China (essentially Xi Yinping) is staying silent because in his end-goal of China #1, he will win if the west and russia duke it out.
The greatest advantage North America had after Word War Two was that it had the world’s only functioning advanced economy. The rest of the advanced countries had their economies smashed.
Xi Yinping could only dream of ending up in such a position.
Sanctions are a blunt and crappy tool, agreed. I don’t think over the last twenty years anybody has caved into sanctions. Dictators almost never voluntarily relinquish power.
Not sure I heard that at all. I have heard this from Russian news sources, however, that Putin says Ukraine wants to acquire a dirty bomb. Playing this out in your imagination, it’s not a useful tool at all for Ukraine. On the contrary, using such a weapon would give Putin the cassus belli he’s looking for to “respond in kind”. So I’m inclined to think such a thing is more telegraphing of a false flag in advance.
Right. Putin is a flat out dictator and as you have pointed out, although some Russians obviously did and do support him, plenty do not. I wish Russia had been able to become a normal western style democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union but I guess you got screwed over by Yeltsin and his cronies.
The cold war 2.0 didn’t just begin. It has been in place for about 20 years. It just has gathered steam in the last five years or so.
If Donbas had gone to the Ukrainian government and asked for an independence referendum (like Catalonia and Scotland) then it might have been legitimate for them to secede. For Putin to just declare Donbas to be his because their are Russian speakers in it is BS. Also, where are the millions of refugees from Donbas you speak of?
It is possible to take the position that NATO ended up coming up to Russia’s border. But does Russia actually have a say in what organizations the countries at her borders join? I think not. Also NATO did not force anybody’s hand (the countries applied to join) so it’s not quite NATO expanding as if it’s some evil strategic plan. The world doesn’t in fact comply to Alexandr Dugan’s wierd theology.
According to “Russian sources” and without evidence. There has been no other news agency reporting anything like this that I can see, and if he made it in a speech it would be all over the news.
In other words, it’s likely pure propaganda being put out by the Russian government.
Not a position so much as an inexorable fact. NATO has and is moving up to all important Russian borders. And this sort of thing simply does not happen by accident.
Are you familiar with the so-called Orange Revolution that culminated in the 2014 crisis?
It is well documented (from internal papers, mind you) that the CIA has been instrumental in similar revolutions. The end goal being regime change.
Ukraine used to be aligned with Russia; after the revolution and regime change it no longer was. The exact opposite, actually.
Again, if anyone believes such serendipitous events unfold purely by accident, I’ve got a bridge to sell them in Siberia.
Its not complicated. Geopolitics 101. Russia’s hand was being forced. Was this the right move? I don’t know. However, its preposterous to expect them to do nothing.
As an aside: under the present circumstances, barring men from leaving the country and indiscriminately handing out weapons to an unprepared, unorganized populace, encouraging them to fight an army - this is not something that would be done by a government concerned for the welfare of its people. It seems Ukraine is being managed by outsiders who are willing to throw the Ukrainian people into the grinder. Certainly it isn’t for their benefit.
@scot
“Geopolitics 101… However, its preposterous to expect them [P.B. the Russian leadership] to do nothing.”
I agree. This is something I really don’t understand (from the point of view of security policy):
Why the (complete?) disregard of Russia’s “security concerns” in Eastern Europe by NATO / the US for years!
And this disregard in combination with Putin’s “paranoia” as a dictator could only become an explosive mix.
For some response attempts see, for example:
“Was this the right move?”
Probably not. Russia has an excellent army so they are likely to win the conventional phase of the war (phase 1). But if there is a protracted guerilla phase (phase 2), they´ll probably lose:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ukrainians turn into some of the greatest guerrilla fighters the world has ever seen (like the Apache warriors, the Viet Cong, or the Afghans).
If the Ukrainians persist, the West will “flood” the Ukrainian guerilla with weapons like crazy.
And if Putin decides to use tactical nukes, for example, then it no longer matters whether Ukraine is in NATO or not. Then we´ll have a World War III scenario.
Apart from that, from a strategic point of view it doesn´t matter any more if Putin decides to retreat his troups because this Cold War 2.0 will probably continue - for years / decades (Note: But, of course, for the people in Ukraine a retreat of the Russian army would make a “huge” difference!).
And in a continuing arms race / economic battle, Russia (at least without China) can´t win in the long run because they´re economically too weak compared to the NATO alliance.
Be that as it may, I d say the situation is so volatile right now that everything is possible - including World War 3.
PS -
“Reporter asks Putin why his political opponents are ‘dead, in prison, or poisoned‘”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEBYU1aGXMA
The real answer is:
“The only good opponent is a dead one.” (Vladimir Orwell Putin, see above).
Interesting twist to the tale. The Ukraine is developing biological weapons and today the USA officially confirmed it. Or is it just propaganda from Russia?
A few minutes ago I got a similar newsletter from Glen Greenwald (see: Victoria Nuland: Ukraine Has "Biological Research Facilities," Worried Russia May Seize Them):
"Self-anointed "fact-checkers” in the U.S. corporate press have spent two weeks mocking as disinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. support. They never presented any evidence for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — but nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth and label such claims false.
Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia as well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed: "The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.” The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted that “Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons.” Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.S. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Yet U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.S. Government to declare such claims "disinformation” and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading as neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.S. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at least in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: “Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?”
Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing further "proof” that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.S. foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.S. messaging campaign by telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should be “100% sure” that it was Russia who did it. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.
But Rubio’s clean-up act came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses “chemical or biological weapons,” Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead — with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.” Any hope to depict such “facilities” as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added: “we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach” — [interruption by Sen. Rubio]:”
I’m sick of fact-checking by now, but all this sounds as one more excuse for the putin’s aggression, I almost recognize the dramatic style of my countrymen, all this emotional articulation you know, though I may be wrong on that. So what, it’s ok to destroy cities and kill Ukranian (and Russian) people just in case?
All the answers are at the beginning of the story as always, then the speculation of some sort takes place, nothing new.
What is an interesting twist, that the most liberal part of the russian population are also unemployed now and gradually getting kind of deprived from information, work tools and things like that by the sanctions. What should we do, I wonder? Go work for the propaganda or for the military structures? I’m kidding, of course, the questions are rather rhetorical… But the unwillingness of some countries to withdraw of the Russian gas and oil is getting more and more not understandable.
“it’s ok to destroy cities and kill Ukranian (and Russian) people just in case?”
No, of course not. But when super powers play their deadly games you should expect, well, everything.
It´s a bit like Cersei Lannister said: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.”
Unfortunately, those who have the least say in those global games often suffer the most.
“But the unwillingness of some countries to withdraw of the Russian gas and oil is getting more and more not under- standable.”
From a strategic point of view, you don´t want to push Putin´s regime in a corner where he becomes desperate.
At the same time, it isn´t good to foster a close Sino-Russian alliance.
The wisest course at the moment would be a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine (with compromises from both sides). But what no one wants is:
In short, I’m not sure that more sanctions are helpful at this stage because there are already more than 5000 sanctions against Russia in place.
But, of course, I´m only an observer like most of us…
PS -
“Go work for the propaganda or for the military structure”.
I ´m not in a position to give you any practical advice.
But I know what I would do: I´d probably try to leave Russia, because even if the “Cold War 2.0” suddenly stops, the authoritarian regime in Russia will remain (in one way or another).
You’re aware that your government has for years known about and has repeatedly expressed concern over these labs? Why not admit inspectors into the labs in order to dispel the fear that a bio weapons program is being conducted?
Recall Iraq. In this regard, the two situations are quite similar.
You can have an opinion as to whether this ‘special operation’ is the right course of action, morally or otherwise. However, who can deny that not only Putin but the entire Russian state and military apparatus has legitimate concerns when it comes to Ukraine?
That’s it. Привет, дурачок…
Just to tie this all back to language learning:
google translate tells me that Привет, дурачок means ‘bonjour imbécile’
There were multiple reports from several Western outlets such as BBC news and Canadian news that talked about the Neo-Nazis there a few years ago and as to why certain Canadian government officials even meet with these people? Somehow they jus stopped reporting it now especially during the war. Why is that?
Some examples
and here’s their leader talking about changing the world order. They are also proud of the weapons they received from guess which countries? And behind them is Stephen Bandera. This was taken way before the war.
Even some photos of soldiers being posted by western media online show them wearing these insignias. Even the Ukrainian soldier cover girl in French magazine has pictures of her wearing Nazi insignias. They also parade Stephan Bandera every year. How much proof do we really need. I’m just putting this down here and we should be objective about this stuff. I just hope that we wouldn’t be picking sides and instead just listen to both sides before coming up with conclusions.
I do not support the war, but I only blame all the people involved in instigating it.
I have friends in both Ukraine and Russia. One of the things that most saddens me is the tendency of many in the US to elevate the Ukraine to saint status and reflexively dismiss anything Russian as evil. My biggest fear about the sanctions is that at the end the hurt the average citizen, not Putin or his cohorts. I just pray for a peaceful resolution before more lives are lost.
Great point. I expect athletes to play their sport, not do politics. There’s been a lot of silly hatred tossed at Russian hockey players over this. Completely unwarranted.