Kenya's ambassador to the UN, Martin Kimani, eloquently strikes the issue with a message of peace (its failure with Russia), history, diplomacy, and anti-imperialism.

I watched this earlier today and again just now. It's such an excellent speech and really hits the nail on the head.

Putin is a mad man. Russian aggression must be stopped. Attacks on Ukrainian cities have begun.

I was watching the speech of Joe Biden. I was absolutely horrified of what I saw. An old man who couldn't even give a speech for more than three minutes without starting to mumble and incoherently utter meaningless part-phrases. Is this guy senile?

That was the moment when Putin decided he can go after the Ukraine without fear of any reprisals. Seeing his worst "enemy" on tv with such an absolutely catastrophic performance was the get-go sign.

Now we will see umpteen politicians going on tv declaring "we are with the Ukraine",  "Putin bad guy" and all these blatherings really shows that the West has no guts. I give the Ukraine about 48 hours before their politicians run and the country is in Putin's full control.

And this WAS avoidable, but not with a quasi senile US president. And let's face it, the US would have had to bite the bullet and lead the coward pack (Europeans, all talk, no action).

Biden's farts make more sense than whatever rambling incoherent logic is behind that nonsensical post of yours.

Live updates on Russia's "defensive" conquest of all of Ukraine can be found here.

For those just tuning in, Putin has now launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine proper that the White House had expected to happen last Wednesday. So in other words, he delayed exactly one week to the day and TOTALLY DESTROYED THE AMERICAN NARRATIVE! (/sarcasm)

The Ukrainians called upon the United States and Western powers more broadly to, as applicable, abandon the Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline between Russia and Germany and impose serious economic sanctions on Russia immediately like at least a month ago. That was their position. But we knew better! How would the Ukrainians know what's best for Ukraine? Or, more correctly, the corresponding sanctions bill here in the United States was being sponsored by Republicans, so the White House decided, for that reason, that they could not support it. (cue eye roll) Instead, the administration decided to use the threat of sanctions as "leverage" against any not-so-neo colonial ambitions that Putin might have here. That sure showed him.

In theory, the Biden Administration's tempered actions were intended to tamp down hostilities in order to restart negotiations with Putin over the Ukrainian issue. ...I just find that whole premise remarkable as well. Once more we see the basic problem here: Where was the say of the Ukrainians in their own fate? Why was their fate to be negotiated by two other countries? (I'm describing an independent Ukraine in the past tense because, let's get real, we know what the outcome of this war will be.) But of course it's also just naive! Moscow was never looking to negotiate with anyone here, they were testing out where the limits are: What gets a firm response and what doesn't.

This whole mentality reminds me very much of another foreign policy disaster that took place just six months ago when the Taliban overran Kabul in Afghanistan. We had decided, in this case under our previous administration, to negotiate that country's fate with the Taliban to the exclusion of its elected government. The effect was to de-legitimize the very state that tens of thousands of Afghans had given their lives for and overwhelmingly supported despite its many faults. We knew better than the Afghans what was good for Afghanistan! In reality, of course, the Taliban was never interested in negotiating peace, they were simply interested in de-legitimizing the Afghan government and we actively helped them do so. Same basic principle applies here to the situation in Ukraine. Putin was never interested in negotiating peace, he was interested in de-legitimizing Ukraine and its sovereignty and we actively helped him do so.

*sighs*

We should listen to our allies more I guess is what I'm trying to say here. The Kurds. The Afghans. The Ukrainians. Their fates demonstrate our need of listening and caring more about our allies in this world, lest we one day awaken to find ourselves without any because we've sold them all out for convenience.

That would be my assessment.

We couldn't even be bothered to station NATO troops in Ukraine.

Hey, maybe when we also let China take Taiwan in the name of nationalism and US isolationism and the global supply chain is destroyed, we'll realize that our current foreign policy is a big failure.

That Nord Stream 2 pipe is just a red herring. Of course the Ukrainians were against NS2, NS1 runs through their country and they get quite a chunk of money out of it every year. (And it doesn't need a rocket scientist to know what Putin would have done once NS2 would be operating). I'm pretty sure they are dancing in Bejing now, they could get all the gas they need from Russia in the future.

The underlining problem has always been that the Ukraine is nowhere near what one could call a democracy. You basically have a set of old fashioned Oligarchs running he country to their will. So western support has always been, let's call it cautious. All these former Soviet satellites show the same behaviour. Poland, Hungary as they are run now by party dictatorship are the best examples of countries that have never learned what democracy means. The only former satellite states that do reasonably well are the baltic states, and boy are they nervous now.

"We like the Ukraine only because they are a pain in the *s to Russia" is the unspoken mantra hence the reason why you are going to hear a lot of "we are really concerned" speeches from European politicians, almost none of which have any interest in actually helping in whatever form that could be. Russia has the gas and the raw materials for electronic components. If you thought there is a chip crisis going on, just wait until Russia stops delivering the raw goods...

I'm with you in spirit, but I would point out that Ukraine isn't a NATO signatory. We don't station NATO troops in non-NATO countries.

What the Ukrainians have asked of us is that we help supply them with the weapons they need to defend themselves and abandon material support for their attackers immediately. That is what we should do.