nato officials as a Nato ‘partner’ for some time before they joined NATO’s ‘enhanced opportunity partner interoperability program”. They were de facto a part of Nato yet without any chapter 5 protection against being identified as such by the Russians, who had said that state of affairs was unacceptable. Zelinsky presumably was told that Ukraine being given weapons by Nato to fight a civil war against ethnic Russians backed by Russia was not placing Nato under any obligation to defend Ukraine from Russia, which had already annexed Crimea, and might do the same to the Ukraine. He does not seem to have fully processed that information.
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I think the Russians are being killed in huger numbers than even the highest estimates so far, but that is not any surprise because the Russian army are incredibly insouciant about casualties. They attack in echelons, and the first wave tends to do badly. The best units in the Russian army have barely participated yet, so there will be a new wave.
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Yes, reconnaissance in force to activate the enemy defence plan is the Russian way. They are not used to facing an opponent with substantial heavy artillery and far more sophisticated targeting technology
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In 2008 Nato announced Ukraine and Georgia would would become members at some point.--Georgia was invaded by Russia a few months later. I believe the gist of what Mearsheimer said is that whether it wins or loses, Ukraine will be progressively devastated while trying to defeat the Russian invasion, and so because the invasion is a very bad thing for Ukraine, it would have done well to think very carefully about how to prevent that invasion, and would do well to consider its position now.
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@pppLT19 Russia has a Russian government, The CIA's current boss, Burns, said in his book that he had never met a Russian who thought Ukraine in Nato was anything but unacceptable. Ukraine was not officially in Nato but it was being integrated to fight with Nato and in 2020 ii started to participate in Nato's partner enhanced interoperability program That the Russians were incensed was not a surprise to the US government, what did come as a shock is Putin had the nerve to mount a full on invasion. The professor T&P is putting shade on says that all states act in the same way externally, and the domestic differences such as whether they are run on democratic or authoritarian lines does not affect their foreign policy.
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They were not Nato members because the Russian threatened to invade were they to become members. Petraeus said he visited that Ukrainian base on the border that got hit the other day and it was a massive facility where Nato members trained the Ukrainians. Since 2020 when it was admitted to the enhanced partner interoperability program, Ukraine was being integrated into Nato command structures and getting sophisticated weapons. But they were not under Chapter five protection, so they had the worst of both worlds. Nice going Zelinsky.
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@shawnotoole1421 For Latvia, joining Nato was the right decision, but Latvia and Ukraine are different counties with different governments for a reason. Do you think Zelinsky, who six weeks ago publicly asked Biden to stop talking about an invasion, pursued the best policy for keeping his country from being invaded? I think he ought to have fulfilled the terms of the Misk accords that Ukraine agreed to in 2015 and gave the breakaway Donbass republic autonomy, and not intensified the process of integrating de facto with Nato command structures while still lacking Chapter 5 protection. Ukraine is the Timothy Treadwell of countries; with no one going to come to their aid, they ought to have been more careful around their ravenous 1800 pound neighbour.
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@shawnotoole1421 If the US dared it would overthrow Putin., but it hasn't and Russia has not attacked America either. Both countries have armed forces. As Professor Mearsheimer write in his 'The Tragedy Of Great Power Politics' "it is difficult for a state to increase its chance of survival without threatening the survival of other states". There is a American missile base in Poland that is going to become operation later this year; it is 300 seconds hypersonic flight time from the Kremlin. The trouble is the American diplomats have done too good a job, and they did so because as Perry, Clinton's defence secretary, said, there was contempt for Russia as a 'third class state" and the attitude was "who cares what they think".
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@shawnotoole1421 "Putin's war against Ukraine is not for the sake of his people as individuals.". Correct. it is for the Russian state which has existed in one form or another for half a millennium. You say Russia ought not to do it, but the fact is the US would and has in Cuba and Central America under Reagan and Kennedy. You say those things are unnecessary but were that the case bot Russia and America (and all other states in history) have completely misunderstood the way the world works. This seems unlikely.
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