EPTRusso-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 656
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KwarK
United States43991 Posts
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Sermokala
United States14131 Posts
On February 20 2024 04:50 JimmiC wrote: You can get that while be an ally of the west. The cheap gas was more than just that. It was an idea that war in Europe could forever end. Russian gas imports making European industry powerful while allowing Russia to modernize into a functional state. The gas money Russia got would be returned to the Europeans through importing the advanced manufactured materials. And the sad part is that it was working. The vaunted Russian arms industry was reliant on it's next generation of arms of European made parts for it's advanced tech. Parts that were cheaper because they were made using Russian gas oil and metals forged from the soviet energy sector. The former soviet bloc was rapidly catching up with the rest of the European union. Russia could have followed the Chinese model and torn out tens of millions out of abject poverty. If putin phased out of public life with his stolen gains and retired a hero of Europe and of Russia like the mythical George Washington. I want to believe that crimea was about an existential dread about the potential of Ukraine in the eu, and that covid made a further invasion to kidnap children and citizens a need to continue the existence of Russia. There has to be a universe where things got better instead of so much worse. That a million people and a trillion dollars doesn't have to be spent to salve a wounded ego. Maybe this was always what humans have been, and we've just been hoping that a broken people can be fixed with good will and kindness. I'm going to go out on a limb though that the people of the donbass wouldn't have chosen getting killed by Russia and having their province systematically reduced to ash and ruin while also having their worlds largest coke plant become not even the worst environmental disaster that Russia has caused in the war. I would invite zeo to go to the refugee camps for those evacuated from the areas Russia shelled for fun to go ask them if they're happy with the course of events. | ||
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FriedrichNietzsche
92 Posts
On February 20 2024 05:36 KwarK wrote: The fact that Putin continues to openly assassinate his apolitical enemies of the state in the west is exactly why Russia has no friends. They insist on this “why do they hate us? Russophobia!” shit while openly flouting the sovereignty of other nations and murdering people on foreign soil. How hard is it to just not murder people. Compared to Russia how prevalent do you think assassinations (on foreign soil) are for e.g the USA or Israel? That ofc does not imply what Putin/Rus is doing is okay at all. But it implies that it is in fact an absolutely common occurence on the geo political world stage among powerful actors. | ||
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Ardias
Russian Federation618 Posts
On February 20 2024 01:24 JimmiC wrote: Question for Airdas or Zeo. If a new democracy magically appeared between the west and Russia what would be the selling point to why they should ally with Russia over the west? All I can think of is because if they don’t Russia might attack them. This is somewhat a compelling argument because Russia has a powerful army, a willingness to use it, and a willingness to cause mass casualties to civilians, mass destruction to infrastructure. Is there actual positives for joining with a Russian alliance or just avoiding the big negative? Because as part of the deal of not being attacked you are already giving up self determination and I really don’t see a lot of positives being offered. The question itself has a flaw - it doesn't have to "ally" to anyone, it can just stay neutral. Selling point - trade free of different EU regulations or measurment of the level of "proper democracy" in your state to secure investments. Cheap gas was already mentioned. Plus there is no need for magic appearences, the perfect example is post-2008 Georgia. While maintaining a rhetoric about "occupied territories", they do enjoy good economic cooperation with Russia, and they do not dive into Ukraine business, staying fully neutral. As a result, they enjoy steady and quite high economic growth (PPP GDP per capita - about 8% a year). | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18292 Posts
On February 20 2024 18:34 FriedrichNietzsche wrote: Compared to Russia how prevalent do you think assassinations (on foreign soil) are for e.g the USA or Israel? That ofc does not imply what Putin/Rus is doing is okay at all. But it implies that it is in fact an absolutely common occurence on the geo political world stage among powerful actors. Well, there's two major differences: 1. the US keeps its extrajudicial killings to Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia... you know, countries that have no agency. Russia is also perfectly happy to do targeted killings in those countries, but in addition assassinates people in Western Europe, you know, countries that were seemingly on a friendly path to mutual prosperity until 2022. 2. The US assassinates foreigners. Usually people who they claim are terrorists. Osama bin Laden and Qasem Soleimani spring to mind, but drones rain terror on plenty of other people too. Russia does that in the middle east, but also kills its own citizens. I don't know why it's worse for Russia to assassinate Russians than to assassinate Malinese, but we generally assume a country has a duty to its own citizens at least, even if those citizens are never-do-goods in the views of that country's leadership. The US would probably have liked to get rid of Snowden a few years ago (by now he's irrelevant), but they didn't assassinate him on Russian soil. They attempted all legal means for Russia to extradite him, and then eventually just gave up. I think we'd have heard if the CIA botched an assassination attempt, because Putin would've been crowing from the rooftops about Western hipocrisy. | ||
zatic
Zurich15365 Posts
The US also did kidnappings of Europeans in Europe which were definitely not just being accepted and did stress Euro-US relations. Both programs were under Bush and early Obama during the war on terror and are not done anymore. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11840 Posts
On February 20 2024 19:25 Ardias wrote: The question itself has a flaw - it doesn't have to "ally" to anyone, it can just stay neutral. Selling point - trade free of different EU regulations or measurment of the level of "proper democracy" in your state to secure investments. Cheap gas was already mentioned. Plus there is no need for magic appearences, the perfect example is post-2008 Georgia. While maintaining a rhetoric about "occupied territories", they do enjoy good economic cooperation with Russia, and they do not dive into Ukraine business, staying fully neutral. As a result, they enjoy steady and quite high economic growth (PPP GDP per capita - about 8% a year). As a result, such a country doesn't have any defense should Russia decide that they are not a real country, and randomly invade them. We have seen very clearly that there are three types of countries next to Russia. Those who have powerful protection, those who are puppets of Russia, and those who are victims of invasions and bullying. | ||
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KwarK
United States43991 Posts
On February 20 2024 19:25 Ardias wrote: The question itself has a flaw - it doesn't have to "ally" to anyone, it can just stay neutral. Selling point - trade free of different EU regulations or measurment of the level of "proper democracy" in your state to secure investments. Cheap gas was already mentioned. Plus there is no need for magic appearences, the perfect example is post-2008 Georgia. While maintaining a rhetoric about "occupied territories", they do enjoy good economic cooperation with Russia, and they do not dive into Ukraine business, staying fully neutral. As a result, they enjoy steady and quite high economic growth (PPP GDP per capita - about 8% a year). Ukraine was neutral. It was not a member of the EU, not a member of NATO, and enjoyed much closer relations with Russia than it did with any western nation. So no, you can't just stay neutral. Russia will not allow it. | ||
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FriedrichNietzsche
92 Posts
On February 20 2024 19:46 Acrofales wrote: Well, there's two major differences: 1. the US keeps its extrajudicial killings to Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia... you know, countries that have no agency. Russia is also perfectly happy to do targeted killings in those countries, but in addition assassinates people in Western Europe, you know, countries that were seemingly on a friendly path to mutual prosperity until 2022. 2. The US assassinates foreigners. Usually people who they claim are terrorists. Osama bin Laden and Qasem Soleimani spring to mind, but drones rain terror on plenty of other people too. Russia does that in the middle east, but also kills its own citizens. I don't know why it's worse for Russia to assassinate Russians than to assassinate Malinese, but we generally assume a country has a duty to its own citizens at least, even if those citizens are never-do-goods in the views of that country's leadership. The US would probably have liked to get rid of Snowden a few years ago (by now he's irrelevant), but they didn't assassinate him on Russian soil. They attempted all legal means for Russia to extradite him, and then eventually just gave up. I think we'd have heard if the CIA botched an assassination attempt, because Putin would've been crowing from the rooftops about Western hipocrisy. I am not claiming I know myself - but I am 100% sure you CAN NOT know what the US does or does not do. You make it sound like you are the head of CIA or NSA or FBI or whatever Org else that exists that we know or even do not know about when you post stuff like this rofl. Who knows what kind of hidden Orgs exist that do stuff in whatever country ever including home soil. I find it a bit bewildering that you think that you can possibly know what they do not do. In fact I think the only thing we really can know about stuff of that kind is a certain % of what is either admitted, or leaked ect.. So I would proclaim that your points have almost literally no merit.. If you would be willing to tell me what is wrong with my thought process I would be grateful! | ||
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KwarK
United States43991 Posts
On February 20 2024 22:48 FriedrichNietzsche wrote: I am not claiming I know myself - but I am 100% sure you CAN NOT know what the US does or does not do. You make it sound like you are the head of CIA or NSA or FBI or whatever Org else that exists that we know or even do not know about when you post stuff like this rofl. Who knows what kind of hidden Orgs exist that do stuff in whatever country ever including home soil. I find it a bit bewildering that you think that you can possibly know what they do not do. In fact I think the only thing we really can know about stuff of that kind is a certain % of what is either admitted, or leaked ect.. So I would proclaim that your points have almost literally no merit.. If you would be willing to tell me what is wrong with my thought process I would be grateful! What’s wrong with your thought process is that you’re claiming that you’re right on the basis that you don’t know anything. That’s not a thought process at all. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Excludos
Norway8257 Posts
Following in Denmark's footsteps (Likely not literally, these things aren't decided in a day), Sweden is going to send over a package worth roughly $680m to Ukraine | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18292 Posts
On February 20 2024 22:48 FriedrichNietzsche wrote: I am not claiming I know myself - but I am 100% sure you CAN NOT know what the US does or does not do. You make it sound like you are the head of CIA or NSA or FBI or whatever Org else that exists that we know or even do not know about when you post stuff like this rofl. Who knows what kind of hidden Orgs exist that do stuff in whatever country ever including home soil. I find it a bit bewildering that you think that you can possibly know what they do not do. In fact I think the only thing we really can know about stuff of that kind is a certain % of what is either admitted, or leaked ect.. So I would proclaim that your points have almost literally no merit.. If you would be willing to tell me what is wrong with my thought process I would be grateful! Zatic's argument was the right way to refute this. Having the Macedonian police arrest a German citizen because you mistake him for someone on your watchlist, then flying him to a blacksite and torturing him for a few months is pretty fucking disgusting, and not actually long enough ago to qualify as something you can say belonged to a different era (as I would have said if this were all just cold war stuff). Your argument is that because you don't know, you can't know. Generally speaking, assassinations leave an obvious result: a dead guy. We know Russia assassinates people because those people turn up dead. Russia isn't announcing their assassinations, but they're immediately obvious to anybody who is even halfway interested. You claim that in the absense of those corpses we cannot know people aren't being assassinated. Might as well say we can't know there isn't a pink teapot in orbit around the sun. Zatic, however, pointed out that those corpses are there. Not super recent, but not exactly long ago either. | ||
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SC-Shield
Bulgaria845 Posts
On February 20 2024 21:47 KwarK wrote: Ukraine was neutral. It was not a member of the EU, not a member of NATO, and enjoyed much closer relations with Russia than it did with any western nation. So no, you can't just stay neutral. Russia will not allow it. Didn't issues with Ukraine and Georgia start when they announced that they wanted to join NATO? At this point, Putin must have realised that once in NATO, they aren't going to leave anytime soon and not leaving means ever shrinking sphere of influence. Hence, I guess this is the reason why Kremlin compares war in Ukraine to "life or death" of Russia which is silly as if they think it's zero-sum game. Overall, Russia's position to have "buffer zones" or being afraid is something I still don't understand. Russia has such a large territory that they can probably make a nuclear launch site every 100-200 km "just in case" and still be fine even when they lose a few somehow. Besides, their vast territory is a buffer enough as this is how Hitler and Napoleon lost. No country has the resources to fully occupy Russia and if they're afraid of united NATO can do that, well, there are nukes. So what are they afraid of? It seems it's about soft power / sphere of influence after all, not about Russia's survival. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium5161 Posts
On February 21 2024 08:43 Acrofales wrote: + Show Spoiler + On February 20 2024 22:48 FriedrichNietzsche wrote: I am not claiming I know myself - but I am 100% sure you CAN NOT know what the US does or does not do. You make it sound like you are the head of CIA or NSA or FBI or whatever Org else that exists that we know or even do not know about when you post stuff like this rofl. Who knows what kind of hidden Orgs exist that do stuff in whatever country ever including home soil. I find it a bit bewildering that you think that you can possibly know what they do not do. In fact I think the only thing we really can know about stuff of that kind is a certain % of what is either admitted, or leaked ect.. So I would proclaim that your points have almost literally no merit.. If you would be willing to tell me what is wrong with my thought process I would be grateful! Zatic's argument was the right way to refute this. Having the Macedonian police arrest a German citizen because you mistake him for someone on your watchlist, then flying him to a blacksite and torturing him for a few months is pretty fucking disgusting, and not actually long enough ago to qualify as something you can say belonged to a different era (as I would have said if this were all just cold war stuff). Your argument is that because you don't know, you can't know. Generally speaking, assassinations leave an obvious result: a dead guy. We know Russia assassinates people because those people turn up dead. Russia isn't announcing their assassinations, but they're immediately obvious to anybody who is even halfway interested. You claim that in the absense of those corpses we cannot know people aren't being assassinated. Might as well say we can't know there isn't a pink teapot in orbit around the sun. Zatic, however, pointed out that those corpses are there. Not super recent, but not exactly long ago either. I believe his argument was that you don't know which organisation kills who. If it's in the CIA's best interest to make Russia look like the worst guy possible, they might just kill Russians themselves and make it look like Russia did it. You don't know. No one does. That's the point. Pointing at a body and saying that the regime he opposed did it is naive im. Granted, we don't know anything about anything and it's only in this naive sphere we can operate, but that makes it all the more insidious to talk about, because you might view certain things disproportionally (not that Russia is in any spot to get some of that good limelight, but you get the idea). I'm not claiming Russia isn't killing off it's political opposition. But I'm also not claiming that of all the Russian opposition that has been killed, it was 100% Russia that did it. | ||
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JoinTheRain
Bulgaria409 Posts
On February 21 2024 21:33 SC-Shield wrote: Overall, Russia's position to have "buffer zones" or being afraid is something I still don't understand. Russia has such a large territory that they can probably make a nuclear launch site every 100-200 km "just in case" and still be fine even when they lose a few somehow. Besides, their vast territory is a buffer enough as this is how Hitler and Napoleon lost. No country has the resources to fully occupy Russia and if they're afraid of united NATO can do that, well, there are nukes. So what are they afraid of? It seems it's about soft power / sphere of influence after all, not about Russia's survival. Well, the way I see it, nowadays it's not about Russia being afraid of being invaded. It's obvious that them having a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons denies that possibility. But I think any dictatorial regime must project itself as strong and independent in the eyes of its own nation. If you deny Putin this ability to flex to the world, he's done, no one would tolerate him. So it is critical for Putin to be perceived as this strong and unyielding figure, at least in the eyes of the regular Russian. I really think it boils down to that - for the Russian dictator to stay in power, he must be seen as strong and scary. The way to do this is threatening nuclear war here and there, waging (a successful) conventional war, making the locals richer, blaming everything on external conditions, never the regime can be blameworthy, you get the drill. This is why Russian government controlled media is packaging the war as a successful one to their nation even though the army failed all initial objectives. In the 1980s it took them a long time to admit that Afghanistan was an utter failure, I don't see the Russian ruling class thinking differently now, still they're stubborn and obstinate, insisting in their stupidity, hoping the other party crumbles before they do. I do hope this somewhat unified under NATO West as it is now, doesn't get tired of supporting Ukraine before the Russians decide they've had enough but we will see. The most horrible outcome would obviously be a protracted war like the Vietnam, Korea and Lebanese civil war. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Uldridge
Belgium5161 Posts
It seems to me that when the cost of making a national threat look incompetent or bad (like to rally your population against them) outweighs the life of someone, they'll make that trade and call it a "sorry, it's not personal" kind of thing. | ||
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0x64
Finland4615 Posts
On February 22 2024 00:09 Uldridge wrote: Again, JimmiC, I'm not claiming I know the MO of the CIA, or which specific targets are smoke screens or diversions. I haven't scoured through all the leaked documents. I haven't followed up on how they operate, but I'm sure no one here can make the claim they know how any intelligence actually operates. It seems to me that when the cost of making a national threat look incompetent or bad (like to rally your population against them) outweighs the life of someone, they'll make that trade and call it a "sorry, it's not personal" kind of thing. To be fair, Alicante might be the worst place to go hide from Russian mob as it is basically known for hosting Russian mob for holidays. Even though he probably got tricked in other ways... | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17744 Posts
On February 22 2024 00:34 0x64 wrote: To be fair, Alicante might be the worst place to go hide from Russian mob as it is basically known for hosting Russian mob for holidays. Even though he probably got tricked in other ways... "It is darkest under the lamp post" as the saying goes  | ||
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