Peace Talks Between Russia and Ukraine, You Say?
"We need air defence, IRIS, Hawks, Patriots, and we need transformers [for our energy needs].""In a nutshell: Patriots and transformers are what Ukraine needs the most."Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba"[Washington should be aware of unspecified risks because of its support for Kyiv against Russia's 'special military operation' to disarm Ukraine]. We are sending signals to the Americans that their line of escalation and ever deeper involvement in this conflict is fraught with dire consequences.""The risks are growing."Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov"[Of over 16,000 missiles Russia has fired at Ukraine, 97% have been aimed at civilian targets].""We are fighting against a terrorist state.""Ukraine will prevail and will bring the war criminals to justice."Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov
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| A missile is seen stuck in the ground after destroying an electricity line with part of the electric wire caught in it’s tail, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the Russian border in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, October 21, 2022. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne |
Fully 40 percent of Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been deliberately targeted by Russian missiles, the plan, to put them out of commission with the approach of winter, depriving residents of the country of light, and heat, and water. Conditions the residents of Ukraine's east and south-east that lived under occupation by Russia's military for months were very well acquainted with. The urgent need of the Ukrainian government at all levels is not only munitions to help them fight back against the Russian aggressor.
Ukraine is in dire need of generators, replacement parts, pipes and valves to allow its engineers frantically working to restore heat and light, to succeed in their mission to keep the country's citizens from freezing in the dark this winter. The United States and its allies in sanctioning Russia for its imposition of conflict on Ukraine, and for its succeeding war crimes, confiscated Russian assets to the tune of an estimated $300 billion.
Wouldn't it be just and fair to compensate Ukraine for the unspeakably wide damage inflicted on the country by Russian shelling and bombing of the nation's cities and towns with the use of that confiscated treasury? War is a criminal act without justification. There is wide justification for inflicting financial damage on the purveyors of war and human misery.
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| Ukrainian service members fire a shell from an M777 Howitzer at a front line in Donetsk Region. Photograph: RFE/RL/Serhii Nuzhenko/Reuters |
Ukraine has turned Russia's war inside out. The courage of its servicemen in fighting back, in mounting an impressive counteroffensive to rout the enemy within its borders surprised the international community with the level of Ukrainian resolve and commitment. The question now is, why is it accepted that Russia is conducting a war against a neighbour, but that neighbour must restrain its defence/offence to fighting back within Ukrainian borders.
If Russia can with a certain amount of impunity mount a war against a neighbour, devastating its cities, killing civilians, creating chaos and destruction, forcing the movement of people out of their cities to find refuge in other less targeted areas, creating six million refugees who fled for haven to other countries, why is it not feasible that in response Ukraine demonstrate to Russia that it has the capacity and the will to bomb Russian weapons and energy caches within Russian borders?
It has the will, but not the long-range missiles and bombs required to do that efficiently, and in the process disrupt Russian supply lines to the war front. Ukraine's allies fear a broader conflict and as the price to pay for their support in the supply of munitions, Ukraine's government is held to a vow to refrain from targeting Russia directly on Russian territory. Of course, when Ukraine sends bombs into Luhansk and Donetsk, territories that Moscow now claims as its own, in a perverse way Ukraine is defiantly defending its territory by bombing Russia's annexed territory.
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NATO, the EU and other western allies of Ukraine undoubtedly would like to see an end to the war. So would Ukraine, but not at the price Russia demands in 'peace' talks that the Kremlin says Ukraine is avoiding and thus prolonging the suffering of its people. On both sides of this war so far in its 9 months of operation, an estimated 100,000 people have died, military and civilian on both sides. One may take from that, that the Russian deaths are primarily military, the Ukrainian deaths represent both military and civilian.
Russia insists that peace is achievable as long as Ukraine is prepared to disarm, to set aside any notion of joining NATO, to accept the loss of a third of its territory and to find itself a new government with a president of Moscow's choosing. Ukraine grimly laughs and insists that peace is achievable as long as Russia completely withdraws, returns Ukrainian territory, and pays war reparations in the reconstruction of all that Russia has destroyed.
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| Repeated missile attacks have severely damaged Ukraine's power grid leaving people without heating or power as temperatures fall to freezing [File: Gleb Garanich/ Reuters] |
Labels: Infrastructure Targets, Peace Talks, Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Counteroffensive, War Crimes
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 01, 2022
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