gah... the geopolitics is so messed up that i have to see saw when commenting.
NATO is not inherently evil.
The idea was to keep Russia out of a war razed Europe. If that wasnt established the whole europe would likely have been "great russia" since neither country had fully functioning military after the WW2 but the Russians had insane numbers and production capacity.
There was no idea to keep the Germans down... the idea was to show Germans that you can have a prosperous country without war and subjugation but through trade.
The USA did allow European countries (including Germany) to prioritise civilian investments instead of spending vast amounts on military
If everyone started arming themselves (without some external policeing) there would likely have been some warlords wishing to grab something while everyone was down
The idea behind naTO indeed was to substitute trade (with American functioning economy) to both be a guide and safety net.
Ie Trump is right that the military expense was/is a burden ...but the trade with USA was supposed to make it beneficial for both sides (one side gets to grow peacefully, the other side has a nice trading partner) ...win win
Hovever...idiots that prefer dick measuring are always greedy and want MOREMOREMORE....for MMEMEMEME
And thus somewhere the idea arose that EVERYONE(excluding "enemies") should be NATO so that NATO dick remains the largest in the world
This line of thought arbitrarily selects friends and everyone else is THE horrendous other = enemy
It is my opinion that it is essentially the isolationist rightwing way of thought that always draws very sharp lines to segregate the ingroup vs outgroup and is always afraid of the other and thus actively hostile "to the other" to keep them down
its not enough im on top.... i MUST BE untouchably forever on top. Ie its not enough that Trump is president...he needs to be EMPEROR (above law)
The same guys took over the NATO and instead of seeing the live-and let live policy of fostering trade, they kept on focusing on the fear aspect (omg the OTHERS are getting stronger...quickly we should bring them down a notch)
This starts a vicious cycle where "the others" cannot be passive since their "other side" actively works to degrade them...so they need to get stronger unless they wish to remain at the mercy of whimsical decisions.... like we take your land and make casinos or rename your country "red white and blue"
The cycle is vicious since apparently EU will need to invest in more military (no police...and/or police is actively turning corrupt/lawless - Greenland)
So instead of aiming to world peace we are quickly aiming for "everyone grab the biggest stick or you will get pwned) where everyone is armed and distrustfull of everyones. And the more authoritarian government you have the better will you be able to force your citizens to die for your country for lords sake?
Fuck this outcome and give me back the peaceful world which is not governed by might but by compassion ie "What would Jesus do" instead of "4 riders of the apocalypse" future
Anyway.... trade builds trust. Dick measuring builds animosity.
I just hope that the next period of "common sense" will not require another WW first to get us back to the stone age first to see the good in our neighbors instead of seeing everyone as an adversary.
Fingers crossed but not optimistic
And the video regarding the left/right entrenchment might bring some people out of cheering for deleterious policies
Soon we will learn that Gen Kellogg’s daughter holds a seat on the board of Burisma and is earning $80,000 per month. Although little is known about her addiction to crack cocaine & prostitutes, a laptop may very well turn up w/ photos attesting to such a thing.
All /sarc aside, Gen Kellogg traveled to Kiev in 2023, a trip for which his daughter’s philanthropic NGO, tasked to Ukraine, paid. When he returned he told the Senate Armed Forces Committee that “It is no mystery why this war happened. The Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, has always resented the American victory in the Cold War, and has spoken openly of his desire to reverse it. The path to bringing negotiations about is to enable Ukraine to defeat the Russian Army in Ukraine.”
The WaPo, describing Kellogg’s trip in 2023, on the dime of his daughter’s Ukraine-based NGO, included an arch statement in its reportage: “Kellogg is his own man, and his daughter her own woman. There’s no guarantee that the father always agrees with the daughter, and vice versa.”
Kellogg’s views are reductive, however; they reflect someone steeped in Russophobia-based misdirection. He propagates the trope that Russians don’t care about losses in combat, citing the casualties at Stalingrad in WWII—as if Russians are callously indifferent to casualties or are unconcerned about the deaths of their troops—or as if the complexities of Stalingrad, circa 1942-1943, a historic urban battle for the control of a large city, are no different from the vast battle landscape along a thickly strung-out line of contact in eastern Ukraine in 2025.
My thoughts: Kellogg came w/ Mike Waltz as something of a Package Deal or a Plus 1, if you like, for reasons having to do w/ Waltz’s neocon chops, his neocon pedigree. Both embody a regressive Cold War-era warrior mind-set steeped in the backwards-thinking, 20th Century mode of John McCain. Neither man is equipped for nurturing a peace process—but they may be serving an obfuscating purpose right now, putting on a highly diverting public show, providing protective cover, while a Senate largely populated w/ neocons drags its heels in confirming Kash.
Washington will not be amenable to Moscow’s terms for ending the war because there’s no way to sell those terms as a U.S. win—so negotiating for a settlement is not resultative. In this sense, Gen. Kellogg is beside the point: he’s a hood ornament.
Stop spamming. Formulate your thoughts into coherent sentences rather than breaking them up into dozens of spam-posts. Your brand new account was registered today and is already posting questionable things so Skynet is already watching you for infractions
Thank you. Comments were turned off on one of my favorite Stacks, due to spam and such. 💙🇷🇺❤️ A disappointment, yet necessary. I do come here to support your work, and to learn from the bright bulbs❤️🐈⬛
I'm not quite sure what Trump needed Kellogg to do as "Special envoy to Ukraine and Russia." The Russians don't want to talk to him, but of course Zelensky will talk to anybody.
Now it looks like Kellogg's real job is to talk to the EU people, so they feel they were heard, and I guess pat them on the head so they feel they were included in some way.
When they stare at him slack-jawed, and say, "You mean Russia is *not* a gas station w/ nukes?" he'll hand them a bag of Fun-yums and some gummy bears to make everything better.
I don’t know why anyone would believe General Rice Krispies (or Colonel Sanders, for that matter) on anything that relates to foreign policy.. I appreciate your deep dive but the litmus test of believability for me when it comes to foreign policy is: did an American politician say it? If so, it’s a lie. Remember Powell and his photo op at the UN ahead of the Iraq invasion? The mendacity of this class of humans is ingrained. It’s just how they’re made.
They don't know the meaning of "conflict of interest." DOGE should audit every government official who trotted to Kyiv since Feb 2022. 101 of any government job/contract that "there must be no any impropriety or even what might have been perceived as impropriety," but I guess it's just for us, mortals.
Putin's dithering (I agree with Paul Craig Roberts) has led to this. Putin does not scaring anyone. So Trump is going to push and kill Russian civilians and become a terrorist. Trump OWNs the Gazan Genocide, and now he owns the Ukraine war. Fuck Trump and Musk. Now they will never be able to get rid of the deep state. He lost the independents who determine elections. Putin is going to have to scare people. Taking out the Slavic working class of the Ukraine isn't going to help. Putin wants a sanitary, legal special military operation which is not quite war, highly negotiated, which isn't possible with the non-agreement capable west. The way of war is Netanyahu's way - you take out the top actors and take out all the NATO contractors and go after the money. It is all in the computers.
In every war it is the working class that fights the wars and dies for the rich.
Just "Putins dithering" is as wrong as anything that is fixed on that name.
the RF is a presidential democracy, so Putin is not alone as an absolute monarch - I really get tired of that Putin-nonsense.
I am happy that the Duma, the general staff plus other parts of the Russian government consider the impact of their actions in a broader scale than just playing the zero sum game of the retarded cold warriors of the west.
This childish "who is not with us is against us" stops usually after kinder-garden when kids go to high school. Just in the west it's all on that idiotic infantile scale and the majority of the western populations is buying that primitive crap unfortunately.
"The Russian is slow to saddle but when he does, he rides like the wind." Gung hoer$ seldom do wisdom. Russia is very very different from big-mouth $lumville.
Wars, pandemics, deliberate destruction of economies, human trafficking, etc... hugely profitable for some interest groups who will do all they can to keep it going. Nothing new under the Sun (Moon).
It is not going to happen. Simp has been predicting escalation for over year. Remember him saying that the French and English will soon join the fighting? He is creating unnecessary drama for money.
That proves it. You are simply wrong. The French and English have actually been joining the dying, not the fighting. Every time the FUKs land a few wannabe SS mercs they get a large, high velocity, gift on their heads. I guess you need a new ruler to measure 'escalation' and right now there is a closing down sale on at your local US A.I.D. office. Rulers and condoms are piled high on the trestle tables.
>Enemy saboteurs probably worked in Ust-Luga. The recent explosion in the engine room of the Koala tanker (164,500 tons), according to sources of Ambrey Analytics (a company in the field of marine risk management), was associated with the installation of underwater mines on the outer part of the hull. Three explosions resulted in three holes: one 100 cm by 80 cm, and two large 4 by 2 meters.
You are missing the whole story -- there were reports about Russian coastal guard searching for USVs at the same time.
Of course, the Kremlin is keeping it hushed because there is no way to spin it as "Ukrainian" USV when it is happening in Ust-Luga -- the distance is literally 10,000 km from Odessa to Ust-Luga for an USV to travel. The many UAVs that flew to the Leningrad region, and even beyond (Murmansk, Cherepovets, etc.) get passed as "Ukrainian" because people can be easily fooled without knowing the actual specs; the actual specs in this case making it impossible for anything the Ukrainians have to fly to Murmansk, meaning that it was clearly launched from Finland. But it wasn't just Murmansk -- the drones that hit St. Petersburg typically come from the gulf of Finland, not from the south, the drones that destroyed the IL-76s planes in Pskov were reported to have flown over the lake from Estonia/Latvia, etc. etc.
In their finest cucktastic fashion, the Kremlin has firmly stuck to pretending none of this ever happened. And is apparently still finding new ways to deny that it is under attack.
But here is the thing -- if the traitors in Moscow are fully committed to never attacking NATO, that opens the door for NATO to attack them. Just perhaps not in a huge large-scale attack, but with mosquito tactics. Which over time will be very effective at draining the country of treasure and resources.
Both the problem and the solution were put in Putin's face by Karaganov a few months ago -- his metaphor was that if you have a pack of hyenas nibbling at your feet and legs, you can try hitting them with a stick all you want, eventually you will bleed to the point where you are too exhausted to fight back and they will eat you alive; the solution is to shoot a couple, and then the rest will quickly go away.
The question then is do you have a gun to shoot them with (yes in Russia's case) and why are you not using it if you do (which is the big question)?
Unlike too many critics, obviously some brains who also have more real information and on top of that personal experiences, look to avoid a full war. How long that can last, whether it can be avoided, we shall see. A common thing when emotions speak is to ignore the consequences. Let us hope that patience and eventual deal making will avoid a real confrontation that would also include nuclear weapons as well the plethora of other systems that exist and are partially used, but a cumulative usage of everything that is available at the same time would indeed be catastrophic. Real leaders take that into account.
There are two fundamental asymmetries at work here, one in Russia's favor, the other against. The problem is that the one in Russia's favor it refuses to exploit because the other one working against it is kneecapping any serious defense of Russia's national interests.
The asymmetry in Russia's favor is that ultimately everything in Europe is disposable assets for the US. Nobody will sacrifice Boston for Poznan as Karaganov likes to say. Article 5 is a bluff when it comes to Russian nukes. So Russia has the freedom to create the buffer zone needed for its security by simply emptying out the necessary space between itself and the Atlantic of those who have caused the Russian people so much suffering in the past and are now dreaming of delivering the final blow. The US will most likely not do anything in response, and if they do, they were going to strike first anyway, so nothing would have been lost by trying to pre-empt it, at least it won't be from point-blank range.
The asymmetry that works catastrophically against Russia is that Russian elites are out for themselves and have very little interest in defending the country. They already broke it up once and gave up half its population and a third of its territory, just so that they could loot it without the restraints imposed by the communist system, why do we expect those people to have suddenly change and turned into the next coming of comrade Stalin? The only way to make sense of the puzzling way the SMO/not-war has been conducted is through that prism.
What Putin (thinks he) wants ≠ Russia’s vital interests.
The absolute minimum condition for a win in this war is the permanent erasure of Ukrainian statehood (and later on Ukrainian identity too), and even then it will have been a strategic defeat if everything else stays the same in Europe.
The current situation is an absolutely catastrophic defeat.
Moscow owned all of Ukraine in 1991, where does the current line of contact run?
And most of Ukraine was Rusian in mentality in 1991 too, what will it be if the new border passes along the current line of contact with no denazification?
Nothing will stay the same in Europe, it's already not the same - I live here so I might be able to tell ;-)
The cracks in Europe are widening and it is no coincidence that some here and abroad even begin to avoid calling it Europe but West Asia.
What do you thing a Dane has in common with a Portugese and all in between, except being used by an international operating capital class?
Our cultures, mentalities and even climate are far more diverse in Europe than especially US people can imagine.
The ilk of the 'old permanent' "Elites" are starting to scratch their heads and desperately searching for an understanding of the situation they brought on itself.
v/d/Leyen, Rutte, Macron, Scholz/Merz are so irrelevant already, it's a pleasure to watch them falling in their own trap and as the traitor Gorbatschov said: who is late to reality will be punished by life itself
Don't forget that the real goal is the reduction of humans by 7.8 billion souls. As soon as possible. The means to achieve that are there. A madman hundred years ago could destroy a lot. A madman today can destroy the planet. And with "madman" I like to refer to Dr. Strangelove types that are so brainwashed that they are unable to figure out that they will also off themselves.
You follow English-language alternative media scam who have long stopped bothering actually looking into what is happening on the ground and live in their own detached from reality self-referrential bubble in which the multidimensional chess and judo master is toying with the pink-haired diversity hires in Western capitals.
Stop with your lies. Russia is getting more than that. In Ukraine, putin has annexed $12.4 trillion in natural resources and annexed 6 million people. Also taking 30% of Ukraines agricultural land, 20% of its territory, and 75% of its coastline. Plus Have you heard, Syrian president is negotiating with Russia so they can keep their bases. P
it is not a question of survival, it is a question of revenge.
If it ever becomes question of survival, if Russia is to be attacked from Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Romania, these countries will disappear in nuclear mushrooms.
Revenge will come at a different time, however. Revenge, not nukes.
Acting now is exactly what MI6 would like to provoke.
Why?
It supports theory that Putin is a madman who plans to recreate Soviet Empire. Theory that is being pushed by British intelligence services and British media. If that theory were true, it would be essential for US to continue supporting Ukraine as long as it takes.
Current US administration has accepted the rational, realist theory advocated in the West by Mearsheimer, Sachs, McGregor...that the cause of the war is NATO expansion.
You sound like a Russian nationalist but all your suggestions are exactly what MI 6 would like Russia to do. .
He is obviously a plant. Trying to ramp up things. But anyway Russia is getting a lot out of this already. Eu looks completely cucked. Daddy America is finally home so EU has to listen
>Current US administration has accepted the rational, realist theory advocated in the West by Mearsheimer, Sachs, McGregor...that the cause of the war is NATO expansion.
And?
The absolute minimal winning condition for Russia is Ukraine disappearing completely.
Is the current US administration going to just hand it all off? Of course not.
And even that does nothing to restore the lost deterrence and standing or to address the problem of US nukes in Europe.
So what is there even to talk about? Yet Putin will be soon signing Minsk-3.
I don't care what the MI-6 would like Russia to do, I care about what must be done, which is to protect the country by physically eliminating the threats that are attacking it daily. Putin is refusing to do that, thus he as to go and be replaced by someone who will do it.
It drives me a little bananas. After Putin though, would Mishustin be any better?
I am starting to think that Russia really is terrified of nuke war or never being able to integrate with eu or something, so it will endure getting killed by a thousand cuts I guess. I hate how the west's response of, 'if you respond Russia we will blow up the world' has utterly frozen Russia from escalating and is leading to some major pressure builds.
Sadly, this strategy seems to work and is being applied to Israel, don't stop us from killing our neighbors or we will destroy you, if you respond strong we nuke you way of war.
Seeing how well this power stroke works for the west, Russia should have told Ukraine to surrender in 24hrs or we nuke - maybe not a shot would have been fired in Feb 22. If they would have said no, then just a couple shots would have been fired, but no loss of Russian life. For anyone saying nukes are bad - well we are already past 1m Ukraine dead and counting.
I think everyone should be terrified of nuke war. Russia has also reminded the west that they do have nuclear weapons.
Maybe not a shot would have been fired in Feb 22 - Or we'd all be dead by now. Tough choice. Russia did want to put on a show of force to get Kyiv to the negotiating table and it almost worked in Apr 2022.
>Seeing how well this power stroke works for the west, Russia should have told Ukraine to surrender in 24hrs or we nuke - maybe not a shot would have been fired in Feb 22.
The proper move for the last 30 months has been to give Poland and Romania the following ultimatum:
1) Seal the borders with Ukraine and let Russian observers be present 24/7 at all entry points to make sure there is no smuggling of heavy weapons
2) You have 24 hours to agree on that and a week to set it up
3) If you do not agree, you will be wiped out fully.
The scale of the death toll and destruction has long exceeded the commonly assumed thresholds for nuclear use, especially against non-nuclear countries.
Why hasn't that been done? Well, you ask the following:
>I am starting to think that Russia really is terrified of nuke war or never being able to integrate with eu or something, so it will endure getting killed by a thousand cuts I guess.
It's not so much about integration with EU as it is about internal Russian politics. Remember the old principle that internal politics drives foreign policy. Usually we apply that to the US, but it is true just as much for Russia.
Russia is in the enviable position of having the biophysical capability to be self-sufficient. It can feed itself, it has all raw materials it needs, and it has the scientific potential to be technologically independent. And is the only such country right now.
China only has the latter, but cannot feed itself.
The US at current consumption levels is not self-sufficient. It can be if you scale consumption down, but that would implode the whole system. It also can be if it annexes Canada, for another few decades at least, which is why that is being put on the table now.
The only other biophysically self-sufficient country is Brazil. But not technologically.
In principle Russia can nuke the EU, set up a depopulated and demilitarized buffer of 1,000-1,500 km from the border, then become a total pariah state for the whole world, and not care at all. So what is stopping it?
The problem is in part that Russian elites desperately want to be a part of the West and they love to spend their money there (where are their kids and main residencies?).
But the bigger problem is that for full Russian autarky to work, the country would have to go back to some form of communism. It just doesn't work otherwise.
And that means the current elite giving up their wealth and power. Not acceptable.
A milder form of that requirement is also the reason why Putin refuses to mobilize more than the current level of industry going towards weapon production and the measly manpower pool that is at the front lines and is barely sufficient to keep the Ukronazi hordes from breaking deep into Russia, but very far from what is needed to win. Again, if you work out the details, you quickly see that seriously trying to win undermines the current socioeconomic model inside Russia, even though it is fully doable with some substantial corrections to it.
Simply put, winning is not in the interests of much of the Russian elites, so they are right now prostrate in front of Trump begging to be allowed to surrender without giving up too much concessions to the Western oligarchy relative to how things used to be
General Moron, what a shame the Russian General Staff aren't plugged in to your valuable nation saving insights.
I do realise it's a long way from Moscow to your trailer park but what about a sat phone? You can take their calls with the hand that's not holding your meth pipe.
Answer the question why was there an expanding of NATO east in the first place?
This (capitalist) system needs expansion, that's why war is build into it to prevent it from collapsing under it's own contradictions.
It's all written down, thought about and the proof of it is countless.
To narrow the approach of the matter like you do is helping no one.
It's not the 'incapable' Putin or the oligarchs in Russia that don't dare to stand up against the combined old western powers.
To me it's Humanity, preserving of Russian and probably even Baltic, Polish and Rumanian life and Russia being part of the new international world order that Russia is fighting for. Even Ukrainian Soldiers are treated well when captured or switch sides.
You keep on working out the details but Russia and China will go on collecting friendly nations to work with in peace and on a win win balance and change the world in the meanwhile.
The piously stirring “OTAN Hymn,” sometimes known as the “HATO Hymn,” is a favorite of military bands on the continent especially. Predictably there are few passages for strings but plenty of brass, befitting military bands everywhere of course. It would be interesting, though, to hear an all-ukelele rendition of the “OTAN Hymn,” perhaps w/ a Don Ho-style slack-key lap guitar worked into the arrangement as a left motif.
Russia’s new 21st Century Tchaikovsky after the SMO win will work elements of the “OTAN Hymn” into the thunderous victory composition he creates to commemorate for all time Russia’s heroic thrashing of the U.S.-led OTAN, just as ‘old’ Tchaikovsky, the OG Tchaikovsky worked “Le Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, into his 1812 Overture. The new Tchaikovsky will bring back the cannon & the cathedral bells, as a nod to the OG.
When DJT looks at Europe today, he sees protein—better than a Big Mac. The Shepherd, in the guise of the U.S., is threatening to eat the Sheep in other words, not protect them. So we may hear less of the “OTAN Hymn” in the future.
Which might suit Lady vdL all up & down. Proposing an alternative to OTAN—a Euro Defensive Alliance—allows her to move Europe’s giblets out of DJT’s boardinghouse reach. Taking a page out of the Church of Jesus Christ Without Christ in Flannery O’Connor’s novel WISE BLOOD, Lady vdL envisions a new OTAN-type alliance but without the carnivorous Shepherd. Cleverly, Lady vdL is trying to make sure the U.S. can’t sit down at the Cool Kids table. What’s problematic, however, a little bit of a sticking point, is the plenitude of U.S. military bases in Germany and Italy—and the plethora of treaty permissions accorded to the U.S. in military airbases across Scandinavia.
The Shepherd who now wants to *eat* the Sheep, not *protect* them, has already prepared a place for himself at all the tables.
Population of the countries involved in the Baltic Sea conflict:
• Russia: 146 million
• Sweden: 10.5 million
• Finland: 5.5 million
• Estonia: 1.3 million
• Lithuania: 2.8 million
• Latvia: 1.9 million
Well, good luck pressuring Russia. If things continue to escalate, Russia will group vessels into convoys with military escorts along the entire route through the Baltic Sea.
I may have to put my Canadian spouse of Latvian descent under quarantine as a precautionary Latvia/Russia war measure if I get the courage to enforce my idea. lol
And these Russians are third class citizens. Sooner or later the Russian government will face internal pressure to help the Russians in the Baltic States, because there are family ties all over the place. And then is the moment where SHTF.
Zelya has been so super-busy w/ his gobsmackingly popular lithium, his world renown lithium, like the most ginormous of all valuable lithium deposits on earth, that he failed to notice until too late that—oh,oh—DJT and VVP were already engaging in world business without Zelya’s knowledge ahead of time or permission.
No matter. Zelya magnanimously offered a Mineral Partnership w/ the U.S. in exchange for security guarantees, leaking the deets to Reuters, who is busy burning through the last of its USAID money before the well goes dry. Waiting to hear back from DJT’s team about the Mineral Partnership, Zelya must be impatiently tapping his toe. Plus he’s got the new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, visiting Kiev this week, inquiring into where the billions have gone—and this can’t be comfortable for Zelya.
In an “It’s the journey, not the destination” scheme of things it may not ultimately matter if the U.S. and Ukraine ever enter into a Mineral Partnership—what matters is the way DJT changed the focus of perseverations about Project Ukraine. He shifted the fulcrum away from what OTAN neocons wanted to hammer home—Russia’s frozen assets in the EuroClear Bank; French and UK peacekeepers in a demilitarized zone; maximum pressure on Russia; “brutal unprovoked war of aggression”—and we now hear mainly about lithium.
Lithium is enough of a Bright & Shiny Object during the endgame for Project Ukraine that even Governor Trudeau is getting swept up in the whirl. Caught on a hot mic, he said that DJT doesn’t *really* want to make Canada the 51st state but only wants to strip Canada of its rare earths: Canadians are Useless Eaters sitting atop a wealth of lithium, in Trudeau’s ‘read’ of DJT. The minerals are the thing. Masks are off: it’s not that democracy is on the line—the rare earths are.
Lithium aside, Ukraine’s utility for the U.S. lay in its eagerness to become a battering ram w/ which the West could take down Russia. No one was ever going to bring in excavating equipment and a fleet of Caterpillar heavy tunnel-borers and start working a seam of ore. *Destroying Russia* was the *lithium.* Although the EU is still eager to use Ukraine, weaponized, against Russia—DJT knows the mine is tapped out.
EU speakers for the Munich Security Conference are so totally rewriting their speeches tonight--relying even on China's DeepSeak AI
it might be bound to fail, but it is also the only way to remain
i feel that it should be self evident that the bigger you are, the more relevant you are in the current world.
Noone considers Japan a powerhouse anymore. But a less developed China is a tier 1 player.
In the same way each individual EU country is meaningless on the large scale of things (barring maybe Germany/France). But together they have a vastly bigger weight
How to get thick headed people that there is safety in numbers for THEIR benefit is a difficult battle unfortunately. Maybe people from Denmark/Greenland now get some firsthand experience. Or Scandinavians which would also like to know someone has their back.... maybe even Spain? So maybe they would still like to support the less developed regions via investments to the south since they are buying stability and bargaining power in this way?
its always ironic that the right wing likes to be in a crowd (nation/religion).... but abhors a bigger crowd despite knowing full well their small nation is not enough to ensure their safety (for most nations). They NEED to be right despite actively going against their personal interests? Maybe like sheep going off the cliff together because herd mentality? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4665511.stm
so why ask/hope for the dissolution of EU? Unless you are living elsewhere and aim to reduce competition on the world stage?
The Russians have no interest in freezing the line of conflict in Ukraine. An imposition like that, should the U.S. try to impose it, is ridiculous. Moscow has no incentive to accept terms—because Russia is winning. VVP will work toward hammering out a larger security architecture for Russia’s place within the European continent, on which DJT is likely to look favorably, because he has long wanted to reduce the U.S. military’s footprint in Europe. A well-tuned reworked security architecture—updated for the post-Cold War 21st Century—is critical.
Secretary Hegseth warned his OTAN colleagues that the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and secure the peace “must not be Minsk 3.0” The Minsk Accords in which France & Germany disingenuously participated were fraudulent: deceptive efforts designed to allow ultra-nationalists in Ukraine time enough to consolidate power in order to provoke a hot war w/ Russia.
Soon after the SMO commenced, Col Macgregor observed that “We always sail away and we fly away.” Proxies are disposable, in other words. Prepped under Clinton initially for destabilizing Russia and then forged during the Bush jr and Obama years into a finely honed weapon of war, Ukraine outlived its usefulness once Collective Biden bit the dust. DJT, commonsensically, saw no ‘up’ side for throwing good money after bad in a losing endeavor: the U.S. is, in fulfillment of Col Macgregor’s sentiment, sailing away.
Excellent. Very informative rundown. The Empire is reverting to form: terror and subversion-- its preferred instruments of disruption and control. Standard Operating Procedure. Expect more vicious events against Russia and all its enemies in the future as its power diminishes. The Empire will not go gentle into that good night.
Jewish elite hatred of Russia goes back centuries to when Russia destroyed their Khazar kingdom and drove them from their homeland. Having taken control of the West over the past five centuries or so, they are also responsible for much of the Western russophobia infection of Western elite. They do not forget. They do not forgive. They never lose resolve. Nothing will assuage their lust for revenge until the last Russian is dead.
It is written in English language, presumably to provide receipts to USAID for release of the sponsorship funds, and not for the local Lithuanian-speaking or Russian-speaking population.
The entire EU bloc and the OTAN alliance function at the Gen. Kellogg level of thinking about the war in Ukraine: bureaucratically-challenged, dense w/ inaccuracies, inclined to fear-mongering & uninspired. From Brussels, the highly emotional Mark Rutte saber-rattled in VVP’s general direction, saying if Russia attacked an OTAN member, then OTAN would “crush” Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia is a blade of steel. It is winning—liberating villages in Donbas, taking territory in south Donetsk—and the AFU is being hung out to dry. Fulminating over this from Brussels is beside the point. Feelings do not change facts.
OTAN was an alliance the U.S. imposed on the continent in 1949: it is part of an old paradigm which has little currency in the post-Cold War 21st Century. On top of which the EU bloc & OTAN alliance have not really moved on from their partnership w/ Collective Biden, for instance. To their mind, dealing w/ DJT is not different from dealing w/ Collective Biden, but wowza are they wrong.
Living in the past suits them, though. Doing so permits them to sustain the momentum of the past 4 ultra-russophobic years. The war has fed them financially, in billions of laundered dollars. They actually thought that *they* would become the AI engine for the world. But JD set them straigh in Parist: the U.S. will lead: "You all can follow."
Members of the bloc may not have liked it when JD said it, but they wagged their tails gently.
The sooner DJT can shed the burden on behalf of the U.S., the sooner he can focus on more immediate & pressing domestic issues.
The sad thing is, that because the EU is a bloc, it cannot permit uni-lateral diplomacy between Russia, for instance, and another sovereign nation in Europe. So there’s a lack of flexibility. They’ve boxed themselves in. The operational space within which any European country can engage is practically nil.
Nonsense. If they were present in any appreciable numbers, we'd see prisoners, hospitals clogged with wounded, war cemeteries, wives, mothers and girlfriends demanding answers.
Would we? Clown World still manages to hide many of their schemes and their failures, and most people don't give a shit beyond whatever common narrative fits their political inclinations.
Joseph MacDonald (find him on YouTube) is an English soldier who does spill the beans in great detail about Anglo-Saxons, Euros, Balts, Georgians, etc., streaming in to enthusiastically try and kill Russians.
He survived the massive blasts at Yavoriv (hundreds of NATO troops reportedly killed, instructors too).
He also witnessed first-hand the embezzlement and racketeering along the supply chain from the Polish border to the front line, which again he describes in great detail, leaving very little for the brave defenders of honest democracy to fight with against Putin's corrupt regime.
He is not saying anything just clearly being provocative.
I believe in the freedom to correct him.
What is the point of him signing up, and paying for it to repeat intended insults?
Maybe he has a toothache, or someone dropped a brick on his foot. Who knows? If he has a point make it, that is a freedom of expression. Hostility is not an expression it mirrors frustration, and that has nothing to do with commenting on the posted article. He should watch CNN, and take a Tylenol.
Ooh Ooh, AI is coming to the rescue, I really don’t know what The I stands for? Insane? Insomnia? Incrimination? Europe goes wild, France and India in pursuit of Stargate, deepseek and other chats and Ursula with Zel still hoping that it can clear out and bring some new magic, Artificial Incredibility.
Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down - this has always been NATO's true purpose.
The Germans have been happy to play the sub bottom the whole time.
I used to think they weren't poisoning our food to make us sick..."𝐛𝐮𝐭" this changed everything.... https://t.co/uhttQtYkp7
gah... the geopolitics is so messed up that i have to see saw when commenting.
NATO is not inherently evil.
The idea was to keep Russia out of a war razed Europe. If that wasnt established the whole europe would likely have been "great russia" since neither country had fully functioning military after the WW2 but the Russians had insane numbers and production capacity.
There was no idea to keep the Germans down... the idea was to show Germans that you can have a prosperous country without war and subjugation but through trade.
The USA did allow European countries (including Germany) to prioritise civilian investments instead of spending vast amounts on military
If everyone started arming themselves (without some external policeing) there would likely have been some warlords wishing to grab something while everyone was down
The idea behind naTO indeed was to substitute trade (with American functioning economy) to both be a guide and safety net.
Ie Trump is right that the military expense was/is a burden ...but the trade with USA was supposed to make it beneficial for both sides (one side gets to grow peacefully, the other side has a nice trading partner) ...win win
Hovever...idiots that prefer dick measuring are always greedy and want MOREMOREMORE....for MMEMEMEME
And thus somewhere the idea arose that EVERYONE(excluding "enemies") should be NATO so that NATO dick remains the largest in the world
This line of thought arbitrarily selects friends and everyone else is THE horrendous other = enemy
It is my opinion that it is essentially the isolationist rightwing way of thought that always draws very sharp lines to segregate the ingroup vs outgroup and is always afraid of the other and thus actively hostile "to the other" to keep them down
its not enough im on top.... i MUST BE untouchably forever on top. Ie its not enough that Trump is president...he needs to be EMPEROR (above law)
The same guys took over the NATO and instead of seeing the live-and let live policy of fostering trade, they kept on focusing on the fear aspect (omg the OTHERS are getting stronger...quickly we should bring them down a notch)
Regarding the demonisation of the other ...whoever hasnt should watch the Black mirror "docuseries" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709234/?ref_=ttep_ep_5
This starts a vicious cycle where "the others" cannot be passive since their "other side" actively works to degrade them...so they need to get stronger unless they wish to remain at the mercy of whimsical decisions.... like we take your land and make casinos or rename your country "red white and blue"
The cycle is vicious since apparently EU will need to invest in more military (no police...and/or police is actively turning corrupt/lawless - Greenland)
So instead of aiming to world peace we are quickly aiming for "everyone grab the biggest stick or you will get pwned) where everyone is armed and distrustfull of everyones. And the more authoritarian government you have the better will you be able to force your citizens to die for your country for lords sake?
Fuck this outcome and give me back the peaceful world which is not governed by might but by compassion ie "What would Jesus do" instead of "4 riders of the apocalypse" future
Anyway.... trade builds trust. Dick measuring builds animosity.
I just hope that the next period of "common sense" will not require another WW first to get us back to the stone age first to see the good in our neighbors instead of seeing everyone as an adversary.
Fingers crossed but not optimistic
And the video regarding the left/right entrenchment might bring some people out of cheering for deleterious policies
https://youtu.be/MYoA1R38cuc?si=hc6nBn4wLI2aWcX3
ironically, it is better to judge the merit of each action in isolation and not through camp preference on other issues
Soon we will learn that Gen Kellogg’s daughter holds a seat on the board of Burisma and is earning $80,000 per month. Although little is known about her addiction to crack cocaine & prostitutes, a laptop may very well turn up w/ photos attesting to such a thing.
All /sarc aside, Gen Kellogg traveled to Kiev in 2023, a trip for which his daughter’s philanthropic NGO, tasked to Ukraine, paid. When he returned he told the Senate Armed Forces Committee that “It is no mystery why this war happened. The Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, has always resented the American victory in the Cold War, and has spoken openly of his desire to reverse it. The path to bringing negotiations about is to enable Ukraine to defeat the Russian Army in Ukraine.”
Conflict of interest much—?
The WaPo, describing Kellogg’s trip in 2023, on the dime of his daughter’s Ukraine-based NGO, included an arch statement in its reportage: “Kellogg is his own man, and his daughter her own woman. There’s no guarantee that the father always agrees with the daughter, and vice versa.”
Kellogg’s views are reductive, however; they reflect someone steeped in Russophobia-based misdirection. He propagates the trope that Russians don’t care about losses in combat, citing the casualties at Stalingrad in WWII—as if Russians are callously indifferent to casualties or are unconcerned about the deaths of their troops—or as if the complexities of Stalingrad, circa 1942-1943, a historic urban battle for the control of a large city, are no different from the vast battle landscape along a thickly strung-out line of contact in eastern Ukraine in 2025.
My thoughts: Kellogg came w/ Mike Waltz as something of a Package Deal or a Plus 1, if you like, for reasons having to do w/ Waltz’s neocon chops, his neocon pedigree. Both embody a regressive Cold War-era warrior mind-set steeped in the backwards-thinking, 20th Century mode of John McCain. Neither man is equipped for nurturing a peace process—but they may be serving an obfuscating purpose right now, putting on a highly diverting public show, providing protective cover, while a Senate largely populated w/ neocons drags its heels in confirming Kash.
Washington will not be amenable to Moscow’s terms for ending the war because there’s no way to sell those terms as a U.S. win—so negotiating for a settlement is not resultative. In this sense, Gen. Kellogg is beside the point: he’s a hood ornament.
Russia is Crip Walkin’ on Project Ukraine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/10/russia-ukraine-war-special-envoy-kellogg/
What are you talking about
Wow such silliness
Stop spamming. Formulate your thoughts into coherent sentences rather than breaking them up into dozens of spam-posts. Your brand new account was registered today and is already posting questionable things so Skynet is already watching you for infractions
Thanks!
Thank you. Comments were turned off on one of my favorite Stacks, due to spam and such. 💙🇷🇺❤️ A disappointment, yet necessary. I do come here to support your work, and to learn from the bright bulbs❤️🐈⬛
If you remove Simp Wrong, could you also delete dhdh? Thanks!
Why ?
Why? Are you butthurt Dhdh isn't afraid to mention the enemy of all humanity?
Down vote button please... Chip
"Wow".....
Pithy s#it indeed!
I'm not quite sure what Trump needed Kellogg to do as "Special envoy to Ukraine and Russia." The Russians don't want to talk to him, but of course Zelensky will talk to anybody.
Now it looks like Kellogg's real job is to talk to the EU people, so they feel they were heard, and I guess pat them on the head so they feel they were included in some way.
When they stare at him slack-jawed, and say, "You mean Russia is *not* a gas station w/ nukes?" he'll hand them a bag of Fun-yums and some gummy bears to make everything better.
I don’t know why anyone would believe General Rice Krispies (or Colonel Sanders, for that matter) on anything that relates to foreign policy.. I appreciate your deep dive but the litmus test of believability for me when it comes to foreign policy is: did an American politician say it? If so, it’s a lie. Remember Powell and his photo op at the UN ahead of the Iraq invasion? The mendacity of this class of humans is ingrained. It’s just how they’re made.
They don't know the meaning of "conflict of interest." DOGE should audit every government official who trotted to Kyiv since Feb 2022. 101 of any government job/contract that "there must be no any impropriety or even what might have been perceived as impropriety," but I guess it's just for us, mortals.
Putin's dithering (I agree with Paul Craig Roberts) has led to this. Putin does not scaring anyone. So Trump is going to push and kill Russian civilians and become a terrorist. Trump OWNs the Gazan Genocide, and now he owns the Ukraine war. Fuck Trump and Musk. Now they will never be able to get rid of the deep state. He lost the independents who determine elections. Putin is going to have to scare people. Taking out the Slavic working class of the Ukraine isn't going to help. Putin wants a sanitary, legal special military operation which is not quite war, highly negotiated, which isn't possible with the non-agreement capable west. The way of war is Netanyahu's way - you take out the top actors and take out all the NATO contractors and go after the money. It is all in the computers.
Russia is winning ,Putin does not have to scare anyone.
Trump will make a deal, Russia will get what it wants and EU can STFU>
In every war it is the working class that fights the wars and dies for the rich.
Just "Putins dithering" is as wrong as anything that is fixed on that name.
the RF is a presidential democracy, so Putin is not alone as an absolute monarch - I really get tired of that Putin-nonsense.
I am happy that the Duma, the general staff plus other parts of the Russian government consider the impact of their actions in a broader scale than just playing the zero sum game of the retarded cold warriors of the west.
This childish "who is not with us is against us" stops usually after kinder-garden when kids go to high school. Just in the west it's all on that idiotic infantile scale and the majority of the western populations is buying that primitive crap unfortunately.
"The Russian is slow to saddle but when he does, he rides like the wind." Gung hoer$ seldom do wisdom. Russia is very very different from big-mouth $lumville.
Wars, pandemics, deliberate destruction of economies, human trafficking, etc... hugely profitable for some interest groups who will do all they can to keep it going. Nothing new under the Sun (Moon).
It is not going to happen. Simp has been predicting escalation for over year. Remember him saying that the French and English will soon join the fighting? He is creating unnecessary drama for money.
That proves it. You are simply wrong. The French and English have actually been joining the dying, not the fighting. Every time the FUKs land a few wannabe SS mercs they get a large, high velocity, gift on their heads. I guess you need a new ruler to measure 'escalation' and right now there is a closing down sale on at your local US A.I.D. office. Rulers and condoms are piled high on the trestle tables.
Yep
Look into the light and on the count of three you will turn into a rabbit. Uno, dei, trei, tada.
See Simp? We need a downvote button or an ignore for trolls like Simp wrong... Chip
I don't think substack has a downvote feature.
Under the small hat.
>Some Russian reports impute certain sabotage:
>Enemy saboteurs probably worked in Ust-Luga. The recent explosion in the engine room of the Koala tanker (164,500 tons), according to sources of Ambrey Analytics (a company in the field of marine risk management), was associated with the installation of underwater mines on the outer part of the hull. Three explosions resulted in three holes: one 100 cm by 80 cm, and two large 4 by 2 meters.
You are missing the whole story -- there were reports about Russian coastal guard searching for USVs at the same time.
Of course, the Kremlin is keeping it hushed because there is no way to spin it as "Ukrainian" USV when it is happening in Ust-Luga -- the distance is literally 10,000 km from Odessa to Ust-Luga for an USV to travel. The many UAVs that flew to the Leningrad region, and even beyond (Murmansk, Cherepovets, etc.) get passed as "Ukrainian" because people can be easily fooled without knowing the actual specs; the actual specs in this case making it impossible for anything the Ukrainians have to fly to Murmansk, meaning that it was clearly launched from Finland. But it wasn't just Murmansk -- the drones that hit St. Petersburg typically come from the gulf of Finland, not from the south, the drones that destroyed the IL-76s planes in Pskov were reported to have flown over the lake from Estonia/Latvia, etc. etc.
In their finest cucktastic fashion, the Kremlin has firmly stuck to pretending none of this ever happened. And is apparently still finding new ways to deny that it is under attack.
But here is the thing -- if the traitors in Moscow are fully committed to never attacking NATO, that opens the door for NATO to attack them. Just perhaps not in a huge large-scale attack, but with mosquito tactics. Which over time will be very effective at draining the country of treasure and resources.
Both the problem and the solution were put in Putin's face by Karaganov a few months ago -- his metaphor was that if you have a pack of hyenas nibbling at your feet and legs, you can try hitting them with a stick all you want, eventually you will bleed to the point where you are too exhausted to fight back and they will eat you alive; the solution is to shoot a couple, and then the rest will quickly go away.
The question then is do you have a gun to shoot them with (yes in Russia's case) and why are you not using it if you do (which is the big question)?
Unlike too many critics, obviously some brains who also have more real information and on top of that personal experiences, look to avoid a full war. How long that can last, whether it can be avoided, we shall see. A common thing when emotions speak is to ignore the consequences. Let us hope that patience and eventual deal making will avoid a real confrontation that would also include nuclear weapons as well the plethora of other systems that exist and are partially used, but a cumulative usage of everything that is available at the same time would indeed be catastrophic. Real leaders take that into account.
There won't be a full war.
There are two fundamental asymmetries at work here, one in Russia's favor, the other against. The problem is that the one in Russia's favor it refuses to exploit because the other one working against it is kneecapping any serious defense of Russia's national interests.
The asymmetry in Russia's favor is that ultimately everything in Europe is disposable assets for the US. Nobody will sacrifice Boston for Poznan as Karaganov likes to say. Article 5 is a bluff when it comes to Russian nukes. So Russia has the freedom to create the buffer zone needed for its security by simply emptying out the necessary space between itself and the Atlantic of those who have caused the Russian people so much suffering in the past and are now dreaming of delivering the final blow. The US will most likely not do anything in response, and if they do, they were going to strike first anyway, so nothing would have been lost by trying to pre-empt it, at least it won't be from point-blank range.
The asymmetry that works catastrophically against Russia is that Russian elites are out for themselves and have very little interest in defending the country. They already broke it up once and gave up half its population and a third of its territory, just so that they could loot it without the restraints imposed by the communist system, why do we expect those people to have suddenly change and turned into the next coming of comrade Stalin? The only way to make sense of the puzzling way the SMO/not-war has been conducted is through that prism.
An accurate observation.
Lol 🤣🤣🤣🤣 lies. Russia has gotten what it wanted even before negotiations
What Putin (thinks he) wants ≠ Russia’s vital interests.
The absolute minimum condition for a win in this war is the permanent erasure of Ukrainian statehood (and later on Ukrainian identity too), and even then it will have been a strategic defeat if everything else stays the same in Europe.
The current situation is an absolutely catastrophic defeat.
Moscow owned all of Ukraine in 1991, where does the current line of contact run?
And most of Ukraine was Rusian in mentality in 1991 too, what will it be if the new border passes along the current line of contact with no denazification?
Nothing will stay the same in Europe, it's already not the same - I live here so I might be able to tell ;-)
The cracks in Europe are widening and it is no coincidence that some here and abroad even begin to avoid calling it Europe but West Asia.
What do you thing a Dane has in common with a Portugese and all in between, except being used by an international operating capital class?
Our cultures, mentalities and even climate are far more diverse in Europe than especially US people can imagine.
The ilk of the 'old permanent' "Elites" are starting to scratch their heads and desperately searching for an understanding of the situation they brought on itself.
v/d/Leyen, Rutte, Macron, Scholz/Merz are so irrelevant already, it's a pleasure to watch them falling in their own trap and as the traitor Gorbatschov said: who is late to reality will be punished by life itself
You make a strong and nessassary argument - thanks for posting.
Don't forget that the real goal is the reduction of humans by 7.8 billion souls. As soon as possible. The means to achieve that are there. A madman hundred years ago could destroy a lot. A madman today can destroy the planet. And with "madman" I like to refer to Dr. Strangelove types that are so brainwashed that they are unable to figure out that they will also off themselves.
You have been wrong alot especially dramatizing silliness. Europe won't do anything because America won't support them
They are already doing it.
Who sunk the ship near Spain, who is attacking the Russian northwestern regions, who hit the ship near Ust-Luga, etc. etc.?
Again lies. You guys are following make believe. Europe is done. NATO is done. Russia got what it wanted plus more.
I follow primary sources.
You follow English-language alternative media scam who have long stopped bothering actually looking into what is happening on the ground and live in their own detached from reality self-referrential bubble in which the multidimensional chess and judo master is toying with the pink-haired diversity hires in Western capitals.
The real world is rather different though
Lol Russia has won. Stop hating. Stop buying simps drama. He has gotten so much wrong but he is here to make a dollar
The war is a catastrophic loss for Russia as it stands.
Stop listening to scam artists who will say anything to make you feel good so that you keep donating and generating ad revenue for them.
Stop with your lies. Russia is getting more than that. In Ukraine, putin has annexed $12.4 trillion in natural resources and annexed 6 million people. Also taking 30% of Ukraines agricultural land, 20% of its territory, and 75% of its coastline. Plus Have you heard, Syrian president is negotiating with Russia so they can keep their bases. P
I am not going to waste any more time with you.
Good luck enjoying your 12.4 trillion of natural resources while dodging drones 24/7
Your point is well made, important and no waste of time, imo.
GM
it is not a question of survival, it is a question of revenge.
If it ever becomes question of survival, if Russia is to be attacked from Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Romania, these countries will disappear in nuclear mushrooms.
Revenge will come at a different time, however. Revenge, not nukes.
Acting now is exactly what MI6 would like to provoke.
Why?
It supports theory that Putin is a madman who plans to recreate Soviet Empire. Theory that is being pushed by British intelligence services and British media. If that theory were true, it would be essential for US to continue supporting Ukraine as long as it takes.
Current US administration has accepted the rational, realist theory advocated in the West by Mearsheimer, Sachs, McGregor...that the cause of the war is NATO expansion.
You sound like a Russian nationalist but all your suggestions are exactly what MI 6 would like Russia to do. .
He is obviously a plant. Trying to ramp up things. But anyway Russia is getting a lot out of this already. Eu looks completely cucked. Daddy America is finally home so EU has to listen
>Current US administration has accepted the rational, realist theory advocated in the West by Mearsheimer, Sachs, McGregor...that the cause of the war is NATO expansion.
And?
The absolute minimal winning condition for Russia is Ukraine disappearing completely.
Is the current US administration going to just hand it all off? Of course not.
And even that does nothing to restore the lost deterrence and standing or to address the problem of US nukes in Europe.
So what is there even to talk about? Yet Putin will be soon signing Minsk-3.
I don't care what the MI-6 would like Russia to do, I care about what must be done, which is to protect the country by physically eliminating the threats that are attacking it daily. Putin is refusing to do that, thus he as to go and be replaced by someone who will do it.
"it is not a question of survival, it is a question of revenge"
Revenge is a dish best served cold. I'm sure the Russians have a scorecard for the day
the shit hits the fan. Centuries of useless wars and the Euro-monkeys learn nothing.
It drives me a little bananas. After Putin though, would Mishustin be any better?
I am starting to think that Russia really is terrified of nuke war or never being able to integrate with eu or something, so it will endure getting killed by a thousand cuts I guess. I hate how the west's response of, 'if you respond Russia we will blow up the world' has utterly frozen Russia from escalating and is leading to some major pressure builds.
Sadly, this strategy seems to work and is being applied to Israel, don't stop us from killing our neighbors or we will destroy you, if you respond strong we nuke you way of war.
Seeing how well this power stroke works for the west, Russia should have told Ukraine to surrender in 24hrs or we nuke - maybe not a shot would have been fired in Feb 22. If they would have said no, then just a couple shots would have been fired, but no loss of Russian life. For anyone saying nukes are bad - well we are already past 1m Ukraine dead and counting.
I think everyone should be terrified of nuke war. Russia has also reminded the west that they do have nuclear weapons.
Maybe not a shot would have been fired in Feb 22 - Or we'd all be dead by now. Tough choice. Russia did want to put on a show of force to get Kyiv to the negotiating table and it almost worked in Apr 2022.
>Seeing how well this power stroke works for the west, Russia should have told Ukraine to surrender in 24hrs or we nuke - maybe not a shot would have been fired in Feb 22.
The proper move for the last 30 months has been to give Poland and Romania the following ultimatum:
1) Seal the borders with Ukraine and let Russian observers be present 24/7 at all entry points to make sure there is no smuggling of heavy weapons
2) You have 24 hours to agree on that and a week to set it up
3) If you do not agree, you will be wiped out fully.
The scale of the death toll and destruction has long exceeded the commonly assumed thresholds for nuclear use, especially against non-nuclear countries.
Why hasn't that been done? Well, you ask the following:
>I am starting to think that Russia really is terrified of nuke war or never being able to integrate with eu or something, so it will endure getting killed by a thousand cuts I guess.
It's not so much about integration with EU as it is about internal Russian politics. Remember the old principle that internal politics drives foreign policy. Usually we apply that to the US, but it is true just as much for Russia.
Russia is in the enviable position of having the biophysical capability to be self-sufficient. It can feed itself, it has all raw materials it needs, and it has the scientific potential to be technologically independent. And is the only such country right now.
China only has the latter, but cannot feed itself.
The US at current consumption levels is not self-sufficient. It can be if you scale consumption down, but that would implode the whole system. It also can be if it annexes Canada, for another few decades at least, which is why that is being put on the table now.
The only other biophysically self-sufficient country is Brazil. But not technologically.
In principle Russia can nuke the EU, set up a depopulated and demilitarized buffer of 1,000-1,500 km from the border, then become a total pariah state for the whole world, and not care at all. So what is stopping it?
The problem is in part that Russian elites desperately want to be a part of the West and they love to spend their money there (where are their kids and main residencies?).
But the bigger problem is that for full Russian autarky to work, the country would have to go back to some form of communism. It just doesn't work otherwise.
And that means the current elite giving up their wealth and power. Not acceptable.
A milder form of that requirement is also the reason why Putin refuses to mobilize more than the current level of industry going towards weapon production and the measly manpower pool that is at the front lines and is barely sufficient to keep the Ukronazi hordes from breaking deep into Russia, but very far from what is needed to win. Again, if you work out the details, you quickly see that seriously trying to win undermines the current socioeconomic model inside Russia, even though it is fully doable with some substantial corrections to it.
Simply put, winning is not in the interests of much of the Russian elites, so they are right now prostrate in front of Trump begging to be allowed to surrender without giving up too much concessions to the Western oligarchy relative to how things used to be
General Moron, what a shame the Russian General Staff aren't plugged in to your valuable nation saving insights.
I do realise it's a long way from Moscow to your trailer park but what about a sat phone? You can take their calls with the hand that's not holding your meth pipe.
lol, you're the Elvis of retributive insults, man.
Your analyses are beside the point.
Answer the question why was there an expanding of NATO east in the first place?
This (capitalist) system needs expansion, that's why war is build into it to prevent it from collapsing under it's own contradictions.
It's all written down, thought about and the proof of it is countless.
To narrow the approach of the matter like you do is helping no one.
It's not the 'incapable' Putin or the oligarchs in Russia that don't dare to stand up against the combined old western powers.
To me it's Humanity, preserving of Russian and probably even Baltic, Polish and Rumanian life and Russia being part of the new international world order that Russia is fighting for. Even Ukrainian Soldiers are treated well when captured or switch sides.
You keep on working out the details but Russia and China will go on collecting friendly nations to work with in peace and on a win win balance and change the world in the meanwhile.
The piously stirring “OTAN Hymn,” sometimes known as the “HATO Hymn,” is a favorite of military bands on the continent especially. Predictably there are few passages for strings but plenty of brass, befitting military bands everywhere of course. It would be interesting, though, to hear an all-ukelele rendition of the “OTAN Hymn,” perhaps w/ a Don Ho-style slack-key lap guitar worked into the arrangement as a left motif.
Russia’s new 21st Century Tchaikovsky after the SMO win will work elements of the “OTAN Hymn” into the thunderous victory composition he creates to commemorate for all time Russia’s heroic thrashing of the U.S.-led OTAN, just as ‘old’ Tchaikovsky, the OG Tchaikovsky worked “Le Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, into his 1812 Overture. The new Tchaikovsky will bring back the cannon & the cathedral bells, as a nod to the OG.
When DJT looks at Europe today, he sees protein—better than a Big Mac. The Shepherd, in the guise of the U.S., is threatening to eat the Sheep in other words, not protect them. So we may hear less of the “OTAN Hymn” in the future.
Which might suit Lady vdL all up & down. Proposing an alternative to OTAN—a Euro Defensive Alliance—allows her to move Europe’s giblets out of DJT’s boardinghouse reach. Taking a page out of the Church of Jesus Christ Without Christ in Flannery O’Connor’s novel WISE BLOOD, Lady vdL envisions a new OTAN-type alliance but without the carnivorous Shepherd. Cleverly, Lady vdL is trying to make sure the U.S. can’t sit down at the Cool Kids table. What’s problematic, however, a little bit of a sticking point, is the plenitude of U.S. military bases in Germany and Italy—and the plethora of treaty permissions accorded to the U.S. in military airbases across Scandinavia.
The Shepherd who now wants to *eat* the Sheep, not *protect* them, has already prepared a place for himself at all the tables.
Love the reworked 1812 idea
Population of the countries involved in the Baltic Sea conflict:
• Russia: 146 million
• Sweden: 10.5 million
• Finland: 5.5 million
• Estonia: 1.3 million
• Lithuania: 2.8 million
• Latvia: 1.9 million
Well, good luck pressuring Russia. If things continue to escalate, Russia will group vessels into convoys with military escorts along the entire route through the Baltic Sea.
There is, in the decadent West, still a powerful belief in the myth that Finland won the Winter War, and they're trying to trade on it here.
And a significant % of the three Baltic Chihuahuas are Russians.
I may have to put my Canadian spouse of Latvian descent under quarantine as a precautionary Latvia/Russia war measure if I get the courage to enforce my idea. lol
Cleaning up shit can't be considered a war.
And these Russians are third class citizens. Sooner or later the Russian government will face internal pressure to help the Russians in the Baltic States, because there are family ties all over the place. And then is the moment where SHTF.
I wonder how long this will continue wthout their USA sponsor?
Zelya has been so super-busy w/ his gobsmackingly popular lithium, his world renown lithium, like the most ginormous of all valuable lithium deposits on earth, that he failed to notice until too late that—oh,oh—DJT and VVP were already engaging in world business without Zelya’s knowledge ahead of time or permission.
No matter. Zelya magnanimously offered a Mineral Partnership w/ the U.S. in exchange for security guarantees, leaking the deets to Reuters, who is busy burning through the last of its USAID money before the well goes dry. Waiting to hear back from DJT’s team about the Mineral Partnership, Zelya must be impatiently tapping his toe. Plus he’s got the new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, visiting Kiev this week, inquiring into where the billions have gone—and this can’t be comfortable for Zelya.
In an “It’s the journey, not the destination” scheme of things it may not ultimately matter if the U.S. and Ukraine ever enter into a Mineral Partnership—what matters is the way DJT changed the focus of perseverations about Project Ukraine. He shifted the fulcrum away from what OTAN neocons wanted to hammer home—Russia’s frozen assets in the EuroClear Bank; French and UK peacekeepers in a demilitarized zone; maximum pressure on Russia; “brutal unprovoked war of aggression”—and we now hear mainly about lithium.
Lithium is enough of a Bright & Shiny Object during the endgame for Project Ukraine that even Governor Trudeau is getting swept up in the whirl. Caught on a hot mic, he said that DJT doesn’t *really* want to make Canada the 51st state but only wants to strip Canada of its rare earths: Canadians are Useless Eaters sitting atop a wealth of lithium, in Trudeau’s ‘read’ of DJT. The minerals are the thing. Masks are off: it’s not that democracy is on the line—the rare earths are.
Lithium aside, Ukraine’s utility for the U.S. lay in its eagerness to become a battering ram w/ which the West could take down Russia. No one was ever going to bring in excavating equipment and a fleet of Caterpillar heavy tunnel-borers and start working a seam of ore. *Destroying Russia* was the *lithium.* Although the EU is still eager to use Ukraine, weaponized, against Russia—DJT knows the mine is tapped out.
EU speakers for the Munich Security Conference are so totally rewriting their speeches tonight--relying even on China's DeepSeak AI
Europeans are nihilistic
EU is like Soviet Union when it was in decline
It’s going to be tragic
Europeans are mostly chauvinistic vs. nihilistic, and fall on own sword again and again.
Europeans are divided through language, culture, history and even climate.
There is no common ground between a scandinavian and a spanish or portugese man.
The force of selling your labour to an international class of capitalist owner of the means of productions is all that we in Europe have in common.
The attempt of the EU to artificial unite this diversity political and economical is the verdict to disaster from the beginning.
it might be bound to fail, but it is also the only way to remain
i feel that it should be self evident that the bigger you are, the more relevant you are in the current world.
Noone considers Japan a powerhouse anymore. But a less developed China is a tier 1 player.
In the same way each individual EU country is meaningless on the large scale of things (barring maybe Germany/France). But together they have a vastly bigger weight
How to get thick headed people that there is safety in numbers for THEIR benefit is a difficult battle unfortunately. Maybe people from Denmark/Greenland now get some firsthand experience. Or Scandinavians which would also like to know someone has their back.... maybe even Spain? So maybe they would still like to support the less developed regions via investments to the south since they are buying stability and bargaining power in this way?
its always ironic that the right wing likes to be in a crowd (nation/religion).... but abhors a bigger crowd despite knowing full well their small nation is not enough to ensure their safety (for most nations). They NEED to be right despite actively going against their personal interests? Maybe like sheep going off the cliff together because herd mentality? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4665511.stm
so why ask/hope for the dissolution of EU? Unless you are living elsewhere and aim to reduce competition on the world stage?
Do you really want to go to war with Russia, Ursula Von der Lyin'? How hard would it be to put a Hazelnut onto your office, I wonder.
They are not. Simp is trying to make money
The Russians have no interest in freezing the line of conflict in Ukraine. An imposition like that, should the U.S. try to impose it, is ridiculous. Moscow has no incentive to accept terms—because Russia is winning. VVP will work toward hammering out a larger security architecture for Russia’s place within the European continent, on which DJT is likely to look favorably, because he has long wanted to reduce the U.S. military’s footprint in Europe. A well-tuned reworked security architecture—updated for the post-Cold War 21st Century—is critical.
Secretary Hegseth warned his OTAN colleagues that the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and secure the peace “must not be Minsk 3.0” The Minsk Accords in which France & Germany disingenuously participated were fraudulent: deceptive efforts designed to allow ultra-nationalists in Ukraine time enough to consolidate power in order to provoke a hot war w/ Russia.
Soon after the SMO commenced, Col Macgregor observed that “We always sail away and we fly away.” Proxies are disposable, in other words. Prepped under Clinton initially for destabilizing Russia and then forged during the Bush jr and Obama years into a finely honed weapon of war, Ukraine outlived its usefulness once Collective Biden bit the dust. DJT, commonsensically, saw no ‘up’ side for throwing good money after bad in a losing endeavor: the U.S. is, in fulfillment of Col Macgregor’s sentiment, sailing away.
Excellent. Very informative rundown. The Empire is reverting to form: terror and subversion-- its preferred instruments of disruption and control. Standard Operating Procedure. Expect more vicious events against Russia and all its enemies in the future as its power diminishes. The Empire will not go gentle into that good night.
The Baltics are the next target of the Jew. There is a big sign on a building in Vilnius attacking Putin. The building is owned by a Jew.
Jewish elite hatred of Russia goes back centuries to when Russia destroyed their Khazar kingdom and drove them from their homeland. Having taken control of the West over the past five centuries or so, they are also responsible for much of the Western russophobia infection of Western elite. They do not forget. They do not forgive. They never lose resolve. Nothing will assuage their lust for revenge until the last Russian is dead.
That sign in Vilnius reads:
• "Putin, the Hague is waiting for you".
It is written in English language, presumably to provide receipts to USAID for release of the sponsorship funds, and not for the local Lithuanian-speaking or Russian-speaking population.
The entire EU bloc and the OTAN alliance function at the Gen. Kellogg level of thinking about the war in Ukraine: bureaucratically-challenged, dense w/ inaccuracies, inclined to fear-mongering & uninspired. From Brussels, the highly emotional Mark Rutte saber-rattled in VVP’s general direction, saying if Russia attacked an OTAN member, then OTAN would “crush” Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia is a blade of steel. It is winning—liberating villages in Donbas, taking territory in south Donetsk—and the AFU is being hung out to dry. Fulminating over this from Brussels is beside the point. Feelings do not change facts.
OTAN was an alliance the U.S. imposed on the continent in 1949: it is part of an old paradigm which has little currency in the post-Cold War 21st Century. On top of which the EU bloc & OTAN alliance have not really moved on from their partnership w/ Collective Biden, for instance. To their mind, dealing w/ DJT is not different from dealing w/ Collective Biden, but wowza are they wrong.
Living in the past suits them, though. Doing so permits them to sustain the momentum of the past 4 ultra-russophobic years. The war has fed them financially, in billions of laundered dollars. They actually thought that *they* would become the AI engine for the world. But JD set them straigh in Parist: the U.S. will lead: "You all can follow."
Members of the bloc may not have liked it when JD said it, but they wagged their tails gently.
The sooner DJT can shed the burden on behalf of the U.S., the sooner he can focus on more immediate & pressing domestic issues.
The sad thing is, that because the EU is a bloc, it cannot permit uni-lateral diplomacy between Russia, for instance, and another sovereign nation in Europe. So there’s a lack of flexibility. They’ve boxed themselves in. The operational space within which any European country can engage is practically nil.
You have been wrong a lot especially dramatizing silliness. Europe won't do anything because America won't support them
🤔
Remember the summer of France and UKa troops is possibly joining the war
French and British troops HAVE joined the war, they're just failing to make any impact. They have, however, been on the receiving end of many impacts.
Nonsense. If they were present in any appreciable numbers, we'd see prisoners, hospitals clogged with wounded, war cemeteries, wives, mothers and girlfriends demanding answers.
Would we? Clown World still manages to hide many of their schemes and their failures, and most people don't give a shit beyond whatever common narrative fits their political inclinations.
Joseph MacDonald (find him on YouTube) is an English soldier who does spill the beans in great detail about Anglo-Saxons, Euros, Balts, Georgians, etc., streaming in to enthusiastically try and kill Russians.
He survived the massive blasts at Yavoriv (hundreds of NATO troops reportedly killed, instructors too).
He also witnessed first-hand the embezzlement and racketeering along the supply chain from the Polish border to the front line, which again he describes in great detail, leaving very little for the brave defenders of honest democracy to fight with against Putin's corrupt regime.
Get rid of this pretender here, please!
Sandor. He's not rude, he's just wrong. Don't you believe in freedom of expression?
Wrong about what?
He is not saying anything just clearly being provocative.
I believe in the freedom to correct him.
What is the point of him signing up, and paying for it to repeat intended insults?
Maybe he has a toothache, or someone dropped a brick on his foot. Who knows? If he has a point make it, that is a freedom of expression. Hostility is not an expression it mirrors frustration, and that has nothing to do with commenting on the posted article. He should watch CNN, and take a Tylenol.
Ooh Ooh, AI is coming to the rescue, I really don’t know what The I stands for? Insane? Insomnia? Incrimination? Europe goes wild, France and India in pursuit of Stargate, deepseek and other chats and Ursula with Zel still hoping that it can clear out and bring some new magic, Artificial Incredibility.