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Thread: Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

  1. #1421
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    I wondered already how long it would take till both sides accuse each other of being in cahoots with fascists...

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    Google translate from a book about Russian nationalists.

    The most intensive training militants conducted in the spring - summer 1993. In Moscow suburban bases of RNE experts from GRU , MVD and FSB conducted training barkashovskih militants with an emphasis on fighting in urban enivronment and subversive activities . They practiced assaults of buildings and usage of explosives.
    Not only naziz capital , but also the " fighters" from province. For example, in September 1993, a such training was held for korup form Krasnoyarsk , where was located second bigges organisation of RNE.
    The abundance of representatives from security services in training suggests supporting the Nazis someone from the country's leadership . Barkashovites prepared to revolt . "Even in the spring of '93 RNE preparing for the fall events. Our bases actively trained stormtroopers , developed plans for various operations , "- said later the then head of the Security Service Alexander Denisov RNE .
    Barkashov himself in April confidently stated that by autumn the situation in the country escalated dramatically , with the RNE in the protracted confrontation between the president and members of parliament to support the latter, " if need be, physically."
    http://eajc.org//data/image/books/18/09/9/18099_d.pdf

  3. #1423
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    Greetings to Dugin and Barkashov from Donbass.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  4. #1424
    Council Member Firn's Avatar
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    Pretty early in this thread we discussed the huge problems Russia would face supplying the occupied Crimea, be it water, gas, oil, electricity and food. The headline Crimean Citizens to Get Russian Gas sounds promising, but for now the reality is:

    Crimea is also facing a shortage of gasoline and diesel supplies resulting from its annexation, as the majority of its supplies were delivered overland from Ukraine. Russia has not yet been able to resolve the supply issue with the small oil terminal in the port city of Kerch, on the eastern side of the peninsula.
    Pretty much what we said, capacity just doesn't grow magically and severing natural economic ties comes at high costs. BTW if Ukraine did indeed cut the water supply from the NCC at the entry it will take some weeks, I think, to be felt in Crimea. IIRC there is also another channel watering southwest Ukraine towards Odessa, possibly they might be able to divert also there.

    The highly likely collapse in tourism, perhaps the most important source of private revenue has promted some Russian plans. If the pension and public wages will get the promised big rise the Crimean economy will be dominated by the state.

    According to data from the Russian tourism watchdog, Rostourism, nearly 6 million tourists visited Crimea last year, of which 65 percent were Ukrainians and 25 percent, Russians. The 2014 season will be different, warned Irina Schegolkova, a spokesperson for Rostourism.

    "This year, the Crimean government plans to welcome about 3 million people, the majority of them Russians," she said, adding that in previous years most Russians either drove to Crimea in their cars or traveled by rail. For Russians, that means a detour through potentially hostile territory, which most will be unwilling to risk, she added: "The only alternatives are developing direct flights to Crimea or ferry connections."
    So after talking about a moderate reduction in tourism demand a month or so ago the have at least cut them to a more propable number, only 50%. Still too high in my books, but we will see.
    Last edited by Firn; 05-07-2014 at 09:39 PM.
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  5. #1425
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    1 opinion.

    Russia intends to sit and watch Kiev suppress the rebellion in the southeast.

    There are probably two reasons for this. The first is the fear of economic sanctions that the U.S. and Germany have threatened to impose in the event of any military intervention. The second is that Moscow does not want to get involved in a conflict that could be potentially destructive for its economy over large territories with large economic problems and a predominantly Ukrainian population whose sentiments are far from uniform, which Russia has never been particularly interested in.
    Ukrainian forces will most probably regain control over those territories in time to make it possible to conduct a presidential election on May 25 with at least a semblance of legality.

    It would however be erroneous to interpret this as a sign that an end to the Ukrainian crisis is in sight. A military operation, conducted by poorly trained troops and with support of paramilitary nationalist groups, cannot but cause anger among the population.
    Ukraine is doomed to a long political crisis with a further radicalization of politics, with the factors of ethnicity, language and religion coming to the fore.
    By refusing to intervene in Ukraine's southeast we have not averted the threat of sanctions but have just bought ourselves some time to prepare for them by re-orienting our economic, science, technology and other ties towards Asia and by putting import-replacement programs in place.
    http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/book/Rus...-Ukraine-16623

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    Why Germans Love Russia

    MAY 5, 2014

    BERLIN — Like most foreign-policy experts, I was shocked by Russia’s
    annexation of Crimea and its continuing “soft invasion” of eastern Ukraine. Can such a naked land grab really be happening now, in 21st-century Europe?

    But Russia’s actions were not the only surprise. If you have followed the German debate about the Ukraine crisis, you have witnessed another strange phenomenon: a parade of former politicians and public figures going on TV to make the case for Russia.

    According to these august figures — including former Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt — NATO and the European Union were the real aggressors, because they dared to expand into territory that belonged to Moscow’s legitimate sphere of interest. And it seems part of the German public agrees.

    You thought that Germans were the champions of international law and a rules-based world order? Think again.
    Both versions of anti-Westernism have been around for decades; until now, though, they have been confined to the political fringes. These days they are accepted by parts of the elite and sections of the political center. That, combined with the enormous investment by German companies in Russia, is placing constraints on how aggressively the government of Angela Merkel, Germany’s strongly pro-Western chancellor, can act against Russia.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/op...wergin%2F&_r=1

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    Putin Too Clever by Half on Delaying Russian Referendum

    May 8, 2014

    Putin is engaged in the classic Leninist approach of two steps forward and one step back: He has absorbed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine and now will receive credit in some circles for being a peacemaker. He has made it more difficult for the West to come up with a united position because it is certain that some capitals will say this is not the time to push forward. Yet, he has left all his options on the table, not agreeing to any substantive change on Ukraine or anywhere else.
    http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ed...4#.U2ydY9oaySN

    According to one Ukrainian site (written in 2011) "Donetsk Republic" was organised by Aleksandr Tsurkan, who worked in Yanukovich presidential election team in 2004. Yanukovich lost to orange revolution and Tsurkan left to Donetsk to organise movement that could act as opponent to president Yuschenko. Last biggest event was protest meeting where gathered 15 persons. After Yanukovich became president this organisation became quiet.

    http://zrada.org/hot/26-nation/244-p...a-ukrainy.html

    2012. "Donetsk Republic" opened their "embassy" in Moscow in the office of Dugin's youth movement. That year Putin became president again under "Eurasian Union" banner.

    http://gazeta.ua/ru/articles/politic...9?mobile=false

    Autumn same year Dugin's people arrived to Donetsk to share know how about Eurasianism. There was talk about "Eurasian Union", which is Putin's geopolitical project.

    http://rusmir.in.ua/pol/3362-v-donec...a-nauchno.html

    7.05.2014 Russia's present day "useful idiot" Bckman is in the game.

    Ukrainian separatists opening mission in Helsinki
    The eastern Ukrainian separatist group calling itself the "Donetsk Republic" will be opening a representative office in Helsinki, according to Finnish academic and activist Johan Bckman.
    Johan Bckman says that the representative office will be opened on the 18th of this month at a conference in Helsinki where the keynote speaker will be Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, an ideologist of the creation of a Eurasian empire. Bckman added that he has had talks in Moscow with Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin on setting up a western European representative office in Helsinki. As Pushilin is on the EU sanctions list, it is unlikely that he will be present for the opening.
    http://yle.fi/uutiset/ukrainian_sepa...lsinki/7226818

    Bäckman is working for Russia's front organisatins for some time. He was one of the most active international election monitors in Crimea. In Finland he is representative of Russia's RISI institute, whose head is retired special service general. If you tell to Finn "Backman", usually very calm people lose their temper

    It's very hard not to agree with Paul Goble.
    Last edited by kaur; 05-09-2014 at 11:13 AM.

  8. #1428
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
    Why Germans Love Russia
    pro Russia:

    Schröder - de facto disrespected former Chancellor, without substantial political influence in Germany

    Schmidt - much-respect elder statesman and former Chancellor (West Germany), but he was already over 70 when the wall fell...he hasn't exactly the most agile mind nowadays

    Gysi - 100% political opposition (far) left wing figurehead with rhetoric gift, but without ability to influence national policies

    far right wingers - some are in love with authoritarian strongman Putin as anti-homo, anti-Muslim crusader et cetera, others prefer to foster their condescension towards slavs.


    There is a (correct) assertion that the mainstream media reports on the Ukraine with a bias, preferring the counter-Putin side of affairs. The fascist component of the revolution and of the new cabinet didn't get much attention in the news and negligible political groups such as the Klitchko brothers were hyped, for example.
    Now imagine how the other Western media are biased if in a country accused to be too pro-Russia the mainstream media can be correctly accused of having a counter-Russia bias.

    I suppose it's a 'both sides are bad' case - as usual.
    Principles are still to be applied on 'good' and 'bad', and the right to self-determination was with Russia in the Crimea case as it was with the EU in the Kosovo case. At least Russia didn't bomb the Ukraine generally for months before it invaded the Crimea (as we did with Yugoslavia/Kosovo, supposedly to stop atrocities which were afterwards almost entirely disproved).

    Russia's methods are illegal, but it has a point: The self-determination right of the people in the majority Russian districts (the sovereignty of the Ukraine stems from the same principle).


    Now it's possible to point at a plurality of opinions in Germany and to point at non-enthusiastic opinions in Germany which take the greyscale nature of the conflict into account and to assert that Germany is Russia-friendly.

    Well, I suppose a pluralistic society looks like this. It might be better to appraise the difficulty of the conflict than to go into an all-out adversary mode knowing only "containment", "sanctions" and turning the Ukraine into a proxy.
    It's unlikely that the international community finds cure the root of the problem if major countries have a 100% adversary stance. I think the poorly-drawn borders are the problem, not a Putin regime attempt to re-establish the Russian empire. He may want it, but it would be way out of reach if the borders weren't so poorly drawn.


    ------
    P.S.: Germany has a positive attitude towards Russia, and it goes both ways.
    Germans thank Gorbachev more for the reunification than Bush, Mitterand and Thatcher combined. Russians have forgiven WW2 better than the Dutch or English, for example. Warsaw Bloc 'communist' ideology drove reconciliation efforts during the Cold War: According to ideology, it wasn't nationalities but plutocrats and fascism which caused the war. This may have helped relations despite the real-economy leeching of East Germany.
    Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the USSR/Russia reached Germany in the past two decades, many of which (notionally all) were descendants of German immigrants to Russia of the 18th century.
    Germany supported the Russian state with substantial loans during the 90's without visible strings attached.

    It's naive to expect Germans to ditch a fairly good relationship in an instant only because Russia and another non-allied country are now in conflict. There were some lessons learned about how deteriorating relationships in Europe can have severe consequences - lessons which Americans never learned.
    Last edited by Fuchs; 05-09-2014 at 12:08 PM.

  9. #1429
    Council Member mirhond's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
    Following youtube links are in Russian.

    Ukrainian SBU claims that they have got phone call between Donetsk self defence forces and Russian fascist Barkashov, where Barkashov gives intructions about referendum in Donetsk. "No federalisation, just Donets Respublic"
    Aww, how sweet, old warhorse Barkashov, uheard and unseen along with his RNE for 20 years, is now in action again. Well, Kremlin shows mad skillz in political assets management

    Meanwhile in Mariupol

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSWwAPsO3Q0

    Translation from 3:00
    Soldier: Mr Yatzenuk &Co. thanks a lot for 1300 Hr(about 110 $) two months wage. Wish you everything I've heard from my brothers and systers here and in Kiev. I am ashamed. Think of it, we may turn the column against you.

    Guys are little bit nervous, public doesn't show respect.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=XMvhQRPYPEA
    Last edited by mirhond; 05-09-2014 at 01:55 PM.
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  10. #1430
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    mirhond:

    Were you able to find out what Putin's net worth is and what his salary is?
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  11. #1431
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    I wonder how much Germany counts for anymore. Maybe it is time to stop worrying about them and 'Europe' and start thinking about countries like Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden etc.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  12. #1432
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    Fuchs:

    P.S.: Germany has a positive attitude towards Russia, and it goes both ways. Germans thank Gorbachev more for the reunification than Bush, Mitterand and Thatcher combined.
    Have you heard about this news?

    MOSCOW, April 10 (RIA Novosti) – Members of Russia’s lower house of parliament have filed a request with the prosecutor general demanding the breakup of the Soviet Union be declared illegal and those responsible be prosecuted, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian media reported Thursday.
    According to the Izvestia newspaper, the request, filed by members of several parties, says that in a 1991 referendum Soviet citizens voted to maintain the state’s territorial integrity, but the country’s leaders then committed illegal acts that led to the collapse.
    In November 1991, a criminal proceeding was launched against Gorbachev, but the charges were dropped on the next day.
    One of the initiators of the request, United Russia deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov, told RIA Novosti that the move was driven by a necessity to investigate the mechanisms of coups staged from abroad in the wake of current events in Ukraine.
    This deputy Fyodorov is head of NOD movement.

    Yet, Moscow hasn't been entirely successful at covering its tracks. When pro-Russian forces declared a "People's Republic of Donetsk" on April 6 and demanded with it a Crimea-style referendum, several separatists thanked the "National Liberation Movement" (NLM) for supporting their endeavour. This supposedly grassroots movement is led by Putin. (In the photo above, NLM supporters distribute flyers at a rally in Donetsk on March 1.)
    Since 2011, the NLM (or RusNOD as it's commonly known in Russia) has been fomenting pro-Russian sentiments throughout "the Russian world" -- the Russky Mir, as Putin has encouraged Russians to say when referring to the lands of the former Russian and Soviet Empires.
    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...eedom_fighters

    In their news section is one cossack atamans' meeting. Just example of their style.

    http://rusnod.ru/news/theme3580.html

    So, today in Russia there are forces in action that don't look at the history the same way as Germans. One-sided love?

  13. #1433
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
    So, today in Russia there are forces in action that don't look at the history the same way as Germans. One-sided love?

    Look closely at what you wrote here and at what I wrote here.

    And then read this definition.

    It's self-explaining.

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    I wonder how much Germany counts for anymore. Maybe it is time to stop worrying about them and 'Europe' and start thinking about countries like Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden etc.
    You're more than a decade behind the curve.

    Even proven stupid politicians were smart enough to walk away from this attitude.
    NATO in East Europe would collapse militarily if Germany turned neutral and Germany's economic influence on Russia is much greater than the American one.

    http://atlas.media.mit.edu/profile/country/rus/
    Russian exports to Germany: 6.1 %
    Russian exports to USA: 5.0%

    Russian imports from Germany: 15%
    Russian imports from USA: 3.6%

    You should wonder how much the United States count for anymore. They're having a loud voice, yet little substance in Russia's European backyard.
    Obama seems to understand this.

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    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    First I do not have a clue who the guy is. The name I offered up, Alexei Savich, is cited as an aviation expert by the AFP article you placed such stock in as a verification. I would like to know his bone fides as an aviation expert. Second, I would appreciate your being a little more explicit about which other site you would like me to come over to. The Internet is a pretty big place.


    The article and video have confirmed nothing as far as I can tell. I've looked at open source satellite imagery of military airfields in Crimea dated 2014. Those airfields had significant numbers of Soviet-era combat fighter aircraft as well as larger aircraft. (I'll admit my "squint" skills have atrophied so I'm not sure what they all were, and I did not have a light table to look at them as closely as one might like.) For all I know the videos and reports you cite are just people seeing those aircraft flying around to get ready for some kind of flyby for Putin on Friday.

    The following account, from page 43 of John Prados' [I]The Soviet Estimate[/I, details the source of the 1950's "bomber gap" and is rather instructive I think:



    For confirmation, here from Wikipedia, is an alternative report, citing a completely different source,




    A good analyst cares whose name is on a report because source evaluation is a significant part of analysis. An IIR was (and I presume still is) evaluated in terms of the source and the content. The need for both should be obvious: a good source can be deceived and thus report as true something that is false, as the story above makes poignantly clear about Col. Taylor.
    wm---you do understand that any IIR from a field HUMINT collector that is not a technical collector is in fact always a F6---hope you understand the significance of F6? And yes if you know the IIR collection system even an US Ambassador who is reporting via Cables is also a F6 as is the reporting from a OGA field agent a F6.

    Before a F6 is in fact converted to a higher classification by the analyst there is far more in play than source and content as stated in the report. Have actually seen in some really stupid sounding/looking IIRs trigger a major reaction because a single word was mentioned and it had nothing to do with source and or content.

    Am assuming you are evidently aware that sometimes a F6 has a single sentence in the report body and a single sentence in the Summary which in the end can trigger a formal report to the NCA ie the WH---you are aware of such reports since you are evidently a solid expert in IIRs and how the analyst works?

    So again you seem to fully not understand the intel collection world just as you wedre not in Europe in 1989 so get real.
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 05-09-2014 at 07:08 PM.

  15. #1435
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    wm---you do understand that any IIR from a field HUMINT collector that is not a technical collector is in fact always a F6---hope you understand the significance of F6? And yes if you know the IIR collection system even an US Ambassador who is reporting via Cables is also a F6 as is the reporting from a OGA field agent a F6.

    Before a F6 is in fact converted to a higher classification by the analyst there is far more in play than source and content as stated in the report. Have actually seen in some really stupid sounding/looking IIRs trigger a major reaction because a single word was mentioned and it had nothing to do with source and or content.

    Am assuming you are evidently aware that sometimes a F6 has a single sentence in the report body and a single sentence in the Summary which in the end can trigger a formal report to the NCA ie the WH---you are aware of such reports since you are evidently a solid expert in IIRs and how the analyst works?

    So again you seem to fully not understand the intel collection world just as you wedre not in Europe in 1989 so get real.
    If you reread the last paragraph in the post that led to the above response, you will note that I spoke about the analyst doing source and content evaluation.

    BTW, one wonders why the language in your blog posts is so much more coherent than what is displayed on SWC threads. Do you have a ghost writer?
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  16. #1436
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    Fuchs, pluralism is ok until it may paralyze system. If I'm reading this kind of overviews I become little bit scared.

    Mrs Merkel, with her habitual reserve, has taken no clear stand but is believed to sympathise with the more robust American view of Mr Putin. Her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is a Social Democrat and former protg of Mr Schrders, and thus closer to the Russlandversteher. But even he seems to have grasped that Ostpolitik now looks naive and risks undermining Germanys transatlantic and European alliances. Voices on both the right and the left (mainly in the Green party) back a tougher line on Russia.

    However, both Mrs Merkel and Mr Steinmeier also have German public opinion to contend with. And here recent polls show the extent of German ambivalence. One finds a majority opposing sanctions on Russia. In another, almost half of Germans yearn for a middle way between Russia and the West, with a clear majority in eastern Germany in favour of this.

    This German self-identification as in some sense equidistant between the West, particularly America, and the East, especially Russia, has a long tradition. Historians refer to its 19th-century version as the Sonderweg (special path). West Germanys first post-war chancellors, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, tried to end the ambiguity by anchoring the new country firmly in western Europe and the Atlantic alliance, as it still is. Yet since Ostpolitik in the 1970s and reunification in 1990 the earlier sentiment has returned.
    http://www.economist.com/news/europe...-understanding

  17. #1437
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Merkel's only policy is "preservation of power". There's nothing else.
    The crisis has little potential to kick her out of office, so don't expect anything drastic from her, for doing nothing is her default stance (she's a German post-Erhard conservative, after all).


    In the end, the Ukraine is not an allied power and lost a region which overwhelmingly preferred secession.

    Besides, the football world championship launches in a few weeks. This means no politics or policy is going to happen for weeks. The bi-annual re-awakening of German nationalism during such (world and European) football championships isn't going to affect foreign policy either.

    The priorities would be different if the Ukraine was in NATO or the EU, that's for sure. The Bundeswehr would now be in the Ukraine with much more forces than in the symbolic deployments such as the one to Turkey.
    Last edited by Fuchs; 05-09-2014 at 09:12 PM.

  18. #1438
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    What is the solution to Russia question? Russia under Putin has grabbed land from neighbouring country, has been fooling under insane propaganda screen his own people, his neighbours, European Union, whole world. Business as usual?

  19. #1439
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Accept that the Crimea was an incredibly low-hanging fruit which fell into Russia's hands for almost no effort - for a good reason.

    Next, re-establish and reinforce an international climate in which aggressions are prohibited effectively - including the Westerners.


    The U.S., the UK, Israel and France have become much too casual in bombing or invading foreign countries under pretences which wouldn't (and don't) pass in the UNSC (and wouldn't so even if Russia and the PRC had no veto privilege).

    Estonia has ratified a treaty called the "North Atlantic Treaty" in 2004. The invasion of Iraq 2002 was a clear violation of this treaty.
    Do you expect the government of Estonia to protest loudly and try to inflict some pain (such as kicking out some diplomats and CIA spies) once the U.S. president decides to casually bomb a country with cruise missiles the next time?
    If not, Estonia would have little moral right to expect a less troubling neighbourhood.
    Don't expect an unfriendly great power to be restricted by the rule of law if you side with great powers who de facto claim that only rule of force applies to them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
    What is the solution to Russia question? Russia under Putin has grabbed land from neighbouring country, has been fooling under insane propaganda screen his own people, his neighbours, European Union, whole world. Business as usual?
    Sooner or later Russia must be emasculated - like with Germany after 1945 - otherwise this expansionism will not stop.

    The fuel for this dream of reinstating the Russian/Soviet Empire is the oil/gas driven economy. To control the Russians this must be targeted.

    There are a number of measures that need to be taken to to reign in the Russians... but the US has effectively run out of steam to the point of self imposed impotence. The Germans - true to their national character - will not suffer any economic discomfort in order to save small nations from falling under the Russian jack-boot.

    There is real doubt that NATO without the US drive and enthusiasm - seen during the COld War era - will even act when a member state is moved against by Russia.

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