Quote from: be.open on Today at 05:21:34 PM

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Quote from: paxmao on Today at 10:24:42 AM

Quote from: be.open on Today at 10:00:07 AM

You have a logical error, and I pointed it out in the previous paragraph. It will be easier for you to understand it using the example of any peacekeeping mission with the approval of the UN Security Council - this is not a war, but peacekeepers sometimes shoot. It can also be viewed as a hybrid information-economic proxy war between the US and Russia for spheres of influence in Europe with a battlefield on the territory of Ukraine. But for my personal safety, I will call this a military special operation.

There are no US nor NATO soldiers in Ukraine, there are Putin's Russia soldiers. A peacekeeping mission is a force that gets in the middle of two conflicting factions to prevent them from fighting. Russia is not getting in the middle of two factions, is taking a side.

If you wish to consider this a proxy for spheres of influence it would be closer to the truth. I am not particularly happy about US influence in Latin America, the Middle East nor anywhere else. I do take sides when a despotic regime takes the path of aggression on a germinal democracy - a very imperfect one.

I am not blind to the conflicts in Donbas, but there should be a pacific resolution and Russia should have acted as a mediator, not as a part in the conflict. US probably did not help either, both are still living in an imperialistic mindset in which local dissents are an opportunity to grab another piece of the world and they are both experts at feeding the local hawks and make a lot of money selling weapons in the process.

There are many countries that have different levels of governments and political organisations that could very well work in Ukraine, but that happens when people are given the opportunity to discuss and find common ground. That does not happen under despotic regimes that simply take one side, but usually in Democracies (e.g. North Ireland, Basque country, ...) in which people eventually understand that fighting is most of the times the worst solution.

For your purposes, you can call it whatever your government allows you to call it - we would not want you in prison, would we?

I don't understand what you are trying to prove to me? That only the United States or NATO countries have the exclusive right to conduct peacekeeping or special military operations, including without the sanction of the UN Security Council, invading the territory of sovereign states? (There are many examples, the most recent being Turkey's recent invasion of Northern Iraq, which is ongoing right now). Or that Russia has not made enough diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve the conflict within the framework of the Minsk agreements?

I am not trying to prove anything. You are comparing Putin's war to a peacekeeping mission - which is not, because they have clearly declared that they are fighting on behalf of one side, or a proxy war between Russia and the US, which is not because there are no US soldiers (nor NATO troops) in the conflict but there are Putin's Russia soldiers - so it is not a proxy, it is simply a war between Russia and Ukraine.

Russia has put forward their conditions about how Ukraine would need to act to avoid being invaded. That, in my hood's called a threat, not a negotiation. Ukraine has decided not to be bullied. On top of that, the Donbas conflict could not exist without the support from Putin's Russia. War is expensive - who is funding the separatists? We all know who.

Seems to me that Putin wants peace, but only if he sets the rules, else ... psycho mode.