Are they willing to gamble all life on earth for a chance at a few more decades of capitalism?

Depressing but I think the answer to this is yes, absolutely.

Courage is definitely a substitute for weapons and training in a modern military.

What they obviously needed was to draft Mel Gibson to give them a rousing speech before sending them into the meat grinder. That would have changed everything.

Ukraine didn’t ask to be invaded, or make the first strike in this warz they’re being invaded by an agresssor and are defending themselves.

I will take your position in good faith and just assume you are very misinformed. Not entirely your fault, if you only started paying attention to the region in the past couple of years this is exactly the narrative that has become mainstream.

A lot of the underlying circumstances of the war date back to 2014 (and earlier, but we will try to keep a fairly tight time frame here). A more pro-Russian leader (Yanukovych) was elected by the people, which they US obviously did not want, so a US-backed coup was staged. Surprising nobody, this is US Foreign Policy 101. You can read about Victoria Nuland for more specifics, but there are leaked phone calls of her explicitly selecting the next leader of the country which ended up being Poroshenko. The new administration rolled back several amendments to the constitution and began a widespread crackdown on its political opponents (specifically anyone with Communist ties or leanings) and banned anyone from any communist party of holding office. The crackdown renamed thousands of streets and cities named after famous communists and removed many statues of the same. Even the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic flag was banned. Totally not fascist.

The above was, incidentally, when Russia first become involved, which led to the annexation of Crimea that you are probably familiar with. It is also when the Ukrainian military began shelling Donetsk and Luhansk due to pro-Russian movements there.

Interestingly, a lot of western sources were much more open about fascist elements in Ukraine and crimes comitted thereof, because they did not have the vested interest in hushing those things like they do now. In the years leading up to the current operation, you can find many stories from the New York Times or Washington Post harping on Azov and neonazi elements in Ukraine, it wasn’t a secret but people were just not paying attention to Ukraine at that point.

You don’t need to take my word from it, but I do encourage you to do your own reading. Please let me know if you need any suggested sources and I will be glad to provide some.

Look, I support the fastest resolution as possible to prevent more casulties as long as it is effective, but this argument is nonsensical. Even the New York Times was reporting on Ukraine shelling their own cities with cluster munitions back in 2014. You can’t just say “people will die if we intervene, so go ahead and keep murdering people, we won’t stop you”.

As an aside, three day thing never came from Russia, that was Belaraus and a US general estimating it was possible to take Kiev in three days if they wanted to.

If Zelensky and his dictatorship cared about the Ukrainian people they would have went against NATO to form a peace treaty.

Which by all accounts, they had multiple close attempts at until the NATO Overlords put a stop to it. Not only would they have saved many lives, they probably would have ended up with better terms than they would get now. Even if he didn’t give a shit about his people, and I don’t think he does, the country would have been better off taking the deals that had already been negotiated.

We can only hope that as many of those people are in the platoons that have surrendered as possible. Which honestly seems likely to me, the far-right elements are not going to surrender because they know they wouldn’t be treated quite as kindly.

I don’t want any more innocent civilians to die if it can be avoided, and I do consider children and elderly thrown into the front lines with a gun and a salute to be civilians.

It’s absolutely an intentional metered roll out to ease the public into it. I give it two years max before they start writing about fascist elements in Ukraine (again) and wringing their hands over “nobody could have seen this coming”. Minus all of us who saw it coming.

Once they got people used to that, they can just scapegoat Ukraine for everything else too. They already did for the nordstream bombing.

Considering this has happened a dozen times by now, no they won’t analyze things a bit more closely.

Considering diplomacy these days amounts to getting up and walking out of the room to get kudos from the public rather than talk to the people they disagree with (which is literally their job) I am not remotely surprised.

If it were up to me, any diplomat pulling that kind of stunt would be instantly replaced. Only talking to people who already agree with you isn’t particularly useful most of the time.

I’ll bite, why do you think so?

There have been defectors in the past, they were treated pretty well by all accounts. It beats working for the US military, especially the kind of US military that tend to be stationed in South Korea. He was apparently being held for disciplinary action, so probably did something horrible like report another US soldier for sexual assault of the locals.

I will admit that crossing the border can be risky between minefields and soldiers from both sides, but as he seemingly made a safe crossing he should be okay.