Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Speak for you and your neighbors--not the whole country We are an empire; the whole world is our business. Why? Oh, so it has nothing to do with Russia threatening an invasion? Got it. Bet you said that about the USSR during the Cuban missile crisis. We'll see what happens if Ukraine wants to become a member. What did we forget, that Russian remembered?
Do you remember the horrors Russia instigated AFTER WWII...... If russia cared about the horrors of WWII they would not have invaded and took over all of Eastern Europe after WWII and put in communist dictatorships...you think Romania and Poland and East Germany were so happy with Russia's control after the horrors of WWII?
Putin ain’t right. That’s crazy. Ukraine is only arming up in response to Russia. Make no mistake Russia is and has been the aggressor. The Russians want control over Ukraine, Ukraine wants to be sovereign. It’s not like Ukraine would even entertain the idea of joining nato or even some affirmation of it we’re not for Russians. Fuck no, Americans would not collapse in a fight. We can get into that if you want but in a fight anywhere, always take the Americans. Ukraine is certainly NATO business, we are part of NATO so within the context of NATO we have an interest. Although we do not have a “go at it alone” interest. We, as in NATI, do not want Russian authoritarianism spreading. It’s a threat to small “l” liberalism and free markets.
Neither Russia nor China want outright conflict. Incrementalism has and will continue to be their friend. What they want is a weak American president and then let the trend continue to be their friend. They have that now for sure. Ditto for the Iranians. The trend is their friend. Just add time into the mix and they have everything they want.
Absolutely correct. Russia (Putin) knows exactly what America is to NATO and to Ukraine which is why they escalated exponentially those cyberattacks during the Trump administration and continued to do such during the Biden administration. In addition, Russia saw how weak (fragile) Democracy was on January 6th 2021. It's an unforgettable day for all other Democracies in the world that will have repercussions for many years regardless of who is the U.S. President. Thus, Russia is thinking the time is right to start a fight with Ukraine because America has too many bonehead fucks trying to destroy Democracy as in self-imploding...intentionally weakening it for the foreign bonehead fucks. Russia's tactics towards Ukraine is similar to the tactics by North Korea towards South Korea to further weaken NATO and weaken America. wrbtrader
Putin is not Stalin, and the Russian people aren't Stalin either. That's like comparing Merkle and Germany to Hitler.
You are sooo stupid. Yeah, I could just see Millennials and gen Z'rs starving, freezing, eating the soles of shoes, all the while under 24/7 artillery fire digging trenches by hand in frozen ground to prevent 100's of thousands of soldiers and tanks rolling into Chicago or NY. Keep the context of my post in mind before you spout off. I was referring to the strength and fortitude of the Russian people in comparison to your pussy ass generation today. 2 weeks tops and you'd be surrendering like Sadam's army did. I'd take ten 87 yo Ken Langones on the front-line over 100 of your ilk.
You forget that in the early 90's the US promised Mikael Gorbachev that NATO would "not move one inch east of Germany". It was part of the deal to break up the USSR. Now we have moved that line 800 miles east. Putin's wrong to say something about that? The U.S., the U.N., and the EU can help the Ukrainian people in dozens of ways, economically and with humanitarian aid, but Putin has a right to oppose their admission to NATO. EDIT Here: 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]
Having retreated 600 miles from Gorbachev’s red line, Putin drew a new red line on December 2, seeking “reliable and long-term security guarantees.” Those guarantees “would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory.” Putin is keenly aware that the red line has moved east 600 miles. At the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007, Putin asked the world, “And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?” The guarantees were a deception, and the red line has moved hundreds of miles and has become a threat. Seven years later, in its review of 2014, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would note that the “ongoing eastward expansion [and] successive waves of NATO enlargement [are] contrary to the assurances issued at the highest level.” In 2015, Russia’s National Security Strategy would note that NATO’s “continued expansion and the approach of its military infrastructure to Russia’s borders, all create threat to national security.” The first guarantee was given on February 9, 1990 when Secretary of State Baker assured Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany and Russia pulled its troops out of East Germany, NATO would not expand east of Germany. Gorbachev records in his memoirs that he agreed to Baker’s terms “with the guarantee that NATO jurisdiction or troops would not extend east of the current line.”