38 minutes ago, M2 said:

Where are you getting your intel?

And I'm talking real intel, not the Internet...

do you dispute that ukraine is losing? i'd much rather be in Putin's strategic position than zelensky's

1 hour ago, BashiChuni said:

do you dispute that ukraine is losing? i'd much rather be in Putin's strategic position than zelensky's

Big difference between "losing" and "losing badly," and I am very well aware of how much territory has been lost and the costs on both sides from legitimate intel sources.

Putin isn't winning...

keep telling yourself that. i only see one side offering peace plans.

I am wondering when the US government is going to conclude that Putin doesn't want to quit until he crushes Ukraine.

i thought the talking point was putin wants to capture paris?

5 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

i thought the talking point was putin wants to capture paris?

Negative, that’s just the strawman thrown out by Putin simps to argue that the current Russian state poses no concern at all to Eastern Europe. Riga/Tallinn ≠ Paris.

Trump is right that this is a European problem and NATO has atrophied. Europe needs to contribute more and some are starting, but one major weakness of the West is the DIB. We can’t print F-35s or munitions overnight. Our DIB is slow and obsessed with high end. Boeing is a shitshow. While we try to dig out of that hole, we shouldn’t just about-face and leave our NATO partners in the dust.

Trump’s approach is anti-Teddy. Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, Trump runs his mouth and serves up TACOs. Maybe it will work. Regardless of his style, appeasing totalitarian heads of state has proven to be as effective as pissing into hurricane-force winds.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-peace-deal-trump-driscoll-abu-dhabi-talks-latest/

conveniently buried in the last two paragraphs of the article:

"A U.S. official told CBS News that Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to believe that he will take the Donetsk region of Ukraine one way or the other — either through a negotiated settlement or on the battlefield. The Trump administration's negotiations in Geneva began from the premise that Putin is correct. 

While that same U.S. official declined to provide a U.S. assessment of whether Ukraine is losing the war in the East, the U.S. official said that the trajectory of the fighting points to Russia taking Donetsk. The official indicated that the Russian progress in the eastern frontline city of Pokrovsk, which is a logistics hub for Ukraine, was not a positive sign for Kyiv's defensive prospects. Russian media often refers to Pokrovsk as the "gateway" to Ukraine's industrial Donbas region."

"After meeting for about an hour with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mr. Trump said he believes Ukraine can win back all of its territory from Russia "in its original form." 

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-united-nations-general-assembly-speech-unga/

guess a lot has changed in the last 2 months 🤷