It's Getting Crowded at the Top

Why since then? Putin's been rebuilding his war chest agressively since at least 2018

 

We can go back to 20 years if you like, but the trigger for the current carnage was when NATO blew off Russian objections to Ukrainian NATO membership in Feb 2021. You can "say" Ukraine is a sovereign country, but unless someone is able to step up and back that with action...it's just words.

Obama/Hillary had no problem dumping boatloads of arms into Libya...then, once Gaddafi was toppled, shipping them to ISIS fighters in Syria to fight Russians. Why are we so reluctant to help Ukraine fight Russians?

Russia is clearly wrong...we're in complete agreement there! ...but they've been "wrong" every other time in the past, too. Did we expect Russia to react differently "this time"? Why would we expose Ukraine like this...then send them "helmets".

Germany draws mockery for promising 5,000 helmets to help Ukraine defend itself.

Germany’s defense minister, Christine Lambrecht, last month in Lithuania.
Jan. 27, 2022
BERLIN — After weeks of scrutiny for its less-than-firm diplomatic stance against Russia, the German government announced that it would send 5,000 combat helmets to help Ukraine defend itself in case of an attack by Moscow.

“It’s a clear signal: we are on your side,” Christine Lambrecht, Germany’s defense minister, said after a parliamentary meeting on Wednesday where she announced the donation.

It was not received as the beneficent gesture Ms. Lambrecht might have intended.

“The plan is obviously for 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers to run across the border and head-butt the Russian troops deployed there,” Marina Weisband, an author and former politician who was born in Ukraine, wrote on Twitter.

“Could you get any more embarrassing?” tweeted Ruprecht Polenz, a prominent member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party. “Will 5,000 helmets make a Russian invasion less likely?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/world/europe/germany-5000-helmets-ukraine.html

 

Historically we're far better at the toppling than the maintaining.

Long story short this was going to happen no matter what. I mean, why wouldn't Ukraine want to join NATO? They were pushed to it by Russia when they literally invaded and took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. This isn't an issue of NATO expansion, it's an issue of Russia keeps invading and taking over its neighbors as a type of warped manifest destiny to rebuild the USSR

 

Clown

 

Clown

 

Oh, do you disagree or are you just blanket spamming again?

 

Oh, you Clown....

 

I think @charley is just paraphrasing what I'm about to say. "Efficiency of expression is the truest sign of Genius".

That's been apparent ever since Emancipation! That's why 25% of the Negro population in America perished (died) of starvation in the four (4) years FOLLOWING the Civil War. Emancipation was like Afghanistan...right idea, piss-poor execution. I guess the "plan" is to "emancipate" the Ukrainians the same way we did the Slaves.

What an incredibly ignorant statement! Crimea was a direct response to the overthrow the "UN-certified" Ukrainian government...instigated by the West!

Ukraine DIDN'T want to join NATO...until the West overthrew their UN-certified government and installed the government THE EU wanted. Only then did Russia retake control of their critical Black Sea port...traditionally a Russian Oblast which only became part of Ukraine in a 1954 USSR realignment.

Nothing but MSM manipulation. These people are Pros at manipulating thought. When has Russia "invaded" Ukraine when they haven't been provoked? That's like the U.S. invading Canada or Mexico for no reason. If fact, there are people in Canada today who are still PISSED at the U.S. for suggesting such a thing during the War of 1812. Perhaps @John Kamps can enlighten us.

We need to research on our own to get to the Truth. Our MSM has lost their "Benefit of the Doubt". Yes...I share everyone's aspiration that "one day" all of the World will live in Peace and Harmony...but this simply isn't the way to go about it! We're on a Nuclear trajectory and we need to show some humility and end this thing now before it spirals out of control. Ukrainian blood is on our hands.

Dang @GeneWright ...you sure pack a lotta ignorance into a few words. You must be a Genius, too.

 

Yes, and in general, a concurrence with the rest of your post.

I do not mind or judge ignorance of the basis of the historical impact on world events. I do not mind or judge that the expression of the ignorance is due to plagiarism of Google or of political sources that use an Ideology of Division to disseminate information and mislead the ignorant.

What I do detest is an individual that, when professing that level of ignorance, does so, having never personally experienced Armed Conflict, or participated in same when the participant's life was the prize.

That is what disgusts me about the silly clownish Ideology of Division commentary I read here.

 

1. How are international currency reserves specifically identified for War?
2. If so, was Russia adding it "aggressively" after taking back Crimea?
3. The EU expanded into the former Soviet sphere of influence. Russia doesn't see that as a friendly gesture (obviously). Especially after Gorbachev was promised that NATO would NOT expand "one inch" eastward.

"Don't start no shit and there won't be none!" ...words to live by.

 

Odd place to take the conversation. I didn't have "in the short term, freeing the slaves was bad for them" on my bingo card, but ok.

How does that make sense? It's like if Mexico's government was overthrown so we invade and annex Yucatan declaring it part of the U.S.
The only way it MAYBE makes sense is if you acknowledge the Ukrainians overthrew Yanukovych because he was a Russian puppet.

That's objectively untrue. Ukraine first started the process to apply for membership in 2008, 2 years before the election you're talking about. Hence why Russia propped up Yanukovych, who took NATO membership off the table.

Oh boy, I bet you'll react the exact same way if the Palestinians overthrow Israel and take back their land...

Apparently Russian state media hasn't lost your benefit of the doubt

 

I left you all the citations...assuming you care. It's all there. Here's some more...

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard

Michail Gorbachev discussing German unification with Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Helmut Kohl in Russia, July 15, 1990.

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
Slavic Studies Panel Addresses “Who Promised What to Whom on NATO Expansion?”

Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.

The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”

President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]

The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.[3]

We can discuss who's right and who is wrong until the cows come home, but for the moment, let's at least agree that these are perilous times which require a degree of sound judgement and humility. We're doing this...no one else. This didn't "have to" happen. It's time to come to grips with Reality and stop the escalation!

 

Here's the Western view...

 

Let's hear what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has to say...



Btw, how do you think things would be playing out in Ukraine if Joe Biden was their President?

 

A rebuttal to that I largely agree with. The point about there being no east to move to at time due to the Warsaw pact really puts it into context that they were discussing troops into East Germany. Further, if they REALLY thought it meant no NATO expansion East at the time they were talking about it, wouldn't they have got that in writing? Signed something explicitly saying that? No, it works much better for the Russian's when it's vague and unsigned.

This way, the Russians get to wail about broken promises as propaganda and pretense to invade their neighbors and rebuild the Soviet Union.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/exposing-the-myth-of-western-betrayal-of-russia/

 

Nope...not at all. You obviously didn't read the article or watch the video...each with irrefutable citation. The West "traded" East Germany's reunification with West Germany and their combined inclusion into NATO..."in exchange" for assurances that NATO would NOT expand eastward toward Russia. The time you're talking about 1990-1991 was the time just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the dissolution negotiations were underway. Everyone knew what these agreements were all about.

Over the past 100 years of Socialism in Russia, the Russian people have been through A LOT! They learned how war is fought when they fought the Germans. Now, Germans are, once again, knocking on their door. Putin only knows one way to fight a war. Unless someone is willing to stand up and make him to stop...this is Reality.

So...given all that...why did we wander down this path in the first place?

 

Did they get it in writing? Or are we going with the good old "it is known" line of reasoning?

 

Just watch the video. That way, you won't sound so foolish.

 

Already did, didn't buy it.

 

Why wasn't restriction of NATO expansion included in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which is what those talks you're quoting were leading to. Do you think the Russians were just massive idiots and totally forgot?