881–890 of 1001 posts
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>No more time for games. It's time, as you say, to wake up and stand up for our values. This makes a nice tweet. But what does it actually mean in practice?
For starters, support the Ukraine.
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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 go…
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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 tha…
The upcoming 2024 election cycle will be one for the history books, regardless of outcome. And that outcome can be incredibly bad. 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.
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> 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 absol…
>Russia snatching Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with NATO's expansion. Absolutely false. We cannot prevent wars if we refuse to engage with reality as it is not as we wish it to be. https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/17000929447142730...
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.
For anyone who is interested, the full speech is available at https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm
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> 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 conne…
> 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 we…
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.
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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…
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.
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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…
the question is who will starve faster: Ukraine or Russia.
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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.
"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
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The upcoming 2024 election cycle will be one for the history books, regardless of outcome. And that outcome can be incredibly bad. 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.
And about half of the West will be OK with that. Interesting times we live in.
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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'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 th…
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.