“And, as Putin said yesterday, one of the tasks was to demilitarise Ukraine. In fact, this task is largely completed. Ukraine is using less and less of its weapons. And more and more it uses the weapons systems that Western countries supply it with.”
Ah, the subtle differences between demilitarization and upgrading to NATO standards.
If his statement had ever anything to do with reality. Probably just feel-good words directed at the domestic audience.
Can the cowards downvoting the comment I’m responding to and others in this thread respond to this comment? I want to block you guys but you timidly refuse to stick your head out and post your disagreements out in the open.
@Spzi Ukraine has been demilitarized of soviet equipment FWIW. Imagine how long it would've taken Ukraine to do this had it not been an invasion on its land. Thanks, Putler!
Bonus: Putler has also demilitarized former Warsaw Pact members of Soviet weaponry even further. Can you believe the benefits of it? I'm in tears of joy rn.
Reminder: As the aggressor in an imperialist colonialist war, Russia can end the war at any time, just by returning all its troops to its own territory. The continuation of the war is purely the choice of the extreme right-wing Russian dictator and his cronies, who continue to violently exploit the Russian people.
Not really, as you argue without respect to the core of the problem, that is, the US is building a geopolitical tool next to Russia’s borders (obviously against Russia). Even if Putin suddenly disappears, another politician will get support from Russia’s elite and probably easy consent from the Russian public to pursue an anti-NATO foreign policy.
Nothing will change until the US will change it’s foreign policy towards Russia and stop meddling with countries bordering with Russia.
Also this does not contradict that Russia is not an oligarchy or Putin is not a dictator, before you call me pro-Putin. Russia can be the aggressor, an “extreme right-wing dictator ship” that attacked Ukraine and at the same time Ukraine was set up like a red flag in front of a bull by the West.
Remember, there is no reason a country like Russia should perceive the US and its vassal states as friendly. They have no way to assume whatever they do with Ukraine or try to do with Belarus is not against them. In fact, the opposite is true, the foreign policy of the US writes that Russia is their enemy and they will allocate so and so much funds to fight it. You think you need to be a right-wing dictator or an ex-KGB agent to grasp that the goal of the west is to subdue your political class or to turn your country into a gas colony for them?
But of course, being a biased lib that thinks the world is built like Lord of the Rings or a comic book, what’s class consciousness to you? You believe that there are ebil people like Putin, that suddenly went crazy and decided to invade Ukraine for no reason than being evil.
Don’t you think if the Russian capitalists are investing so much money into the war because they see Ukraine as a pawn of the US and as a threat? And they will continue fund it if it stays a threat to them, beyond Putin? Nah, they put in billions for the lolz. Because Putin said so.
I feel like you want to have this argument with someone and, sure, go for it, but I feel like you’re painting OP as the average /r/worldnews poster, and that’s a very rude thing to do. For all I know they might agree with you but the hostility isn’t helping.
Sorry if this is a little forward or “tone policing”, it just bugged me.
I don’t think this is actually as bad as people say.
It’s not that we won’t have drinking water. Municipal water use is tiny! And provided with enough incentives (higher costs) people will use less water. And this can be done in very reasonable ways by issuing water tiered rates.
Agricultural water use, is a whole different topic. However, until we can incentives better water management on our massive agricultural lands, it’s only going to get worse.
I think better management and recharge of groundwater is the only way to weather the unpredictability climate change brings to precipitation. During winter floods it will be necessary to divert flows to areas where it can soak in to recharge aquifers and make it through the dry times. There simply isn’t enough space for surface storage to fill the gaps.
I think it’s important to note how much hardscape and channelling has been done to prevent widespread and sheet style flooding, and how they contribute to this problem of ground water recharge.
Most places that are flat enough to build are flat enough to build because of thousands of millenia of flooding, especially sheet flooding, laying down sediment and making them flat. Then humans get annoyed because the flat low places floos, so they build flood control.
There is a post further down about how Muni water really isn’t an issue and I agree with this. I’ve put up a couple posts explaining this on Reddit and hacker news. I could rehash it if some one was interested.
Words should matter though. The guy you responded too is correct. There is a very big difference in responses to pandemics vs drought. Both can cause upheaval, but that’s about where the similarities end.
even used figuratively, it’s bad writing for the reason i explained. this isn’t some high school essay; it’s a headline in a well-regarded, internationally-recognized newspaper. this should never have passed editorial muster. it’s sloppy.
Are you surprised? After SA continued doing business with Russia after much of the west had imposed sanctions this type of inconvenience is expected. It’s petty and exactly the type of thing delegates are used to
Yeah the fact that SA doesn’t agree with the west politically totally justifies holding their delegation hostage. Thank you for your insightful comment.
edit: presumably downvoters think it’s normal behavior for countries to do this sort of thing, if this is the way the west is going to keep acting on the world stage then life is going to get very hard for westerners
One could say that with every election. It’s always a gamble but when you start from such a low point it really doesn’t matter. Putin is a violent dictator using a scorched earth policy against Ukraine. He is ruthlessly suppressing LGBTQ people to the point where their existence cannot be spoke of. He kills his opponents and is engaged in an ongoing Cold War with the USA. He needs to go.
Also, given the lack of a clear successor, Putin's death would likely lead to a power vacuum and infighting-- which means they'll be too busy fighting each other to focus on attacking us.
archive.is/j7NqS if you don’t want to be assaulted by cookie notices and paywalls and more.
Edit to add: I find it absurd how this logic is used so often:
He insisted that Russia was justified in starting the war because Ukraine was run by “Nazis”, even though its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.
It’s logical nonsense to think the two are mutually exclusive. Moreover, it ignores the very real issue of Nazis in Ukraine. We even see this “don’t believe your eyes” nonsense, trying to convince people open and proud Nazis aren’t in fact Nazis.
Nobody honestly believes Putin started the war to fight Nazis, he just used it as an excuse because he thought the West would stay out of his way for this flimsy lie. Instead he was quickly called out for using resources such as his own Wagner Group in the war which directly recruit modern Nazis, and thus lost all credibility.
Russia also said demilitarisation and pointed fingers at NATO. If it’s this and denazification, it would suggest that Russia was hoping for NATO/the West to get involved in exactly the way that it got involved.
Further, the Russian perspective is that NATO was already involved by running a coup then supporting about a decade of shelling in Donbass. If that’s the case – and the important detail here is not what westerners think NATO reps were doing in Ukraine all those years, but what Russia thought – there is no logical scenario in which Western involvement comes as a surprise. It was known to be there before the invasion.
And if NATO really wasn’t in Ukraine before that invasion, the point still stands: Russia expected NATO involvement even if it’s initial intelligence was faulty.
That doesn’t mean denazification is the main reason for the invasion. Although there are people who accept that reasoning as it was more than just a Nazi presence. It was an organised Nazi terror campaign against ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, killing thousands.
No matter how you look at it, Putin was just swinging his dick around thinking he was a big boy that could tell everyone else where to stick it. I really do believe he thought Russia was a dominant world power, but he’s living in the dark ages and didn’t have a clue that social media can change governments. Zelenskyy knew how to play the game and got people to care about his country again, and that immediately made a difference in how much aid they could ask for.
It’s freaking hilarious how untrustworthy China is, yet the US still trips over themselves to buy Chinese crap. The capitalist race to the bottom in full effect, from the economy to the gov’t.
You sure about that? Wasn’t Russia like in a much worser shape after WW1 and got raided by line 15 countries at once (“to strangle the bolshevik baby in its crib” according to Churchill)? And they still prevailed?
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