War a nation can recover from, but from an erosion of cultural unity and shared identity it cannot.
You're basically pointing at a smoker who started a year ago and concluding because they don't have cancer yet cigarettes don't cause cancer.
So, yes, it's about the time Europe wakes up and stops financing Ukraine gets NATO the fuck back into borders set back in the nineties.
Europe and everyone else is entirely justified under international law to provide assistance to Ukraine to defend itself.
Regarding your edit, Russia doesn't have the right to dictate neighbouring countries which alliances they can form. What you're doing here is denying Ukraine its sovereignty, just like Russia does.
I can not believe the europe would risk all its heritage and for what?
Quite contrary - Europe is preserving it's heritage. Remember that russia does not want to stop with Ukraine - for example they want Poland to quit NATO. What right do they have to tell other sovereign country what it can do?
???
I'm sure you think this is smart, but the indisputable fact of how this conflict started remains.
Are you suggesting that we don't come to the aid of our friends when they are attacked by our adversaries? That Ukraine does not have the right to support? That it must succeed or fail on its own or it's somehow not sporting?
One of Putin’s first four super sonic missiles obliterated the cell.
Back then, the Ukraine was like the badlands frontier. Nobody really in charge, unless you mean money.
I support the sovereignty of peoples, yet this world is a complicated orgy of lies trying to act straight.
That was the second attack. The first attack was the western organized "orange revolution", one of the CIA organized color revolutions, that was also backed by violence, in order to drive out another duly elected official.
In response to the Maidan coup, Russia provided some token military aid to independence groups in the Donbass, that refused to honor the appointment of the Maidan government and demanded the return of the elected leadership. The EU/Maidan regime sent in tanks to shoot the protestors and seize the regions by force, taking approximately half of the territory, and launching a 8 year bombing and terror campaign against the Donbass, leading to over 2,000 civilian deaths a year killed by EU/Ukrainian forces. These attacks included burning Russians alive in the so called "Odessa barbecue" celebrated and put on restaurant menus during 2014, beheading Russian speakers, burying them alive, etc.
In 2014, on the verge of defeat, the EU/Ukraine forces agreed to a peace treaty in which the Donbass militias would pull back and Ukraine would cede sovereignty to them while keeping them officially in the country. On video, all the major European powers that signed these agreements - France, England, Germany, admitted that they had no intention of honoring the Minsk agreement and instead they needed time to rearm the Ukrainian military for a final ethnic cleansing of Donbass. Russia reduced its support for the militias and they withdrew, but Ukraine never honored the agreement, and continued to shell and bomb the civilian areas of the Donbass for the next eight years, dropping petal mines, dropping bombs, and constantly shelling the rebellious cities.
Finally, after eight year of these terror attacks, Russia said "enough" and declared war on the Maidan regime, and together with the Donbass militias, it launched an attack to overthrow the illegitimate government of Ukraine, and bring to trial the western funded forces that were ethnically cleansing the country.
> Finally, after eight year of these terror attacks
Was it 20 years or 8 years? Those are two very different numbers, and only one has any semblance with reality given that 20 years ago was long before the so-called coup.
We arm and support Ukraine in their war because a tyrannical neighbour led by an autocrat is intent on taking its territory and he will not negotiate on ending it.
It's that fucking simple. Fuck him for starting it; if he won't end it, Ukraine and their allies get to make things difficult.
Your interpretation is contemptuous.
Right. Mighty Russia that has been fought to a standstill by its much smaller neighbour is going to provoke a military alliance absolutely dwarfing it into outright war. Not even China is going to back that after having a look at who the more valuable trading partner is.
Being ready for war is reasonable, being afraid or worried is a waste of time, and even irrational in this case.
It might be tending towards impossible to achieve regime change militarily at this point. Maybe we all should just figure out how to get along.
That said, I also believe that there is fairly widespread, low intensity, grey-zone action across Europe at the moment. Not every random fire or infrastructure failure is "The Russians", but I'd be surprised if none of them were. Indeed some of them have already been formally attributed.
It would be foolish to still just wring our hands about it. We have to name the enemy, Russia, and both support Ukraine's fight and do our own active hybrid actions on Russian soil. And yes, military buildup is required.
And to be clear, this will not end anytime soon. The war in Ukraine is but one aspect of Russia's imperial ambitions. It's fully possible we will not see friendly relations again in our lifetimes.
So we have in this nugget an example of why you shouldn't trust western media, but not an example of why the west wont fold like a cheap deck.
A Russian war with Europe would not be the short war that the original poster alludes to by invoking statements from a Russian official.
That said, it argues that the various pre-war preparations fail to include "psychological preparedness". I think this is largely true for America as well, since war is something that the USA almost exclusively engages in offensively in distant countries, with only one small exception for one day on 9/11.
I work with some Ukrainian refugees, we are not prepared.
Totally not a fan of the guy we have driving the bus right now, I didn’t vote for him, and oppose all war. But now that we’re in it, I’m a bit concerned that this is going to be quite a bit more violent and terrible than we have the stomach for?
I mentioned above I work with some Ukrainian refugees. We are not prepared mentally for what is coming.
† See Italian journalist Gianni Micalessin who dug out the Georgian snipers that were hired to shoot at both protesters and the police so as to “get the ball rolling a bit faster.”
You can make the (somewhat weak) case that Russia was provoked, but the first violent strike was made by Russia and Russia alone.
For a long time I wanted to believe you, and in the past I'd have looked at work camps in China and said "thats bad". Now i look at the US prison industry and go "Is it really that different?". The examples don't end there...
People are great, countries are pretty much all evil.
Up close everyone is great, far away, like from space, everything looks great. It's the middle distances that are problematic.
We are in a perilous position right now in Europe, very close to a major escalation of the Ukraine conflict. This would entail direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
I find it deeply troubling that no mainstream party in most European countries seems to think this is a bad idea.
Take Rolf Dobelli's advice - don't listen to the news:
The British press is not, on aggregate, left-leaning. That's just a weird weird wrong idea.
Again in this era, reactionary and nationalist messaging has dominated and somehow, despite generations of extraordinary success, despite being born into it and seeing its success and superiority, many/most think such an order is infeasible or even undesireable. At the same time, I've seen American leaders in the military industry advocate for becoming accustomed to mass destruction and death.
And shockingly, even the experts and practioners abandoned it and at nearly the height of its success. It's as if a messaging campaign insisted cloud computing was impossible and absurd, and so everyone just stopped using what was obviously working. For the rules- and rights-based order, yes there were outliers and setbacks and threats; that's life. But the entire free, wealthy, industrialized world subscribed, and were untouchably allied, free, safe and prosperous. Now, having abandoned it, all those things have diminished.
What's missing is not acceptance of warfare but ultimate commitment and work for freedom and peace.
It does not help that we keep electing extremely selfish strong appearing individuals in winner-takes-all democracies.
That is why Voldemort always comes back in real life
Yes, there is a war, the same that Warren Buffett famously referred to – a class war.
> china ? why ? they just want taiwan
> russia ? lol, they can't even manage Ukraine ( with our aid )
> iran ? why ? they just want to kill you know who
This is just a fearmongering article.
And that's why they want to attack Europe. They hope that it will either cause eu to stop supporting Ukraine or at least that it will give them good negotiation position (e.g. we'll stop attacking baltic countries but Ukraine has to let go of their territory).
That's the issue, a belligerent neighbor that permanently sabotages you but which you can't ever get too close to losing.
And it'd also be the end, economically, for the US. We'd be hosed, that isn't to say current leadership wouldn't try and end up fucking us all over, but the effect would be another loss for the US.
When (likely not if) Russia decides to attack the Baltics, NATO will just shrug and send a strongly worded memo.
First of all you don't even believe in democracy - if you did, your views would not be so one sided and you would really want to understand the conflict.
Secondly, because no real democracy is left anywhere in the world. It's a myth.
Get some diapers too!
May be don't take the rifle. Take more diapers!
But your attitude is exactly the problem - remember, people are all equal as per western democratic values.
And the way to solve the differences is by talking! And yes, I am ready to talk to russians about democracy as well as ukranians.
It looks like you are not, discarding them based on ethnic grounds.
Why did you attack Ukraine instead of talking then?
Negotiations didn't go anywhere unfortunately. And it's not Russia that takes the blame.