Ukraine war mega thread

[bsnub]

I provide more thought provoking material for those interested.

You regurgitate RT and Sputnik talking points. Nothing more.

[bsnub]

Russia’s Top Five Persistent Disinformation Narratives

Theme #1: “Russia is an Innocent Victim”

Russian government officials falsely portray Russia as a perpetual victim and its aggressive actions as a forced response to the alleged actions of the United States and our democratic allies and partners. To further these claims, Russia turns to one of its favorite labels to attempt to hit back: “Russophobia.” After invading Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government and state-controlled disinformation outlets began to accuse anyone who questioned Russia’s actions of being xenophobic Russophobes.

For example, Russia claims that the international community’s negative reaction to its invasion of an independent country was simply because people feared and hated Russia. According to the chart below, Russophobia was not an issue of major concern to the Russian Foreign Ministry or state-funded disinformation outlets until the Russian military invaded Ukraine. Claims of “Russophobia” persist across a range of topics and are employed whenever the Russian government wants to play the victim, when it is actually the aggressor.


Theme #2: Historical Revisionism

When history does not align with the Kremlin’s political objectives, Russian government officials and their proxy voices deny historical events or distort historical narratives to try to cast Russia in a more favorable light and serve its domestic and geopolitical agenda. For example, the 1939 non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which helped precipitate World War II, is politically inconvenient for the Putin regime. In 2020, in an attempt to minimize and rationalize Stalin’s decision to align himself with Hitler, Putin published a twisted version of the start of World War II, downplaying the Soviet role and shifting blame for the war to other countries. Russia often takes this a step further by labeling those who disagree with its twisted version of history as Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.

The Kremlin also applies this formula to the history of Ukraine’s statehood, NATO’s conduct during the collapse of the Soviet Union, its GULAG prison system, the famine in Ukraine known as Holodomor, and many other events where the Kremlin’s historical actions do not serve its current political goals.


Theme #3: “The Collapse of Western Civilization is Imminent”

Russia pushes the false claim that Western civilization is collapsing and has strayed from “traditional values” because it works to ensure the safety and equality of LGBTQI+ people and promotes concepts such as female equality and multiculturalism. The demise of Western civilization is one of Russia’s oldest disinformation tropes, with claims of “the decaying west” documented since the 19th century.

This “values”-based disinformation narrative evokes ill-defined concepts including “tradition,” “family values,” and “spirituality.” Russia argues it is the bastion of so-called “traditional values” and gender roles and serves as a moral counterweight to the “decadence” of the United States and Western countries. For example, President Putin has claimed the West has practically cancelled the concepts of “mother” and “father,” and instead has replaced them with “parent 1 and 2,” while Foreign Minister Lavrov wrote that Western students “learn at school that Jesus Christ was bisexual.”


Theme #4: “Popular Movements are U.S.-sponsored ‘Color Revolutions’”

The Kremlin has difficulty accepting that all individuals should have the human right to freedom of expression, and that the government should be accountable to its people. Russia has accused the United States of either instigating uprisings or plotting “color revolutions” in Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Ukraine, and throughout the Middle East and Africa. If a popular movement is pro-democracy and pro-reform and not deemed to be in Russia’s geopolitical interests, the Kremlin will often attack its legitimacy and claim that the United States is secretly behind it. These baseless accusations often target local and international civil society organizations, as well as independent media that expose human rights abuses and corruption. The Kremlin seeks to deny that people in neighboring countries could have agency, dignity, and independent aspirations to advocate for themselves, just as it denies these qualities to the people of Russia.


Theme #5: Reality is Whatever the Kremlin Wants It to Be

The Kremlin frequently tries to create multiple false realities and insert confusions into the information environment when the truth is not in its interests. Often intentionally confusing, Russian officials make arguments designed to try to shift the blame away from the Russian government’s role, even if some of the narratives contradict one another. However, in time, presenting multiple conflicting narratives can itself become a technique intended to generate confusion and discourage response. Other elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem, such as the abuse of state-funded disinformation outlets and weaponized social media, help push multiple false narratives.

It was clear to the world, for example, that Russia attempted to assassinate former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England, on March 4, 2018. In the four weeks following that incident, Russian state-funded and directed outlets RT and Sputnik disseminated 138 separate and contradictory narratives via 735 articles, according to the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

Russia has used the same technique of flooding the information space with many false claims following other events, such as the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and Russia’s 2008 invasion and ongoing occupation of Georgia, to distract conversations from their role in the events. Again, the purpose is to confuse and distract others and manipulate the truth to suit Kremlin interests.

Sabang, OhDoh and Backspit gobble this shit up and regurgitate it time and time again. Ironic that they call others brainwashed.

Once again, you can not discount any of these narratives because they encapsulate your entire posting history in threads of these topics. You Muppet.

[sabang]

Well as modern, ongoing history is conclusively demonstrating 'reality' is not always as the US wants it to be. So circle those wagons boys, and try and monopolise the narrative. YeeHa. Or maybe start dealing with the world a bit more as it really is, and fade away last centuries unipolar fantasy. China is not on a mission to 'convert the world', and neither should you be. You're not missionaries, and we're not your disciples.

[bsnub]

Once again, you FAIL to discount the Russian disinformation narratives. Why? Because you can't, as they are all true.

[bsnub]

From 2016 but spot on...

Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a remarkable evolution in Russia's approach to propaganda. This new approach was on full display during the country's 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It continues to be demonstrated in support of ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and in pursuit of nefarious and long-term goals in Russia's “near abroad” and against NATO allies. In some ways, the current Russian approach to propaganda builds on Soviet Cold War–era techniques, with an emphasis on obfuscation and on getting targets to act in the interests of the propagandist without realizing that they have done so.¹ In other ways, it is completely new and driven by the characteristics of the contemporary information environment. Russia has taken advantage of technology and available media in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War. Its tools and channels now include the Internet, social media, and the evolving landscape of professional and amateur journalism and media outlets.

We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”²

Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency.

Interestingly, several of these features run directly counter to the conventional wisdom on effective influence and communication from government or defense sources, which traditionally emphasize the importance of truth, credibility, and the avoidance of contradiction.³ Despite ignoring these traditional principles, Russia seems to have enjoyed some success under its contemporary propaganda model, either through more direct persuasion and influence or by engaging in obfuscation, confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting and messaging.

We offer several possible explanations for the effectiveness of Russia's firehose of falsehood. Our observations draw from a concise, but not exhaustive, review of the literature on influence and persuasion, as well as experimental research from the field of psychology. We explore the four identified features of the Russian propaganda model and show how and under what circumstances each might contribute to effectiveness. Many successful aspects of Russian propaganda have surprising foundations in the psychology literature, so we conclude with a brief discussion of possible approaches from the same field for responding to or competing with such an approach.

Russian Propaganda Is High-Volume and Multichannel

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. This propaganda includes text, video, audio, and still imagery propagated via the Internet, social media, satellite television, and traditional radio and television broadcasting. The producers and disseminators include a substantial force of paid Internet “trolls” who also often attack or undermine views or information that runs counter to Russian themes, doing so through online chat rooms, discussion forums, and comments sections on news and other websites.⁴ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that “there are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte” maintained by Russian propagandists. According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.⁵

RT (formerly Russia Today) is one of Russia's primary multimedia news providers. With a budget of more than $300 million per year, it broadcasts in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and several Eastern European languages. The channel is particularly popular online, where it claims more than a billion page views. If true, that would make it the most-watched news source on the Internet.⁶ In addition to acknowledged Russian sources like RT, there are dozens of proxy news sites presenting Russian propaganda, but with their affiliation with Russia disguised or downplayed.⁷

Experimental research shows that, to achieve success in disseminating propaganda, the variety of sources matters:

• Multiple sources are more persuasive than a single source, especially if those sources contain different arguments that point to the same conclusion.
• Receiving the same or similar message from multiple sources is more persuasive.
• People assume that information from multiple sources is likely to be based on different perspectives and is thus worth greater consideration.⁸

The number and volume of sources also matter:

• Endorsement by a large number of users boosts consumer trust, reliance, and confidence in the information, often with little attention paid to the credibility of those making the endorsements.
• When consumer interest is low, the persuasiveness of a message can depend more on the number of arguments supporting it than on the quality of those arguments.⁹

Finally, the views of others matter, especially if the message comes from a source that shares characteristics with the recipient:

• Communications from groups to which the recipient belongs are more likely to be perceived as credible. The same applies when the source is perceived as similar to the recipient. If a propaganda channel is (or purports to be) from a group the recipient identifies with, it is more likely to be persuasive.
• Credibility can be social; that is, people are more likely to perceive a source as credible if others perceive the source as credible. This effect is even stronger when there is not enough information available to assess the trustworthiness of the source.
• When information volume is low, recipients tend to favor experts, but when information volume is high, recipients tend to favor information from other users.
• In online forums, comments attacking a proponent's expertise or trustworthiness diminish credibility and decrease the likelihood that readers will take action based on what they have read.¹⁰

The experimental psychology literature suggests that, all other things being equal, messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive. Quantity does indeed have a quality all its own. High volume can deliver other benefits that are relevant in the Russian propaganda context. First, high volume can consume the attention and other available bandwidth of potential audiences, drowning out competing messages. Second, high volume can overwhelm competing messages in a flood of disagreement. Third, multiple channels increase the chances that target audiences are exposed to the message. Fourth, receiving a message via multiple modes and from multiple sources increases the message's perceived credibility, especially if a disseminating source is one with which an audience member identifies.

Russian Propaganda Is Rapid, Continuous, and Repetitive

Contemporary Russian propaganda is continuous and very responsive to events. Due to their lack of commitment to objective reality (discussed later), Russian propagandists do not need to wait to check facts or verify claims; they just disseminate an interpretation of emergent events that appears to best favor their themes and objectives. This allows them to be remarkably responsive and nimble, often broadcasting the first “news” of events (and, with similar frequency, the first news of nonevents, or things that have not actually happened). They will also repeat and recycle disinformation. The January 14, 2016, edition of Weekly Disinformation Review reported the reemergence of several previously debunked Russian propaganda stories, including that Polish President Andrzej Duda was insisting that Ukraine return former Polish territory, that Islamic State fighters were joining pro-Ukrainian forces, and that there was a Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.¹¹

Sometimes, Russian propaganda is picked up and rebroadcast by legitimate news outlets; more frequently, social media repeats the themes, messages, or falsehoods introduced by one of Russia’s many dissemination channels. For example, German news sources rebroadcast Russian disinformation about atrocities in Ukraine in early 2014, and Russian disinformation about EU plans to deny visas to young Ukrainian men was repeated with such frequency in Ukrainian media that the Ukrainian general staff felt compelled to post a rebuttal.¹²

The article is very long but also concise and spot on. Read the rest here...

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

[sabang]

I like my propaganda in various flavours Sgt snubko! But it's more time consuming. Why don't you just keep it simple, and restrict yourself to Fox?

[bsnub]

I like my propaganda in various flavours Sgt snubko!

No you don't you have a very narrow filter of information. You are just too indoctrinated to see it.

Why don't you just keep it simple, and restrict yourself to Fox?

Fox is friend of Russia and RT/Sputnik in fact it spouts a lot of Kremlin propaganda.

[bsnub]

The word “great,” of course, has multiple meanings. One meaning is that something is superlatively good. Another is that something is simply superlative, great in the sense of massive or important.

When the cover of Newsmax’s monthly magazine describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as “Vlad the Great,” it’s not clear the sense in which it is meant.

The right-wing media outlet’s description of Putin includes various negative descriptors, but they’re offered in the way one might describe Darth Vader: titillating, exciting.

“From his days as a cutthroat KGB spy stationed in East Germany to his power-hungry ascension to the presidency of Russia, Putin has given the U.S. and the world unending headaches with his nonstop amassing of nuclear weapons, incessant saber-rattling, and deadly espionage plots,” the description reads. “ … Newsmax exposes Putin’s private life — from his secret girlfriend to his love children, to his favorite books and pop group. And you’ll learn why, incredibly, he has become a sex symbol in Japan!”

Tiger Beat for authoritarian teeny-boppers.

This isn’t particularly surprising, coming from Newsmax. The outlet has made clear where it stands in the tension between performative toughness and liberal democracy with its post-2020 embrace of Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud. But the timing of the issue is awkward: As The Washington Post has reported, Putin’s Russia appears to be poised to invade Ukraine, a key U.S. ally. Should that happen, Newsmax magazine readers might be primed to view the incursion with sympathy.

Granted, that’s probably not many people. For example, it’s not anywhere near the hundreds of thousands of people who probably tuned in to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show last night, where Carlson explicitly rationalized a potential invasion.

In his telling, Putin is salivating over Ukraine because the Russian president simply “wants to keep his western border secure.” After all, Ukraine might join NATO, which Carlson describes as the United States “plan[ning] to control Ukraine no matter what.” Massing tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine is simply Putin acting defensively, Carlson insists, akin to “how we would feel if Mexico and Canada became satellites of China.”

Of course Carlson also couldn’t resist framing this as a celebration of Putin particularly when contrasted to President Biden. He showed a snippet of an interview in which Biden agreed that Putin was “a killer,” a belief probably born in part of the number of political assassinations (and assassination attempts) that have unfolded in Putin-era Russia. But Carlson waves this away.

“These people are children, again, children pretending to be leaders,” he said of Biden. “Vladimir Putin is a killer — presumably unlike every other head of state on Earth through all human history.” Shrugging at an invasion threat is one thing. Shrugging at political murder is another.

Carlson centered his defense of Putin on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol.

“NATO’s takeover of Ukraine” — an odd way to describe Ukraine joining an international alliance — “would compromise Russia’s access to its Sevastopol naval base,” Carlson insisted, something that an expert quoted by Carlson said would be “the biggest military geopolitical defeat of Russia in the last thousand years.”

What Carlson is doing here is not just defending Putin’s current aggressive posture toward Ukraine but also rationalizing his prior attack on Ukraine’s territory. That naval base is on the Crimean peninsula. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, Russia paid rent to Ukraine to maintain the base. In 2014, though, Russia simply seized the peninsula, triggering international blowback — and a separate round of Putin apologia by the American right.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, for example, appeared on Fox News to declare that Putin was “what you call a leader” for his strong hand in annexing the region. A number of other conservatives similarly framed Putin as a more effective leader in contrast to President Barack Obama.

What really shifted how partisans view Russia, though, was not Putin’s efforts to influence Europe but, instead, the United States. The brief war with Georgia that occurred in 2008 prompted a spike in the number of Americans who saw Russia’s power as a threat to the United States, as did the seizure of Crimea. After each of those incidents, the increase was seen among both Democrats and Republicans, according to Pew Research Center polling.

It wasn’t until the 2016 election, when Putin and Russia sought to influence the outcome on behalf of Trump (who’d similarly excused Putin’s assassination efforts) that a partisan gulf emerged. Suddenly, Democrats were far more likely to see Russia as a threat than were Republicans. In fact, Republican concern about Russian influence decreased in the wake of those revelations.
This isn’t just about the Democratic response to the interference effort. In August, YouGov conducted polling on behalf of the Economist that asked Americans how they viewed various world leaders. Republicans were more likely to say they viewed Putin at least somewhat favorably than they were to say the same of Biden. Among those who reported having voted for Trump last year, twice as many viewed Putin with at least some favorability.

In the abstract, one can chalk this up to the fervor of partisan sentiment or to the Republican Party’s increasing antipathy to liberal elections. But that Newsmax’s elevation of Putin and Carlson’s defense of his geopolitics emerge now removes the discussion from the abstract. Government officials believe that Putin has designs on Ukraine more broadly than just protecting its base in Crimea — which, again, Russia already controls. It’s certainly true that those officials might be wrong, and it’s certainly true that there are officials and politicians on both sides of the aisle who are eager to embrace military solutions to problems. But if Russia does invade Ukraine with precisely the sort of ambition that Carlson went to great lengths to deny, how will Newsmax readers and Fox News viewers consider any American response?

Putin’s goal in seeding conflict during the 2016 election was to amplify divisions in American politics. Five years later, that effort has generated a weird side effect: It seems also to have widened the gap on perceptions of Putin himself. If Russia further invades Ukraine, there will be a lot of Americans who are primed to take Russia’s side.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...raine-tension/

[OhOh]

The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has given NaGastan a face-saving opportunity.



At 10:30 in the video, he states this current discussion is not about one single issue.

The Ukraine particular issue is The Minsk Agreement and its implementation.

Blinken and Biden have both offered to "help" regarding the implementation of the Minsk Agreement, as instructed by the UNSC to all the UN members.

To exercise their influence on the Ukraine government, to stop the Ukrainian internal conflict.

A win/win/win/win/win, Ukraine, NaGastan, NATO, Europe and the rest of the world.

Progress there would reduce the Ukrainian humanitarian situation. It would, if the Ukrainian army and air force, stop attacking the citizens of a small area of Ukraine (some of whom are Russian citizens), lead to cooling down of the Ukrainian situation. If fully implemented, this alleged Ukraine crisis, negate any requirement for any armed conflict between the two Ukraine parties.

When the Russian Government receives the NaGastani answers to their proposals, which again has allegedly been promised by the NaGastani POTUS and by Blinken, during the next week. The Russians will review them and possibly have further meetings with NaGastani officials regarding their proposals.

[OhOh]

The NaGastani press conference:



His answers start logically, he confirms the delivery of a response to the Russian proposal, and then the stumble begins.

[misskit]

Families of US Embassy personnel in Ukraine ordered to begin evacuating as soon as Monday: officials

The State Department has ordered families of U.S. Embassy personnel in Ukraine to begin evacuating the country as soon as Monday, U.S. officials tell Fox News.


Next week, the State Department is also expected to encourage Americans to begin leaving Ukraine by commercial flights, "while those are still available," one official said.


Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine, leading to fears of an invasion.

Late Friday night, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine announced the first shipment of ammunition had arrived as directed by President Biden.

U.S. officials say small arms ammunition constitute the bulk of the 200,000 pounds of what the State Department is calling lethal aid – needed by Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines. U.S. officials also tell Fox that Javelin anti-tank missiles are expected to arrive early next week from the Baltic states and from U.S. military stockpiles.

Advanced Russian fighter jets have now arrived in Belarus, north of Ukraine. The Pentagon is concerned that Ukraine's capital is "now in the crosshairs," another official added.


The West has rejected Moscow's main demands – promises from NATO that Ukraine will never be added as a member, that no alliance weapons will be deployed near Russian borders, and that it will pull back its forces from Central and Eastern Europe.

The U.S. government is planning to move "a ton" of weapons and ammunition into Ukraine in the coming days, officials say.


Talks between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday yielded no breakthroughs, though both sides agreed to continue negotiating diplomatically. The two diplomats will speak again after the U.S. submits a formal response to Russian demands next week.

Families of US Embassy personnel in Ukraine ordered to begin evacuating as soon as Monday: officials | Fox News

[sabang]

The German government on Saturday distanced itself from comments made by its navy chief after video footage emerged in which the vice-admiral said Russian President Vladimir Putin deserved respect and that Kyiv would never win back annexed Crimea from Moscow.

... In the video, Schoenbach, speaking in English, says Putin seeks to be treated at eye level by the West.

"What he (Putin) really wants is respect," Schoenbach says.

"And my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost... It is easy to give him the respect he really demands - and probably also deserves," Schoenbach said, calling Russia an old and important country.

Schoenbach concedes Russia's actions in Ukraine needed to be addressed, but adds that "the Crimea peninsula is gone, it will never come back, this is a fact", thereby contradicting the joint Western position that Moscow's annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 cannot be accepted and must be reversed.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called on Germany to publicly reject the navy chief's comments.

Schoenbach's comments that Crimea would never return to Ukraine and that Russia's president deserved respect could impair Western efforts to de-escalate the situation, it said in a statement.

"Ukraine is grateful to Germany for the support it has already provided since 2014, as well as for the diplomatic efforts to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict. But Germany's current statements are disappointing and run counter to that support and effort," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said separately in tweet.

German government distances itself from navy chief's comments on Putin (msn.com)

[Listerman]

I'm not sure why Britain is being so aggressive with the weapon shipments to Ukraine.

Because there is nothing like a good war to deflect attention away from PM BoJo's failings at home, and the impending vote of no confidence he is facing from a considerable quantity of his own MP's.

Your not the only one pondering the same question:

Britain should stay well out of Russia’s border dispute with Ukraine | Simon Jenkins | The Guardian

[russellsimpson]

What a terrible shame it is going to be if all efforts to resolve the dispute fail and there is the blood of fathers, mothers, brothers and sons soaked into the Ukrainian soil once again. Those comments from the German Naval Chief is spot on the money.

"... In the video, Schoenbach, speaking in English, says Putin seeks to be treated at eye level by the West.

". Absolutely goddammed right. The disrespect shown to Russia by a succession of Western leaders at all levels has been disgraceful since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia is in a position of some strenght to collect some payback at the given moment. I think Putin has played a limited hand quite brilliantly. I agree with the Naval Chief that Crimea is gone for good. I don't agree with the way in which Putin grabbed Crimea but there probably wasn't any other way of doing it. NATO has to sit down to a delightful meal of humble pie right about now. They could quietly have come to some back room agreement regarding NATO and Ukraine. An agreement similar to the one that got us out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But no. The level of their joint stupidity is really quite astounding.

Shame, shame and shame!

[DrWilly]

More commies crawling out from under the rocks.

[Switch]

What a terrible shame it is going to be if all efforts to resolve the dispute fail and there is the blood of fathers, mothers, brothers and sons soaked into the Ukrainian soil once again. Those comments from the German Naval Chief is spot on the money.
". Absolutely goddammed right. The disrespect shown to Russia by a succession of Western leaders at all levels has been disgraceful since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia is in a position of some strenght to collect some payback at the given moment. I think Putin has played a limited hand quite brilliantly. I agree with the Naval Chief that Crimea is gone for good. I don't agree with the way in which Putin grabbed Crimea but there probably wasn't any other way of doing it. NATO has to sit down to a delightful meal of humble pie right about now. They could quietly have come to some back room agreement regarding NATO and Ukraine. An agreement similar to the one that got us out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But no. The level of their joint stupidity is really quite astounding.

Shame, shame and shame!

A post which demonstrates how little you understand about high level politics and diplomacy.
The priority is first dealing with internal issues in Ukraine, by joint high level diplomacy between East and West.
If the protagonists can do that, everything else becomes much easier. That is not to suggest that Ukrainian internal problems are any easier to resolve, but without such core solutions, the wider aspects of East v West will simply rumble on.

[sabang]

Those rocks must be gravestones willy. Neither Ukraine or Russia have been Communist since 1991.

[DrWilly]

Yeah, and China is a shining pillar of democracy.

[bsnub]

Good riddance...

“My position is increasingly burdened by the ill-advised comments on security and military policy that I made in India,” Schoenbach said in a statement released by the German navy. Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht has accepted his resignation, he said.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

[sabang]

Shame, 'cus all he spoke is commonsense. But there is a strict taboo on serving military officers saying anything that can be construed or interpreted as political,

[bsnub]

Shame, 'cus all he spoke is commonsense.

No, he was pandering to indoctrinated chicken heads. BTW, I am still waiting for your attempt to debunk the five Russian disinformation narratives I posted at the top of this page. Especially since most of your posts fit in one or more of the five.

[sabang]

Then use your search function drone. I have spent plenty of time debunking concocted shit and mass hysteria, going all the way back to the Iraq invasion. I'm not your kindy teacher, or Google bot.

[OhOh]

An opinion from elsewhere:

"Let's see if I have this straight.

There is an ongoing civil war in Ukraine where the US and its allies are arming and sending soldiers, sorry, "trainers", to help one side (in contravention of the Minsk agreements), but the real problem is a Russian invasion.

Meanwhile, the US invasion in Syria is actually a "civil war".

Thanks, MSM!"

[sabang]

Maybe snubs should emigrate, and leave that Hate filled place behind. But not to Ukraine, obviously.

[Backspin]

Good riddance...



Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Why are you posting this ? That's freedom of speech for you.