Ukraine
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Elon gets a reply. He’s updated his twitter handle.
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Interesting take by John Simpson on path out of this.
So what will make President Putin come out of this disastrous war looking good in the eyes of Russia's majority? Firstly, an assurance, perhaps even to be written into Ukraine's constitution, that it has no intention of joining Nato in the foreseeable future. President Zelensky has already prepared the way for this, by asking Nato for something it couldn't agree to (establishing a no-fly-zone over Ukraine), then criticising the alliance for letting him down on this, and finally musing out loud that he wasn't sure that if Nato behaved like this, it was actually worth joining. As clever and wise political positioning goes, it doesn't get much better than this. Nato gets the blame, which it can easily cope with, and Ukraine gets the freedom to act as it wants.
whole article is worth a read:
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Since 2015, and blue-check verified. I had to go onto twitter and verify for myself that this wasn’t a 4chan prank. It isn’t.
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@kid-chocolate Hardly surprising at all NATO has diplomatic missions in lots of places plus Ukraine is a Nato partner (along with Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyz Republic, Malta, The Republic of Moldova, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan). Which fed Putin and Russia's paranoia.
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Good posts. The problem that the tweet & the NYT article sadly highlights is conspiracy theorists believing any old crap which supports their loopy theories and a MSM with a track-record of biased journalism or just making stuff up to suit their advertisers/financial backers - e.g. the NYT's attempts to discredit the Wuhan Lab theory.
Dumb conspiracy theorists on one side and an un-trustworthy, biased MSM on the other and each feeding the other - what could possibly go wrong?
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@kid-chocolate said in Ukraine:
Since 2015, and blue-check verified. I had to go onto twitter and verify for myself that this wasn’t a 4chan prank. It isn’t.
Actually, NATO also had the same representation in Russia until 4-5 months ago under the same program - Partnership for Peace - that Ukraine has. Cooperation with NATO was reduced after Putin annexed Crimea, but Russia had been pushing for co-operation to be restored since 2018. It was Putin who ordered the closure of NATO's office in Oct 2021.
So Putin seemed quite happy to have the same relationship with NATO as Ukraine - until he started massing troops on Ukraine's borders.
"Relations between the NATO military alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council.[1][2] In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, and since that time, NATO and Russia have signed several important agreements on cooperation.[3]"
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im going to ask the stupid question, i could google a bit more but will be interesting to get people thoughts....what does Putin claim he's doing?
when he started and when he annexed crimea i thought the claim was these regions wanted to be liberated, to be no longer part of Ukraine, is he claiming that the majority of the country wants to be part of russia? or just that Kyiv is part of these regions that wants to be liberated despite the fight back
or had he given up any pretence and he's happy to say he's punishing them for wanting to be part of nato
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This (admittedly biased) tweet seems to give one answer...
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@kiwiwomble said in Ukraine:
im going to ask the stupid question, i could google a bit more but will be interesting to get people thoughts....what does Putin claim he's doing?
when he started and when he annexed crimea i thought the claim was these regions wanted to be liberated, to be no longer part of Ukraine, is he claiming that the majority of the country wants to be part of russia? or just that Kyiv is part of these regions that wants to be liberated despite the fight back
or had he given up any pretence and he's happy to say he's punishing them for wanting to be part of nato
He claims that Ukraine is full of Nazis, Government is complicit (and illegal?), there's widespread oppression (I think he's even accused them of genocide?) - and he's going in there to save everybody.
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@kiwiwomble said in Ukraine:
im going to ask the stupid question, i could google a bit more but will be interesting to get people thoughts....what does Putin claim he's doing?
Some insight into his thinking here.
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@kid-chocolate The last line of the article reads
"And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide." After seeing what is happening up there need we say any more what they have decided? -
He claims that Ukraine is full of Nazis, Government is complicit (and illegal?), there's widespread oppression (I think he's even accused them of genocide?) - and he's going in there to save everybody.
And the biolabs. Don't forget the biolabs - the ones that are a threat to Russia directly.
So threatening they were only mentioned after he started shelling people.
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@kiwiwomble said in Ukraine:
Just been chatting to my mate in Amsterdam and he reckons the mood there has changed a lot over the past few days. Had their first air raid drill there since 1989
is the dutch government prove to overreaction? or is there consensus it was a good idea?
Based on my discussions with him, people are genuinely worried about the situation and the potential for it to get worse very quickly. His bags are pack for a quick escape to anywhere but Europe and sounds like he isn't the only one. A lot of US reinforcements are coming in via the local airport there and then routed in to Poland which may have something to do with it
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@kiwiwomble NATO has said they want more tanks, missiles, artillery, subs, warships, planes, morris dancers, lollypop men, tea ladies... Basically more of everything on their eastern frontier i.e. adjacent to Russia.
Also quoted as saying "Putin has united Ukraine against him. Well he's also united NATO."