I expected this and as pointed out if you don't like NATO this war has been disastrous. NATO is more united than before and is set to grow out of it.
Countries have to deal with and confront the ugly parts of the past or they are doomed to repeat atrocities. The US culturally has done a good job until lately with the MAGA movement in confronting our history with slavery, and our disgust with being lied into unnecessary wars like Vietnam and Iraq. What is different about Russia and what is looking different with the MAGA movement is a culture of lying, and a permission structure to live in an alternate reality where you are always a hero and everything done from your team or leader is perfection. The series Chernobyl does such a great job of perfectly identifying the Russian culture of lies and the atrocities that follow. It’s just incredibly important that objective truth remain of utmost importance moving forward in society. The US is in deep deep trouble because it’s obvious that Rupert Murdoch has done more to brainwash a good chunk of our US population than the KGB and FSB could do in Russia with complete control of the media there. Even when operating in a country with a free press, Murdoch has had wild success to the point where if Trump or any other Murdoch supporter political figure like Ron Desantis decided to invade Mexico just like Putin invaded Ukraine with mass atrocities, murder, rape, etc. you’d have basically all of those who watch FoxNews have essentially the same response as that Russian lady in Germany. It’s simple. A developed culture of lying and accepted alternate reality.
There has been as much made up propaganda and flat out lies produced by the corporate media and the Democrat left establishment in connection with this war as there was with the Kavanaugh hearings, the Russian election conspiracy hoax or the recent political leveraging of the Covid hysteria. There have already been so many reports about instances in this war that were clearly falsified propaganda, made up by the relentless, unconscionable liars in our government and the media in order to try to whip up a mass hatred of the Russians that any of these reports at this point has to be presumed from the start to be false and unreliable. As far as the "offers," there were also offers made to Zalensky, effectively promising him that NATO membership was a possibility, and then there is a great deal of other history, some of which I have previously written about in this thread, and which I will not go through again at this time. This did not need to happen. We have been poking the bear going back to 2008, starting with Condoleezza Rice, the Bucharest Declaration, which was escalated into action in no uncertain terms when Obama interfered in Ukrainian politics to facilitate the overthrow of the democratically elected pro-Russian Ukrainian regime in 2013, which was then followed by Russia's invasion and ultimate annexation of the Crimea in 2014. You may regard all of that as water under the bridge, but the Russians certainly do not. And now we have continued to push the boundaries, in ways that we should not have, if we did not want war. In fact, it is not at all clear to me that we did not want war in Ukraine at this time, or that many of these people do not want to see it escalate further now, which many of those megalomaniacal incompetent lunatics in Washington and the media have over the last few weeks been openly attempting to encourage. Russia does not need our permission to go to war. Nor does any other country. If we want to object to another country going to war, there are two effective methods for approaching that - diplomacy or military. We are trying a new approach, which will not work, which is to have a raging geopolitical temper tantrum and to try to "cancel" the nation of Russia. The people who are promoting this "strategy" are incompetent, clearly desperate, and have apparently actually lost their minds. Since we are hopefully not going to go into a full on WWIII confrontation over this, the answer here is diplomacy. In that scenario, the Russians have the upper hand. We have to be willing under the circumstances to show some humility - if any can be found - and let cooler heads prevail, handling this in a realistic, practical way, without the involvement of the Democrat left corporate media led mob, or any sort of emotionally charged P.R. campaigns. If we want this effort to succeed, that is. What we need to be working towards is peace, not the escalation of or continuation of this war.
As a German yourself, I'm sure you are well aware of this, and as far as I can tell from the US, Germany has done a great job of not living in a culture of lies in regards to WW2. Based on the chaos you see brewing here in the US my best recommendation would be to make sure Germany never lets Rupert Murdoch invade your media ecosystem. That's why there is such a huge nasty back and forth right now in the US. FoxNews has led the charge on trying to institute an alternate universe of lies about our ugly past on race. It's an effort to deploy the same cultural nationalism that is engrained in Russia. The US falling to a culture of lies leading to autocracy would be terrible of course, but Germany falling back into this culture too would be devastating as well. Just look at how quickly Schultz was able to throw together a massive military budget almost overnight because of the great wealth it has. France too is in a real tricky spot with LePen being a out there in the open paid by Russia plant, and many French people don't seem to care because of the alternate reality she is selling. At the very core of it all, truth is under attack more than anything. In Russia there just never really has been much truth at all which is why you see people like that Russian lady in Germany spouting nonsense like breathing.
Okay so your version of diplomacy is "What do you want, Vlad? We will give you whatever you want to just stop the war."
The Ukraine should take the war into Russian territory whenever it can - damage that Russia can't ignore or hide from it's people. I will say that if you get those obscure text messages.....type in "**** RUSSIA" and get ready for about 15 of them to want to fight you!!! DD
Germany voted to expand their defense spending to 100 billion euros. Hooray for them freeloading less off Nato? Oh wait, they're now third in total defense spending/year.
@SamFisher, this is what your indifference enables. Ukraine conflict: 'Russian soldiers raped me and killed my husband' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243
So, suggesting that we return to the arrangements under which the peace was maintained in that region after WWII for just short of 70 years (until 2014) is "delusional". Gotcha.
