Imperial Russia from the Tzar times and the Soviet empire times
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Need a rolling your eyes emoji
At the start of the war the narrative was that Ukraine could win, and that was worth all the sacrifice, but now even the west admits that Ukraine is going to lose. So, Borrell is openly admitting here that the west is destroying Ukraine for their own interests as opposed to helping people of Ukraine.
How much of that "aid" is basically just buying up the parts they plan to keep from Russia after negotiations and plunging it into serfdom.
I wonder how much of the soil is seeped with uranium and other munition chemicals lol. Blackrock will sell radioactive wheat back to Ukrainians.
It’s bizarre seeing everyone on here horrified at the prospect of depleted uranium being used and mass privatization because we know Ukrainians will continue living there after the war, and we’re branded as evil fascist tankies. But liberals who supposedly care about Ukrainians keep hyping up and defending chemical warfare and privatization by foreign corporations.
The sad thing is that this is basically a war for symbols.
If they just conceded the territory, how much would the locals' lives change? One sketchy government replaced by another, but OMG new flag and banknotes! A slightly different language in official documents! Clearly that's an ACTUAL genocide, not like we have any reference to what that would look like.
If we said "hundreds of thousands had to die for Coke over Pepsi" it would be no less absurd than this level of death for "Blue and Yellow Brand Corruption vs Tricolour Brand Corruption."
We could have solved this conflict in 2022 by figuring in terms of "the cheapest, least bloody way to make Putin feel like a winner" but the West approached it with all the nuanced logic of a primary school teacher saying "The bully must be punished and denied for being a bully" no matter the cost.
One sketchy government replaced by another
They were being shelled by their current sketchy government for about a decade
Putin is not a different brand of corruption here he’s the only rational actor in this entire conflict. Russia has made it entirely clear to the west since the 90’s that Ukraine was a redline. The west should have listened. Take your ignorance somewhere else.
Putin is not a different brand of corruption here
Show
Putin has only ended up in the anti-imperialism camp because the US can't contain their deranged contempt for any country that isn't wholly subservient
That’s the thing, Putin would accept being allowed “into the club” in a heartbeat. These euros see Putin as an existential threat but they refuse to do the one that thing would actually defuse the situation - bring Russia closer to them. Neoliberalism can’t allow Russia to be an equal - they’re too much of a threat to US hegemony just by sheer size and power, even if they earnestly want to play ball with the west. It took Putin a while to realize this but I think he gets it now.
By the way isn’t Borrell the guy who made that infamous “garden” comment?
"Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together," Borrell said during the event.
"The rest of the world," he went on, "is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden."
"A nice small garden surrounded by high walls in order to prevent the jungle from coming in is not going to be a solution. Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden," he said.
You know it's a European politician when they take 300 words to say 14
This is the endgame from 30 years of mishandling the unwinding of the USSR.
The obvious answer was to follow the post-WWII playbook: welcome Russia with open arms and flood them with redevelopment aid, like Germany and Japan. Provide a soft landing for Ivan Ivanovich-- maybe enabled by a rush of cheap, available consumer goods or some temporary market supports-- and it's much harder to make a political message out of "were you better off before 1991?". Give them 20 years to willingly unwind their military presence and become economically dependent, and you'd buy an endless stream of Yeltsin-esque stooges that would greenlight the slow parasitization of the country.
That would have required delayed gratification though: you probably couldn't push the privatization grift immediately, for example.
Yes we all know Russia wanted into the club at one point, but this person literally said
If they just conceded the territory, how much would the locals' lives change?
My brother in Christ you’re comparing the people liberating them to the people trying to genocide them. There are differences between Ukraine and Russia and we can either discuss them or you can take your “deranged contempt” somewhere else.
I read that as "if [Ukraine] just conceded the territory [new territory, not the areas controlled by the republics and Russia for the last decade], how much would like the locals' lives change" - and I would think very little if you spoke Ukrainian and positively if you spoke Russian.
Obviously that doesn't go in the reverse, but I don't think they were suggesting that?
"War to the last Ukrainian" the west has decided that the people of Ukraine are expendable. A noble sacrifice. Boris Johnson is gonna repel down from the rafters and say something stupid about how it's okay to make a "grand bargain" with other people's lives.
