71–80 of 203 posts
Europe should be leading the diplomatic efforts towards Russia, not the US. This sort of rhetorics leads nowhere useful.
This is a joke, right? Diplomacy is something Russians completely disregard, lie about, and only agree to do when they are the only one benefiting, and even then only until they decide to break whatever agreements were made, because they've done so every single time so far. How do you have any diplomacy with someone like that? You can't.
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This is a ridiculous statement
It is an informed statement. The Russian military had ALWAYS operated on grift and cronyism, all the way back to the napoleonic wars. When shit hits the fan, as in Crimea, WW1, WW2, and Ukraine, it turns out all those paper capabilities don’t exist. Even in the height of the Cold War, ICBM silos in Russia were often flooded and inoperable. Nuclear weapons are extremely sensitive and maintenance heavy devices. They ha…
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What was undemocratic about the decisions to support Ukraine?
To my knowledge, these things are never put forward as an election topic or referendum. There is no discussion with citizens, it's always a fait accompli, we have to do it for national security sort of thing. The blowback is not discussed. I am from Czechia, and Russians attacked Vrbětice munition factory, because it supplied Ukraine. That's the reason. But in media it's always portrayed without this context. FWIW, I…
Representative democracies are supposed to work this way, a government is elected, and they represent their electorate. If the electorate disagrees with the actions the government took they will be voted out the next election cycle, in between it's in the hands of the elected government to make decisions in these matters.
> FWIW, I am not opposed to humanitarian and economic help to Ukraine. But I don't believe military support will end the war in a good way, whatever it means.
It means Ukraine falling in the hands of Russia, is that a better alternative for the rest of us? Have you considered the Pandora Box this opens up to? Without supporting Ukraine militarily they will be defeated, Russia will get a large border with Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Moldova.
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> If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda. This has already happened, Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that. The VKS can't afford to lose these planes willy-nilly.
The Turkish pilot who shot down was persecuted by Erdogan: > Erdoğan announced in an interview that the two Turkish pilots who downed Russian aircraft were arrested on suspicion that they have links to the Gülen movement, and that a court should find out "the truth". Russia didn't tuck its tail, they deployed SAMs to their Syrian base, they deployed the late Moskva in the region, and they pressured Erdogan to punish…
Armchair analysis: Germany is preparing for war and all of Europe is asking them. Well, this won't end well for Russia. Germany is one of the biggest industrial producers in the world.
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Perhaps you should be a bit more humble when spewing bullshit, it might even make it more believable instead of this word vomit.
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This is a ridiculous statement
It is an informed statement. The Russian military had ALWAYS operated on grift and cronyism, all the way back to the napoleonic wars. When shit hits the fan, as in Crimea, WW1, WW2, and Ukraine, it turns out all those paper capabilities don’t exist. Even in the height of the Cold War, ICBM silos in Russia were often flooded and inoperable. Nuclear weapons are extremely sensitive and maintenance heavy devices. They ha…
Contrast this with many "advanced" nations such as UK, EU, Australia etc. that can't even get a rocket into space. There was a period recently where the US was relying on Soyuz rockets to get into space.
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With a huge nuclear arsenal. So I doubt Moscow would be reduced to rubble, unless everything else was too.
France has a nuclear arsenal as well, making Moscow's kind of useless unless they want to provoke retaliation.
Could you please come back to reality?
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Germany still has a very large industrial base, things don't just disappear into the ether because they aren't profitable. Factories are still there, they can be retooled in case of need such as in a war. Perhaps you should be a bit more humble when spewing bullshit, it might even make it more believable instead of this word vomit.
Here's Germany doing its NATO exercises with broomsticks due to shortages
https://www.newsweek.com/germany-cant-explain-use-broomstick...
https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2018/0...
What was that you were saying about spewing bullshit?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is an informed statement. The Russian military had ALWAYS operated on grift and cronyism, all the way back to the napoleonic wars. When shit hits the fan, as in Crimea, WW1, WW2, and Ukraine, it turns out all those paper capabilities don’t exist. Even in the height of the Cold War, ICBM silos in Russia were often flooded and inoperable. Nuclear weapons are extremely sensitive and maintenance heavy devices. They ha…
While all of this is true, all it takes is literally one nuke that works.
My take: The drone sightings is a mix of Russian ops, and copycat actors. The jets that violate airspace, are probably a mix of intentional close flying, under the plausible deniability that navigation jamming in the area causes them to cross into neighboring airspace. In the case of Russian aggression, it is to create more tension. Why on earth would Russia want to escalate this, you might ask? Well, now that pretty…
> If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda. This has already happened, Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that. The VKS can't afford to lose these planes willy-nilly.
Russia retaliated by disallowing tourism to Turkey in the summer of 2016, causing about $5 billion of damage to the Turkish economy.
https://carnegieendowment.org/static/media/images/202105-Pri...
