Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[jaichind]

https://www.ndtv.com/business/biggest-indian-oil-company-finalises-deal-to-import-3-million-barrels-of-crude-oil-from-russia-2831042

NDTV confirms that Indian oil company finalized a deal to buy Russian oil at a discount.  This is most likely just the start and there will open the way for a bunch more.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.ndtv.com/business/biggest-indian-oil-company-finalises-deal-to-import-3-million-barrels-of-crude-oil-from-russia-2831042

NDTV confirms that Indian oil company finalized a deal to buy Russian oil at a discount.  This is most likely just the start and there will open the way for a bunch more.

Western efforts to isolate Russia in the oil market seem to have been a major failure, like they were always like to do.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It’s not geographic, it’s based mostly on power tier levels in the world mixed with the autocratic-democratic ideological divide. Second-tier powers want to weaken the first-tier power so they can do whatever they want to their neighbors. This appears to override considerations of democracy and autocracy because power corrupts and all that.*

Lol that’s the typical “bringing freedom and democracy to the savages” world police exceptionalism that it’s pointless to argue with. Not that different from Putin fabricating moral argument bs that validates HIS interventions with the “denazification” thing.

As if the West was democratic pinnacle to act like that, the main difference there is that corruption is sold as “entrepreneurship” and elections with two parties only are treated as example to others to follow. You’re not changing your mind and neither am I on this.

Regarding the Brazilian poll, that’s not the “Bolsonaro” or “Lula” view. Neutrality is a consensus. The “Nem-Nem” voters are people who will vote for other options and they’re 73% so… not an ideological thing at all. You can bet the Lula voter would be even higher than 70% if it wasn’t Bolsonaro pushing for neutrality.

Again, that doesn’t mean support for Russia at all (I think people sympathize with Ukraine), but show that people disagree with taking a position and not just buying the simplistic good vs evil narrative. NYT already reported on this geographic divide:

In some parts of the world, the war in Ukraine seems justified

And yes, your bubble, everyone should always realize they’re in one and their views are related to many different backgrounds and experiences.

But cool that you mention that attempts to isolate US for Iraq war failed while this one went unquestioned for a reason. Thanks for backing my point?

Who are the people in Brazil who *don't* favor neutrality? Who are those who support Russia? Who are those who support Ukraine?

[Storr]

Some bits the stuck out to me:

"The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically."

"We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine’s capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail."

"The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine"

"Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation."

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1505291409577943041?s=20&t=n2_GkyDW...

[Person Man]

Some bits the stuck out to me:

"The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically."

"We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine’s capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail."

"The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine"

"Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation."

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1505291409577943041?s=20&t=n2_GkyDW...

If other nations wanted to reignite their territorial disputes with Russia, now would be the time.

[Torie]

https://www.ndtv.com/business/biggest-indian-oil-company-finalises-deal-to-import-3-million-barrels-of-crude-oil-from-russia-2831042

NDTV confirms that Indian oil company finalized a deal to buy Russian oil at a discount.  This is most likely just the start and there will open the way for a bunch more.

Western efforts to isolate Russia in the oil market seem to have been a major failure, like they were always like to do.

Selling at a discount was always going to happen, rather than no sales, unless Russia prefers no sales to deep discount sales as their pawn move on the chess board. The issue is the percentage of the discount. If it is 30% like the Shell purchase, that is significant and a partial "victory."  Particularly in a stalemate, the idea is to creep the percentage up as more supply comes on line elsewhere and consumption goes down as consumers adjust their purchasing habits at the margin.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1505026512210345988?s=20&t=4hr0SGg3dI9...

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Some bits the stuck out to me:

"The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically."

"We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine’s capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail."

"The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine"

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1505026512210345988?s=20&t=4hr0SGg3dI9...

1. Again, I was told that Thursday marked the end of positive news for Ukraine

2. So much for that vague "Russian victory" that everyone seems so adamant about

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It’s not geographic, it’s based mostly on power tier levels in the world mixed with the autocratic-democratic ideological divide. Second-tier powers want to weaken the first-tier power so they can do whatever they want to their neighbors. This appears to override considerations of democracy and autocracy because power corrupts and all that.*

Lol that’s the typical “bringing freedom and democracy to the savages” world police exceptionalism that it’s pointless to argue with. Not that different from Putin fabricating moral argument bs that validates HIS interventions with the “denazification” thing.

As if the West was democratic pinnacle to act like that, the main difference there is that corruption is sold as “entrepreneurship” and elections with two parties only are treated as example to others to follow. You’re not changing your mind and neither am I on this.

Regarding the Brazilian poll, that’s not the “Bolsonaro” or “Lula” view. Neutrality is a consensus. The “Nem-Nem” voters are people who will vote for other options and they’re 73% so… not an ideological thing at all. You can bet the Lula voter would be even higher than 70% if it wasn’t Bolsonaro pushing for neutrality.

Again, that doesn’t mean support for Russia at all (I think people sympathize with Ukraine), but show that people disagree with taking a position and not just buying the simplistic good vs evil narrative. NYT already reported on this geographic divide:

In some parts of the world, the war in Ukraine seems justified

And yes, your bubble, everyone should always realize they’re in one and their views are related to many different backgrounds and experiences.

But cool that you mention that attempts to isolate US for Iraq war failed while this one went unquestioned for a reason. Thanks for backing my point?

Believe it or not, Red Velvet, I actually do agree with many of your part of the world's historical and moral claims against my country. I support several leftist governments, that of Bolivia for example, that haven't exactly been profiles in courage on the Russia-Ukraine situation. I understand very well why people in the Global South would reflexively distrust shrill NATO and EU narratives about muh freedumb and in general I don't blame people for that.

But we, on this forum, frankly, know better, and I have absolutely no patience for moral relativism, whataboutery, or any other reason you or compucomp or anybody else on the Talk Secular Elections US Atlas Forum Blog has for excusing or minimizing the Russian government and military's actions. The fact that the world failed to hold the US to account for its actions in Iraq does not mean that the world should choose not to hold Russia to account for its actions in Ukraine out of some perverse sense of naïve fairness. Double standards should be resolved in favor of consistent justice, not consistent injustice. The direct equivalency that you draw between Russia launching an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and other world powers contemplating intervening to expunge that invasion is particularly obscene, and indicates very bad things about your ability to tell the difference between sincere principled considerations and half-baked knee-jerk resentments and thought-terminating clichés about the United States being both the Main Character and the Bad Guy.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1505244711086444545

[Logical]

https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1505244711086444545

This is true and isn't propaganda btw. It's gotten bad enough that Lukashenko has to deploy the OMON (riot cops) to protect the rail lines.

[compucomp]

Although not much of a division within Latin America and the Caribbean:

But do go on about the West. Fascists of a feather flock together and all that.

You mean condemning Russian invasion? That’s just everyone’s sane position. Even China doesn’t agree with it even if they won’t directly oppose Russia and will rather hide behind neutrality.

One very different thing is supporting this articulation of full isolation of a country and realistically, you cannot deny there isn’t a major geographical divide shaping up. Forget China, there’s also:

- India is working for an alternative exchange way to go around western sanctions
- South Africa publicly saying the war is NATO’s fault
- Brazil joined the countries above in asking for Russia’s claim of US Biological labs to be investigated and wanting Russia partnership for its nuclear subs projects
- Saudi Arabia (!!!!) studying to make payments to Russia in Chinese coin. Even Israel, seen as western ally, behaved more like Iran in this issue lol
- Mexico, Argentina and others positioning against the international institutions being kidnapped to propel an isolation of Russia. And those all are places which condemned the invasion when it started, as you said.

The only non-Anglo and non-European countries that are aligning are Japan and South Korea. You can’t talk about “international community united” without almost all of Asia, all of Africa and Latin America. It’s a divide being stimulated that simply isn’t good for anyone, if you don’t understand the possible consequences.

Great post. Clearly if we look just slightly under the surface, there are clearly multiple viewpoints in the world on the conflict. This was my original point to post in this thread, for a forum that is very politically aware and can find and discuss multiple sides on just about any issue, even most international ones, for some reason has a huge blind spot on this issue and only accepts the Western view. Under the standard of the old Fairness Doctrine, which most liberals still believe in, there should be a Russian posting in this thread telling us about how those Nazi followers of Stepan Bandera are slaughtering people in the Donbass. I'm what passes for pro-Russian in this thread, since the actual Russians have been silent, probably banned, since the war started, and I'm far from the Russian position.

Back to the low effort non sequitur responses again? Who takes the W or L is still to be decided; I will say that if the US and China end up in a trade war, the US will suffer historic inflation and supply shortages among other economic consequences and the Democrats will be utterly destroyed in November.

Speaking of non sequiturs, lol.

Anyway, clearly the biggest L was taken by your parents, whose only child, I presume, ended up being, well, you.

LMAO, they are quite proud that despite being constantly exposed to Western propaganda,  I remain loyal to my people and my country. This is after all a common Western mistake; you love to think that Chinese people are all brainwashed by their government and would overthrow it if they were just informed, does it kill you to know that most Chinese people genuinely support the government and the party, especially when the USA is held up as an alternative?

Why don’t you move to China if  you like it so much , and given you call China your country instead of the US .


You are literally the best possible example of how immigrants should not act and you are a disgrace to the immigrant community

This…is a bit too far. Immigrants can be supportive of certain policies of their homeland even if there were other reasons they left. The only disgraces to the immigrant community imo are those who rally against immigration in general (not illegal immigration so don’t start there) immediately once they get here.

It'd be one thing if he just had strong opinions on the politics of the country he immigrated from; that's any immigrant's right, and Lord knows I have strong opinions on Italian (and Russian for that matter!) politics despite my people having immigrated from Italy and Russia a century ago. The issue is that he openly and affirmatively roots for relations between his home country and his current country of residence to worsen, to the point of sneering at the latter's humanitarian concerns about a country that's currently more friendly to the former bombing theaters and hospitals as part of an unprovoked war of conquest. Actively advocating worse relations between two countries one has extensive ties to is bad form, to say the least, without even bringing questions of loyalty into it.

I'd love to see good relations between China and the USA, but not on American terms based on the attitude of the last two presidents. Trump hated China on a deeply personal level, and was an untrustworthy piece of sh**t, and Biden seems to think the world is still as it was 20 years ago and the USA can dictate terms to China. The call between Xi and Biden is a great example, Biden demands that China withdraw support for Russia without offering anything to bargain. Naturally Xi doesn't give him anything, and today the Vice Foreign Minister calls sanctions "outrageous" and blames NATO expansionism for the war. Yeah, relations between China and USA got worse, and that's unfortunate, but the alternative for Xi was to surrender to Biden and that's just plain unacceptable. I think a deal could have been acceptable, for example where China backed away from Russia in exchange for American action on trade or Taiwan, and this would improve the relations between the two countries, but Biden was not interested.

[It’s so Joever]

Although not much of a division within Latin America and the Caribbean:

But do go on about the West. Fascists of a feather flock together and all that.

You mean condemning Russian invasion? That’s just everyone’s sane position. Even China doesn’t agree with it even if they won’t directly oppose Russia and will rather hide behind neutrality.

One very different thing is supporting this articulation of full isolation of a country and realistically, you cannot deny there isn’t a major geographical divide shaping up. Forget China, there’s also:

- India is working for an alternative exchange way to go around western sanctions
- South Africa publicly saying the war is NATO’s fault
- Brazil joined the countries above in asking for Russia’s claim of US Biological labs to be investigated and wanting Russia partnership for its nuclear subs projects
- Saudi Arabia (!!!!) studying to make payments to Russia in Chinese coin. Even Israel, seen as western ally, behaved more like Iran in this issue lol
- Mexico, Argentina and others positioning against the international institutions being kidnapped to propel an isolation of Russia. And those all are places which condemned the invasion when it started, as you said.

The only non-Anglo and non-European countries that are aligning are Japan and South Korea. You can’t talk about “international community united” without almost all of Asia, all of Africa and Latin America. It’s a divide being stimulated that simply isn’t good for anyone, if you don’t understand the possible consequences.

Great post. Clearly if we look just slightly under the surface, there are clearly multiple viewpoints in the world on the conflict. This was my original point to post in this thread, for a forum that is very politically aware and can find and discuss multiple sides on just about any issue, even most international ones, for some reason has a huge blind spot on this issue and only accepts the Western view. Under the standard of the old Fairness Doctrine, which most liberals still believe in, there should be a Russian posting in this thread telling us about how those Nazi followers of Stepan Bandera are slaughtering people in the Donbass. I'm what passes for pro-Russian in this thread, since the actual Russians have been silent, probably banned, since the war started, and I'm far from the Russian position.

Back to the low effort non sequitur responses again? Who takes the W or L is still to be decided; I will say that if the US and China end up in a trade war, the US will suffer historic inflation and supply shortages among other economic consequences and the Democrats will be utterly destroyed in November.

Speaking of non sequiturs, lol.

Anyway, clearly the biggest L was taken by your parents, whose only child, I presume, ended up being, well, you.

LMAO, they are quite proud that despite being constantly exposed to Western propaganda,  I remain loyal to my people and my country. This is after all a common Western mistake; you love to think that Chinese people are all brainwashed by their government and would overthrow it if they were just informed, does it kill you to know that most Chinese people genuinely support the government and the party, especially when the USA is held up as an alternative?

Why don’t you move to China if  you like it so much , and given you call China your country instead of the US .


You are literally the best possible example of how immigrants should not act and you are a disgrace to the immigrant community

This…is a bit too far. Immigrants can be supportive of certain policies of their homeland even if there were other reasons they left. The only disgraces to the immigrant community imo are those who rally against immigration in general (not illegal immigration so don’t start there) immediately once they get here.

It'd be one thing if he just had strong opinions on the politics of the country he immigrated from; that's any immigrant's right, and Lord knows I have strong opinions on Italian (and Russian for that matter!) politics despite my people having immigrated from Italy and Russia a century ago. The issue is that he openly and affirmatively roots for relations between his home country and his current country of residence to worsen, to the point of sneering at the latter's humanitarian concerns about a country that's currently more friendly to the former bombing theaters and hospitals as part of an unprovoked war of conquest. Actively advocating worse relations between two countries one has extensive ties to is bad form, to say the least, without even bringing questions of loyalty into it.

I'd love to see good relations between China and the USA, but not on American terms based on the attitude of the last two presidents. Trump hated China on a deeply personal level, and was an untrustworthy piece of sh**t, and Biden seems to think the world is still as it was 20 years ago and the USA can dictate terms to China. The call between Xi and Biden is a great example, Biden demands that China withdraw support for Russia without offering anything to bargain. Naturally Xi doesn't give him anything, and today the Vice Foreign Minister calls sanctions "outrageous" and blames NATO expansionism for the war. Yeah, relations between China and USA got worse, and that's unfortunate, but the alternative for Xi was to surrender to Biden and that's just plain unacceptable. I think a deal could have been acceptable, for example where China backed away from Russia in exchange for American action on trade or Taiwan, and this would improve the relations between the two countries, but Biden was not interested.

America has no right to bully China but China has a right to bully Taiwan. Is this really your philosophy?

[lfromnj]

Again what exactly does sending aid to Russia give you? If you truly do want better US China relations but are also willing to balance other factors how will China sending aid to Russia benefit either America or China or their relations ?

Your position is merely one of wanting to own the libs.

[Alcibiades]

I'd love to see good relations between China and the USA, but not on American terms based on the attitude of the last two presidents. Trump hated China on a deeply personal level, and was an untrustworthy piece of sh**t, and Biden seems to think the world is still as it was 20 years ago and the USA can dictate terms to China. The call between Xi and Biden is a great example, Biden demands that China withdraw support for Russia without offering anything to bargain. Naturally Xi doesn't give him anything, and today the Vice Foreign Minister calls sanctions "outrageous" and blames NATO expansionism for the war. Yeah, relations between China and USA got worse, and that's unfortunate, but the alternative for Xi was to surrender to Biden and that's just plain unacceptable. I think a deal could have been acceptable, for example where China backed away from Russia in exchange for American action on trade or Taiwan, and this would improve the relations between the two countries, but Biden was not interested.

I suppose the real question is do you believe in any sort of political philosophy or principles other than the basest realpolitik* and spectator-sport approach? For instance, what do you make of the fact that you can spew this crap without fear of repercussions from the safety of your New Jersey home, but if you tried to promote pro-Western positions in China, well…

*And even this is not really true — see lfromnj’s comment.

[Red Velvet]

It’s not geographic, it’s based mostly on power tier levels in the world mixed with the autocratic-democratic ideological divide. Second-tier powers want to weaken the first-tier power so they can do whatever they want to their neighbors. This appears to override considerations of democracy and autocracy because power corrupts and all that.*

Lol that’s the typical “bringing freedom and democracy to the savages” world police exceptionalism that it’s pointless to argue with. Not that different from Putin fabricating moral argument bs that validates HIS interventions with the “denazification” thing.

As if the West was democratic pinnacle to act like that, the main difference there is that corruption is sold as “entrepreneurship” and elections with two parties only are treated as example to others to follow. You’re not changing your mind and neither am I on this.

Regarding the Brazilian poll, that’s not the “Bolsonaro” or “Lula” view. Neutrality is a consensus. The “Nem-Nem” voters are people who will vote for other options and they’re 73% so… not an ideological thing at all. You can bet the Lula voter would be even higher than 70% if it wasn’t Bolsonaro pushing for neutrality.

Again, that doesn’t mean support for Russia at all (I think people sympathize with Ukraine), but show that people disagree with taking a position and not just buying the simplistic good vs evil narrative. NYT already reported on this geographic divide:

In some parts of the world, the war in Ukraine seems justified

And yes, your bubble, everyone should always realize they’re in one and their views are related to many different backgrounds and experiences.

But cool that you mention that attempts to isolate US for Iraq war failed while this one went unquestioned for a reason. Thanks for backing my point?

Believe it or not, Red Velvet, I actually do agree with many of your part of the world's historical and moral claims against my country. I support several leftist governments, that of Bolivia for example, that haven't exactly been profiles in courage on the Russia-Ukraine situation. I understand very well why people in the Global South would reflexively distrust shrill NATO and EU narratives about muh freedumb and in general I don't blame people for that.

But we, on this forum, frankly, know better, and I have absolutely no patience for moral relativism, whataboutery, or any other reason you or compucomp or anybody else on the Talk Secular Elections US Atlas Forum Blog has for excusing or minimizing the Russian government and military's actions. The fact that the world failed to hold the US to account for its actions in Iraq does not mean that the world should choose not to hold Russia to account for its actions in Ukraine out of some perverse sense of naïve fairness. Double standards should be resolved in favor of consistent justice, not consistent injustice. The direct equivalency that you draw between Russia launching an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and other world powers contemplating intervening to expunge that invasion is particularly obscene, and indicates very bad things about your ability to tell the difference between sincere principled considerations and half-baked knee-jerk resentments and thought-terminating clichés about the United States being both the Main Character and the Bad Guy.

I definitely agree with that, but I also wasn’t born yesterday to believe that this consistency of justice will magically suddenly start now with Ukraine. I know better too, my parents generation lived it. If we’re being honest, everyone “knows” war is finally bad now only because of who’s doing it. Because otherwise, western propaganda is all about selling why war is necessary or justifiable.

And the correlation of “bringing freedom” wasn’t about this Ukraine situation at all, but how your part of the world talks about third world as undemocratic savages to justify wars, which is what WMS used to differentiate wars in Iraq as more justifiable than this one.

Ideally, I would agree with what you propose. But then reality hits when you realize how it’s competition driving these relations and on deciding who is the “good” and the “bad”. International liberalism in foreign relations, with this cooperation between nations, is extremely one-sided in practice. That’s when you start paying more attention to the realist thinkers on these matters of international relations, because their analysis comes from a practical position.

And I don’t believe in any villains or heroes, but I do believe in a natural conflict of interests in which there’s an unbalance of power and “justice”. Why would it be in some places interest to get involved in a conflict in another far away place for this argument of international cooperation when they know it’s one-sided bullsh**t.

How would you lecture a country like Libya that foreign interventions and wars need to be condemned and that they MUST position themselves, for example? That’s the logic behind third-worldism. If China, Russia, or anyone else were to lecture some neighbors for having non-aligned neutral stance, I would also find it ridiculous. If I were Ukrainian for example, I wouldn’t buy that. And that’s exactly what they’re doing when refusing to bow to Russia lol.

So why exactly places far away have to position themselves? When we already established these places are mostly “on the other side” of the double standards you mentioned?

You think about that and you will understand better why it’s only the West + Japan/South Korea/Taiwan sanctioning Russia. It’s not my opinion, it’s what it’s happening, with some of the leaders, including South African president, blaming this on NATO. They know it’s not on their interests to get involved in this and the fake moral argument is something less people buy nowadays.

“Oh but you say that, you are validating other places interventions”. No, because 1) I am personally against what Russia is doing in Ukraine, although I defend neutrality. 2) These places already feel entitled to war and interventions regardless of whatever I think lol. Look at WMS post and you get the idea war is more justifiable when done against undemocratic savages. And who gets to decide that? Because I don’t believe most of the West is example of democracy or anticorruption.

If anything a lot of what I understand as corruption in my country is legalized as “lobby” in some certain places.

[It’s so Joever]

Can ya'll seriously stop feeding the troll? Most of the last 3 pages have been taken up by a inane debate caused by one or two bootlickers

Not everyone who disagrees with you in automatically a troll.

[Storr]

Interesting thread. Whenever this ends, unless Russia repents in the same way that Germany eventually did after the Second World War, the Ukrainian hate towards Russia will last generations.
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1505265888563453959?s=20&t=u_0KwyStN12...

I came into the thread to post the same tweet lol

I just found a Ukrainian article explaining this exact view. There certainly seems to be a widespread belief in Russian society that "Russianess" doesn't end at the current borders of the Russian Federation. You constantly hear from Russian academics about the "25 million Russians that were cut off from the homeland" in 1991. That's exactly why Russia's intervention in the Donbass and Crimea were popular, even among many in the opposition (looking directly at Alexei Navalny). It was about bringing back Russians to the motherland. Instead of the real reason: invading a weaker neighboring country that had a new government less friendly to Russia.

Maybe a big part of the Russian people accepting Putin's ever increasingly authoritarian and militaristic rule is that Russian society (especially those of Putin's generation) has never accepted that the Cold War was actually lost by Russia. They see 1991 through the lense that communism was replaced by capitalism, but the Russian struggle against the imperialist "West" was never lost. That's a big reason why the "NATO expansion" lie resonates among average Russians. I get it, it's really difficult to accept that your nation isn't as great and powerful as you were taught growing up. Change is hard. But, at some point the Russian people are going have to accept that things have irreversibly changed. This isn't about just bashing and blaming Russia. The UK eventually had to accept that the US was no longer British, too.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/03/19/dont-pin-your-hopes-on-anti-war-protests-in-russia/

Edit: I feel the US will at some point have to face a similar reality, that the World has changed and we aren't the sole superpower anymore nor have the strongest economy. Fortunately, I imagine it would be more of a self reflection (maybe America isn't all that exceptional, but that is okay) instead of invading neighboring countries.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

I'm here for Russian/Ukraine updates and couldn't give two s**s about a multi-page, multi-person debate started by a bootlicker and folks who refuse to stop feeding and encouraging said bootlicker.

Take it to another thread.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I'm here for Russian/Ukraine updates and couldn't give two s**s about a multi-page, multi-person debate started by a bootlicker and folks who refuse to stop feeding and encouraging said bootlicker.

Take it to another thread.

Stop treating other people's perspectives with disrespect. (If you want to consider Brazil, Vietnam, or other neutrals nations of bootlickers, please be honest and say so.)

[Logical]

Owned. The Belarusian embassy has been cleared and the ambassador recalled. More worryingly, there is a large build up of the Belarusian Army in the vicinity of Brest. I don't believe that Belarus has the capability or strength to invade but it's something I'd keep a close eye on.
https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1505247793996341251

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm here for Russian/Ukraine updates and couldn't give two s**s about a multi-page, multi-person debate started by a bootlicker and folks who refuse to stop feeding and encouraging said bootlicker.

Take it to another thread.

The bootlicker's horrid takes pertain to the Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions, so this is, unfortunately, the correct megathread for them. I'd recommend putting him on ignore; I know I'm going to do so if he keeps this up for much longer.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Owned. The Belarusian embassy has been cleared and the ambassador recalled. More worryingly, there is a large build up of the Belarusian Army in the vicinity of Brest. I don't believe that Belarus has the capability or strength to invade but it's something I'd keep a close eye on.
https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1505247793996341251

Given that the Belarussians just had a popular uprising two years ago and most/all of the logical support Moscow’s push in Kiev is running through Belarus, sending the army out of the country seems like it would be a very big mistake.

Which, given how the Russians are running this thing, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Can ya'll seriously stop feeding the troll? Most of the last 3 pages have been taken up by a inane debate caused by one or two bootlickers

Not everyone who disagrees with you in automatically a troll.

But compucomp is

[Storr]

I wonder how he died. The Russian Navy has mostly been uninvolved. Its primary role in the war was going to be the amphibious landing at Odessa. But, that's been indefinitely shelved due to the Army's lack of progress westward in the South.

Edit: there are twitter rumors that he was at Kherson Air Base when the 8th Army's commander was killed during Ukrainian shelling.

https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1505333532876488705?s=20&t=m2d-r0S-Zsd...