As I mentioned, china has had a dream to make Russia as their vassal state and overthrow western order, namely the US. Russia wants to return to Yalta conference age. And I think CCP surely saw the weakness of Russian military power and become to know military weakness of china considering the US. So the today meeting of genius Sullivan and Yang is very important rather than negotiation between Russia and Ukraine. I think the US can make the china paralyzed by their chip technology, while Russia makes chip industry suffocate by Ukraine’s Neon.
If Russia turns off the gas, half of Europe is standing still, if there won't be massive blackouts to begin with. What's even more, if the Ukraine doesn't make peace with Russia: They depend the most on Russian gas and can't afford any alternative. They couldn't even pay the Russian gas and stole it from the transnational pipeline, which was part of the reason why they were always against Nordstream.
You don't have to wait for the chip industry to collapse if Ukraine turns into a months long battlefield and the sanctions on Russia being not lifted. This will cause a massive production chain collapse and hyperinflation in a worst case scenario.
And Russia knows that it can't go back out of a sudden to the size of the old Soviet Union, even less to its sphere of influence in the Warshaw Pact. That's absurd and completely out of question. Ukraine is a specific conflict and war, it can be made a bigger scale war, even a World War, if the US and some of the Eastern European states don't come to their senses. They just need to call Selenski back and tell him to take negotiations seriously, like he should have all the time, since he became president. Instead of enjoying being in the world wide media and playing "the Western hero", while his country suffocates in blood. He just repeats "whatever the costs" and isn't even ready to talk about the Crimean question seriously. Who does he think he is? What did Biden think he does by weaponising Ukraine and making false promises to the Selenski regime, which, if being fulfilled, will lead to World War III? And all of that mainly for the NATO membership, for the political purge in the Ukraine, which de facto ended democracy there, when they arrested the pro-Russian opposition and closed all non-phased media and TV stations. For territories which they don't control since 2014 and which population doesn't want to be part of an anti-Russian Ukraine.
For that they went into war and Russia just made the first step into this catastrophe.
Its so easy: Crimea to Russia and a guarantee for the water supply and traffic, Donbas too for Russia or getting at least sufficient autonomy and the NATO membership removed from the constitution, at least sort of a blocking period and on the other hand hard guarentees for the independence of the Ukraine (without Donbas and Crimea) and its people from both the USA, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.
That would have been a good peace for all sides, unless the Ukrainian nationalists want to reconquer "all of Ukraine", even the parts which don't want to belong to that sort of Ukraine anyway, by brute force, which they planned and which caused the war. And they did annihilate the Ukrainian opposition to the war course, which was both undemocratic and a final political declaration of war to Russia.
The main problem is: That egomanic Selenski loves to be "so important" and "the hero", it comes through in his videos, he is a self-promoter. And on the other hand, he feels the pressure from the Ukrainian nationalists and his policy destroys the Ukraine. The more death and destruction, the harder it gets to make such a peace, because everyone could ask, and rightly so: If this is the peace, why wasn't this treaty not made in 2019, 2020 or 2021? But only after all those thousands of crippled and dead people, after half of the Ukraine is in shambles.
And that's where I'm getting even more pessimistic, because its like the World War I dilemma: Everybody in a clear state of mind did regret to even have started that war, but it became to costly to just come back to the status quo ante or just accept a honourable defeat in a compromise. So all sides fought on, because the many dead and all the destruction couldn't have been in vain. And the next problem was, that when it was finally possible to force peace on one side, that peace was so unjust and cruel to the Central Powers, that it hardly could have become a lasting peace.
The longer the war goes on, the more its becoming such a political dilemma. Both sides need to justify their losses, but both sides can't get all their demands, so they fight it out to the bitter end or the next escalation level, which would threaten mankinds existence if the USA/NATO gets involved.
And to those which think that the Russian nuclear power won't be able to strike the US hard, because they are on the other side of the Atlantic or seem to be technologically not as advanced: It will be hard enough for everybody to regret it, if it comes to this point, even over there. Of course, we in Europe are much closer to this, but it will be still bad enough for North America if the Russians would start an all-out nuclear war. The hypersonic missile arsenal alone would destroy a good number of US cities and core agglomeration zones and the defense systems are nowhere as effective as to being able to stop a full scale assault.
The Biden administration backed up and pushed the Selenski regime into this conflict, now its about time to start thinking about an emergency stop. Making that comedien in Kiev clear that latest when the pincer movement in the West Ukraine starts and it becomes clear that his main forces will be trapped and annihilated, he has to start negotiating quickly, because the West won't risk a nuclear war for this dream role as Western hero. One could argue, the Ukrainians have a chance in conventional warfare without their whole country being destroyed up to this point, when Kharkiv/Mariupol are falling and the pincer starts, the Donbas front collapses. If that happens, it can only become one bloody mess of a dirty partisan war and the Ukraine completely destroyed, or the West is starting World War III, otherwise they have to surrender latest at this point.
I'd suggest the Ukrainians start to take negotiations more seriously as soon as possible, because if the Russians manage to do that movement, and they eventually will, if they have no military or political miracle, from within Russia, they inevitably will make it, its over for the UAF. The steamroller will start moving again, once the two plugs being lifted (Mariupol and Kharkiv) and then its over for the UAF.
That's just how it is and the worst scenario, not just for Ukraine, but the whole world, is an escalation of this war to the next level. No sane person should want that, its completely unnecessary and superfluous to risk the well-being of billions for this idiotic conflict Putin and Selenski could end in days on the negotiations table. The Ukraine didn't even have the Crimean peninsula and Donbas in its hands before the war started and the idea of a quick NATO membership was just one of the gravest mistakes, politically, done by the recent Ukrainian governments, especially the Selenski regime confrontational course backed up and pushed by the US Biden administration. That was so damned unnecessary, just like the idea of taking Donbas back by force, with the help of NATO instructors and weapons. For what? All of this could have been easily prevented by a diplomatic solution as early as 2014. Why this unnecessary confrontation and escalation? Who's profiting from it? And even those which thought they might profit from it, are they happy with the results? Is that what they wanted? All reasonable analysts warned to not go that far, to stop that - and Trump did stop it, and it became more peaceful, a diplomatic solution became at least more likely. But as soon as Biden backed the Selenski regime up, everything started to become a bloody mess.
ok so Canada got some heat for the Trucker thing it's obvious some of these Democratic countries are very much on edge and afraid of losing control, the peasants are revolting...if you prefer Autocracy to Democracy own up to it, then maybe I can understand your argument or point of view...