Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris on Wednesday, where he made a fresh pitch for fighter jets and other advanced weapons.
“France and Germany have the potential to be game changers and that’s how I see our talks today. The sooner we get heavy long-range weapons and our pilots get modern planes … the quicker this Russian aggression will end,” Zelensky said in Paris.
Zelensky said the weapons are “needed for peace,” reflecting recent comments by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who recently claimed sending more arms to Ukraine is the quickest path to peace.
Scholz told Zelensky that Germany and its allies will back Ukraine “as long as necessary” but gave no indication he’s changed his position on sending fighter jets. The German leader ruled out sending advanced aircraft to Kyiv, but he previously ruled out sending heavy tanks, and now Ukraine could receive over 200 German-made Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks.
Speaking alongside Zelensky, Macron said Russia “must not” win the war and that Kyiv could rely on France. “Russia cannot and must not win this war. As long as Russia continues to attack, we will continue to adapt and moderate the necessary military support to preserve Ukraine and its future,” the French leader said.
Zelensky traveled to Paris after visiting London and meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who seemed eager to provide Kyiv with fighter jets. Sunak said Britain would begin training Ukrainians how to fly NATO aircraft this spring, although London has yet to pledge that it will give its own jets to Ukraine.
Zelensky’s visits on Wednesday marked his first known trips outside of Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, besides his December visit to Washington DC. On Thursday, he is expected to meet with EU officials in Brussels.
“Zelensky said the weapons are “needed for peace””
So, war is officially now peace …
The weapons that Z claims to need do not exist, in a sense, because Russia will ALWAYS have excallation dominance in this matter. Thus better weapons from the west will only lead to more destruction for Ukraine, as we have already seen from previous rounds of upgrading. It’s almost as if the destruction of Ukraine is the plan …?
As you point out, the notion that we have to wage war to have peace is the ultimate hypocrisy.
Zelensky said the weapons are “needed for peace,”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claimed “sending more arms to Ukraine is the quickest path to peace.”
you can’t make this sh*t up
You want a game changer, Zelensky? Surrender and save some of your people.
If Zelensky really wants “heavy long-range weapons” we should roll an ICBM into Kiev and hand him the keys, and then when he and his government disappear we can move on. The west has press conference dominance and that’s all they’re going to get.
Speaking alongside Zelensky, Macron said Russia “must not” win the war and that Kyiv could rely on France. “Russia cannot and must not win this war. As long as Russia continues to attack, we will continue to adapt and moderate the necessary military support to preserve Ukraine and its future,” the French leader said.
Same guy who said Russia’s security concerns should be addressed. Why does he think Russia “continues to attack”? Maybe because those security concerns still haven’t been addressed?
It happens that both statements are true (i) Rjussia must not be allowed to win thei war and (ii) Russia’s security concerns should be adiscussed and ddressed. As Noam Chomsky, Dan Ellsberg and most of the anti-imperialist antiwar activists I worked with over 50 years ago recognize, Russia’s unaddressed security concerns do not justify a war of choice that has killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people, driven millions from their home and which threatens to escalate into a nuclear war. Putin had a difficult choice to make a year ago. He chose wrong. Imagine Putin was in a saloon trying to calm down a belligerent drunk. The drunk slaps Putin, throws his drink in Putin’s face, screams he is going to rape Putin’s mistress and kill Putin’s kids and curses Putin’s mother. That provocation would not justify shooting the drunk. Over 100 million people (about 4% of the world’s population) died in two world wars to establish the principle that wars of conquest are illegal. Putin’s war against Ukraine is nothing less than a descent into barbarism. There is no contradiction to saying, as Chomsky does that it is legitimate to give weapons to Ukraine for self defense but the world must also address Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Check out Chomsky’s nuanced position on Lex Fridman’s podcast:
“It happens that both statements are true (i) Rjussia must not be allowed to win thei war and (ii) Russia’s security concerns should be adiscussed and ddressed.”
But they weren’t addressed pre-invasion. You can’t possibly think they will be addressed with a Russian defeat. And if Russia hadn’t invaded what would the situation look like today? At what point was it going to get better? The invasion was inevitable because the west wanted an invasion and had no intention of letting up until it happened.
Precisely, wars. Putin’s war of choice is a great example of why war is almost always the wrong response to injustice. The invasion made everything worse for Russia.
1. 14,000 people killed in 8 year long civil war with allegations of persecution of ethnic Russians. In less than a year of war tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of Russians and Ukrainians have been killed. Millions of Ukrainians were made homeless and no end to the carnage in sight. BTW, the annual deaths in the Donbas war had dropped to double digits after Zelenskyy’s election in 2019.
2. A year ago Russia was rightfully concerned that Ukraine seeking NATO membership pose a threat of war on Russia’s southern border. Today, Russia is fighting a war it can’t win on its Southern border.
3. A year ago there were no NATO weapons in Ukraine and no possibility that Ukraine would join NATO over reservations or objections by Germany, France, Hungary and Turkey. Now Ukraine is a defacto NATO member filled with NATO weapons killing Russian soldiers.
4. A year ago Russia was concerned about NATO expansion. As a result of Putin’s war Finland and Sweden are trying to join to NATO and Turkey will eventually agree to their request. Even Switzerland is working on joint security arrangements with NATO. And Ukraine is a NATO protectorate. As a result of Putin’s war Ukrainians will never agree to peace with Russia without security guarantees from NATO.
Russia, Ukraine and the entire world would be better off if Russia had not invaded Ukraine.
And all those things would have disappeared if Putin hadn’t invaded? You talk about a year ago, but you don’t talk about what the year would have brought if Putin hadn’t invaded. Where would we be right now? We’d still be facing the inevitable because the west was not backing off. You keep ignoring that and talk as though peace was right around the corner if only Putin hadn’t taken the bait. My point was the bait wasn’t going to stop and Putin had little choice other than when to take it.
If Putin had not invaded Russia would be much better off today.
You are correct, if Putin had not invaded the provocations by US/NATO would have continued. There probably would be joint NATO/Ukrainian exercises. Ukraine might have joined the EU. Ukraine would not have joined NATO and there would be increasing tension on Russia’s southern border. But tension on the border and anxiety over NATO military drills is not as bad as a war across the border that has killed ten or hundreds of thousands of Russians with no end in sight. Escalating trensions are not as bad as a hot war.
The civil war in Donbas would have continued. The level of violence in Donbas drastically declined since Zelensky was elected in 2019 from thousands killed annually to dozens of annual fatalities. Would the Donbas civil war have continued to wind down or would it have escalated? I don’t know. But the worst case scenario for the Donbas civil was would have produced far fewer casualties than the past year’s carnage of Putin’s invasion.
The Nazis in Ukraine made a lot of trouble during the Maidan movement. But remember that ten million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army during World War II. Over a million Ukrainian soldiers died fighting the Nazis. Most Ukrainians hate the Nazis and come from families that had soldiers in the Red Army during WWII. The Nazis were on the decline in Ukraine a year ago. The Svoboda party of the neo-Nazi’s went from 36% of the vote in 2009 to less than 2% of the vote in the 2019 election where Zelenskyy was elected. Whatever your criticism of Zelensky, he is not a Nazi. The real Nazis would want him and his family in a gas chamber. As a result of Putin’s invasion the controversial Azov Battalion have become national heroes following their tenacious defense of Mariupol.
I trust the Ukrainians to deal with the own Nazis.
Finally, you can’t ignore the centuries long history of Russian imperialism in Ukraine. Ukrainians see the Russians as oppressors. Russian troops in Ukraine evoke ancestral memories of murders, rapes, pillaging, pogroms instigated by the Czars and the Stalinists. An estimated four million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor famine 1929-1935 that Ukrainians consider a deliberate genocide perpetrated by Stalin. In the 1920’s Ukrainians were killed in the White Terror by Russian forces trying to restore the Czar. In the nineteenth century the Czars ordered a genocidal policy of forced assimilation where they outlawed Ukrainian language, schools, literature and religion. So nothing good was going to come out of a Russian invasion.
I believe Naftali Bennett was telling the truth when he said that Putin doesn’t really care about Nazis in Ukraine or the oppression of ethnic Russians in Donbas. This is a revanchist war aimed at geopolitical reset.
Putin is fighting for Russia’s version of the Monroe Doctrine. Putin believes that Russia has the right to a sphere of influence in Eurasia that encompasses the former Soviet republics, the Balkans and all the Slavic people. I opposed the US Monroe doctrine when I sat in my principal’s office to protest Kennedy’s attempt to enforce the Monroe Doctrine on Cuba in 1962. for the same reasons I oppose Putin’s Russian version of the Monroe Doctrine for a Russian sphere of influence in Eurasia.
Putin’s war in Ukraine is a classic illustration of how wars make bad situations worse. Putin forgot that a bad peace is better than a good war.
You keep saying the same thing over and over again, including the irrelevant history lesson. And yet you agree the provocations from the past 30+ years would have continued but for some reason you seem to think Russia acted on something that was somehow magically going to fix itself. Obviously, Putin believed that so called “bad peace” was only going to get worse and the inevitable war would have occurred when Russia was even more vulnerable.
If Russia had not invaded last year Russia would be worse off today than they were last year.
But because Russia invaded they are worse off now than they would have been if they had not invaded.
NATO and Ukrainian provocations left Putin with bad choices last year. He should have accepted the continued slow decline of Russian imperialism rather than starting a disastrous war which has only accelerated the decline of Russia.
A bad peace is better than a good war.
In 1962 I wrestled with these issues in the context of the Cuban missile crisis. The basis for the US blockade was the notion that Cuba was in the USA’s sphere of influence under the Monroe Doctrine and that the US as a great power had the right to veto Cuba’s decision to station Soviet missiles on Cuban territory. I recognized that Cuba has the right to make its own alliances and make its own security arrangements.
Why do you support Putin’s war? This is an imperialist war to maintain and recover Russia’s sphere of influence. It is not about liberating anybody. Russian imperialism is declining in Europe faster than US imperialism. Why should we want to preserve Russian imperialism in Ukraine? How does any of this justify Putin’s decisin to start a war that has killed tens of thousands of people?
War of choice? A bald faced lie. You lie about everything that matters. Putin’s government tried to get Biden to sign off on a deal for the Oblasts and NATO for three solid months preceding the onset of hostilities. Putin’s government was set to sign a deal on the two issues last March. In the first instance, Biden refused to issue a guarantee re the Donbas and NATO. In the second, Biden and his poodle told Zelensky to walk away from the very agreements which would have ended the war in March.
So your rationales are pure unadulterated BS. The simple truth is that Biden & company intended to block every road to peace because their intention all along has been to involve the Russians in a conflict designed to do only one thing: weaken Russia to get them out of the way prior to the push for aggression against China. You are either a boy scout or you’re clueless.
Putin chose to launch the invasion, which by definition means it was a war of choice. Perhaps he decided his other choices were worse, and perhaps he was even right, but he chose to do what he did.
yes putin actually stated his reasons for drawing a red line in the sand and waited for it to be crossed before he decided to invade
Your logic suggests that 𝐚𝐥𝐥 wars are wars of choice. That is likely true.
I wonder how things might have turned out if the United States and Europe had not interfered in Ukraine. Isn’t it really a choice to wage war by providing money, logistical support and diplomatic endorsement in support of regime change? Our fingerprints are on the Orange Revolution, the EuroMaidan Coup, the failed Minsk agreements, and the military buildup after 2014. Zelensky’s 2021 decrees to take back Crimea and the Donbass were a choice to escalate a civil war that specifically targets ethnic Russians. That he issued those decrees only 1 month after Biden entered office can hardly be a coincidence.
When the US invades other countries, we always have such great sounding reasons. Nobody seems to be interested in labeling the US invasion of Syria as a war of choice. But that is what it is. Moreover, our reasons for attempting regime change there are certainly no better than Russia’s reasons for defending the Donbass and Crimea.
Yes, all wars are wars of choice.
Even in the most naked case — forces from Regime A launch an all-out invasion of the territory claimed by Regime B — Regime B could choose to negotiate or even surrender rather than fight.
But in most cases, most regimes have far more latitude of choice than that. They make their choices, and frame those choices around supposed necessity.
I think something is very wrong with Macron.
The only true game changing move eoukd be for Zelenski to depart for Israel where he would feel at home with the repressive occupation regime. And take all his henchmen with him. Restore political freedoms in Ukraine, allow political parties to return after bring banned, allow free elections.
That would be game changer,
And who will be trained? All that new technoligy would be destroyed, snd sll newly trained -/ dead men walking.
A new law just passed with draconian punishment for soldiers caught after deserting, for complaining to comanding officers, making videos showing conditions in front lines, such as trenches without ammunitiin, wounded not evacuated, dead not collected. Or if collected left in a pile of bags.
It is depresding to read our media withbsuch high level if propaganda content. Routinely, all that ails Ukraine and Ukraiian military has been attributed to Russia and Russian military. Inexperiened conscripts supposedly fighting in Russian Army. Nobody explained why would that be necessary, since Russian regular military hardly saw a combat yet. However, in Ukraine they are down to recruiting 16 year olds. And men up to 65. Russian economy supposedly took a hit. Not even IMF thinks that. However, it is Ukraine that is on life support, as without cash injection from the West, Ukraine would collapse.
Game changing move? Ukraine knows what Russian conditions are, Take them. Stop the war. Restore political freedoms and hold elections. Remive clowns from power, elect new leaders to return this failed state to viability.
It was galling to see this clown addressing the EU Parliament and in the UK HOC being fawned over as if he were a saint. They lap up all this – we are ” fighting for European values” and that if Ukraine does not win then Europe is no more.
Only a week into the conflict anyone who was gay, or looked trans were beaten back from leaving (sent on trucks to the military recruitment) and non-whites were turned back too from escaping as that county is a Thumpain dream as many in east Europe. Also the neo-Nazi are embedded there as the 14,000 dead in the Dombas could attest too BEFORE the invasion.
Early in the war when a missile hit a Jewish was memorial in Kyiv he called it an attack on all Jews world wide (it was never hit) – when 2 farmers in Poland died when one of Ukraine’s rockets went rouge he called on a NATO war and asked Biden to launch a preemptive nuke strike on Russia!
Those applauding him as he railed against the Russian annexation of territories, displacement of civilians, brutality on the innocents and ethic cleansing of whole populations – were and are 100% behind Israel doing this exactly to the Palestinians for 60 years!
So sick – sorry fro the rant.
shame on you!
As much as he wants to perpetuate this war, Zelensky’s promises of victory conditioned upon “just a little bit more” have gone stale. The notion of trading lives for territory is growing old, and there is growing conviction that the west is only throwing good money after bad because most of the gifts he has already received have literally gone up in smoke.
Tens of thousands of deaths matter. Five million refugees matter. Everybody knows by now that more weapons means more suffering. This isn’t a fairy tale where everyone will live happily every after…. regardless of the outcome of the war.
Germany recognizes that it is losing its industrial base to countries that enjoy lower energy costs, and the news that Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines will be seen as proof that he is as willing to harm them as he is to harm Russia.
This speech by Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) to the UN Security Council says is going to resonate, and I predict that neither France nor Germany will support many more mindless escalations.
https://www.pressenza.com/2023/02/roger-waters-full-speech-at-the-un-security-council/
ok i was just watching Chris Cuomo on NewsNation TV and he actually said that Putin is trying to reinstate the soviet union. i imagine that he is a mind-reader who is reading the collective minds of uncle sam and is now trying to hypnotize his viewers into supporting uncle sam’s support for the bomb-maker inc’s war
While I don’t think Putin has the slightest desire to reinstate the USSR, I do think he would like to push NATO out of Eastern Europe. But de-fanging NATO in Ukraine is already an ambitious objective.
It was critical to the effort for the Biden/Blinken/Burns war machine to promulgate hysteria. But if Putin stops at the Dnipro, that dog won’t hunt anymore.
President Putin cannot stop at the Dnipro River. Russia needs a 250 NM buffer against long range missiles that POS Joey Biden is sending to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian fascists are so insane and they are now using chemical weapons. There is also film of these fascists shooting Russian POWs in the head.
“Zelensky Tells Macron and Scholz to Supply ‘Game-Changing’ Weapons Zelensky met with the two European leaders in Paris on Wednesday after a stop in London”
Voldomort Zelensky spends more and more time outside Ukraine. Perhaps he sees the end of days for himself in Ukraine. If the Russians don’t get him his own troops will!
Zelensky Tells Macron and Scholz Ukraine Lost
There will be no military miracles in Ukraine. The fascist Ukrainians started this fiasco and Russia will end it very soon. The question to ask is how the US will respond to their funky getting their ass kicked and their country destroyed? Will the US go Nuclear and risk the end of civilization? That also goes for the other countries of NATO.