Ukraine will be able to use Danish and Dutch F-16s to strike into Russia, while Belgium is saying only for use in 1991-border Ukraine.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/Iv4Fu
No doubt. Russia placed too much faith in the OSCE and France and Germany approaching the process in good faith. Merkel later came out and said that the Minsk process was just a time-buying exercise so that NATO could arm Ukraine as a proxy against Russia.
Ukraine, of course, knew that it was being armed and trained and had the carrot of NATO and EU membership dangled before it. Circling back to the original point, the fact that Ukraine was being armed and trained at such a rate is good evidence that Ukraine absolutely knew what was about to happen.
Russia placed too much faith in the OSCE and France and Germany approaching the process in good faith.
I’m not sure if you’re calling Putin a stupid man that is easily manipulated or incompetent. No politician ever in their lives did anything in good faith, Putin included. You must be very naive to think that.
<…> good evidence that Ukraine absolutely knew what was about to happen.
That’s an empty speculation. Knowing and preparing for a possibly are completely different things. Also, if you note the timing on the war, it stared a month before a US company was about to start extracting oil and gas from the Ukraine territory and cut off Russia from Europe as supplier. The reason for the invasion was pure greed and not some stupid notions of NATO expansion or cries for help from Russian separatist groups.
I’m not sure if you’re calling Putin a stupid man that is easily manipulated or incompetent. No politician ever in their lives did anything in good faith, Putin included. You must be very naive to think that.
Very cool that the argument boils down to “of course we were going to trick you, you are stupid for being tricked.” I guess the lesson the world should learn is to never trust a Euroid and to respond to European peace overtures with uncompromising force.
No politician ever in their lives did anything in good faith
“My country has broken hundreds of treaties and wipes its ass with international law, but it’s actually OK because it’s impossible for anyone to operate differently”
I’m not sure if you’re calling Putin a stupid man that is easily manipulated or incompetent.
They are parroting Russian propaganda. The one where “the west” is stipid, cunning, strong, and rotting all at the same time.
What? There is no contradiction. The West has a global hegemony enforced by the world’s biggest, most expensive murder organization. A lot of work and intelligent minds go into maintaining this hegemony, but the society it’s built on is falling apart.
I don’t think you would be calling this “propaganda” if you spoke to any regular people around you.
Yup, stupid and cunning. Cunning in the sense that they have a playbook developed over 7 decades to enforce their global hegemony which works damn well. Stupid in the sense that they don’t realise that this is not the meta anymore. Think of it as a difference in tactics and strategy.
