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BFR 9 hours ago
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Ryuu96 said:
BFR said:

I agree with Ryu. Let's wait a few months for Trump to show his actual hand. At the end of the day, someone is in for a big disappointment: either Zelensky or Putin.

Edit: One last thought: I believe Zelensky is willing to give up 20% of his country in exchange for joining NATO. However, I do not believe Putin would ever accept 80% or even 5% of Ukraine joining NATO. Thus, he has no choice but to conquer all of Ukraine, no matter how long it takes or how costly it will be.

Also, Trump can only assure Putin that Ukraine will never join NATO under his term, but that ends in 4 years and the next president can do whatever he wants.

I do not believe Zelenskyy would give up the 20% in exchange for joining NATO TBH. I believe Ukrainians would hate that even more than the option of joining NATO. The issue is joining NATO won't be a thing that happens over night even if the war ended tomorrow because of cowardly countries like America, Germany and Russian puppets like Slovakia and Hungary. Ukrainians have had their land stolen, their people slaughtered, a promise they can join NATO 5+ years from now and their land remains stolen would likely make Zelenskyy a hated President.

I do believe there is more likely (but not that likely) a scenario where NATO aspirations are surrendered in exchange for their territory back, but such a scenario would have to come with security commitments from individual countries that are equal to NATO and the issue with that is, outside of NATO, we have seen repeatedly how weak and bullshit security commitments are, what is stopping a country which has made a security commitment to Ukraine from retreating the moment Russia attacks again?

Ukraine could build itself up like a fortress with continued massive EU/American investment into their military even without NATO but they'd still be on their own and Russia likewise would rebuild itself. Which would likely cripple Ukraine's population as nobody would return to the country with knowledge that Russia WILL attack again in the future once they've repaired themselves, thus that would also cripple Ukraine's economy.

The only way Ukraine's safety is ensured in the future is either immediate ascension into NATO after the war is over or security commitments so fucking ironclad that they might as well be NATO but call me pessimistic, I don't believe individual country security commitments anymore; They've already been proven to be bullshit, the only security commitment that has proven itself to be real is NATO.

The problem with Trump promising Ukraine won't join NATO in his term is that favours Russia, as they would just rebuild and then attack again as soon as the next President is sworn in before they can ascend Ukraine into NATO unless Trump offers Ukraine some ironclad security commitments which won't result in America just running away but fighting Russia next time they attack. Stalemates favour Russia too; Russia needs to fuck off out of Ukraine and Ukraine needs immediate security commitments, that has to be NATO and it has to happen within a year.

I don't want to see Ukraine have to give up any land in exchange for peace with Russia.  But let's be honest, Putin is not gonna give up the 20% he controls of Ukraine.  He has lost too much blood to give any of that land back, and Ukraine is in no way strong enough to reclaim that land on their own - at least not anytime soon.

I believe Ukraine will have to surrender the land controlled by Russia today.  After a peace deal is reached, a peacekeeping force of 50,000+ foreign soldiers (Americans, British, French, Germans, Polish, etc.) should be stationed along the "new" border until Ukraine is accepted into NATO.