Starker on 24/2/2023 at 17:26

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Just add Sarmat-ushka and United Stat-ushka and you basically got the gist of it.

demagogue on 25/2/2023 at 21:26

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I remember reading (and hearing in Snyder's recent course) that one of the most important events in the end of the Cold War was Poland's decision, anyway Solidarity's decision already in the mid-1980s, to support the separate independent nationality of Ukraine and disclaim any claim over west Ukraine (even though it'd actually been Polish for a big chunk of its history). I think I posted about it before.

In the big scheme of things it made sense. Supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine was gonna support the territorial integrity of Poland in the long run.

What's interesting about that statement from Medvedev is it's like the loony mirror image of that thinking, proving they were right on point. If Ukraine isn't a real country, how secure are the Baltic states and even former Eastern Bloc countries? Those ultranationalists' delusional magic-thinking makes non-entities out of every country around them, even 30% of their own population which isn't even Russian.

lowenz on 26/2/2023 at 07:59

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For them they're subjects, not real person-citizens.
When they attacck "liberalism" they DON'T attack in reality the economic side of liberalism (that's for their propaganda in Europe, to sell us "friendship for the people oppressed by evil satanic ANGLO-SAXONS :D corporations" being russian corporations somehow holy, LOL), they attack the liberal conception of the citizen as a person.
It's the core of the fascism vision for the world: not persons, just subjects.
OBEY and all will be fine......unless a war starts, and we need meat for the (of course "SAINT" - here's why they're so fond of traditional values, no matter if christian or islamic) grinder.

In all of this they're backed by *STUPID* US republicans (and all the far right populistic movements in Europe) not even realizing that they have been hijkacked to serve what you can figure as romulans of the planet Earth.....

lowenz on 26/2/2023 at 09:32

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Forced? No, they can just betray if Russia goes nuclear.
It's why we must (saddly) use the earthquake crisis to strenghten the bonds with Turkey and make Turkey let Sweden+Finland join NATO.

WingedKagouti on 26/2/2023 at 14:50

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Forced in the sense that if they don't, the chance of them actually joining the EU would likely be completely buried for the forseeable future, as opposed to the current status of "You need to do some work on your internal policies". And last time he spoke on the subject, Erdogan still wanted Turkey to be a full member for the various economic benefits to Turkey. Actively breaking an alliance with someone you're hoping to increase trade with is among the stupidest things you can do in politics.

There's a lot of crossover between EU and NATO membership, Turkey should expect a vote of no confidence from any dual member if they fail to respond to Article 5 (which is about armed attacks against member nations and has nothing to do with nuclear warfare).