One of the weird ironies of Russia's invasion of #Ukraine is that it was supposedly done to keep #NATO from spreading closer to #Russia, and the first thing that happened is that Sweden and Finland rushed to join.
Russia now has a very long border with NATO.
βNot an inch to the Eastβ (of Berlin).
I don't have a strong historical understanding, but what little research I did do does point to nato being out of line for a few decades prior to the Ukraine thing. Is that controversial to say?
I'm not sure where a land invasion, following a military annexion and a faux referendum, is considered an appropriate response to people being "out of line".
I thought Europeans don't send tanks and fighter jets over each other's borders, anymore, but Russia has now taught us, otherwise. π
My whole knowledge of the situation is a couple decent videos I watched when shit started hitting the fan. So, again (as people often get heated when it comes to politics), I'm not claiming deep knowledge here.
What stood out most to me, main takeaway that seems hard to argue with, was what seemed an objective timeline of NATO breaching agreements time after time by spreading closer. The other was the US-staged coup in 2014 in Ukraine.
That they feel seriously threatened seemed reasonable to me. Appropriate response is another thing, and I don't know enough about what efforts they made leading to attacking Ukraine, but surely plenty of noise.
That's as concise and accurate as I can manage, in my sleep deprived current state, of where I'm at on the bare bones of the situation.
Wasn't the Orange Revolution that started this whole mess largely instigated by western intelligence services for the purpose of NATO expansion?
It's not ironic, the plan worked.
I don't find this peculiar, tbh. NATO is rushing to defend their member states.
Seems like a bit of an own-goal, from Putin. Scandinavian militaries are scary. π€·π»ββοΈ Finland's entire military is custom-designed to fight Russians.
But, I guess his calculation that conquering Ukraine would only take a few days, as part of a "special operation", was already evidence that his supposed 9-D chess sometimes only involves 8-D chess moves.
I think you all are trying to overcomplicate a matter that has never had to be. Humans always make this same mistake.
nostr:npub1rfw075gc6pc693w5v568xw4mnu7umlzpkfxmqye0cgxm7qw8tauqfck3t8 why is this funny to you?
Because NATO is on track to lose US support for Europe and then the entire concept of defending member states would collapse if Russia actually had any intentions of taking Poland or something.
If the US abandons NATO, all of its other allies would immediately cut ties, and everyone would immediately dump dollars and shut down trade.
Dump dollars and buy oil how? Beg the Arabs for scraps like Habeck did with his 5 year contracts? No leader in their right mind would collapse their own economy just as they fear losing the shield protecting them from the evil bear. Nah, NATO isn't that important. If the EU wasn't hellbent on self destruction I'd be in favor of strictly defensive pacts between neighbouring countries in Europe, which would allow individual countries to also have defensive agreements with Russia. Not gonna happen in my life time.
The Arabs are the allies I am talking about. And the Japanese. And etc. The security guarantees they receive only have weight, if NATO holds.
Russia has been trading oil with other currencies, including Bitcoin and Tether and Remnibi, for years. Don't need dollars to buy oil, anymore.
Taiwan, is another one. Qatar just got written guarantees that were sold to them as "Just like Article 5", which is why Israel then immediately apologized.
Article 5 goes, everything goes.
Easy pill to swallow for the Russians and definitely something they expected, at least as a worst case scenario. Ukraine is much closer to Moscow. Building up a diverse army and defenses within Ukraine would've put Russia under a lot more existential threat. Sweden joining NATO and abandoning Russia is more of a cultural, diplomatic and historical sting for the Russians. Finland isn't of much use to attack Russia from. St. Petersburg is already pretty safe from NATO due to around 100k soldiers being positioned close to the border to Finland since last year.
He wouldn't have needed 100k near that border. And now he has to post some of his best soldiers up there, because _Finland_.
Nobody was interested in attacking Russia. This is the ridiculous thing that keeps being repeated, at the same time that Russians also claim that Europeans are all retarded and gay, and were caught by surprise. Both can't be true.
Ukraine now has a much more powerful army and defenses, than before. At the beginning, they could barely find anyone who knew how to clean a rifle, and now they're a high-tech arms exporter with a massive army, and a population that is war-hardened and seriously pissed off at Russia. Even if they lose some eastern territory, they are more dangerous than before.
I wouldn't feel _safer_ now, if I were the Russians.
Can we stop it with the "he"? Russia is a nation, a government, a military and a people, not some crazy boogieman the Western media propped up to be some evil mafia dictator who woke up one day and decided that Ukraine should belong to Russia to re-establish the UdSSR or something.
NATO has been interested in closing in on Russia for decades. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004 and Operation Eagle Guardian and Enhanced Forward Presence propped up stationed military near the borders to Russia of all NATO member states. In 2007, Putin made Russia's position clear: Stop expanding to our border or we'll consider this and existential threat.
In 2014 the Maidan coup happened. Just another color revolution plotted by Western intelligence. We have Victoria Nuland on tape discussing which government positions they'll fill with their agents. We had the Hunter Biden thing. We have the biolabs in Ukraine. We have published documentary evidence proving that Western Intelligence had a hand in propping up the ultranationalists for years. Since the ultra-nationalists took over, they've been polluting all cultural ties between Russians and Ukrainians for decades. For what? Ukraine will be a poor, military neutered, much smaller country than it was before 2022.
Ukraine has almost no functioning Army anymore. They've long lost this war. They've been sending disabled people, seniors and family fathers with 10 days of basic training and basically no ammunition to the front for at least 2 years now. They're done. Unless our crazy EU leaders somehow end up starting WW3, Ukraine will meet its fate in 2026.
To what end? Parts of their infrastructure and lands have been sold for pennies on the dollar to outside investors, their male population has been decimated, multiple generations will have severe trauma. Reconstruction rights were sold to foreign investors, mainly Blackrock.
I hope the people of Ukraine will wake up some day to how much they have been swindled. Then they'd hunt Zelensky and his cronies through the streets. But let's not kid ourselves.
exactly π―π―
I've been hearing that Ukraine has no military personnel or equipment left _for years_.
Ukrainian citizens don't appear to be interested in Trump's deal, by the way. Prepare to be very disappointed.
Another year of continued useless slaughter would do more than just cause disappointment.
Russian government really is just a one-man show. Whatever Putin says, goes.
That is not the case with Ukraine. Zelensky can't just capitulate, sign a deal, and the Ukrainians will all clap for him and go along. He actually needs some sort of public consensus, to get constitutional changes through and abdicate territory.
I have never seen anyone point out that the deal has to appeal to the Ukrainian citizenry, but we are all about to find out that they simply aren't interested in giving up territory they tightly hold. They hold the high ground, literally.
Also, as an aside, it's bizarre to me that no one thinks there's any problem with Russia sending a million young men off to fight this war, but it's supposedly really horrible that Ukraine has done so. Are Ukrainian men worth more than Russian men?
I think the consensus is: yes.
I don't agree with this, but I have yet to find a single person who thinks differently...
I never said that. Ukraine could've been saved in 2022 in Turkey and neither Russians or Ukrainians would've died. That's what I mean by that.
Well, you've likely been hearing and reading a lot that doesn't align with my perspective and research, so there's that. π
Ukraine recently lost most of their control of the strategic stronghold in Pokrovsk, blocking supply routes right now that always got reenforcements before. Just one of many signs of lacking new recruits.
They don't need new recruits as badly as they need arms for the soldiers they already have. What are they gonna do? Send new arrivals to the front with slingshots and have them shout "pang! pang!"?
Ukraine's conscription starts at 25, despite the USA throwing a fit about them not conscripting younger men, by the way. The citizenry refused to budge. That is what I mean. Ukrainians do have some say in government. It is _not_ Russia.
Ukrainian recruiters have been and are still being chased out of remote villages by people armed with axes, pitchforks and hunting rifles because they don't want to see their men slaughtered. Once you leave the westernized urban areas you won't find much support for this war, at least not anymore. I mentioned young people because they have been most heavily indoctrinated into the ultra-nationalist Banderite ideology for more than a decade by now so I pity them as much as young Arabs blowing themselves up because they both were deceived at an impressionable age.
These countries were de facto already part of NATO, because they took part in all NATO exercises and all NATO military operations. Moreover, Ukraine has a special significance for Russia as the cradle of the Russian world.
So, that means North Korea, China, and Belarus are basically Russian? They also take part in joint exercises.
Joint exercises don't give you Article 5. That's the trophy.
Finland was also part of the Russian Empire, but Ukraine is probably snazzier, I agree. And they wanted the Black Sea ports.
Russia and Belarus are part of a strange state that few people know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State
The punchline: the Ukraine war is actually a war by the west against Germany
Would you take james bakers word of βnot one inch to the eastβ? How many promises of non militarism, non expansionism, and aggressions have been broken? How much do you have to see to realize what the west is doing with these actions?
