deferring to putin shows up in many forms
I mean … ok. What is your suggestion beyond sanctions (which I would suspect the so-called putin deferrers themselves would be in favour of) and supporting resistance?
The Schlieffen plan was hatched years earlier. You’re saying they had a crystal ball and knew Ferdinand would be assassinated?
Nothing that you’ve posted contradicts what I said. Whether or not they were going to invade France eventually doesn’t mean they expected them or, more importantly, Russia to attack.
Russia started general mobilization of their military July 30th. Germany took Luxembourg August 2nd and invaded Belgium on August 4th as part of their invasion of France. You can’t do that quickly if you didn’t expect having to do it
at this point we are going to end up lobbying congressional and presidential candidates to support ukraine’s border readiness and nato status. things like no flight zones over mariupol might be necessary.
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Funcrusher is correct. The Germans gave a so called “blank cheque” to the Austrians by promising to support them in their war against Serbia because they didn’t think that Russia would be willing to go to war over it. They believed it would be a localised war in the Balkans in which Austria would rapidly crush these insolent upstarts. Austria dithered for weeks in presenting an ultimatum to the Serbians and creating a casus belli. At that time Russia, for a number of reasons including having received assurances of French support, declared that it would support Serbia and began a partial military mobilization.
This created a problem for Germany, because as you mentioned, the Schlieffen plan called for a quick defeat of France first in any two-front war against the Franco-Russian alliance. That contingency plan had existed for years, which is why they were able to put it into effect so quickly, but German military mobilization did not begin until after Russian mobilization, which was something they had been confident would not happen when they gave assurances of support to Austria.
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Lol
I can see this becoming one of UPs chinese whispers type games where any context is gradually removed and in a few months time someone will post…
“who was it that said he thought New York was going to get nuked - what an eejit”
Anyone know how good Putin’s internal propaganda game is? I guess I’m wondering if the Russian military is as dedicated to the idea of seizing Ukraine as Putin seems to be. I’m pretty sure Trump got some military pushback when it came to Trumpian ideas like BLM crackdowns, seizing voting machines and martial law. Could something similar happen with the Russian military?
putin’s dissenters tend to be poisoned or thrown off a balcony so I’m gonna go with no
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NATO is a huge and legit threat in the eyes of Russia, but what evidence is there to suggest that Ukraine was ever joining NATO any time soon?
Ask yourself whose will.
WW1 went up in flames because of numerous pacts that existed between pairs of nations.
Imo Putin doesnt even need to just focus on Europe. He knows that quite few western democracies are mostly against unnecessary military spending. The numbers of armed personnel went down over the years which means the EU cant spread their numbers too much. Just last week the Europeans and Canada decided to end their engagement in Mali after apparently the Wagner group helped the new leader of that country. So by keeping the Europeans focussed on Europe it opens up Africa to be taken(exploited, further destabilized) by Russia and also China. The EU just loses their influence and there arent a lot of natural resources on the continent. All we have is our economy right now which is also hugely dependent on cheap energy.
Most of the talk I hear is from my Ukrainian students concerned about their family back home. It’s not something I feel particularly comfortable bringing up given the situation.
But before this speech, they and most of this country were pretty confident that it was all bluster.
Putin is a reminder not to put a KGB agent as head of state. Russia sure is impressed with itself when its primary political achievement for 500 years is demonstrating to the world why dictatorships are bad.
Do you think Ukraine has the right to exist as a nation separate from Russia? If so, under what conditions?
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Germany suspends certification of Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
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Maybe the Russians will be greeted as liberators!
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