Politics Will Russia Attack Ukraine?

So they closed all doors to the West and demand unconditional surrender from Russia, that it leaves all parts of the official Ukraine, this means even Crimea. They are insane if they are sticking to it. They just force more brutality and desperate measures from Russia and support a criminal regime in Kiev which did everything to escalate to the maximum.

At the same time all voices of reason, private, public and politicians, have to fear a witch-hunt if speaking out, even if just in the most moderate tone. Like in this case, the premier of Sachsen, Michael Kretschmer:
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik...87.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-de-DE

But the mass media being now, after the anti-Trump wave, Me Too, identity politics and last but not least of all the Covid phasing in the mainstream media and stepping up of censorship and "cancel culture", they have some training in suppresing dissenting voices and beat on people pointing out obvious inconsistencies of the pushed narrative. Everybody has to do his creed in public, that he supports the Selenski no matter what, even if this leads into World War 3 and in a best case scenario will cost millions of Ukrainians and Russians their life.
Like a commenter recently said: "If you constantly poke Russia in the eye, what do you expect them to do?"
 
I don't understand what Russia's supposed "cornered cat" attitude has to do with having sent troops to Kazakhstan to repress the opposition, at the request of the dictator of that country...
 
italouruguayan said:
I don't understand what Russia's supposed "cornered cat" attitude has to do with having sent troops to Kazakhstan to repress the opposition, at the request of the dictator of that country...
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If they have to be afraid of any regime change leading up to hostile, anti-Russian regimes taking over and US support for all enemies and interference to start for sure, just like in Georgia and Ukraine, it has all to do with it.
Or in Kazakhstan, like in Syria, the situation could even deteriorate to an Islamic terror supported by Gulf states and US.
Who should want that? Surely not Russia or China. It wouldn't be in European interest as well, unless they adopt the US stance of "anything is better than Russian, Chinese and Iranian influence."
It was mainly about quarrels among the local oligarchs in the literal sense of the word anyway and Russia just intervened before this could have escalated to the worse with more deaths.
 
italouruguayan said:
I don't understand what Russia's supposed "cornered cat" attitude has to do with having sent troops to Kazakhstan to repress the opposition, at the request of the dictator of that country...
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Nothing.....
 
But the mass media being now, after the anti-Trump wave, Me Too, identity politics and last but not least of all the Covid phasing in the mainstream media and stepping up of censorship and "cancel culture", they have some training in suppresing dissenting voices and beat on people pointing out obvious inconsistencies of the pushed narrative.
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And meanwhile you get up to 15 years prison if you publish something in Russia against the Kremlin line, are people put in jail because of protest. Next thing is the cut of of internet. Russia is on the way to North Korea.

But the (self-) hatred against the open, liberal democracy seems so big combined with some kind of victimized behavior that 'censorship' in the west is obviously worse. Pathetic.
 
Northener said:
And meanwhile you get up to 15 years prison if you publish something in Russia against the Kremlin line, are people put in jail because of protest. Next thing is the cut of of internet. Russia is on the way to North Korea.

But the (self-) hatred against the open, liberal democracy seems so big combined with some kind of victimized behavior that 'censorship' in the west is obviously worse. Pathetic.
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Its not worse, sure the censorship in Russia is harsher, but it has an obviously different focus, that's the first issue. The second is, like I wrote before, if people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange would have been Chinese or Russian, and doing what they did to the USA to these countries, they might get Western protection, being praised and get a Nobel prize. So all that talk about free journalism, ok, these are extreme examples, but there are others with a less extreme but still quite similar outcome, is hypocrisy from a certain point on.
The third is, that Russia now fights for its freedom and self-determination as much as the Ukraine does, its now involved, after Putin has done these steps, into a decisive war effort. Obviously, that kind of dramatic situation can't be seen from the regular perspective. They can only double down or crumble, which is because they got cornered so badly by the hardliner Ukrainian government and the USA. The harsher the reaction from the West, the more intensive their war efforts must become, because losing is no option, unless they want Russia to sink into abyss.
Regardless of how one thinks about the initial steps Putin has taken, for the reasons mentioned before, in the situation they were in, now its done, they are in this mess and they have to deal with it. They can't have any backstabbers at home, just like the US did persecute its whistle blowers and has beaten down the Vietman protesters too, when they felt the need for it. This is not just an adventure war, like the US has done so many in the recent years, this is a decisive war effort for the future and independence of Russia. That's the absurd thing about this, once it escalated to this level, it became a struggle of the Russians as much as the Ukrainians for self-determination and independence. Because in diametrally opposed directions, they both can't lose this war completely without losing their status. This is why any demand for complete withdrawal of the Russian forces and the support of the hardliner Selenski regime is not exactly helpful if anybody wants to end this war and come to a peace.

The Russians might crumble, but its not like the USA withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan, they lose their status, a massive geostrategic loss, lost bases and resources, millions of pro-Russian refugees, destabilisation of the state and system in main Russia itself and so on and forth. That's why the nuclear threat is imminent also, it became to important for Russia, the US interference and the Selenski regime became too much of a threat and now with the invasion, they are all-in. You don't get out of that easily, even if you would regret it at some point.

You can talk about regular civil and political rights in such a situation, but then you have to compare what the UK or USA did in e.g. World War II to citizens which were opposing the war or sabotaged the war efforts. That's the proper comparison, not with the current situation in the West, in which there is no serious threat or war effort at all, and they already have censored and cancelled in so many areas for the political agenda of the establishment and social engineering. Comparing that Western situation with the current situation of Russia would be once more like a comparison of apples and oranges. Russias well-being, position and stability as such is at stake, the conflict became too big to fail. Coming back to the Mearsheimer interview, its exactly the kind of situation and escalation nobody, no sane person should have wanted. Unless they don't care for Ukraine and human lifes in general. Apparently, the US added fuel to the fire for years, and now it became a big fire. By adding more fuel, you just make it worse and a threat to Europe and mankind.
The West should always have wanted an neutral Ukraine, and support it economically, instead of making that idiotic and clearly provocative claim for Ukraine and Georgia to become future NATO members. That caused so much trouble and its one of the few times I'm with Merkel, which opposed this gambling. The USA proceeded and weaponised Ukraine and Georgia, with the predictable outcome of armed conflicts. There was absolutely no reason to do that and they proceed and and proceed, just like they did in Syria and Libya, until everything is in ruins but they can still blame all the others for not acting "decisive enough", instead of holding themselves back for the good of the people...
 
@Riverman

We are where we are.

Putin is the aggressor, provoked or not.

It will be ironic if NATO stands by and allows Putin aggression against the smaller NATO members.

The leaders of the Free World..Biden, Johnson and Scholz, even Macron, are not exactly world class leaders.
 
Vallicanus said:
@Riverman

We are where we are.

Putin is the aggressor, provoked or not.
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Sometimes I think Riverman is a FPO adept.

This party goes very well wit mister Putin, had even (until eeven end 2020) an agreement with the Kremlin (like Riverman already stated).

Their ex minister of foreign affairs Kneissl invited Putin for her wedding, walzed with him and....



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nister-given-seat-on-board-of-russias-rosneft

I even suspect that Austria never properly processed their 'brown inheritance'. After ww2 they presented themselves as victims while that was only part of the story...and that has in my eyes still an after effect.....
 
Vallicanus said:
@Riverman

We are where we are.

Putin is the aggressor, provoked or not.
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If the Ukrainian forces attacked the Donbas for months, and prepared an even bigger assault while getting armed by the US and with the perspective of the Ukraine becoming a NATO member, with hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing, and nobody else doing anything, even though Russia did complain again and again - Selenski even mocked them, provoked them, offered absolutely nothing, its not like a "small provocation", it was war already, just not with the regular forces from Russia.
Now Russia could have just intervened in Donbas, in a limited operation, which is what I expected honestly, but where would that have led them? The hardliners in Kiev don't stop now, and they wouldn't have stopped then! The US would have forced all its vassals to do basically the same sanctions, to make Russia and outcast anyway and never accept even the demand for Crimea, with its vital naval base and position. Talking about Crimea, the Ukrainian government would have never have given the water supply to Crimea back too, which is no minor issue as well.

The Ukraine did nothing for a compromise, for a peaceful solution, at no point, and the US always just doubled down in their war efforts with the Ukrainians. Russia was running out of options, this was a desperate situation and like so often, if you are that much cornered, you go all-in.
But that's exactly what the kind of US policy, which is 100 percent confrontational, creates deliberately. Because they wanted that conflict, they wanted to weaken Russia at all costs. There is no euphemistic talk about this. The Ukrainian people being just the pawn in this game of the US services and Ukrainian based oligarchs with the Russian state.

There was an ongoing war for 8 years and no diplomatic solution in sight, which can't be blamed on Russia alone, given the complex situation of Ukraine. If the Ukrainians wanted to go and change allegiance, completely, by joining NATO, the old federal state borders of Ukraine were of course nothing Russia could accept. A fair solution is that either the Ukraine stays permanently neutral and doesn't join NATO, gives minority rights, regional autonomy and gurantees Russian naval-military bases, everything they questioned, or they give up on the Eastern regions and especially Crimea. There might be a fair, democratic plebiscit, but the Ukrainian regime knew/knows how this would end in Donbas and Crimea. These are the only fair alternatives for both sides, but that they want to subdue all regions, even the pro-Russians, by force and persecution, join NATO in the current borders and pose a military and political threat to Russia as a whole, that was always out of question without Russia trying practically everything from preventing it.

That's part of the old tactics the Western states played in Central and Eastern Europe: Creating or aknowledging absurdly drawn borders against the ethnic-cultural and strategic interests of their non-allied states, and achieving two goals by doing so:
- The state which gets the disputed territories being dependent from Western states support to keep them
- These borderlines cause lasting frictions between neighbours which won't ally up easily because of this border disputes.

Crimea was given by the Stalinist Soviet Union to the Ukraine only in the 1950's, to a federal state of the Union. I know why the international law followed the idea of accepting federal state borders and rather opposing newly drawn political borders for other than the above mentioned geostrategic reasons in case a state splits up, but in most cases, the outcome is just like the one described. Its like colonial powers making borders with a ruler and using divide et impera to control world regions.

The split of Czechia and Slovakia was fairly smooth and with little troubles, to a large part because they had fairly correct, historically, strategically, ethnically, culturally, borders. The Ukraine was for Russia in its current borders always only acceptable, as long as it was a friendly state. If it changes allegiance, like it was pushed by the USA since 2008 and even more since 2014, the situation dramatically changes and everybody with some insights into the situation knew that. This is now an 8 years war, which escalated to the next level, because there was no political compromise in sight. Its no new war.
 
Northener said:
Sometimes I think Riverman is an FPO adept.

This party goes very well wit mister Putin, had even (until eeven end 2020) an agreement with the Kremlin (like Riverman already stated).

Their ex minister of foreign affairs Kneissl invited Putin for her wedding, walzed with him and....



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nister-given-seat-on-board-of-russias-rosneft
Click to expand...

She was not even a proper FP? member, but if looking at images, almost every minister or premier had friendly relationships with Putin. Russia is a major power and has a lot to offer, friendly relationships were important and they still are, in a way. There are enough people from left and right being friends with Putin. France in particular needs Russia too:
w_55781340-800x450.jpg


Because they know that without Russia in the game, the USA would just overwhelm and dominate Europe even more. We need a counterweight to the US influence and that is, to repeat it, not because Russia is so much better in all respects, but because we see where the unrestricted US dominance will bring Europe to. Now we might even get dependent from US fracking gas, no thanks.

That's also showing how absurd the accusations of Russia wanting to "conquer Europe" and crap like that are. The good thing about Russia is, that its factually too weak to do that anyway, they can just make alliances. The USA on the other hand can single-handedly blackmail every other state in the world. That's why a better balance of power is so important for Europeans to find their own political path.
 
Riverman said:
She was not even a proper FP� member, but if looking at images, almost every minister or premier had friendly relationships with Putin. Russia is a major power and has a lot to offer, friendly relationships were important and they still are, in a way. There are enough people from left and right being friends with Putin.
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ohw she was even more fare right? And there is a difference between maintaining relationships, in the sense of contact between countries, and a literal and figurative bow (during an ultimate private moment).
 
And of course those contacts were more often see former queen Beatrix of the Netherlands with the opening of the hermitage in Amsterdam (2013). Retrospective this is completely naive (and or pragmatic) c.q. chance through cultural contacts. But that something different from what Kneissl and the FPO had done: they kissed his....euhm hand.

On the background: "If God gives me time to live and health, Petersburg will become a second Amsterdam." This is what Tsar Peter wrote during his visit to Amsterdam in 1697/1698.


 
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Northener said:
ohw she was even more fare right? And there is a difference between maintaining relationships, in the sense of contact between countries, and a literal and figurative bow (during an ultimate private moment).
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She was considered "an expert" and as such became an independent candidate for the job of a minister. She is not more right than the average FP?, rather less, but she has a some strange perspectives and is probably a somewhat "difficult personality". Putin attended her wedding and she soon after had troubles in her marriage according to this article:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/03/austrian-minister-danced-putin-accuses-husband-domestic-violence/

In any case, her political career was short lived and she was brought into office as non-partisan "expert candidate" by the FP?. In part because an actual member of the party was thought of being not well-accepted internationally and at home as representative for Austria.
From my personal perspective, she's largely an opportunist, but she had a lot of foreign experience, lived for many years abroad and had a lot of contacts even before entering office. You can read up on her bio if you really want...
 
And the real witch hunt in "the West" begins. Criminal charges getting pressed against Gerhard Schroeder and other prominent Germans for "crimes against humanity", because they don't distance themselves from the "Russian regime":
https://www.nau.ch/news/europa/stra...r-verstosst-gegen-die-menschlichkeit-66126181

[h=3]Strafanzeige gegen Altkanzler Schr?der wegen Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit[/h]17.21 Uhr: Gegen den fr?heren Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schr?der (SPD) ist Strafanzeige wegen Verbrechens gegen die Menschlichkeit gestellt worden. Wie die "Badischen Neuesten Nachrichten" am Dienstag berichteten, ging die Strafanzeige in der vergangenen Woche in Hannover ein und wurde am Montag an den Generalbundesanwalt in Karlsruhe weitergeleitet. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Hannover best?tigte der Nachrichtenagentur AFP den Eingang der Anzeige und die Weiterleitung.

Wie es in dem Artikel weiter hie?, richtet sich die Anzeige auch gegen weitere Menschen. Die Beh?rde in Karlsruhe wollte sich gegen?ber der Zeitung nicht ?u?ern. Schr?der steht in der Kritik, weil er sich nicht vom russischen Staatschef Wladimir Putin distanziert.
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https://www.waz.de/politik/ukraine-...eg-putin-westen-aktuell-news-id234760451.html

As if Schroeder could be made personally responsible for war time actions in Russia. Absurd, they won't get through with it, hopefully, but they building up the pressure for silencing all voices of reason.
 
Riverman said:
And the real witch hunt in "the West" begins. Criminal charges getting pressed against Gerhard Schroeder and other prominent Germans for "crimes against humanity", because they don't distance themselves from the "Russian regime":
https://www.nau.ch/news/europa/stra...r-verstosst-gegen-die-menschlichkeit-66126181

https://www.waz.de/politik/ukraine-...eg-putin-westen-aktuell-news-id234760451.html

As if Schroeder could be made personally responsible for war time actions in Russia. Absurd, they won't get through with it, hopefully, but they building up the pressure for silencing all voices of reason.
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That acquisition is indeed questionable.

Nevertheless the Bromance between Schröder and Putin is imo very shameful.

Even een few weeks ago he was nominated for the board of Gazprom.

The paper the Volkskrant:

'Naivety, complacency, arrogance, ignorance and greed are characteristic of the relationship with Putin's Russia and the relationship between Schröder and Putin is the personification of this. '

Schröder a clear bounder disgusting.
 
Northener said:
Nothing politics now just humanitarian aide.

This morning started a aide collection for the Ukrainians in the Netherlands, the standings are 53 million euros, hopefully it will be even more....

21:30 standing 63 mil.
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In the end: in one day 106 mil euro was collected....so the aid organizations can work with this in a targeted manner
 
"Cloudflare Inc. said Monday it won’t stop providing services to Russian organizations, rebuffing calls from Ukrainian officials and activists who say the company is getting in the way of cyberattacks meant to protest Russia’s invasion."

"While Apple and Ikea left, Uniqlo, Starbucks and PepsiCo are remaining."

Selfishness named Capitalism? Even the US and UK do not keep the promise to protect Ukraine as a condition of their giving up their nuke bomb.
[FONT=&quot]
"Although Vladimir Putin alone is responsible for the war in Ukraine, it is worth remembering that prominent Westerners played a key role in shaping Russia's post-Soviet trajectory. They insisted that market reforms must take priority over political reforms, and we are still living with that choice."
[/FONT]https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/1990s-shock-therapy-set-stage-for-russian-authoritarianism-by-katharina-pistor-2022-02
 
Another lecture from Mearsheimer, those which don't want to listen all three, or not even this full episode, go to the last 10 minutes, he told it back then and it came true:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESwIVY2oimI&t=0s

And the USA never acted any different if they thought its in their geostrategical interest.
 
"Let it go" by Ukraine Ellsa:


New York Times
06ukraine-ledeall-family-articleLarge.jpg
Russian mortar fire on Sunday killed a woman, her teenage son and her young daughter, as well as a family friend, as they tried to escape the fighting near Irpin.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
 
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