The 2022 documentary 'Navalny' is important and explains how the anti-corruption campaigner got to that terrible place, being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and still deciding to go back to Russia.
Navalny calculated that this process would be watched and documented through to the very end. He hoped that might be significant, perhaps even sufficient.
Maybe, but maybe not. Once there was a young man who became a martyr under an autocratic and bloodthirsty regime, this young man's name was Alexander Lenin. Although his death was not circulated in the newspapers, or widely known by many, there was one man who was changed by his death, his brother Vladamir, and his brother Vladmir did quite a bit to change the course of Russian history.
He was pardoned by Lukashenka last year, since then there was little news, but this week he showed up in a video stream. I found out in Polish media, was very hard to find an English article about it, found just one:
Lukashenka is not better than Putin, many oppositionists are rotting in prisons, but for some reason (young age?) he let Roman go, probably after some devil's deal.
Not all bravery is stupid. When people point to so-called inevitabilities of human character, as Putin and his ilk often do, I'll recall Navalny's name.
I'll also recall the victories that were only possible thanks to people of similar courage. Things looked as helpess for Václav Havel, but without him we wouldn't have had the Velvet Revolution.
Imagine what these people could have done if they weren't at this point... just names that few, even of many few will remember. Ask the same question in a decade.
Yes. Unfortunately, he miscalculated and threw his life away by failing to appreciate the conditions. Similar to standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, this was and now proved to be a ineffective and futile act in a country whose populace refuses to stand up to Putin, oppression, or corruption. It's likely Putin will continue to be the de facto "elected" dictator of Russia until he dies and his oligarch pals replace him with someone equally terrible. The Russian people lack the will, organization, and moral courage to overthrow their klepto-plutocrat dictator.
To Russians, it’s always someone else who is responsible. The will, organisation, and moral courage come first. Lack of secure communication comes after that.
If Russians had any of that, they won’t even need the communication means in the first place, to overthrow their dictator. When there’s a mass of people enough to fight the regime, the regime won’t even fight. They only fight the battles they believe they can easily win.
The truth is, Russians are, en masse, don’t care or even support all that. Those folks aren’t on Hacker News, they aren’t in any English-speaking communities as well. They barely speak even their own (complicated enough) language.
The so-called ‘liberal’ Russians try to persuade us that Russians en-masse don’t support all that, ’Putin’s war‘ they say [1], etc. But there are literally hundreds of thousands of Russian fight against Ukraine right now, and there are 400,000 dead [2]. They are Russians, aren’t they? Russians have the very long history of wars they started on their neighbours.
Is it Telegram being (possibly) backdoored or lack of Signal being too popular among Russians that stops them from growing in-house dictators and other murderers?
Oh yeah, as if Russians were very very different before the TV box was invented. They always home brew despotic tsars. E.g Ivan Grozny aka The Terrible [1] was long before the TV, and it’s not the one and the only example, just the famous one.
A million tank men may be needed to topple stupidity. China will undergo major change this next century as they shrink 500,000,000 in population, and their system will inevitably change during this time. Hopefully for the better - maybe Tank Man was a necessary seed.
And now it was used by putin to overshadow ukraine-maidan day. The message is clear. Ukraine is just sideshow, murdered oppossition in mainland, is main-show.
I have held the exact same question. I don't say this lightly. His decision was stupid. He would've been much more effective as a critic with a Twitter account. You can't criticize the government when you're not free to do so.
Reminder that Americans voted trump in pretty much based off social media and TV presence, bluster, and Trump "supporting" each voter's individual brands racism, misogyny, homophobia etc.
Are you suggesting Navalny could win through the social media?
Russia really tightened control over its part of the internet. If you are a normal russian citizen you can't visit twitter or instagram or linkedin, you need to know what a VPN is first and also you need to install it.
Still probably better than Iran. (I assume) in Iran some websites are blocked by iranian government and some (dockerhub, github) are blocked by US government.
It seems stupid, yes. However he would've been hunted the remainder of his life and likely assassinated, regardless. He may have hoped too that by sacrificing himself, he would keep his family safe.
I don't have that strong of a will to give myself over to Putin the way he did. Navalny is immensely brave and principled and while his sacrifice ultimately will likely end in vein, I hope beyond hope that it inspires and motivates those in Russia who prefer Putin be eliminated from power. Time will tell.
Have you heard the metaphor of the chicken and the pig at breakfast time?
I could probably stand in the Krasnaya Ploshchad and yell "Vladimir Zelenskiy Sucks!" without repercussion, but that wouldn't make it effective criticism.
1. it's only a copy, paste, and click to get to Red Square
2. it fits with the .ru transliteration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy
3. it retains any original ambiguity between "red" and "beautiful"
4. it avoids confusing the Union with the Federation
5. it complies with dang's suggestion not to overly spoon-feed each other
I had double checked that (1) worked before including it, and for that matter, even untransliterated « красная площадь » gives me "Red Square, Moscow, Russia, 109012" above the fold when using the most popular search engine.
Strategy is what gets results, not metaphors. Examples of effective criticism with government-toppling results can be seen in the Arab Spring movement.
Toppling governments doesn't do much good if no one manages to provide effective replacements running on new lines afterwards. See also Reconstruction in the US, or the CIS/CSTO/etc. in the former Soviet Union.
Mahatma Gandhi doesn't work when the tools of the apparatchik and the people aren't with you, or when the dominant force is unreasonable and disrespects the rule of law.
I'd prefer to stay in the back where it's more vulnerable. 100m away from it with a tandem AT weapon ready. But honestly we can't always get what we want.
The reason most people have even heard of Navalny is because he went back to Russia. That move is what caused the western media to pick up the story and run it on the news for months on end. The imagery it produced, videos of him leaving the plane, saying goodbye to his wife, getting arrested, standing trial, were what catapulted the wests exposure to the opposition movement in Russia. It was an incredibly well played calculated move that unfortunately did not pay off because that coward Putin has his finger on the mobile oppression palace 24/7.
Certainly nobody wants to be a martyr. I guess he thought he had a chance at peaceful politics, and at the time it could have been seen as reasonable by a poor planner like him. He had a history of weird blunders, like refusing to resort to violence when it became the only possible solution, or failing the publicly planned protest simply because he didn't account for being detained under a bullshit pretext for a few hours.
Some people do. If you believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and you truly believe your death will significantly help others, then maybe you do make that (incredibly hard) decision knowing full well the consequences.
That's the reason why we have Russia we know today and I'm afraid that we'll see more countries taking this path in coming years. Almost million russians left country during last two years alone. But if everyone against regime leaves, who have to fight for better country? Or do you really think that it's more effective to shout in Twitter?
The job he chose was to inspire people, and show them a way to protest from within the system (the strategic voting system he and his followers published).
In America, when the two party system is criticized and people push for changes to the way we vote, we don't get put in prison or poisoned with nerve gas or radioactive tea.
On the contrary: What you call "lawfare" is actually one of democracy's first lines of defense against Pied Piper wannabe dictators.
Just imagine: What if Hitler hadn't been on the German ballot in 1932 because of his failed 1923 Munich coup attempt. Instead, the weak-kneed Bavarian authorities did an Emily Litella and said, in effect, "Never mind" about his treason conviction and imprisonment (he was released after only nine months).
You realize he already owes 443 million dollars and improper behavior by a prosecutor doesn't exonerate him from his 91 indictments right? Arguing about this is a little silly, but what would actually be interesting is for you to link where you get your news.
Is the DWAC merger happening or not? There's no probable reason it wouldn't, so Trump stands to gain $4bn from his shares soon enough. I'm using "practically" effectively, in spite of whatever dismissive dialogue you're trying for here.
Verifiably false unless your source of information is Jesse Watters or similarly disingenuous ilk.
These trials have barely begun because the former president is desperate to get into power before a verdict can be handed down (classified documents and Georgia case).
He's already been found guilty of insurrection by a state court, and the SCOTUS hasn't argued against it. They are only deciding if a state is allowed to remove someone from the ballot on charges of insurrection.
The former president's attempt to evade prosecution by claiming total immunity (laughable in a democracy) has failed.
So no. Valid cases against the former president are not failing. They are taking place.
A valid source for millions of people, if you aren't politically motivated against him or related sources, of course — which is the case here.
This is not a democracy, despite what the silly Progressives want to believe. Playing pretend is commonplace, of course.
We are a Constitutional Republic and always have been. Democracy, as we're using it here, is an illusion of choice. Yes, we vote, but that doesn't define us as a democracy. We elect representatives to make informed choices on our behalf. You nor I have any direct impact on our laws or leadership — it's just the facts.
Burning, looting, rioting, and abuse of the legal system is how democracy is defined by Progressives because their policies can't be successful without some form of subversion, demoralization, and unfair play. Hence, democracy as declared here is synonymous with mob rule.
>(Jesse Watters) A valid source for millions of people
If a million people were to listen to someone who tells them the sky is red and Churchill was a Nazi, then a million people are wrong. Being wrong on the fact is not a matter of opinion. The man is a bad person because he lies, factually, constantly. He has no interest in the truth, or driving debate, or finding common ground.
Pardon me. We were talking about how the former president is the reason his trials keep getting delayed, not because they are without merit.
You went off on a tangent. I never discussed the imperfect nature of our government, the degree to which votes matter or translate into particular action. The moment I challenged your assertion that the former president is a victim, you pivoted to amorphous comments about democracy vs. republic, conflating political beliefs around Progressivism with methods you feel they deploy, and so on. What in the hell does that have to do with the discussion about Trump's numerous indictments?
What you've done is called the gish-gallop, FYI.
In case you wonder: I'm 35, live in Texas and work in cybersecurity. I'm a real person who got a degree, reads some news, and tries to think about the nature of problems and how they can be solved. Where common ground can be found. I value free speech, the rule of law and the idea that there is always work to do to make our society and government better. I like this country. I happen to be liberal.
I assume you too are real, and I hope you have similar values, if not the "liberal" part.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Could you explain who has been a victim of this? Please don't say the former president who has worked hard to delay trials.
On a related note, look at the kinds of people who are going after Trump:
1. We have Fani Willis and her little boyfriend in Georgia using cash she pulled out of her campaign to evade accountability (that's a felony).
2. We have this little pr*ck filing lawsuits in every state to have Trump removed from their ballots, being arrested and charged with filing 17 sets of false tax documents to the IRS. [https://twitter.com/rickydoggin/status/1759623388509929853]
3. We have Letitia James whose sole campaign promise was to "get Trump at any cost" -- seems like they're willing to make up anything for a political win, even if it's a complete lie. Can't trust someone whose mission is clearly a witch hunt. Integrity doesn't matter to them.
...and they want to insinuate that Trump is corrupt? Talk about hypocrisy.
These are the people who are entrusted with "getting Trump", seriously? This should ruin your trust in anyone going after Trump and increase your scrutiny towards those who (apparently) have no integrity or basis for going after this guy. This is why conservatives rightly have a strong argument against this witch hunt, any why they feel justified in continuing to support Trump.
Find us someone whose record is clean, and then we can talk.
You said he will appeal his $450 million civil fraud trial and win, but most of what you said here does even have to do with that case.
1. We have Fani Willis2. We have this little prck filing lawsuits* 4. Kevin O'Leary condemns the ruling
You realize these people have nothing to do with this case right?
What do you think of the actual evidence of inflating values by 10x to 20x and that there were multiple findings - "Trump and his co-defendants committed fraud with his financial statements, found Trump liable on five of the six remaining claims in James’ lawsuit: falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and conspiracy to falsify business records."
You seem to write with talking points that just repeat the same claims over and over, but there was a real trial with real evidence that you are ignoring.
I provided plenty of points -- you just ignored most of them, the most important one being: the bank CEOs found nothing wrong or no indication of fraud. The loans are paid off. That testimony should have been enough to nullify the case, full stop.
That's enough :)
I listed the other semi-related facts as supporting details that ultimately ruin the credibility surrounding each simultaneous case involving Trump, which as I said before, should put into question all of these "indictments" and "charges" against Trump until someone with an actual problem comes forward, instead of playing games abusing the court systems. This is a conspiracy against him, period.
The point is: Trump is being attacked recklessly, and those who are attacking him are making huge mistakes that are going to bite them in the ass later. Thus, I do not view any of these cases as credible or plausible, regardless of what "evidence" has been presented.
Call it willfully blind, I don't care. The willfully blind are those who refuse to see this abuse of the justice system for what it is, and don't use common sense to see these are attacks, rather than real cases. Why were these not brought up many, many years ago? Why during an election year? Seems rather convenient, don't you think?
Trump admitted on the witness stand in November that his company did not always provide accurate estimates of the value of some of his trophy properties to banks. Trump said the discrepancies did not matter because his estimates bore disclaimers and that he had plenty of cash to back up his loans.
A former Trump banker at Deutsche Bank, David Williams, testified in November that conducting due diligence on information clients provided was standard practice. In one instance, the bank adjusted Trump's net worth down to $2.6 billion from the $4.9 billion he reported, Williams said, adding that such a revision was "not unusual or atypical."
The state's lawyers are expected during the appeal to offer the same arguments they presented to Engoron. They have said this law can be used to police the integrity of the market generally and does not require complaints from victims.
They are expected to emphasize Trump's "outrageous" conduct, including overstating his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion and lying about the size of his own apartment. They also may argue that Trump's case is unusual because few companies are accused of fraud on this scale, according to some legal experts.
Trump is being attacked recklessly,
Again, what do you think about the massive evidence against him in each case?
I feel it worths noting that the meaning of the word 'legal' is different for ears of western than some eastern nations. It may be inaccurate to describe for western minds what actualy is happening there as legality and law is an instrument of the ruling party for the benefit of the ruling party not some independent supervising power for the goodwill of all. I feel using the English word 'legal' is completely inaccurate expressing Russian public matters, some other was better to adapt/coin for the situation, unsure what though.
I believe you are confused and when you talk about where US is headed you wanted to cite the absolute presidential immunity that Trump pursuing for himself (adapting from his good friend, Putin) so he could continue doing and escaping the deserved consequences of huge tax evasions (plural!), fueling riot, stealing and exposing state and allied secrets, and in general other yet unspecified criminal activity as well as escalations and conflicts to destroy the order and peace in the whole population in order to pretend being a strong figure (in the attempt of cloacking weak personality), including asking Putin to attack the allies of US (being borderline to treason perhaps?).
What you call legal attack is actually called legal proceedings against a criminal.
He is not an "anti-war candidate". To think it is possible without FSB approval is naivety. His purpose was to collect lists of people who signed for him (that is, new opposition that hasn't emigrated and formed naturally in 2022-2024 - needless to say, it consists of completely different demographics and people's backgrounds from the "old" opposition). Unfortunately these people are too naive to recognize the danger.
I've known him personally for quite a time and that's a ridiculous statement. He never was and isn't a revolutionary, but he always was pretty sincere in his beliefs and his attempts to fight in rapidly closing legal space.
this is FUD. Inventing another candidate while already sitting on already existing lists of tons of Navalny supporters? supporters to whom nothing happened through all that time? doesn't pass the smell check
Navalnyists are soft-banned in Russia. They can't make any meaningful public statements without hitting one of the censure laws (e.g. it's illegal to say anything about the war that differs from the official Kremlin line). The FSB just slaps the "foreign agent" designation onto the more loud ones and makes their lives difficult enough for them to migrate away. It's a slow cleanse but it's pretty effective.
I replied to comment claiming a candidate was invented by our gov to collect PII of people who signed for him. Until people who donated/signed for Navalny are in trouble I don't see why that can be true
There are tons of Navalny non-supporters who are latently opposed. Personally I'd say that they are actually more dangerous to the regime due to the stratum they represent. You just don't hear it on the internet because they are older and have shit to lose. Alexey was a youth's idol, not adults'. Many people never considered him a good politician, if mediocre. Maybe that other person wasn't "invented", but they definitely could use him as a trap. There's no way anything could change here through "elections".
Sad times began in 2002, when the last independent TV channel (TV-6), to where the team of previously shut down channel NTV, flocked, was also taken over and shut down. That was the end of free press.
Navalny was in support of Ukrainian invasion of Crimea and knew it would require a further land invasion to keep. He was just as psycho and homicidal (suicidal) as Prigozhin but refused to be under Putin’s thumb. Navalny wanted to be the #1 asshole in charge otherwise return to Russia and die in prison.
Putin usually had faked opposition, and even some illusion of election monitoring. This time around it seems there will be no illusion of having elections at all since there will be no international monitoring and seemingly not even a pretend opposition.
But I guess why would he pretend to have democracy? The Russians certainly don't buy it, and the countries that might care have already cut all ties. I wonder why he bothers to have the election charade?
A 47 year old man killed by the 72 year old president. Nothing shows the conflict of generations in Russia better than this. The old farts of Russia/Soviet Union are killing the younger generation and by that are killing Russias future. For what, grandpa? For what?
What future? Between the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the collapse of the USSR, Russia has only a few generations left before experiencing demographic collapse.
There simply aren't enough young men there to keep the Russian population growing and the population there doesn't value diversity enough to consider producing more Russian children with immigrants.
This is what many believe (e.g., Peter Zeihan) to be the real reason behind the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is "Russian enough" in their eyes, so combining the two populations would help stave off demographic collapse.
There is not enough Young women as MEN cant give a birth, still russian demographic looks terrible and this is very good news for all russian neighbors and EU as last imperial country in Europe will die
> This is what many believe (e.g., Peter Zeihan) to be the real reason behind the invasion of Ukraine.
This does not make any sense. Banning birth-control would be the most cost-effective way to increase the birth-rate, stronger social programs being a strong second.
Much of what I've heard from Zeihan sound memey – like camp-fire stories or what your older brothers friends would tell you – without anything meaningful to back it up.
I'm fairly certain he knew this, but did it anyways. If anything, it'll make him a martyr who died in their home country, still fighting, rather than someone who is trying to run away and fueling the opponent's arguments.
Still sucks it had to come to this. But I agree, this wasn't the unexpected outcome.
I personally think it makes a clown show of Musk and Carlson Putin fan club we have going on, now they're buddies with a murder. I mean Putin has murdered many people, but this one is pretty fresh and seems to hold a lot more weight because of the stature of the victim.
In their eyes it makes Putin more, not less attractive because that's how they view their own little power fantasies: to do away with their enemies, real and perceived.
It's not as if we collectively refused to do business with the murderer (correction, butcher) of a journalist in a f'ing embassy. That stood pretty much unchallenged besides some finger wagging.
No, this refers to US ignoring KSA/Mohammed bin Salman killing and dismembering Jamal Khashoggi.
From [1]:
> [Trump said] "it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn't ... In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Two days later, Trump denied that the CIA had even reached a conclusion.
Yes. And now he is dead and will be forgotten in a week.
As I mentioned earlier - does anyone remember the guy who flew over Belarus and had his plane redirected to the capital, and he was seized there. He also was a protester, now forgotten. I do not even remember his name and never heard of him since then.
I assume you never heard of Roman Protasevich before the plane incident?
Navalny on the other hand has done many notable things and was in the news all the time before his death. His is the first name you think of when you think of Russian opposition. This is not a valid comparison.
I heard about Navalny when he was in Germany because it was newsworthy, and then when he decided to get back to Russia. I have never heard about him before.
Same for Protasevich - it is because his plane was diverted that it made it to the news.
The only time we hear about these people is when they do something visible. I am not saying that this is OK, it is just the sad reality of our world where one news pushes another.
Navalny could have had protested and there would be a chance he would be heard then. When he was in prison it was over until he dies.
The contrast with an earlier Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, bears reflection. Lenin went into exile in Munich, London, and Geneva from 1900--1905, returning to Russia for a 2005 revolution, then living in exile again during the First World War.
Navalny all but certainly was aware of his likely martyrdom, and appears to have won that. I have my doubts that he will be more effective as a martyr than he would have been acting in exile. In addition to whatever organisation remains, he does leave both a wife and daughter, though whether or not they'll carry on his fight I don't know.
The news today is not unexpected, but disappointing all the same.
If you believe the western media, the west no longer believes in or upholds its values, and watches while Russia pushes westward while China builds up a military and eyes Taiwan, both more than happy to destabilize the middle east in pursuit of their goals.
The west needs to wake up, we're slowly sliding towards a world conflict. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
> How do you propose the west avoids conflict with Russia and China?
There's a lot of things the West can do without throwing nukes at the problem:
- arming ourselves and our allies (especially Taiwan) to the teeth
- supporting exiled and in-country opposition
- intervening against hostile operations (such as "police stations") on our own soil
- strengthen links with "global south" countries to minimize Chinese/Russian influence on them, support local rebels against regimes that have already fallen towards Russia/China.
Of course I would. We're at least a bunch of democracies, neither Russia nor China are.
I believe that we should have done much more, and much earlier, to foster democracies and to stop dictatorships and bullies. Instead, we let them fester (unfortunately, even amongst our own like Hungary and Turkey), and now the cancer has grown so massive that it will be very hard to kill it.
> Generally you avoid conflict by being scary, not agreeable.
As a rule of life, that's a pretty bad idea. I don't avoid conflict with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers by being scary.
In international relations, it's by far more effective to be agreeable. Alliances are far more stable than competitive balance between 'scary' countries. Look at the EU; look at Korea - which relationships are more stable, the scary or the agreeable ones? Look at Israel, where by far the most stable relationships are the agreeable ones with Egypt, Jordan, and the US, even now. Look at the US and Canada. The list goes on forever.
Your argument falls apart since you deal with mobsters who don't respect any contract if it doesn't suit them. Remember pinky promises that they won't invade Ukraine just before they did it? If you keep stepping back to bullies, soon you are standing with ocean behind your back. And if you don't think russians would love ruling as much Europe as they can grab, you haven't been listening to them a single bit for past 2 decades, their ego is gigantic. We've been there for 40 years not so long ago, but maybe you weren't born yet to recall these times.
Also, this is how russia was defeated - mix of US being simply too strong and one sane russian leader who realized how bad this is (Gorbachev, he is deeply hated by all russian elites who now try to bring good ol' times back).
What you propose is a position of weakness, that leaders of russia see as a sign of weakness and will act accordingly.
I just wish all these naive commenters would spend a decade living in russia to understand what we're actually dealing with and what kind of conflict is inevitably coming to the western Europe.
When agreeable was first used in the chain of comments above it was presented as the counter point to "scary." As in, you defend yourself by appearing scary to take on.
Shrewd tactful negotiation can be valuable, but I think people are mainly emphasizing the need for strength and clear emphatic boundaries, not for being a "monster."
> As a rule of life, that's a pretty bad idea. I don't avoid conflict with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers by being scary.
There is time and place for both.
Some people live in much rougher environment, where you must demonstrate strength, if you dont want to be eaten. (Not in the family, but once you go outside)
Russia is not a guy that you met at a library, Russia is a gangmember that runs a “protection” racket.
By rules of law you mean international law? By that logic we should also commit preemptive strikes against Israel to prevent it committing what is recognised by the internal community as genocide.
Paragraphs 54 and 58 of the ruling clearly refute what you're saying.
It sounds like you're naively repeating a description of the ruling that you've heard from somewhere, without stopping to ask yourself whether it had any connection to reality or not.
Or maybe it is because there have been 29,000 deaths and all aid has been cut off along with cement poured in their plumbing so they have no fresh water.
I'm not sure we can avoid conflict now, I think we're past the point where that was possible (last 10-15 years were critical). I think both Russia and China understand that, and are planning accordingly.
I'm proposing we wake up and start doing the same, planning and drawing "do not cross" lines in the sand to hopefully limit the total/final scope of the conflict.
Yes this will force an earlier confrontation -- but WWII would have been a lot less bloody if Europe had stood up to Hitler earlier -- problem was everyone thought that appeasing him would make things better.
It's clear both Russia and China can't be appeased at this point. Both need to be checked.
No, Europe’s problem was that we were pacifists. France still prides itself for inventing the Congés Payés (paid leave) in 1936 while the Germans were building their military might. The price in lieu of our “acquis sociaux” was getting occupied, point blank.
Europe still prides itself for having female ministers of defense in every major country (who remembers them? We give the job to women when we just need to maintain things; Men traditionally seize the head-of-war position by force when someone wants to get things done, the position of Minister of Defense is figurative and should not exist) and feminist warfare (=give priority to women in war). Europe also prides itself for its glorious occupation by … ahem… by the thing I’m not allowed to talk about because we’re under occupation. Our kids get smashed at school, that’s for sure, under the eye if teachers who forbid them from responding with force.
If I were Russia, I’d pay all the leaflets and papers on which the “Vivrensemble with enemey people” posters are printed. We’re vegans, we’re trans, we’re using non-violent communication, we’re in discord on our soil, we destroy every trait of masculinity during education: We’re incapable of war, and we’re incapable of being a threat to Russia.
For as long as I’ve been hearing Macron’s minister say we’re “doing a total economic war” with Russia (literal words), for as long as I hear the West is winning and Russia is on its knees, I see that every battle is one step closer inside Europe.
> Europe also prides itself for its glorious occupation by … ahem… by the thing I’m not allowed to talk about because we’re under occupation.
> We’re vegans, we’re trans, we’re using non-violent communication, we’re in discord on our soil, we destroy every trait of masculinity during education
Remind me what exactly do these have to do with Russian aggression again?
> We’re vegans, we’re trans, we’re using non-violent communication, we’re in discord on our soil, we destroy every trait of masculinity during education: We’re incapable of war, and we’re incapable of being a threat to Russia.
Going by your post, French men are so masculine that their masculinity feels threatened by pretty much everything.
Fan fiction, but: Civil wars might do it, the Russians need to overthrow Putin, Xi in China, and we need to elect peace hawks in places that have democracy. People would have to really really really really not want a word war. On the history part, I have no clue, but I do know that today the citizenry is more connected and able to strategize for ourselfs than at any point in history before.
Putin's old, but he isn't that old. Plus I assume there are similar people waiting in the wings to takeover. Idk how to fix the situation but it would make me nervous for them to have a civil war in a nuclear power.
It's a damn shame everything going on, really gets me down sometimes. My mum said the other day one of the reasons my folks had us when they did was the Cold War was ending(Gorbachev came in), there would never be war in Europe again, and the world was happy and healthy for the future.
> Xi might go, but that party isn't going anywhere.
Geographically probably not, but politically the Chinese Communist party already covers a very broad spectrum with Xi and others currently at the top being the most insular, paranoid, and economically impractical of all the various factions. A "fix" to the situation is unlikely, but changes that yield improvements are all but inevitable at this point.
This is interesting to me, I naively think of the CCP as being highly unified as they paint such a great picture of that, I always thought there would be some decenters but for the most part complete unification. I should probably learn more about this and would gladly accept any resources on digging into the modern CCP more.
I am not a historian, but I have always found diversity of thought inside large political bodies: Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Jimintou, etc. Surely if you have a large political party where you are from, you have also seen that they have factions as well?
Painting a great picture of party unity - and national unity - is a key propaganda goal of the CCP, so if that's what you see then they are succeeding. In practice, the party has almost 100 million members so naturally it is composed of people with many different points of view, although those differences are rarely expressed openly and they're all still shaped by the overall political and educational environment of the PRC.
It's generally accepted that Xi Jinping has used his anti-corruption drive to wipe out rival factions, and one unlikely conspiracy theory is that he somehow orchestrated Bo Xilai's fall from grace in 2012 so he could take control of the party. The whole thing could provide material for stacks of palace intrigue thrillers... and in fact it did, which resulted in the Causeway Bay Books disappearances of 2015. Gotta control that narrative, after all.
If you're interested in the propaganda side, I recommend reading China Media Project: https://chinamediaproject.org/ If you just want to know about the party maneuvering, all the usual thinktanks (CSIS, Brookings, CFR etc) publish a ton of English language content.
"the Russians need to overthrow Putin, Xi in China, and we need to elect peace hawks in places that have democracy."
We overthrew communists in 1991, USSR crumbled, in 1992 Pentagon declared that America's "first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival" [0] and 17 years later NATO, after multiple rounds of expansion, announced that it would expand into Georgia and the Ukraine [1] despite all the promises given by Western leaders [2].
The trust between Russia and the collective West will not be rebuild for a very long time.
Even if you where right, all of this doesn't matter if sovereign nations decide they don't want to deal with russian threats, oligarchy/corruption and oppression anymore by joining NATO. I am happy they did and I think Europe's future is brighter if we stand together against the darkness that is russia.
If you ever read ‘NATO Expanded’ it’s a Russian narrative. NATO never expanded, its members ask to join NATO because they don’t want their sovereign states to be occupied by barbarians as it happened with Ukraine’s east. Or they don’t want to be just bombed, as it happened with basically every place in Ukraine.
> despite all the promises given by Western leaders
This gets repeated a lot, but who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it? Many people from that time are still around. Both the USSR's last minister of foreign affairs (1985-1990) and the first Russian minister of foreign affairs (1990-1996) have called that bullshit, with the latter adding in a recent interview that people believing this are "chumps and useful idiots"[1].
> I gave the link to the documents, not to hersay.
It's a speculation that has been categorically refuted by the very persons it mentions.
> You mean apart from 'nationalists', 'hardliners' and 'communists'?
Apart from people like Putin, who at the time was nowhere near the foreign policy circles, but served as an enforcer for St Petersburg's mayor, collecting protection money and bribes from businesses.
The Soviet minister of foreign affairs has explained that references to "NATO expansion" have been mischaracterized, and that their discussions were limited to placement of US forces in East Germany after reunification, and that no wider discussion about the future of Eastern Europe in NATO ever took place, let alone reached any agreement, because at the time they couldn't have imagined that the USSR would cease to exist in a few years. Both he and his successor find nothing wrong with the fact that most of Central and Eastern Europe eventually joined NATO and see no reason to whine about betrayal like Putin. If anything, they regret that the Europeans and Americans didn't engage more with Russia and didn't pressure it enough towards becoming a civilized country:
While the West failed to seize the opportunity and some diplomatic mistakes were made on both sides, the United States and NATO were on the right side of history by admitting new democracies to the Alliance and being willing to find an accommodation with Russia. It was Moscow that returned to its antagonism toward NATO, which has been intensifying ever since. Yeltsin’s chosen successor president, Vladimir Putin, tried to hinder the West with a charm offensive in the early years of the 21 century and even hinted that Russia might join NATO. In the meantime, domestic anti-American and anti-NATO propaganda has continued to gain momentum. Today the Kremlin has left little doubt about its attitude toward the Alliance in words and in deeds.
NATO remains the main power to safeguard the liberal world order. It is under attack from autocratic, populist and extremist forces who claim that the organization is outdated. The Kremlin’s champs and chumps in the West portray NATO as a bloc promoting American hegemony, expanding to the East and cornering Russia. It is reassuring however, that the U.S. Congress continues to display firm bipartisan support for NATO.
The prospects of a new opening in Russian–NATO relations will depend on the resilience and firmness of the Alliance and on deep changes in Moscow’s domestic and foreign policy. I believe that sooner or later the Russian people will follow the suit of other European nations in finding their national interest in democratic reforms and cooperation with NATO and other Western institutions.
I suggest you study the link I gave. For example, document #30 [0] that gives an answer to the question "who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it?"
"On July 1, the delegationhad a meeting with M. Woerner—NATO Secretary General. ... Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansionof NATO (13 out of 16 NATO members support this point of view). In the near future, at his meeting with L. Walesa and the Romanian leader A. Iliescu, he will oppose Poland and Romania joining NATO, and earlier this was stated to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We should not allow, stated M. Woerner, the isolation of the USSR from the European community."
"didn't pressure it enough towards becoming a civilized country"
> I suggest you study the link I gave. For example, document #30 [0] that gives an answer to the question "who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it?"
There is nothing in the document confirming an eternal commitment to not accept new members into NATO.
Until late-1990s, the position of most NATO countries was indeed that Eastern Europe was too underdeveloped and unstable for membership, and the document accurately reflects that. This undermines the narrative of how NATO has always wanted to surround Russia.
By the time new members were accepted into NATO almost a decade later, Wörner was long dead, the USSR was long gone, Russia had started its descent into a totalitarian dictatorship, and all 13 opposing countries had changed their position.
You see, now you are inventing strawmen like "eternal commitment" and "the narrative of how NATO has always wanted to surround Russia". I don't think I can continue this conversation if you are not talking in good faith.
"By the time new members were accepted into NATO ... Russia had started its descent into a totalitarian dictatorship"
The decision to expand NATO was made in 1997 [0]
And by the way, here is a passage from wikipedia on that first round of NATO enlargement [1]:
"That year, Russian leaders like Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev indicated their country's opposition to NATO enlargement. While Russian President Boris Yeltsin did sign an agreement with NATO in May 1997 that included text referring to new membership, he clearly described NATO expansion as "unacceptable" and a threat to Russian security in his December 1997 National Security Blueprint."
And a bit from "What Eltsin heard" [2]:
"On December 1, Foreign Minister Kozyrev unexpectedly refused to sign up for the Partnership of Peace; and on December 5, Yeltsin lashed out about NATO at the Budapest summit of the CSCE, in front of a surprised Clinton: “Why are you sowing the seeds of mistrust? ... Europe is in danger of plunging into a cold peace …. History demonstrates that it is a dangerous illusion to suppose that the destinies of continents and of the world community in general can somehow be managed from one single capital.” "
> You see, now you are inventing strawmen like "eternal commitment" and "the narrative of how NATO has always wanted to surround Russia". I don't think I can continue this conversation if you are not talking in good faith.
I am not inventing anything. I have not seen a single source that would indicate a commitment not to accept new members into NATO until the present day. Nor have you cited any high-ranking Soviet or Russian officials from those times saying that they had a firm commitment. The constant unmet Russian demands that you cite also point that way.
> The decision to expand NATO was made in 1997 [0]
By that time, liberals had lost influential posititions in Russia and hardliners had been consolidating power for several years. Putin had risen from St Petersburg's mayor's errand boy to presidential staff in the Kremlin, to become the head of Russian security service (FSB) a year later.
The first Chechen War started in 1994 and Russian atrocities committed there were a key turning point in taking Central and Eastern European security concerns seriously:
The First Battle of Grozny was the Russian Army's invasion and subsequent conquest of the Chechen capital, Grozny, during the early months of the First Chechen War. /---/ The battle caused enormous destruction and casualties amongst the civilian population and saw the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the end of World War II.
> "On December 1, Foreign Minister Kozyrev unexpectedly refused to sign up for the Partnership of Peace; and on December 5, Yeltsin lashed out about NATO at the Budapest summit of the CSCE, in front of a surprised Clinton: “Why are you sowing the seeds of mistrust? ... Europe is in danger of plunging into a cold peace …. History demonstrates that it is a dangerous illusion to suppose that the destinies of continents and of the world community in general can somehow be managed from one single capital.” "
Kozyrev is who wrote the three paragraphs I cited previously. In the PDF I linked to, he gives a description of NATO-Russia relations during his tenure (1990-1996). In the end, he concludes that Russians were on the wrong side of history and Americans and Europeans were on the right side of history. The outcome - peace and prosperity in Europe, death and destruction in Russia and everywhere they go - certainly supports his view.
"I am not inventing anything. I have not seen a single source that would indicate a commitment not to accept new members into NATO until the present day."
You are inventing a strawman again. 1997 isn't present day. Bye.
In fact, western governments can't give such informal guarantees further than their election term even if they wanted to, because unlike in Russia, governments change every 4-5 years and the current president, prime minister or cabinet ministers can't promise what their successors will or won't do, because the successors are often completely different people from different political parties with vastly different political platforms. That's why we have written treaties. Soviet and Russian diplomats are without any doubt educated enough to know that.
The decline of "The West" (really The US and client states err Europe) is inevitable now that Russia and China have dismantled any social unity we had. Americans all hate each other and that division is not getting reconciled. They will continue to use it to disrupt us. You can basically destroy momentum in the US by bombarding the population with propaganda and forcing political destabilization.
We are screwed in the long run because there is no antidote to this that is compatible with our constitution.
> If you believe the western media, the west no longer believes in or upholds its values, and watches while Russia pushes westward while China builds up a military and eyes Taiwan, both more than happy to destabilize the middle east in pursuit of their goals.
> The west needs to wake up, we're slowly sliding towards a world conflict. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
I think there's an essential connection there: The West's values and their power, and peace and freedom. The West's power comes from its values, not only because it captures the hearts and minds of others but because the power freedom and universal human rights gives to its own people.
As many in the West disparage or undermine those values, they are doing the work of Putin and Xi (at times, I'm sure, led by their disinformation campaigns).
No more time for games. It's time, as you say, to wake up and stand up for our values.
Ah come on. The west is as hypocrite as any other country. Look at what they did in too many places in the world. Human rights my pents. The phone you are holding is probably created by some child hands. If there is one thing what the west could improve is this silly Disney like black and white thinking. There must be a good and a bad. Its nonsense. Bad a good goes hand in hand.
Everyone makes mistakes, it's about learning from them and what you change to try to make things better in the future.
Generally speaking, the west has been significantly improving the living conditions and human rights protections for its citizens over the last several hundred years, many times in direct response to some horrible mistake that was made and then subsequently learned from (slavery, Vietnam, etc.)
The same cannot be said at all about Russia. All the intelligent, brave people who could see through the propaganda or who had the bravery to do something about it have largely either been killed off or emigrated away at this point. The country has been in a continuous cycle of totalitarian suffering for hundreds of years, with no end in sight.
Everyone and every institution is a hypocrite. If that's going to stop us, we might as well have submitted to the Nazis or Bolsheviks or someone long before that - after all, we were hypocrites then too!
But who am I to say that - I'm a hypocrite. No hypocrites allowed on HN!
> As many in the West disparage or undermine those values, they are doing the work of Putin and Xi (at times, I'm sure, led by their disinformation campaigns).
I don't have evidence, but my gut says that's not by accident. This slippery slope we've been heading down for the last few decades (no more right and wrong, all values are equal, anyone who says otherwise is a problem/oppressor/colonizer) look to me like a well funded / coordinated / long term political warfare campaign in order to build a country of "appeasers". People who refuse to stand up for anything -- we all know that's how bullies win.
I often wonder how much of what we're doing to ourselves is actually being funded by bad actors, fake patriots, etc.
I don't trust any free news. Someone is paying for a message to be delivered to my eyeballs, and I don't know who that is. Maybe 1% of stories are from bad actors, maybe it's 25%. Who knows? The answer matters -- a lot.
No one trusts anyone anymore. We've lost faith in our government and each other. No better way to conquer a nation than from within.
> no more right and wrong, all values are equal, anyone who says otherwise is a problem/oppressor/colonizer
But that whole view is self-contradictory. If all values are equal, what's wrong with being an oppressor or colonizer? By calling people oppressors and colonizers, they are saying that some things are wrong. Their position destroys itself.
Or you misunderstand their position. Taking someone's argument to a logical extreme and calling them hypocrites is about a rhetorical game, not about meaning and truth.
Strawmanning someone's position is about a rhetorical game. Fairly representing someone's position and pointing out that it is logically contradictory is exactly about truth. Self-contradictory positions cannot be right. (Now, you may be able to remove the contradiction without destroying the whole position. But it has to be flawed.)
You see this in formal philosophy. If the conclusions of an argument disprove the premise, then the premise is wrong.
In this case, we aren't dealing with a formal position. We aren't even dealing with the clearest-spoken advocates of a position. We're dealing with culture warriors whose specialty is yelling, not clear argument. Nevertheless, there are people out there who say that, if you say one culture is better than another, then you are a Nazi. This is not taking their argument to a logical extreme. This is listening to their words. And based on that, you can say that that position shows that they aren't thinking, because it's absurd.
But you're right, you can't go too far with it. The worst, most thoughtless advocates of a position only let you say that those advocates' position is flawed. They don't tell you anything about the steelman version of the position.
Listen to internal speeches by Putin or Xi, they are often available on YouTube. We are not slowly sliding towards a world conflict, it has already begun and we are hopeless to stop it. It is arrogant to ignore or dismiss the happenings.
Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO towards the East this path was set in stone. The late 2000s were the absolute breaking point.
Major Eastern players are asymmetrically breaking US hegemony through proxies and internal conflict. They cannot face the US conventionally but it doesn't mean they cannot face the US. They can, they do and they will continue to do so.
Brexit, MAGA, Mideast conflicts, Ukraine, EU refugee crisis, inflation, energy crisis, recent development in North Korea, social media disinformation etc. etc. etc.
The BRICS countries (and others) are pursuing a multipolar, non-democratic world with heavily reduced US influence over Asia and Europe, who are now discussing defense independence and their own nuclear umbrella after Trump strategically placed some Russian talking points (again).
> Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO towards the East this path was set in stone. The late 2000s were the absolute breaking point.
Your point would have been better made without weaseling in a Mearsheimer apology for authoritarian states. Russia snatching Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with NATO's expansion. Indeed, had NATO expanded earlier, we wouldn't have found ourselves in this mess, with Ukraine left to fend for itself.
NATO grew because of the desperation of former USSR satellites to shelter themselves from their abuser.
As to the other bit here about rejecting Russian integration as a cause for war: I think that point has been proven quite wrong with Merkel's absurd fantasy that trade with Russia would bring peace.
The West didn't reject Russia's deeper integration -- Russia, and more particularly, Putin did. There was always a plan to add Russia to the EU and even at some point get them to join NATO. Russia abandoned democracy and closed that door.
A big example of this that comes to mind to me (as a space nerd) is the ISS and various American rockets developed around that time. The US footed much of the bill for the ISS and offered Russia a ridiculously good deal in offering to launch their modules and setting up the seat exchange with Soyuz. Boeing and Lockheed Martin adopted Russian rocket engines for their rockets despite the national security concerns of having major launchers dependent on a potential adversary. This second decision caused a good bit of harm to domestic rocket engine design in the US.
Of course part of the goal was to give Russian rocket scientists a more peaceful task to work on than spreading out to Iran, North Korea etc, but it was also a great chance for Russia to integrate further with the West and expand their historical prominence in space technology.
Instead, they've done everything to ensure that they never get such a deal again, and have allowed their space industry to atrophy significantly.
There's talk about how if Russia had been allowed into NATO they'd have been able to channel their energy into more constructive pursuits, but they were given an opportunity to do that for space technology and did not do so.
I am 2 days too late, but will reply nonetheless. I fully agree with your arguments about NATO expansion and am not trying to apologize Russian aggression.
However, it does not change how the Russians perceived NATO expansion which matters in todays conflicts:
> "The final assurance was Clinton’s agreement (despite Russia’s brutal Chechen war and multiple domestic pressures) to come to Moscow in May 1995 for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the victory over Hitler. In Moscow, Yeltsin berated Clinton about NATO expansion, seeing “nothing but humiliation” for Russia: “For me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding towards those of Russia – that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people."
The Russians see the developments of the early 1990s as humiliating and as the spark of the modern conflict. It became much more serious in the late 2000s under Putin but the developments of the mid-90s already set things on a rotten path regarding the relationship between the West and Russia.
You link to a tweet of a deliberately edited speech by Stoltenberg to suit their own agenda. It's the worst kind of propaganda that anyone can see through given five minutes of research. I don't know what's worse, that you presented it as damning evidence or that people take 280 character tweets at face value.
In any case, the full quote with the missing section emphasized in italics is:
> Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
> The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
> So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member. Because at Vilnius Summit, we agreed a statement where it was clearly expressed how Sweden will do more, follow up the agreement we had in Madrid on fighting terrorism, and also address issues related to export of military equipment, and then Türkiye made it clear that they will ratify as soon as possible.
For those who don't see the problem with removing military infrastructure from every former satellite state that fled the USSR it's this: throwing your allies back to the wolves who hunted you is as about as morally bankrupt as it comes.
And just to really make it clear which countries Russia wanted put back to the wilds, it's Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Finland.
I don't see how any of the extra context undermines the point that the Ukraine war is primarily in response to NATO expansion. Why is it so hard for people to acknowledge?
The invasion of Ukraine is primarily a desire of conquest. NATO has nothing to do with it. The "request" from Russia is nothing more than a pretense for setting former satellites up for more invasion by their former masters.
We know this is true from a map the dictator of Belarus was seen in front of showing more conquest after Ukraine, specifically of Moldova. We know President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called the collapse of the Soviet empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” His desire for a return to the days of empire is obvious from every aggrandizing speech he makes.
It is convenient that your worldview can absorb any contradictory information such that it all just demonstrates what you already take to be true. A truly masterful reality-distortion field.
>The invasion of Ukraine is primarily a desire of conquest.
No. It is personal desire of Putin to remain in power. Conquest has nothing to do with it either.
I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion given the available evidence we have of Putin's many speeches and writings on the matter. And one is not mutually exclusive of the other.
Yeah, and he also gave many speeches and writings about how he is fighting Nazism in Ukraine. Are we seriously going to discuss Putin's speeches? This Putin's rhetoric did not exist before the 2014 revolution in Ukraine.
His intentions have been obvious for a very long time for anyone who wants to see them.
The recent Tucker Carlson interview confirmed that Putin has an uncontrollable obsession with a made up version of history, and he gets visibly upset when his long rants about Ukrainian statehood being an anti-Russian conspiracy by the Austrian General Staff and the Pope get interrupted. Nazis running Ukraine is only a small part of that persecution complex.
Putin's speeches deserve as serious consideration as Hitler's. Until tanks started rolling, his speeches were also dismissed as rhetoric.
Not really. In 2014 Ukraine's NATO aspirations were codified into their constitution. Later that year Russia annexed Crimea and began a slow march towards the current war. To say it was about EU ties sans NATO is just gaslighting.
What deeper integration would that have been? Geniunely curious, I don't see what could have worked once the oligarchs were minted. They only care about selling simple low-effort stuff, easily corrupted, like oil.
We talk a lot about economic integration but we rarely talk about cultural integration. imo part of what will keep us safe in the future is cultural integration. We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased. I don't know the answer here, but I do feel we don't think about cultural integration as a national security asset often, and it probably could be.
> We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased.
Like the multi-generational families some of their members living in Ukraine, some in Russia? Didn't seem to stop the war sadly.
It might be difficult to believe, but in the 1990s the people of Russia truly wanted to be in Europe (kind of like Ukrainians do now). That sentiment is now gone, and it's not (just) due to propaganda. The common people believe that Ukrainians will just be used to achieve some goal in the US vs. Russia power struggle and then abandoned.
Where do you got that info. Most Russians want to be part of Europe. Its not that Russian people dont have a way to think freely. They all watch youtube and other social media. And they all love to ski in Austria or to visit Italy for a holiday. I don't know one russian person who is not pro Europe. Even Putin himself is pro europe.
Boris Yeltsyn was proposing to Bill Clinton to admit Russia into NATO. This way Russian ambitions would be tamed and channeled into something more constructive.
Of course, we can't know what a Russian NATO membership could have lead to.
But a few red flags - Russia just barely held together at that time and had its own civil war. Also, there's the risk of Russia joining just to walk away with the keys to the kingdom at any later point. If the CFE inspections (1) were anything to go by, Russia didn't exactly play fair.
Your own link says: "The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact" and later "most former non-USSR Warsaw Treaty members subsequently joined NATO, followed later by the Baltic states and the states of the former Yugoslavia".
"CFE-II took into account the different geopolitical situation of the post-Cold War era by setting national instead of bloc-based limits on conventional armed forces. NATO members refused however to ratify the treaty..." [0] What a surprise.
Having a veto on who gets in the alliance, gathering intelligence, who knows? Not me.
I just don't think Russia joining NATO is an apparent slam dunk success. Maybe it would have been great, we can never know for sure, but I can understand the suspicion.
Attack Ukraine? But on the other hand, joining NATO could have changed the course of history for the better, so such plans may never have come into motion. This is all counterfactual. There was deep mistrust on all sides and it didn't happen.
Not the parent commenter, but IIRC in that document Putin expresses an ideological belief that Ukraine is inherently a part of Russia and must be returned.
And how do you imagine it? Being in the same security alliance as Ukraine and having free trade agreement and having good relations with the West, he would attack the Ukraine to get a piece of land?
Nobody in Russia would've supported such an unthinkable war.
It took a coup in Kiev in 2014, burning people alive in Odessa, all the slogans 'Hang the Russians', dozens of streets named after Nazi collaborators, the war of the new Ukrainian government on the separatists in the East and eight years for people in Russia to start thinking that not all Ukrainians are brothers.
> Nobody in Russia would've supported such an unthinkable war.
Nobody would be against, in the same way there isn't anyone against this unthinkable war now. Why are you on HN. Maybe you should go and try to denazify some other website instead?
"Europe is partly to blame for the crisis in Ukraine although this is no excuse for Russian behavior towards the former Soviet republic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy said on Wednesday.
The tone struck by Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, head of the Social Democrats (SPD), contrasts with that of conservative Merkel who has pinned responsibility on Russia for exacerbating the crisis, which has soured ties between Russia and the West.
"Certainly, the European Union has also made mistakes, although this does not justify Russia's behavior," Gabriel told the German daily Rheinische Post.
"It was certainly not smart to create the impression in Ukraine that it had to decide between Russia and the EU," the Economy Minister added." [0]
Putin has pushing this lie that he tried to get closer to NATO and was rebuffed for a long time, but it's simply not true. His ideology has always been completely against being junior partner in a US led alliance.
For starters, pre-2014 Russians would be glad to have a visa waiver with the EU. But they never got that. Then 2014 and Crimea affair came and EU didn't have that lever to pull.
Things like student exchanges, etc, were also severily limited in scope. Russians only ever saw EU as tourists, not as neighbours. And tourists can sure swap one destination for the another. Russians knew that they live in Europe, but did not feel the neighbourly presense of the EU.
This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday.
"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0]
Yeah, I believe visas issue is what actually broke the camel's back. Putin and the Russians felt humiliated when Ukrainians got visa free travel and they didn't. Humiliation is a very powerful emotion.
Sadly I think you’re right about NATO expansion. I think a hot war with Russia was always on the table with NATO expansion. You either have to be willing to fight it to defend the expansion or you’re going to cede something to Russia when they push back.
Hot war was absolutely on the table without expansion, just look at Moldova, or Georgia. Or even Ukraine. Ukraine was already ineligible for NATO prior to 2014 as a result of the multi-decade lease of Sevastopol to the Russian Navy.
There are smart people who work for Russia, or worse - for russian gov. Without them it would not be possible.
How can an individual have both the critical thinking and still have the gut to contribute to this?
I grew up in rural russia. It's much much worse than what you see on the facade.
My neighbour was a police man. His 15 years boy raped a kid from local orphanage and captured it on a video. No justice followed, because his dad is a policeman. No one spoke up. Everyone just accepted it, as they always do. When he grew up he became a policeman. It's not even the most screwed up story that I witnessed. This is beyond fucked up.
It's a case of mass inheritable PTSD. All males I knew in my family tree were violent drunks, all females were bitten up housewives. This place is surreal and should not exist. And my family was somewhat functional compared to some neighbours.
I abandoned everything there and got out as soon as I could make any money. I wish every person capable of critical thinking just leave this dreadful place and let it descend to the middle ages.
> How can an individual have both the critical thinking and still have the gut to contribute to this?
Personal experience has taught me that critical thinking does not nessecarily go hand in hand with the ability and/or the guts to push for change.
Many who move through corporate worlds do so for personal gains, and will not speak out against or put them selves in the spotlight to fix issues that might reflect badly on their upward progress in the hierarchy.
And from my interaction of these kinds of people, they have often been very intelligent.
I believe the same behaviour and motives sadly exist for many in modern day societies.
Agreed. The abundance of powerful organizations that commit great harms for personal gain, both now and throughout history, makes it very clear that capable people do this.
It is very hard to put myself in their shoes, and contort my brain to make their actions feel like a thing I could do.
Russia’s murder rate is one of the highest in the world, up there with Jamaica’s. Eighty-three percent of murderers and more than 60 percent of murder victims were slobbering drunk during the deed. A typical drunken murder story goes something like this: Two middle-aged male friends meet, go back to A’s apartment, and pound four or five bottles of cheap vodka over a two-day binge. A passes out drunk; B stumbles away, rapes and strangles A’s prepubescent daughter, steals A’s microwave oven, and sets A’s apartment on fire to cover his tracks but passes out while setting the fire, then dies of smoke inhalation. (This, by the way, happened to my ex-girlfriend’s next-door neighbors.)
There is some reason to disbelieve the official numbers. They started dropping rapidly under Putin, while the number of unidentified bodies processed by the health system climbed more or less identically: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/russia-is-not-actually-a-very-...
What are the sources of the alternative numbers? (Up to Jamaika, 83%, more than 60 percent, etc).
As for the rates raising in 90-ies and then falling back down, that's understandable, if you know what were the 90-ies there. The same happened in all other post Soviet states.
> I abandoned everything there and got out as soon as I could make any money. I wish every person capable of critical thinking just leave this dreadful place and let it descend to the middle ages.
I don't begrudge you for doing that, as I would have done (and basically did) the same. But that also highlights how a lot of these places get more fucked up over time.
The same thing is happening/has happened in the US. Basically, nearly all of the opportunity has moved from rural areas to urban and suburban ones. So basically anyone with the slightest modicum of ambition gets up and leaves. So all the people that are left are the people (a) without ambition or (b) are stuck there for other reasons (e.g. lots of early pregnancy). But the end result is those rural areas fall further behind, and many of the people that stay there become even more embittered about their lot. In the US the effect is even more pronounced because rural areas have outsized voting rights due to the way the electoral college and Senate work.
Parts of population always did and always will be falling behind other parts.
Humanity must ensure that an individual has the way to realize their potential. Freedom to raise and freedom to fall.
The internet changed everything. The information flowing freely and allowing critical thinkers to get out of a swamp they found themselves in. At least this gives everyone a chance to see.
The other thing is immigration. Your case about the US is thankfully different because one can get on a car and leave to another state or urban area. It's not as easy to get out of russia. Get a visa first. Maybe. If you have education and fit into a category. Do not fit? Too bad, there are great places like Kazakhstan that are available though.
About 8% of the world suffers from PTSD symptoms. There was a recent study done in Poland that said over 15% of population has symptoms. It is generational PTSD from WW2.
Well if the Soviets fucked up Poland in ways taking multiple pairs of decades to reverse (pollution is an obvious example, among countless others), isn't that "generational", since a generation is supposed to be roughly 20 years?
You must do something about the horrific crime your neighbour did. Simple things. Collect the info: his name, surname, adress, etc - everything you can. The date this happened. List the other witnesses, potential witnesses, and other people and facts that can help investigation. Other possible crimes he committed? Who was aware and not acted?
Then submit it to authorities: investigative commitee, child ombudsmen, prosecutor's office, etc. Not local, but higher, maybe even central.
If the video is available, submit it too.
If not adressed by all authorities (unlikely), go public with the specific and detailed information.
Make sure to protect the victim's info from public.
If that happened as the op says, it's absolutely worth trying to bring the rapist and those who should have punished him but covered instead, to justice.
It will cost several hours over couple of weeks to remember and assemble the facts and submit them (remotely). Again, it's important to not harm the victim again. That's why going through the authorities is critical, and choosing the right level - I would not report to the same town or administrative area, especially if the offender works there. If done right, chances for success are high (of course, don't bring in any Navalny or similar topics, approach it as a criminal case). Only if all possible applications to authorities fail, consider going public, but weight that in with double care about the victim.
When the op was young and in the environment where no-one acted, it's possible to understand he didn't act till now. But now, IMHO, reporting this is the only right thing to do.
BTW, in many jurisdictions, failure to report a serious crime, especially against children, constitutes a crime by itself.
So in latest news, last opposition figure in Russia dies together with any hope for regime change while Russia's war effort is starting to get some traction with it's overwhelming man power and Ukraine is forced to cede more territory all while west is busy either with it's in-fighting or comparing each others superior GDP and how Russia will crumble just any day now (TM). Man, are we in for a ride next decade in Europe, I would have never believed all this just a few years ago, how it will go down.
Europe deciding to depend on Russia for their energy and not focusing on defense spending is the unbelievable part to me, but they've been doing this for quite some time now. They walked right into it. Russia is doing what they've always done and always will do.
The strategy of economic integration as a way to reduce military tension has worked very well in many other instances. It doesn't seem like an obviously insane thing to have tried.
It mostly worked because in recent history the Germans were an occupied state [0] followed up by a very polite situation that wasn't an occupation but looked a lot like one by the numbers [1]. The US has a number of troops in Germany comparable to the German army. Note from the article that up to 2006 the US had more troops in Germany than the Germans did.
Economic integration wasn't what kept the peace, it was probably the military integration.
Russia is a gigantic country with vast resources that isn’t bordered by Europe, and more than once it was a superpower and it was a superpower against another gigantic country. On the other hand, Europe consists of small countries trying to fit in with their neighbors.
It’s like thinking the scooter kids are gonna be hanging with the skater kids. It’s not that they are inherently that different, but they have such different mindsets that it means they see their positions in the world differently.
>Russia is a gigantic country with vast resources that isn’t bordered by Europe
Maybe you should look at the map before writing such nonsense.
1. Russia does have borders both with EU and NATO. Norway, Finland, Baltic states, Poland.
2. Russia is geographically in Europe too. Most of its population and the capital are in Europe.
Among European countries it does have the largest territory, population and nuclear arsenal, but it is not even the biggest economy. Ex-superpower is not a now-superpower. Mindset-wise it has a lot in common with other EU members.
Obviously Russia borders Europe. How do you do a land invasion of Europe without bordering Europe?
But Russia isn’t Germany whose borders are completely dominated by Europe.
Putin obviously thinks Russia should still be a superpower. People get that mentality when they see the past and think they deserve it again. Holy shit people love the “glory days.”
There are conflicts that have been going on for millennia like in the Middle East and they fight today because their ancestors fought.
People have a hard on for the past.
You’ll teach someone command line Git starting out and they love it and they will never bother with a GUI because they value their experience more than practicality.
Russia is a still a superpower in many ways, certainly in nukes. It's a shame though they feel the need to grab territory which seems a bit nineteenth century. I put it down to Putin reading too many old history books instead of Pinker and Gladwell. The US manages to be a superpower without feeling the need to invade Canada because they have a similar culture and try to have democracy there rather than being ruled from Washington.
The US just carries out its wars overseas - not on its next-door neighbors. Whenever the stock price of the Big-3 War Companies drop, the senators and congressmen are encouraged to find an excuse for bombings.
This is what Putin is always trying to convince the world about, but when you look closer, it is no longer true - but it was once. Now the USA is not only not starting any wars, but is also getting out of old conflicts, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. They realized these were stupid wars, in the case of Iraq started on false premises, impossible to win, even without a feasible strategy for wining and a definition of victory. These two wars should have never happened and most people in the West were against them. It is mostly Bush and Blair to blame for them and for their consequences, including the atrocities of ISIS.
Apart for these, which Bush considered a retaliation for 9/11, the USA is very careful not to start any conflicts and not to get involved - see Syria for example.
For the case of Syria, it is damned if you do and damned if you don't. Red lines were crossed (chemical weapons) and it was only when ISIS emerged that there were boots on the ground.
Plus they're trying to unseat Assad because he is blocking the development of the Qatar turkey pipeline project that would see Europe able to route around Russia for natural gas.
Now due to Russia's actions Germany has signed on with Qatar on a million dollar deal to get the pipeline done. I am sure this will result in more pressure on Syria.
Very convenient forgetting the invasion and destruction of Libya - a state that had free education & healthcare along with free household electricity. This was carried out under Obama, btw. You should personally ask native Libyan's what they think of the invasion - not the U.S. state department.
I suppose you will say the U.S became the "good guys" only under the Trump administration ? I suppose all the targeting and intelligence advice and weapons given to the Saudi's for bombing Yemen weddings were for "freedom" and thus completely justified ?
My positions/opinions are not based from Putin - but from middle-east citizens who have faced the brunt of American warfare. But the general tendency of war-loving American neocons/neo-liberals who wish to deliver "freedom" by War is to always blame Putin Propaganda when a citizen not of the NATO sphere holds a position opposed to their own. The U.S. are the real masters of propaganda- the Russians are a laughable footnote.
In every country ruled by some dictator there are beneficiaries who will complain afterwards that the bloodshed was caused by some foreign intervention. They feed from his hands, receive generous giveaways while others suffer. Did you talk to those people to get your opinion?
Yes, I have I talked to more than a dozen Libyans from the lower middle class. I am reasonably certain you haven't talked to any if you hold those opinions.
The some beneficiaries is a joke. You check your own sources - under Gaddafi, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000 - the 5th highest in Africa. Universal free healthcare did exist and was not limited to "some beneficiaries" as you claim. Now, most Libyans suffer extreme poverty and deprivation. A nation that was utterly decimated - all thanks to NATO under the Obama administration.
The funny thing is that Gadaffi was willing to step down from power and hold elections under international observers. The U.S. rejected that. That would mean not having a war and hawks like Victoria Nuland wanted the Libyan government destroyed - not merely brought under democratic leadership. They were aware that if real elections were held and monitored with observers - Gadaffi would likely win and NATO legitimacy for the War would be lost.
The EU is at least as much a consequence of economic integration as it is a driver of it. The Marshall Plan wasn't just handshake deals to play nicely from now on.
Indeed. There's a common saying that sort of derives from Frédéric Bastiat that "where goods cross borders, armies don't." Trade and economic dependence is the best deterrent of war that there is. That doesn't necessarily mean that it stops all war, but it definitely raises the cost of war and costs matter.
It's also IMHO the most productive and ethical way to reduce/prevent war. Maybe they shouldn't have allowed something so fundamental as energy to become a dependence, but generally speaking the principles are sound.
> Indeed. There's a common saying that sort of derives from Frédéric Bastiat that "where goods cross borders, armies don't." Trade and economic dependence is the best deterrent of war that there is.
It's a saying whose truth has been greatly exaggerated, and the people who foolishly believe it have a tendency to make themselves vulnerable.
> That doesn't necessarily mean that it stops all war, but it definitely raises the cost of war and costs matter.
GP has a point. While economic integration didn't work this time, it has in the past. Been a while since you last saw Germany invading Poland for example. Or France.
Costs obviously do matter, but no-one is saying it's a fool-proof means of control.
Also I think part of the problem in this case is that Europe failed to make Russia sufficiently financially dependent on Europe. Instead Europe made itself dependent on Russia for energy, which means that the pacifying forces of trade are leveraged more towards Europe than towards Russia.
Geopolitics are complicated and messy. The more I think about them the more my head hurts.
Completely agree. It's complicated and messy, and no one factor is every fool proof or even sufficient.
I agree I think the main problem here is that Russia isn't nearly as dependent on Europe as Europe is on Russia.
But that said, it's also very early to conclude that Russia has plans on Europe. Especially given how Ukraine went, even if the Russian leadership fully wants to invade Europe, they surely know how that would go the moment they touch NATO. Their military will be crushed and they'll be assassinated or executed if they don't end up in prison. Europe has time to correct this imbalance. Awareness of the issue seems to be one of the hardest steps however, and coming up with solutions after that is of course quite a challenge as well. It's messy and I'm glad I don't have to be responsible for it :-)
> GP has a point. While economic integration didn't work this time, it has in the past. Been a while since you last saw Germany invading Poland for example. Or France.
Is that because of economic integration, or other reasons? Since WWII, Germany and France sat on the same side of a military alliance for more than a generation against a formidable foe (which would obviously change some attitudes), and there have been other ideological developments in those countries at well (e.g. the degree that Germans are pacifists as a reaction to Naziism).
> Is that because of economic integration, or other reasons?
Probably both. In any case, in spite of political tensions there haven't been any armed conflicts between EU members so far, and the attitudes of people are very friendly.
Economic integration was the main difference between the end of WWI and WWII, and we know how those turned out. One resulted in a horribly burdened and depressed German people. When a charismatic figure who could and would speak to the people emerged (Hitler) preaching nationalistic righteous anger, he rose to power to horrific results for both Germany and the rest of the world. It could have happened to any country in the same boat.
After WWII, the allies learned from their mistakes and instead of saddling the German people with mountains of debt and economic punishment, they sought to rebuild, quickly established trade and economic integration. It went substantially better the second time, and to this day seems to be working.
Also when it comes to economics and warfare, there are no silver bullets. Just very good guides. WWI broke out mainly because of entangling alliances mixed with a culture of honor (i.e. you don't break your agreements/word).
But look at how WWI ended with Germany getting heaps of crippling debt placed upon them and economic devastation. That totally paved the way for Hitler and WWII. Contrast with the end of WWII where Germany was rebuilt and economically integrated, and today it would be ludicrous to consider Germany invading Europe with designs on the world! The genetics of the people didn't magically change in a couple generations. Their economic situation did, and economic-related needs are at the base of everybody's hierarchy of needs.
Germany and Japan also faced extensive campaigns of cultural reprogramming. Campaigns that already had the foundations of success because both countries were urbanized and covered in mass media. In Afghanistan this was fundamentally impossible because much of the country follows ancient, tribal ways of life that the occupying forces never fully understood or appreciated. This isn’t to say it was easy to rebuild and pacify Germany and Japan—Japan in particular required a very sensitive balance that was probably Douglas MacArthur’s crowning achievement—but urbanized populations that have already been brainwashed by mass media to follow one ideology can easily be reprogrammed by the same mass media to follow a different ideology.
It probably also helped that both countries were so thoroughly devastated that their own “might makes right” ideologies had been clearly discredited by events. You can’t really claim to have racial or spiritual supremacy over your enemies when your enemies have reduced your cities to rubble, driven your people before their armies in vast refugee columns, and occupied your cities with soldiers. Obviously if you take this too far you run the risk of revanchism, so there’s another balance to be struck between domination and mercy.
Another big difference is that both Germany and Japan were accustomed to authoritarianism. Germans and Japanese were very governable peoples, and still are to some extent. The people of rural Afghanistan were ungovernable to begin with, more ungovernable than the people of any developed country. For example, I’m going to guess that your way of life does not involve grabbing your rifle and joining in this year’s season of warfare without any consistent ideological commitment to which side you want to fight for. But this is how many tribal Afghans have lived for centuries. There’s a core of devoted fanatics within the Taliban, but most of the actual fighters literally showed up and treated the war like a pickup basketball game. That’s why we seemed to win so quickly and easily in the beginning—nobody wants to be on the losing side. But as time went on and American commitment diminished, the dynamic shifted before ultimately and dramatically reversing.
> In Afghanistan this was fundamentally impossible
That's an odd idea. The people in Afghanistan aren't magically different -- instead, they're being oppressed by a comparatively small group of violent uneducated men (the Talibans).
You’re showing me pictures of people in cities. I’m not talking about the cities. I’m talking about the tribal populations in the countryside. And honestly, the tribal peoples aren’t the “magically different” ones. They’re closer to normal baseline human. We’re the WEIRD ones.
Yes, it's a pain to read through essays and all the details of various circumstances. But the nuance is helpful sometimes... And seems to be important to elaborate in this case.
People don't need to agree or disagree with previous posts. Simply stating more facts and going into details (especially on complex matters of history and culture) is good and helpful.
One of the many failures of nation-building has to do with property disputes. In a WEIRD society like our own (or Germany, or Japan) there’s an office in the city that has survey records and the question of who owns a piece of land is decided by paperwork. If there’s a dispute or a transaction or an agreement that changes someone’s property rights in some way—perhaps you have an easement or you agreed to move the property line-those changes are also duly recorded in the paperwork in the office in the city.
This is not how human cultures work by default. In fact, the process of writing down everyone’s property deeds for the first time is a massive undertaking that is hard to do well and easy to fuck up. The Ottoman Empire made a hash of this when they did it in Palestine and recorded property rights at such a high level of granularity that a single land deed with a single owner might cover a massive expanse of land that spanned multiple villages. Which made no difference to any of the people in Palestine until those “owners” ended up selling that land to Zionists.
Afghanistan, likewise, had lots of land records, many of which dated back to before the Soviet war. Of course, in the intervening decades, a lot of the tribal peoples had property disputes and settled them in a perfectly normal pre-modern way, involving verbal agreements and codes of honor between extended kin groups. And as long as nobody tried anything like governing them from Kabul based on those written land records, it worked for them. Everyone remembered and respected the traditional agreements. Of course, when the US installed a government in Kabul and backed it up with American troops, eventually everyone who had been on the losing side of a property dispute and realized they could get more or better land based on some dusty old paperwork decided to sic the US-backed Kabul government on their neighbors, completely upsetting the balance of life.
Simply put, a human culture that has been urbanized, governable, and legible to a paperwork-based central authority for centuries is an extremely sophisticated thing that takes a ton of effort to invent. If you grow up in that kind of society centuries after the initial work was done, those institutions are almost invisible to you. How else would society function?
You probably mean "to prevent military tension"? When tension already becomes war, it's sort of pointless to continue economic integration in the hope that it can stop war.
Well, it works OK as long as the countries involved don’t get taken over by a demagogue, dictator, or whatever the Brexit movement was. In other words, rationality and cooperation go out the window. Which turns out to be a pretty common failure mode according to 21st century evidence.
Indeed, and it's a serious problem. There are really only two ways out of this mess and one is not at all like the other and both are roughly equally likely by my reckoning.
I believe the problem is that the premise is false. It works OK for a part of the population that feels comfortable with it. When you look closer at the root causes they are not immaterial and often boil down to people not wanting immigrants around them. If you are progressive you can just dismiss their outdated attitude - and this is what center- and left-wing politicians were doing for decades. Ignoring and ridiculing these folks caused the radical right to grow stronger in several European countries. Putin knows that and that's why he is sending more and more of them to Belarussian borders.
Not true. The Soviet threat existed already before the WW2. It was actually the main reason why Nazi Germany was able to become that powerful - Britain and France hoped that Germany will balance that Soviet threat out. Eventually it did, but not without huge damages to Britain and France and without substantially aiding Russia. If your claim was true we should have seen huge increase in tensions between France and Germany after the collapse of Soviet Union, but rather the opposite is true.
Russia didn't disappear after the collapse. Germany was utterly defeated in the WW2, occupied by western allies and the soviet union and is demilitarized compared to France. Americans still have military bases there. Its whole existence after WW2 was reshaped by the victors to not be a threat again.
Germany was defeated and was rebuilt and the tools to reshape the European political landscape from within was first ECSC and later European Union. Yes, US military presence works as some stabilizing mechanism but it wouldn't have been enough without European mutual political framework.
EU leaders mistakenly thought that they can have the same success with Russia but they didn't take into account the fact that Russian new president had completely misaligned interests.
This. Amartya Sen has claimed that two actual democracies have never been at war between each other. At least I find hard to find significant counterexamples in history. (Not sure about the Falkland war. And I think Finland was technically at war with UK in the second world war)
I think the democratic and developed countries need to change their game plan pretty soon. The countries that are willing to join the club should be offered actual help to develop. By actual help I mean trade treaties that are designed to benefit those countries, not developed countries. Includes IP vaiwers, duties that protect local industries etc.
The countries that do not want to join, (including China and Orban's Hungary) then again, should be punished in all ways possible. Massive duties to commodities and other products imported from those countries, as a starter.
Open democracies do not need to be nice guys if they are threatened. Must not be, to be more precise. See Popper and paradox of tolerance.
Do you mean the war between Argentina and England?
Argentina was not only under a military dictatorship then, but the war was definitely triggered by the military junta.
> This. Amartya Sen has claimed that two actual democracies have never been at war between each other. At least I find hard to find significant counterexamples in history.
Off the top of my head -- a war of 1812 between Great Britain and United States. Both countries were democracies at that time.
> […] a war of 1812 between Great Britain and United States. Both countries were democracies at that time.
By what definition the British Empire, a constitutional monarchy, had been a democracy in 1812 if all (and not just the fourty-shilling freeholders) men aged 21+ with some women aged 30+ only became allowed to vote in 1918, 106 years later, and all women aged 21+ were finally allowed to vote in 1928?
In 1812, both Britain and the US lacked universal suffrage - not only were all women excluded from voting, but in both countries, so were many men - so if lack of universal suffrage made 1812 Britain not a democracy, the United States wasn’t one either.
But, historically, democracy was not considered to require universal suffrage. Athens is often cited as one of the world’s first democracies - and it is from Ancient Greece that we get the word - yet in ancient Athens, most adults couldn’t vote (either due to being female, due to being slaves, or due to being non-citizen resident aliens)
In 1812, Britain was a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system dominated by landed aristocracy and gentry – 3% circa of the population, and it was exclusively males.
Members of Parliament (MP's) were often elected in rotten and pocket boroughs where a single patron could (and unashamedly did) buy up the votes in one or multiple boroughs and essentially dictate the outcome of elections. Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk controlled 11 boroughs, as an example.
The rotten boroughs were only disenfranchised by Reform Act 1832 which granted seats in the House of Commons to large cities instead.
In the pocket boroughs, the landowner could evict electors who did not vote for the two men he wanted, the practice that did not cease to exist until secret ballots were introduced in 1872.
There were also «open boroughs» where the vote was more competitive but still limited to male property owners only.
Since «demos» in «democracy» stand for «people», calling Britain a democracy in 1812 is not even a stretch.
And in 2024, it still is a constitutional monarchy - how is that relevant to the question of whether it is or was a democracy?
> Since «demos» in «democracy» stand for «people»,
The meaning of words isn’t determined by sum of parts like that. The people who coined the word “democracy” used it to refer to systems in which only a small percentage of “the people” counted. Herodotus used the word in the 5th century BCE, whereas universal adult suffrage didn’t exist in most places until the 20th century, well over 2000 years later. If you want to argue that everyone was using a word incorrectly for over 2000 years, well, you can define words however you like, but other people aren’t obliged to accept your novel definition
I am not following it. On the one hand, valid points have been made that I have a wholehearted agreement with, yet the next moment there seems to be the gish galloping going on. Or that is how I perceive it, anyway.
> In 1812, Britain was a constitutional monarchy […]
[…] a parliamentary system dominated by landed aristocracy and gentry – 3% circa of the population […]
That was the key point that was conveniently or otherwise omitted. 3% of the entire population being landed aristocracy and gentry is not the rule of people by any measurable account, and, no, it does not constitute the British Empire a democracy in 1812. There was also a reason why I originally emphasied «Empire» – empires do not place a focal point on the power of people as there are no people in an empire, there is only the empire.
> The meaning of words isn’t determined by sum of parts like that.
Yes, the modern defintion of «democracy» is multifaceted and elastic, it has evolved to mean much more since its inception, including universal suffrage as a fundamental property of a functional democracy today. Yet, democracy in Ancient Greece is not what most would call a democracy today. I am accutely aware of that.
> […] other people aren’t obliged to accept your novel definition
This is a hard one since the guy managed to do his trick once Hungary already joined all clubs. On the other hand, there's little hope anybody can manage to overthrow him anytime soon, and in any case restoring democracy in Hungary will take decades.
It worked when both sides wanted it to work. When one side's fundamental strategy includes fomenting tension as an integral component, no amount of concessions and friendly gestures from the other side would be enough to reduce it.
The EU. France and Germany used to be deadly enemies. No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon.
Same with US states. Texas etc keep muttering about secession, but the economic complications make it an insane idea.
It's not inherently a bad strategy, but it tends to fail when you're dealing with huge would-be hegemons - which certainly applies to China and Russia.
Ukraine was under Russian dominion like almost forever, but that didn't make it a part of Russia. If it had been then Russians would not distinguish between 'Russians' and 'little Russians' and other (far worse) terms.
But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
> I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century.
That has nothing to do with Russia vs Russian conquered territories, besides, France has Occitan, there is the German based dialects, Catalan, some Basque and a whole raft of others.
> Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Except that that didn't quite happen in the way you suggest. You could make a similar statement about Fries in NL or maybe Limburgs or Diets. And it would be just as much wrong.
> Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Sorry, are we on different planets or something? You mean: those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian and who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture?
> I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
They are as alike as the Dutch and the Belgians, we joke about each other but at the end of the day there is no hate and zero chance of a war.
> Occitan native speakers: Estimates range from 100,000 to 800,000 total speakers (2007–2012)
No assimilation and cultural genocide policy in any form. It has just dwindled to these numbers on its own. Also has no relation to the topic that we discuss. Don't forget to call whataboutism.
I gather that reflection is not a strong side of Western Europeans.
> those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian
That's called "a civil war", and that's how it viewed by many Russians and some Ukrainians. Indeed that's not a great condition to be in.
> who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture
Again, this accusation is coming from a proud member of a nation who eradicated a couple of cultures very recently. "While I had already been born" recently.
People of Donbass were fed up with Ukrainization to the extent that these two Republics do not have Ukrainian as co-official. But Crimea, and the "new territories" of Kherson oblast and Zaparozh'ye (whatever left of them, arguably) have Ukrainian as co-official. Crimea also has Crimean Tatar as co-official. If anybody wants they can study their language and their culture, including in schools. That's what was not permitted to Russians in many, many ex-USSR countries.
It is un-civil-ized genocidal war, by calling it civil war you are denying the existence of Ukraine as a state it's the same as saying you support this war and atrocities Ruzzian Federation commits and occupation of Ukrainian territories. Go and preach this on runet instead.
Ukrainian isn’t a dialect continuum with Russian. That’s a myth commonly pushed by Russia and Russian nationalists. It’s a separate language with roots diverging from a rather early point with different history. It actually shares more similarity with Polish or Bulgarian than it does with Russian. Here’s a good video on the languages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI
(Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
Surzhik spoken everywhere east of Dnieper, in Kiev and and Odessa certainly is a dialect continuum with Russian. Most often it's simply Russian with a Swadesh list of 100 words replaced by their Ukrainian counterpairs, whenever possible. The rest being left as is.
Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
Eneida by Ivan Kotliarevsky [1] (1798) is first literary work published wholly in the modern Ukrainian language. Ivan Kotliarevsky lived in Poltava, East Ukraine [2].
Valuev Circular [3] (1863), Ems Ukaz [4] (1876) banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print. Religious books on Ukrainian were banned century before [5].
Census [6] (1897) maps Ukrainian language majority far beyond Ukraine current borders. Annexed by RSFSR, Russified by force. Continuum of ethnocide by Moscow.
Еней був парубок моторний
І хлопець хоть куди козак,
На лихо здався він проворний,
Завзятіший од всіх бурлак.
So you are saying this is not a dialect of Russian? Any Russian can understand 50% of this text right off bat, 80% after a day of effort and 95% after a week.
Nationalists like to draw fantasy maps. Want to see mine?
Roma, Romania, do you claim Italian is "Romanian dialect"? Muscovy was Rus colony, grew under Golden Horde, renamed in 1721. Rus Grand Prince Володимѣръ Свѧтославичъ — Ukrainian name Володимир (Volodymyr) not Moscow Владимир (Vladimir). Language of Kyiv can't be dialect of its former colonies language.
Slav languages are mutually intelligible. I've checked spoken Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian. Do you claim these are "dialects" of Moscow language?
Eneida translated to Polish:
Eneasz rzutkim był młodzianem,
Podobnym całkiem do Kozaków,
Radzącym z każdym złem spotkanym,
Zawziętszym nawet od burłaków.
Russian (Russish) language is recent development. First song in Russian language was publicly performed by Fedor Shaliapin as demonstration that Russian language can be used instead of French language in culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMCFALhS90c
Okay, okay, so? The point is, there's a hell of a lot of songs, books, science articles, movies, video games and other kinds of content in Russian now. It's standardized, everybody can read, speak and write it. Things are going around Russian language. It's an UN and UNESCO language. A lot of goodies.
So it makes sense that everyone who is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian will be consuming Russian content 90% of time. Hence people no longer use Surzhik anywhere east of Kharkov (or Khabarovsk), even if some of their ancestors actually spoke it. It just don't make sense to do that anymore.
It does not help that literature Ukrainian has a lot of borrowings from Polish, Romanian and Hungarian and is not really accessible to people who did not visit Ukrainian state schools. However, Russian is very accessible to basically everybody in Ukraine and the rest of ex-USSR.
Regarding folk songs, people actually did a lot of digging in this area starting with late Soviet times, and now there's huge revival of folk music in Russia. Many contemporary pop or rock bands use Russian (Slavic, maybe even Ukrainian) folk motives in their songs, which are usually in Russian. By doing so, they enrich Russian culture, which I've started this comment from.
Ukrainian language with 1000+ years of history, is not a dialect of Russian (Russish) language, which is a very recent development, with so high number of words borrowed from Turk languages, that it makes hard for Russians to understand other Slavic languages, except Bulgarians, which are also have some Tatar origin.
Use of Russian language shrunk by 2x in last 30 years, while Ukrainian language increased by 2x in last 30 years. At some point, it will flip.
Regarding folk songs, just name one Russian folk song in Russian language, for which I will not be able to found author by 5 minutes of googling.
I'm not sure why I will be doing all that. A great Ukrainian folk song Zhuravel' was rediscovered by Chstyakov I believe, and is now fertilizing the Russian culture.
No, it's other way around. Russian (Russish) language was based on Russian Church-Slavonic language, which is based on Old South-Slavonic language. Ru with many words borrowed from Ukrainian (Russian) language.
For example, Ukraine holds word record by number of folk songs, while I was able to found none of folk songs in Russian (Russish) language after years of searching. Folk songs exists in Russia Federation, but they are not in Russian (Russish) language. Cuban Cossack Choir - folk songs are in Ukrainian language, Ural Cossack Choir - Ukrainian, for example.
You're mixing written versus spoken language. Russian people largely cannot understand any Ukrainian when spoken. Polish people on the other hand can make out bits of Ukrainian.
So you are saying that similar repressive policies were not implemented in present-day Russia and Kazakhstan? Is there any research into comparative severity of policies?
As far as I know, Russian peasantry was absolutely not spared in the collectivization, making for the bulk of immediate casualties. And why would Stalin care about them? Was he Russian?
I merely question your claim about Russians having a positive attitude towards Ukrainians and their language. Having subjugated them by famine and other forms of mass-scale terror and murder, Russians allowed Ukrainians to use their language... how magnanimous.
No, there is no comparative study of the effects of repressive policies, because starving millions of people to death and not allowing outside help in (read "The Russian Job" by Douglas Smith) is not practiced on such scale anymore, even by Russia. The Wikipedia page on Holdomor quotes orders to subjugate Ukraine regardless of cost. That in itself negates any notion of Russians having a "super positive attitude" towards Ukraine. Do you know why "(...) you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991."? Because it was not possible while Stalin was alive. It was not possible, because it was Stalin who gave orders to subjugate Ukraine at any cost.
Why would USSR have this famine in Russia and Kazakhstan if the goal was "to subjugate Ukraine"? Indeed why would it even suddenly need subjugating if it was part of Russian state for at least two centuries.
If you have any complaints about Stalin, you can mail them to Georgia, and indeed I'm the first one to do the same.
In terms of vocabulary, the Ukrainian language is the closest to Belarusian (16% of difference), and the Russian language to Bulgarian (27% of difference).
After Belarusian, Ukrainian is also closer to Slovak, Polish, and Czech than to Russian – 38% of Ukrainian vocabulary is different from Russian.
Germans distinguish between prussians and bavarians? What are you talking about. Yes there are distinctions by state and where you're from. But the distingtion (apart from the occasional joking Fischkopf or Pazi) is nonexistent. Much less than states in the US.
I don't personally think is economic liberalization that succeeded.
It's the US won't stand for anymore wars like that. And for 50 years after WWII they could enforce that. You can note the general absence of large wars in North and South America as evidence of that.
That's putting the cart before the horse; countries only join the EU after they're already politically aligned with the current membership. Turkey, for instance, has been kept out of the European Union precisely because of these types of concerns; a strategy of economic integration would have entailed allowing Turkey to join the EU in hopes that the EU would be a positive influence on the country.
Edit: I'm being throttled so I'll respond to similar comments here. TheOtherHobbes similarly notes:
> The EU. France and Germany used to be deadly enemies. No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon.
In particular, France and Germany weren't peacefully reconciled through economic integration. There was a war, and the victors of that war installed democratic governments in both France and West Germany and inducted both countries into a broader alliance.
> Same with US states. Texas etc keep muttering about secession, but the economic complications make it an insane idea.
It took about two decades after Texas was admitted to the union for the states to fight a civil war against each other.
genman says:
> Remember WW1? WW2?
Not personally (I'm not that old) but those were not instances of economic integration easing military tensions; they were instances of extremely bloody world wars. And the First World War in particular was already deemed impossible because of the degree to which European economies were already economically integrated. That theory did not pan out.
wolverine876:
> The EU (in its early forms) was formed by the countries that just fought each other in WWI and WWII, and for centuries before that. The EU was specifically intended to prevent another war.
Again reversing cause and effect. The Allies won the Second World War and installed friendly governments across western Europe (and also in Greece); following this, those friendly governments formed the EU.
> countries only join the EU after they're already politically aligned with the current membership.
The EU (in its early forms) was formed by the countries that just fought each other in WWI and WWII, and for centuries before that. The EU was specifically intended to prevent another war.
> The EU (in its early forms) was formed by the countries that just fought each other in WWI and WWII, and for centuries before that.
Not quite, the Western Union (predecessor to the EU by way of the was formed by the BeNeLux countries, the UK and France. Some of those were at war in preceding centuries but they were on the same side during WWI and WWII. It didn't have a lot of clout because very rapidly afterwards other more powerful institutions were formed and it was superceded. But it was more of a continuation of some of the collaboration that stemmed from being allies/liberators in the war than that they were on opposing sides. Later institutions included Germany and Italy as well.
In Europe there have undoubtedly been international institutions going back a long way. Is what you're talking about really a blood ancestor of the EU, or is it a predecessor - another group that happened to have some of the same members.
As I recall, Churchill was a strong proponent of the EU's [edit: I can't believe I used the wrong word:] ancestor (the European Communities? Some oil and coal community?), as a way to prevent further wars. Churchill blamed nationalism specifically.
I would say it was because there is a reasonably direct line of succession in terms of both members and responsibilities. The steel and coal union is also in that line. What happened is that the unification was seen as beneficial but that a larger body with a more future proof organization was what really was required.
> What happened is that the unification was seen as beneficial but that a larger body with a more future proof organization was what really was required.
You're saying the EU wasn't required? That seems like a bold statement, but probably too much to sort out in HN comments.
I'm a bit confused by "but" in that sentence. I'm not sure if a 'not' or another word is missing there. Certainly many saw unification as beneficial - again, it was the key to many. Many still do.
Unification was underway prior to the EU, the EU is the eventual larger body but it took some steps to get to the point where it could be properly established, mostly on account of the various countries still reeling from WWII and being very busy with reconstruction efforts (and piss poor to boot, the first years after WWII were almost as bad as the last years of the war and in some places even worse besides the reduced immediate risk to life). Doubly so for those countries that ended up on the far side of the Iron Curtain, but then again, they weren't part of the EU for many years to come. But for many of them the only thing that changed is that German uniforms became Russian uniforms and usually that wasn't accompanied by a higher degree of civility by the occupiers.
Nonetheless, all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it. You could argue that the EU kept the peace, but I think that overlooks the role of NATO and of the hundreds of thousands of American troops who never actually left western Europe after 1945. For instance, do you really think there's a serious risk of war breaking out between the UK and France since the UK left the EU? Of course not.
> all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it
How do you establish the arrow of causality (and of course, to some degree, it points both ways)? Objectively, we know that a major intent and design of the EU (and its earlier iterations) was to prevent another war.
The one thing we know about the arrow of causality is that it doesn’t point backwards in time. The founding members of the EU all had friendly relations with each other prior to the founding of the EU. That’s why they formed the EU!
Yes, but rather than engaging Nazi Germany with trade agreements and hoping that would somehow transform it into a peaceful democracy, Churchill and others fought WWII and attempted to conquer Germany with massive armies. The EU was a strategy for how to rebuild the ruins afterwards, it wasn’t a strategy for how to resolve the differences between Britain and Germany. So this isn’t a very good analogy for the current situation between NATO and Russia, or between the US-led allies and China.
The US imports more goods from Mexico than China, but we do import a lot of stuff from China. It is clear from both sides that is problematic. They've been exporting less AND we have been moving supply chains to import less from them.
It is quite problematic as it appears the US and China are slow crawling to a direct confrontation.
Yes and I'm dead set against it. When that blows up in our face we deserve it for allowing it to happen. The best we can hope for is China ruins their own economy rendering them impotent.
Don't hope too much for that. Authoritarian regimes with collapsing economies often find war a useful distraction for their populations. China could do an awful lot of damage on the way down.
Almost all of Europe’s fossil fuels came from Russia whereas China is not even the largest trade partner of the US. Also energy dependence is much harder to get off of than production dependence.
After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Germany quickly moved away from nuclear power, with the last plant closing down in late 2023. Germany leads in renewable energy, but this swift change has left them with a big gap in energy security that might last until 2038.
Where can I get more information on this? Wasn't fukushima total disaster in that it was badly maintained and in a bad location? These two pre-conditions don't seem to apply to the plants germany had.
"Russia is doing what they've always done and always will do."
Do you think those stereotypes are really helpful in understanding geopolitics? Traditionally what russia has always done(after it conquered its east), was being invaded, loosing lots of land, let the invader bleed out in the winter and then push back and win new territories.
Then russia as a monarchy was quite different to the sowjet union, the result of a marxist revolution with marxist agenda. And russia after the sowjet union was first weak and now they try to find strength in the traditional empire values again, religion and tsar. But it is not a given, that they will keep that, only if it works out for them. I hope it doesn't.
> Do you think those stereotypes are really helpful in understanding geopolitics?
In some kind of way, yes. Cultures differ, sometimes drastically so. It is important to evaluate stereotypes based on history and their merits.
You said it yourself. Historically, Russia has faced many cyclic periods of expansion and reduction. They are currently being reigned by a patriotic figure with a record of dwelling on Russia‘s great past. Given enough time or an effective military response, chances are high that their next leader will be more favorable of peace.
instability in the middle east was and still is the plan. As long as we keep the middle east from united under some new ottoman empire, the US is happy.
If we wanted to 'win', it would require taking over afghan which no one wanted to do.
It was reasonable not to see Russia as enemy. It was well integrated into European trade and some political structures (PACE, NATO-Russia council etc) and there were even talks about visa-free travel between Russia and EU. What went wrong was the glacial speed of integration, letting the nationalist sentiment and disappointment in West grow. Post-WWII Europe was pacified through a political union between Germany and France, post-Cold War Europe should have done it too. Putin could be another Orban in the worst case.
That's naive. Russia allowed Germany to unify, but not Romania. It was very clear to eastern Europeans that they needed to join NATO before Russia can attack them again.
Ever since the 1500s Russia has always sought to expand under the excuse of being encircled. Listen to any Russian propagandist now and they sound no different to ones from hundreds of years ago. They say Russia needs natural bothers. Well, there are no borders until the Carpathian mountains.
If they do conquer the Carpathians, they'll just move the goal posts, just like they didn't stop at the Ural mountains.
It's naive to not see Russia as the enemy because it has always been so.
Fundamentally what actually went the worst was the absolutely awful way that capitalist market systems were, on the whole, rolled out in the eastern bloc in the 90s.
Poverty, corruption, and massive wealth disparity were the results.
And into the chaos, strongmen came in, and promised and gave some stability.
Modern Russia is far better at political subversion than it is at outright conquest. Every country in Europe has captive politicians and far-right parties being funded and enabled by Moscow.
Like Germany's AfD which - as a matter of record - has been cultivated, promoted, and steered in a pro-Russian direction.
Scholz is clearly playing the same game, obstructing aid to Ukraine in every possible way.
Geert Wilders in NL makes anti-Russian noises in public while threatening to cut support to Ukraine.
Portugal has Chega, France has National Rally and Le Pen, the UK had Brexit and Boris Johnson - who installed the son of a top KGB operative to the House of Lords.
The US has Trump and Maga.
And so on.
Every single one of these has proven Russian links.
Ukraine is just a distraction. The real war has been happening elsewhere. Many leaders - and most voters - still haven't realised what's happening.
And should Le Pen win in France and Trump in the US, that would leave the UK's one active nuclear submarine as Europe's sole protection against Russian nuclear threats.
If you want to bash german politicians for current situation, 100% guilt falls on Angela Merkel. Making
1) Germany ultra weak militarily, you really can't let intellectuals drive whole nations since they have 0 clue about realpolitik, warfare and all those ugly aspects of it, and currently bundeswehr is a pathetic underfunded joke with rotting helmets that even current russian army would roll over without breaking a sweat.
2) a massive push for critical fuel dependency on russia
3) never standing up to that murderer in any way, even as he was killing and invading Georgia and Ukraine
He played her and similar to her very efficiently. Of course its nothing compared to masterclass he pulled/will yet pull on Trump.
As somebody coming from cca eastern Europe, being enslaved by russian troops after their bloody invasion, western Europe is... to keep things ultra polite - ultra pussies. You simply don't grok how depraved and hardened to cruelty russian mind is, things like fair game are an insult. Also their incredible durability to withstand absolutely horrible treatment, just buckle up and continue. Western sanctions my ass, just make sure any good chips don't work for them somehow because they don't care for the rest.
This is the case when you are dealing with mobsters who kill and know only rule of stronger, and you come with your polite smile and handshakes and expect things like keeping their word or contracts. I don't even have such a problem with EU dumb naivety in the past, but what is shocking that they didn't wake up right after invasion and starting putting 10% of GDP into army, to see some effects in 5 years just in time when real stuff starts happening. Every single post-soviet country keeps issuing very strong warnings due to previous horrible expereiences with russian terror, but these are completely ignored on EU level. This is a major long term weakness that will not get unpunished.
Yeah, when SHTF its very easy to be ashamed to be from Europe, for quite a few generations.
100% agreement, it's a complete mess. I think the big mistake is that this was all built on hope and hope is a fantastic way of getting to disappointment. But now what? That's the hard question. It looks like a whole bunch of politicians in the West are in Putin's pocket or at least useful idiots, the populace doesn't give two shits as long as they can watch TV and there is bread and meanwhile the fuse is burning.
It's pretty sad that the EU now has to look to Lithuania for their moral compass because they seem to have lost their own.
Despite a massive investigation there have never been any proven links between Trump and Russia. What’s more, Trump maintained sanctions against Russia and provided military aid to Ukraine.
I can’t speak as much to the situation in Europe aside from the obvious conflicts of interest for former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Aside from him, I don’t know where to attribute Germany’s fecklessness: it could just as easily be the same weak-kneed pacifism that led Germany to disarm themselves. (Also, I’d point out that, contra your narrative, both Scholtz and Schroeder are members of the center-left SPD and not any far right party.)
> Despite a massive investigation there have never been any proven links between Trump and Russia.
I suppose there is some narrow definition of links for which that is true.
> What’s more, Trump maintained sanctions against Russia
He signalled plans to weaken them, and then Congress, by massively veto-proof majorities in both Houses (419-3 House, 98-2 Senate), passed a bill limiting his ability to lift existing sanctions while also adding new sanctions on top.
> and provided military aid to Ukraine.
He held up Congressionally-mandated aid to try to force a quid pro quo from the Ukrainian government for propaganda to support Trump’s personal political efforts, releasing it only after he became aware that someone had blown the whistle on it.
> He held up Congressionally-mandated aid to try to force a quid pro quo from the Ukrainian government for propaganda to support Trump’s personal political efforts
That’s certainly one possible interpretation of events.
Absolutely each and every one of those is far right, borderline fascist and getting more so by the day. There is plenty of evidence of Russian funds bankrolling these (and others), no need to suggest this is a conspiracy. What you believe doesn't really matter.
You're hilarious. Geert Wilders is a populist, not a politician. The party objectives are Geert Wilders' dog whistles and promises to the gullible, it isn't a serious political party even though it has attracted the largest voting bloc simply because there is no governance structure in place, the party is Geert Wilders, the rest is just window dressing. The idea that 'even in the west[sic] you can fell[sic] victim to propoganda[sic]' is true but it has nothing to do with my view of Wilders, the PVV or the general Dutch political situation. And as for state media, guess what GW wants to get rid of?
I mean in France, you've got Marine LePen. In the Netherlands you've got Geert Wilders. Robert Fico wanted to take Slovakia back to a past when oligarchs dominated the state. PiS wanted to turn poland into the arsenal of the EU and got a really good start on it, etc.
Nationalism is having a renaissance since Trump won in 2020, but it turns out overall to be a terrible way to run a country.
PiS was close, Slovakia is maybe getting there, but Orban is the longest serving prime minister of Hungary. He actually did it and he stays in power. LePen, Wilders etc did not do a single thing from Orban’s list. They didn’t even form a government which could do it.
Things like a strong and independent media, legal system, parliament and police force are crucial to democracy. It can be justifiable to argue that someone is anti-democratic if they advocate a narrative that erodes trust in any of these.
That's an interesting idea. Covers both political parties, with the left undermining trust in the police, and Supreme Court. The right in the FBI and journalism.
It's context-dependent, but that's the basic idea. In the UK for example, we currently have quite a right-wing government in power, which is:
* Undermining our Supreme Court by trying to force through a migrant deportation scheme which the court has ruled unlawful
* Eroding the Police Force's independence by claiming they are biased in their approach to protests
* Trying to defund and delegitimise the BBC
It might be because I'm fairly left wing myself, but I think you have go pretty far into authoritarian-left territory (think Stalinism) before you start becoming seriously anti-democratic. Before that point most leftists are pretty keen on giving power and choice to ordinary people and communities.
Even though that is troublesome I think the absolute biggest issue was the West “helping” liberalize the Russian economy. I.e. giving away huge amounts of the Russian states resources to corrupt oligarchs with great help from London banks. It really set the stage for Putin in a big way.
Not deciding, but being told to do so by Germany who is infiltrated by Russians at every level of government, industry, and media. Allowing Germany to unify and giving the keys to the future of Europe to Germany was the biggest mistake the USA and Britain made after 1989.
The same move could have had a completely different outcome so it is hard to lay the blame with the USA and Britain. A unified Germany unlocked Poland and the Baltics as well as the Balkans, Romania and even Bulgaria. It did not work out quite as planned because Putin went mad but it could have worked if Russia focused on creation rather than destruction for a while. But with people that power hungry ratio goes right out the window.
Nothing will go "as planned" in that part of the world for as long as individual states like Germany will be signing agreements with Russia without consultation or participation of the Eastern European states. The problem of Western Europe is that they look at Eastern European countries as "lesser", former dependencies and haven't accepted them as equal partners.
Yes, that's a very valid point, the Western countries in the EU do not properly value the input from their Eastern colleagues on these matters. It's a very annoying thing. I have spent a good chunk of my life East of Berlin both before and after the wall came down and I have zero illusions about the situation at the moment. The question is how long it will take the rest of Europe to wake up to the new reality and it is incredible how lax the response has been so far. You'd think that they would get the message by now but all we get is half-assed measures.
It will be difficult. Germany is a state with a massive parasitic infiltration by Russian agents and "useful idiots" at all levels of the government, the industry, and the media. Watching German response to war in Ukraine has been embarrassing and a good argument for the countries of Eastern Europe to arm themselves to the teeth and not wait for the Western Allies to come to their support.
Agreed on all counts. This is a turning point in history and I'm really wondering if we aren't about to lose 80 years of progress in Europe, for Ukraine, on a shorter timescale, that is already a reality. And all because we keep making the same dumb mistakes.
I think it makes a lot more sense if you separate a country from their elite.
It seems quite clear that the German elite class had been wholly corrupted by Russia who offered them enrichment at the cost of Ukrainians and ultimately long term German security.
It makes a lot more sense when you look at how America's own elites sold out America to China.
All of this (charitably assuming good faith) was founded on the idea of inevitability. People thought peace was an inevitable result of trade, liberalization was an inevitable result of prosperity, and democratization an inevitable result of capitalism.
Navalty had some pretty scary things to say about Ukraine as well. To summarize: He thought there are no differences between Ukranian people and Russian people, he thinks that Crimea is rightfully Russia's (finder's keepers!), and he thinks it would be nice for Belarus and Ukraine to just be absorbed by Russia and become part of Russia again.
He was only against the war in Ukraine when it became obvious it was not going to be a three day one and done operation.
Navalny has always been a supporter of a concept referred to as "Russkiy Mir"[1] and has spoke at length about it. It is a weird ethno religious philosophy which shows the bounds of the russian country extend far past the borders of teh russian federation. The closest I can easily describe it is as a weird western version of jihad where they want to assume all other cultures and erase them in favor of expansion of their own via multiple methods.
In 2007, in a Russian "Gun Rights" video, Navalny compared the Chechen muslims to "cockroaches and flies" and said he wanted to exterminate them. A picture of a Chechen muslim appears on the screen and he shoots it with a pistol. In another [2] video it featured Navalny dressed as a dentist, presenting a slightly confusing parable that likened interethnic conflict in Russia to cavities and argued that fascism can be prevented only by deporting migrants from Russia. Navalny closed his monologue with “We have a right to be [ethnic] Russians in Russia. And we will defend this right.” This is an allegory to killing all non-ethnic Russians.
In 2008 when Russia invaded the country of Georgia. He said[3]:
Of course, there is a big desire to fire a cruise missile at the General Staff of the [derogative name for Georgians], but they are just waiting for this.
Years later, he apologized for the ethnic slur denoting Georgian people, but never for his support of the Russian war on Georgia.
In an interview with Echo of Moscow radio station in October 2014, Navalny admitted that the peninsula had been seized through “outrageous violations of all international norms”, and yet asserted that it would “remain part of Russia” and would “never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future”.
His statement was not simply an assessment of the developments around Crimea. When pressed on whether he would return Crimea to Ukraine were he to become Russia’s president, Navalny wrapped his “No” in an odd question: “What? Is Crimea a sandwich or something that you can take and give back?” His position on Crimea was basically, "finders keepers."
Also in 2014, here[4] he is using one of the worst ethnic slurs for Ukrainians making fun of them.
In 2016, Navalny said that he intended to hold a "normal" referendum in Russian-occupied Crimea if he won the Russian presidential election. Note that Russia has forcibly killed or deported many/most ethnic Tatar peoples and native Ukrainians from Crimea. They've allowed Russian people to come occupy it and settle the lands, so by definition, any referendum would be with invaders on invaded territory. It would be a sham.
In 2023, he offered a 15 point "manifesto"[5] where he changed tac quite a bit, but this was after some prominent navalnyists were pissing off western journalists with their staunch anti-ukraine message, all in line with Russkiy Mir.
I can go on and on and on, but his support of violence and cleansing the world of non-russians goes back a long time. I just spent a few minutes to find these but if you dig in you can find the same and more.
Note that Russia has forcibly killed or deported many/most ethnic Tatar peoples and native Ukrainians from Crimea.
— where is the reference for that please? I am from Crimea and have both Russian and Ukrainian friends there, I have never heard of anything like that happening.
Agreed with most of your points on Navalny though.
Wrong - I am actually Tatar with Ukrainian passport, but it’s a long story…
Just read the article you quoted. Are you referring to 1944? We can go all the way down to Crimean war if you want. Your original statement made an impression that you were referring to recent events?
Thanks for those links. Let me address them. As a side note, it is interesting to see how you were not satisfied with the official western media coverage of Navalny but suddenly referring to them - Spectator, Times - when it comes to Crimean Tatars.. Putting this aside
The article refers to human rights violations documented by Crimean Tatar Resource Centre. I had a quick look at this organisation and here is the list of its “partners” - all openly stated:
https://ctrcenter.org/en/o-nas/nashi-partnery - NATO Information and Documentation Centre, USAIDS, PACT Ukraine, etc. - all huge friends of Russia, obviously seeking unbiased views on the situation. Can you trust that source? Maybe. I remember those “human rights organisations” from my teenage years when they suddenly started to pop up all over the peninsular after the USSR collapse, telling me about my rights that were apparently violated. I had not invited any of them and never appreciated any of their business, all targeted to destroy the state rather than protect human rights. Personal opinion of course.
As for those cases mentioned in the article
1. Roman Osmanov is currently facing an administrative charge of online petty hooliganism. Sorry, this is neither killing nor deportation. Not even a criminal offence.
2. Leniye Umerova – from what I understand from the article, she didn’t accept the choice of the majority of Crimean people on the referendum and fled to Kyiv in 2015. Her parents are still in Crimea. Again, nobody deported or killed. In the same article the author says that she freely crossed the border to visit her parent in Evpatoria (eastern Crimea) and had been doing so since 2015 until she was eventually detained in December 2022. So she crossed the border freely every year until that detention when FSB accused her of having sensitive information about Russian forces locations in Kyiv region on her phone. True? False? Who knows.. It’s a wartime and so entirely possible. No killing or deporting still.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/05/5/7400834/https://www.interfax.ru/russia/901646
3. Appaz Kurtamet - According to the investigation, he transferred 500 hryvnias (US$13.67) to a member of the Krym Battalion. Krym Battalion is an interesting one, it was created by Ukraine to perform terrorist attacks in Crimea and is declared a terrorist organisation in Russia. Did the Russians have rights to arrest him? Sounds like it. Was it too much for a young boy? Probably. No killing or deporting.
To your second article
2. https://spectator.org/the-unseeing-years-russias-ethnic-clea...
Ervin Ibragimov was probably exactly what it says in the article. What can I say? Appalling and disgraceful behaviour of Russian DPS. Bless this guy. Situation in Crimea in 2014 was very very dangerous. It was a miracle that the war didn’t break back then. It does appear that this was a violation.
3. times.co.uk - apologies the page won’t open without registration, and I am not prepared to subscribe to Tories’ propaganda.
Crimea is a complicated case. Ukraine has always tried to play on the tension between us and the Russians. Especially so after 1992 when Crimea declared independence and tried to adopt its own constitution. Among other things Ukraine allowed organisations like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hizb_ut-Tahrir (recently declared a terrorist organisation by UK btw) to operate on the peninsula.
Since 2014 Crimea has three official languages - Tatar, Ukrainian and Russian. Before that it only had one – Ukrainian. We were granted amnesty for “unlawfully seized” lands and were allowed to privatise those territories. I am not trying to say it’s black or white, but I do believe those Tatars who chose to remain on the peninsula are a lot better off now compared to pre-referendum time.
What about this summary of the current human rights situation in the Republic of Crimea, from Wikipedia:
United Nations monitors (who had been in Crimea from 2 April to 6 May 2014) said they were concerned about treatment of journalists, sexual, religious and ethnic minorities and AIDS patients.[115] The monitors had found that journalists and activists who had opposed the 2014 Crimean referendum had been harassed and abducted.[116] They also reported that Crimeans who had not applied for Russian citizenship faced harassment and intimidation.[115]
According to Human Rights Watch "Russia has violated multiple obligations it has as an occupying power under international humanitarian law – in particular in relation to the protection of civilians' rights."[117][55]
In its November 2014 report on Crimea, Human Rights Watch stated that "The de facto authorities in Crimea have limited free expression, restricted peaceful assembly, and intimidated and harassed those who have opposed Russia's actions in Crimea".[118] According to the report, 15 persons went missing since March 2014; according to Ukrainian authorities 21 people disappeared.[67]
He did all of that, true, but all of that no longer matters. Nobody cares about Che Guevara personality or political views, when they wear a t-shirt with his portrait. He became a symbol of resistance and Alexey will become another one, an iconic figure who was poisoned, but returned home to continue his fight.
I concur. What he stood for was a more free, open, and democratic Russia. In reality, if Russia was more friendly with the west, it would be 100x more prosperous. It is really a shame the old Chekists are still in charge. As large as the Russian Federation is in people and land mass, their economy would be an order of magnitude larger if it was ran better. Such a shame.
Most Russians would disagree with you. The worst time (economically) for the vast majority of people was peak friendliness with the West under Yeltsin. Economically Russia was actually doing very well just before 2022.
My point was that Russia is a large extremely natural resource rich country. It has a lot of culture and a lot of people. It would be much better off exporting goods to the west instead of continuing the Cold War.
It should in theory be able to export much more than just energy products to the west. America has a virtually infinite appetite for consumption and labor costs in Russia are quite low due to different standards of living.
The problem of course is infrastructure rot and corruption have gutted much of the non Muskovy areas of the Russian federation. It’s a pipe dream that will never happen, but it would be a wonderful world where Russia is actually friendly with the west and loses their imperial ambitions.
>The problem of course is infrastructure rot and corruption have gutted much of the non Muskovy areas of the Russian federation.
Export infrastructure is in a very good shape (e.g. railroads, which are used for export of coal, grain etc, pipelines and container terminals) and there’s plenty of new manufacturing capacity there across the country. Russia does have industrial policy for import substitution since 2000s and managed to localize some production, so this is not really a problem.
The real problem is the shortage of labor, the unemployment is already very low there. Just like in USA and Europe it is partially solved by the immigration from Global South, in this case from Central Asia. But this also means that skilled labor is not super-cheap. Russia can be a strong partner on some markets (energy, aerospace, IT) and can bring a lot of value in entrepreneurial culture and customer service (unknown to the West, but superior to anywhere else in Europe).
Economically significant part of Russian population is doing quite well right now, thanks to generous military spending. Inequality dropped, working class is earning the money they have never seen before. Nevertheless I do not think this would in any way imply that they want to be in a state of war forever.
Sure but that was right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Takes some time and Putin himself was outwardly more cooperative with the West back in the day.
Also in the USA congress makes the budget but the president always gets blame or credit for the economy(it's more complicated sure, but it all falls on the POTUS).
Yeah I wouldn't say it would be 100x more prosperous. Look at the 90s under US puppet Yeltsin. That was the time to show how good cooperation with the west will be but didn't happen. Russia was treated as any South American or African country was treated. I'm not from Russia but heaps of westerners (not only US) came to buy up businesses and spread Christianity. They literally did nothing in terms of investments and creating institutions except for capturing mining rights.
Although I would add that I personally think Russia has not really developed much in the last 10 years under him. He really needs to invest into changes.
This is a very inaccurate picture of that period. Yeltsin wasn’t anyone’s puppet for sure and Russia was not treated as a colony. All economic struggles of that period happened for several purely internal reasons: transition from planning to market economy cannot happen instantly - a lot of processes had to adapt and recalibrate; rule of law was not established, because the legal system and law enforcement had to be reformed and a lot of new laws had to be written (e.g. modern law on bankruptcy was enacted only in 2000s IIRC); dissolution of USSR broke a lot of economic ties. The West actually helped a lot in that period of time, offering credits, even sending humanitarian aid. Western investment from major consumer brands like Unilever, Coca-Cola or P&G brought management skills and standards of work, entrepreneurial culture was heavily influenced by America etc.
"He did all of that, true, but all of that no longer matters."
Because he is dead.
"Nobody cares about Che Guevara personality or political views, when they wear a t-shirt with his portrait."
But I have never seen anyone wearing it, without them thinking it is somehow connected to good socialism and revolution. Mostly in ignorance of the actual person and events, sure, but not ignoring the political views.
I don't see how Russia is culturally part of "the West" in any meaningful way.
We can debate whether, say, Poland or Hungary is, but Russia is, to me, surely not part of any meaningful definition of the West (in a cultural sense)
"but Russia is, to me, surely not part of any meaningful definition of the West (in a cultural sense)"
Why not? The roots are probably in norse/viking people mixing with the locals and it later became a christian country by force, like the rest of europe, though orthodox (like greece is for example). It always was more off, sure, but for example Alexander II greatly invested in connections into the rest of europe. Russian thinkers and writers were greatly influential in europe, like Tolstoi and Dostojewski, or more to my liking: Bakunin and Kropotkin.
The whole east and sibiria always was and is different, but west of Ural traditionally had strong connections with the rest of europe.
Yes, actual Russians (русичи) are from Russia tower, now Old Russa tower (Старая Русса), which was on Russia river, now Porussia river, but Russians renamed their country to Ukraine, to avoid confusion with Russian (Moscow) Empire.
Russian (Rossian) Federation doesn't contain a region named "Russia". Russians (Russish, русские) are believers of Russian Orthodox church and not a nation at all, like Catholics are not a nation. Rossians (россияне) is.
Many nations, such as Tatars, Mordva, etc., were turned into Russians (Russish) by a process called "Russification", when stolen Russians Orthodox Church was used as tool to enslave peoples and erase their identity by giving them Russian names and forbidding to use their native language in favor of Russian Church Slavonic language. Scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar[1].
This all may be true, but he still has a track record as an expansionist, as nationalist, as islamophobic, and as ethno-nationalist. He may not have presented much of a change in Russia's behavior the way the western press has implied he might have.
I remember watching a documentary about his life, and in his early years he has expressed some "extreme-right"/nationalist views. I assume that he was click-baiting anyone who would hear him, gathering fame and fortune. Eventually he was recognised as a 'potentially worthy' opponent of Putin and was given the support and guidance to become what he became.
(Majority of) Russians are 'different'. They don't care to change. They don't understand the "modern" way of life. They don't understand the new/modern approaches of 'diversity'. (Understand = it conflicts with their ideology, traditions, mindset - of course they understand and simply disagree).
In Russia, historically, the easiest way to solve a problem is to eliminate the person behind the problem, and the problem will solve itself. I has been done like that for centuries, and I don't feel that this will change anytime soon.
> I'm not sure that's an accurate reflection of the man's views. Your sequencing is not construable to a new fact.
> He did recant any notion of Ukrainians being Russian. He also asserted ukrainians Right to independent self-governing.
I never followed Navalny very closely, but my understanding was he opposed Putin but he was also a Russian nationalist, so (at least pre-2022) there wasn't tons of distance between them on the topic of Ukraine.
Since Trump and especially since the more recent invasion of Ukraine, I think there's been a tendency for Western liberals to concentrate on Putin, oppose him, and therefore idealize his opponents as being and thinking just like themselves. So the liberals would tend to avoid thinking about certain uncomfortable facts, and Navalny may have been incentivized to conform to their views (given he was in prison and his main protection was the attention and sympathy of foreign liberals)
It was always pretty clear that he wasn't a saint. At some point Amnesty International felt compelled to clarify that their sympathy for Navalny began and ended with him being poisoned and imprisoned.
Has happened over and over again that the Western political class prioritizes alignment with some entity on some short term goal over checking that the entity shares any other sentiments. And then being all surprised-pikachu when they dont.
US funding mujahideen against the Soviets.
Israel funding Hamas to keep the PA weak.
Europe lauding Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Myanmar
etc.
Any time you see a puff piece in mainstream Western media about some leader abroad that "we find we can work with" or has similar cheese, beware.
> there's been a tendency for Western liberals to concentrate on Putin, oppose him, and therefore idealize his opponents
Seems to depend on whether someone believes Russia's security interests have some level of legitimacy. If the war is unfounded then it is an act of madness and the motivation is probably attributable to a single charismatic individual (and Putin must be that person). The view is part of the "Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine!" narrative.
If Russian has legitimate security interests in the region then it doesn't matter so much who the president is and Putin's role in events is important but it is likely others would have made the same choice.
Some people in the West really tried to make him the face of opposition in Russia, but he was unpalatable to Eastern Europe, which no longer is a part of the world that doesn't count. The West, Western Europe in particular has to realign its diplomatic strategy and stop ignoring countries located between Moscow and Berlin.
To him this is likely "a mild disagreement" as ukrainian civilians are being actively targeted by Russian missiles. Quite a tone deaf and horrible point of view.
That too but I was referring to language differences.
Untrained/unexposed russian won't understand UA language. They wouldn't even be able to pronounce it correctly if their life depended on it.
> Untrained/unexposed russian won't understand UA language.
As a Russian who is hosting Ukrainian refugees I can definitely say this is false. I can understand probably around 90% of raw speech in Ukrainian without any support and 0 prior experience.
No, Russia's goal is to keep Ukraine in their sphere of influence and prevent democracy from taking hold there, because if that happens in Ukraine people in Russia might start to think it's possible there as well. Also there are geographical reasons regarding border defense which are somewhat understandable, but overruling the will of the people of Ukraine for that is not considered acceptable anymore in this century.
Russia's actions in Bucha, Mariupol and just about everywhere in this war (Cherson during occupation comes to mind) have been horrid, as is its disregard for its own soldiers, many of whom are just used as cannon fodder. Russia is targetting civilians all over the place.
Those other wars are horrible too, but comparing them just by number of casualties is disingenious.
It is not for lack of trying on part of Russia. They send plenty of missiles in that direction. It's just that Kiev is protected by modern air defenses more than any other Ukrainian city.
So far Russia has not hesitated completely destroying relatively large Ukrainian cities. If you need a link to the pictures, let me know.
That's quite a russian narrative. Mariupol alone is in vicinity of 100k civilian casualties. Kyiv holds because of air defense and denying ru air superiority by shooting them down.
Ukrainians have plenty of issues with invading forces. Plenty.
Official UN statement is 1300 death in Maripol.
Please do not spread false info. Do some research first before talking. It creates a fake narrative where people fall into. Not good.
> “The actual death toll of hostilities on civilians is likely thousands higher,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said... Bachelet added that right now it is "impossible to know" the exact death toll.
Even Russia doesn't think it's that low, and they've reason to want to undercount.
> Russian officials say that 3,000 civilians were killed in the attack on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, in Moscow's first estimate of the death toll since the siege several months ago.
That’s not a reasonable reading of that statement.
> To date, OHCHR has verified 1,348 individual civilian deaths directly in hostilities in Mariupol, including 70 children. These deaths were caused by air strikes, tank and artillery shelling and small arms and light weapons during street fighting. The actual death toll of hostilities on civilians is likely thousands higher.
The other comments by the same poster in this thread do not lead to the “honest” conclusion.
If the UN says "To date, OHCHR has verified 1,348 individual civilian deaths directly in hostilities in Mariupol" and then some dude says "Official UN statement is 1300 death in Maripol" that is an honest reading.
It isn't an accurate reading, but if you spend any time at all on the internet you will detect that honest people are often quite inaccurate. And wrong even while being able to back their opinions up with evidence. But it still isn't fair to imply that they are liar, lying or spreading lies. They are just wrong. Happens to literally all of us.
Even if hypothetically he was a habitual liar in every other comment he ever made on HN, this is not a showcase of lying.
If I tell you I went to a McDonalds potato warehouse, and that I counted twenty potatoes, but "there's a lot left to count", it would not be a reasonable summary of my statement to say that "the warehouse contains twenty potatoes".
The ICC has arrest warrants out for Putin for his war crimes. I really can't believe you're wilfully this ignorant to say there has been no civilian targetting. How are cluster bombs on cities not pure indiscriminate murder?
Search video. For example, Kharkiv was targeted by cluster ammunition, that's norm. Moscow terrors to drive out disloyal population, to hinder economy, to distract defenses from the front.
"Poland forced Germany to attack" (1939) by Putin, Moscow propaganda supports genocide. Atrocities in Bucha, Izum is result. Relatives? They speak nothing or support "liberation" by occupants.
Yes, there are lots of family and friendship ties between the countries. It's sad that Putin has destroyed any chance of good relationships in the future, and basically solidified Ukraine as a nation in opposition to his aggression.
I lived in Ukraine and when you cross the border between Russia and Ukraine you will notice absolutely no difference. Everything is the same. People, infra, houses, food. Only the language is different.
Second the recommendation, learned a lot watching this.
If you don't have time to watch all 23 episodes, the last one is a bit of a summary, discussing the history of European imperialism and colonialism, particularly Nazi German imperialism (conquering Ukraine was a central strategic goal of WW2), and pointing out some European hypocrisy in their reckoning of this history, and how Russia is exploiting that to pursue its own imperialist and colonialist goals.
Timothy Snyder is the worst source, he is academic on payroll of government and 100% biased.
On top of having zero credentials yourself, you're also making some pretty weird, muddled arguments here:
"Snyder is on the government payroll! Okay so maybe he isn't. But Navalny attended Yale. And so did some people who ended up working for the government. So plainly Snyder in the pocket of ..."
As can be seen in the first seconds of the lectures, Timothy Snyder is a professor at Yale [1], a private university, so he cannot be considered a government employee.
Additionally, even in government run universities in the west, there is the concept of academic freedom[2], meaning that faculty are able to teach their material freely without having to fear retaliation from the government (in the United States, this is effectively limited to "tenured" professors, it's more general in other countries.)
By your argument, we should disregard everything Noam Chomsky says on politics because he is a professor (emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an elite university deeply interconnected with the government, and thus must be considered a mouthpiece for US government propaganda.
No. Can you people do not turn off your technical rooted in science pragmatic pedantic brain when talking about politics ? MIT is technical university, why I have to explain on HN that there is great difference between technical crowd from MIT and politicians who brewed at Yale ?
Yale have more in common with United States Military Academy At West Point where [1]
> The runner up after Harvard is Yale University, claiming 5 U.S presidents as alumni.
> Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower are the only 2 U.S. presidents who attended the United States Military Academy At West Point. They are also 2 of the most important military generals in American history
Except Ukrainians are prepared to fight Russia to preserve their freedom and independence, that's the main difference. The majority of Russians just put up with a totalitarian regime after another because that's what they were always used to do. Also there are language differences, but almost everybody over 40 in Ukraine can speak Russian, mainly because Moscow tried very hard and pretty much succeeded erasing their history and culture.
Even Russia is very diverse ethnicaly and culturaly, as expected of such a huge country. The differences between the Far East, Sankt Petersbug, Daghestan and Buryatia are quite significant.
And what’s your point? You could say the same about the US and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand, or any number of Spanish speaking countries in the Americas, or any number of countries in Europe, Africa, Asia... should we support one invading the other?
Care to provide some links apart from 'they said it on fox news'? Its exactly the type of narrative putin would like to push to marginalize another high profile murder, and we have seen he can be an expert with playing foreign powers and media against each other
If you compare what happened in 2022 to what happened in 2014, you could make the argument that basically nothing was done in 2014.
I had a friend who kept saying that we needed to do something back then, and kinda ignored him, and now looking back, it's depressing how right he was.
Security isn't a thing that can be secured in an absolute sense, only a relative one.
For example, while the catastrophic ineptitude of the Russian forces at the start of their invasion has caused me to believe 80% of their nukes don't work any more, even just one nuke detonated as a HAEMP would destroy a continental-sized power grid — and the same visible signs of corruption that gave me the previous 80%, that also means there's a substantial chance at least one of the warheads ended up on the black market.
There's not so much infighting as there is a fascist fox in the hen-house (Orban). They still managed to get the €54bn aid package through this month - and that's just a Marshal Plan to set the country up for future EU membership. Germany alone has pledged €8bn in bilateral military aid for Ukraine this year, and there's a further €5bn coming from the coalition.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a minor figure, one of the many others in jail, who are decent people but irrelevant politicians. 99% of Russians haven’t heard of him. At this moment the only active and relevant politician is Nadezhdin.
There are more oppositional figures, they’re simply barred from entry because it’s not a real democracy.
Russia is not gaining noteworthy traction. Avdiivka is a tiny pointless place aside from the fact that Russia is willing to impale itself at horrible odds to achieve any victory it can for optics.
"Both sides regard Avdiivka as key to Russia's aim of securing full control of the two eastern "Donbas" provinces - Donetsk and Luhansk. These are among the four Ukrainian regions Russia says it has annexed but does not have full control of.
Avdiivka is seen as a gateway to Donetsk city, whose residential areas Russian officials say have been shelled by Ukrainian forces, sometimes from Avdiivka."
I don't understand your point about optics. Why does Russia care about optics in this case? Ukraine has to care about optics because they are completely dependent on NATO aid for their survival at this point.
Go read any actual war analysis. It is not a strategically important place. Donetsk City is not realistically a significant target in the foreseeable future.
Russia cares immensely about optics because Putin has demanded a military victory in time for the march elections. This has been publicly reported on since at least October.
Avdiivka is a tiny fraction of all of Ukraine, but it's still noteworthy that Russia is making significant progress there, and pushing in at other points on the whole front. Ukraine's lines aren't at imminent risk of collapsing, but they have a pretty serious shortage of artillery shells and other equipment, and it's taking a toll.
If the U.S. were still supplying Ukraine they'd be in a much better place.
It’s not that noteworthy though. Russia cannot sustain the war effort at this cost and this pace for the entirety of Ukraine. It’s a really small place with minor strategic value. Incessant meat waves do eventually work buts it’s not a winning strategy.
“Sustain” is a really funky term that’s hard to define. Like, they can keep refurbing tanks. They can keep funneling out meat. But they can’t replace the ships. They can’t replace the sovereign wealth fund.
Not to say the US shouldn’t be sending every last bomb it can find
"Russia cannot sustain the war effort at this cost and this pace for the entirety of Ukraine. "
That is something I heard ... since the beginning of the war, yet I see no signs of it. Russias economy is in full war mode, producing way more tanks and shells than the west. Ukraine has serious ammunition and manpower problems and the front can collapse. Also Ukraine prepared for a succesful offensive, and neglected the defense.
"It’s a really small place with minor strategic value"
And that small place was one of the best fortified places and succesfully defended since 2014. The fallback positions are not nearly as good prepared. And the chances are low, that they can even fallback with no more roads under their control. It is really not looking good at the moment.
Russias economy is extremely far from full war mode. Not even close. It is producing extremely few tanks, but is rather refurbishing old ones from storage.
"It is producing extremely few tanks, but is rather refurbishing old ones from storage."
That is effectivly the same. They can bring more tanks (100+ every month according to british intelligence) in, than they loose. Not the case for Ukraine.
And if you mind telling me, what of my post was fiction in your perception, I might consider giving you sources.
The Russian positions are weak and also largely mud. This is an operational challenge for sure, but the apparent strategy appears to be a localized counter attack to support the withdrawal.
The russians don't really have to move. They are already close enough to shoot with small arms fire at the whole withdraw area. But the ukrainians have to move, the counter attack and the withdraw itself- it is a total disaster. The order came way too late, probably because of stupid symbolic reasons, because too many cannot handle unpleasant truth. And you did not tell me yet, what exact statement of mine were fantasy.
"The second line of defense, a few kilometers behind the front, is still being built, according to nearly a dozen interviewed soldiers."
"To reinforce infantry units after heavy losses, Ukraine has transferred soldiers from units specialized in artillery or logistics to infantry positions, according to the soldiers interviewed by the Kyiv Independent. This means soldiers deployed on the first defensive line may not even know the basic survival skills of an infantryman"
Yeah and nothing they write contradicts anything I wrote. I also read them, but Kyevindependent and NYT are quite reputable as well.
"Ukrainian forces will likely be able to establish new defensive lines not far beyond Avdiivka, which will likely prompt the culmination of the Russian offensive in this area. "
If there would have been a second line truly ready and prepared, there would be no need to write it this way.
And all they wrote about the retreat, is that they have not seen pictures of large groups of ukrainians surrender. They do not deny, that the order came to leave the wounded behind. Or that lots of equipment had to be left behind. They just do not mention it. But they do not wrote the retreat went pretty well, like you did.
"Russian forces have not yet demonstrated an ability to secure operationally significant gains or conduct rapid mechanized maneuver across large swaths of territory"
And this is correct - but they are aware and state the possibility, that the front can collapse.
Why do you think so? There are many signs of Ukrainian starvation: 25% of population is displaced, they always were dependent on Russian energy, which they are cut from, they receive asymmetrical damage from Russian drone strikes.
I don't see much signs of starving from Russian side at the same time.
Considering he was thrown in the can for 30 years and his associates had left the country, I fail to see how the opposition dies with his death, rather than having died with his incarceration.
What keeps my hope for democracies in the world is an observation I made after reading The Year 2000 by Joseph Goebbels written on 25 February 1945. He more or less said that Stalin wasn't bound by the rules of democracies then he would succeed after all. I like to analyze such predictions because you know the outcome and you can guess what was wrong when someone wrote this. My version is that democracies have values kept while transitioning from a state to a state (after elections) while dictatorships change in many respects. It was visible in the Soviet Union, every new ruler brought a new system despite the fact that they all claimed to fight for the same goals.
Europe will now spend more on it’s own defence which is very good for the West and just horrible for Russia. Invading the EU is a different proposition to invading Ukraine. Invading a well-armed Europe is almost impossible.
War is fundamentally different now than it was at the beginning of WW2. A nuclear superpower cannot be invaded. You can poke the bear A LOT, but basically everyone recognizes that a ground invasion is crossing a red line.
That's the purpose of NATO. In exchange for giving up some autonomy to the US (letting the USA build military bases in your territory, not acting overtly against our interests), and paying us for our fancy weapons, NATO members get the immeasurably valuable power of a nuclear red line border, and protection by the most powerful military the world has ever seen. It's a very, very good deal, and the most stabilizing force in history.
Given the NATO membership of most of Europe, the only wars possible in Europe are small, regional conflicts between non-member states.
“War is fundamentally different now than it was at the beginning of WW2. A nuclear superpower cannot be invaded.”
You are right on the former, incorrect on the latter. Invasion looks different now that warfare has changed. You might have been invaded and not even know it. When was the last time you looked at your ssh logs?
Well that assumes that NATO will hold its promise and defend the member state that is invaded.
Lately, considering Trump's recent outings, this isn't set in stone anymore.
Fair point. But if you want to use that analogy, maybe you are also willing to admit that the might of the Wehrmacht accomplished substantially more than getting bogged down about 100km beyond their initial borders two years into the conflict?
I refuse to acknowledge any nazi accomplishments. That does not mean I haven’t learned from history. I think the evidence shows it’s the other way around. That people forget history and like to admire a fascist regime for their murder rate or ability to take down unsuspecting neighbors.
Russia got bogged down because Russia doesn’t want this fight. Russia’s Kremlin does.
Nobody "admires" the murder rate of nazis (except perhaps other nazis). People are horrified by the efficiency and success that Nazis achieved. It's a stark reminder of what can happen when the wrong people get too much uncheckered power. Denying or minimizing that it happened will make it more likely for it to happen again.
Fascists weren't efficient, broadly speaking. They presented the aesthetic of efficiency and disappeared anyone who called them out on their bullshit. For example, Mussolini's trains didn't run on time, apart from one or two showpony lines.
Ok so maybe the trains didn't run on time, but they invaded a lot of neighboring countries really fast. Something that Russia doesn't seem capably of doing, as was pointed out upthread.
It's not a good idea to broadly think "nazis are stupid, they won't get anything done". Sometimes they get things done and then we're fucked.
Germany was the 1930's equivalent of the USA in roughly comparable industrial output, the difference is that instead of creating a nicer society they gambled that they could overrun all of Europe by redirecting that output towards a war machine. The scary thing: their gamble almost worked.
"027 – Letter by guard Hugo Behncke to his wife, 28 January 1945
Today I’m on duty from 10 to 12, though without anyone relieving me and without the NCO [non-commissioned officer], so I’ll be able to cut a few corners. I can sit down and that makes the work fairly easy, so two hours are bearable. In the SS, everything apart from breathing is forbidden, but if you don’t break a few rules you’re not a soldier. But I always take care that nothing happens. Anyway, in the winter time the prisoners are disinclined to “travel” [escape]. I haven’t heard of a single case all the time I’ve been here. But in spring and summer we have to keep a really close eye on things.
All they were good for was to be burned
There’s no table to write on and so my writing looks funny. Last night I slept in the next room. It was really cold in there. There has never been any heating in there. I have the space to myself because the others prefer to stay in the warm fug, but I moved out in particular because my neighbour in the bed above me has lice! Yes, lice! I’m not keen on those. I had enough of them in the First World War. He probably got them from being on the recent transport of prisoners to Neuengamme. The prisoners were all sick, dirty and thin as skeletons. All they were good for was to be burned in the Neuengamme crematorium. And a lot of them thought they were being brought to Neuengamme to be burned. Of course, many of them are stupid, primitive people. […]
The war situation is still gloomy, of course, but I’m putting my trust all the same in our counter attack after our enemies’ latest offensive. As I see it, everything is ready. […] So we’re hoping we’ll have victory soon, first over the Russians and then over the western powers. After we’ve won my comrades want to carry on […] as soldiers but not me! I want to get home to you and my children.
"
This isn't Twitter or your polycule's Wednesday night political discussion, my friend. Being proud of rejecting historical facts doesn't give you as many virtue signalling points as you think.
Not sure how admitting that the current state of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation relative to the rest of Europe is not as good that of the pre-WWII Wehrmacht has any relationship to punching Nazis.
I do not admire Nazi military accomplishments nor compare current military strategy to a world invasion. Russia’s military state is because Russia’s military doesn’t want this fight, but they must.
Nope, they cowardly did it because they did. No invasion is heroic. Ukraine pulled out to redirect forces elsewhere. Avdiivka isn’t worth the bloodshed.
Besides an open military invasion (hopefully improbable), I'm afraid of slowly tilting and influencing border states (Slovakia, Hungary) to lean towards Russia, with maybe some future economic extortion, or in the very extreme case, staging an election/referendum to leave EU/NATO.
This feels like the complacency that has meant Europe is almost entirely dependent on the US for credibile defence against Russia. Europe is not well-armed, as shown by the panicked response to Trump's threat to let NATO allies be attacked if they don't contribute enough to the budget, and it will take a long time to re-arm properly in the current economic climate. (For clarity, I think Trump's threat is terrible in many ways, but it has exposed NATO's fundamental dependence on the US)
"Invading a well-armed Europe is almost impossible."
- You don't get it. An alliance of china, russia, iran and north korea will be enabled to do whatever they want. Including invading or, more likely, hitting with missiles critical infrastructure in any Nato country with the exception of US and UK
Sad reality, from the pov of their neighbors, is that russian regime change wouldn't really change much on their side.
As much as it is incomprehensible for America, there are societies that do not value freedom from the very bottom to the very top - and Russia is one of them
>>... that russian regime change wouldn't really change much on their side.
there is more to this. The power there is usurped by a group of KGB officers, and they control all the government and power branches, etc (including even russian orthodox church). Any hypothetical elected outsider as a president will be coerced into doing what they demand. Anyone non-compliant will be eliminated.
Why does this surprise you? Russia just can't afford another Lenin during the war. Or another Yeltsin.
The last thing they need now is a fight for supremacy, similar to what we have in Ukraine, that would cripple their war effort and benefit only their enemies. The death or one of the opposition leaders may be considered as a small price to pay to avoid the 1917 like catastrophe. Today, with the abundance of nuclear weapons, the stakes for the whole world are much higher than then.
Let's keep in mind the man was no saint either, perhaps his regime would have preferred sending some rockets to the Georgian "rats" rather than Ukrainians.
>I would have never believed all this just a few years ago, how it will go down.
They have been following the same playbook since 2014. I'll tell you how it will go; Salami tactics.
Invasion of crimea,
Annexation of parts of georgia,
Annex Belarus,
Annex Kiev,
expand military and mining presence in the artic,
Incite war in serbia with other baltic states,
annex a modern yugoslavia.
At this point they will be the only major power who has been on a war footing for 10+ years. (US Skirmishes do not really count). They will have the inhouse manufacturing capabilities and knowledge to execute a ground war with the EU and will start by taking Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I believe once they accomplish the above, they will be happy... for a generation or so.
Surely not the last opposition figure and Russia will run out of manpower as every attacker has a higher loss than the defender. You forget Lukashenko, he wasn't unwilling to let Belarus join the Russian Federation for no reason. As soon as Putin dies for whatever reason, Lukashenko will be the first to race to the Kremlin and take over.
Personally I have great hopes that an outsider like Kasparov could become President of Russia once Russia is defeated. He did attempt to run for presidency in 2007.
You do read the news? Ukraine is sinking the Russian Black Sea fleet ship by ship with cheap sea-drones. Ukraine is destroying Russian oil refineries and Russia has to reduce it's crude oil production now that India seems to saturated with cheap Russian oil.
On Ukraine ceding territory, I assume that's in case of a peace deal? Putin will sell that as a victory to the Russian people and prepare the next attack a few years later. This simply isn't an option for Europe to allow. Russia will crumble.
* Lukashenko is president since the post was created, his position is quite solid and will be useful when Putin's time is over.
* just two years into his presidency he signed a Union treaty with Russia, then still ruled by Yeltsin. Russia always understood that treaty as Belarus becoming part of Russia, something Putin is very keen on, extending Russia by force has happened more than once since 2000 but Belarus joining peacefully would push Putin's popularity. Lukashenko again and again promised things like introducing a common currency by 2004, 2005, 2006 and "maybe" 2007. Didn't happen. For Lukashenko it's a carrot he dangles in front of Putin.
* Belarus didn't join the war against Ukraine, and Lukashenko profited a lot when he got Wagner to stop their rebellion.
I’m sorry but how are any of those points suppose to suggest Lukashenko, the unpopular ruler of a weak country slowly getting eaten by Russia, is poised to take control of Russia?
>> as every attacker has a higher loss than the defender
On what are you basing this assertion? I'm going to assume it's a flawed understanding of the oft-cited "3:1 rule", which a) isn't a rule, but a planning guideline b) never referred to casualty ratios, but to force ratios suggested for a successful attack.
>> Personally I have great hopes that an outsider like Kasparov could become President of Russia once Russia is defeated.
What influence does Kasparov have with Russia's security establishment? In other words, why would any of the men who actually wield power in the country support him?
Hoping for regime change in Russia? Am I insane, or are the supporters of the ongoing holdout of the Ukrainian government literally dreaming for WW3? Why the hell does anyone here give a shit who rules eastern Ukraine? Why are we sleepwalking into a geopolitical firestorm?
He never represented any real hope for regime change.
He was just a useful figurehead to attract sympathies from the west, but he never posed any threat to Putin and even if he somehow got into power he would do nothing to change Russia for the better.
He died (was killed) because he no longer served a purpose for Putin.
The entire problem with "Make <blank> Great Again" and business monkey dick-waving in general is that it carries an inherent assertion of success, while doing very little work to actually make that success happen. So it doesn't really make sense to brush aside the implausibility and analyze it in the a posteri context of "if it succeeds", any more than indulging the fantasy of a child saying "I want a pony". And sure sometimes such gambles can actually end up working. But that's more for debt/confidence based businesses where keeping investors on the hook can win significantly more resources. At the level of national leadership, such delusions are just ignorant.
I’d say it’s more accurate to say the Republican Party is firmly beholden to a man who is at times openly pro-Putin and the rest of the time merely transparently pro-Putin.
Thanks for clarifying, I'm not an American, and I was not aware Trump is openly pro-Putin. This is quite concerning, do you mind clarifying what openly or transparently pro-Putin policy positions he takes?
Well for one, his public and sharp criticism of NATO countries that he's decided are not or have not been spending enough on defense. Airing that stuff out in the open sows division and weakens the unity of the alliance. And it often seems like he is angling toward pulling the US out entirely at some point--though I'm not sure he'd be able to.
There is none, it is 100% rhetoric. When AOC says "Eat the rich" , do people think she literally wants the masses to go find the nearest billionaire and start cannibalism?
Trump thinks that the US pays too much into NATO and others not enough. This his tactic for getting other countries to pay more for the security we all enjoy which isn't free.
I'm not a Trump fan but I see through his words to his tactics.
The MAGAts in the House from the Speaker on down are blocking all Ukrainian aid concretely, not rhetorically. That's literally pro-Putin, and it comes 100% at the direction of the leader of the MAGAts.
This is quite reductive. 38% of democrats also oppose additional aid[0], are they literally pro-Putin? 100% (one hopes) of Americans would oppose a $100T aid package, are we all rootin' fer Putin? When I earned minimum wage, I steadfastly refused to donate to charity; was I literally pro-homelessness and suffering and all of societies ills?
Those "democrats" are not preventing a vote on the aid, which appears would pass with a large majority. The actual power here resides with the MAGAts, from the Speaker on down, directed by Trump.
I am not sure I can be charitable enough to think you really don't understand this. The reaching is extreme.
I'm taking issue with the claim that not doing something that Putin doesn't want you to do is being "literally pro-Putin". There is an infinite list of things that Putin doesn't want us to do- nuking Russia, for example- and there are many reasons other than supporting the guy not to do them.
I must admit I also don't have the charity in me to believe you made any attempt at being charitable before responding to only the first of my three sentences and calling me deliberately obtuse. 'You sound so stupid that I am convinced it is because you are a bad person' is a lot ruder than I think people realize. I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I'm above average; is it really so inconceivable that a random stranger is as dumb as half the people on the planet that you must immediately accuse them of malfeasance?
Ah. You also have reading comprehension problems, on the face of it, but I don't believe that either.
I believe that you are smart enough to understand the power dynamics in the House, and you understand that I don't think you're stupid. Quite the contrary.
Although... maybe you're a political "centrist"? That would explain a lot about your comments. Then I am sadly compelled to agree with you about what I think about you! I mean that means I'm an idiot myself for engaging with you. Sorry! Look around on the intertubes for what people who study this stuff think about US political "centrists".
Some journalists have interviewed high ranking members of the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who said that Trump told him "he would seek to withdraw from Nato and to blow up the US alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection."
The full context is he said if those European countries did not meet their NATO defense spending obligations he'd let Putin do what he wants with them.
Europe has to wake up. We are so lazy and political incompetent that it would easy for anyone to invade us and have us work in gulags. The only people left that fights back are the slaves, the rest of us is uncomfortably unconcerned.
My wife's from there and I spend quite a lot of time there. Everybody and their uncle became a Slovak politic expert during the last election while half of them didn't even know Czechoslovakia wasn't a thing anymore the day prior.
Unless you evolve in very weird circles you probably know that it's infinitely more complex than 'US bad Russia Good'
> So tell me why would you assume my lack of knowledge?
Hard to tell if you're part of the "Slovakia should be kicked out of EU because they voted bad" crowd that popped up out of nowhere (and disappeared as quickly apparently). It's much less black and white than people make it look like, for example: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27331.jpeg
> Hard to tell if you're part of the "Slovakia should be kicked out of EU because they voted bad" crowd
Not sure why you went that far with your assumptions. I just stated that situation in Slovakia changed. It is not black and white - I agree with you. I mentioned Slovakia where it happened and US where it is starting to happen. It is not going to be black and white there either but that should not be excuse to stay passive.
Fair enough, I jumped on the gun because I heard lots baseless attacks on Slovakia in the recent past, which I assume might be partially orchestrated or at least coming from very uninformed individuals trying to fit their local political games onto other nations'
I was bit vague with my original comment. I should have expect comments like that but I posted that under emotions of this news and what is currently happening at home.
I live in Slovakia. My impression is that the country was always divided; half of the population pro-Western, the other half pro-Russian.
The pro-Western people are over-represented in Bratislava and among the university-educated people. So if you are a smart person living in the capital city, it is easy to forget how the rest of the country thinks... and then you always get surprised when they elect an anti-Western alpha male: previously Mečiar, now Fico.
For reasons I do not understand, Russian propaganda (Slobodný vysielač, etc.) is extremely popular here. I have never actually listened to it, but I don't even need to, because people quote them on internet all the time; it is the source of all popular conspiracy theories.
Luckily for us, Fico lies to everyone, including his own voters. He promises them to side with Russia against the Ukraine... but most of that are just empty words. The actual policy probably will not change a lot, because his main concerns are somewhere else: staying out of prison, remaining popular, stealing more money. Otherwise he will give up under the slightest economical threat from EU. His voters only care about rhetoric, and at home he is going to give them exactly that.
Not sure I remember the source, but even Navalny was not against Russia’s war to get its buffer zones back. Of course, if Navalny was able to magically overthrow Putin, it’d be harder for a democratic regime to fight an offensive war because no one wants to personally participate in a war.
Not sure about downvotes, but Navalny was definitely against bringing back Crimea to Ukraine.
In his own words: "Crimea is not a pastry to pass from hands to hands". After it becomes clear that "3 day" invasion of Ukraine is unsuccessful he changed his mind. But only after it, not before.
Putin has exactly one strategy: to remain in power. The revival of the empire has absolutely nothing to do with this. The annexation of Crimea was needed not to revive the empire, but to discredit the idea of revolution in Ukraine that happend in 2014. The war in Ukraine - is the price for the revolution that Putin forced Ukraine to pay, because if the revolution does not have a price, the revolution will happen in Russia
You know, the further this goes on, the less difference I see between both sides. Most people on both sides are brainwashed to the core and are unable to think critically regardless of the country they live in. If you lived in Russia, you would be just another Putin's supporter, trust me. Before accusing me of "lying" and the dead man of something he never did, please reread your own comment carefully, then show the same consideration to my reply. I'm done here.
>Navalny was definitely against bringing back Crimea to Ukraine.
This is a classic liberal position. You just can't give away a piece of the country against the will of people who lives there, no matter international law or what else.
>After it becomes clear that "3 day" invasion of Ukraine is unsuccessful
As far as I am aware of, Navalny always consistently opposed agression against Ukraine, from the very start, including the annexation of Crimea
You forgot a chunk of the US right actively supporting Russia and praising Putin as savior of the West.
They aren’t the majority but are influential.
Xi Xinpeng should take a lesson here. Apparently all you have to do is dunk on gay people and pay lip service to right wing culture war stuff and they’ll roll over. You don’t even have to mean it. (Every core statistic the right claims to care about is worse in Russia like birth rate, divorce, abortion, etc.)
I hang out with people of a huge range of political views, from classical Marxist-Leninists to earnest tear-it-down anarchists, from neolib Obama stans to full magapedes.
I've yet to meet a single one who "actively supports Russia and praises Putin as savior of the West". Like, literally not one. The only time I've _ever_ heard this viewpoint uttered in North America is when people online are sketching it out online as a bogeyman. Even on the trashier, more marginal sides of Twitter it's still America First - I just don't know who these people are that you and others in this thread are so concerned about.
Have you personally met someone who believes that crap? Who, given the option, would prefer a world of Russian hegemony over American? I think we're getting mad at a population that in North America doesn't really exist in any meaningful way.
Usually, I believe the underlying reasoning is that they think someone is not pro-war enough, or anti-the guy enough, when they accuse someone of being pro the guy. Like secret supporters or something. Because actual pro the guy seem extremely rare.
My dad praises Putin as a good leader. He sees Putin as someone who is merely capitalizing on the weakness of Biden, and that Putin was scared of Trump. In his mind, Putin invading Ukraine is the fault of everyone who voted for Biden. It's stupid an illogical, but it is his legitimate opinion on the matter.
He's not even a fringe case either, just your standard old dude who parrots whatever crap Fox News is spewing.
Your average MAGA is a conservative who cares about things like low taxes and gun rights but who is also protectionist on trade and immigration. This is a change from the older Bush and Reagan conservatives who tended to be neoliberal. They may or may not care much about culture war stuff. Some do and some don’t.
I’m talking about ideologues and movement people. I have run into a few of these people in the wild, mostly neoreactionaries, trads, and neo-racists who use terms like “race realism.” I haven’t personally run into really hard core neo-Nazi types in my circles but those exist too.
A lot of the above either admire Putin directly or at least see him as an example of the kind of strong man ruler they think we should have.
It’s not clear to me whether the ideological affinity is mutual though. Putin’s Carlson interview seemed dismissive but Putin has dog whistled to these crowds. Maybe he’s just doing it for propaganda reasons and could personally care less.
There’s also a big claim about Putin being heavily influenced by Alexandr Dugin but I’ve heard others claim this is hugely overblown.
He has Princes waiting in his wings that will continue the same kleptocratic dictatorship in that country for decades to come. Nothing will change when he, hopefully soon, dies.
I know it is enough to fill several books but I don’t see how we went from Gorbachev to this.
I’ll hold hope that the Princes will be less homicidal maniacs. I think there is something extra psychotic about Putin that you don’t find in normal people.
In the early 2000's it was rumored in the west that Putin's health was poor.
In 2008 the Pentagon authored a study that claimed that Putin had Asperger’s disease.
In 2010 there were more rumors about his bad health after being photographed with a black eye.
In 2012, more rumors after he postponed a visit to Japan.
In 2014 "sources" reported that he had cancer of the spinal cord. Other "sources" denied that report, and instead said it was pancreatic cancer.
In 2018, more health rumors, more "sources" saying that Putin was about to resign for health reasons.
In 2020, he still reportedly had cancer, along with Parkinson's disease. And also, leprosy.
Clearly a very, very sick man.
I hope I never get cancer. But if I ever do, I hope I have access to the very obviously incredible Russian medical facilities.
More seriously, you do realize this is the same propaganda that is rolled out every time there is a leader the US does not like? Putin may actually be ill, but you can't determine that from reading US news reports. They tell lies over and over and over.
He’s 71, that’s the meaning of my Father Time is undefeated comment. And I’ve seen the videos of his hands shaking and having to hold onto tables at summits. I do think there is something to the cancer rumors. Either way, no dictator lives forever!
The Ukraine war is a tragedy and I hope it ends soon.
But they have no economical & military power to really do any harm the Europe & the US. Putin makes a lot of noise but really can't even win a few km's in Ukraine.
But the real threat is further east. China is slowly building it's empire, and it's a scary one. Taking over parts of Africa. Migrating it's people. Integrating it's tech worldwide. Making the world dependent while building it's own full independence.
The situation in Ukraine is not very comparable with the US occupation of Afghanistan. The US captured all of the major cities in Afghanistan in a matter of weeks, after which the Taliban were pushed into a sliver of southern Afghanistan and into Pakistan, which borders those Southern regions of Afghanistan. The issue, as the other commenter mentioned, was in holding the territory. This issue of maintaining stability was worsened by how the US both ignored the Taliban's attempts to negotiate early in the occupation and ignored the fact that the Taliban were being harbored in Pakistan (which was considered an ally), allowing the Taliban to regain strength. Had the US targeted objectives in Pakistan in the early 2000s when the Taliban were weak, rather than waiting till 2011, history may have turned out differently.
The problem of Afghanistan has never been conquering it, but holding it, the Soviets ran into the same issue. Anyway, the km's really do matter, if people truly fear for a deeper invasion into Europe.
I don't think it's a convincing narrative that that's what Putin wants, and also that that's something he could reasonably accomplish. But I do hear it often as a powerful narrative to help Ukraine more, and I understand why, but from my point of view it's not very convincing.
At the same time I agree with the sentiment that heavier the losses in Ukraine, the more he will have difficulties in starting similar drama in other countries with large Russian communities.
The US occupied the country for 20 years. Staying just became unpopular. The US lost about as many troops in 20 years as Russia loses in 2 days of fighting in Ukraine.
Not a chance. Kaliningrad is barely even useful to Russia - now that Finland is part of NATO, they can't cut off the Baltics from resupply, and the Baltics watched Ukraine and are less enthusiastic about Russia than ever.
Realistically there's no (strategic) benefit to even defending Kaliningrad in case of a war (and the thing is surrounded by NATO so it would be taken immediately if not heavily defended), so stationing lots of troops there is just a pointless drain on resources. If the Kaliningrad secession movement picks up steam, then they might just let them leave.
I think the links there are less about 'wow look at how this disruption playbook worked in the US' and more about'look you can cause instability without inviting open warfare with NATO'.
Or are the Baltics and her people immune to propaganda?
Sure, but they do the "promoting polarity" thing outside the US plenty. It's a useful tactic; pick wedge issues like gay people or immigrants, spread false or out-of-context news, etc.
> Facebook is where the light skirmishes take place; the mortal combat is reserved for the comment sections of Lithuanian news articles, where the trolls loose a constant drizzle of falsehoods and complaints, each comment helping to construct an alternate reality version of life in this Baltic country of 3 million. Rather than a thriving and patriotic post-Soviet success story, which it is, the image the trolls cultivate is that of a demoralized and angry society whose people are ready for regime change, be it through internal democratic mechanisms or through “liberation” by a friendly neighboring army.
There are significant Russian minorities left in the baltic states from the SU.
Russia will support and radicalize those.
If the Baltics dont react it will lead to unrest and Russia is forced to intervene and "protect" their fellow Russians.
If the states react this will be seen as suppressing the Russian minorities and Russia will be forced to intervene and "protect" their fellow Russians.
True, Putin would need to wait for Trump to make it clear that he wouldnt come to their defense and/or Orban/Fico have done enough damage to the Organization to make this viable.
The same way as in Transnistra, Georgia and Ukraine. Soviet Russia colonized these areas with Russians to control access to the baltic sea/coal production/... and today these Russians lead a "Back to Mother Russia" campaigns.
Ukraine was busy closing Russian language schools all across country, including Donbass.
The inconvenient truth is that such a policy didn't get any serious reversal during the reign of "pro-Russian, Donbass choice" Yanukovich. Nevertheless, Donbass only really went ballistic when the first action of post-Yanukovich Rada was to repeal the "language law" which half-assedly permitted the things I have mentioned in my previous comment.
They are mostly in place. You can get "Ukrainian as native tongue" lessons in these "new regions". Not sure about LDNR as there's some stigma, plus the fact that all those regions are predominantly Russian speaking.
Putin and the Russian political elite have declared several times, in speeches and articles, they want the Russian Tsar Empire back. As early as 1994 it was clear that Putin wants the Baltics back (see Hamburg incident).
> But they have no economical & military power to really do any harm the Europe & the US. Putin makes a lot of noise but really can't even win a few km's in Ukraine.
Let's see how the situation in Avdiivka develops in the next few weeks. Ukraine is reinforcing the area, but it doesn't look good.
We've seen plenty of blunders by the russian army. But you should not underestimate your enemy.
Putin (and the Russian (leaderhsip) culture in general, see Stalin) is this:
What are a 100M (of our) people dead if we own Ukraine/Baltics/East Poland/Georgia/... for the next hundreds of years?
Stalin had the same blunders, thats priced in, the Red Army had meat wave attacks in WW2 and lost millions, but achived all it's war goals (Poland, Baltics, Eastern Europe including half of Germany - only the US achieved all it's war goals too, everyone else lost, sadly Poland had the biggest loss).
People have been steadily getting poorer thanks to inflation eating their stagnating wages combined with skyrocketing consumer and housing prices and the birthrate keeps dropping.
Poor people had plenty of kids because they had no standards nor accessible birth control or they come from a conservative religious culture where having kids is the norm.
But once people taste the good life, like westerners had it so good a while a ago, they don't want to bring kids in economic conditions worse than before, so the poorer you make them, the less kids they'll have.
So to compensate, you don't focus on improving the conditions for the locals to convince them to procreate, but you open the immigration gates to people from poor places with no standards, happy to bring kids in conditions that are way better than what they have in their own country, even though they're worse than the locals had a few decades ago.
He absolutely increased poverty levels, education is in extremely sharp decline, propaganda is thriving, and he started to fight birth control (so far, emergency contraception only).
And I must remind that Russia is having an electoral event this March, so the repressions were temporarily put on a back burner - but unpopular changes will come shortly afterwards. Check back in May or June.
Considering the USSR partnered with Nazi Germany to invade and split up Poland, yes, the Red Army was definitely the aggressor. There's also a school of thought amongst historians that if Germany hadn't attacked the USSR in 1941, the Soviets would have been prepared to attack Germany.
There is prehistory[1] to Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and simply labelling Red Army as the aggressor instead of considering political actions of every EU state is injustice to sanity as well as ignoring prehistory of 2022 escalation.
Really not sure what you're rambling about mixing up the EU with Red Army stuff or "injustice to sanity". Poland had existed for centuries before being dismembered in the 18th Century. Reconstituted after WW1, it was a fully recognized and sovereign country with its own language and culture. The fact that it had the misfortune to lie between Russia and the Hapsburg/Prussian states.
Have you ever thought about what Russia's influence in the AI sector would be by now if they would have focused on developing it instead of starting a war? Developing it while pretending a peaceful cooperation with the West?
It might well be that China supports Russia's war effort so much because it knows that this way Russians will have zero time and resouces to focus on being an AI leader, and through it, a threat to China.
The biggest win for the US and China is that Russia will now never be at the cutting edge in AI development. The longer this war goes on, the better it will be for both the US and for China.
Even Europe will be more advanced than Russia during the next couple of decades.
Putin's Russia does not have a good track record of developing strategic projects with big R&D component. If anything, they spectacularly failed in space, in nanotechnology and other fields which were designated as strategic 15 years ago. All Russian successes were in commercial sector so far thanks to many technology entrepreneurs and ignorance of Soviet boomers - the generation currently in power. Despite the enormous brain drain, Russia may be now in a better position to start and make significant progress in something. Russia is traditionally better in mobilizing the nation in times of war than in peaceful times and it shows now, when they were able to scale military-industrial complex capacity very quickly.
I don't understand why he went back to Russia --- on principle, maybe? Regardless, it wasn't worth it. He could and should have stayed in the West and pumped out anti-regime content: he would have achieved much more.
> I don't understand why he went back to Russia --- on principle, maybe?
He was a Russian politician and was intending to stay one. In the eyes of Russian public opinion, a politician who fled abroad - opposition or not - is not a politician anymore, but some foreign guy living in comforts of some Germany or England, either on money stolen from Russians or on the payroll of CIA, not worth listening to. Interests of polit-emigrants and interests of Russians in Russia do not align, and the general public knows that.
This is why Navalny returned and Yashin never left.
I confirm the previous poster: in the eyes of even oppositional public those who fled loose credibility -- at least that they can't call people to the streets under SWAT batons; and also living abroad they lose sense of what matters and events are important.
It could be an argument, but no politician inside Russia call people to the streets either. Navalny abroad had more influence than all other opposition personas in sum.
If we think why they chose it purely rationally, I suppose he and his team foresaw him be arrested, but expected the people to rebel.
Earlier murder attempt by the state, plus an arrest afterwards -- were still arguably unprecedented (Nemtsov 2015 murder being a bit different), plus his all-in investigation on Putin's palace, could theoretically end people's patience, and that protests would have been even broader than in Belarus in 2020.
Plus, his team were all die-hards, no skeptics.
That was all-in move, and it turned out wrong.
I also went to those protests, it was -23°C, and there were more SWAT police than us. I got a harsh reminder as well of the sad truths sociologist Yuri Levada had described in his work "Simple Soviet man".
The day he returned, he released a video about a $1B palace built by Putin with stolen money. Maybe he (mistakenly) believed people will rise to his cause upon seeing the video.
Dying like that seems like a computer who can't avoid but to crash when it hits a single wrong bit on an ocean of memory. Why? Why choose rigid principles that might lead you straight to doom? Why people think this is honorable? His enemy lost nothing, and the allies left behind have to fight with less men.
I'm not advocating for what Navalny did, just explaining his point of view, according to which if you're not ready to die for your principles then you have no principles — just opinions. Again: his words, not mine.
His death and the circumstances will remain in your mind (buried, perhaps) for years to come and affect your decisions and thinking. And you're not alone.
In the end it's advertising for change, and we have data on advertising's usefulness. It can change minds.
Because if he left, the propaganda would have easily portrayed him as a coward. Staying in Russia gave him the best chance he had to win over the populous.
Hmm, in attempt to poison Skripal in London, they poisoned his daughter as well. It is quite silly to talk about this if you consider all the war crimes in Ukraine.
I don't think you understand how this works. Navalny's family physical location made zero difference here. As evidenced by numerous murders conducted abroad by FSB and GRU. No place is safe when Putin wants you dead.
"Escalation management" through "slowly boiling the frog" combined with lack of coherent strategy for the war, partially because some western politicians are afraid of Russia's tantrum in case of Ukrainian victory(using nukes if Crimea is lost, for example), and that are balancing aid so it's enough for Ukraine not loosing, but not enough for Ukraine winning. Equipment that would've been sufficient to win the war in 2022(before Russia constructed massive defensive lines) was delivered in 2023, largely in the second half of 2023. And there's not that many signs that it might change.
More important question is how is it that you don't know that NATO has given Ukraine all of those?
Patriot and NASAMs batteries have been defending Ukraine for a while. ATACMS have been used against Russian air fields. F-16s aren't being used there is a lot of training first, but they have been delivered.
Just domestic politics under effective Russian influencing campaigns ("America first"). If the Democrats were against Ukraine and pro-Russia, Republicans would be violently pro-Ukraine. There is no other reason.
Trying to postpone a direct conflict with Russia perhaps? Attempting some Chamberlainian achievement in preserving peace against a ruthless and untrustworty agressor? Hopeless efforts of course but the stakes and anticipated damages are quite high actually for being not too eager escalating.
Like Novichok being used by Russia in England to assassinate UK citizens. I don't get why the west is afraid of escalation when Russia just does whatever they want. Russia shows no restraint. They crashed an expensive NATO drone recently. Correct response is to shoot down their planes if they crash ours.
The US did give them a lot (HIMARS, Bradleys, ATACMS, a few Abrams, cluster munitions) and Europe did too (Storm Shadow, Scalp, Leopards).
I don't remember whether the Patriot batteries came from the U.S. or were traded out of some European countries.
The U.S. could have supplied a lot of the advanced weapons much sooner, but Biden dithered. Supposedly Ukraine will get F-16s any day now.
For now, U.S. aid is being blocked by Republicans in Congress who insisted that Ukraine and Israel aid be lumped into a border bill, but then they abandoned the border bill and speaker Johnson is blocking a vote in the House. There's no policy reason for this, it's just that they want to make Biden look bad in an election year and a lot of representatives are afraid of angering Trump and his supporters.
Because this whole shit is just another cold war meant to drive the interest of power on both sides. The west got justification to jack up prices on everything in the name of "energy crisis because we need to do the right thing" and the East can expand their power and nationalize western businesses in the name of "sanctions" that happen to be relabeled and still run profitably through shell companies. It's all just another big squeeze to wring some more out of the normal folk.
And just like every other time, you're the stupid one if you don't vote in lockstep with the current trendy war.
And then two decades later after the war, when people aren't so vehemently biased one way or the other, then everyone agrees again "war is stupid - why did everyone fall for it?"
A historian and renowned Russia expert in my country (Estonia) commented that this was probably bad timing for Putin. Now, as a martyr, Navalnyi is much more of a disturbance to Putin's regimen than he would have been as an isolated opposition leader serving a 19-year prison sentence, which rendered him not a direct threat to Putin. Like the expert put it: as a political prisoner, Navalnyi was already simply forgotten by many. [1]
Somehow this got me flipping through a book by Anna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist extraordinaire who covered the Second Chechen War and was shot dead in Moscow in 2006, on the birthday of Putin. [2]
I want to think that the age of massive online information does make at least a slight difference as to how much of the reasons behind events like these see the light of day eventually. Rest in peace, Alexei Navalnyi.
1: https://news.err.ee/1609255851/historian-navalny-s-death-wil... (Interestingly, the paragraph on Navalnyi being more of a disturbance now, after being declared dead, was not included in the English version of this news story. This is quite surprising, since ERR is actually a very well balanced source of news. All in all, that story includes interesting takes on Navalny as a politician, too, by another highly respeced Russia expert from Estonia.)
I love how naive and gullible most people can be... Just google past the first result and you'll see that he is a carbon copy of putin - they are literally the two sides of the same coin. His personal views were perfectly in line with the russian leadership for the past 300 years: believed in imperialism and ethnic superiority. He played opposition for one reason and one reason alone: personal gains. He softened down his tone internationally in the past decade just to buy himself some sympathy from the west(and sadly way too many people ate it like a fresh doughnut). But he was no different. Assuming there is such a thing as opposition in russia(which, I'm sorry, I don't believe for a nanosecond), I'd argue his contribution was to further divide it.
I haven’t looked hard into this issue but that’s the more likely explanation in these kinds of situations. So you have a terrible kind-of dictator and you have a seemingly charismatic opposition. In a country stereo-typically ruled or co-ruled by oligarchs. What’s the most likely explanation? That the opposition is a selfless saint who only wants to liberate Russia (or tone it down to: wants reform, democracy, is kind of an egotist but is using his ego for good ends)? Or that he’s another shade of dark who is aligned with other factions close to or inside the power elite of Russia? And that Russia wouldn’t fundamentally change with one or the other at the helm—it’s still the same corrupt country.
Of course we The West jump to the fantastical conclusion that he, an opposition leader in Russia, wants everything that we want and would be the seedling of prosperity of Russia but also (most importantly) wants to be friends and buddies with The West.
Not surprised to see your comment at the very bottom of this thread by the way.
That's what I mean by naive. I doubt you'd find anyone from a country that was a member of the Warsaw pact with a functioning brain that would disagree with me. I'm saying that being a representative myself. And you really don't have to look all that far to see that what I said about him is true: being the other side of the same coin. Literally a few scrolls down the results page on google and you find this [1]
He should not have been murdered in a Russian prison. But if he would have somehow become the ruler of Russia, he would have had to been ruthless or be toppled by someone else. The system in Russia can't be changed by one man on the top. That's like imagining a mafia could suddenly be transformed into a an open and democratic organization.
Assuming anyone wants to change it to begin with. You know the 5 monkeys experiment? In reality, russia is simply a large scale version of it - "this is how it is and the way it's always been".
> Assuming there is such a thing as opposition in Russia
Oh, that reminds me about people in russian internet who said that Navalny was managed from Kremlin. They kept saying this even when he went to prison.
Do you as well believe in the shadow government which controls every public figure?
> Do you as well believe in the shadow government which controls every public figure?
This is a trademark of the people who call themselves "free thinkers", or as the rest of the world commonly knows them, "tankies". I'm solely talking about the russian society: the same society that is unironically congratulating women for getting a new free coat after having their children killed. The same society that's gloating about 4 year old girls having their legs blown off by their rockets. The same society that left their country by the millions in recent years, not because they are against what they country is doing(and had been doing for centuries btw), but because they personally don't want to be sent to the front lines. Navalny was no different and you can easily confirm all that for yourself if you spend 5 minutes googling. Was he managed by the kremlin - unlikely. He just wished to be the next dictator and get his own mansions filled with golden toilets. Had he managed to achieve it though, nothing would have changed but the face of the operation. Navalny had 0 redeeming qualities.
He had nothing to do with the investigations, he just made a youtube video about
them. Join any OSINT initiative and you'll see that he brought absolutely nothing to the table - all his vlog did was to show things that were known for decades. More importantly all that "investigation"/vlog did was to outrage the non-russians. There are plenty of interviews with average russians who openly say "well yeah, of course putin has big and expensive mansions - he deserves them". And you can clearly see they truly mean what they say.
Looks like you have quite a grim outlook on russians, saying that Navalny would have ended up being the same dictator, that russians want war and want Putin as their president.
But why? I lived in Russia and even I can't be that certain. It's hard to talk about war with random people to understand their attitude. Because they live in environment where at some point you could be punished for calling this war a war.
Sorry, I've had my fair share of experience with russians, none of those were positive and I'm being extremely generous. And sorry, "you could be punished for calling this war a war" this is called being a chronic coward, assuming they do not support the war. When the special forces were beating people up to death on the streets a few kilometers from my home in the 90's, my dad picked up a crowbar and went out to fight back and my grandmother, who was 50 kilos went out to do the same with a wooden stick. They were both willing to do everything they can, even give their lives if it came down to it. This says one of two things about the current russian society: either cowards or psychopaths supporting genocide. But most probably both.
And yes, look him up on google, swap the face and the voice and you won't be able to tell the difference between the dictator and the dictator wannabe - they say the exact same things.
He was a realist and tailored his positions to appeal to the Russian mentality in the hopes of changing it from within. If he really wanted "personal gains" he wouldn't have gone back to Russia.
Yeah, he did it all for the immense personal gains of … getting poisoned, imprisoned, and dying in an Arctic prison colony before reaching 50.
Navalny being a Russian chauvinist should be utterly unsurprising: it would be significantly stranger for Russian opposition to be a stereotypical '60s hippie as opposed to, you know, Russian.
Personal gains as in hoping to become the next dictator - he gambled and lost. Nothing more, nothing less. As I said, I don't believe anyone in russia wants to change the system on either political level or social level. From what I can see, (almost) everyone strives for this lifestyle. It's only a question of who comes out on top.
I always wondered if he went back because he hoped to use his popularity after surviving the poisoning attempt to stir up enough chaos and somehow get into power. He probably felt if he even had a 5% chance he had to take it. Him being a narcissistic opportunistic politician makes a lot more sense to me than some heroic figure who risked his life for the Russian people.
American news media is all about the narratives and they love heroes and martyrs. I imagine in the next couple of weeks this guy will be turned into the Russian MLK of some kind, some comment here already made the comparison. It's just unreal how blatantly manipulative the whole thing is.
It's hard to think of any military intervention in the last 60 years by US and their friends that left the region or country in a better state, Asia, South-America, Africa, Middle-east it all became big mess. Arguable some of that mess was by design, but not all.
Russia is not something anyone can solve from the outside; they have to figure it out themselves. Same for the Europe & the US, there are enough things to figure out here.
Like what? Boycots are in place, what remains? CIA mingling? Taking Putin out? Any of those things are hard to predict and allow you to confidently steer the country in a right direction. There arguably a lot of places, for instance South America & Iran, where those action were taken and only made things worse.
Boycotts are definitely not in place and as long as we tolerate countries doing an end run around any kind of sanction without being sanctioned themselves they will remain ineffective.
Sanctions are a patronizing form of punishments that have hardly ever been effective and are hard to maintain over a long period of time. Take Iran, even when there is a huge international block working together against Iran, the people suffer yet the government continues but just in secret to develop their nuclear program. And if anything it spurred Iran's warlike actions in the region.
To do it because of Navalny would just be a out of a wish to punish, not out of knowledge it would actually change the situation. And is it the role of the West to dish out punishment?
Besides it would just be used by Putin to empower the internal story of the threat of the West & NATO.
That's not what I hear from the people that I know on the other side of the divide. They know damn well why this is happening and who is in the driving seat but: they're scared, they don't want to be seen as unsupportive because people have already died because of that and they don't want to speak out because that's a surefire way of seeing your life completely screwed up or ended.
Putin is where he is because he doesn't hesitate to kill each and every person that questions his authority, you can't expect people in an environment like that to go out onto the streets to demand the dictators head because it will end in a very predictable way. But the general impression I get is that people are broadly visibly supportive but in private a lot less so if not outright against it. This makes it very hard to measure the temperature in Russia. There is a good reason why Putin keeps murdering the opposition (or removing them in other ways): he knows that if there is a fair election and a half decent challenger that he's history.
It depends on what part of the population, yeah young tech/internationally oriented people often yes. And also Russians in Europe often are anti-putin.
But Russia is big and I also know a handful of people where he is the one who gave stability & although they are not stupid the idea that he is fully lying or wrong is hard to accept for them.
They generally accept the Ukraine narrative the Russian Media portrays, since it's all they know; and they have no reason to trust the West more then mother Russia.
Like accepting Russian refugees, lots of them. Putin can't fight a war if he has no people. Ban them from defense sensitive industries for 1 generation and spread them around Europe, US and elsewhere.
It's also the humane thing to do. Accept any LGBT and any Russian who lives outside of Moscow or St Petersburg who are being forcibly conscripted for the meat grinder at 10x higher rates (effectively murdered).
Indeed, drain the country of anyone of value while enabling better lives for these people. Extend comfortable retirement plans to anyone responsible for maintaining Russian nuclear hardware to drain the institutional knowledge needed for maintenance and operations; use this information to prepare to disarm it. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is currently the only thing holding the world back from taking aggressive action. Defang the cobra.
I'm totally for it and I will support any Russian that leaves their home country to withdraw their support for the war in any way I can - and have already done so, so this is not just words.
It would be a grand and very effective move if done in a major way.
Half-done it could be very dangerous - getting many well-connected and affluent people with nothing against in principle to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but who don't like the practical consequences for themselves.
> Half-done it could be very dangerous - getting many well-connected and affluent people with nothing against in principle to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but who don't like the practical consequences for themselves.
Maybe disallow them from voting in local elections for 8 years after immigration so they have no political influence. And spread them around many countries so they're less than 1% of the general population.
Even if they're pro-Putin it might still be a net good getting them out of Russia. It's now a war of attrition, the #1 thing that matters is manpower (manpower for conscription, and manpower for industrial production).
That's important, but it is also not the problem we have today. Right now what we have is an out-of-control nuclear weapons wielding/threatening kleptocracy that murders many thousands of people every month. Picking up the pieces is the next problem and the sooner we have that problem the better. It is definitely worthwhile to point at this problem because to a large extent that's how we ended up with this mess in the first place, but it is not the immediate one and arguably an easier one to solve than the one that we have now, especially given lessons learned.
Meanwhile, some Russian emigres are actually returning because the sanctions, and general public distrust, are making life quite hard for them in the West.
As a Russian emigre myself, I can say that when you are calling for sanctions, you're calling for people like me to get screwed. Putin and his cronies don't seem too much damaged, on the other hand.
This is always a tough thing. I think the best sanctions are the ones that hurt the sanctioner more than the sanctionee, that way at least there is a clear negation of any such argument and that any kind of damage to the sitting regime is what it is all about.
What doesn't stop to surprise me is that in every occasion that such dictators rise to the top of the foodchain there there is a whole cadre of enablers that can't wait to be part of the machine. Without them it wouldn't get off the ground. But they always exist and they always seem to exist in large enough numbers that these assholes get to make their play, to the bitter end in most cases.
What do you want to world to do? Russia is already under increasingly crippling sanctions and many countries are funding + arming its opponent in a war.
Russians need a travel visa to go to any Western country and most of the world. Some EU countries are banned Russians from entering; the US is not issuing travel visas in Russia anymore.
US is actually quite good on offering entry to refugees from Russia. At least 30,000 people from Russia entered US through Mexico and requested asylum in US and many got it. The problem is that it's only option for basically rich citizens of Russia because whole process is expensive, hard and quite dangerous.
EU is much closer, but it does nothing. Putins regime could've lost 30-50% of it's high-skilled workforce if EU or UK just made it easier to immigrate. E.g literally 100,000s of Russian IT workforce left due to war and political situation, but getting actual work visas is hard process and outside of country of citizenship it's only gets harder if not impossible.
But honestly west can't even help Ukraine efficiently. How can one expect EU to actually do anything to cripple Russia economy...
There are a lot of political immigrants from Russia as well as people who trying to avoid being drawn into army. And for people who left Russia back in 2022 it's just basically impossible to get any visas anywhere simply because you can't apply for one outside of Russia without having some other residency permit that' impossible to get in Georgia / Turkey and many other countries.
EU still provide visas to tons of people who continue to live in Russia and pay taxes in Russia, but dont give any visas to people who left and dont support Putins regime.
And a tourist visa is hard to get even with a residence permit. The consuls (rightly) see you as an immigration hazard. After all, you've already moved countries one time, who's to say you won't repeat the trick?
Meanwhile in Moscow, you have a good chance to get a 5-year visa from France.
Fun fact: the exact same phenomenon was being ridiculed by the White Russians, back in the 1920s. European countries were suspecting them of being Bolshevik, yet the actual Bolsheviks could come just fine.
Now, of course tourist visas are not really relevant for emigration, but it's an example of the attitude shown towards us.
It's not like west suppose to kill or inprison them. Just go after their finances and throughfully check their source of wealth. Lots of lots of people who are close to Putins regime continue to live in a west and spend money they get out of Russia.
> No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
> Pillage is prohibited.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
KYC and AML procedures have nothing to do with Geneva convention. There are a lot of Putin cronies whose families still live in west and launder money they make on this war every single day.
To add to this: Germany is more than happy to launder russian money - see Deutsche Bank, Vivid money, Solaris Bank etc. BaFin (the financial regulatory authority in Germany) ignores the situation (like they did with Wirecard)
A couple of months (more like years, maybe?) ago it was fairly easy to find many articles about FSB money being laundered through Vivid. But, lo and behold, a search for "FSB" and "Vivid" returns some very ...strange articles: https://imgur.com/VOCNvna
Enact personal sanctions against war-enablers, which is fine with me by the way. But the family of war-enablers are not necessarily involved in their crimes. You didn't mention stolen wealth or money laundering at all. You said:
> And their families and kids who all keep their money in US, UK and EU.
Let's just say, for arguments sake, there is a child who is genuinely estranged from his war-enabling parents, living in Europe on his own dime. Should they fall under these sanctions? I would say no.
War enablers have nothing, their families apparently have a lot, somehow. A strict KYC/AML would quickly find connections of their family wealth to Russia, Putin and his regime. However reality is banks forced to go after each and every Russian due to universal requirements which they have to apply to all equally. This makes any sort of comprehensive KYC/AML checks impossible because of the scale they have to applied at. These restrictions really target ordinary Russians while high-net-worth individuals find their ways around. West should dig under specific individual rather than doing what it does today. Navalny’s ACF has a list to start with.
I did. Now you may argue that NATO and Russia are not in a state of war and therefore Russian citizens do not fall under the definition of a protected person given in article 4, but then you would be saying that it is alright to commit war crimes during peace times. Which seems kind of backwards to me.
It's a war economy. Russia builds a lot of tanks, mans a large army, pays a lot to the families of the fallen, it all adds a lot to the GDP.
But those tanks are going to burn, they don't add value to the economy, won't be exchanged for foreign goods. If you dig a hole into the ground, you increase the GDP, war destruction is not much different in its value creation. GDP is not a perfect measure of an economy.
A) Russia is large enough that it doesn't really need foreign trade to have an economy
B) We -- ie "the west" have no control over what India and China does wrt russia. If they keep buying Russian oil, we can't stop them.
> Russia is already under increasingly crippling sanctions and many countries are funding + arming its opponent in a war.
Supply more weapons to Ukraine? No matter what, Ukraine lacks resources everywhere. Tanks, long-range missiles, anti-air defense, artillery, ammunition.
Alternatively, we can do whatever we can to assist the Russian opposition. A lot of them have been forced into exile. Give them money and access to even a bit of the juicy stuff the CIA is bound to have on the entire Russian elite...
That's different from having a working country and well functioning economy. Not that you're wrong, just I don't think that is in indication of the sanctions being effective or not.
They're not nearly crippling enough. But the problem is that there are a lot of sanction breakers and that those get away with it because we allow them to. That could and probably should stop. Obviously that will hurt the West as well but I'm ok with that, there are no principles without a cost.
There're countless studies conducted during the Ukraine-Russia war pointing out what sectors to hit with full export ban to grind Russian military capability to a halt (e.g Austrian GFM manufacturing equipment for artillery barrels production). But this is very politicized discussion. Obviously companies will want to protect their interests and politicians prefer to make strong and visible statements in place of the working ones (like, freezing Russian assets outside of Russia does very little damage to Russia itself right now, compared to, say, decimating their heavy equipment supply chain)
Business is separate from war (see Sweden's metallurgy industry during WW2).
I think you’ll find that even the neutral countries are providing support to Ukraine via the backdoor (eg Swiss with their armour going via DE).
I believe the strategy that the powers at be are attempting is to keep Russia occupied in Ukraine for as long as possible without major escalation. Without assigning morality, it seems like a tough balancing act to achieve.
There isn't much more we can do. NATO could end Russia with more weapons and making a defence deal with Saudis in exchange for price dumping of oil and gas[1].
But no one wants a nuclear state to fail. Moscow must be terrified of another coup d'etat, hence Navalny's death.
[1]extracting, insurance and delivery cost for Saudis are about $17 and for Russia it maybe as high as $40 now.
When Russia invades Poland to create a land connection to Kaliningrad, just as they invaded Ukraine to create a land connection to Crimea, Europe will wish it had done 10x as much as it did.
Western countries could deliver planes, Germany could deliver Taurus cruise missles, countries could give submarines in the atlantic to target Russian oil rigs etc.
Exactly this. They're slow-walking this thing when they should be decisive. Kick Orban and Hungary out of the EU if they keep playing silly games, make a real stand and stay the course. This dumb half-assed stretching the line is going to end up in misery.
> When Russia invades Poland to create a land connection to Kaliningrad, just as they invaded Ukraine to create a land connection to Crimea, Europe will wish it had done 10x as much as it did.
If it invades Poland. Finland joining NATO makes such an invasion less likely, because (I'm told) that membership gives NATO enough logistics to encircle Kaliningrad without going through the Suwałki Gap, and this in turn changes Kaliningrad itself from an asset into a liability. No, I'm not sure why Latvia/Lithuania/Estonia were not already sufficient for this.
> Western countries could deliver planes, Germany could deliver Taurus cruise missles, countries could give submarines in the atlantic to target Russian oil rigs etc.
Yes, though I've heard convincing arguments that part of the current Russian strategy is to keep NATO sufficiently worried about escalation that they focus on building up their own forces instead of donating those same resources to Ukraine.
To be fair, a nuclear state did fail. The US launched a program to help secure nuclear material and it more or less worked out.
You could argue that if the Russian state failed then a group of nations could literally just buy their nukes from whatever gangsters ever up in charge.
I'd argue USSR collapse was a messy dissolution. A failure would be: Tatarstan declares independence, regular fighting in the streets of Moscow for months.
Why would Saudi go against Russia for doing something they do themselves, i.e murdering opposition(Khashogi)?
Similarly, why would this be the trigger when the Saudi experience shows US is fine with it?
In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. The number one problem for SA is security. The state is fragile. Wahabi, Muslim Brotherhood, tribes that hate House of Saud. Secondly, Iran possess a direct threat, Houthi could destroy critical infrastructure. $$$$ spent on military doesn't help - they lost the war in Yemen.
SA is on a lookout for allies: Defence partnership with Pakistan which probably end up in a nuclear technology transfer or purchase of atomic weapons.
If USA would give better security guarantees to SA (similar to Jordan) with some tech transfer, SA would increase the output by 2x, which would result in $45 per barrel.
Wahhabism isn't an internal threat to Saudi, like at all. It's their export ideology and it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world. Wahhabism in actual Saudi is completely different to what gets exported.
As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China), will need to see where it leads. It's pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list, as they realised(correctly) that all the human rights issues in Russia exist there as well and might get tackled by the West in a decarbonised future.
Not anymore after MBS came to power. Wahabhi missionary worm was a King Fahd policy (and why so many foreign mosques are named after him).
> it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world
Not to most, but it's definetly appealing to a small subset similar to how White Nationalism is appealing to a small subset of Americans.
The religious reforms post-2017 have been massive [0], and the fact that shows like Masameer or Bait Tahrir are being openly produced is a testament to that fact
> As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China)
Only limited to Yemen. The relationship post-rapprochement was still fairly shaky and went down the gutter once 10/7 happened [1]
> pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list
Yea no. Saudi is still continuing with US lead Israel-Saudi normalization [2] along with pushing for a US Defense Pact similar to what Japan has [3]
I think the notion that US Defense Pact is a sign of the countries being true allies needs to be examined. It's clear what the benefit for Saudi is, but it isn't so clear what the benefit for the US is/what the cost for Saudi is(beyond spending money on US arms which they wanted to do anyway).
The reason why I say this: Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything. I think MBS is going fully down the Erdogan/Orban route where he is nominally "West aligned" but is going to be playing both sides as much as he can. When I said allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm).
> Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything
You're overreading into what is a fairly routine demand and response.
Saudi is in the process of implementing MBS's Vision 2030 [0], which requires a lot of financing, and oil prices have been dropping significantly over the last few years.
Most US allies outside of Europe are indifferent to Russia because the bigger bad to them is China or local rivalries.
Even in the US, Ukraine (and Israel and China) almost never comes up in conversations outside of Reddit. Adviika and much of the Russia-Ukraine war is barely mentioned in any mainstream American news because it doesn't hold much relevance to most Americans compared to domestic concerns [1]
> allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm)
Nothing you've said is proof to the contrary. Oil price decreases are always a no-go for Saudi given that 75% of state revenue is financed by oil.
I mean that's kind of my point. I don't really understand what the point of calling US and Saudi allies is when this clearly only extends to the Iran issue in which Saudi is only too happy to freeload on US commitments to the region/Israel as it matches their goals. Its also my more general point, US doesn't really have a lot of allies in the sense "I help you out you help me out", most of these so-called "allies" are interested in freeloading on US's back as much as possible whilst trying to get as much from Russia/China elsewhere as possible.
>Oil price decreases are always a no go for Saudi
Factually false, remember 2015? Saudis tried to kill US shale pretty aggressively.
I didn't say anything about who was or wasn't to blame. My point is just that it's weird to say "there's not much more we can do" when that funding package is still in limbo.
You didn't say it, but it is the Republicans that are to blame. They seem to believe that obstruction is a form of government. And the weirdest thing is that their supporters seem to believe this is true.
I agree, but the person I was responding to seemed to think that I was somehow blaming Congress in general rather than the Republicans, which is reading something into my comment that simply wasn't there.
<< They seem to believe that obstruction is a form of government.
It may come as something of a shock to some, but US constitution effectively guarantees gridlock if the various blocks are unable to agree. It is a feature and not a bug.
In other words, obstruction, such as it is -- last time I checked there were still talks about aid package slowly making it through house with pieces being cut out -- is a valid form of political expression.
History is not a set of if/then statements. It is not written in stone. My most charitable interpretation of the post is that history can be a useful heuristic, but to blindly assert 'future will be' x is inaccurate at best.
I think I understand where you am coming from, but the post I see from you are all unnecessarily 'angry' presenting an opinion as an axiom. It may be worthwhile to take a step back and consider whether those contributions are useful to the community. Frankly, it may be detracting people from the message you intend to spread.
> but the post I see from you are all unnecessarily 'angry' presenting an opinion as an axiom.
Ah, ok so until things really derail you shouldn't be upset. Sorry but I'm not 'angry', I'm ANGRY and that is mostly because I spent a long time working through my various family's stories about WWII, what led up to it and how it all ended up and that nobody that could have done something about it acted when they still could. This isn't some kind of abstract mental exercise. If you're not angry that simply means you haven't thought it through yet.
<< I spent a long time working through my various family's stories about WWII
I do not want to seem dismissive, but I am from the old country and, well, we all have family stories about WW2. I am not going to delve deep into into it though.
<< If you're not angry that simply means you haven't thought it through yet.
I personally think it is a common misconception. Yes, anger can be a good catalyst and may force a person to act, but I am not entirely certain anger is a good advisor. On a personal scale, I rank it just below fear in terms of usefulness.
My actual point: If you are angry, you are not thinking clearly. I tend to remove myself from conversations if I find myself so.
> I do not want to seem dismissive, but I am from the old country and, well, we all have family stories about WW2. I am not going to delve deep into into it though.
Proceeds to be dismissive.
> I personally think it is a common misconception. Yes, anger can be a good catalyst and may force a person to act, but I am not entirely certain anger is a good advisor. On a personal scale, I rank it just below fear in terms of usefulness.
I don't want to be dismissive, but you are giving undue weight to your own opinion over those of others when you probably should at least give them equal weight, on the off chance that you are simply wrong.
> My actual point: If you are angry, you are not thinking clearly. I tend to remove myself from conversations if I find myself so.
What you meant to say: "If I am angry, I am not thinking clearly. I tend to remove myself from conversations if I find myself so."
<< you are giving undue weight to your own opinion over those of others
Are you sure you not projecting a tad bit here?
<< Proceeds to be dismissive.
Would you feel better if I wrote 'too dismissive'?
<< What you meant to say
Heh.
<< you are simply wrong.
What exactly am I being wrong about?
We established we share some ww2 background with its survivors and their descendants and, as a result, your opinion is, at best, as unimportant as mine.
I think we established that emotion ( anger ) may not such a great way to establish whether one is paying attention.
What did I miss?
Friend, I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but so far your responses are not very inspiring. Hell, I am not even sure what you are angry about.
I mean, I can talk generalities too you know. People suck. See?
The question that kicked off this discussion was "What do you want [the] world to do?" In that context it's pretty obvious what it means to say that the US Congress could approve more aid to Ukraine. Of course some people don't want to do that. That's why it remains something that we could do rather than something that we're doing.
But the US Congress can no more approve significant aid to Ukraine than it can make pi == 3.
In a platonic ideal world, sure. But in the world as it stands, this is not possible. The constraints on the system prohibit it as surely as if the Constitution specifically forbade it.
Russia has already failed. The mob controls the nukes, that's the only reason why they managed to get as far as they did in Ukraine. If not for that it would have been long over.
Russia is a nuclear kleptocracy, it is ruled by a mob that seized power in a country that was already very fragile but that still had a massive arsenal. If you think about Russia in terms of a large gang run empire it starts to make a lot more sense. I know plenty of absolutely great Russian people, the country however is giving me the creeps and I don't see any of it ending well.
You can attack a country with nuclear weapons, provided you use only conventional ones, then threaten to escalate to nuclear if they do that. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate threat which would ensure mutual severe damage if not destruction if used, therefore nobody uses them first unless they're completely nuts, or they're cornered. Putin is a criminal but he's far from being crazy, and as for now is surely also far from being cornered. Surgical attacks in
Russia with conventional weapons would undermine his powers and create enough public disapproval to facilitate a coup from within, but should be done with extreme care and up to a certain point in order not to trigger a nuclear response.
Sadly, even using conventional weapons, the number of deaths would be huge; it is entirely possible that Putin would sacrifice millions of innocents sending them to the front line before giving up, also because when dictators give up they usually die shortly after.
Black/Azov Sea aside, they're not touching the area where the power resides, which is usually needed to weaken the leader image. Last bombing in Belgorod is probably just an error, but in any case it accomplishes nothing aside giving more fuel for Russian propaganda.
I should clarify that I'm not defending Russian actions or trying to be a useful idiot here, there just are red lines that if crossed, a nuclear power will respond with nuclear force. The same is true for China, the US, and even smaller powers like Pakistan.
I support sending Ukraine more ammo to defend its sovereignty. Appeasement is also bad.
Systematically calling russian people Orcs is the worst dehumanising things to do IMO.
I have nothing to do with that conflict but I don't like how confident some people are that they're on the side of the Good, thus that they could do whatever to their opponents. (Cf Kasparov who wanted to nuke Russia at the beginning of the war)
The most dehumanizing thing would be to compile all the material that shows what atrocities russians have carried out in Ukraine and show it in Western schools during history classes, would pretty much guarantee nobody wanting anything to do with russians for each generation that is shown the material. And this is ignoring all precedent russian history.
It's very easy to look at what's happening from afar and call the term "orc" dehumanizing, and yes I share the opinion that being too confident in being on the good side is wrong, but we must also not fall into moral relativism were we see a horde of barbarians blackmailing the world with nuclear weapons and we are worried about using the term orc.
Humans are born with equal rights (at least in some countries) but aren't equal in capacity, character, judgment, and so on.
> Humans are born with equal rights (at least in some countries) but aren't equal in capacity, character, judgment, and so on.
This is the most insulting statement on humanity and democracy I have read recently. I don’t really think you have meant it the way you have written it. Let’s unpack some parts of the statement.
> Humans are born with equal rights
This part sanitizes the fact that some are born in poor some in rich families. The rights may be in theory equal but only the one with the wealth and knowledge on political environment will be able to use them.
> [Humans] aren't [born] equal in capacity, character, judgment, and so on.
I can only read this part sensing some rasism and elitism. This neglects a dramatic impact on the environment where the person is born and expectations from them if they want to fit in.
To conclude, Russians are not orcs because they are born that way, but instead because they have been raised in an orc fertilising envirtonment.
Please do not add your interpretations and state them as mine, I'm happy to clarify what I meant: I think all humans should have the same exact rights, but humans aren't born the same, some are blonde, some are tall, some are, in fact, very fucking stupid, some of them are psychopaths. There is nothing classist or racist in that. I don't want to go into the nurture vs nature argument, but if somebody is doing something very bad to somebody else (e.g. attempted murder), he should be stopped. I don't think I am saying anything extravagant here.
To justify or diminish what the bad actor (the would-be murderer) is doing in any way is real racism/classism/whatever.
>but instead because they have been raised in an orc fertilising envirtonment
I mean, after centuries of repression, gulags, etc. I'm sure either the culture or the society could have been affected? Let's drop the orc term and substitute it with "wish Ukrainian genocide".
To conclude, Russians are not "wishers of Ukrainian genocide" because they are born that way, but instead because they have been raised in a "wishers of Ukrainian genocide" fertilising envirtonment.
Now that I've sanitized the sentence, could you point out why I should care about how russians have come to be this way rather than caring about stopping them to avoid the destruction of Ukraine?
Ok. I see that we are on the same page if we were to agree on the definition of “born” to reaching a mature age.
> Now that I've sanitized the sentence, could you point out why I should care about how russians have come to be this way rather than caring about stopping them to avoid the destruction of Ukraine?
The distinction is necessary because the war does not only occur on the battlefield, but there is a significant portion on propoganda. The propaganda reaches best thoose who are not being integrated and with very open immigration policy there now are many within the Europe. With stratification of wealth there are many poor who don’t feel that they belong. Imagine telling them that they are born inferior.
Long before the invasion there were atrocities committed in the war. Civilians killed by literal nazis and the world cheering them on. All because a pro-russian won the election and the pro western candidate was too impatient to wait until the next chance.
Geopolitics is ugly and the world is run by psychopaths. You're siding with one side, and asking to indoctrinate our children to hate the other, just like you've probably been your entire life.
We're always at war with the east. Endless proxy wars and more division is not the solution. We like to believe we're on the good side in the west but I don't, we brought this war on Ukraine with empty promises and now that shit hit the fan we let them fend on their own, and taking the opportunity to test some weapons.
I like to hold my side to a higher standard than the "enemy".
Your entire comment exudes russian propaganda but is shy to bring out specific facts. "civilians killed by nazis", "it's all geopolitics atrocities are normal", "proxy war". Let me tell you this straight: Ukrainians have a right to decide if they want to be part of the russkiy mir or if they want to be independent, no amount of disinformation or demoralization changes this fact.
Teaching history is not indoctrination. You expose people to facts, they'll draw a conclusion. Some facts lead to obvious conclusions.
There is simply no going back from the genocidal acts AND statements made by russians, no amount of NATO bad cope will change that.
>We like to believe we're on the good side in the west but I don't
If you believe russia is on the good side you need to be checked in, but I'm sure you live in a place that wouldn't be impacted by the russkiy mir spilling over and going on some more. Allow me the arrogance to suggest a good intro material to understand why your comment is completely wrong: Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine.
>I like to hold my side to a higher standard than the "enemy".
Same, I can't believe some people would shrug off the kind of atrocities russians brought to Ukraine (again, let's ignore past history). It looks like most russians are even supporting it. The fact is that there are two types of Europeans: the ones who didn't experience russians subjugating their country and the ones who would rather die fighting.
I was watching the protests live in western media and have been following this since the beginning. I don't take my information from anyone but what I see and my own conclusions from the facts.
> If you believe russia is on the good side you need to be checked in
I don't believe one side is the good side, like I mentioned the world is run by psychopaths and I refuse to pick a side. That's the entire problem today, everyone picks a side and sees the opposition as enemies or as the GP said "orcs". The world is more complicated than that.
> Ukrainians have a right to decide if they want to be part of the russkiy mir or if they want to be independent
They did, in an election, which started the Euromaidan and everything went to shit. Tymoshenko was against the deal for the Russian Crimea fleet long before that and she instigated her followers to take to the streets. This is called democracy from "our" side, coup if it's the opponent. I'm 100% sure the US would annex their bases in a similar situation.
Telling that you think the choice is Russia or independence. It's a choice between east and west, the situation is about the fleet in Crimea. Why do you think Erdogan can piss in all directions at once? The Bosporus.
I'm not saying anything going on in the world is okay but you're fooling yourself if you don't think we have a part in this. We want the east poor and in chaos, we were fine with Saddam killing the kurds, but leave the petrodollar? Oh no you don't!
It's easier to call what I say propaganda or misinfirmation, but they're facts. Read up on everything from sources you trust and you should come to the same conclusions. Nothing I say is even far fetched, the US is the self-appointed world police and this has been going on for decades, centuries if you think of the west. Some people just have to run the world and don't want to share.
>I was watching the protests live in western media and have been following this since the beginning.
This doesn't matter, let's just discuss facts.
>I don't believe one side is the good side
I believe that not all sides are created equal. I'd rather have my family be captured by NATO forces than russian ones, what about you? I think the term "orc" is even too kind when it comes to people that come to rape and pillage, with no distinction for age.
You are muddying the water with all these implications about Euromaidan, CIA coups, fleet in Crimea, Saddam leaving the petrodollar, the US annexing bases etc. Let's state the cold facts: russia invaded Ukraine with a genocidal intent that has been shown with actions AND statements.
Let's say the choice is between East and West rather than about independence. It looks like Ukrainians chose West, that doesn't give russia any right or justification to invade. There is nothing you can say that justifies what russians have done to Ukrainians (again).
Russia wants to roleplay as an empire but it has literally nothing to offer to its would-be subjects. Are you really surprised about people preferring freedom of expression, free markets, a possible EU integration and the security of NATO rather than being part of the russkiy mir? All ex-subjects of russia would rather die than be at their mercy again.
> I believe that not all sides are created equal. I'd rather have my family be captured by NATO forces than russian ones, what about you?
I rather get killed in the forest than waterboarded in Guantanamo without trial for decades. But I would of course not have to choose at all.
> Let's state the cold facts: russia invaded Ukraine with a genocidal intent that has been shown with actions AND statements
Speaking of facts, how about you start providing your source for this hyperbole claim, and why mine about Crimea is muddying the waters. I also didn't mention the CIA, don't put words in my mouth it's dishonest.
> It looks like Ukrainians chose West, that doesn't give russia any right or justification to invade
No that's my point, they didn't. The pro-russian candidate won the election, and the pro-european side wouldn't have that so they burned buildings and started a civil war. Read up on Tymoshenko and everything leading up to Euromaidan and you'll find what I claim. Use any source you want, it's mainstream.
> Russia wants to roleplay as an empire
Ironic claim given the NATO expansion and the US activities in the middle-east. Russia has what, 3 allies left on it's borders and they're all in chaos from time to time with the western media cheering on the coups, last was Lukasjenko in Belarus. Why is that?
> Are you really surprised about people preferring freedom of expression, free markets, a possible EU integration and the security of NATO
This is the illusion we're being sold, but is speech really free even in the west? Can you imagine we're being told just as many lies as the other side of the world? There are some narratives that aren't allowed and groupthink and cancel culture is used as a weapon in the west. In my country people were ordering too much from China so we created a special toll for cheap Chinese products. Free market my ass.
We need to hold our leaders and ourselves to a higher standard than our enemies, but we don't. Especially not when resorting to name calling like we're school bullies. All our leaders have to say is "yeah one guest at that wedding in the desert was a terrorist" and we're fine with entire families being wiped out with the push of a button. It's all in the name of good right?
If we were actually good we would mourn anyone we had to kill, not agitate against the "orcs" like they're animals. It's disgusting. Meanwhile I'm being downvoted for stating what should be obvious to anyone paying attention.
>Speaking of facts, how about you start providing your source for this hyperbole claim
It is you sending out a volley non falsifiable claims as an argument that justifies the invasion. You might as well tell me that PG is behind everything, I can't disprove that.
>Ironic claim given the NATO expansion
What aboutism.
>This is the illusion we're being sold
Yeah alright. Please don't bring groupthink and cancel culture into the discussion, it's really not pertinent, you are 1 minute away from going "the west has fallen". And I agree with you that there are many things to improve, to say the least. Still, even if the Western free speech, free market, etc. is all an illusion, Ukrainians have the right to pick that rather than the russkiy mir.
>We need to hold our leaders and ourselves to a higher standard than our enemies
I agree. Raping, torturing, pillaging, genociding, should be unthinkable. Doing that is giving up on being human, imo.
>and we're fine with entire families being wiped out with the push of a button
Who's we?
>not agitate against the "orcs" like they're animals
Who's agitating? It seems to me that Western media has been even too kind to russians. The most terrible deeds that by sheer luck emerge and become public are quickly forgotten.
>anyone paying attention
I guess the only one paying attention is you, not sure what you are paying attention to tho, since you seem unable to state something even just remotely close to the fact that russians are doing something wrong. I wish you and your family will never have to live under the threat of the russkiy mir, but, usually, textbook useful idiots and demoralized people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw&ab_channel=Nicho...) tend to be far away from any danger in this day and age, with somebody else paying the price.
> It is you sending out a volley non falsifiable claims as an argument that justifies the invasion. You might as well tell me that PG is behind everything,
What is non falsifiable? You can even find it on Wikipedia, that's how mainstream it all is. Who is PG?
> What aboutism.
Irrelevant, the discussion is about vilifying and dehumanizing the opposition. That's how we get places like Guantanamo and the pictures of Iraqi prisoners US soldiers took for shits and giggles. So what we do as a comparison is on topic. But if whataboutism is your best response so be it.
> Ukrainians have the right to pick that rather than the russkiy mir.
Still stuck here. What did they choose in the elections? Democracy picked Russia, coup gave them West. Read it twice so we don't need to go over it again. Wasted bytes.
> I agree. Raping, torturing, pillaging, genociding, should be unthinkable. Doing that is giving up on being human, imo.
And we don't? The US as we speak has warships protecting Israel in their genocide ("no water, no food, no electricity, nothing" - Israeli Defense Minister). Israel can compete in sports and Eurovision. Wars are a fucking popularity contest to us and it's absolutely disgusting.
You'll probably claim the Azov battalion were fine human beings towards ethnic Russians between 2014-2022?
> Who's we? Who's agitating? It seems to me that Western media has been even too kind to russians.
The elite in the west. Western media. Latest example is Tuckers interview, even before it aired they started questioning why Putin should get the chance to speak. Why not? What are we so afraid of?
Trump wins, and it must be Russia and Assange colluding. No no the americans can't possibly want this. Everytime this embarrassing blaming Russia for everything. Textbook propaganda.
> I guess the only one paying attention is you, not sure what you are paying attention to tho, since you seem unable to state something even just remotely close to the fact that russians are doing something wrong.
This is where you're deliberately misunderstanding me, even if I've mentioned in every comment that I don't pick sides. I just paint the picture that we're not as good as we try to claim and that we should get off our high horses. But I do see how we got in this situation, and it won't be the last one. For every atrocity you mention I can find comparisons from the West. I'm a pacifist and want peace and cooperation, not constant conflict.
Plenty of people are paying attention, but the majority aren't they just change their profile picture to the latest conflict du jour and repeat their politicians mantras. I think peace in the world is possible, but those with the power to achieve it don't want that. An equal world doesn't benefit them. And it's not their kids dying in Ukraine.
I would have much more respect for NATO if we actually went boots on the ground and helped sort out the mess we were part of creating. The poor Ukrainians were fooled, they took a big risk and when shit hit the fan they're on their own because we want to keep the illusion that we're not involved.
Vilifying a horde of barbarians that film themselves castrating prisoners or raping toddlers is indeed something I intend to do and dehumanize. The fact that you think what russians are doing and their past history and depravations towards neighboring countries is in any way comparable to NATO and the US is completely off the bonkers.
After bringing up points like Euromaidan being a coup, Saddam and the petrodollar, you are now bringing in shit like Trump, "elites in the west", and finally the Azov battalion and the Ukrainians doing violence on ethnic Russians, you are bringing out the points of "we must invade because the Ukrainians are bombarding Donetsk children and they are nazis" of russian propaganda. An attentive reader would have noticed that you said "ethnic russians", de facto stating that there is a chunk of Ukraine that is actually russia and must be saved.
I'll let you in on something: the fact that I feel so strongly about these fucking savages that invaded Ukraine and useful idiots gushing down russian propaganda is because I am a Westerner that lives in Ukraine and I've been living here since before the war. Part of the acquired family I have from my partner is from Donetsk and the fact that you bring up Azov and this ethnic russian thing is the cherry on top, the perfect piece of bullshit that me, actually living in Ukraine, is perfectly equipped to call you on about.
>For every atrocity you mention I can find comparisons from the West
No, you cannot. Russia, from its imperial times, has brought upon the world the worst depraved and terrible crimes, nazi concentration camps are a walk in the park compared to the joys of the russian empire and later the soviet union. And still, we're talking about 2024, these things are being done right now.
>I'm a pacifist and want peace and cooperation, not constant conflict.
You aren't, you are a useful idiot who paves the way for the demoralization of your nation and its later destruction
What disgusts me the most is that you seem to be unable to cede on the point that what russia did is wrong. You even mention that brutalities are okay because apparently, somebody else did them in the past. Russia invading is okay because trump/saddam/elites in the west/euromaidan/crimean fleet/azov battalion/whatever other shit you gobbled up on the internet. But hey, you are a pacifist.
Have you noticed how you don't argue any of my points? All you do is resort to calling me a useful idiot, building strawman arguments (like accusing me of accepting Putins claim of denazification, while I myself have mentioned it's all about Crimea, always was) or claiming I'm spreading Russian propaganda. I make a point of only sticking to what is verifiable in mainstream sources to avoid these kinds of useless accusations.
You have a very condescending and unnecessary tone, but make very few points yourself. Why is that?
You claim since you are in Ukraine (I call bullshit but whatever) you have better sources than me, I doubt it. Any source that would put Kiev in a bad light is regarded as traitors and jailed. Like that blogger was recently for example. So honest reporting from within Ukraine forget about it. Even western media has stopped trying to paint the beautiful picture Zelensky is. How many more Ukrainians are you willing to let die for NATOs cause? Are you fighting? To the last Ukrainian like Zelensky wants? For who? Why?
Your comment here doesn't make me unsee the civilians being killed between 2014-2022. This is not demoralization, you should've realized the west are vile scum from the get go and should've never trusted us. We use our puppets as long as they're useful, then we stage a coup or oust them ourselves. I've said I've wanted NATO to enter openly even after Euromaidan, before 2022. Because even then it was obvious what this was all about.
> What disgusts me the most is that you seem to be unable to cede on the point that what russia did is wrong. You even mention that brutalities are okay because apparently, somebody else did them in the past. Russia invading is okay because trump/saddam/elites in the west/euromaidan/crimean fleet/azov battalion/whatever other shit you gobbled up on the internet. But hey, you are a pacifist.
Why are you lying about my claims? Never said anything even close to that. Is there a problem with your reading comprehension? A language barrier? How can I be clearer than I've been in the last 15 comments? It's getting exhausting to repeat myself.
This could've been stopped anytime in the last 20-30 years. Ukraine wasn't even a country back when this all started. You're reacting now that Russia finally bites back, but all the pushing for half a century you ignore. That doesn't mean it's right, but it's expected and logical. We played and keep playing a part. How come only our side is allowed to be afraid, to expand and play power games? A leads to B leads to C. Simple logic.
Is there some kind of natural law that says we always have to be at war with the east? How about we take the first step and try something else for once?
>Have you noticed how you don't argue any of my points?
Your points are all non-falsifiable and are the checklist of russians propaganda (here I'm ignoring the ramblings about trump, saddam, etc.). You mentioned NATO expansion, Azov, "ethnic russians" being threathened, CIA coup, gonzalo lira, and so forth. You forgot to mention biolabs. I use a condescending tone because I eventually realized this was a lost cause and I'm just writing an answer for whoever lost soul ends up reading this thread.
Here's proof I'm in Ukraine, it's some random shit and a corner of my residential card. I'd rather not take a picture of my passport because it would show my nationality, which is Western but which I'd rather not disclose unnecessarily. https://imgur.com/a/dGR5rro
>you should've realized the west are vile scum
>Ukraine wasn't even a country back when this all started
>Russia finally bites back, but all the pushing for half a century you ignore
Doesn't get more pacifist than that. This is a worthless discussion, let's just stop. I've taken a look at your comment history and you seem very deeply involved into american polarizing politics like heads having to roll because of COVID lockdowns, I quote, "Heads have to roll". I'm convinced that what happened with COVID was stupid and government people should be more accountable for the fuck up, but looking at your post history you are a prime example of what Yuri Bezmenov was talking about. I bet you are this close to writing that the USA needs a revolution.
You don't seem to know what falsifiable means. Pick up a map, look at when NATO countries joined, and you'll see the so called non-falsifiable expansion.
It's easy to call me a liar, Putin apologist, and everything else, but difficult to dispute. Notice I haven't called you a single thing, I use my logic and reasoning.
Since you ask, I think the entire world needs a revolution, but a real one, not a color revolution funded by billionaires with agendas. Very few people are living like gods and they do it on the backs of the rest of the world. I'm allowed to be angry about that. Don't miss the real problem by focusing on the problems they want you to focus on. The elite in Russia/China etc are of course also in this.
I see you also suffer from a reading disability. In my very short comment you missed this bit:
> Don't miss the real problem by focusing on the problems they want you to focus on. The elite in Russia/China etc are of course also in this.
Do you see Putin as a part of the Russian elite? If so, why would you think I side with Putin? Do you have any opinion regarding the points I try to make?
Why is sensible and sane discussion so impossible in 2024? Why do we have to build strawmans and sink to these levels just to make a useless point? What happened to people? Am I even discussing with people? It feels more like bots ignoring all my points, crawling the internet, finding keywords and running sentiment analysis just to derail any valid discussions. Depressing, I'm here for mental stimulation. Don't be so fucking lazy.
The Russian soldiers who committed the atrocities we’ve seen in Ukraine gave up their humanity.
It’s the Russian soldiers in Ukraine that I’ve seen referred to as “orcs”, due to the fact they’re a savage invading army that leaves only destruction and indiscriminate death in their wake. Look at what they did in the beginning of the invasion when they thought they would quickly win and their crimes would never be uncovered.
No, you cannot give up your humanity. Commiting atrocities is as history sadly shows us, a very human thing to do. Pretending that those who do are not human is just setting us up for more atrocities.
Calling russian people Orcs is the worst dehumanising things to do IMO.
No, the "worst dehumanizing thing to do" is to gratuitously start a war that has probably killed or maimed 500,000 people so far and shows no signs of stopping.
To suggest that that this level of reactive name-calling (which in any case is used to apply to the invading forces; not to "Russians" in general) is somehow bigger and more dehumanizing than the awful, perverse and entirely one-sided war itself - is really quite silly.
Meanwhile the invading forces have all kinds of slur words for Ukrainians in turn, as I'm sure you know. So the argument is doubly silly, in that regard.
Yes, it is unbelievable. But better believe it anyway because it is a very harsh reality and if we keep pretending it won't affect us then it eventually definitely will. Russia should be kicked off the net and out of the UN for this stuff, unfortunately there are enough other countries run by similar characters (possibly with more polish) that will continue to enable him.
I'm trying to compare Alexei with some other known political figures. For Americans, I think Alexei is roughly comparable to MLK.
USA was able to gradually turn from some positions to different others. For Russia it seems the current situation is still the fall to the deeper chasms of self-destruction.
> I'm trying to compare Alexei with some other known political figures. For Americans, I think Alexei is roughly comparable to MLK.
If you are comparing him to MLK, you've not seen Navalny's videos on Central Asians I guess (in case you need a summary: compares them to insects that need to be exterminated then kills one with a handgun).
Navalny was a russian chovinist, but it's nothing special for russians unfortunately. I don't know what video you mean, but I guess it's from times when Navalny ran campaign for major of Moscow – it was quite popular position back then. But his positions softened a lot since then.
I wish we had more guns in Russia. Then the war wouldn't have happened -- how could you conscript a person if you know he can shoot you the moment you come for him?
He was more like MAGA and Julian Assange combined. Nationalism is very strong in post-Soviet Russia and Putin managed to destroy most of the major groups over the years, they are underground now. Putin was good for the US for this reason alone but not anymore.
A little reminder of what Putin has been up to in the last few years.
- Annexation of Crimea (2014)
- MH17 Downing (2014)
- Intervention in Syria
- 2016 U.S. Election Interference
- Skripal Poisoning (2018)
- Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws
- Navalny Poisoning (2020)
- Wagner Group Activities
- Invasion of Ukraine (2022)
- Killing of Yevgeny Prigozhin (2023)
- Killing of Alexei Navalny (2024)
What is necessary for US and European Laws, to specify any type of contact, endorsement, indulgence even, of such a regime, is an intolerable criminal offense?
Edit: Its difficult to keep track...
- Killing of Alexander Litvinenko
- 1999 Russian Apartment Bombings
- September 2022 — Ravil Maganov's fatal fall from a hospital window. He was chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil. Lukoil was the first major Russian company to call for an end to the war in Ukraine
- July 2009 — Natalya Estemirova found dead in a ditch
- October 2006 — Anna Politkovskaya murdered in an elevator
- April 2003 — Sergei Yushenkov murder was never solved. Yushenkov was one of the harshest critics of the Chechen war and the KGB's successor organization, the FSB.
And I mean this in sad, sombre way. Russian imperialism has never really stopped, it just had an interregnum in the form of a drunkard President, who was promptly replaced.
In addition to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine were also invaded in 2014, and a lot of the area that was invaded then is still occupied today.
It's impossible to pinpoint this with a single event but I think russia is also an extremely negative influence on Europe, with corruption, spreading division and disinformation, and so on. Who knows how much kompromat is going around, when the war started there were lots of interesting people pushing for "peace" (i.e. Ukrainian surrender), including the pope.
Yet it's not Russia you should worry about. But China. They are the real threat and are actively playing strategic chess by taking over resourceful parts of Africa, building up their military & immigrating their people over the world.
China is a paper tiger. They are fated to be weak due to demographics. They’re now beating Japan in the race to become the world’s largest retirement home.
* instantly removes the need for oil and gas
* instantly protects half of the world from nukes and radiations
(if possible, that would have done this 15 years ago.)
Now, as much as everyone, I loved reading the headlines in HN that told me about the new "energy breaktrough that will change everythin" - meanwhile, in the real world, we're stuck with oil & gas, and the countries owning it are basically free to behave as they please. Understandably, they behave... badly (except for Norway, I suppose ?)
But it's good that Silicon Valley stopped caring about producing energy, and is now mostly worried about to worst spend it in VR helmets and training AIs to generate fake porn.
Given the state of "reality", it's only fitting that we deal mostly in lies and head-burying.
For the second point, I don't think there is even anything in sight, so Putin's opponents are bound to only tread carefully with Putin.
With the Republican delaying aid, Trump almost certain to get back at the WH, and the fall of Adviivka just a couple of days away - this is, in objective terms, a good time to be sitting in the Kremlin.
The only certainty, however, is that, through diplomacy, artillery, or biology, the tides will turn. Navalny probably wished he would be there to see it. Fate decided otherwise.
In Texas, I ran into a recent Russian emigrant/asylum seeker who said he had to leave Russia because the corruption and personal security issues were too much and presently unfixable. Since arriving here, he has already hustled semi-seasonal work to reach over $100k/year in independent commercial transportation services. We spoke mostly by using the Google Translate conversation app as he's still struggling to learn English, which is a very difficult language.
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is dead, the prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region where he had been serving his sentence said on Friday.
I'm not sure this situation is comparable because the US is already fighting a proxy war including economic sanctions against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with US materiel and funds directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers.
Situation is comparable politically as an example of promise America probably cannot keep. There’s nothing left to do, no additional pressure to apply. And that is going to have consequences for America more than for Russia.
The latest theory even added Gazprom to the suspects list.
The blowing up of the pipeline enabled force majeure.
By invoking force majeure, Gazprom could potentially avoid penalties for non-fulfillment of their obligations, or renegotiate contracts in a manner that might be financially or strategically beneficial.
RIP.
After all the attacks and humiliation going back and opposing the evil lord is testimony for having skin in the game (BTW, Snowden still in Moscow?).
I couldn’t believe how brave he was going back to Russia after being poisoned the first time, I didn’t understand it and assumed this would happen at some point. I don’t understand how Putin thinks this can be good for him to do this now but it certainly will make anyone running against him aware it’s a very bad idea. It reminds me starkly that Europe is going to be dealing with the Russian problem for a long time after Ukraine is settled one way or another.
I will never understand why Wagner just stood down and Prigozhin just essentially agreed to suicide. He was obviously not a good man but he could have done the world a favor.
I wonder how the Kremlin apologists will spin this one. I find it unbelievable that someone like Putin seems to inspire people that are nominally far outside of his sphere of influence in spite of decades of mass murder leading an empire run by criminals.
As someone born and raised in Poland I can tell you that the Russians are universally hated by other Slavs.
We get along with Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Chechs, Slovaks, basically everyone except the Russians. The sentiment is widespread across central Europe. You can call it racism or xenophobia, I don't care. Putin is not one person, there's a whole nation behind him. Most people online seem to forget this.
1. That’s not a very nice thing to say. Raised in Russia, I know that there are some people who hate Poles, however, all these haters are backwards and anti-progressive in general.
Yes, I expect he'll be getting every possible half-tested life extension treatment that money can buy.
At this stage, I also wouldn't be that surprised if he amends their constitution to allow his uploaded intelligence to continue in the role after his physical death.
Once Putin is gone, someone else is going to take his place. There won't be much difference between Putin and the other guy, and that (small) difference may be for the better or it may be for the worse.
Putin is not in that place because he's somehow an extremely talented (or extremely lucky) person. Putin is there because that's what most of the Russian elite wants. Once he's gone, the Russian elite will put there somebody else who will fit them the most. It would not be reasonable to expect any drastic difference given the unchanging circumstances.
I think this paints a picture of oligarchy that might have been true when he first came to power but the tail is now wagging the dog. In fact it's not even the same dog the elites and billionaires of Russia now are childhood friends of Putin, people who worked with him in KGB or St Petersburg mayors office, the chef at a restaurant he frequented (RIP), etc.
I'm sure any of the original Russian elites left that weren't brought in by Putin regret him being put there would secretly love to see him gone. That doesn't mean they wouldn't end up in the same situation, countries where nobody trusts each other just waiting for the next dictator hard to get out of that cycle
> I'm sure any of the original Russian elites left that weren't brought in by Putin regret him being put there would secretly love to see him gone
Any elites that are there since before Putin, of whom there was notably more in 2012, could simply nominate someone else for the elections in 2012, or failing that, just keep that Medvedev guy for the second term. For some reason, they decided to move Medvedev away and put Putin back.
I am afraid that the set "any of the original Russian elites... that weren't brought in by Putin [and] regret him being put there" is an empty one.
The whole reason was to reset the counter of 2 consequent terms of presidency without touching the constitution since "The Party" didn't have 2/3 of parliament to be sure.
The reason for puttin' Putin was ... Putin himself. The system he finished building during the time (the shift of power and resources to capital from regions was done in 2010-11) doesn't actually work without him as a consensual figure for all "elites".
I am certain that Shoigu, or Mishustin, or Rogozhin, or the same Medvedev again, could all replace Putin just fine should a need arise. As I wrote, that would be a small change anyway, and not necessarily for the good.
Navalny, on the other hand, never had a chance, unless the vote for Russian president was done among the US voting populace. In that case, he would no doubt win a landslide victory. In Russia outside of the Moscow intellectual spheres, he's simply unknown — it's not that the people in Vorkuta hate him, they don't know who he is (was) to begin with.
In the USSR media of 1980s, there was a lot of talk of Angela Davis, she was the undoubtful "opposition leader" in the USA, as presented by Soviet media. Navalny is in the same position.
LOL. Shoigu is a PR guy, Mishustin isn't a politic by any means, Rogozin (if you've meant ex-director of Roskosmos) never was even a member of Putin's party. The common thing between all 3 is loyalty to Putin: proclaimed during 99-2000 transition, the corrupt tax service head and KGB soldier, respectively.
You're talking to a guy outside of Moscow who knew Navalny from his LiveJournal blog. Republic of Komi - the region Vorkuta is in - has 0.5% of Russia's population.
And Putin was a retired KGB officer working under Sobchak and heading the FSB when he suddenly got promoted to prime minister and then named as Yeltsin’s replacement. Not exactly a career politician either. “Putin’s party” is a misnomer, it was created out of nowhere around the guy anyway. If they chose a loyal apparatchik and put him in that place while creating a party around him once, what makes you think they can't do it again?
Transition of power is notoriously difficult in authoritarian systems and Putin is more of an exception rather than a normal occurence. Only Stalin had this level of control in Russia in the past 100 years. Do you remember who came after Stalin? Georgy Malenkov, but even I had to google his name, he didn't stay there for long. Even (the better known) Khruschev wasn't a strong ruler and got ousted in a couple of years.
I think a good proxy for russian situation would be China. They have changed the guy a couple of times in the last 30 years but the policy stayed the same. The only things that can bring a change are either a coup (not likely in Russia) or a black horse like Gorbachev.
I also don’t think that reductio ad Stalinum is in place here. Putin got a full blessing from the retiring guy, and by that proxy from the elites as well. It’s not that he deposed the king in a coup d’etat or something.
The picture where Putin is a detested psycho hated by everyone including all of his comissars who just wait for a stroke (or bullet) to replace him with a popular, young and charismatic Western-style democratic leader — that's nothing but a conspiracy. And as far as conspiracies go — and as much as that conspiracy is depressing — that's actually an optimistic one. Look, something happens to Putin, and we can have a revolution! But the reality is an even more depressing thought. And the reality is that he has both the elites' support and popular support.
You're building a strawman. We can't expect democracy after Putin is gone, but we can't also expect the same situation we're in now. Putin was an exceptionally strong leader, but part of that role is pruning all possible strong competitors, which usually means that a weak leader will succeed him. The good thing about weak leaders is that it's difficult (and personally risky) for them to mobilize a country for a new war, even if they're more psycho than Putin. As you say, Putin has a lot of support, a new random person will not just magically inherit it just because they're now the president.
> a new random person will not just magically inherit it just because they're now the president
How do you explain that Putin, who was virtually nobody, was nominated as a prime minister in August 1999, declared Yeltsin's successor in December 1999, and then was elected as the president in March 2000, less than eight months after the broad populace first heard of him? How do you explain that the Kremlin nominates a governor, the populace who (at times) never heard of that governor comes and votes for him?
Russia doesn't work the way Western democracy does.
So they finally killed him - regime is confident not to worry about him being turned into a martyr since the Russian people has been sufficiently cowed and intimidated since the Tsarist/Glasnost days to accept their place that is modern Russia.
The brave denizens of the Internet love to ridicule Russians for their learned helplessness, calling them weak, docile, etc.
Well, here's another example of the thing that most of those who grew up in that culture know or feel subliminally: the hero always crushes evil and triumphs at the end of the story. But in real life, for every success there are thousands that wither along the way.
> Russians for their learned helplessness, calling them weak, docile, etc.
"learned helplessness" yes
"calling them weak, docile, etc." - I'm not aware of this going on in any meaningful scale.
About the "learned helplessness" and general apathy it's true and the product of many things, one of them a very targeted effort to make the people internalize this during a whole century. China is very similar in this regard too.
All those "decadent" western democracies went through periods of very violent internal wars, centuries of constant internal "cold wars" where the main objective was "democracy" that includes many things like separation of State/Justice/Free Speech, a minimum standard of living ( not just economic ) that society itself does not tolerate existing below that, etc. I'm talking about the real practical thing, not the "cerimonies" or the theatrical plays of "democracy" authoritarian regimes like to show.
Russia never had that, it had a lot of violence, but for other reasons. One of the main one is Imperialism.
"Russia" in reality is pretty much just Moscow and nearby lands, but Russians have imperialism in their psyche. That's why the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, etc are considered "brother" nations. Because most people in Russia would see no problem if they were somehow "peacefully" integrated in Russia.
But when it comes to pay the price, Russians are "apathetic" because even with all those big speeches and grandiose imperial ego, they know anyone who shows initiative becomes a target.
I don't think it will happen anytime soon, but the best thing to happen to Russia would be to breakup in other states as much as this stupid brutality has been to keep it's internal integrity. That's also why they are always inventing evil external enemies.
> "calling them weak, docile, etc." - I'm not aware of this going on in any meaningful scale.
That is a shame because they actually are. I feel the same coward and pity venal attitude with the Hungarian people - being a soulmate of Russians in this regard - whom I grown up with. They would be very vocal about being proud and brave but the actions only show shortsighted submissive conformity to ruthless tyrants for pity same day breadcrumbs - from the wealth taken away from them. Or just liking if others take charge, instead of the freedom to act that comes with taking responsibility for own actions. Smart people using their talents to screw with others, or just laying low in the hope to get by, whatever happens. Whatever! (a good few even participating for similar reasons, and of course there are scores participating, since Putins and Orbáns would just be laughing stock without the complicity and active support of masses)
At first I wanted to argue with your point (suggesting that the elites are to blame much more than ordinary folks) but thinking more, I just want to correct.
Submissiveness that you mention implies that people understand their interests, what's just (in broad sense), and just don't want to act. And we expect that finally they'll wake up and rebel. I also went to street protests in 2021 when Navalny was enjailed, expecting something to change, but was reminded of what I knew from sociology earlier.
Studies showed that it's not submissiveness in post-totalitarian people that stops them. It's rather immoralism and double-think. People see status-quo challengers as suspicious, and discredit them. They distrust the government -- that's why Russian opposition speakers insist that "Putin has no broad support". But they also hope the state will take care of them, and constantly seek signs of this. They hate state officials, but discedit those who challenge them and goes in politics -- especially those trying to pursue interests of common folk.
These traits of character developed as defense to totalitarianism -- interference with private life and demand of loyalty, and daily hardships.
This was describen in a book "Simple Soviet man" (1993) by sociologist Yuri Levada, summarizing his studies of post-Soviet people's views and their contradictions. There are brief descriptions of it in Englihs, try searching for them.
Putin's support is so broad that he never dared to prove it with some real elections. But for some reason he only competes with candidates who were hand-picked by his administration and posses a very questionable reputation. And even against them he resorts to cheating and adding himself votes via various tricks. Broad support, right.
I see you're not into serious talk, just attacking, but I'll respond: you're absolutely right and wrong both. Sure, if you try hard and look for only core supporters, you can get a figure of 25, 20, 15% of voters. If you look at elections and the real % of votes from all people, even correcting for manipulations, you'll also get a this modest figure of, let's say, 15-20% of core supporters.
But what are the rest of people doing? They passively accept the elections. There's a curious poll results by Levada team showing that 2/3 of people distrust the elections, yet 2/3 accept the results afterwards as legitimate. They don't rebel and so on. And the reason is what I wrote above.
You may even suggest that Levada's pollsters are manipulating people with questions, and theorize that in some way you could find what people REALLY think. The problem is why don't they assert it? Is it a real opinion that is not told and that not turns into action? And also, unlike sociologists who try to correct for bias and not influence the answer, the government actually does manipulate people all the time, and makes the undecided middle be loyal.
So insisting on this, "Putin has no broad support", you ignore the mode complex and sad reality.
> But what are the rest of people doing? They passively accept the elections.
So, people not rising in rebellion barehanded against Putin's well funded, armed and organized occupation army counts as Putin's broad support in your book. Serious talk, right.
I actually admire your audacity: you've made two straw man arguments * in a row (#1: "you're not into serious talk", #2: "you're angry") , and then pre-emptively accused me of doing it. That's the spirit!
However, you motivated me to do a more thorough evaluation of your claims. You cite Levada's poll as some kind of evidence, and draw your conclusions from their data. However, we all know for a fact that all independent organization have been either squeezed out of country, or banned, or destroyed/closed. TV Rain, FBK, Ekho, Novaya Gazeta have all ceased operations in the country. Facebook and Twitter are outright banned. So the only reason Levada continues operating it that its reports are acceptable for Putin's administration. No, they don't use it as bluntly as their other instruments, but it's foolish to think of it as anything else but of yet another propaganda tool at Putin's disposal.
So no, just as we can't trust the election results numbers produced by elections officials, we can't trust Levada polls either.
The rest of your argument that 'if people don't rebel against Putin, they support him' is not only flawed, but also deeply immoral. Never having lifted anything heavier than a computer mouse, you, sitting on a comfortable sofa, have no moral right to accuse people for refusing to perish in an unarmed suicide attack vs a military force. Unlike you, I do have an experience of confronting Putin's police, being beaten and detained by them, but I too do not consider myself in position to ask anyone to rise in a doomed rebellion. The regime will fall only when it'll run out of money to pay for its security - when even the riot police and rosgvardya thugs will be hungry, only then there will be a window of opportunity for the regime change. No sooner.
* - or was it 'ad hominem' attacks? You have to forgive me, I'm relatively inexperienced confronting demagogues.
> All those "decadent" western democracies went through periods of very violent internal wars, centuries of constant internal "cold wars" where the main objective was "democracy"
Look I know it's been 100 years and we understand now that the Soviet Union ended up being a force for authoritarian evil. And that all the communist republics having "Democratic" in their name sounds as ridiculous as North Korea doing it today.
But it didn't have to be that way. The ideals of communism and marxism are pretty inspiring and humanist - on paper. They'd never been tried. That they were corrupted by Lenin then Stalin - if they were even incorruptible in the first place - noone knew that at the time. The only objection the west had to any of it for the entirety of the 20th century was that it intervened with the flow of capital and economics. The proof of that is China which, is obviously the main global competitor to the west, and the risk of an actual war over something like Taiwan is non-zero, it is a far cry from the constant imminent threat of thermonuclear annihilation.
And just because the Soviet Union became the symbol of everything that stands against freedom for 50 years in the 20th century, doesn't mean that in the moment the Russian Empire was any better. Ordinary Russians at the start of the 20th century were some of the most repressed and unfree people in the entire world.
They fucked it up but they did try.
Then "real" democracy came in, and turned out to be in many ways worse for the median Russian. The median Russian quality of life was worse in the 90's than in the 80's. While the oligarchs got richer and crime took over the country. The people turned to a powerful leader like Putin and legitimately reinforced his power because he made the country safe.
In the end your conclusion is correct. "Russia" needs to die, needs to end as a concept. It needs reinvention from the ground up. And I don't know if the median Russian is capable of creating something better.
Anyone with an ounce of brain or integrity left a long time ago.
You can learn a lot of that from reading Dostoyevski. At least, from what I have read so far. It's painful to read (injustice, pessimism, disappointment) so I haven't gotten very far yet but it feels more honest.
The same I think could also be said of Russia, in their view they are the hero's, it makes for good and easily digestible propaganda.
I think the triumph of good over evil is a bias we all share, to recognize the complexity, well, that involves a healthy amount of skepticism. I think underlying it is probably a decent ethic, once we define good/logos/love/god. Defining something doesn't mean we still aren't influenced by it
Maybe I am not participating in the 'right' conversations, but I don't recall HN being a forum for such a silly name calling ( and if it is, it tends to be called out ).
<< the hero always crushes evil and triumphs at the end of the story. But in real life, for every success there are thousands that wither along the way.
I think even in US kids learn really fast that there are no heroes; especially these days. One could argue this is one of the factors so many have withdrawn to easier past times.
Just to clarify, I'm not calling HN out on this specifically. This place is one of the most civilized corners of the web. In other places it's rampant though, and I'm pretty sure some of the people holding this view are here.
Really sad news. But if you really think that he was killed - why now? He was "under control" in a prison for multiple years, so why kill him now? It worsens Russia's public image even more
My assumptions:
1) He was killed, but why now?
2) He died because Russians' prison has a really bad conditions of detention - so his health was declining over time
Perhaps because he was more of a focal point before, with that Netflix documentary, and they were waiting for him to exit the public consciousness, or at least have his prominence fade, before killing him. If they would have killed him at the peak of his popularity that would have invited more action from the rest of the world. Just speculating…
It's not my impression that Putin overly cares about Russia's public image abroad.
And plausibility seems a good reason for "why now". You need to be very naïve to not strongly suspect foul play here, or in other cases of people falling out windows and whatnot, but you can also never be quite sure. Not really. So there is at least some plausibility that it was "just" an accident, or "just" illness, at least when trying to sell this to the Russian people.
Amazing this happens just as a concerted pro Russia media campaign is being run by the American political right.
It will be interesting to see what they do now. This is definitely a loyalty test for them. Those who speak out against Putin at this point will be excised from the party.
My country is spending around 1.4% of GDP for defense, therefore it made into the list of countries he would encourage Putin to invade. The guy apparently doesn't know about the over 100 (publicly known) USA military bases and the American people working there (around 13000).
Yeah the last few weeks or so have been interesting.
A raft of politicians block Ukraine aid.
Then they go on the air to say how strong Putin is, and how his victory is inevitable.
Then Tucker Carlson airs footage of himself in Moscow saying what he sees there will “radicalize you against your government, seeing how much better Russians have it, I know radicalized me at least”
Trump argues in court that presidents have the right to assassinate political rivals.
Trump says on national TV multiple times that he would encourage Putin to invade NATO countries.
Now Putin assassinates his already imprisoned political rival.
If you think Navalny was anything but a Russian nationalist, or that he would have acted differently than Putin on e.g. returning Crimea to Ukraine[0], try learning more about him.
Also, Reuters is really showing its bias here by incessantly referring to Putin as "the former KGB spy". Imagine if an article about Reagan while he was president referred to him constantly as "the former Hollywood actor".
You hit the nail on the head. They're highlighting his flaws to make it so his "passing" wasn't really that bad.
It's why he's being compared to Putin. It's a typical Russian tactic: you can't make Putin seem like an angel, but you can portray everybody as corrupt. Make them think that "everybody is the same" and the indifference is more powerful than repression because most people won't even revolt.
Sort of weird that by killing Navalny, Putin made life harder for his shills in the House of Representatives who do his bidding to oppose aid for Ukraine. But I guess he thinks his "Axis Sallys" like Carlson are enough to whitewash anything he does.
Navalny was far from a saint, but his death is still a Kremlin job by any measure, and I suspect will only accelerate Putin's decline, as the state of Russian affairs continues to degrade.
If the various other opposition figures were not enough, there is no reason Navalny will be. Litvinenko’s assassination was not that long ago, and yet there were many since then.
I hope never to see this conflict materialize, but if it does, I expect Russian aviation to be wiped out fairly quickly even without US assistance (they have not gained Air Superirity against Ukraine in 2 years).
And then a lot of angry Poles doing a blitz across Bielorussia.
At that point shit either goes Nuclear or Russia retreats.
People are throwing hyperboles while the incident is merely symbolic. Nothing changes whatsoever.
And while it's easy to armchair guestimate Russia and its future, we western folk simply cant truly understand the nation and its people. They've endured WWII, USSR and some say take pride in how much they've suffered.
But Europe certainly should get its act together, especially regarding its ammo production. There was plenty of time to ramp up after Crimea,now the improvements are predicted to finish in couple of years. And US is again proving its indecideness in maintaining foreign policy.
The war in Ukraine is existential to Putins Russia and I am wishing the democratic nations win. However, I'm not holding my breath. It's the same as having a street fight. Without outside inference, the one who is more willing for absolute violence most likely wins.
Incredibly sad. Navalny had balls of steel to stand up to a murderous dictator like he did. It feels like it was all for nought. Putin kills another opposition figure and nobody bats an eye.
That's not the problem. Here we are all batting our eyes, but that doesn't help. Thousands of Russians went out to the streets to protest the war and got arrested without making a difference.
I'm very unclear on what kind of sacrifice would be required at this stage to change the situation in Russia.
It just seems hopeless. An enormous country (with a tremendous cultural history) that has never known a healthy democracy. It's just not in their DNA. I think the US will give up capitalism before Russia adopts anything resembling a healthy democracy. (Not the the US' democracy is in perfect health)
Even if Putin dies, whatever replaces him will certainly be just as bad. There will be a power vacuum, then a power struggle among oligarchs etc, and then the next Putin will emerge.
When Putin dies things will get ugly. He's spent the last 20 years building a power structure where he holds all the keys. I doubt he has any kind of successor in mind, he seems himself as the only one capable of leading Russia.
The one to replace him will probably not have the same backing from the citizens nor the Kremlin itself. And although I hate to say it, Putin is quite intelligent, which is one of the factors that has enabled him to stay in power. His replacement may not be.
Effectively a lot of stuff we talk about (no more travel, hard to get money outside of Russia) is meaningless to many Russians, many of which are getting good money to go fight in the war.
Do you remember what happened with the large general strikes in Syria a decade ago?
You don't "just" protest these kind of authoritarian regimes; there's tons of examples for this.
In Nazi-occupied Netherlands there was a large general strike to oppose the Jewish deportations ("February strike"). This worked out about as well as one would imagine. It was stopped in about a day by force, with several casualties. Most of the organizers were summarily executed days later without much of a trail, dozens others were sent to prison for a decade, and the Germans warned "we let you off easy this time, but next time the consequences will be serious". So that was the end of that kind of protest for the rest of the war.
There's an old Iraqi joke from the 90s (controversy surrounding Bush's Iraq war notwithstanding, it genuinely was an authoritarian regime and atrocious by any standard): "Congratulations mister President, 99.98% of the people voted for you in the election! Only 0.02% of the people voted against you; a fantastic result! What more could you want? The President growls: "their names". It's pretty funny, and also describes the kind of fears people have. Often these fears are very realistic.
Lots of things you and I can "just" do in free democracies just don't apply to authoritarian regimes. I never lived in those kind of circumstances, and I think it takes some amount of effort to really understand what it's like.
Frankly, it's strange Putin allowed him to live for so long, normally he just kills his opponent quite fast. Maybe it was just a power show to make everybody understand he can control his opponents' lives completely.
The (small) upside of all this missery, death and pain is Europe will lose some territory but gain it's own military security after decades of living from the US strategy alignment. Countries like Poland will no longer buy US weapons but increase European defense spending - they fear just like Ukraine that US congress just turns around and will stop delivering parts for F-35s in a conflict [0]. The US lost all it's trust that was left in Europe.
We just need to get our act together, not every country building or buying it's own incompatible weapons (like tanks, planes, frigates). The war in Ukraine shows how bad it is to run a war with ten different models of tanks etc.
And we can - at last - close Ramstein, Landstuhl and Weilerbach in Germany, no longer supporting US wars in the Middle East and beyond.
Living as a kid through the 70s and 80s with the PershingII/NATO Double-Track Decision I also would not have thought this threat is coming back the way it did.
[0] I'm sure Germany will not proceed on it's $10b F-35 plans
The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin, and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault. The one bill that was blocked by Congress would be more support than Europe as a whole has provided to Ukraine to date.
While I agree that European countries should start to take their defense seriously I don't see how you fault US support of Ukraine.
In fact this war has highlighted that NO ONE was ready for the fight that came about.
Skip the money for a moment. Ukraine right now is marginally fucked for one reason: 155mm artillery shells.
There isnt enough global production to have a war. The US is far and away the largest producer. EU can not keep up and did not bring on anywhere near enough capacity to defend itself in a future conflict.
I would also like to point out that without that humanitarian aid flowing INTO Ukraine those folks flee TO the EU. Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany and having to spend it there. After taking in so many refugees in recent history the EU is gunshy about another migration.
Quoting and translating the best I can (any translation error is mine):
Ground - Air
SAMP-T : 1 system and ASTER 30 missiles
CROTALE NG : 2 systems and some missiles
MISTRAL : 5 systems and hundreds of missiles
RADAR : 1 GM 200
Air - Ground
SCALP : about a hundred missiles
A2SM : several hundred bombs starting in February 2024
Artillery
CAESAR : 30 canons and tens of thousands of munitions
TRF1 : 6 canons and tens of thousands of munitions
LRU : 4 systems and hundreds rockets
Armoured and liaison vehicules
AMX 10 RC: 38 AMX 10 RC and tens of thousands of 105mm shells
VAB: 250 (including VAB SAN)
VLTT P4: 120 vehicles
MILAN: 17 launch positions and hundreds of missiles
Engineering and small arms
Anti-tank rockets: several thousand
Anti-tank mines: several thousand
Assault rifles: several thousand
12.7mm machine guns: several hundred
Other ammunition: several million
Aerial domain
Drones: several hundred reconnaissance drones and small tactical drones
Jet fuel: tens of thousands of cubic meters
No idea how important / relevant it is. Just posting
I do wonder what the shelf life of those things are? Germany could hand over 200 - 300 of those things and just order new one to replace the oldest one in their stockpile.
In general, Germany is not especially keen to enter into conflicts with Russia. They are a long time economic and energy partner. It is why Germany has a history of thwarting EU energy security and solidarity, and why it dragged its feet w.r.t. early in this conflict.
Energy security like from the US? Germany spending billions to switch to US LNG as fast as possible just to be gut punched. Russia delivered gas without problems for 50+ years, the US is not able to deliver LNG reliably for 1 year:
"The U.S. has become the biggest exporter of LNG to Europe [..] U.S. President Joe Biden last week paused approvals for applications to export from new LNG projects to review the climate change and economic impact of such projects." [0]
The only energy the EU can really control is solar, but probably has not enough room for panels to replace LNG with green hydrogen.
Parts of the German government party SPD are long term friends of Putin and need to be dragged by their feet for every inch of the way. At least the chancellor changed course - luckily otherwise there would be no support at all. But he is still fighting a fraction in his party of Putin friends - there is a "governor" of the government party SPD in power who took money from Putin.
All the help is great, but these numbers are tiny compared to what Russia is fielding. Thousands of shells sounds nice until you realize Russia fires tens of thousands per day, and is able to manufacture hundreds of thousands per month. 30 cannons is nice until you realize Russia has thousands. The West can not solve this problem by dusting off whatever is left in the forgotten corner in the storage and sending it out and forgetting about it. In fact, they can't even solve it with fully mobilizing their capacity - which is still not happening - because while Russia (and USSR for decades before that) has been maniacally arming and stockpiling, the West has been reducing their capacities and relaxing under the impression that the Cold War is over, wars are thing of the past, and whoever thinks Russia is a threat is to be laughed at and needs their head checked. Now some are waking up, but from waking up to gaining back all the lost capacity and getting even to parity is a long way, and one that will be very expensive - which I am not convinced the West is willing to do, especially when it's for benefit of some ex-Soviet country that's not even in the EU. Maybe Putin will take it and then just stop, because this is always how it worked with aggressive fascist dictators in the past.
That's not exactly true, as there's plenty of M198 built, they're just in storage. Ammunition is what's the main issue.
There's also plenty of M1 tanks in US.
The question arrises, when people start to realize that the storage of those wasn't up to the required standards.
The worst part was that multiple countries dragged their feet on providing arms and realizing that 2022 was the start of a new arms race. And multiple countries are still reluctant to commit to refill the arms stockpiles.(hence the inability to even start mass production 2 years after it's clear what's going on)
> whoever thinks Russia is a threat is to be laughed at and needs their head checked
As a Lithuanian - I know this all too well. My mother tongue is Russian and Russian political class had been dominated by anti-western, revanchist and militaristic rhetoric for at least the last 17 years. No one in the west bothered to listen.
I’m not sure how the calculations work in other countries, but the US was/is heavily depreciating its donations, and funding/facilitating a much of European donations.
It's more messed up than that. The ROI on US dollars vs Euros is stupefying. There has been a fairly significant spend IN the us retooling for this war. The ramp up of 155 production ISNT aid to Ukraine but is going to benefit them.
And I called out 155 for a reason, the ebb and flow of it has been at the forefront of Ukraine being successful or failing. It is the the most consistently asked for and consumed large item as it in combination with drones has proven effective beyond anyones expectations.
There's also ring trades where the us donates surplus gear to European countries to get them to donate hardware to Ukraine - somewhat inflating tallies. Greece got several c-130s in expectation that they would donate 152mm ammunition.
I'd have to double check but its quite likely. 152mm being the popular Soviet/WP large artillery caliber which Ukraine no doubt has (or had, at the beginning) a lot of legacy Soviet-era heavy artillery.
Not sure where I wrote that the UK is part of the EU.
EU Total 49,67
United States 42,22
Then there is a list of countries, like the US, some EU countries and the UK. The entry "EU Total" is not the sum of these countries.
With the argument, the list implies the UK being part of the EU b/c it is listed below, would be the same as the "United States" are part of the EU, because it is listed below.
Em... That's the point, we know that France transferred a lot of equipment(Cesar self propelled artillery is Franch). We don't know how much they transferred, there may be unofficial guestimated numbers - but there can be no source for "we don't know".
I wonder if there is such a clear cut between aid and military spending. Most of the aid of Europe is send to Ukraine government such that the government can spend that money. I understand that about 90% of the USA military spending stays in the USA and is actually stimulating the economy.
This war is also a display of weapons produced by defense industries in the USA and increase the spending of foreign countries in the USA. So, the netto effect might be actually turn out to be possitive, if it were not chilled by the current position of the USA in not providing weapons. This is definitely not making European countries happy and might actually result in the EU on putting substantial effort in developing it own weapon systems in the coming decades and reduce the spending the USA.
It is quite hard to think about things knowing that countries can hold multiple contradicting ideas simultaneously. Nothing is entirely correct or incorrect.
for example, true or false: The US started a war against Europe and Russia by blowing up the pipeline. If we look at it like that it is a great success?
Ukraine is fucked in the long term by demographics and economics, not by the lack of any particular weapon or munition. Now that the war has settled into an attritional phase, it's a question of who will run out of fighting men and war materiel first. The answer is unfortunately clear.
But what does "win" mean here? Ukraine clearly is not going to displace Russia, but they can presumably make Russia's occupation expensive and net-negative for several more years at a fraction of their current attrition rate, unless they're forced to the table.
And this seems like a functional loss for Russia. The Eastern provinces Russia holds aren't that valuable in any objective sense. Crimea provides an extremely valuable Black Sea port, but only if Russia can safely keep warships there -- which Russia currently is not able to do. Russia has certainly proven that if they rebuild their entire economy around the goal of holding these assets they can, indeed defend them indefinitely. But they haven't demonstrated that this is worthwhile or sustainable without a very generous peace deal from Ukraine.
People down-voting this, care to explain how this is wrong?? I've thought about this a lot and as far as I can tell, this is the only reasonable expectation I can come up with as well... it seems quite possible to me that the reason Europe and the USA are turning up the "Russia will soon attack us" rhetoric is to justify higher military spending in the short term, and sending boots to Ukraine in the medium term, given that if you look at the reality of the situation, the Russian military has been stopped by a weak (compared to NATO) Ukrainian military, hence you would have to conclude that the possibility of Russia actually even thinking of attacking NATO in the next few decades should be very much zero under any circumstances. It's like thinking in the 60's that if we don't stop North Vietnam, they will come for the rest of Asia :D it just doesn't add up to any reasonable, rather than passion/hate-filled analysis (which is what we mostly see in the media, unfortunately).
Wars aren't decided by pure manpower/materiel, or the US would have won the Vietnam war. It's all about win conditions.
For instance, if Russia loses e.g. 20% of their population then the economy will utterly tank, and if the economy tanks then Putin will lose support for the war and risk falling out of a window.
Ukraine doesn't actually need to win here, they just need to stall the war out for longer than Russia is willing to stay. Russia doesn't need to wipe out Ukraine, they just need to kill Western support of Ukraine and dry up the flow of military aid.
So if Ukraine just needs to stall then why did they go on a counterattack? Because it brings in more military aid now while Russia still has a materiel shortage. If Ukraine has a harsh materiel advantage over Russia then they can push Russian casualty rates far harder and force Putin into political strife much sooner.
Putin crippled the Russian economy by refusing to sell gas to the EU and by extension hurt Russian materiel production, but the tactic makes sense when you consider his win conditions: break Ukraine's western support, so that Russia has a materiel advantage.
>"Russia will soon attack us" rhetoric
I think that's actually Russian propaganda - Russia wants the West afraid to give Ukraine aid, so they play up the nuclear threat every time new milestones in aid are suggested (e.g. when the first F35 is given to Ukraine), then fold the moment the milestone is reached. Russia does this because slowing western aid to Ukraine is vital for their theory of victory.
Not at all. Are you joking? Multiple governments in Europe issued warnings to the population that they should prepare for war. Sweden is even re-opening Cold War era bunkers for the population to hide in case of attacks, and old military bases are re-opening.
Sure: he's flat out wrong. This has been played out again and again - "winning a war" is meaningless if you can't retain the territory. Unless the world is going to stand by and allow Russia to commit genocide of the entirety of the Ukranian population, this will move from a traditional war to a guerilla war. Ukrainians can fight guerilla warfare longer than Putin is going to be alive and able to maintain support of the Russian population. They couldn't conquer Afghanistan drawing from more than double the population.
>Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany
I‘d argue that refugees, 50% of whom intend to stay, are the reason why EU is the only party to win something from this war.
I actively support Ukrainian refugees by giving them some work and talk to people: those who will stay, want to integrate and they offer some relief to the job markets.
I‘m not sure about NATO, at least while Trumpism exists in America. If U.S. voters will think that Europe has to be sacrificed in favor of bilateral Russian-American deal, NATO is effectively as dead as it was pre-war.
U.S.defense industry will also depend on that. If Trump wins and commits to do everything he promised, they will be in a weaker position, loosing foreign markets one by one.
There is a lot of money riding on NATOs continued existence and I think if Trump decides to pull the USA out of NATO he will be in for a rude surprise. Playing with the climate accords was dumb enough and didn't have any immediate impact, if the USA visibly isolates itself from NATO after other countries supporting the USA in various efforts over the last couple of decades then the world as you know it will grind to a very rapid halt and the United States will be the big loser from that unless Trump is reigned in. I would expect him to receive a couple of very pointed reminders of what the consequences of such a move would be. Fortunately even an unhinged TV personality can not single-handedly destroy a country and what it has stood for for the last 70+ years.
Not to nitpick, but trump could singlehandedly destroy the United states in an afternoon. The presidency has absolute control over the use of the nuclear arsenal. One strike on China, in a conflict over Taiwan and the country will be blown to pieces. I don't think that's likely - but one cannot deny it is possible.
He absolutely can and will destroy the country and what it has stood for. He's already completely corrupted one of the only two viable political parties. They no longer believe in democracy. If Trump or one his sycophants gains office again, America won't be a shining city on the hill, it'll be a toxic waste dump.
Trumpism is an ideology that overgrown its founder: there are members of Congress, governors and other politicians who share his mindset. It is the Republican Party of 2020s, not just an insane businessman, who will throw global security under the bus. All those pointed reminders will mean nothing until it is too late.
In Sweden two of my favourite doctors are Syrian refugees, they gave me more humane and personal care than many Swedish doctors I've been to.
My landlord (and by far the best landlord I've had in Sweden) is another refugee doctor, a very laid back Iraqian pulmonologist, to the point I even invite him over to have some beers during summers.
How do you do that? I've hosted refugees for free, as opposed to locals who've had to pay for hotel stays, but I'm not discriminating against locals when hiring.
How do you "actively support refugees by giving them some work" in a way that's legal, without hiring bias?
E.g. I use cleaning services from a company that employs refugees.
Besides, using only specific recruiting channels to select candidates from certain demographics is not a discrimination. If locals would apply this way, I would consider them, but honestly… In Germany, esp. in Berlin hiring locals? The market is so tight, that by just removing the German language requirement you will find some immigrant faster.
Why are you asking? I have no idea, neither I care about it. If I want to hit a diversity target, I just go to a specific channel, be it some refugee job board, a women in tech community or anything else. If someone unintended sneaks through it, fine, as long as they don’t lie to me.
Ukraine's primary artillery for 155mm shells are the French CAESAR and US M777.
There is no need to fire tens of thousands of shells with this equipment, and no one would ever do that. These shells cost thousands of dollars each.
The upside is that they are incredibly accurate, with an error radius of something like 100m at 25km, using the standard dumb shells. (Things like Excalibur are markedly more accurate, but cost $100k each).
Add in counterbattery radar, and there's just no reason Ukraine would ever need to fire 25,000 shells a day like Russia does.
Clearly Ukraine needs more 155mm ammunition, but there's no reason to directly compare the numbers of shells launched by Russia and Ukraine.
Congratulations for picking with 155mm shells one of the few items that Europe has far outproduced the US with an estimated capacity of 650k shells/year pre war and a ramped up actual production to 1 mill/year in the next few months.
Artillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war; I would expect more air force being put in play if the conflict escalated into the rest of europe.
> Artillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war
The reason is that neither side has air supremacy. Ukrainian AA defense is good enough to keep the Russians at bay, but Russian AA defense is also good enough to prevent Ukrainians from taking out their frontline defenses.
So with classic air forces being all but taken out, the only way either side can make progress is by using tanks and artillery.
Ukrainan Air Force has HARMs, but they are VERY limited in their capabilities due to them being employed from soviet-era jets. Basically area where target resides have to be pre-programmed on the ground, rocket then flies to that area and lock on any radar it finds there. But what previous commenter missed is that even if Russian air defenses are suppressed, their planes outclass Ukrainian ones. For example, air to air missiles that UAF has available need to be guided by planes radar all the way through, also that missiles have shorter range than something like R-37, which is fire and forget with VERY high range. Western air to air missiles are much better than what Ukraine has right now, but they can't be fired from Su-27 or MiG-29, they require something like F-16 or Gripen, but while a bunch of European countries agreed to transfer them, Ukrainian pilots and ground crews don't know how to operate them, and need to be trained, which happens right now. If there were trained beforehand it would've changed current situation on the front lines VERY significantly.
We gave them nerfed HARMs that can't properly integrate with their soviet planes, and they have zero SEAD training. HARMs aren't magic, without the strategy and training required for good SEAD, they won't do much. Things may improve when the F-16s start flying since those are properly integrated and capable SEAD platforms.
The problem, at least according to that article and to pictures and videos of shot down HARMs, isn't really the integration. The problem is that Russian AA systems can defend themselves passively using IR or optical sensors, and are highly mobile. Basically, a pure antiradiation missile would only work if the crew of the air defence system makes a mistake or runs out of missiles.
The other issue is that merely because you did get that radar to turn off, doesn't mean that the launching aircraft is safe. Russia (and Ukraine as well) has a true IADS, so it's very risky to get within position to launch the HARM in the first place, let alone stay in position long enough to actually use your sensor package and give more capability to your missile.
Besides, Ukraine had Soviet antiradiation missiles that are extremely similar to the HARMs and that are integrated into their airframes. They weren't hugely effective.
How is an F-16 going to get close enough to Russian SAMs to be able to fly a conventional SEAD mission anyways? The traditional US way of using them is to jam enemy radars while flying F-16s as a wild weasel. The F-16 itself is not a capable SEAD platform - it needs and entire package with EW aircraft and air superiority fighters to defend them.
Besides, the problem in Ukraine is that Ukraine just can't fly even close to the frontline, and can't fly high. That's not just due to air defences - Ukraine used to be able to do this until Russia started using their extremely long range air to air missiles.
This could only end with tactical nukes starting flying and with the strategic ones if the US attacks Russia. Things won't 'improve' no matter what happens.
Kremlin has said multiple times, that use of western weapons against targets on Russian soil will be escalation and they will target NATO bases.
There have been multiple strikes using western weapons on Russian soil... with zero response. One of the most recent being shooting down an Il-76 near Belgorod.
I think Putin can find a way to exit the Ukraine and define that as a success if he wants to. But he still thinks he has a chance to win on the battlefield, so he has no motivation to do that.
Oh, moving the goal post uh ? Pretty weak game you show here.
> Just like the US can stop this war at any moment by dropping support for Ukraine and pressuring them to negotiate.
Just like So you admit Putin could stop the war at any moment ? Good. Why don't you petition for that ? (oh wait, what happened to that guy that submission is about and who wasn't completely on board with Putin's leadership ?)
What prevents him from stopping this war anyway ? Why won't he ? What terrible outcome would he or Russia face if he just declared "okay, we showed the world we ain't no pushovers, we are now confident Ukraine and NATO won't try to invade us because we showed them how strong we are" ?
Anyway, that Putin guy has made it pretty clear he wants to knock off all of Ukraine. Only Russian shills and useful idiots believe otherwise. But that's not what you are, aren't you ?
Putin will be done if he tries to abandon people of Crimea.
"According to Tamila Tasheva, Zelensky’s representative in Crimea, if it were liberated tomorrow, at least 200,000 residents of Crimea would face collaboration charges, and another 500,000 to 800,000 residents would face deportation. Refat Chubarov, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, says that more than 1 million people—more than half the current population—will have to leave “immediately.” "
The USA seems unable to give any more support due to political deadlock.
It definitely could provide much more to Ukraine if both parties were aligned to the common cause of sustaining America's hegemony by being a reliable ally, right now there's one party which the whole ideology centers on going against whatever the other party does and/or supports. Even if that means allowing Putin's Russia to gain more power and influence.
I don't think the vast majority of Americans understand the long-term consequences of allowing the USA to become unreliable to its closest partners (the West in general). You will be feeling this over the next few decades, America's soft power is waning.
> It definitely could provide much more to Ukraine if both parties were aligned to the common cause of sustaining America's hegemony by being a reliable ally, right now there's one party which the whole ideology centers on going against whatever the other party does and/or supports. Even if that means allowing Putin's Russia to gain more power and influence.
It's even worse. The 45th is actively calling for Russia to take what they want.
F16s will arrive this spring, but Soviet AA was designed to contain them. None of the expert observers seems to consider F16s a gamechanger on the battlefield right now.
Soviet AA isn't even the biggest threat - As many Ukrainian pilots put it, the main threat is the R-37M. You can at least fly low and out of the way to defend against SAMs, but without a missile like the Meteor there is no answer to the combination of long range SAMs and R-37M carrying fighters.
Basically the problem is that to avoid AA you have to fly low or far from the front lines. If you fly low, you can't give enough energy to your missile to threaten even just Russian bombers.
If you fly high but far away, there is no way to deal with Russian planes carrying R-37s that will be able to fire their missiles far before you.
The only way to even the playing field would be to give Ukraine modern Gripens with the Meteor missile, as the F-16 cannot fire the Meteor.
Not really. The Storm Shadows are programmed externally, the plane just gives the signal to fire.
For the Meteor you would need deep integration into the fire control system, and even into the data links to be able to use it's range as the F-16 radar is not powerful enough.
If it was easy to do, MBDA would have done it and made a lot of money that way.
Stalin called artillery the god of war. Ranged surface-to-surface weapons are the antithesis of close combat, and whoever has the systems with the highest range and military effectiveness can clear the way ahead of physical occupation until political or economic forces compel suing for a negotiated cessation of hostilities.
While Ukraine is training F-16 pilots, this will take a lot of time and money to achieve and sustain, and is vulnerable to parts supply chain issues, maintenance program sophistication gaps, and puts expensive-to-train pilots at risk of loss by being shot down. Vipers will barely move the needle on the course of the current conflict, but will enable Ukraine to defend its territory and airspace without direct NATO intervention.
The domestic Ukraine drone and missile industry is another leg of the table on which Ukraine will advance and sustain self-defense by striking strategic Russian military logistics, naval, army, and air force targets.
> Even though Russia has got the bigger air force
Russia's military is barely functional due to corruption and complacent reliance on being a nuclear superpower. The % of operational jets is barely enough to sustain territorial defense much less a sustained "special military operation". Russia's air assets total 3000 pieces of equipment but with only 7 regular air bases close enough to launch strikes and could only muster around 250 operational strike aircraft given the limitations on maintenance, storage, and the few pilots.
Yep. And the so-called "aid to Ukraine", 80% of it would be spent within the US on current stockpiles and new equipment. It's curious that the US military-industrial complex isn't falling all over itself attempting to send Ukraine lots of expensive gear and supplies it didn't even ask for. I guess there are too many Putin sympathizers in US political circles able to buy, engineer, and install influence.
> It's curious that the US military-industrial complex isn't falling all over itself attempting to send Ukraine lots of expensive gear and supplies it didn't even ask for. I guess there are too many Putin sympathizers in US political circles able to buy, engineer, and install influence
That's an absurd premise. That gets endlessly repeated on Reddit and elsewhere with absolutely zero proof. If so much of the US Government (the world's richest nation and the only superpower) is purchased by a weak and poor enemy nation (Russia), where's the proof of that? Not supporting a war isn't proof. So a US politician against the Israeli war is bought and paid for by Hamas or Iran? It's laughable and quite obviously so. Nobody would dare float that premise, but somehow for Ukraine it's the go to propaganda.
Why isn't the Biden DOJ + FBI + CIA + FBI + NSA running a large sting operation against all these bought and paid for US politicians that Russia owns? Because it doesn't exist. It'd be a huge win for the Biden Admin to bring those people down and get them arrested. And yet, crickets.
All you really have are US politicians that are opposite of Biden looking to jab him any way they can, because it's a partisan battle and they're looking to score points. It's no more complicated than that. They're taking up position opposite of Biden.
And with the military industrial complex, the issue is nobody is paying for that gear. Ukraine is a hyper poor nation, they are barely surviving. Anything advanced has to get Biden Admin and or Congressional approval. Ukraine isn't getting the very best US weapons (eg F35s) and should not.
The US and the EU are mostly at parity when it comes to total spending (that includes military spending), with the difference being of about 5-10% last time I checked (which was sometimes in September of 2023). By how things have progressed since then it is fair to say that the EU has taken the upper hand on that.
And this is all without counting the "externalities" of the war in Ukraine which Europe had to absorb all by itself, such as higher energy prices, selling assets in Russia at very discounted prices (for comparison, the US and the UK didn't have that much stuff to sell there anyway) and the material help and assistance provided to the millions of Ukrainian refugees.
All US military spending is not properly accounted for in these comparisons.
The US provides a huge military shield in Europe and it costs a lot and none of it gets counted toward helping Ukraine. That shield enables European nations to shift resources relatively safely into helping Ukraine. If you remove that shield, those nations can no longer safely give to such a great extent, they'd have to think with far greater scrutiny of their own defense.
US spending on European defense makes it possible for smaller European nations to give military funds and weapons to Ukraine.
Our massive air force protection enables European nations to provide their F16s to Ukraine, as one example.
Go ahead and staple $100 billion more to that military figure for the past two years.
USA can claim that one Bradley is 2mln, but what is a real value?
Polish T-72 can be worth 1mln, but it's much more valuable than Bradley. UA army knows how to fix it and operate.
I would say that Bradley is actually more valuable, since it can serve wider range of missions, while having higher crew survival rate and being more maneuverable.
Huh? A Bradley is more survivable than a modern T-72? It's a light IFV, it's only advantage is to be more versatile and maneuverable. It is not going to be more survivable.
If you're talking about the autoloader - the kind of munition that would detonate the munitions on a modern T-72 would completely eviscerate any IFV.
If it really was more survivable than a modern tank, why would anyone even bother making tanks, when IFVs have about as much firepower when using ATGMs?
How is a T-72 a "modern tank"? There are dozens of stories of both American (during various other wars) and Ukranian Bradley crews engaging T-72s and winning.
Polish T-72s are modern tanks with tons of upgrades. They are not comparable to base model T-72s in Iraq. They have much improved armor, firepower, sensors, and mobility. It's a lot like how modern Abrams are barely comparable to the original model, which is only 6 years more recent than the T-72. In fact, the Russian T-90 and Chinese ZTZ99 are also heavily upgraded T-72s.
In the era of ATGMs IFVs can engage tanks and win, no matter the tank. In fact, an infantry soldier with an ATGM can engage basically any tank and win. That doesn't mean a soldier is more survivable or more capable than a tank.
A Bradley would be disabled or destroyed by many weapons any modern tank would shrug off, and it cannot provide sustained heavy fire as it has a very limited number of ATGMs.
No. Apples vs. oranges. While UA lacks IFVs, they first need main battle tanks. IFVs without MBTs doesn't comprise a survivable mixed combat element. Main battle tanks with troops with AGTMs is a starting point, IFVs would enhance their mobility but cannot replace the priority of having MBTs before IFVs.
The quote from OP was "The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin". Which is just completely false. Now you're just moving goalposts.
But does it change the more significant point of the US being Ukraine's most important partner in terms of military support? I was countering the narrative that the US is not a good partner. As internet forums do, everyone globbed onto the specific number, not the point being made.
My point, as I'm sure you are aware, is that the US is by far the largest supporter of Ukraine. The fact that the entire world narrowly edges out the US regarding military support does not detract from that fact.
As I've said, I agree now that the world has pledged to give more support to Ukraine than the US currently has. However, I do not see how that changes the more significant point. Perhaps you can explain to me(with less snark and condescension) how the US is a bad partner, but the rest are great.
Oh man, the EU plus the rest of the world are eking it out before the US passes another spending bill. . .
This also includes long-term commitments that have not yet been delivered. EU promising to provide 1 million artillery shells two years from now doesn't help Ukraine at this time.
The US not passing a spending bill and getting constantly deadlocked by the GOP to even table it in Congress also do not help Ukraine at this time.
Also, it's not even close to a certainty that the spending bill will pass, and the chance of that happening diminishes every single day while this stupid presidential election doesn't happen.
That is Europe vs the US. Europe has almost 800million people, US less than 350million. On a per capital basis the average American has outspent the average European by a significant margin.
EU != Europe. EU has a population of just under 450 million. To get even close to an 800 million number you have to include all of both Russian and all the former Soviet states, which in this scenario would be rather misleading, given the geopolitics of the events under discussion.
Yet whoever provided more aid is irrelevant, since it's not enough anyway. We, as a world, are observing (and doing nothing, for the most part) fourth reich coming into action.
It looks like your charts include things like refugee aid costs, which make up a large percentage of European aid. If you remove these costs and go strictly by military support, which is what we are talking about, then my point stands.
Seems kinda unfair. USA has the biggest military complex, bigger than the rest of world combined IIRC. Naturally, can they deliver military aid faster and better than the rest of the world.
Part of the annoyance, as a US citizen, is that we spend ~3.5% of GDP on military. And that's off a large GDP, so hiding scaling efficiencies that would allow it to run lower while maintaining capability. And much more during the Cold War era!
That "bigger" is bought, and has been every year. We could spend that money on other things: social welfare, health care, etc.
So, excusing Europe's inability to deliver mass military aid, when they've willingly underinvested in their defense industry and equipment for decades, rings a bit hollow.
Yeah, especially when Europeans have mocked the US for decades for spending too much on its military while relying on security guarantees for their protection.
The US does get a lot from that in exchange, it's not like the US is being altruistic and providing security out of the goodness in your hearts, the US never does anything altruistically (as most nation-states do not), the dissonance that even well-educated Americans have as if they were footing a bill without getting nothing in return is frankly baffling.
It's infuriating how many Americans don't seem to realize that we would spend the exact same amount on our military even if Russia, China, and NATO all evaporated tomorrow.
We police the world because being the world police is fabulously profitable. You want to maintain the largest economy in the world? Well then you want to keep up the status quo of "you can do business between most countries, and can ship anything across the world for pennies per pound with near zero risk".
And yet because of exactly that, they are hesitant to take hostile action towards the United States, because of the whole "being starved of imported food and oil" thing that would trivially happen. That's a big reason they've been trying to build so many overland routes for shipping, to offset the inability to protect maritime shipping without US help.
Yet again it's the US explicitly spending money to keep someone dependent, similar to Russia's selling cheap gas to put economic pressure on the west.
China and the US really really really don't want to go to war, because even an unsteady "peace" between us is so goddamn profitable. But the US wants everyone to be able to sail by the Chinese coast without harassment, and China wants to own the entire sea north of Australia so.....
Fair in what way? My point isn't about who is better. My point is that the US has been an extremely crucial partner to Ukraine, in terms of countries, _the_ most crucial partner. My feeling from the interactions on this forum is that Europeans do not see it that way.
Can you win a war with weapons alone? Can a nation survive with military aid alone?
USA is not the only crucial partner for Ukraine in this war, they are the crucial partner in a specific area. That's why it's unfair to undersell the crucial partners in other important areas. Everyone is doing their thing to support in the areas they can give support. But not everyone can give the same support, and not everyone should support in areas already covered by others.
That seems kinda unfair? You don't think it's unfair that the US invests in defense for its own strategic reasons but also happens to greatly benefit the rest of the world while the rest of the world can invest in social programs that only benefit themselves all to turn around and criticize the US as soon as that plan seems short sighted? I think that's pretty fucked up personally.
That's for the US to decide. Outside of fair share of NATO dues, the rest isn't for Europe to stick its nose in any more than the US doesn't stick its nose in how Europe spends its budget.
Sure, that is unfair. But what is happening right now is the US having dragged its European partners into a very aggressive position in the Ukraine war, suddenly decides that it no longer cares about it. So Europe has a half dead crazy Russia on its door, has to fill in for the lack of US aid and might very well have the US retreat from NATO when Trump takes office.
Well yes, a big chunk of the world relies on the US to provide military power. How dare the US actually be good at doing the thing that the world asks the US to do.
You are not rephrasing, you are moving the goal posts, you said:
> The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin, and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault.
No, it has not provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined, the EU by itself has provided more military aid than the US already.
You're just wrong. It's not hard to admit that, trying to save face just made it worse...
The EU's military commitments narrowly edge out US military commitments before a new bill is approved. This does not take away from the larger point of the US not being a bad partner to Ukraine or that the US cannot be trusted as a partner.
I don't disagree with the overall point you are arguing (AKA I agree with you), but comments like this are of no help to the conversation. I get a strong sense from this and other comments in this thread that you might be anti-American, which strikes me as biased and small minded thinking for someone that seems so intelligent.
This is not intended to be an insult, but be better. There are plenty of forums to act like this on, and HN isn't one of them.
"we" are doing nothing because "we" are not under attack; Ukraine did not have defense pacts with other countries, and the military aid took a while to get started because of the risk of Russia seeing it as hostility towards them, further escalating the conflict.
If it escalates, it will escalate bigly. If Russia attacks a NATO country, article 5 will / should kick in and the combined military force of 31 countries (with or without the US) will combine their strengths.
But nobody wants this to escalate further, because nukes. Nothing will matter anymore if Russia decides to use them. It doesn't matter if they lose hundreds of thousands of people, material, and are completely humiliated, as long as they have nukes, "we" cannot strike back.
At this point, wishful thinking that the Ukraine conflict seizes up again, keeps the Russian army occupied, and things cool off slowly. Or that the Russian leadership is replaced, but there's no guarantees it would be replaced by someone who would stop the war.
Actually the USA does have a defense pact with the Ukraine. Ukraine gave up its nuclear bomb and destroyed its strategic bombers with the promise that it would be defended by the USA and Russia. Now that Russia stept out of that deal, it does not mean that the USA no longer has the moral obligation of its part of the deal.
I stand corrected, the Budapest memorandum is not a defense pact. The Ukraine government acted in good faith that they would not be invaded. Now that it has indeed be invaded by one of the countries signing the memorandum, it does give the other parties a moral obligation to step in. The USA is now showing to be an unreliable party and I think that this weakens the position of the USA in the world.
What are you going to do with Kaliningrad if you occupy it? Are you going to hand out EU Schengen passports to its residents? You may get a large line for ingress if you're going to swap Russian passpors for EU ones.
If you don't, Russia will politely ask to have its territory back and would get that eventually.
Bottom line, stop thinking about the land as if it was not full of people settled there.
Honestly if you offer residents of Kaliningrad some free EU passports on condition they need to move out of Russia I pretty certain like 90% of them will gladly accept.
Because Germany has no interest in Kaliningrad and Poland has no (or a very weak) claim, I'd say should it come to that, Kaliningrad will be demilitarized and then "given back" to Russia.
And the argument was about nukes, in the event NATO invades Kaliningrad because of missle sites, not if it should or would.
Funnily the staunchest supporters of Putin in Germany (Nazis) would also be the only ones who would like to have Königsberg back.
The easiest solution to this war is sitting Zelenskyy down with Putin and striking a compromise and forming a peace treaty, if the U.S. war mongers allow it.
Like the last several ones, before or after Russia invaded Crimea?
Or the one where Russia guaranteed Ukraines sovereignty if they would give up nuclear weapons? (Russia playing the long con, got what it wanted, Ukraine free of nuclear weapons, ready to be invaded).
The nukes deal wasn't about granting sovereignty. Ukraine had sovereignty since the formation of Soviet Union over 100 years ago(Ukraine even retained it's seat in UN, upon founding).
That deal was just about nuclear proliferation. It was well reasoned at the time and had no special conditions.
That being said - the idea that Ukrainians are a "fake nation" has been a prominent talking point in Russia my entire life.
Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum [0] ("guarantee Ukraines sovereignty") so Ukraine would sign the Lisbon Protocol [1] ("give up nuclear weapons").
Ukraine gives up nuclear weapons, Russia guarantees Ukraines sovereignty. Simple:
"The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances comprises three substantially identical political agreements [..] to provide security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of [..] Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [..] Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders" [0]
What about the next war? Have you listened to Putin? Ukraine is an artificial nation according to him and Russia has the right to reabsorb "Little Russia". How do you compromise with that view?
I listened to him speak for two hours. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the war, how many more lives should be sacrificed to avoid compromise? What about prioritizing the value of human lives over drawing lines on a map between two very broken, very corrupt countries?
I don't really get how you can even begin to trust anything that Putin promises or signs.
Russia has a long tradition of treating treaties as scraps of paper, and they have a recent history in this regard with Ukraine.
Their long-term aim is to absorb Ukraine and exploit its industrial and agricultural potential for further imperial expansion. The next will be the Baltic countries and after them Central Europe.
Whatever peace will be signed now will last precisely as long as it takes Russia to rebuild their offensive capabilities for the next round of war.
All the dead are fault of Putin and his imperial ambitions. Our only choice is whether to submit and become serfs in a neo-Russian empire, or fight back and help Ukrainians fight back.
I'm not sure how anyone begins to trust our own military or elected Establishment leaders who start and fund endless frivolous wars for decades, for greed, leaving the Middle East absolutely laid to waste.
Bush, Obama / Hillary, and Biden are no different than Putin, if not far worse. They deserve no more trust from Americans than a serial killer who took out members of your family for fun. They are reckless abusers, for greed and continued power.
If I were a Middle Easterner, I would agree. Or South American, for that purpose.
(With one huge caveat, both the Middle Easterners and the South Americans are perfectly capable of starting various shit themselves. Don't deprive them of agency by painting them as blind and obedient puppets of Washington. Especially the Middle East is a very ancient civilization with a tradition of backstabbing and betrayal going deep into the Antiquity. They don't have to learn that from some Westerners.)
But in the context of European security, the main problem of the last decades was either the USSR or Russia, not the US. It was Soviet tanks that rolled through Czechoslovak cities in 1968 to crush our attempt at political independence, not American ones.
Context matters, and for former Soviet Bloc nations, Americans are an ally against potential reestablishment of Russian rule.
But today's Russia is explicitly against the Bolsheviks and any form of the USSR altogether. Russia has moved well beyond that, so it isn't a matter of reestablishing former Russian rule under the same horrible terms as before. They are prospering now, are they not?
In 2023, a trusted, world-renowned expert — Bill Gates — stated that Ukraine is one of the single most corrupt nations in the world, and that he feels very sorry for the people there. [1] That says a lot, doesn't it?
Zelenskyy shuts down churches, imprisons political protestors and American journalists, and launders money back to the U.S. war machine after we "fund" them every month or less — to the order of $113 million per day now. How could anyone not see clearly what's happening there? It seems that people are so blinded by their hatred for Russia, that what the people are suffering in Ukraine on Ukraine's own accord isn't enough of a problem, despite how gaping it is.
Russia may be explicitly against Bolsheviks (though recycling the Soviet anthem!), and Putin's Russia is indeed more akin to the former tsarist Empire than to USSR, but the tsarist Empire was fairly evil, too. Just ask the Poles or the Jews. Russian empire didn't grow to its huge size by trade and friendship, it was conquest.
Ukraine is corrupt. So what? Ukrainian corruption is a threat to no one. Not a single nation from Finland to Bulgaria considers itself vulnerable to Ukrainian military aggression, because they aren't an imperial nation and don't seek to dominate others. They were perfectly fine within their 1991 borders and never attempted to annex any extra territory by any means.
It is Russia's problem, in the words of great Václav Havel, that it does not know exactly where it ends.
All the hatred for Russia stems from their former heavy-handed rule of other nations. If they sincerely tried to make amends, it would slowly go away. They are now trying to rebuild their former imperial system. OF COURSE that nations which escaped their tyranny once are going to hate them.
It is freaking simple: we, as in Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Czechs, Rumanians, Ukrainians, Georgians etc. DON'T WANT TO BE THREATENED OR ATTACKED BY RUSSIA. That's it. We have had enough experience with Russian rule. It is primitive and brutal at the same time. Never again.
"Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Czechs, Rumanians, Ukrainians, Georgians etc. DON'T WANT TO BE THREATENED OR ATTACKED BY RUSSIA."
Exactly. Last time Russia and Germany signed a deal to cut Eastern Europe in half, then each invaded countries on their side of the line (and cut Poland in half). Sadly this is not how it is teached in Russia. Which is one of the reasons for what is happening now.
Russias goals haven't changed. Luckily Germany (currently) wants nothing of it.
After Ukraine baited them on their border, right? Nobody can say Ukraine nor the U.S. didn't want this war in desperation to poke the hornet's nest that is Putin, used as a means to obfuscate abuse around the funding of the war.
The U.S. was heavily active in 2014 onward helping Ukraine prepare for this. Specifically in 2016, as shown in this video [1].
Baiting? Are you seriously insinuating that Ukraine was about to invade Russia and thus, as Putin claims, they had no choice but to attack? How naive one has to be to actually believe it?
US and Europe were not (and sadly, are not) doing nowhere nearly enough in providing defensive weapons to Ukraine, if they had, this invasion would have been stopped long ago.
Invade? Absolutely not -- they would have no chance.
Poke the hornet's nest? Yes, I'm saying that. This was a collusion between the U.S., Ukraine, and other globalist EU nations to make Russia look bad using their mass media machine to spread lies about a senseless war, use it as cover to launder money around, and punish / attack a nation (Russia) that isn't submitting to their globalist agenda -- just like they did to Iraq, and several others who wouldn't comply, on the basis of not accepting the U.S. petrodollar.
Why is Russia forming BRICS with nearly half the world? To escape from the clutches of the U.S. empire strangling them.
"Make Russia look bad" - what does that even mean? I'm country A, country B writes bad things about me in their media, so I will invade them, bomb their electricity grid and try to overthrow their government - by what logic is that a valid casus belli?
"Isn't submitting to their globalist agenda" - again, what does that mean? As you yourself point out, nobody was planning to invade them. Russia is the largest country in the world by land mass with abundant natural resources - oil, gas, diamonds and other riches. But instead of focusing on improving lives for ordinary russians, they want to expand that "russian world" which only brings death and destruction.
See this [1] for a perfect example of the imperial mindset - Putin saying that "Russia’s borders do not end anywhere"
Mariupol siege was completely flattened with hundreds of thousands dead from constant shelling.
While IDF in Gaza was fighting building to building with most of the population evacuated. The destruction of Gaza you see is following controlled demolition because of the tunnels below (basically every house).
"controlled demolition"? Yes, very controlled, especially when we see outright admission by their officials that they're after "damage, not accuracy". Indiscriminate shelling and bombing is very obvious and has been recorded for history to remember.
"we would already be seeing Poland and other neighboring territories taken over by Russia with great ease"
The same ease as now in Avdiivka? It took five months of constant bloodshed for Russians to gain the upper hand.
"Putin wants to reclaim only a small fraction of Ukraine where the people in those regions have openly stated wanting that very thing to happen, due to Ukraine's corruption and oppressive policies."
I don't even know what to reply to this. Hitler also ran fake referenda. BTW That small fraction of Ukraine is something like a sixth of its total territory, plus multiple important cities and most of the coastline.
I never really understood why people believed Hitler when he declared in 1938 that Czechoslovak Sudetenland was his last territorial demand, but hey, here we go again.
"Kiev is practically spotless when you compare it to Gaza"
And? There was never ground fighting in Kiev proper, given that the Russians didn't manage to enter the city, and both Ukraine and Russia have enough of AA to keep each other's air assets at bay.
Look at Bakhmut or Avdiivka, places of actual fighting and former homes of tens of thousands of people. They actually do look a lot worse than Gaza. How did you miss those cities when looking for context and perspective?
What geopolitical motive does Russia have for a costly, and likely unsuccessful invasion of Poland? If your argument is "Because Putin is Hitler", you're not really making logical or coherent arguments.
> specially the Middle East is a very ancient civilization with a tradition of backstabbing and betrayal going deep into the Antiquity.
As a "Middle Easterner" (a colonialist term by the way), I didn't realize that the "Middle East" was one conglomerate culture. Thank you for teaching me about my history /s
Civilization is an umbrella term that usually covers multiple cultures.
We also speak of Western civilization, even though it doesn't equal to one conglomerate culture either.
As for 'colonialist' term ... sigh, do I care how people call Europe on Arabic or Turkish forums? Every cultural region has some lingo that reflects its history.
'Europe' itself is a Phoenician word that means "country of sunset". From their perspective, it was. Hereby I am forgiving old Phoenician colonialists (and they indeed colonized much of the Mediterranean) for naming some continent according to their local perspective. That is what people tend to do.
So your statement is a tautology. You'll find good and bad people in any group; there's nothing inherent in "middle eastern civilization" that promotes backstabbing, and in fact you'll find the opposite.
"The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin, and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault."
I've said the US can't be trusted to keep support up. Don't twist my words.
> The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin, and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault.
There is nothing in the parent post to even hint that they are saying that the US is to blame for what happened.
The US cannot be trusted to fulfill it's approved upon role in NATO if and when the push comes to shove (that damage to the US reputation is done).
I want to make it clear that the US does not sholder this responsibility alone. Every signatory to the convention is required to come to it's allies need if needed.
Europe has to get it's act together when it comes to securing its own borders, with tech and armaments produced inside said borders but in a cooperation with the US. As partners.
>>> The US cannot be trusted to fulfill it's approved upon role in NATO if and when the push comes to shove (that damage to the US reputation is done).
What role as the US failed to fulfill in Ukraine?
Ukraine isn't a NATO member, the US had no obligation to come to their support, yet we did anyways.
Meanwhile Germany divested their entire domestic energy security and became subservient to Russia for energy - enabling this entire conflict b/c Russia felt Europe became addicted and depended to Russian fuels and wouldn't oppose their dealers.
The very politicians blocking Ukraine support are openly talking about how NATO should be abandoned. I don't know how else you can interpret that other than making Europe doubt the US would come to her aid.
That just doesn't matter as long as they caucus in unity and vote in unity. Republicans are beholden to Trump's rhetoric so they can get the MAGA vote and keep their damn jobs. That's why they keep falling in line no matter how many times they say "no no we really shouldn't do what Trump says". They were perfectly willing to kill a bill they all agreed was good for the US because Trump said so, because not fixing the problem they've been bitching about fixing for decades will help Trump campaign on fixing the problem.
Surely they as individuals would be better off saying "look, we cowed the Biden admin into fixing the problems, look how good we are at our jobs re-elect us" but that doesn't work, because they are beholden to the MAGAs. So instead they keep giving awkward comments and going back on their own stated opinions because the only uniting strategy (which was the official Republican party policy BEFORE Trump's own progeny ran the Republican party) is to bootlick Trump.
When they vote how he says, pretty much exclusively, they are not "ignoring or shrugging off" his comments.
Funding to Ukraine is even more complicated than most people realize. A massive amount of the money spent for weapons to be delivered to Ukraine is produced outside Ukraine in the US, EU etc. In cases where existing vehicles and ammunition is sent it is also an opportunity for all donors to modernize their vehicles and ammunition by replacing the donated ones with new ones.
That's just something they tell you during your election campaign. The truth is a bit different, USA is good at promissing and forcing other to do, but it did very little, compared to own GDP and military abilities.
Money:
- EU - 85,0 Mrd. €
- USA - 67,7 Mrd. €
- Deutschland - 22,1 Mrd. €
- Vereinigtes Königreich - 15,7 Mrd. €
- Dänemark - 8,8 Mrd. €
- EU: nur gemeinsame Hilfe
- Quelle: Institut für Weltwirtschaft / Ukraine Support Tracker
You cherry-pick tanks as your metric? Why don't we look at the totality of American deliveries, including long-range munitions and artillery, and see who comes ahead? What equivalent of game-changing ordnance, such as the GDSLB, are European countries providing?
This is why a large portion of Americans could care less about the defense of Europe. No matter what we do, it's either wrong or not enough. Meanwhile, Europe spent the last few decades enjoying cheap Russian energy and neglecting its defense spending and then turned around and told the US that we don't do enough to stop Russia.
> This is why a large portion of Americans could care less about the defense of Europe. No matter what we do, it's either wrong or not enough. Meanwhile, Europe spent the last few decades enjoying cheap Russian energy and neglecting its defense spending and then turned around and told the US that we don't do enough to stop Russia.
That comment comes off as surpisingly ignorant of the benefits that the US gets by having a buffer zone between it self on either side (Europe on it's eastern flank and the indo pacific on the western flank).
Your whole foreign policy revolves around keeping these areas armed and protected in cooperation with local governments in an effort of keeping conflict from reaching US shores (an evolution of the Monroe doctrine, which started back in the 19th century with keeping European conquest out of the immediate surroundings).
I would highly recommend picking up 'The Grand Chessboard[0]' by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former counselor to Presidents Lyndon B Johnson and Jimmy Carter. It is an excellent light read on the landscape in the mid 90's in regards to US foreign policy and national security. It even forshadows much that has happened recently.
It will truly fill in some gaps.
> Meanwhile, Europe spent the last few decades enjoying cheap Russian energy
Let us not forget that for a long time the US was hooked on foreign imported oil from the middle east, and even in 2021 Russian energy made up a total of 4% of the domestic US energy usage (up since Venezualian sources were not available as readily).
Please don't paint the US as some white knight that does what ever it can to please others on the world stage for altruistic reasons.
At worst it is disingenuous, and at best signals a massive ignorance of the world stage, history and the actors playing on it (again, highly recommend the book[0]).
My comment is ignorant because a large portion of America could care less about defending Europe? I guess I'll try and educate 100 million Americans before commenting again…
Thanks for explaining that every country has motives behind its actions. I'm familiar with realpolitik it has nothing to do with what average Americans feel about Europe.
I'm just relating the feelings a lot of people I know have towards the region. You might not like it or agree with it(I don't) but lecturing Americans on how bad they are probably isn't the best way to bring them around to your side.
> My comment is ignorant because a large portion of America could care less about defending Europe? I guess I'll try and educate 100 million Americans before commenting again…
No need to be unreasonable. Educating one self should be sufficient as a start, before moving on to the immediate surroundings.
> Thanks for explaining that every country has motives behind its actions. I'm familiar with realpolitik it has nothing to do with what average Americans feel about Europe.
Of course not. The average anyone is not guided by theory. That wasn't my point.
My point was that the comment clearly did not come off as being written in good faith as an objective statement of the sentiment of the general public in the US alone. And as such it deserved to be answered in tone.
> You might not like it or agree with it(I don't) but lecturing Americans on how bad they are probably isn't the best way to bring them around to your side.
Persuading citizens of the US to the benefits of their own government's policies is not on the priority list for me. Frankly if anything, it should be the task of those citizens with knowledge of the theory that guides the making of those policies to educate their country men of the benefits. Yes, further military spending is not popular. But boots on ground is even less so.
To be honest I do not like the way the US conducts it self on the world stage, and believe that the world would be much better for it if the playing field was more even (rather than the modern day hegemony we have).
Cooling European/US relations with the EU taking steps to become more self reliant militarily, but still with the US as an equal partner, can only be considered a good thing.
I don't see how that means you can't trust America. A large % does not equal a majority. Look at polling to see where the majority of US sentiment lies.
Similarly, if you look at surveys of Germans, you will see that a large % do not support Military aid of Ukraine, not a majority, but a large percentage. By your logic, does that mean that Ukraine cannot trust Germany?
Which country is providing more than the US? The only thing that matters is the absolute numbers. Ukraine doesn't care if Moldova contributes 10% of its GDP because it amounts to nothing compared to 1% of US GDP.
Due to the fucked nature of the political system in America most people don't matter. Who cares if someone in California supports aid to Ukraine when Trumpistic and Putinistic swing-voters in Georgia does not.
>That is a lie. EU and European countries has given more than double that of the US.
Based on what number? You tell other people not to make things up, then throw out outlandish claims without citation.
And as for the "by GDP number" - you all seem to be failing to take into account overall military spending by GDP. Most of Europe spends almost nothing because they rely on the US to present a threat to their potential enemies. It's a lot easier to spend 5% of your GDP on military spending for a year or two when the rest of the last 40 years it's been less than 1% because the US has been spending 4-8% YoY for the duration on top of the direct aid.
If you go by military support of Ukraine, this is not true. It's only valid if you include things like humanitarian support. If the US passes its support bill, it would be on equal footing with all aid to Ukraine from Europe, including humanitarian support.
Military help from EU countries is higher than US, humanitarian help is multiple times higher and so is financial help.
If US passes the bill then it will somewhat catch up. IF it passes. Perhaps it decides to degrade its international standing even more instead, who knows.
the usg considers russia one of its key rivals, and so this ukraine thing was a godsend for them: ukraine provides the cannon fodder to fight and die, usg provides the materiel, and russia doesn't have a casus belli to nuke new york. the usg gets all the benefits of fighting a land war with russia with almost none of the costs: no messy body bag parades on cnn, no psychologically disturbed veterans blowing up federal buildings in oklahoma, no sheets of radioactive glass that were until recently thriving metropolises, and no test of the us nuclear response capabilities
all it's cost so far, in direct terms, is a hundred billion dollars or so over a couple of years, in an economy with thirty trillion dollars a year of gdp. 0.2% of gdp, say. contrast with, for example, 2.5% for the apollo program, or 1% for the manhattan project
it sucks pretty bad for the ukrainians tho. and the russians. they're being ground into hamburger by the machinations of putin and the usg, jockeying for power. anyone with a scrap of human feeling is horrified by what is happening. but that's not what animates the cfr
Meanwhile even in this "we can't spend fifty bucks on Russia that we could be spending on tax breaks for oil barons!" political landscape, Russia would run out of hunks of metal to recommission into tanks within two years.
Can you imagine erasing your biggest rival's entire military threat with $300 billion? That's like four whole miles of Californian high speed rail!
It's less about current actions and more about how mercurial and dysfunctional the US congress currently is. No one is willing to bet their sovereignty on the outcome of a US presidential election.
"And the stockpiles of artillery, long-range munitions, armor, ammo, guns, etc sent?"
Quite a lot of those are older weapons that need to be either spent or securely disposed of within a decade or so.
Don't take me wrong, I am happy that the US helped Ukraine and I certainly wish that the next package passes the House, but the economic cost of your help isn't easily calculated in dollars. (Or, for that matter, our in Czech crowns.)
Stockpiles need to be either spent or renewed/replaced. Perhaps you could have used some of that older stuff in training, but not all of it. Military equipment has an expiration date, you would need to refresh your stockpiles anyway.
Because the only winning move it not to play. This is Europe's war. Not sure why the US is involved at all. It's not like Ukraine has oil or a NATO partner.
As Viscount Cunningham famously said when he risked his fleet to evacuate troops in the Battle of Crete in 1941, 'It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition'. Which feels like how America's new insularism is undoing all the "leader of the free world" fandom that it has carefully cultivated - and profited from - in the last 80 years.
Today the US has two strategic enemies - Russia and China - and two strategic partners, Nato in Europe and everyone in pacific except China.
The US can spend peanuts - it really isn't a lot of money in US defence terms - backing Ukraine and using Ukrainian casualties to defeat it's strategic enemy, Russia, whilst making it's other strategic enemy, China, fear it.
Or it can waver and show it's no longer the leader of the democratic world and make all it's allies in Europe and Asia not believe in it.
My big fear is that it is empowering China to dare to have it's go at Taiwan in a couple of years.
This presumes there's any amount US can spend to allow UKR to strategically defeat RU by proxy, and thereby have PRC fear it. UKR as proxy is as much limited by quality/quantity of it's human capita as it is by external support. What happens to US credibilty / desire to be US proxy in IndoPac to fight for US security interests when partners see UKR decimated to the last man despite full US assistance? The western wunderwaffles delivered to UKR have underdelivered, meanwhile US failing to guarantee red sea shipping against Houthis that US armed Saudis have failed to contain for over a decade. Single digit salvos of shit tier RU and Houthi missiles successfully penetrating Patriots in UKR and Flight2/3 DDGs in Red Sea has basically affirmed PRC the vulnerability of US hardware and validated their doctorine to deliver 1000x more fires. If anything the more US commits/show hand, and the more she reveals her (in)capability, the less her adversaries fear it. Sometimes better to commit half heartly and be thought incompetent (or indifferent) than go all in an remove all doubt. Nothing worse for US credibility than trying and failing.
Europe is probably uncomfortable/ashamed by how dependent they are on the US for maintaining the western-centric global power axis. But on the same hand are unwilling to make the sacrifices their societies would need to in order to pick up the slack. Especially now that European economies tend to be in a slump.
It certainly seems that the US is unsure whether it wants this role. The Congress is putting US credibility at huge risk right now.
Nevertheless, if the US abdicates its leadership, the free world will shrink. Even democracies have domestic enemies and all of these will be encouraged to push autocracy as an alternative to the messy parliamentary system.
IMO, if any random country’s government whom we are not allied with through NATO publicly criticizes the USA’s response to helping them out in a war that we have no obligation to help with, I believe we should immediately cease any and all financial aid and let them feel the squeeze. When they publicly apologize and recognize that the United States is truly the only thing keeping any order in the world, then and only then do we consider resuming whatever support we deem appropriate. This should apply to any NATO-allied nation who hasn’t met their 2% defense spending as well. If your country doesn’t keep up their end of the deal, we certainly shouldn’t keep ours.
I understand the impulse to not want to support other countries who don't seem grateful for the aid -- but this sounds like one of those "cutting of your nose to spite your face" situations. Even if you're annoyed that a recipient of US aid is insufficiently grateful, and even if you think NATO allies should be paying their 2% ... a key question is still, "Do we prefer the world where the current-aid-recipient is unsupported?"
If the US prefers the world where Ukraine is not annexed into Russia, then even if our support is not appreciated to your satisfaction, it may still be best _for the US_ to provide the support.
This is exactly why “America is bad” is such a common opinion.
The preferred response of many of its citizens and politicians, is to prove the critics right with no thought of how that affects the world. This vindictive idea is worthy of a 4 year old child that doesn’t know any better.
And I bet you think that the US never benefited from being the world police. You think that the only super power in the world projecting influence all over the globe was all done out of the goodness of their hearts?
Despite much criticism, the US was the country most democracies looked up to or followed. It’s sad and quite worrying for the world that we’re now seeing the end of that.
It is not about what America has or hasn't done, good or bad, but all about the possibility of Trump. The idea of the US getting a president as immature as yourself, who rather aligns himself with the gangsters of the world, whose idea of diplomacy is beg-for-mercy-who-is-your-daddy-now oneliners, that is what scares Europa into self-reliance.
Since Trump, the US might not be the US anymore in the future. It might break its promises, withdraw from NATO, from Paris and any other treaty it has made. War is coming closer to us, we cannot rely on a US that is actively flirting with authoritarianism.
Hopefully not, but it is a very real possibility. And we are not ready for it.
I didn’t like him as president, but he was entirely right about that. Any president would be, regardless of their politics. As bluntly as possible:
Keep your promises, and we will keep ours. But if you fail to keep yours, I do not believe we have any obligation to fulfill ours, even if it leads to loss of life. That’s not immaturity, that is the most basic, foundational tenets of a pact.
Europe constantly fails to meet the requirements across multiple agreements, wether that’s defense spending, carbon emissions, or whatever else, but the second that the U.S. slightly slows down on handing out free cash to anyone who asks, we are a horrible, evil “mafia” country. It would be laughable if it weren’t so depressing.
Ironically, more countries in NATO are meeting their 2% defense spending bill than ever before, because of a possible Trump presidency on the horizon. They know there’s a chance US funding gets rug-pulled, so they’re actually taking their defense spending seriously. Precisely because he is a poor, unpredictable leader, a Trump presidency is ironically what will save Europe from themselves.
The problem with Trump is the same as with your post: you don't even know what you're talking about. The 2 percent was agreed on only in 2014 as a response to Russian annexation of Crimea, and the goal was to reach it in 10 years, which we now have collectively as NATO. 18 members spend 2% or more, and the pressure is on for the rest.
Do they have some explaining to do? Of course. But this is not a reason to threaten military allies of more than 70 years by saying Russia can invade them with impunity. Its like I'm a week late on a payment and the landlord promises to send a pack of mobsters to kick me out if I don't pony up the next day. Let's not talk about the emissions that is absolutely insane coming from the worst offender by far.
Now the GOP is going to block the 'slight' spend of 60 billion in aid because it is using Ukraine as a bargaining chip for its anti-immigrant policies.
This is about Trump, but beyond him the US might become a very unreliable and chaotic partner. I'm worried this will backfire. If it does, on the long term, China will start to look a lot more interesting to some European countries as a force of stability.
The Budapest Memorandum was negotiated at political level, but it is not entirely clear whether the instrument is devoid entirely of legal provisions. It refers to assurances, but unlike guarantees, it does not impose a legal obligation of military assistance on its parties.[2][52] According to Stephen MacFarlane, a professor of international relations, "It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine."[51] In the US, neither the George H. W. Bush administration nor the Clinton administration was prepared to give a military commitment to Ukraine, and they did not believe the US Senate would ratify an international treaty and so the memorandum was adopted in more limited terms.
If anything US should take a view of self interest as they are losing the credibility as an important international power very rapidly and are instead seriously helping their most dangerous adversaries to gain momentum.
Russia was in a very bad position a year ago, Putin's power was crumbling, but US withholding of critical help let him to sustain his power. Where are we now? Russia is threatening US space assets. Authoritarian powers all over the world are becoming more and more cocky as they see that US is becoming week and impotent.
It is sickening for me to watch how US is hurting itself out of stupidity.
“Maturity” is paying your bills on time, and not biting the hand that feeds you.
It’s not a hissy fit to feel annoyed at blame on the U.S. for Ukraine losing a war that has nothing to do with us. It’s not a hissy fit for wanting European allies to take their own defense halfway as serious as we have. We’ve kept stability in Europe, in spite of Europe’s actions.
This comment can be attributed to lacking knowledge in history. North Atlantic security model was decided 70 years ago. It was decided that instead of strong European military union US will be the grantor of security against common adversaries. Instead of very strong European armies, US will have overwhelming power. Do you realized why this might have felt a good idea after WW2?
It is most notable that all countries who feel threatened by Russia contribute well over 2% of their GDP into defense. Do you understand in US that this stupidity that is going on in the congress and this dangerous rhetoric is especially hurting these countries? Do you realize that for example Spain is not really feeling threatened by Russia and people in Spain (the voters who effectively decide the size of the defense budget) do not really care about US not helping them as they don't see any credible threat? This is only hurting US, what is losing its credibility globally as a serious security partner.
> and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault
Genuine question as someone who has no connection to either government of the Russia-Ukraine war: didn't the US push Ukraine into not accepting terms with Russia, under the promise that it would support Ukraine in case of war? In other words, it pushed Ukraine into the war, using it as a proxy to fight Russia.
It’s not the US’s fault Europe spends so little on defense. You reap what you sow. If you get rolled, that’s on you and your poor planning hoping Daddy USA is going to play world police.
We remember the decades of mocking for our choice of investing in defense. Enjoy your “free” healthcare while it lasts.
"It’s not the US’s fault Europe spends so little on defense."
Exactly!
This crisis will probably bring nukes to Poland and hopefully Germany (Macron offered nukes several times, to safe costs, the German public sadly is anti-nuke) to make the EU independent of US protection. We then can close Ramstein, Landstuhl and Weilerbach and close air corridors for US military machines to no longer support US wars in the Middle East. European countries will stop buying US weapons and create jobs in Europe instead of US voting districts.
Well, of course, do you think the US is going to donate its aircraft carriers, F-35s, F-22s, B-2s, and nuke subs to Ukraine? The US isn't spending trillions on artillery rounds.
Spending a lot is not a badge of honor in an asymmetric conflict. If the US was spending more efficiently than Russia the way it did in Afghanistan, this would be sending a message to the next Putin that invading one's neighbors is a losing proposition.
The US's economy suffering more than Russia's sends the opposite message.
If US Congress decides to spend 1 billion USD on weapons for Ukraine, they will not wire 1 billion USD to a bank account in Ukraine.
The US government will give > 900 million USD to US companies that build weapons in factories in the US, employing US workers who spend their salary in the US economy, boosting it.
The US government will also spend a couple million USD to transport the weapons produced in the US to Ukraine.
Russia is also employing Russians to manufacture arms who spend their salary in the Russian economy. The important thing is how much value in infrastructure the government gets for the keynsian boost it's giving, since wars generally last until one side runs out of credit.
The apocryphal calculus in Afghanistan was a 100 000$ US Stinger missile was generally worth one 2 000 000$ soviet helicopter. I'm sure there are US defense systems that would be similarly good tradeoffs, but I'm also sure there are difficulties in spending billions at a time on anything cost-effective. It's hard to spend large amounts of capital effectively and all that.
Honestly what's the difference whether it's POTUS or Congress blocking the bill ? The writing on the wall is here: if Russia invades Poland, NATO article 5 or not the US will not go into full blown war with Russia.
And honestly it was the European's fault to believe in this pipe dream.
"And honestly it was the European's fault to believe in this pipe dream."
Having lived through Reforger exercises, with US tanks everywhere and sonic booms every few minutes, I believe up and including Reagan it was clear the US would not let Soviet Russia invade Western Europe b/c of the resulting shift in world power.
After the EU got more powerful and expanded, dynamics changed.
It's unclear with the Bushes and clear that Clinton/Obama/Trump would not aid Europe.
All of that money is being laundered back to the U.S. war machine, yet it's somehow losing this "war"? Mitch McConnell admitted that himself just recently.
Meanwhile, Kiev is in pristine condition while Gaza is a now a wasteland. None of this makes sense.
Germany will buy its F-35s. Poland will start taking delivery of its HIMARS from the US starting next year and will continue to order US hardware. As part of the deals that Poland and Germany signed, they will be ramping up local production to support the systems they are buying.
One thing you're missing in lots of your predictions is that Ukraine had no US military presence. Poland does. There's 10k US troops in Poland right now. There's zero chance other European countries will be closing US military bases with the looming threat from Russia.
No. Germany needs those F-35 only for delivering nukes ("Nukleare Teilhabe") [0] replacing aging Tornados in that role. With Trump as the next president I don't think you find a German politician (except the far left and far right) who thinks sharing nukes with the US is working any longer.
I'd think Germany will rather take French nukes instead of using US nukes in the future.
"There's zero chance other European countries will be closing US military bases with the looming threat from Russia."
With a US president shouting "Russia, go, invade Germany, rape, plunder and torture with my blessing" - US bases will all be shut in the coming decades.
Depending on what happens with the congress. There are still some semi-sane (concerning foreign policy) Republicans in the Senate of course they'll probably struggle a lot more with manipulating him/keeping him inline like in his first term.
But I guess it's not unlikely that the democrats will lose both the senate and the house if Biden manages to lose. So yeah...
> Countries like Poland will no longer buy US weapons but increase European defense spending - they fear just like Ukraine that US congress just turns around and will stop delivering parts for F-35s in a conflict
That's absolutely not the sentiments among Poles. If anything, there's a belief we can only rely on US when poo hits the fan.
Looking at it historically, you are going to be short changed again...
Suddenly the following scenario, is not far fetched anymore: Russia will find an excuse around Kaliningrad Oblast, and a NATO hostile US president will negotiate a cease fire in the name of stopping a Nuclear conflict...
To be fair modern Russia is not exactly the USSR or Nazi Germany (let alone both of them put together). Their army was decimated (huge understatement) in Ukraine. Their demographic situation was pretty bad before the war. But now? If you combine the massive casualties (more than the US lost in Vietnam during over 15 years AND the Soviet war in Afghanistan (10 years)) with the exodus of working age males how can they ever recover?
It's an extremely cynical take but US + EU can pretty much afford to "wage" this war indefinitely as long they give just enough to Ukraine for it not to collapse and both sides continue throwing their men into the grinder. Russia is on a timer; it might take an extra few years and even if they don't run out of shells they'll run out of soldiers sooner or later (of course unfortunately the same applies to Ukraine..).
> UK would safe them from Germany and Russia and was betrayed
The balance of power is not even remotely similar to what it was back in 1939. Even if we ignore the economy and armament production modern Russia has severe demographic issues it barely has enough manpower to wage a full-scale war in Ukraine (considering the massive casualty rate, more in a single year than US lost during the 15 years in Vietnam and Russia has many times smaller conscriptable population than the US had back then).
How could they ever open a "second front" in the Baltics?
Back in 1940 the allies were extremely underprepared materially (mainly the British, the French had an army that could certainly compete with Germany on paper, but they were much too conservative (and in hindsight run by incompetent morons)). It's not like they consciously decided to just abandon Poland outright, the allies expected it to hold out much longer and very way too slow and indecisive to do anything. Then they somehow managed to lose Norway against all odds and the same thing repeated in France.
Stuff like that simply can't happen in modern warfare (as the Russian attempt to capture Kiev has proven)..
> Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina, he retold the story of his alleged conversation with the head of a NATO member country that had not met its obligations. This time, though, he left out the line that drew the most outrage — encouraging Russia “to do whatever the hell they want.”
> “Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect. OK?” he said Wednesday.
> Europe will lose some territory but gain it's own military security after decades of living from the US strategy alignment.
Why would that be the outcome? Why wouldn't it result in European countries wanting more US involvement? Who wouldn't want the most powerful country in the world on their side, as their ally?
Also, I strongly disagree with the idea that separately, the US and Europe are somehow stronger. Separately, countries end up in conflict - Europe's own history shows it especially, and that's one of the primary, intentional reasons for NATO and the EU. Together they are far more powerful - NATO is far more powerful than any country alone, including the US.
The EU - which for all its flaws is, if you step back and look from an historical perspective, arguably the greatest international organization in history - still lacks effective, unified international relations. Decisions require unanimity, which is hard for a small organization, and now they have dozens of members. Kissinger famously said (iirc), 'if I have to call Europe, who do I call?' They don't yet have the political structure and institutions to conduct international relations as whole.
Finally, power in international relations ultimately flows from wealth and population. If China continues to grow, it could have an economy twice the size of the EU's (or US's) within decades, and India has potential for similar growth. Together, the US and EU offer a much stronger balance.
> Countries like Poland will no longer buy US weapons but increase European defense spending - they fear just like Ukraine that US congress just turns around
This isn't how it works. You buy expensive and unnecessary weapon system from US not because thye are any good but because this is your designated protection fee. After you spend several bilion dollars US feels more obliged to help... Just a racket..
> Countries like Poland will no longer buy US weapons but increase European defense spending
One assumes Poland would actually like someone to fulfill those orders in a timely manner, so perhaps not. Germany can afford to "spend" money on weapons and then not produce anything, but it's not going to work for Poland.
Poland will not get spare parts for its F-35 in a conflict under Trump, or more likely be blackmailed for higher prices or other concessions. Or the software will stop working and they need to pay to make it work again. Trump would love that.
The only way for Poland to be safe is having military production in its own country. Because it's easier if everyone has the same weapons, I it should join Airbus and KMW+NEXTER and get production facilities on it's own land.
As seen with AstraZeneca you need physical control to be safe.
I don't think Poland is very doubtful towards US(some is always welcome). We have strong ties and generally are on extremely good terms with US compared to other western countries.
As for weapons, well its a market situation, sometimes perhaps having non-us weapon systems is actually better.
> Countries like Poland will no longer buy US weapons but increase European defense spending - they fear just like Ukraine that US congress just turns around and will stop delivering parts for F-35s in a conflict
Other pluses: American equipment is expensive. The recent purchase from S. Korea is significantly cheaper and IIRC entails a partnership agreement that requires that at least some of the manufacturing happens domestically in Poland. This allows the S. Korean defense industry to establish a base of operation in Europe. Also, the Polish armed forces have been investing in a diversity of equipment (American, EU, S. Korean, and domestic) for some time, which, of course, means they're not too dependent on a single country.
To be fair it never had that territory in the first place. Prior to 2014 Ukraine was clearly under Russian influence and Western Europeans countries never had any serious thoughts about somehow “taking it over” (despite what putin & al. are saying )
> gain it's own military security
I’m really not sure most Europeans countries (besides those that are very close to Russia like Poland, the Baltics, Finland etc.) are that keen about massively increasing their military spending. Certainly not even close to what US is currently providing.
> no longer supporting US wars in the Middle East and beyond.
A lot of these wars are connected - Russia is working with Iran and North Korea (and China to some extent)
Thinking Europe should only care about what happens in their backyard while criticizing the US for not caring enough about Europe's backyard seems hypocritical.
There was never any chance that the US would fund Ukraine indefinitely. NATO countries arent going to do a 180 based on this. Perhaps they will start contributing the amount towards NATO that they themselves pledged though.
this is very hopeful to me. as an american who is aware of whats going on its been discouraging to see my govt consistently spreading evil through the decades
I think you are on to something. While I consider NATO will hold together, it would certainly avail the EU countries to build a military of similar capability to the US to thwart Russia's ambitions of conquering all of east Europe. It is best to hedge against that, particularly with the rise of MAGA fascism (and its alliance with Russia) in the USA. I feel it will peak when Donald Trump loses in the Fall but there is no guarantee of any of that.
I don't think anybody thought that it would, but here we are. It is quite amazing how time and again we seem to enable little narcissistic men to gain hold of positions of power. And I can't even really complain because NL has Geert Wilders to deal with right now and his foaming-at-the-mouth band of supporters who believe that everything that is wrong with this country can be traced back to immigration. On top of that they believe that this is the fault of 'the left', when in fact we haven't had a left wing government since I was riding a 16" wheeled bicycle.
Except perhaps for the Dalai Lama who enjoys adoration out of religious reasons, I know of no other state (and definitely no other big economy) other then Germany where public infantilization reached such advanced states.
But Germany has a left-wing government. And it is pushing this week to enact a law to prohibit speech that is not extreme enough to be against the constitution or otherwise criminal.
I get it may feel so for an American, since America is the strongest exporter if culture in the world - the whole world for example consumes American movie and songs, with the consequence that most people have some kind of approximate idea how it is to live in the US, what moves Americans etc .
On the other hand, by this same fact, that Germany isn't such a strong cultural exporter, few Americans really know what moves Germans, since these topics are rarely talked about in movies, songs, radio that Americans consume.
From this vantage point, I think it's hard for Americans to imagine just how left-wing Germany became compared to the US.
For example, the US doesn't have a system for wide social security benefits, relaxed border controls (I never understand what the US is fretting about in terms if immigration, you can basically just walk in over the to Germany and register as a refugee - as millions have since 2015), and
all other amenities that are typically "left" causes.
Furthermore, while Germany may not have a legal framework regulating what you can say, it has a lot of implicit rules, how to talk about foreigner, an implicit "speech police" so to say.
(The issue is actually not having all of thr above -because, after all, they are very nice things to have- but it's that they were allowed to be abused and overused at the expense of the general population, who keep paying more and get less if these services, and these initially nice ideas end up hurting now many more people. )
Yeah, Trump wont drop out unless he dies. He desperately wants to stay out of prison. And people behind him want to stay in power. Fingers crossed we all dodge a bullet this year.
Because if we end up with Presidente Marine Le-Pen, President Trump and an AfD-let German government, well, things look grim. Poland gave me some hope so.
If you really drill down the numbers, there are the cibstant 25% or so actively supporting it, regardless of country, with enough others tagging along passively to get the 25% dangerously close to actual power.
> I said it before, if Trump gets a second term, he will have a third. And then democracy as we know it in the Western world will be dead.
It’s not so simple. The Democratic party strategy has been to use hypothetical situations like this to justify (to the public) the arrests, ballot disqualification, deplatforming, and any other unprecedented means to hinder the chances of Trump winning in a fair election.
They already spied on his campaign in 2016 without repercussions (you probably don’t understand how serious that is), and lied about the Russia hoax, and countless other examples. I don’t know if a third term will happen, but a large portion of the public is mad about this.
So I can’t take this argument seriously, but a significant portion of the public apparently does. That’s an actual, not hypothetical failure of democracy. Rules for thee, not for me.
why rant and rave against US? This isn't 2012 post-Snowden era of "friends don't spy on friends". The US are not the enemy here but our long-term ally. Right now Russia, China, the Assad regime, and IRGC are.
> We just need to get our act together, not every country building or buying it's own incompatible weapons (like tanks, planes, frigates).
If "we" means Europe I agree, that "we" need to reintroduce mandatory military service, prepare to fight Russia and its allies on their own turf, defend against Russian terrorists on our own turf. Ans most importantly we must wage war against pro-Russian mouthpieces in our own countries, e.g. Geert Wilders, Marine Lepen, Meloni, Bjorn Hoecke and AfD, the entire Orban government, current Slovakian regime, and anyone who takes money from Putin and spouting their propaganda.
War is already here in Europe. It's just unequally distributed.
Agree with your list of pro-Russian populists, except Meloni doesn't appear to be pro-Russian, in Italy it's rather Salvini (Lega Nord) and Berlusconi (Forza Italia).
The only ones that has ever activated article 5 is the US, and all the European allies answered the call. So who is the beggar here? Budget percentages is a mirage and not a serious way to discuss actual engagement in NATO.
The difference is that natives regained the majority of their land in other continents. North America and Australia being the worst offenders with their unlawful apartheid regimes.
1973 Europe. We all know post 2000 countries were for the economic zone (Poland is an interesting case, but Germany never considered them trusted partners, building their gas pipelines around and not through PL)
So what about Romania? Looking at it from a European security standpoint they only need to be aligned to the mission
> The US taxpayer is rightly wondering why they're funding an unwinnable war in a foreign land.
The US taxpayer is notoriously bad at coming to rational conclusions about a lot of things I don't see why on this one they suddenly should be operating from a different set of principles that guide them towards seeing the future a little bit more clear. The last time that tactic was tried it ended up with a couple of million people dead and the first use of atomics against civilians, you have to wonder if there is a better way to solve these problems than to ignore them until you no longer can because you're suddenly on the defensive.
> Western powers were wrong to encourage Ukraine to fight Russia instead of agreeing to ceasefire terms.
This is not what happened. The US, in fact, tried to get Zelensky to flee and told them that they were going to lose and didn't really offer any aid until _after_ Ukraine fought Russia to a standstill. There have never been any ceasefire terms from Russia. Which has, FWIW been fighting in Ukraine since 2014.
That was early on. Later on, when there was a potential ceasefire deal on the table, the West, especially Boris Johnson, advised Ukraine not to accept it. Look it up.
> Russia was ready to end the war and withdraw its troops in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality just a few months after the invasion began and was refused partly because of ex-British PM Boris Johnson, who pressured Kyiv into continuing the fight, David Arahamiya, the leader of Ukraine’s ruling party confirmed in a recent interview, published on Friday, November 24th.
If I had insight into confidential information, I would be busy commuting between my real estate in Spain, Switzerland, and Dubai, instead of arguing with you.
Without a doubt the US pushes its might around the world BUT in the case of Europe, European countries do not have the willpower to create a military like the US's. How did the US lose all its trust? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Europe was frolicking around for decades, most countries with no real economy and making many mistakes a long the way regarding energy security.
I don't think the US stance on limiting LNG export for its own security is a valid defense. Europe/France/Germany made many mistakes before that by shutting off generation plants before having secured long term resources.
The French military will likely continue to be bogged down in Africa, given that the situation there is pretty dire and French vital interests are threatened.
The French betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938, then got steamrolled by the Wehrmacht themselves, and their credibility in Central and Eastern Europe has been shot ever since.
Just a side-note regarding energy mistakes: Germany single-handedly funded R&D for solar energy to the place where it is now the cheapest form of energy available. And then more or less gave the industry away to China. That was one happy mistake which is hard to overestimate the longterm impact it has on the world.
I absolutely agree with your criticism on European defense spending but I know how the US managed to do that.
By first dragging the rest of Europe in a very aggressive position in the Ukraine war. Dont get me wrong I fully support that stance. But it was only possible because the US stood front and center, president and congress hand in hand "as long as it takes".
Now less than two years the US lost interest and left Europe with a half dead crazed Russia running on a war economy on its doorstep. So Europe has to try and fill in for the lack of US support while a possible upcoming Trump presidency makes it rather likely that the US wouldnt honor article 5.
We weren't frolicking, we were peacefully consuming Apple's wonderful technology, cursing at Microsoft's abysmal OS, and other great product from Silicon Valley ;)
There's a world of difference between Tucker (dabbles where he's deeply misinformed, "just asking questions" in total safety) and Russian "apologist" journalists who fear for their job and life.
Obviously the "embezzlement" was a sham charge by the Kremlin:
> The court did not explain why the trial would be held in prison and failed to explain how witnesses, journalists or Navalny’s defence team could attend the heavily restricted facility.
> Navalny is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence on trumped-up, politically-motivated charges, which the European Court of Human Rights has described as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”
Wether that's true or not (given his ideological leanings there would be nothing surprising if he was corrupted), he still was a fascist and a racist.
Hardly the symbol of democracy that western liberals are struggling to make him to be.
BTW don't you find it curious how his "wife" was already at the munich security conference, ready to give a speech to the world just few hours after his death?
Why is irrelevant when he was in russian prison in a faraway region and only the official apparatus with putin at the top had the means to kill him.
Why would they kill him? Who knows, there's spite, posturing, all the other mafia shit.
Also why did you put Navalnys wife in quotations?
Note: I'm not giving any judgement on whether Navalny was a good or bad person, liberal or nationalist. Just that he was a political prisoner killed by a brutal autocrat.
> Why is irrelevant when he was in russian prison in a faraway region and only the official apparatus with putin at the top had the means to kill him.
It is never irrelevant. I feel it's actually damaging for putin to have killed him now, so I still wonder why would have he done it?
Mafia shit is a naive answer and only shows your bias, Putin is not a mafia boss but the leader of a great power.
> Also why did you put Navalnys wife in quotations?
Shes known to have had other companions while he was in jail. All pretty rich. I strongly believe her appearance at the Munich security conference was just a carefully planned show.
So your morals worry about whether there is infidelity in marriage but your morals have no issue about murder. The murderer is still a respected leader of a great power in your eyes?
Using your own favorite trope, a bit hypocritical, ain't it?
Each year, like clockwork, Putin's top critic residing in Russia is killed "mysteriously." If you can't figure out "cui prodest" by now, you're in a small (but quite vocal!) minority.
> downvotes, which indicate that a majority of users feel your comment does not add to the discussion.
I've been on HN for far less than you have but I still have more karma than you do, it means your contributions add less to the discussion than mine do, somehow.
Anyway I reposted it because it got flagged. It just had 2 downvotes, that's pretty normal and I'm used to my opinion not being popular here. After all there's lots of privileged americans and westerners in HN userbase.
But maybe you'd prefer to hear only one side?
Perhaps we should have only "discussions" where everyone agrees that the Western liberal point of view is the best and there are no downvotes at all. Oh that would be so enriching and stimulating!
In the case of Navalny, there are mountains of evidence implicating Putin, including audio recording of a Russian agent admitting to a previous poisoning attempt [1].
> After all there's lots of privileged americans and westerners in HN userbase.
Like I don't know what an ad hominem is or I care at all for the approval of a bunch of privileged shielded liberals...get a life. This isn't a high school debate contest and I couldn't care less about your rules when I know I'm right.
No matter who killed him or if he was killed at all, I'm glad Navalny is gone. One less fascist on this planet, and it's definitely helping expose hypocritical liberals like you.
And anyway you still have no hard proof that he was killed by the government. A previous poisoning is not proof of his assassination now, although it makes it likely. In any court, it wouldn't still be enough to warrant an arrest.
But who needs evidence when all you care about is discrediting the enemy and mounting a case to escalate a war?
Few days and we're supposed to know everything about Navalny's death. 5 years after Epstein's death and we still have no idea how did he die.
It's clear you have no interest in rational discussion.
Perhaps you'd be happier engaging with some local political groups that share your views?
Sounds a bit more productive than spamming a Californian VC firm's website with your hourly angry, poorly-informed political rants against "rich woke Western liberals" ;)
Yes, all the same, UK prison cells and Russian Gulag with people tortured and worked to death. There is no difference between a $10 fine for parking in the wrong spot and the death sentence. The later is just a little bit more "harsh".
I'm not sure why or what you are cherry picking here. I could easily quote pieces on how prisoners are treated in Guantanamo Bay, what happened in Abu Ghraib under American supervision or how we happily send billions of dollars to a country of which Save the Children said of the detained children "86% were beaten, 69% were strip searched, 60% spent time in solitary confinement, 68% were denied any healthcare, and 58% were denied visits or communication with family".
I'm not pro-Russia, pro-Putin or pro-anyone-who-detains-opposition-for-life. I'm also not pro people saying "Russia bad" when these things happen everywhere and somehow think they are morally superior.
You are using logical fallacies to make a point. The UK does not set out to kill political prisoners in it's prison system. It hasn't done since at least the 80s (depending on your view of the 6 counties)
> we happily send billions of dollars to a country
who are a different sovereignty, outside of our control.
Realpolitik here. The world is unsavoury, The "West" wages war, just like russia, china, india and empires of old. However, the crucial point here is that even the UK, doesn't routinely imprison people for political crimes, that is, having an opposing view of the present government. There are, for the moment freedoms and rights that we enjoy.
Lord know it's trying (see protest laws) but the difference in outcome is stark. I can freely say that Sunak is a total failure, a posh wanker who has made things worse for the populace. At no point will that comment land me in jail. If I stand for office and say the same thing, I will not end up dead two years later.
Your viewpoint that the UK is just as "morally free" as russia, really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Sure, you can support the end of USA hegemony, but that doesn't mean that Russia is a bastion of freedom.
So it's no longer about political prisoners (I assume you think Assange is one), but about children?
"we happily send billions of dollars to a country"
Who is we? You have sent billions of dollars to the US? I haven't.
I thought the article was about Russia, why exactly are we talking about the US prison system now? What is the goal? Making the Russian Gulag look good? Improving the US prison system?
I've campaigned against the US prison system with AI. Did you? If you didn't, it's simply Whataboutism.
Whataboutism has one goal, and one goal alone: Deflect criticism.
They were cherry picked examples such as your "$10 fine" example to demonstrate that how in multiple places in the world people (and even children) are imprisoned under horrible circumstances, spend their entire lives behind bars and some simply die or get murdered within their prison cell before completing their sentences.
I or you don't have to prove any alliance here. I could be burning a Russian flag in front of your eyes and you would probably still find a reason why I cannot have criticism on one side doing exactly the same injustices and (criminal) acts as the regime of the flag I just burned. Let me be clear that Navalny should not have been treated and died the way he did and in a fair justice system people would be held accountable.
That doesn't mean I cannot state an opinion that it is repulsive things like this happen everywhere yet somehow one side doing it is worse than the other and claims the moral high ground. They are both bad.
That's right there are no differences. The UK nabbed a 17 year old English girl named Carole Richardson in 1975 and tortured her until she confessed to bombing pubs that soldiers frequented in Guildford. Her detention without charge for many days was allowed due to then recent legislation stripping those civil liberties. Her and three Irishmen she knew who were also tortured and who also confessed under torture were sentenced.
In 1977 the Balmcombe Street IRA ASU was arrested, and proclaimed the Guildford Four were innocent. It later came our that police had lied and submitted false evidence during the trial.
All to further the British occupation of Ireland which is similar to the Russian occupation of the Ukraine.
Yes UK prison cells are the same. The British tested torture techniques on Irish they arrested in the 1970s, there is a book called the Guineapigs about it.
> All to further the British occupation of Ireland which is similar to the Russian occupation of the Ukraine.
British occupation of Ireland ended over a 100 years ago. And many people in Northern Ireland do not want to be part of the ROI. There would have been no conflict if that wasn't the case.
I have strongly criticized the British actions during The Troubles in the past on many difference fronts, but to equate the invasion of Ukraine with the complex situation in NI is offensively misinformed.
So 1977 is today? (personally when making that argument I'd use the Boers genocide by the British in the prison system, would have more impact). The dungeons of 1244 France are the same as the prison system in France today? The German prison system today is the same as in 1944? What kind of physics theory of time equivalence is that?
Did the UK torture prisoners. Sure. Should someone go to jail for this. Sure. Is todays UK prison system the same as Russias Gulag? No.
the word you are looking for here is ‘regime change’. it is true that it is unreasonable to bring up ‘historic matter’, that is conduct in the ‘prior regime’, to discuss the merits of the current regime. Germany suffered total defeat in WW2 and so its “1944” prison conditions mean nothing. UK arguably can claim “a win” after the end of USSR (the only possible ‘regime change’ we can consider as relevant matter) and so ‘regime vindicated!’ and thus conduct of UK against Irish resistance is relevant as evidence.
I'd really like to know: You think Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown are the same "regime"? Can democracies in this view ever change? Has there been any regime change in England since 1066? (not trolling)
Not sure if you're just trying to troll, but you don't get elected into any Duma if you're from the opposition.
In fact I don't remember there being any real (elected) opposition in Russia, the "multiple parties" have always just been a theater. Like maybe some of the smaller parties would sometimes manage to push some insignificant agenda, but the important issues would always be controlled by the actual leadership in power.
No it was a genuine question. Did his party win any seats at any election at all?
Call me old school, i am a bit skeptical of single perspective foreign country coverage after the Iraq war lies and NYT’s fawning coverage of Stalin’s Russia.
I was not aware of these. Were they barred through court process (like we are trying to bar Trump through judicial process) or was it extra-judicial, arbitrary?
Don’t they have the equivalent of the election commission.
Yep. They have election commission, appointed by 1/3 putin, 1/3 by duma (with putin's party dominating it), 1/3 by "soviet of federation" which is comprised of governor representativs of governors appointed by putin (in Russia you can not vote for your governor). So, completely independent institutuion, I suppose...
What good are elections if you jail or straight up murder the dissents/opposition? It’s a complete joke. Navalny was also poisoned in 2020 he almost died on a commercial flight that had to be diverted.
Look up also the amount of journalists murdered there, that isn’t a democracy.
Wasn’t he considered a nazi before the Ukraine war? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56181084 Suddenly all the enemies of Putin are the good guys, even Yevgeny Prigozhin somehow turned into a hero in his last few days when he turned against Putin. And then we have US citizens dying in Ukraine prisons for publishing videos on YouTube that tells different story to the war in Ukraine, such as Gonzalo Lira without any notice in the western media!
Solid propaganda piece with the recent interview, now a popular opponent eliminated after long sadistic power play. Putin's Russia is consistently moving ahead, they don't seem to be losing at all.
sorry, but that is nothing for rusland. 1 person is worth 3 drones - so about $800.
The amount of gas/oil they sell per day can continue the war indefinetely.
well, that's a lesson for every western-backed opposition wannabe:
don't trust your German handlers (probably told him, they will support him like a murderer Khodorkovsky, and get him out later)
I Russian (government employees) are fuckheads. Ok i framed it as anti-government are we allowed to say negative things about Russian bots here? When they murdered someone?
It's wild to me how everyone has a (very energetic) opinion about a conflict nowhere near their home, helmed by people they don't know, fought by people they don't understand, over problems they don't understand.
I wish we could return to when not every conflict between nations was a considered a global emergency.
The war affects everyone. Some people die, some suffer because they are under shelling or occupation, some suffer cause their loved one die. But those outside war zone suffer as well. Due to broken food chains, crazy economic inflation and general political instability. For sure it's as bad as when you're dead because of the random shell hitting your home, but still.
When a man with a nuclear button savagely kills his opponent just because he can, this creates instability inside the country. And increases chances, that once he dies (which eventually will happen), some radical guy might overtake the power and who knows what happens next.
I understand that a lot of events in the world might have potential global effect, but only few of them might hit as bad.
I don't understand why people are so scared specifically about Putin's nukes. He's not the only murderous dictator with a big red button, but he's the only one I hear people worrying about. Xi + the CCP is just as much, if not more, of a threat.
And due to the way things are going, they're testing the waters in cooperation and friendship.
For all of China's faults, the country seems less reliant on hard power for survival. Russia is a country with three tricks only: fossil fuels, nuclear weapons and destabilizing democracies.
China is a manufacturing and technology powerhouse.
Unlike Xi, Putin and his propaganda machine has literally threatened to use the nuclear power if they have to. Multiple times.
Yes, it is considered as a bluff. And most likely it is. However so was all the military "exercises" before the invasion to Ukraine in 2022. Only a few really believed it, unfortunately it actually happened.
Its funny to me that with the current state of Russia this guy could have died with absolutely zero interference from the state and the rest of the world will assume he was killed no matter what comes out of Russian media, purely due to their track record with this sort of thing.
Not sure why I'm being downvoted, I'm not trying to suggest that this death isn't suspicious, just commenting that even if it wasn't people wouldn't believe the Russians due to how often this happens.
People calling for the US to do more against Russia, be careful what you wish for. You have no idea how close the US is to a draft. The US has been woefully low at filling military recruiting quotas. Keep in mind both presidents during WWI and WWII campaigned to keep us out of those wars. Any major conflict like that will most certainly require a draft. Better keep your saber rattling to a minimum.
Though the percentage of active duty military members has fluctuated since 2001, it has declined by 39% since 1987, its most recent high.
The people behind this propaganda are pushing for privatization, not a draft. The US Army is dramatically downsizing its uniformed troop strength at the same time its budget is dramatically increasing.
"Under end strength levels outlined in the annual defense authorization bill passed by the Senate Wednesday evening and expected to be passed by the House on Thursday, the total number of active-duty troops in the armed forces will drop to 1,284,500 in fiscal 2024. That’s down nearly 64,000 personnel in the last three years and the smallest total for America’s military since 1940, before the United States’ entry into World War II."
Lawmakers say the reason for the lower target isn’t a decrease in missions or threats in recent years. Instead, the number reflects recruiting challenges across the services and an expectation of what level of personnel is realistic in coming months.
They aren't lowering troop numbers because they want to, they're moving the goalposts to meet the reality of diminished recruiting.
Also, privatization is for non-combat roles, logistics and what not. It allows us to keep more US military personnel in combat roles instead of support roles.
When all of these hack aren't enough to fill ranks in a major conflict, the next step is a draft. Iraq I, II and Afghanistan were not major conflicts in terms of total deployment.
Also, no politician will utter the word "draft," or they will lose all support. If a major conflict arises with Russia, it will get instituted, make no mistake about it. Everyone pushing for war with Russia needs to consider the consequences.
>Consider what happens when the Taliban runs out of troops. The United States has a 28:1 advantage.
The US conquered and held Afghanistan for 20 years and we could have done it for another 20+ years, we just lost the political will to do so. I'm in total agreement with getting out of Afghanistan, as ugly as it was.
The US didn’t “conquer” Afghanistan. It was fighting a nonstop insurgency that obviously we couldn’t sustain for another 20+ years as evidenced by the fact we didn’t sustain it for another 20+ years. Losing political will is quite literally “losing,” and we left and the Taliban now gets to (actually) rule their country how they want to.
It certainly did. It took the Taliban out of power and installed our own government. Also, all conquered countries have insurgencies. France, Poland, Belgium, Holland all had insurgencies and they were certainly conquered by Germany in WW2. Insurgencies by conquered people have been happening since before Alexander.
>Losing political will is quite literally “losing,”
Maybe. Did Britain lose to India because they lost the political will to occupy them? Canada? Australia? Maybe. Did the US lose to the Philippines because we no longer colonized them? Doesn't seem like it. I'd be hard pressed to find any rational historian to say the US lost to the Philippines.
>It was fighting a nonstop insurgency that obviously we couldn’t sustain for another 20+ years as evidenced by the fact we didn’t sustain it for another 20+ years.
Afghanistan didn't force us out. We could have kept doing what we did for another 20 years. It would have been as stupid as the last 20 years, but we certainly had the financial and military means.
Anyhow this is a tangent. If we go to war with Russia, there will be a draft and millions will likely die. This has been a known for the last 80 years. I'm amazed people don't think this would be true. Those who forget history are destined to repeat it I guess. Better start getting in shape.
No one is disagreeing with “if we go to war with Russia there will be a draft and millions will die.”
They’re disagreeing with your suggestion that the way to avoid war with Russia is by not supporting Ukraine now or that Ukraine is necessarily doomed because of a 3:1 difference in manpower.
If you want to talk about repeating history, maybe look up how well appeasement worked with the Nazis, another lying autocratic regime wallowing in delusions about its own greatness.
>I suppose it’s ambiguous who you’re referring to “doing more”? But you unambiguously said a 3:1 advantage -> Ukraine will run out of troops.
Ah I see, yes I meant "do more" as in escalating by putting boots on the ground or getting US or NATO troops officially in the war before Russia invades a NATO country, or giving Ukraine weaponry where it can invade Russia. Right now we're in a proxy war with Russia like Vietnam or Afghanistan (1979-1989). The national interest for us is to make Russia look bad and drain Russia to the point where they can't invade a NATO country at the expense of Ukraine, unfortunately. The war has devolved into trench warfare and a war of attrition, which will ultimately lead to Ukraine running out of troops if nothing significant changes.
During peace talks Ukraine has stated they want all the captured territory including Crimea back, which Russia will never agree to because they have the upper hand. Russia just has to sit there and defend like Germany did in the Western front in WWI. Furthermore, Russia can fight a war of attrition much longer than Ukraine can. That's where the 3:1 ratio is important.
I don't see a path to Russia "giving up," and relinquishing all captured territory outside of Putin getting removed and a magical NATO friendly leader taking his place, which is highly unlikely. Had Prigozhin toppled Putin, he would have likely been even more aggressive. A coup in Russia would likely make things worse, too. Nobody wants the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world to become unstable, except maybe Iran.
What else can happen? Ukraine invades Russia? We haven't been giving Ukraine long rage weapons because we don't want this to happen. If Ukraine invades Russia in earnest and makes a lot of progress, Russia will likely lob some nukes, which is very bad.
Ukraine can take over the territory Russia has taken, but they haven't been able to do it and have been repelled from Bakhmut and recently from Avdiivka. It's not looking good. How many more counter-offensives can Ukraine sustain? I don't know, but it's fewer than Russia can repel. Something needs to happen that isn't happening now, but I have no idea what that is.
I just don't see a path that doesn't involve lots of Ukrainians dying and ultimately give up most of the land Russia currently occupies, except a peace treaty, which Ukraine currently isn't being realistic about. Furthermore a peace treaty is no guarantee Russia will not invade a NATO country.
We're walking a tightrope. We want Ukraine to repel Russia, but not threaten Russia's existence. When a non-nuclear power fights a nuclear power, the one with nukes has the upper hand.
So that's the path we're currently on. Ukraine can only commit to so many counter offensives and rebuff Russian offensives before they are drained. Russia hasn't even fully committed to the war yet. What do we do once Ukraine has ultimately "bled out?" Ukraine is a powder keg waiting to explode. It's pretty scary.
Do you realise how easy it would be for the US to defeat the depleted Russian military? The US Air Force alone could probably do it in a weekend.
The war in Ukraine only drags on for so long because of the refusal of the west (partly tachnical issues, partly political hesitation) to equip Ukraine with modern weapons in sufficient quantities.
They aren't depleted. They've suffered 300K casualties, they have 24,700,000 left of fighting age. Also keep in mind Russia has no qualms about putting women in front line combat roles.
Also, Iran seems like they want to get involved. They've been selling Russia arms during the conflict. They have about 17 million people of fighting age.
Without equipment, logistics and ammo to support it it's a dead weight. Also, it's very interesting that you omitted Gulf War, which would be the most similar conflict in terms of power dynamics. 4th by strength military in the world in war against large coalition of countries that is led by USA.
>Also, it's very interesting that you omitted Gulf War, which would be the most similar conflict in terms of power dynamics.
Most of the Iraqi soldiers surrendered as soon as they saw coalition forces. Only the Republican Guard remained to fight and they were only around 75K. I doubt the Russians will surrender en masse like the Iraqi regular army did.
I don't know much about the US but I assumed you don't have draft since the Vietnam war? And this is why USA army has to actually produce cool ads as opposed to Russian army who just takes people.
Are you suspecting that the law would be changed to enable draft? Or maybe I'm confusing draft and conscription, are those different?
>I don't know much about the US but I assumed you don't have draft since the Vietnam war? And this is why USA army has to actually produce cool ads as opposed to Russian army who just takes people.
You are correct. Conscription and the draft are essentially the same. I believe conscription is when you enter military service regardless of wartime, while the draft is explicitly to fill ranks. I could be wrong on that though.
>Are you suspecting that the law would be changed to enable draft?
Yes, if we get into a large scale war without the ability to recruit enough volunteers, most certainly. Currently our recruiting numbers are way down. The US has had a draft/conscription throughout most of its history. Current times since 1973 are an anomaly.
Also, the law is already in place. Every male citizen, when they turn 18 must register with the Selective Service, which is responsible for the draft.
However, conscription remains in place on a contingency basis; all male U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live, and male immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, residing within the United States, who are 18 through 25 are required to register with the Selective Service System.[2][3] United States federal law also continues to provide for the compulsory conscription of men between the ages of 17 and 44 who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, U.S. citizens, and additionally certain women, for militia service pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and 10 U.S. Code § 246.[4][5][6]
In fact, reinstitution the draft is required by law:
A national emergency, exceeding the Department of Defense’s capability to recruit and retain its total force strength, requires Congress to amend the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the President to induct personnel into the Armed Forces.
The term for a person who pushes for war without any intention of serving themselves is called a Chickenhawk. I'm just reminding all the people who are pushing for escalation with Russia that if war happens, they will likely be drafted and aren't just sending the mostly poor kids to fight their war. To those people I say, be careful what you wish for.
Being young Russian citizen with liberal world views I passionatly followed Alexey Navalny and his team work, at the time it was seemingly altruistic, positive, and very entertaining. But now not so young anymore and hopefully smarter, I am looking back and seeing that what it was, was play to hijack power for the sake of it, create instability as means to gain power, and from more recent interview with people worked side by side with Navalny [1] [2] it is clear that what he was on public was facade and underneatch was power hungry man that weaponised internet platforms, populism and worked by the book-play of a typical foreign NGO interfering with sovereign state.
[1] Anastasia Vasilyeva: Navalny’s harassment and FBK’s deception /// EMPATHY OF MANUCHI https://youtu.be/ei-9Wh_jaCs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navalny_(film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF_HsKCWEHw (trailer)