Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

[PointOfViewGun]

Pure hypocrisy. If you have forgotten, permit me to refresh your memory. They were useful allies in combating the Islamic State, but when it is convenient they are considered terrorists. In case you don't remember,
The US joins the Turkey-PKK fight in northern Syria
US to stop arming anti-IS Syrian Kurdish YPG militia - Turkey
Le Monde rightly put it,NATO challenged by Turkish blackmail - Le Monde
The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs disagrees, Statement from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm
Sweden's Kurds fear they may pay price for NATO bid as ...
More? do you want more?
year 2108,Turkey Launches Operation Against U.S.-Backed Kurdish
U.S.-led coalition helps to build new Syrian force, angering Turkey...
And I could go on.

And even more. Just a couple of months ago, April 2022
US-backed Kurds tighten siege of Syrian army-run enclaves in ...
Finally, - June 7, 2022. Quite interesting...
US-Backed Kurdish-Led Forces Say Ready to Coordinate With Syrian Army Against Turkey...

Not sure what you're trying to argue there. You don't seem to realize that you're actually confirming what I argued in the post you responded to.

[Laser101]

Plus back then (just like today), Russia's leadership was solely interested in seizing land and slaves and it's stormtroopers were only interested in raping and slaughtering anyone who couldn't fight back. That they are seen as anything less than the horde of savage beasts they were is only because they were fighting the Nazis, who could make anyone look better by comparison.

Well, that's not really different from pretty much any army in history to be honest.

[Ludicus]

Not sure what you're trying to argue there.

No?may be it's my fault, then.Let me be very clear.By way of introduction, A brief history of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led alliance that helped the U.S. defeat the Islamic State ...

The U.S. military, noting Turkey’s hostility to the YPG, went to the Kurdish militia and said, “You’ve got to change your brand. What do you want to call yourself besides the YPG?” according to Thomas. (1)“With about a day’s notice, they declared that they were the Syrian Democratic Forces.”

(1) The commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Check video.
--
As I mentioned earlier in a previous post, very recently,while discussing the future of NATO, Erdogan threatened to make a military incursion to capture towns in northern Syria that the Syrian Democratic Forces, where Kurdish YPG fighters are prominent, had seized from the Islamic State with US support. US-Backed Kurdish-Led Forces Say Ready to Coordinate With Syrian Army Against Turkey.

Erdogan bets he can invade new parts of Rojava (Kurdish-majority regions in northern Syria) while the West stays quiet over this NATO membership issue.

In the Swedish Parliament, MP Amineh Kakabaveh accused the government of "bowing down to the tyrant" Erdogan and of wanting to enter NATO at the cost of the sacrifice of the Kurdish people.And she is right. The Swedish MEP considered that the swap of Turkish authorization to enter NATO for Swedish support for the Syrian Kurds was "a black day in the history of Swedish foreign policy" and that it brings added anxiety to people who have found a safe haven in that country and are now being sold their most basic rights.

And about this, I want to ask, who is in charge in Europe? is it Boris? No, Boris is English. Is it Macron? No, he capitulated in Kiev, together with Draghi. Von Der Leyen? No, she is a pawn of the Americans, in whose hands she has put the fate of Europe, henceforth condemning the EU and itself to irrelevance. Stoltenberg, the American governor of Europe, is the boss. He is the one who appears everywhere, who announces, commands, and decides everything. He even decides which laws Sweden must change in order to declare Kurdish refugees to be "terrorists", as Sultan Erdogan proposes - this champion of human rights, who unlike Putin, has no "desire" to rebuild a past, glorious empire.
Stoltenberg gained all this immense power in a short four months that changed everything, taking advantage of Merkel’s retirement, Boris's immense levity and Biden's galloping senility, and above all, of Putin's tragic and unforgivable miscalculation.If nobody stops him, this Norwegian who became the master of Europe without any European having voted for him will lead us to nuclear war with Russia.

We learned from the G7+1 (Zelensky) meeting that Ukraine must win the war before winter. The Americans alone are supplying the Ukraine with 7.5 billion dollars’ worth of arms every month - a feast for the American military complex. At the end of the day and over a ruined horizon, someone will have to pay for this, and I suppose not only the American taxpayers, but all of NATO.
---
Jeffrey Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development. He has been adviser to three United Nations secretaries-general and currently serves as an SDG advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres,
Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster

(…) The most likely outcome of the current fighting is that Russia will conquer a large swath of Ukraine, perhaps leaving Ukraine landlocked or nearly so. Frustration will rise in Europe and the U.S. with the military losses and the stagflationary consequences of war and sanctions.
The knock-on effects could be devastating, if a right-wing demagogue in the U.S. rises to power (or in the case of Trump, returns to power) promising to restore America’s faded military glory through dangerous escalation.
Instead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

--
Inside the mind of Boris, nostalgia for the British empire runs high. Eight years ago, he suggested that many countries are unlucky to have missed out on the "benefit of British rule". Boris Johnson Says British Rule Would Have Made The World

In 2017, Boris was caught on camera reciting Kipling in Myanamar temple, "The temple bells they say/ Come you back you English soldier.” Boris Johnson caught on camera reciting Kipling in Myanmar

Johnson’s impromptu recital was so embarrassing that the UK ambassador to Myanmar, Andrew Patrick, was forced to stop him.

Now, the war in Ukraine has Boris dreaming of a reborn western Roman Empire. Hail Emperor Boris! 'Roman empire' alliance

Roman empire’ alliance would strengthen European unity, says Boris Johnson
“I had this idea back when I first became foreign secretary,” he said, referring to his time in the post from 2016 to 2018. “My view is that we should rebuild the whole concept. I think that Turkey should be there. I think that Maghreb should be there, and I think we should basically be recreating the Mare Nostrum of the Roman empire.”

Reality is closing in on Boris Johnson, a narcissist scared of what he has unleashed
---

Soups and Salads, the Culture War.

NATO's new "360º defence strategy", or let's keep the Russians out of the potato salad.

The problem arose because the NATO summit cafeteria served up the traditional and delicious potato salad, an important component of the Spanish tapas menu, under the name by which it is known to all and sundry: an ensaladilla rusa - a Russian salad.Within hours, the Russian salad has changed into the traditional salad. It so happens that at the dinner of foreign and defence ministers held on Tuesday, the menu included a so-called Kyiv salad, prepared by chef José Andrés. This denomination had no problem at the summit.

UNESCO Sides With Ukraine Over Russia In 'Borscht War'

UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, has weighed in on the brouhaha over borscht, officially recognizing the cooking of the beetroot soup as part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, despite similar claims by Russia. The culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking “was today inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding”

The salad days of the culture war

Modern wars do not distinguish between the front line and the rearguard. As the battlefield stretches from Ukraine to Twitter, food has become susceptible to ideologization.
Russian salad, a popular dish in Spain, became ideologized when it was rebaptized Kiev salad, as a declaration of intent after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. If it is on the menu as Kiev salad in a restaurant, it is not necessary to hang a Ukrainian flag over the door to know which side of the war the chef is on. It is not the first time that Russian salad, which was invented in the 19th century by a Belgian chef, has been subject to a rebranding. During the Franco regime in Spain, it was renamed National salad or Imperial salad. And it is far from the only dish that has been through some nomenclature-based ups and downs. In 2003, France declined an invitation from the United States to join the Coalition of the willing that would invade Iraq. The three restaurants inside the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, decided to rebrand French fries in a more patriotic way, introducing the world to freedom fries. “It is a small but symbolic demonstration of how disgusted we are with the French, who claim to be our allies,” said a Republican congressman at the time. The French Embassy in the United States merely stated that, in fact, French fries were a Belgian invention.

[PointOfViewGun]

No?may be it's my fault, then.Let me be very clear.By way of introduction, A brief history of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led alliance that helped the U.S. defeat the Islamic State ...

(1) The commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Check video.
--
As I mentioned earlier in a previous post, very recently,while discussing the future of NATO, Erdogan threatened to make a military incursion to capture towns in northern Syria that the Syrian Democratic Forces, where Kurdish YPG fighters are prominent, had seized from the Islamic State with US support. US-Backed Kurdish-Led Forces Say Ready to Coordinate With Syrian Army Against Turkey.

Erdogan bets he can invade new parts of Rojava (Kurdish-majority regions in northern Syria) while the West stays quiet over this NATO membership issue.

In the Swedish Parliament, MP Amineh Kakabaveh accused the government of "bowing down to the tyrant" Erdogan and of wanting to enter NATO at the cost of the sacrifice of the Kurdish people.And she is right. The Swedish MEP considered that the swap of Turkish authorization to enter NATO for Swedish support for the Syrian Kurds was "a black day in the history of Swedish foreign policy" and that it brings added anxiety to people who have found a safe haven in that country and are now being sold their most basic rights.

And about this, I want to ask, who is in charge in Europe? is it Boris? No, Boris is English. Is it Macron? No, he capitulated in Kiev, together with Draghi. Von Der Leyen? No, she is a pawn of the Americans, in whose hands she has put the fate of Europe, henceforth condemning the EU and itself to irrelevance. Stoltenberg, the American governor of Europe, is the boss. He is the one who appears everywhere, who announces, commands, and decides everything. He even decides which laws Sweden must change in order to declare Kurdish refugees to be "terrorists", as Sultan Erdogan proposes - this champion of human rights, who unlike Putin, has no "desire" to rebuild a past, glorious empire.
Stoltenberg gained all this immense power in a short four months that changed everything, taking advantage of Merkel’s retirement, Boris's immense levity and Biden's galloping senility, and above all, of Putin's tragic and unforgivable miscalculation.If nobody stops him, this Norwegian who became the master of Europe without any European having voted for him will lead us to nuclear war with Russia.

We learned from the G7+1 (Zelensky) meeting that Ukraine must win the war before winter. The Americans alone are supplying the Ukraine with 7.5 billion dollars’ worth of arms every month - a feast for the American military complex. At the end of the day and over a ruined horizon, someone will have to pay for this, and I suppose not only the American taxpayers, but all of NATO.

Just wow. The amount of irrelevant word salad you manage to cook up just to argue for the sake of arguing is mind boggling. It's clear you have no point, yet you accused me of hypocrisy and never managed to back it up. The likely case is that you made a stupid claim, as described in my post #4612, and now unable to substantiate it. Hence, the irrelevant word salad. You can go back to trying to justify Russia's raping of Ukraine and killing civilians along the way.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

...wall of words

Stoltenberg is only the news anchor man, who can tell and explain the public what the prime ministers and presidents of the NATO members have decided.

Sorry to say but your Anti-Americanism is completely irrational.

At the end of the day and over a ruined horizon, someone will have to pay for this, and I suppose not only the American taxpayers, but all of NATO.

Sorry, what would be the alternative? Putin's Russia wins and in best case a flood of Ukrainians is pouring into Central Europe, flooding Poland and then Germany. And in worst case Putin is invading Moldova trying to take back Transnistria "heim ins Reich". Or the parts of the Baltic States were the russian minority lives.

I pay happily to prevent this.

[reavertm]

Well, that's not really different from pretty much any army in history to be honest.

It is very much different.
Numbers make the difference. Look them up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape...ion_of_Germany

[Coughdrop addict]

It is very much different.
Numbers make the difference. Look them up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape...ion_of_Germany

One could argue that the Red Army was only able to turn the tables on the Nazis when the possibility of invading Europe to rape and slaughter arose, motivating the Russians in the way mere defense of home and family never could.

[Laser101]

One could argue that the Red Army was only able to turn the tables on the Nazis when the possibility of invading Europe to rape and slaughter arose, motivating the Russians in the way mere defense of home and family never could.

That's no more true of the Soviets than of the British or Americans.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

That's no more true of the Soviets than of the British or Americans.

This.

In Taken by Force, J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.^[71] As in the case of the American occupation of France after the D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint.^[72]
Although policies against fraternization were instituted for the Americans in Germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternization" was used as a motto by United States Army troops.^[73] The journalist Osmar White, a war correspondent from Australia who served with the American troops during the war, wrote:

After the fighting moved on to German soil, there was a good deal of rape by combat troops and those immediately following them. The incidence varied between unit and unit according to the attitude of the commanding officer. In some cases offenders were identified, tried by court martial, and punished. The army legal branch was reticent, but admitted that for brutal or perverted sexual offences against German women, some soldiers had been shot – particularly if they happened to be Negroes. Yet I know for a fact that many women were raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the culprits. In one sector a report went round that a certain very distinguished army commander made the wisecrack, 'Copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternisation.'^[74]

A typical victimization with sexual assault by drunken American personnel marching through occupied territory involved threatening a German family with weapons, forcing one or more women to engage in sex, and putting the entire family out on the street afterward.^[73]
As in the eastern sector of the occupation, the number of rapes peaked in 1945, but a high rate of violence against the German and Austrian populations by the Americans lasted at least into the first half of 1946, with five cases of dead German women found in American barracks in May and June 1946 alone.^[72]
Carol Huntington wrote that the American soldiers who raped German women and then left gifts of food for them may have permitted themselves to view the act as prostitution rather than rape. Citing the work of a Japanese historian alongside that suggestion, Huntington writes that Japanese women who begged for food "were raped and soldiers sometimes left food for those they raped."^[72]
White American soldiers in Germany were responsible for mass rapes, but the Black soldiers of America's segregated occupation force were both more likely to be charged with rape and severely punished.^[72] Heide Fehrenbach writes that while the American Black soldiers were in fact by no means free from indiscipline,

The point, rather, is that American officials exhibited an explicit interest in a soldier's race, and then only if he were black, when reporting behavior they feared would undermine either the status or the political aims of the U.S. Military Government in Germany.^[75]

In 2015, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that German historian Miriam Gebhardt "believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany. The author bases her claims in large part on reports kept by Bavarian priests in the summer of 1945."^[76]

The mass rapes by soviet soldiers (Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Poles, Kasachs...) in East Germany happened after millions of Soviet Civilians were killed by Wehrmacht and SS.

So its nothing something specific with russian nature.

[Ludicus]

.Sorry to say but your Anti-Americanism is completely irrational.

Not at all, read below. It seems that there are many "anti-American" Americans, just read the American press. I am not anti-American in the strict sense of the term, just as I am not anti-Ukrainian, anti-Russian, anti-Chinese,or anti-any people. And I have a relatively solid knowledge of the universal history and the history of Europe from the middle ages to the present day.This is my interpretation of the facts.But of course, I understand those who have other interpretations of recent and past history.
NATO calls now Russia its "most significant and direct threat". But the trouble started in 2008, when the US declared that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of the NATO (as you easily recognized, " The east expansion of Nato and respectless treatment of Russia, have caused a deep mistrust against Nato and the West among the russian population”)
NATO promises Ukraine, Georgia entry one day
…which the Russians unequivocally stated was an existential threat. Stoltenberg candidly admits that Ukraine has been under NATO tutelage for many years. Special address
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NATO leaders approve new Strategic Concept, 29-Jun.

while addressing China for the first time and the challenges that Beijing poses toward Allies’ security, interests and values

Let's see,the document that emerged from the NATO summit in Madrid poses the central question of the definition of the "West", which is the reference to the entity in whose interests the military alliance acts; and of Western values, that which constitutes the core that identifies and distinguishes Westerners from the other major political, military and economic groups.
It contains a decisive sentence, which European leaders should clarify. The communiqué emphatically stresses: "the ambitions and coercive policies of the People's Republic of China challenge our interests, security and values".It is assumed that the values are Western values. It would be important for the citizens of the member states of NATO, who will pay the consequences of these statements, to know what NATO's "summit" understands our "values" to be, and even what NATO understands by the West.
These communiqués are of the type of biblical texts that require exegesis because they deliberately start from statements that they consider to be dogmas, thus beyond any criticism or doubt, or even confrontation with reason.
Originally the term West indicated the separation of the Roman Empire between the Latin West and the Greek-dominated East. The schism of Christianity of 1054 also reinforced and caused decisive differences in the social structure, in the dominant forms of power. For example, Russia and Bulgaria were converted from Constantinople and were part of the "East" (a few years ago, Bulgaria was transferred to the West by joining NATO and Russia was expelled from Europe, where the United States and Canada, former English colonies, entered, but no longer the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies of America: NATO is an Anglo-Saxon creation).
Edit- This is why South America is neutral in this conflict. The Ukraine War May Hasten the Return of Great Power Politics in Latin America
Both right and left,
Bolsonaro won't condemn Putin, says Brazil will ... - Reuters
Brazil's Lula says Zelenskiy 'as responsible as Putin ... - Reuters

Lula said it is irresponsible for Western leaders to celebrate Zelenskiy because they are encouraging war instead of focusing on closed-door negotiations to stop the fighting.

And even more,
In Colombia and Chile, Latin America Is Returning to Democracy

Now, as Brazil prepares for a presidential election this October amid the threat of an autogolpe (“self-coup”) by the increasingly dictatorial Jair Bolsonaro and a possible return to military rule, Biden must decide whether he’s committed to proving that democracies can provide for their citizens, as he asserted at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles earlier this month, or whether he sees the term “democracy” as little more than a slogan, fundamentally devoid of meaning….Other Latin American nations, such as Argentina, have urged the Biden administration to substantiate its democratic rhetoric by addressing the “unequal” rules of the international financial system. These range from trade embargoes that have been in place for years and sometimes decades to IMF loan surcharges designed to keep poor countries in debt.

---
There are several definitions of the West, the classical one based on religion and culture, another one referring to the dominant powers since colonial times, the one of the NATO countries during the Cold War. During the Cold War, the expression "Western World" referred in a very general way to the developed capitalist countries. Accepting this "geography" of the Western World, one comes to the conclusion that the main value of the "West" is profit, and that the West's way of acting in the world to defend its interests is to conquer other territories around the globe and exploit their peoples and wealth.

We can situate the West's "way of being" in the Crusades at the beginning of the second millennium and its strategy has developed up to the present with the expansion and conquest of other continents from the 15th century onward, with the resulting colonization of the American continent and Africa. The West was the centre of world power and if there is agreement about its identity it is that in the West values correspond to interests and vice versa. Roman Christianity had created with the crusades the first great expansionist enterprise of the West and the concentration of power with the demagogic invocation of values of justice and goodness, always violated in practice. It will be the matrix for the action of the West in the future.

The great schism of the West, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation resulted from the interests of national groups to seize the power to accumulate wealth and power, in confrontation with the Catholic papacy. The nationalism of King Edward VIII, who created the Anglican Church, and that of the German princes, (you know that, Morticia) who supported Luther, are a fine example of the combination of interests and values that characterize the West, the West to which the NATO communiqué refers and which NATO extends according to its interests, invoking the threat of the interests of others who, for over 600 years (from Marco Polo's voyage) have never threatened the West.

I assume that Stoltenberg has some idea of what the West means for his NATO. He should enlighten us. This communiqué marks a decisive turning point within the West, led by NATO: the concentration of power in a single entity, the U.S. NATO became an imperial army on a planetary scale to guarantee access to raw materials and to keep control of the emission and circulation of the international currency.
Does Stoltenberg have any explanation to give to "westerners" about this new assignment of roles, about this expansion of business with the opening of fronts on all seas and continents? The NATO communiqué that came out of the Madrid summit has a translation: for the head of the NATO empire, China is now the major competitor.
It is also implicit in the demand to increase the NATO members' quota up to 2% for arms purchases that these new weapons systems are not intended to defend Europe, nor Western values, but rather the interests of the U.S. in the world and in particular in the Pacific.The NATO communiqué also has another reading, which European leaders should be asked to explain: the U.S., after having created the conditions to provoke the war in Ukraine, after having involved Europe in it, is preparing to involve Europe, in the name of the West and of NATO, in a conflict with China in the Pacific Ocean? Is this what's happening?

When Stoltenberg speaks of threats to the West arising from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he is misleading European citizens.The Russian army has been trying since February to conquer a strip of about 150 kilometers in a westward movement. Russia has a very limited ability to project forces over long distances. The Russian Armed Forces do not have the capacity to build and set in motion a steamroller that will pass over Poland, Germany, France, Spain and reach the Atlantic. The NATO policy resulting from the Madrid summit, with the pompous title of "New Strategic Concept", is based on this fallacious premise.

[swabian]

Russia's military turns out to be massively underarmed and incompetent, but Ukriane's victory is not at all certain, only if we keep the support for Ukraine up with a steady stream of supply.

Other threatened countries like Moldavia, Kasakhstan, Azerbaijan, etc. will have to rely on weapons deliveries or even preemptive interventions in the future. This is mainly why Europe has to arm up.
The nuclear strategic situation remains the same, but the problem is gonna happen everywhere, if Russia attacks: who can inhibit/delay/frustrate/prevent Russia for long enough (and as safe as possible for everyone), so that they cannot reinforce their conventional conquests with their then expanded nuclear umbrella.

That is why those new alliances and re-militarizations are happening. And it has to happen. Russia has been allowed to murder and mess around for far too long. They are not a major player anymore and the tolerance for this kind of murdering is limited. Especially here in Europe. We have lent them our hands often enough, now it's time to play seriously. What is wrong with that, please??

[Cyclops]

Ludi these walls of text defy coherent analysis. Exactly who "never threatened the West"? Russia has decisively intervened in Europe many times, and typically it has taken a combibation of powers to defy them. If NATO now serves the US how is that a change? It was always their show.

Russia is in Ukraine. If they are "meant to be there" because if some organic marxist/machiavellian principle then they will win. If they need us to stab Ukraine because they are too feeble to suceed then we're engaging in proxy imperialism, and contaminating the political ecosphere.

The argument "welp Russia is already there and [wall o' text] Yankee Man Bad" sickens me. War stinks, and there should be none: Russia started this one and continued it. If their terrorist scum president cant survive without being spoon fed a win that js his problem, and if he resorts to nukes it is his crime.

The entire defence of his criminal act is based on the assumption he will use nukes first: that alone justifies an attack on him, and a rejection of compromise.

If hes not a monstrous nuker, he can get back in his box and win the war on the ground, and we can contest that. If he can be defended on Machiavellian ruthlessness, we can also indulge our own power plays.

We dont get to slam the US for the Iraq crime and spin this as some natural organic necessity. So much hot air, just to say Zelenskyy's children need to go to the Kremlin.

[Coughdrop addict]

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/07...raine-war-news

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, attended the meeting, despite his country’s pariah status in Europe and beyond over the war, and said that “blatant Russophobia” was causing Western nations to allow harm to the global economy through sanctions against his country. But Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and several other Western officials declined to meet with him.

A common trait of tyrannies and malignant narcissists is that when bullying fails to produce the desired results, they immediately become the victim. You made them do it, everyone is mean to them, nobody loves them, ect.

At least Blinken shows the Biden Administration has hopefully wised up that diplomacy with Russia was always a fool's errand, serving only to legitimize Putin as anything but the common thug he is.

[Ludicus]

In essence, much of what I said in my last post,

Biden's NATO Summit Divides the World Into Hostile Camps
Excerpts,

(...)The NATO buildup in eastern and northern Europe is ominous in itself and not to be ignored

But it is the global implications of the Madrid summit that command our greatest attention. Not content merely to identify Russia as an enhanced threat to European security, the NATO leadership found time to embrace the anti-China agenda of the Biden administration, expressed in such White House documents as the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance of March 2021, and to incorporate it into the mission statement they adopted in Madrid.
…Under this edict, China is to be viewed along with Russia as major challengers to the “rules-based international order” on which alliance security and prosperity supposedly rest.
…Adoption of the new strategic concept by NATO ensures that tensions between the United States and its allies on one side, and China on the other, are bound to increase.
And so, with NATO now committed to an anti-China stance in Asia, we must view the Ukraine conflict as but the opening act in a long-term struggle for global power between the major Western powers and those labeled as “authoritarian actors,” notably Russia and China.
For the military and political elites who dominate NATO summits and other such conclaves, this long-term struggle for control of Eurasia and the Pacific constitutes the overriding mission of our time, outranking all other global concerns, including climate change, Covid, and systemic poverty. It is striking to note, however, that the NATO leadership met at a time when their own citizens seemed far more concerned about domestic issues that impacted their lives: inflation, record energy prices, ethnic tensions, and, in the United States, abortion and gun violence

--
Edit,
Scandal: Ukraine sells military equipment donated by NATO ...
---
Boris Johnson has fallen, Macron has lost his absolute majority, Draghi is running a government he was not elected to, Europe is coming apart at the seams with the huge crisis it is facing and it seems to us that it is completely incapable of managing it. The example of airports is, from this point of view, exemplary.
Here you have a small series of texts with the world of today's killers as their central theme,

1-1989-2001: America's Long Lost Weekend | The New Republic
2- Opinion | Ukraine's ultra-right militias are challenging the the government to a showdown - Washington Post...
3-ukraine - OFPRA
4-LE RETOUR DES ASSASSINS DE LA MÉMOIRE.
5-One War Too Many on Planet Earth - TomDispatch.com

The first text tells us what Bill Clinton did not do - the obligation to help the democratization of the Eastern bloc. It also tells us, though less, about what he did do - the advance of NATO to the East and the forcing of the rapid transition to the savage capitalism of Eastern Europe By what he did and what he did not do, Clinton paved the way for the situation we have today.

The second and third texts tell us about what was done after the Washington-manufactured and EU-backed coup in Ukraine, which resulted after what happened in Maidan Square in February 2014.

Text 2 also describes the strength of the Nazi or para-Nazi organisations in Ukraine. It is a text written by Joshua Cohen and published by the Washington Post, which today can be considered one of the spokespersons of the Biden government. Joshua Cohen was a senior USAID official responsible for the management of economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union.

Text 3 is published by the “Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides” (OPRA) and describes the organised violence practiced by the military and paramilitary forces that reign in Ukraine. Not even in my country during the time of fascism did the political police PIDE reach such levels of savagery.

The fourth text tells us about the negationism that exists today in relation to the actions referred to in the second and third texts, that is, Westerners try to whitewash the political reality of Ukraine, presenting it as a candidate country for integration, and as soon as possible, into the European Union

The fifth text has the characteristic of not confronting the realities set out in the previous texts and thus places itself on the same level as those who criticise me: there is an invading country and an invaded country. It is worth reading, and in spite of that we reach the same conclusion that we have been defending: peace must be negotiated and urgently.
The search for peace, diplomacy as a weapon against war, is not the path that Western politicians have followed, at least the European ones who, with mass destruction at their doorstep, follow the interests of the US Military industrial complex, the great manufacturer of instruments of death and which for thirty years has always been at war, since war feeds its economy and its power in the world.

[Vanoi]

EU backed coup?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro...e)%20in%20Kyiv.

As a result, an agreement was signed on 21 February 2014 by Yanukovych and leaders of the parliamentary opposition that called for the creation of an interim unity government, constitutional reforms and early elections. Shortly after the agreement, Yanukovych and other government ministers fled the country.[89] Parliament then removed Yanukovych from office[90] and installed an interim government.[91] The Revolution of Dignity was soon followed by the Russian annexation of Crimea and pro-Russian unrest in Eastern Ukraine.

The whole point of a coup is that the entire government is overthrown and replaced. Yanukovych fled the country after signing the agreement. Parliament then voted him out unanimously and set-up an interim government.

You can keep parroting Russian propaganda but no one is going to fall for it.

[conon394]

Scandal: Ukraine sells military equipment donated by NATO ...

Pro Russian French source and a nominal tweet from Uralvagonzavod. Err Calli me be back you got a gps verified picture from their plant showing a breakdown of the weapons.

[Mithradates]

Edit,
Scandal: Ukraine sells military equipment donated by NATO ...

France denies Russian reports of a captured Caesar artillery piece

“This information is false,” said the General Staff of France.

FSB disinformation

[Heathen Hammer]

Russians posted footage of Ceasar's being towed away to some facility in Urals. Though I won't be surprise if Ukrainian or even NATO brass is just low-key selling those to Russians or whoever pays the most.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Germany has solved the problem with the supply to Ukraine of ammunition for the Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.

Spiegel writes about this, European Pravda reports.
According to the publication, after several weeks of efforts, the office of the German government, together with the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, found a manufacturer that can produce additional ammunition.
The supply of ammunition for the Gepard was previously considered a problem, since only slightly less than 60,000 35-mm shells were available for them.

The Gepard can fire at up to 1,000 rounds per minute. However, in real conditions, it shoots short bursts adapted to the target.
The German government first found ammunition in South America, but its transfer to Ukraine was not approved by Switzerland, the manufacturing country. A few days ago, the search was more successful in Norway
A local manufacturer could produce special 35mm projectiles, government circles said late last week. They should be tested at the Bundeswehr shooting range in Putlos (Schleswig-Holstein) as early as next week.
As for the supply of the equipment itself, nothing should prevent the transfer of 30 units of Gepard to Ukraine. The systems manufacturer is already training Ukrainian
oldiers in Germany to use anti-aircraft guns that will be used in Ukraine to protect cities and other critical infrastructure.

The Gepard can fire at up to 1,000 rounds per minute. However, in real conditions, it shoots short bursts adapted to the target.
The German government first found ammunition in South America, but its transfer to Ukraine was not approved by Switzerland, the manufacturing country. A few days ago, the search was more successful in Norway.

A local manufacturer could produce special 35mm projectiles, government circles said late last week. They should be tested at the Bundeswehr shooting range in Putlos (Schleswig-Holstein) as early as next week.
As for the supply of the equipment itself, nothing should prevent the transfer of 30 units of Gepard to Ukraine. The systems manufacturer is already training Ukrainian soldiers in Germany to use anti-aircraft guns that will be used in Ukraine to protect cities and other critical infrastructure.

If everything goes according to plan, the first systems should be delivered to Ukraine in July.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, France will transfer six more Caesar self-propelled guns to Ukraine.
Ukraine will receive heavy weapons from Italy similar to those provided by Germany and the Netherlands. The exact list of equipment is kept secret.
Earlier, German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen reported that in addition to Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers, Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns along with American MLRS and HIMARS will arrive in Ukraine within 3-6 weeks.


https://ukranews.com/en/news/867961-...-ukraine-media

I think russian attack helicopters and low flying fighters are now more in danger to be shot down.

[AqD]

The search for peace, diplomacy as a weapon against war, is not the path that Western politicians have followed, at least the European ones who, with mass destruction at their doorstep

So I could beat you and demand 1000 bucks and instead of fighting back you the victim should sue for peace, let's say 500 bucks to stop the beating, and you want European powers to mediate that?


IMO it's already far too kind to demand only their unconditional withdrawal and cost of rebuilding.