Russia and Ukraine

[emjay]

We talking trump or zelensky there?  I mean, in either case, no.  As soon as vance started his howler monkey impression zelensky was going to strongly correct him and donald was going to look like papaw yelling at his cereal bowl again.

I just meant Zelenskyy.... generally speaking, didn't stand a chance once he got off the plane, cos the narrative was already against him.

And talking about Vance, I have to say I can't see him as anything other than Riker from Star Trek's evil twin... 'take us to Warp, No. 1' I joke but I had never actually seen him until his Europe-bashing speech the other day, and that was enough. And then continuing in the same vein with Starmer and then Zelenskyy... it's a terrifying prospect that he might be Trump's successor one day.

[Deesse23]

I have said it in November, and i will stick to my position, which just got validated these days:

As a German, as an European, i strongly recommend my governments to downgrade the relations with the USA, to treating it as a neutral nation instead of an ally. No need to dissolve NATO, but Article 5 clearly wont be worth the paper its written on, since the current US admin seems to be willing to do as they see fit, to throw foreign nations under the bus for mere domestic image, at best. At worst, the US is going to be openly affiliated with entities like Russia or North Korea (as evidenced by last UN meeting). Europe needs to step up for itself and become an entirely, economically and militarily, independent player. 

I am all for terminating all collaboration with the US, sharing intelligence in particular. All american installations need to be terminated and troops to leave. We cant afford to have non friendly troops on domestic soil. There is the very real possibility that the US will rather be on the side of Russia than of NATO/Europe in future conflicts. At best, its unpredictable, at worst is going to be outright hostile, and this is only month 2 of 48.

From now on, please consider my position to be anti-american, at least to a certain degree, and this will inform all my future voting decisions.

[Belacqua]

War is bad, and ending a war is good. There's no point in continuing the one in Ukraine.

If the goal was to weaken Russia, that has failed. According to the IMF, the Russian economy is doing well. The war has failed.

[Russia has] overtaken Germany and Japan to become the fourth-largest economy in the world (using the purchasing power parity [PPP] method of GDP calculation). Soon after, the World Bank also upgraded Russia from “upper-middle-income country” to “high-income country” status, with gross national income (GNI) per capita having reached $14,250 in 2023.

https://internationalbanker.com/finance/...utperform/

If the goal was to get control of Ukraine's natural resources, this has largely succeeded. It's not clear whether Trump will get total control, after today's spat, but international investment firms have gained significant access.

Moreover, the attempt to weaken Russia has failed by driving it to become closer with China. As the US deteriorates, China is taking over.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technol...think-tank

According to Tim Cook, who should know, Chinese manufacturing is now the highest quality in the world. It has more STEM graduates. Tsinghua University surpasses MIT in STEM subjects. (Is everybody aware that China brought back samples from the far side of the moon?)

One of NATO's main goals was to keep Germany and Russia apart. Because Germany had a history of doing naughty things, post-War America needed to be sure that German industry would never ally itself with Russian resources. Such an alliance would be more powerful than the US. That part succeeded. But now Chinese industry surpasses Germany's, so by pushing Russia and China together America has shot itself in the foot.

Trump's attempt to make nice with Russia is a transparent attempt to stop the momentum of the BRICS movement, and draw Russia back into the Western fold. But that's too late. BRICS is gaining new members all the time.

By January 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates joined the bloc making BRICS membership grow from five to nine countries [...]

On 24 October 2024, an additional 13 countries, namely Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, were invited to participate as "partner countries".[70] The partner status would allow these countries to engage with and benefit from BRICS initiatives.

If BRICS introduces a common currency, the dollar is finished as the international reserve currency. Trump can't stop this by making peace with Russia. Dismantling the unipolar world and disengaging from a leadership role in Europe is popular among US voters and, economically, probably inevitable.

[Fake Messiah]

If the goal was to weaken Russia, that has failed.

The goal was to prevent Russia from conquering Ukraine and slaughtering Ukrainians. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

[The Grand Nudger]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Bel use that same link last time..the one that says russias economy is fucked..if you actually click on it and read it?

[Fake Messiah]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Bel use that same link last time..the one that says russias economy is fucked..if you actually click on it and read it?

I don't have to read it, I already know that sending hundreds of thousands of work-able men to be slaughtered (as Putin does) is very bad for the economy.

[The Grand Nudger]

You have to be a special kind of stupid to repeatedly link shit that demolishes your propaganda, though. At any rate, they got it more or less right as described in that link - from back in october. Russia had just gone through a bunch of drastic actions to try and prop up the ruble, which was expected create a growth bubble, that would then burst. OFC they thought it would burst at the end of this year.....but it burst at the beginning instead. So now you've got russia throwing everything they have at their war economy, because the only thing they can afford to do is pick on the only people who were poorer than them, even that isn't going to save their economy..and they're still losing the damned war, too. What a shitshow.

[Leonardo17]

Thumpalumpacus:
 
I’m only speculating here. But it seems to me that he is really trying to push for some sort of deal. He said “I could say a lot about Putin if I wanted to. But I’m trying to get both sides to agree on something”
And if he does not do it, Than who? (It’s probably not going to be the East-Roman Ruler, I can tell you that much )
 
Belaqua:
 
They cannot have that much mineral. I think Trump was using this as a pretext to send US companies etc. to Ukraine which would make it more difficult to Russia to attack Ukraine in the future. This and French / Uk troop on the ground and you have a Korea like frozen frontier. Than you wait for Putin to go (in 10, 20, 30 years) and you see if you can restore Crimea + the two oblasts to Ukraine (which is not that important if you ask me).
 
As I said before: The whole thing with trump and his friends is that they were disrespectful. Zelensky is the leader of people who are dying every day. So Trump is right in some ways. But people are dying there. People who have kids, family etc. are being amputated every day.
 
So I still wish Kamala was elected instead of him.
 
Belaqua 2:
 
No one cares about Russian energy anymore. France is even confident of its AI program because they have huge amounts of nuclear energy. After Fukushima, Germany moved away from Nuclear and invested more into renewables. It’s a matter of a decade or two until they also produce excess energy based on renewables.
 
Trump is talking about “minerals” because he is a man of the past. No mineral or rare earth is that important anymore because people are innovating. Ex: There may be no need for lithium batteries in the future. They are already studying other more abundant minerals to store clean energy in cars / trucks etc.
 
All of this is obsolete.
 
If the EU is as weak and empty as you said, why is Putin, Elon Musk and China doing everything they can to try to break their unity and destabilize them by supporting AFD like populist parties?
 
Emjay + Grand Nudger:
 
There is a famous Narcisism expert called Dr. Ramani. Yesterday she published a video on how narcissist like to provoke normal people and then say “See, see, he did this. He is a maniac and I didn’t do anything”. I think that’s exactly what happened yesterday.
 
Emjay:
 
One of his counterparts told him to not go. But he decided to go anyway.
 
These are not so simple issues. During our war of independence (I mean Turkey between 1919-1923), we received financial and military aid from the Soviet Union, from Vladimir Ilyc Lenin himself. So of course he is going to do everything to get more gun and support while fighting a nation that has inherited all the weaponry of a former super power.
 
So he simply has to try. And if the US doesn’t play, he will look for other ways. That’s how these things work
 
Deesee:
 
Donald Trump had a first term and it ended. So he won’t be around forever. The whole thing now is to keep the ball rolling until the end of his second term. He is not powerful enough to undo 80 / 100 year old alliances with the old continent as a whole. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Thumpalumpacus:
 
I’m only speculating here. But it seems to me that he is really trying to push for some sort of deal. He said “I could say a lot about Putin if I wanted to. But I’m trying to get both sides to agree on something”
And if he does not do it, Than who? (It’s probably not going to be the East-Roman Ruler, I can tell you that much )

Of course he's pushing for a deal. He has consistently been against Ukraine in this war and has been since Day One. Anyone with half-a-brain knows that freezing the lines here, declaring a cease-fire, but refusing to give Ukraine security guarantees -- which is what caused yesterday's blow-up -- is a recipe for this war's reignition in a couple of years.

[arewethereyet]

Donald Trump had a first term and it ended. So he won’t be around forever. The whole thing now is to keep the ball rolling until the end of his second term. He is not powerful enough to undo 80 / 100 year old alliances with the old continent as a whole. 

Trump and his crew are destroying decades of things every damn day.  That you think he can't screw up relationships with other countries is laughable, at best.  As for your smiley face - no, none of it is cool.