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On November 27 2025 17:35 Excludos wrote:
Someone from Hong Kong not supporting Ukraine is genuinely unfathomable to me. Especially if you don't want to be called Chinese. Hong Kong is being more and more merged into China. You have lost your sovereignty, and you are about to lose your culture
People are not monolithic entities that think based on colour of skin or where they are born. People can think for themselves based on their own experiences and don't need you telling someone from Hong Kong what they should be thinking. Maybe you'd like HK to be a smoking crater in the ground with 100s of thousands of dead (because you don't live there), but something tells me they have a more pragmatic approach to their own problems.
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United States43812 Posts
Ah yes. The people of Hong Kong don’t need other people telling them what to think and that’s why their political parties have been banned and thousands of secret police from the mainland have been deployed there. They can think for themselves, as long as it aligns with the CCP. Glad zeo was here to let us know that we shouldn’t tell them what they ought to believe. That’s Beijing’s job.
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Northern Ireland26505 Posts
Is Hong Kong one of the exceedingly rare places where they’d rather have the British back?
Guess the Palestinians would also take that state of affairs
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Northern Ireland26505 Posts
On November 27 2025 07:52 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2025 07:14 Gahlo wrote:On November 26 2025 18:14 Excludos wrote:On November 26 2025 16:12 maybenexttime wrote:According to a recent leak, it is apparent that the supposed US envoy to Russia is acting as a Russian agent. https://archive.is/utUkc To the surprise of no one with eyes and brain cells to rub together Edit: confirmed by Trump himself, who now is just casually normalizing treason.. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/11/26/8009009/ Is it treason if Trump signs off on it? He's not a king, merely a government official. Witkoff was advising Russia on how to play Trump to do their bidding. I would say that's clear treason.
Even the benign explanation is pretty damning. Let’s assume Witkoff genuinely thinks this is a great deal and in American interests. You can’t sell it to Trump on that basis, you have to butter him up. And not only that, you have to do it in a limited timeframe before the other person also does the same thing.
Fudge sake. It’s laughable deeply depressing stuff, especially the denial people have. Folks in USPol were denying what’s patently obvious, and has been obvious for years just a few days ago, and then this drops. You almost couldn’t have asked for a better illustration of it if you tried.
I don’t, btw buy the more benign end of this spectrum, but even if it were the case it would still be bad
And what’s even more mental is that Trump can just say he didn’t even read it when questioned on it. This would be a pretty major deal in any vaguely functional country.
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The part that gets me is that most theories of Trump have him as a narcissist with fits of rage, he thinks he's smarter and more powerful then anyone else, and of course, encyclopedias have been written on how to manipulate him, thousands of articles covering how people do it, and I can get that he doesn't read and doesn't care, but this is very clearly someone who is supposed to work for him working for Putin, directly, there is clear evidence, and he isn't even bothered by it?
I mean who spun it that way, how? Shouldn't he be firing Witkoff while yelling his lungs out at him and having the military police escort him out, I mean the guy was giving another country direct advice how to manipulate him to get what they want.
The only theory that fits all the known facts is that Trump and Putin's goals are so aligned, to the point that even Witkoff wasn't aware that he doesn't have to put his thumb on the scale even more, so Trump didn't mind this, because he's in Putin's pocket anyway.
Anyhow, I find it kind of funny that you guys are bewildered by Zeo's approach, he is from a country that was built on trying to deny others their sovereignty and is completely unrepentant about it, of course he thinks that no one from the column of "to be subjugated" should have a problem with that, I mean his whole existence is based on supporting a mafia state, he has 0 sense of self or actual pride in anything other then weird fantasies these mafiots use to manipulate him.
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Trump owns him now. He steps out of line and Trump can charge him with treason. It is like in the old USSR (and every corrupt country), or the mob. You want people doing the bad shit and you to know about it, because that gives you the power. Clean people are scary.
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Oh boy, I think you might have missed the massive trail of corruption and conflict of interest that Witkoff's been leaving behind from the moment he started his globetrotting.
His 32 y/o son has been following in his wake and "making deals" along with Don Jr. and Eric:
https://newrepublic.com/article/200551/trump-witkoff-emiratis-bribery-corruption
There is enough shit just with the crypto schemes they've been running to put them all away for a long time, if need arises.
I don't think that this guy would have ever ended up in this position if Trump didn't own him beforehand.
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You answered in your post, the previous stuff involved Trumps. Leverage works both ways. He owned Trump, Trump owned him, they had some sort of MAD, relationship, who knows? But this one is all Witkoff and will ruin his credibility.
But beyond all that, I'm not sure it is the right play to right a condescending post insinuating someone else is naïve right after you write a novel wondering why Trump is not firing someone working directly for Russia.
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Trump isn't firing someone working for Russia because he's working for Russia himself. You really think that a dumb spoiled businessman Trump in the 80's with a penchant for young girls getting offers to build a hotel in Moscow wasn't ensnared? Hell, Russians even got him the right to call his hotels by his name (Trump stamp, hahaha) which he wasn't able to do himself.
Trump and his cronies are all corrupt and under foreign influence. There's no denying that.
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On November 27 2025 17:35 Excludos wrote:
Someone from Hong Kong not supporting Ukraine is genuinely unfathomable to me. Especially if you don't want to be called Chinese. Hong Kong is being more and more merged into China. You have lost your sovereignty, and you are about to lose your culture
Supporting Ukraine doesn't mean supporting it by non stop spawning news about russia descent or more weapon/aids.
I myself have donated number of times to ukraine (yes using crypto to cover my tracks)
If you know anything about Hong Kong, is that we are extremely realists. When protest begins to die down, so many of us have left (including me).
When the world was having living cost crisis and housing affordability crisis. Hong Kong was having a reversal, housing price drop to decade low, no inflation, and schools are forced to shut down due to low number of students and teachers, because how many have left.
I have said this before about ukraine and will always be my stance.
Ukraine doesn't need drip feeding weapons and aids, it needs full commitment from allies that are willing to risk world war 3.
Drip feeding is not going to change the momentum to turn things around, it's just a slow death animation.
Delaying deals only mean they are losing more bargaining power more and more.
Worst of all ukraine even falling behind in drone tech.
Some of you hoping russia to have economic collapse is banking on something very unlikely. China wouldn't let it collapse, and Russia has a lot of capital control. Being able to adapt to SWIFT cutoff is significant.
What is a realist win for Ukraine here?
Least land lost, least gov/political system change with border as secured by Europe and NATO and US are the only good outcome now.
Do we think prolonging the war is achieving or made worse for these goals?
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What you don't seem to grasp is that every day this war is going on is another day Russia didn't win. The onus is entirely on Russia here because they're the attacker. They can stop this war any time they want but they apparently don't want to stop it so the war continues. All that Ukraine has to do to win is just not give up and that's what they've been doing for the past 4 years so right now they're winning this war.
Russia doesn't really give Ukraine any choice here. Surrender and lose your country or fight and lose your country. They'd rather fight than be sent to reeducation camps and be subject to ethnic cleansing.
Putin can take his lebensraum and shove it up his arse.
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On November 28 2025 09:15 Manit0u wrote:
What you don't seem to grasp is that every day this war is going on is another day Russia didn't win. The onus is entirely on Russia here because they're the attacker. They can stop this war any time they want but they apparently don't want to stop it so the war continues. All that Ukraine has to do to win is just not give up and that's what they've been doing for the past 4 years so right now they're winning this war.
Russia doesn't really give Ukraine any choice here. Surrender and lose your country or fight and lose your country. They'd rather fight than be sent to reeducation camps and be subject to ethnic cleansing.
Putin can take his lebensraum and shove it up his arse.
The weird thing is that "Lebensraum" is the one thing that Russia has enough of. Russia is full of space to live. What Russia probably wanted out of this war is more people. That doesn't seem to be working out well.
Even if they fully win now, they mostly get an empty land, because they need to do a lot of murdering before Ukrainian partisans stop being a problem for them.
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In any case, Russia went all in and now they're kind fucked because of that. Ukraine (and the EU) won't agree to the Russian terms for peace, Russia will not agree to the Ukraine and EU terms for peace so their only other option is taking complete control of Ukraine and they don't have the resources to last 100 years of war.
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On November 28 2025 09:15 Manit0u wrote:
What you don't seem to grasp is that every day this war is going on is another day Russia didn't win. The onus is entirely on Russia here because they're the attacker. They can stop this war any time they want but they apparently don't want to stop it so the war continues. All that Ukraine has to do to win is just not give up and that's what they've been doing for the past 4 years so right now they're winning this war.
Russia doesn't really give Ukraine any choice here. Surrender and lose your country or fight and lose your country. They'd rather fight than be sent to reeducation camps and be subject to ethnic cleansing.
Putin can take his lebensraum and shove it up his arse.
Making Russia war expensive is a win for Europe but not necessarily for Ukraine, when it is losing land it can't recapture and has less negotiation power, and losing majority of maritime trade route
Yes Russia doesn't want to end the war, it's almost entirely up to them. Why do you think negotiation are softer on them?
They are still capturing more land from ukraine.
What's new?
Again then, what's the realistic win condition here?
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United States43812 Posts
One of the many problems is that Russia is lying about its motivations and its real motivations seem so irrational that a lot of people struggle with them.
Russia isn't after more land, obviously. It has more land than it can use.
Russia isn't after more population, if you're facing a demographic crisis then A, you don't start a war that pushes a lot of your most valuable young men into exile, and B, you especially don't start a war where the prize is Ukraine, a country facing a worse demographic crisis.
Russia isn't concerned about NATO expansion. It was entirely foreseeable that the invasion of Ukraine would trigger long standing neutral states like Finland and Sweden to seek protection under NATO. They're more valuable to NATO than Ukraine is to Russia. The power gap widened. Russia did nothing to stop them joining NATO, it didn't wage hybrid or direct war, it didn't make them ineligible, it let them join.
It isn't concerned with buffer. See any map and the location of Finland.
Russia isn't after natural resources. Russia is not constrained by minerals in the ground, it is constrained by the infrastructure available to extract them and the markets for Russian goods. Having two hundred years of natural gas in the ground is not materially better than having a hundred and fifty years of natural gas, it's still the same gas sales you were already doing for the first hundred and fifty years. Especially when extracting them relies upon European collaboration and the market for them was Europe.
Russia isn't after economic gains. Sanctions have devastated Russian industries and Russia's key exports, hydrocarbons and military hardware, have both suffered significantly.
Russia doesn't care about Nazis, obviously. See the large number of Russians with Nazi tattoos.
Russia isn't concerned with electoral legitimacy. Zelenskyy was elected, he didn't come to power in a coup, Russia was one of the international community of nations that observed and recognized his election. Also if Russia was concerned about democracy they have targets somewhat closer to home.
They're not interested in protecting Russian speakers, the war in the Donbas was over in 2021, Ukrainian Russian speakers weren't in danger until the invasion of Ukraine, and now a great many of them have died.
Russia's motivation is emotional. They believe that they're a great power, an imperial power, an empire that includes Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics (and Finland) (and parts of Poland). They just don't like that they can't oppress other Slavs right now. It makes them sad. And to fix that they're willing to pay a huge price in blood and treasure.
It'd be like if some weird "rule Britannia" empire nostalgic Englishmen decided that the British Isles really should be under the crown and invaded Ireland. It doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense.
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On November 28 2025 09:31 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2025 09:15 Manit0u wrote:
What you don't seem to grasp is that every day this war is going on is another day Russia didn't win. The onus is entirely on Russia here because they're the attacker. They can stop this war any time they want but they apparently don't want to stop it so the war continues. All that Ukraine has to do to win is just not give up and that's what they've been doing for the past 4 years so right now they're winning this war.
Russia doesn't really give Ukraine any choice here. Surrender and lose your country or fight and lose your country. They'd rather fight than be sent to reeducation camps and be subject to ethnic cleansing.
Putin can take his lebensraum and shove it up his arse. The weird thing is that "Lebensraum" is the one thing that Russia has enough of. Russia is full of space to live. What Russia probably wanted out of this war is more people. That doesn't seem to be working out well. Even if they fully win now, they mostly get an empty land, because they need to do a lot of murdering before Ukrainian partisans stop being a problem for them.
Hard to say why but I reckon they just want to reshuffle the population on the outskirts of Russia to "resist some of the cultural social changes" from the west
Look at Mariupol, it's been reshaped as a strictly very Russian cities. And similarly, a lot of populations been moved around in occupied territories to make it more Russian
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There is no way Russia hits any sort of ROI on this. It is a huge loss for all the people involved, even the survivors.
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That's just the classic diplomatic blame game.
"Ukrainian troops must withdraw from the territories they hold, and then the fighting will cease. If they don't leave, then we shall achieve this by armed means. That's it," Putin said.
Putin is not about to give-up on taking Donetsk and for now Ukraine isn't willing to give it up.
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Almost everything I've read says at least two years not one. Any sources for that timeline?
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EPT
