Yes, Germany will deliver something helpful at last. It’s in the news here. As I rumbled above it needs international guidance and pressure to get this inexperienced but arrogant wannabe ‘oh so progressive’-government to do the right things. For weeks they told us how well prepared their top-secret-super-powerful sanctions were. Now they tell us how they are nonstop working on how a Swift-exclusion could be realized… oh my!
The response of much of the left wing in Europe is such a disappointment to me. I’ve voted for the same party all of my adult life, and I’ve always known they were weak on defense, but it’s one thing to be weak in peacetime when you have the privilege, and quite another to be weak now.
It’s especially disappointing to me because in 1940 when the Germans came, it was the left who were first to fight and suffer, while the rest of Denmark was cowering and sending their sons to the Eastern Front with SS runes on their shoulders.
If I’m gonna be able to sleep at night, next election I’ll have to cast my vote for Zelensky. It really bothers me that there’s such an overlap between being kind, and being naive. I don’t understand it.
Likewise :)
Russia was in this seat, not USSR. Belarus and Ukraine were separate entities in the UN from the very beginning.
Well, it could be worse, PCP, the Portuguese Communist Party has said the fault of the whole thing belongs with NATO and the EU.
Might be some sort of Pavlovian response, after so many years following the Kremlin’s lead, they’re still at it, even after it stopped being a Communist state.
The Danish far left are stopping short of that, but they voted against increasing the Danish contribution to NATO. The moderate left voted in favor.
There was a similar pronouncement in the UK, signed by Jeremy Corbyn and a number of UK Labour MPs, who were later convinced to withdraw their signatures.
There seems to be a push for a false equivalence between this and the war in Iraq. Iraq was also a war of choice and a war of aggression, it was blatantly criminal, but it was not a war of conquest by someone proclaiming an empire.
I’m not sure there’s much of a false equivalence, at the end of the day both situations were “we can do it because we’re stronger, so, nyah”, but 2 wrongs don’t make a right.
Also, I doubt there were many people crying over the Iraqi regime, even with all the bullshit excuses to go to war, not quite the same when it’s a “managed” democracy invading a democracy that’s attempting to become freer and more Western. At the time I thought the Iraq invasion was pretty dumb from a 911 angle, taking into account what was known (Saudi != Iraq), but who knows, good could come of it, this time, not so much.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. To me, one thing this situation has made clear is that both the US and Iran are both correct in the nuclear debate (though you can substitute Iran for any other country we are trying to de-nuclearize, like North Korea).
This proves that many countries need nuclear weapons to act as a successful deterrent to an invasion. Anyone invading a nuclear power really needs it to be a last resort before committing.
Likewise, this also proves that any country with nuclear weapons can invade a non-nuclear power on a whim and use the threat of MAD to keep the rest of the world from interfering.
I am not militarily savy enough to say, but I really suspect if it wasn’t for the threat of nuclear weapons the US and Europe would be much more willing to militarily help. Likewise, Russia probably wouldn’t have invaded if they knew that the west would play a more active role in helping Ukraine.
It’s not any country with nukes, it’s Russia. AKA, we have more nukes than anyone, we don’t even need to aim, we’ll just generally destroy everything. North Korea couldn’t invade and expect to be treated with the same “respect”, even though they could delete millions from Earth, I guess.
In any case, it’s only getting easier, nukes are old tech, I imagine whatever difficulty is still there, it’s “artificial”, rich countries could get nukes real quick if they wanted to, and poorer ones if they really want them too.
Alstein
3656
Then you bring in Civilian Aircraft and do a Berlin airlift. Make it crystal clear to the Russians these are unarmed. If they shoot down unarmed food aid planes- it will be easier to ratchet up sanctions even more.
For those unfamiliar, TASS is a Russian state-owned news agency
Those are the numbers the Ukranian military released. TASS was likely just reporting on them, but those are not internal Russian numbers.
Oh, agreed, but there was an additional message if one reads the translation:
“This is more than two wars in Chechnya. At the same time, the authorities report that “there are no losses.””
Someone put this out there in protest.
This is less then Chechnya. Russian army in Chechen wars had 10 000 casualties.
Good point
Meanwhile, Germany has definitely done an about face
vyshka
3662
Don’t want to be left out of all the good pr.
vyshka
3663
Hmm, I was thinking yeah but looking at the Charter is does mention the USSR specifically:
Either way, will never happen.
Aceris
3666
Glad to hear this. Sounds like Scholz has found his backbone.
