Russian apologist need to read this

[Mushroom]

We promised Gorbechev we would not expand NATO.

Russia also promised to never attack Ukraine, and to respect their borders.

I think that their ignoring that promise is a bigger deal than one made to a country that dissolved over 30 years ago.

 

[Mushroom]

And after getting and assurances on both sides, Russia started invading and annexing parts of its neighbors. That action invalidated those agreements and caused all the ex- Warsaw Pact and Ex-Soviet nations to need the defensive advantages of joining NATO. Just look at recent history, Russia has launched unprovoked invasions of Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine TWICE. It has annexed territories belonging to both Georgia AND Ukraine. Russia has fomented civil unrest and sent Russian Army troops into several old Soviet Socialist republics to create the appearance of civil wars to give Russia excuses for invasions.

And two of the nations they invaded at the time were actually members of their own "Commonwealth of Independent States", which was supposed to be the follow-up to the Warsaw Pact.

Russia is trying to act like it is still the 1980s and before, where if they do not like how things are in an ally they can simply invade them like they did to most of the nations back when they were in the Warsaw Pact.

And the more they do that, the more their CIS will dissolve and slip away from them.

 

[Mushroom]

We can stipulate. In 1991, they gave assurances to Gorby that there would be no eastward expansion, but there was nothing in writing.

Actually, that is not quite true.

It was in 1990, and the "promise" only involved what was East Germany. Which NATO honored for well over a decade.

It was never about "expansion", because the collapse of the USSR was still two years away.

The first "NATO base" in what was once East Germany was not until 2002. By that time the USSR and Warsaw Pact had been gone for over a decade, and countries like Poland had joined NATO, which made the idea of staying out of what was once East Germany rather silly.

Back in 1990 when that agreement was made, nobody had any idea that in just two years the Soviet Union would implode and cease to exist. And that former Warsaw Pact nations would be begging to join NATO.

 

[Mushroom]

To go with "Everyone I don't Like is a Commie"

Being a moderate, I tend to have a deep distrust for anybody on the extremes of either political ideology. I see the "Far Right" and the "Far Left" as the exact same thing.

And when somebody starts to say either of those things, I generally dismiss them for what should be obvious reasons.

Which often results in strange interactions, where one person will scream at me I am a "Nazi", and another that I am a "Communist" in the very same page in a thread. Because I have no problem saying that they both are politically moronic idiots.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Being a moderate, I tend to have a deep distrust for anybody on the extremes of either political ideology. I see the "Far Right" and the "Far Left" as the exact same thing.

And when somebody starts to say either of those things, I generally dismiss them for what should be obvious reasons.

Which often results in strange interactions, where one person will scream at me I am a "Nazi", and another that I am a "Communist" in the very same page in a thread. Because I have no problem saying that they both are politically moronic idiots.

Yeah, anyone does that to me, I just put them on ignore. If they're doing it now, they'll probably keep doing it over and over.

 

[para bellum]

Actually, that is not quite true.

I wasn't claiming that it was necessarily true.

I was stipulating for the sake of argument- even if it was true, would it still hold?

Or were there other agreements later on that changed that understanding, and possibly undermine Putin's "aggressive NATO expansion" excuse?

 

[MisterBeale]

I have posted the diplomatic agreements'

"respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security, the inviolability of borders and peoples' right of self-determination as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents"

. . . and memos that the US and NATO violated, and the CIA caused coup's in Ukraine which has led to this mess.

If you want to ignore the wikileaks documents that prove the CIA knowingly did a coup in Ukraine which violated this? That's on you.

I am not posting my own opinion, I already posted primary memos AND FACTS. I am not shooting off my mouth or parroting establishment rhetoric like you folks are. Twist it all you like to fit a narrative. The fact of the matter? The west and NATO caused this by refusing to negotiate with Russia.

Even as late as December, the Russians were seeking a peaceful way out. The west has no interest in peace, they only want to destroy Russia. Just like they had wanted in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, WWI, WWII, etc. It never ends. This is only about the balance of power in Europe, food, energy, and money among the global oligarchs.

I'm just opposed to them, the west & RUSSIA, using the small people as fodder. I am not pro Russia or pro West. All you folks have the intellectual capacity of a gnat. I give you the primary sources, and you are so dumb, you have to make excuses and gas-light yourselves.

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA​

17 February 2022​

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

johnpilger.com

". . . Vladimir Putin refers to the "genocide" in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. Following the coup in Ukraine in 2014 - orchestrated by Barack Obama's "point person" in Kyiv, Victoria Nuland - the coup regime, infested with neo-Nazis, launched a campaign of terror against Russian-speaking Donbas, which accounts for a third of Ukraine's population.

Overseen by CIA director John Brennan in Kyiv, "special security units" coordinated savage attacks on the people of Donbas, who opposed the coup. Video and eyewitness reports show bussed fascist thugs burning the trade union headquarters in the city of Odessa, killing 41 people trapped inside. The police are standing by. Obama congratulated the "duly elected" coup regime for its "remarkable restraint".

In the US media the Odessa atrocity was played down as "murky" and a "tragedy" in which "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) attacked "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says".

Professor Stephen Cohen, acclaimed as America's leading authority on Russia, wrote, "The pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during world war two. [Today] storm-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other 'impure' citizens are widespread throughout Kyiv-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s...

"The police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kyiv has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorialising Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms, renaming streets in their honour, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more."

Today, neo-Nazi Ukraine is seldom mentioned. That the British are training the Ukrainian National Guard, which includes neo-Nazis, is not news. (See Matt Kennard's Declassified report in Consortium 15 February). The return of violent, endorsed fascism to 21st-century Europe, to quote Harold Pinter, "never happened ... even while it was happening".

On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for "combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism". The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine.

Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine's "borderland" that Hitler's divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine's Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.

Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia's respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:

- NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)
- NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
- Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
- the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
- the landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)

These amount to a comprehensive draft of a peace plan for all of post-war Europe and ought to be welcomed in the West. But who understands their significance in Britain? What they are told is that Putin is a pariah and a threat to Christendom.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kyiv for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The "massing" army we seldom hear about are the thirteen Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war.. . ."

 

[MisterBeale]

Kinda right, mostly wrong.

NATO promised to not expand into what was then Eastern Germany. In 1990, after East Germany collapsed and the nation was reunifying. And NATO did not expand into what was once East Germany. Until many years later after Germany was fully unified and the USSR and Warsaw Pact no longer existed. As far as I am aware, the only "NATO" forces in what was once East Germany is a small Air Force contingent in Leipzig. That only exists to support forces going to and from the Middle East as there are no large bases in what was once West Germany to support that (all the aircraft that land there are transports, on what was once a Red Air Force base).

And the very idea that NATO would "not expand" is silly, as several nations have left NATO, joined, rejoined, and may leave again. And such a concept is particularly stupid as not only does the nation of the USSR no longer exist, but the group of nations they led known as the "Warsaw Pact" also no longer exists.

So sorry, even considering that such should still be the case, is about as stupid as trying to say an agreement made with Mommar Quaddafi that was only a handshake deal and never an actual ratified treaty is still in effect.

And Ukraine is not anywhere close to joining NATO. In reality, they were actually a member of the follow-up to the Warsaw Pact, the Russian led "Commonwealth of Independent States". That is, until 2018 when Russia attacked them and started biting off chunks of their territory. And Ukraine has never shown ant real interest in joining NATO, instead preferring to stand a neutral course in the hopes it would not anger Russia.

If anything, the multiple attacks and taking parts of their country over the past 4 years by Russia is pushing them to join NATO. If not for their constant expansions Ukraine would still have had absolutely no interest in joining and still be in the CIS. But after several wars, they now know they can not trust Russia at all, and needs to ally with somebody or they will eventually fall to them. And Ukraine is not alone in that. Georgia was also once a member of the CIS, and withdrew after Russia attacked them in 2008. And Maldovia is now considering leaving, because of Russian interference in their internal politics and their invasion of Ukraine.

The problem is that the CIS was a great idea, but in the last decade or so it has been increasingly used by Russia in order to try and regain what some see as their "lost empire". And by doing this, all they are doing is pushing members away and right into the arms of NATO because they know nobody else will support them, and they can't trust the nation that once promised to protect them.

Everything I wrote is sourced with links.

Everything you wrote is straight out your ass.

Thus? Everything you wrote is propaganda.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Everything I wrote is sourced with links.

Everything you wrote is straight out your ass.

Thus? Everything you wrote is propaganda.

Do you still cry because the Berlin Wall fell?

 

[MisterBeale]

Do you still cry because the Berlin Wall fell?

Do you always resort to personal attacks on the messenger when your version of reality is destroyed by empirical facts?

Cognitive dissonance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/John%20et%20al%202019%20-%20Shooting%20the%20Messenger_bed9332f-ac03-4f35-a4dc-3da322cfa112.pdf

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Do you always resort to personal attacks on the messenger when your version of reality is destroyed by empirical facts?

View attachment 713653

Cognitive dissonance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 713656View attachment 713657

https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/John%20et%20al%202019%20-%20Shooting%20the%20Messenger_bed9332f-ac03-4f35-a4dc-3da322cfa112.pdf

You could just say yes...........

Did you agree with Putin when he said the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy?

Should we let Putin re-occupy all the old Warsaw Pact countries?

 

[MisterBeale]

You could just say yes...........

Did you agree with Putin when he said the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy?

Should we let Putin re-occupy all the old Warsaw Pact countries?

You have nothing better than to troll and lie now, that it?

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Putin is a war criminal.

True.
As are those who support and defend him.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Russians are still better than democrats.

Democrat

Woman recalls being brutally attacked, raped in Torrance while walking her dogs

After being brutally attacked and raped while walking her dogs in Torrance, one woman is hoping her story can serve as a warning for others. For the first time since the assault, Marissa Young is s…

ktla.com

 

[Mushroom]

Or were there other agreements later on that changed that understanding, and possibly undermine Putin's "aggressive NATO expansion" excuse?

Each of the nations that joined NATO did it entirely voluntarily.

Russia on the other hand has actively invaded several nations. And in the last 20 years, each and every one has been a member of the CIS, an organization that was supposed to protect them from invasion.

And it is just an excuse. Name a single nation NATO threatened. Or invaded with the idea of any of the member nations expanding their borders.

The very idea of Russia invading other nations to keep them from joining NATO is stupid. And Ukraine had absolutely no intention of joining NATO, prior to this year. Even after Russia bit a chunk off of them in 2018, they still insisted in remaining neutral.

One thing in common seems to be involved in every expansion of NATO. The country that joined had been under the control of the Soviets for decades, and was terrified of being invaded by Russia again.

If they want countries to stop joining NATO, then they really should stop invading other countries for the purpose of expansion of their own borders.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

You have nothing better than to troll and lie now, that it?

Did you agree with Putin when he said the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy?

Should we let Putin re-occupy all the old Warsaw Pact countries?

^These are questions.....which you haven't answered yet.

It's ok comrade, this is a safe space.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Who exactly is apologizing for Putin?

Conservatives exclusively.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Conservatives exclusively.

Tell Vlad I'll be more flexible after the election.

The 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back.

 

[Mushroom]

. . . and memos that the US and NATO violated, and the CIA caused coup's in Ukraine which has led to this mess.

Amazing. You are absolutely following the Russian party line there, good Comrade.

The thing is, nobody else calls what happened in 2014 a coup. Only the Russians. Of course, that is because they were pissed that their half-puppet leader actually did what his people wanted, and tried to forge closer ties to the EU. However, then Russia started to threaten Ukraine, and he backed down and reverse course. Which caused mass riots as that is not what the people wanted. And of course, it did not help that the Pro-Russia faction tried to pass repressive anti-protest laws, which lost the Pro-Russian faction even more support.

Which saw him removed from office, and the Constitution restored.

Oh, and to give an idea how bullshit the argument that there was a coup was, simply look at what happened. President Yanukovych and Russia scream it was a coup, that he was illegally removed from office, and all kinds of nonsense. But in the simple reality, he fled the country long before anything like that was done. He left Ukraine and fled to Russia on 21 February 2014. IN essence, he abandoned his post as President.

The next day the Parliament held a "vote of no confidence", which is basically the first step of removing a head of state. And he was not there to take part in the hearings. And under law, he indeed should have then been run through the Impeachment process. But the problem with impeachment when you do not even have a head of state because he fled the country, is how do you have a trial?

And the same thing would probably happen in most countries. Just suppose President Biden was in some scandal right now, and rather than allow the impeachment process to happen he left the country and moved to Jamaica. A nation can't have an absentee leader, and the proper action should be as Ukraine did. Declare the post as abandoned, then either follow the line of secession, or hold a new election.

And in this case, even that could not happen. The Prime Minister had already resigned, and also fled to Russia. In fact, a hell of a lot of the top leadership in Ukraine on 21 and 22 February up and left the country and moved to Russia. The reality is, that Russia is still pissed because they realized that even with a submissive and passive government in charge of the country, the people did not want that. And like Stalin and Hitler before him, he expected his forces to me seen as liberators and welcomed into Ukraine with open arms.

Which very obviously has not happened at all.

It's funny, as almost every single time you say something, it follows almost exactly the official Russian Party Line.

Very good, Comrade.

 

[Mushroom]

Conservatives exclusively.

Not really. A hell of a lot that I know hate his guts and want to see him crushed.

Most of those rooting for him have other agendas