I am Groot

Imagine that, after $216 million dollars spent - almost all of it various consultants and <cough-cough> administration fees, the committee to search for the unmarked graves at residential schools has come up with approximately ZERO graves. By the way, only 3.6% of the money was spent on actual physical searches. But hey, lots of band councilors got new pickups and were able to renovate their homes. You probably haven't heard much about this since the mainstream media's screaming headlines about 'mass graves' that initiated the panic among the Left has not also resulted in blaring headlines about how it was all a waste of time. I wonder why. The Canadian federal government will be halting funding to a committee tasked with searching for “unmarked burials” near former residential schools after zero graves were discovered and millions of taxpayer dollars spent. In a statement released last week, the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials said it was “extremely disappointed to learn that the Government of Canada has decided to discontinue funding to support their work to help Indigenous communities in their efforts to identify, locate and commemorate missing children.” https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/trudeau-govt-to-halt-funds-for-unmarked-graves-search-after-millions-spent-no-bodies-found/

Putin has rejected any NATO troops and continues to demand Ukraine disarm. What Russia wants is Ukraine. All of it. A temporary truce until their next attack is not what we want. And since Putin's signature on a treaty is worth about as much as Trump's, ie, nothing, we need to ensure they don't attack again.

Negotiations are fine. And I agree that Russia will have to be permitted to retain the Donbas region. But any idea of Ukraine disarming is out the window. And ideally, we require Western military in as peacekeepers. The carrot and stick are that if he does this many of the sanctions against Russia could be lifted. And if he doesn't, then the West will start giving Ukraine more modern weapons and take the gloves off them, let them have long-range missiles, and fire them as deep into Russia as they want.

The Communist party is not in power in Russia. United Russia is Putin's party. The only people who have to worry about guns to the back of their heads are anyone who irritates Putin. He absolutely is a dictator. Anyone who opposes him dies. Douglas Murray is British, to begin with. He's also not so much a columnist as a war correspondent, though he has written a number of books that I'm surprised you haven't heard of, including The Strange Death of Europe. He has spent most of the last year traveling between Ukraine and Israel. He was in Ukraine when the Israeli war started, went there, embedded with the IDF and went into Gaza. He has an absolute TON of experience being the man on the spot, talking with presidents, generals and common people. I trust what he has to say. . You might also give a read or two to Konstantin Kisin, who is both Russian and Ukrainian, though he now lives in the UK. The war should have been brought to an end a long time ago as I wrote here. My hope is that Trump can achieve that and I've said many times he is far more likely to do that than Biden ever was. But, facts matter. Calling Zelensky a dictator is absurd. Both Murray and Kisin have been fairly strong supporters of Trump but both disagree with him about Ukraine and Russia. Then there's Piers Morgan, another Trump supporter. Volodymyr Zelensky is NOT a dictator. Vladimir Putin IS a dictator. Zelensky didn’t start the war in Ukraine. Putin did. Hope this clarifies things for anyone who is confused.

Well, first, it's more like $130 billion. Second, how many lives lost in WW2? I guess we blame Roosevelt for that, right? How many lives lost in Iraq? That was all on George Bush, I guess. And the second Iraq war, and the world trade center bombings? That was all George Bush II! Why, if only orange Jesus had been president there'd have been no WW2! No Iraqi war! No WTC bombings! By giving Russia everything it wants. You act like it's hard to end a war by giving the aggressor everything they want. It's not.

Some facts about the Russia Ukraine war, and just who is a dictator, from the pro-Trump New York Post. https://nypost.com/2025/02/20/opinion/putin-is-the-dictator-and-10-ukraine-russia-war-truths-we-ignore-at-our-peril/

What does that even mean? That NATO would then threaten Russia? No sane person believes the disparate group of countries in NATO, especially given how bad their equipment was/is would invade Russia.

Total surrender. I don't give a damn about Biden. He's gone. Nothing he does matters. You can't defend Trump's stupidity by demanding I acknowledge Biden failed. I noticed you cut out the answer I gave to this. It's not a victory if all it does is give Russia the time to reorganize and rearm and for Ukraine to soften its defenses and send soldiers back to their regular jobs so Russia can attack again. Russia's word on a peace treaty is about as worthless as Trump's name on a free trade treaty. So without someone guaranteeing Russia doesn't attack again there can't be peace. And he has rejected the idea and even demanded Ukraine disarm. I find it interesting that the party of Patriotism, love of the military, and opposition to Russia is now the party of peaceniks who want to slash the military budget by half and give the Russians anything they ask for.

Bullshit. I don't know why you don't believe Putin. He's made it clear that he thinks Ukraine has always been part of Russia and must rejoin so that Russia can be great again. The NATO excuse was just that, an excuse. He never thought Western Europe would invade his crap country. By surrendering. No. What they care about is agreeing to let Russia have the chunk of their country he's stolen, then agreeing to stay out of NATO, then in four or five years Russia launches another attack to take more territory. It's childish to assume Biden didn't want it to end. You need an agreement that guarantees Ukraine's remaining territorial integrity. And the problem with that is Russia already did that and went back on their agreement. So the only way this works is if Ukraine becomes a member of NATO afterward. Or at least if NATO troops are in place to guarantee their sovereignty. Both of which Putin has vetoed.

If you think Zelansky is selling them out you really ought to have a look at what that doddering, dementia patient in the White House has been up to.

I think you should apply your last sentence to the second one. Because the second one lacks a little something...

No, it won't. The only reason it could provide Ukraine with all that is because they had been building up their military prior to the war and were able to stand off the Russian invasion and even push them back from their capital. They had over 700k active military. That would not happen in Canada. An invasion would be over in a day. We have no military to speak of and what we do have are poorly armed and equipped.

We did. That was why when the Russians invaded, expecting a cakewalk, they got their asses kicked and forced back to the east and north.

An interesting writeup in the Washington Examiner, which has long been the Right's answer to the Washington Post. The international order that has prevailed since World War II is over. The abandonment of Ukraine is just one manifestation, and not the most dramatic. More striking is the readiness of the United States to make aggressive claims on foreign territory without bothering to snatch up even a legalistic figleaf. That revolution has left the U.S.’s client states stranded, like outlying Roman provinces when there is a vacuum in the metropolis. America’s allies, whether in NATO or in the Pacific, have tended to define themselves geo-strategically as precisely that: America’s allies. Most, for example, have pursued defense procurement on the assumption that they will always be part of a U.S.-led bloc, and so can specialize rather than investing in full-spectrum capacity. That assumption is dead. So are the other assumptions that make up what we think of as the international system. That nations should respect each other’s independence, for example; that the high seas should be open to commerce; that disputes should be settled through peaceful arbitration; that civilian government is preferable to military rule. These rules were sometimes broken, but they were never jettisoned. Until now. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3319902/we-are-back-to-a-world-of-wars-and-warlords/

That you aren't able to understand what I write is on you, not I. There are militia groups like that in the United States. Not to mention in Russia. The Azovs have less than a thousand members. To argue a nation beset by a violent, psychopathic army of rapist murderers should be picky about who they allow to fight in its defense is irrational and just plain dumb. Ukraine is so nazi it elected a Jew as president.

Don't ever get it into your head I don't know more than you do about virtually everything. Says the guy who thinks FOX and Breitbart are unbiased news sources. I wouldn't call Putin a Nazi, necessarily, though I'm sure his policies and behaviour closely mirror those in many ways. Are you talking about Trump? I wouldn't call him a Nazi either, just a lazy, ignorant old geriatric authoritarian coasting downhill as his dementia grows deeper.

Defended themselves? Rejected a Kremlin stooge as their leader? All you're saying here is might makes right - and that this is the way you think things should be.

Strong knowledge of the law isn't really a requirement to be a judge in Canada. It's not even a consideration. Neither is good judgment or intelligence.

What he wants is Ukraine. He's said that repeatedly. Yes, he doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, or any other nations in NATO either, so he can attack them and absorb them more easily. If the US betrays Ukraine after guaranteeing their borders expect a lot of other countries to go nuclear since American reassurances and guarantees would be considered completely worthless afterward.

The US guaranteed Ukraine's sovereignty. Are you saying American assurances are worth nothing? Even if they sign a document? You want to leave that to Russia and China?

By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. By giving Putin what he wanted. To give Putin what he wanted. To surrender Why did the US give up Japan, give up Germany, give up South Korea?

Germany essentially has no artillery or anti-air capability. Neither does Canada. Half their aircraft are not combat ready, and those that are have few missiles - again, not unlike Canada. Most of NATO, aside from Poland, isn't in much better shape. The UK has been downsizing its military to save money. Ukraine has a bigger, tougher, more experienced military than the UK, France, Germany and Italy combined. And without the US, none of them could sustain combat more than a week or two before running out of ammunition. Russia has really ramped up weapons production in the last three years. While Western countries are still conducting reports and bidding processes and negotiating contracts, the Russians simply ordered factories to go to three shifts and ordered more factories built. No environmental studies. No NYMBY protests. No court challenges, bidding processes, or negotiations needed. The Canadian government, meanwhile, continues to say there isn't a business case to subsidize an existing Canadian artillery shell producer to expand production. Nor has it made any effort to replace the artillery shells it sent to Ukraine. Nor, for that matter, to replace its own 50-year-old artillery with modern, mobile artillery, nor to replace its broken down old tanks. It still has no armed drones (nor do most NATO nations) while Russia has many thousands, with more being produced.

By surrendering. Well, to begin with, the United States pledged to guarantee Ukraine's national sovereignty when it helped convince them to give up the nuclear weapons that were within its borders and left over from when it was a Soviet republic. Second. Absent war in Ukraine, Russia is at a huge advantage to NATO in that its military has been on a war footing for three years. The flow of weapons and resupply has begun to catch up to the chaos of its first year, and it has 50 heavy brigades it could shift to the West to attack any portion of NATO it chooses to. By contrast, Germany and France might, with some warning, be able to field 1 brigade each. The UK would need a month to do the same. And they have very little ammunition. After long, complicated bidding and contracting processes, many of the contracts to resupply them with missiles, bombs, and artillery shells are just now being let. NATO air forces are better than Russia's (don't be mistaken by Ukraine. Russia held back all its best aircraft in case of NATO) but they don't have many missiles and would likely shoot themselves dry fairly quickly and then be useless without resupply. The Germans pledged to double military spending after Russia invaded Ukraine. A recent report says their military readiness is lower than it was three years ago amid the bureaucracy and red tape of trying to buy weapons and a manpower shortage. There is much internal opposition to spending more on the military anyway. In other words, Europe is fat, dumb and if not happy at least whistling past the graveyard. It could in no way defend itself from Russia today. Not even close. Not without the US. And while US help was once assured, it no longer is. Trump's latest cost-cutting musings are that he wants to cut military spending by 50%. He's definitely the best investment Russia ever put money into.