Note the very different tone here between this discussion about russia and previous discussions about china. Strangely calmer and less troll-swamped, this.
Probably because you're not commenting as much on this thread.
The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
141–150 of 193 posts
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also Sergei Skripal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal Using WMD to take out a single person does indeed seem like making a political statement.
It's a rather confusing statement though since Skripal survived this WMD attack.
OK perhaps that should have been "attempt to take out" but I don't think you use nerve gas for anything other than trying to kill people?
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't consider the situation in Yemen comparable? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention...
What Saudi Arabia has done in Yemen is a war crime in my opinion. But it's also part of an ongoing proxy war against Iran, whose government has made it clear that the goal is to destabilize the Saudi regime. So no, not comparable to Russia's ongoing attempt to reassemble its lost Soviet empire by destabilizing and invading neighbors who pose no threat to it. Go read that wikipedia article you posted. It links to a go…
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Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
You stated: > If Saudi Arabia were to commit a comparable offense, I assure you they'd face a comparable response Offenses were cited to you. Where is the "commensurate response by the international community" to these offenses?
Read my comment again. I said that if SA were to do what Russia did -- invade a peaceful neighbor with no provocation and steal a portion of their country -- then I'm confident that sanctions would be levied against them. Pretty simple proposition, really.
So you don't think the Yemen situation is worse than Crimea (which is a complicated issue in itself?). Or even SA financing the expansion of Wahhabism?
I think SA gets too little sanctions for what they do. Too little.
And by the way, I'm totally in favour of Russia sanctions. I'm not questioning any of that.
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that it was invented in Russia doesn't mean that this sample was Russian made. Every decent chemist can produce that stuff. We were also shown powerpoint slides of Saddams truck-mounted labs of WMD - they just didn't exist. The second mission was to "win hearts and minds". Result: 1,000,000 people dead. Women, old people, children and toddlers included. Just watch collateral damage again. Do it 100,000 times…
>Every decent chemist can produce that stuff. After reading, "Novichok agents: a historical, current, and toxicological perspective"[1] it looks like the only places to have produced such agents are Russian chemical weapon labs and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Central Analytical Database. Maybe someone who works in the field can provide some more evidence either way? [1] https://www.ncbi.n…
Iranians were the first to publish about the synthesis:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rcm.7757
https://analyticalscience.wiley.com/do/10.1002/sepspec.1591c...
I am pretty sure that the Porton Down military research facility next to Salisbury is capable or producing it too - but that doesn't mean they produced the specific poison used to attack the Skipals.
The same for VX gas that was used to kill Kim Jong Un's brother in Malaysia. VX was indeed invented by the brits but I would seriously doubt that they killed Kim Jong-Nam.
Edit: this is just factual information. What kind of fscking loosers do downvote this? Go get a reality check.
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
What Saudi Arabia has done in Yemen is a war crime in my opinion. But it's also part of an ongoing proxy war against Iran, whose government has made it clear that the goal is to destabilize the Saudi regime. So no, not comparable to Russia's ongoing attempt to reassemble its lost Soviet empire by destabilizing and invading neighbors who pose no threat to it. Go read that wikipedia article you posted. It links to a go…
Crimea is also part of an ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and Russia, where NATO seeks to encircle the latter. The wars with Ukraine and Georgia were about maintaining buffer states (And to serve as a warning to the rest), rather than reassembling an empire. Or at least, the facts can line up with this interpretation.
Maintaining a buffer is exactly why the Soviets annexed half of Europe after WWII, and spent the next half century brutally oppressing the populations therein. That's the whole point. But regardless, this is such a silly semantic quibble. Who cares why Russia wants to reassemble its empire? The international community is understandably alarmed by Russia's actions, and naturally care little about Putin's justifications.
> Crimea is also part of an ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and Russia, where NATO seeks to encircle the latter.
Fuck, this again? Go ahead and connect the dots for me. Explain what specific actions on the part of NATO, or the countries that have requested membership in NATO, were responsible for Russia suddenly invading a neighbor country that posed no threat to it, forcibly annexing a large part of it, and maintaining a ruinous and deadly guerilla conflict in much of the rest.
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#147Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia definitely has the talent.
Had Name any political, cultural, economic, literature, sports achievement in last 30 years to come out of Russia. That's right Internet trolls which are an evolution on kgbs psyops
Try reverse engineering or data recovery sometime.
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeltsin certainly began the process, but it's hard to argue that Putin hasn't acted very aggressively to consolidate power. The idea that just because it was a process that started under a previous ruler, the currently ruler shouldn't be blamed for embracing and expanding the corrupt policies makes no sense. Also, what is the encroachment you are talking about against Russia? Are you talking about allowing the people…
Just remember what happened when Cuba followed some domestic policies US didn't like in 1962.
First, let's not play whataboutism. Certainly the US isn't perfect. That doesn't make what Russia is doing ok. Second, Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship. That's probably not the best example.
Re: The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crimea is also part of an ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and Russia, where NATO seeks to encircle the latter. The wars with Ukraine and Georgia were about maintaining buffer states (And to serve as a warning to the rest), rather than reassembling an empire. Or at least, the facts can line up with this interpretation.
Maintaining a buffer is exactly why the Soviets annexed half of Europe after WWII, and spent the next half century brutally oppressing the populations therein. That's the whole point. But regardless, this is such a silly semantic quibble. Who cares why Russia wants to reassemble its empire? The international community is understandably alarmed by Russia's actions, and naturally care little about Putin's justification…
Let me reverse that question.
What specific actions of NATO lead you to think that its ambitions for Russia in the 2010s differ from its ambitions for the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s?
What has changed since the Cold War, in those ambitions? What specific actions has NATO taken that make it clear that those ambitions have changed? What reassurance is Russia expected to see that encirclement, containment, and isolation is not the goal of the West? I can't see a single bloody one.
We're going down the exact same road again, the only difference is that the front line is now 300 miles further east. Which is very comforting for Czechs, and Hungarians but unfortunately, far less so for Ukranians.
(Oh, and to answer your question, I think 'US Army bases in Poland' is a pretty good, solid example of why Russia feels threatened. Had the War in Donbas not happened, as likely as not, we'd have been seeing US Army bases in Crimea today. It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. I advise that the best way to win for the buffer states is to either adopt neutrality, or, barring that, to not antagonize the side that's being backed into a corner.)