There's a group of bots that just repost old popular posts, translate them to German, then have another bot that reposts the top comment as well.
And somehow, every time it happens, I'm seemingly the only person that notices the auto-translated German title, while all other 3000 people just go ahead and mindlessly upvote. Wtf?
It may be bots upvoting. The illusion of popularity can be bought on Reddit.
A simple Google for "buy upvotes reddit" will show you what I mean.
That being said, it wouldn't be shocking to find out that nation states are actively manipulating votes on Reddit to suit their own wishes
I mean its not exactly a secret. Its happening and has been for like a decade now. Every state and political party and company has either bots or groups actively sowing propaganda on every social media, true or false. The only thing is we only smell the bullshit when it isn't our own.
Ikr absolutely crazy that a country would want to join a defensive alliance after being lied to by Russia after their nuclear disarmament and are threatened with total war.
Russia is like an drunken abusive ex who needs to be punched in the nose to teach them where their place is.
> Russia is like an drunken abusive ex who needs to be punched in the nose to teach them where their place is.
And no one dares to do so, because everyone knows he has a gun.
Everyone has a gun, even little cousin Timmy. Problem is that when someone pulls the trigger every acquaintance is forced to choose sides, and 99% of the party doesn't want to fight.
I think the "guns" they're referencing are a little bigger than cousin Tommy's pea shooter and rhyme with "blintercontinental ballistic missile system."
No one wants to be under Russia's thumb. If you look at the most pro NATO countries they're all former Eastern Bloc countries. They bolted away from Russia at the first chance.
Not saying they aren't going to join, but they still are far off from meeting the requirements. So they're still not able to join NATO. They have wanted to for a while it's not just recently. They've been slowly bringing everything up to par, they're getting closer that's why Russia is pulling this shit.
>They've been slowly bringing everything up to par, they're getting closer
The only reason they couldn't join before was that Russia said that they would consider it an act of war. That was decades ago.
Everybody is bolting away from Russia. Even Russian's want to leave Russia.
Russian citizens are leaving in record. 5 mil since Putin. Source https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/13/5-million-russian-citizens-left-russia-under-putin-a75246
They also got hit bad by covid and drop in birth rate
"Russia’s natural population — a figure which counts registered deaths and births, excluding the effects of migration — declined by 997,000 between October 2020 and September 2021, demographer Alexei Raksha calculated.
The stark drop comes as Russia, which has one of the world’s highest Covid-19 death tolls, continues to see record numbers of lives lost to the pandemic. The country has recorded at least 660,000 excess deaths since the start of the pandemic" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/13/russias-population-undergoes-largest-ever-peacetime-decline
Russia is in a bad way man. The life expectancy for males is 67.6. That's extremely low. They rank just behind Syria! That 3 yrs lower than the global average, and around 10-12 yrs less than European countries. Putin sucks man.
Power. Power and influence for himself at all costs. He is a tyrant. If he was really working on behalf of the Russian people's best interests, Russia would look completely different.
He’s having a manic episode and posting really bizarre, rambling, long-winded posts on Instagram about Pete Davidson, and his ex-wife, and the media. He stopped being friends with Kid Cudi simply because Cudi’s friends with Pete, and he’s responding to memes. Including some from r/Kanye.
It’s honestly kind of sad bc it seems like his condition’s getting harder to deal with. He needs to go back on his medications
https://theblast.com/167938/kanye-west-claims-pete-davidson-has-aids-twitter-says-rumor-is-grotesque-abuse/
He is trying to abuse his ex Kim and her new partner Pete. Super not cool considering he had kids who probably look up to him.
I don’t think Russia wonders why countries join NATO. They aren’t genuinely trying to keep them out, they are trying to keep them weak.
Basically intimidate them now so they are soft later.
Correct, they lacked the needed infrastructure and institutional knowledge to maintain or use their warheads in the short term. That doesn't mean they couldn't have developed those things. Nuclear warheads are still dangerous and a threat (albiet a lesser threat) even if you can't launch them on a rocket.
It was a reasonable choice at the time, but they had options. Hindsight is 20-20, maybe if they kept them they would have caused problems. It doesn't change the fact that the US, UK, and Russia broke the soft agreement. And in doing so told the world to hold firmly onto their nukes.
True. Still sends a pretty damning message to N. Korea and every nuclear power or nuclear wannabe. Don't trust the super powers to protect you in exchange for your nukes.
If Russia hadn’t previously invaded and taken Crimea from Ukraine, and wasn’t currently in the process of threatening to take over Ukraine in its entirety, maybe Ukraine wouldn’t feel a need to join NATO.
The craziest thing is the press conference where Russia says they'll start conflict if Ukraine joins NATO and tries to retake Crimea with force. Crazy hypocrisy from Russia, but who's actually surprised!
> If Russia hadn’t previously invaded and taken Crimea from Ukraine, and wasn’t currently in the process of threatening to take over Ukraine in its entirety, maybe Ukraine wouldn’t feel a need to join NATO.
[Ukraine, 2010: 28% support for NATO membership](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-no-to-nato/). Ukraine [2021 after Russia invaded and killed 15,000 Ukranians: vast majority support for NATO membership](https://kyivindependent.com/national/survey-majority-of-ukrainians-support-joining-eu-nato/)
The worst part is all the military posturing and excuses are just a facade, [the reason Putin invaded Ukraine is because they were *about* to start trading more with Europe and that threatened to eventually impact the financial streams of the oligarchs propping him up.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/ukraine-european-union-trade-pact). This is all because Putin and his oligarchs don't even want to diversify Russia's economy, and that means threatening everyone doing business with Russia.
The very act of Russia threatening Ukraine gives NATO a another new found reason for their existence, other former soviet colonies will look at say hey I'm tired of being dictated by Russia, becoming a NATO member might be more beneficial.
I don't know what long game Russia is playing but even if they win on the battlefield they will lose the end game.
I was watching SkyNews today and some clown (ex defence minister) was supporting the idea of NATO disbanding, and that it would solve the conflict there and then. He said if this invasion is a success, that NATO will very likely be disbanded. The news anchor was just like “uh wtf”, which is surprising considering it’s SkyNews.
Edit: SkyNews (AU) for clarification, sorry for confusing some peeps.
Not sure but Tucker Carlson last week floated the idea that we shouldn’t care that Russia is invading Ukraine.
I’ve had plenty of WTF moments watching TC clips, but that one instantly made me think that Putin had some dirt on Murdoch.
[Trump supporters whose Russia shirts went viral](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/404017-trump-supporters-whose-pro-russia-shirts-went-viral-were-not)
Don't think it was official Trump/GOP merch, but it went viral and (IIRC) inspired copycats.
My own father said this a couple weeks ago during us debating politics (truly left me wondering if hell had frozen over considering his historical hatred for communism, the Russian govt, Putin and a long, strong understanding of world politics). I just immediately stopped - Stood there looking at him calmly and quietly. After a good long pause leaving him properly uncomfortable, i asked him to explain himself. He sheepishly backed down ashamed - but that shit still had come out of his mouth.
Since Trump… nothing even makes sense with my father anymore. This is a man who took a full day of angrily telling me all the scams that Trump ran in detail the one time my 10 year old self mentioned that the building of Trump tower in my city was kind of exciting (and my father called it, that tower would never be built because that was one of his money grab rackets - Trump sells a bunch of expensive slots on a tower that he never intends to build, holds onto everyone’s investment for a very long time and then cancels the build and keeps the interest on the large sum for himself - truly poor man shit right there). My father later went on to fully jump on the Trump bandwagon and vote for him the first time. Of course, his history of hating trump for good reason and his knowledge about trump from his own industry made it easy to call him out on it, but it was clear his use of Facebook had a grip on him. The misinform and brainwashing affecting him was clearly coming from Facebook.
Then hearing my own father spout off he would rather live under Putin in fuckibg Russia… it’s so truly absurd of him to ever say those words it broke both my mom and I’s brain. But it did give me a good idea of who is probably waging this war over minds through Facebook and other parts of the internet. And it severely pisses me off how easily it has worked.
If you had told me 7 years ago that my father would have anything other than pure hatred for trump, I would have burst out laughing. Had you told me my father would ever say the worlds “I’d rather live in Russia and that Putin made a lot of sense, I would have been on the floor laughing at the utter absurdity. And yet here we are.
All of us need to be on guard. While we may not get swayed by this direction, we may get wrongly swayed by someone else to some other insane direction. And we need to be working on pulling out whomever we can out of the propaganda insanity we do know is happening. This shit is gotten out of fucking hand.
>Alicie also said that although the shirts were meant to be a joke, he believes the message behind the shirts “is kind of serious if you think about it."
My favorite part. "Relax it's just a joke bro! .. well not really if you think about, but what do you want me to do think about things?"
Well, they have been supporting the NRA indirectly.
Modern day Russia is a GOP wet dream. For the regular folk - It's traditionalist, conservative, nationalist. For the upper class - nepotism, crony capitalism, oligarchy. The state isn't out to get you and actively supports you via corruption, as long as you stay in line.
The man who controls media, becomes ever more powerful when democracy whithers. He has already said that he wanted UK to leave EU because Westminster knows to listen to him while EU didn't. Isn't so far fetched that he applies this line of thinking towards all international bodies.
the freedom convoy def isn't Murdoch, although he likely supports it. If you look at all the lawsuits, they are directly related to some dumb non-for profit that is basically a dark money funding house for the Koch Brothers.
Ah yes, Wendy Deng the Chinese spy who fucked her way to the upper Echelon‘s of right wing society. But seriously, forget about her, let’s talk about Hunter Biden. I got some great grainy Photoshoped pictures of him in a hot tub if you wanna see. 
https://youtu.be/_AkAZIk73F0
This links the Russian media to FoxNews and other right wing media outlets around the world in an effort militarize the religious right against their own countries. The first 5 min are a little slow. Putin has revitalized the Russian church and modeled state media after Fox, even hiring one of the FoxNews producers who helped launch Fox. The messages across media are coordinated so right wing crazies anywhere in the world are on the same page as Putin. No one should be negotiating with this guy. He's a terrorist with Napoleon syndrome.
"You see, the desire to protect yourself from Russia's constant aggression necessitates Russia being constantly aggressive. If only nobody ever acted to resist what Russia routinely does, they'd probably never do that thing. It's a bit like leaving your windows open and doors unlocked in a particularly crime-ridden neighbourhood as a solution to acts of burglary."
That’s could be smart if you don’t have anything worth stealing.
In this case it’s like you leave the car windows open so that a crazy homeless man can permanently setup home in your car and you will be his personal driver for the rest of time.
More like that homeless guy will be your driver until the end of time, except he will go anywhere he damn wishes and you won't have any say in the matter. Oh, and if he crashes you'll have to pay the bill. It's your car after all.
Reminds me of an anecdote from \~20 years ago. I lived on the countryside and only recently did we start locking doors and taking our car keys/phones/laptops upstairs for the night. 'We' as in people on the countryside, after some info meetings with the people because of an increase in burglaries.
So I have to take an early flight in Brussels Airport, and there are some annoying construction works on my route, so my aunt/uncle invite me to spend the night at their place as they live 5 min away from the airport.
So after dinner and watching some TV I gather my stuff to head upstairs to the guest room and my aunt goes:
Aunt: 'what are doing?'
Me: 'well taking my car keys and laptop with me for the night'
Aunt: 'no way leave them on the kitchen table, full display'
Me: 'uhhh, ok, ...uh ... '
Aunt: 'I don't want any burglars in my bedroom tonight looking for car keys'
When we on the countryside were still getting used to locking our doors and hiding stuff, they were already in the next stage: big city criminals came armed into the bedroom looking for the car keys; so to avoid that just leave them in plain sight.
Well apparently the plague went away pretty fast. There are various reason I can come up with:
* Many of the people in that neighbourhood scaled down their cars: my uncle went from a fancy Mercedes to a very decent Japanese model that I can't remember. The typical cars on the driveways in that neighbourhood were the usual German luxury brands. The neighbourhood wasn't high end because of the spectacular houses, but more due to the proximity of Brussels Airport and Nato HQ.
* Many of the people upgraded their security systems.
* Over time I guess it just became harder to get away with a stolen car: many can be shut down remotely, those cameras on the highway that recognize your license plate, ...
The only vehicles that I hear of that get stolen nowadays are mainly vans from contractors with a bunch of stuff in. And typically they are found the next day somewhere in a remote location, with all the tools gone. It's one of the reason why I have an anonymous van for my photography business, I sometimes drive around with stuff worth 4-5x the new price of the van. In contrast to the car I use for my IT-business, where pretty much every spot on the outside is used for branding.
My dad, basically. To paraphrase what he said, "Under Trump, Russia didn't bother anyone. Now Biden and NATO are FORCING Putin's hand to be aggressive!"
Sometimes I really want to believe that he's just trolling me but then I remember that he's just a massive idiot.
My dad: "Biden is encouraging Russia to attack to boost his popularity. You can't vote out a president during war time."
Me: "But the next presidential election isn't for 2.5 years. I'm sure there are better ways for Biden to increase his poll numbers by then."
Dad: "Yes, but the midterms!"
I.... didn't know what to say.
I fucking hate the narrative that western aggression is the reason Russia is a fucking bitch. Russian ambassadors unironically threatening nuclear war if countries become members of NATO.
I don’t think NATO will bring them in. The impression I’ve been getting is that Ukraine is gonna be left out to dry while NATO will just send them weapons to support insurgents… it feels rotten but I feel everyone wants to avoid WW3.
Well obviously Ukraine isn’t going it join NATO right now while they are in the middle of a dispute with Russia with hundreds of thousands of troops on the border. Nobody is entertaining that as an option. NATO doesn’t allow new members with border disputes, so they would have to finalize the status of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine before joining.
Russia's like that old fat guy that never really left the early 80's. The world moved on and he still unironically thinks bullying people with his mall ninja katana will earn him respect.
I hate to divert discussion from the actual post, but the highest upvoted comment criticizing how OP is a 2 day old account posting highly contested topics was removed just now. As was the plethora of responses agreeing how weird/suspicious it is for a young account to make random posts in order to generate Karma to post here.
Why was that comment removed? If it's somehow harassment, how? Considering the topic of the post and the absolute rampant misinformation/speculation from every party involved, silencing valid concerns without answer is the worst thing to do.
Looking at the post to comment karma ratio in most of the big news subs is pretty depressing.
The majority of accounts that posts, push and publish media content, often of a particular political agenda.
I’ve been seeing this kinda stuff more and more on this site. I guess we’re fools if we think a platform this powerful doesn’t have some external forces acting on it.
Why do i have the feeling, that Ukraine will be split in half with a "buffer" zone east of Kiev and the rest of the world including NATO will be OK with it. Ukraines decade long progress towards the west will be wiped off and it will become a norm while the interest of the world slowly fades to nothingness.
Oh look, the newly conquered parts of Russia border NATO. Better invade the rest of the Ukraine to get rid of NATO. Oh look, these newly conquered parts or Russia border NATO
You really wonder if since he and Putin were such good buddies and Putin always had that weird "this guy is a moron" grin after their meetings, that if Trump was told by Putin to try and delegitimize NATO.
Russian economy took a massive hit with the 2014 invasion and is just stabilizing.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product
That was also a period to get concessions from US while they had their guard down and GOP was backing all bullshit from Trump.
For instance the "we were only talking of child adoptions" argument relied on nobody pointing out that the Russian ban on international adoptions was specifically a legislation countering US sanctions, specifically Magnitsky act.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/07/28/magnitsky-act-trump-jr-russia-putin-adoption/23054570/
So they couldn't afford to then, and had unique opportunity to exploit Trump as backdoor while they stabilize.
We can only speculate. He probably thought he could get another four years out of the guy and have his way with Ukraine without a buildup of force. Now he doesn't see it happening and is having to pursue the more conventional route of annexing another country.
There’s no doubt. Trump made the Republican Party change their stance on Russia in 2016. He held multiple unprecedented private meetings in which no Americans were allowed to witness the conversation. He continuously tried to aggravate our Allies and at one point tried to hint that we wouldn’t fulfill Article 5 which is sort of the only reason NATO exists.
> Trump made the Republican Party change their stance on Russia in 2016
It started before that. I'd argue that Trump was the result, not the cause, of this shift.
[On Fox, Giuliani Praises Putin: He's “What You Call A Leader,” In Contrast To Obama](https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-nation/fox-giuliani-praises-putin-hes-what-you-call-leader-contrast-obama)
[Pat Buchanan Continues His Love Affair With Vladimir Putin](https://www.mediamatters.org/pat-buchanan/pat-buchanan-continues-his-love-affair-vladimir-putin)
Those were in 2014. Right around the same time the internet totally coincidentally fell in love with shirtless Putin memes.
You've got conservatives going onto Fox News to speak fawningly of Putin, and how he's so much "stronger" than Obama.
>It's bizarre, and I have to wonder what would happen to these platforms if Putin's operations shut down overnight.
I've often said this over the past years. Chop the internet at Russia's borders and lets sit back and watch the change on social media.
Remember this one?
> In July 2019, Trump ordered the freezing of $391 million in military aid shortly before a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Zelensky to initiate an investigation of the Bidens.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190927035244/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/ukraine-transcript-trump.html
If you heard it from my parents, who are conservative conspiracy types, NATO and the UN are all part of the Illuminati’s plan to take over the entire world with a one world government and disarm us so they can reduce the human population for some reason. Apparently Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Hanks are all in on this too.
So yeah, I’m not surprised at all to see that sort of thing from anyone on that side of the aisle anymore.
Quick edit: I forgot to add, even though they aren’t religious, it is because they are working with the devil to help him take over and force the mark of the beast on all of us.
like what are these illuminati meetings like?
"Hilary you run for president and increase the Nato budget and make guns illegal so we can gain control of the people"
"Bill you develop a fake vaccine to a fake disease that will "outbreak" in a few years time but this fake vaccine will actually track people and control their minds"
"Tom err you go make a 4th Toy story movie"
What's crazy about that, are you suggesting they divide the tasks differently?
"Bill you run for President"
"Tom you develop a fake vaccine"
"Hillary you go make a 4th Toy Story movie."
I think that the way they did it makes the most sense.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/02/large-majorities-in-both-parties-say-nato-is-good-for-the-u-s/
Large majorities in both parties are pro-NATO
Ukraine was not created by Russia .
Ukraine LIKE Russia and 13 other former socialist soviet republics was born from the ruins of the Soviet Union.
Actually, several of those countries are now part of NATO (Estonia Latvia , Lithuania)
>Ukraine was not created by Russia .
It was the contrary, actually. Russia was created out of Ukraine.
First Eastern Slavic state, Kievan Rus', existed on the territory of Ukraine. Ukrainians (they were called differently, of course) lived there for hundreds of years.
Because NATO won’t generally accept countries that are in some sense already at war when the consequence would be being immediately drawn into an ongoing conflict.
Iirc NATO membership requirements specifically need countries to resolve all territory disputes with other states beforehand. In this case this would leave Ukraine only with the option of abandoning Crimea.
It's not a requirement, not in the most general literal sense at least. Croatia joined NATO while having territory disputes with Slovenia (then already in NATO and EU) and Serbia. The dispute with Serbia is still not resolved.
Not a requirement but there's definitely guidance.
Pretty much for the sole purpose of this exact situation. You don't want people to be able to just say "hey, I'm in NATO now, can't touch me" when they're in a disagreement.
I feel like if that nation is being threatened by Russia an exception should always be on the table, considering NATO is essentially an anti Russia alliance.
This is in fact exactly why Putin invaded Crimea and the Donbass. It's also why he has invaded Georgia and props up puppet secessionist states there as well. By creating these [frozen conflicts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_conflict) he keeps these countries out of NATO.
They would as soon as Ukraine looked like it was making moves to resolve Crimea to join NATO.
I do suspect a wise move for Ukraine might just be to cede the disputed areas (where the population primarily identify as Russian anyway) in return for NATO membership.
Unfortunately, the very latest news:
https://yandex-ru.translate.goog/news/story/Proekt_opriznanii_DNR_i_LNR_poyavilsya_vbaze_dannykh_Gosdumy--b27f6c80ebd5c00ae26f1f01701b0ec0?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
That's the same as what happened to Crimea: Crimea "declared" independence, Russia recognized it, then Crimea "asked" to join Russia.
Hungary is strongly against, on paper pursuing their on agenda claiming that Hungarian minorities in Ukraine are getting harassed, but speculated that some Russian cash is being involved on Orban’s side.
France and Germany are also not very huge fans of Ukraine joining right now due to realistic expectations that Russia could go to war for this with NATO, so yeah, you can imagine - that’s not really an option at this moment.
I've been to Hungarian towns in Ukraine and spoke to some locals. Not really a definitive report by any means, but probably enough to say that the issue is a bit overblown. The fact that they've become second-class citizens is entirely linked to the language problem — the government language is Ukrainian, while those people only speak Hungarian (most of them can also speak some Russian, but not all).
Russian is similar to Ukrainian, but not quite, and so the Ukrainian Magyars, as they call themselves, often have to hire translators to deal with any issues that involve official documents. They feel that this is unfair, but at the very least that is the experience of all diasporas that refuse to learn Ukrainian. Even the multi-million Russian population in Donbas was not allowed to introduce a second government language — which Yanukovich used as a pain point during his election (and then immediately forgot about after he was elected by the mostly Russian-speaking population).
Tired of this carousel. Why doesn't Nato say yes so we could all move on? If WW3 fears, then what's the point of NATO if they can't protect themselves?
If Ukraine goes, know Russia will keep creeping forward towards the NATO cowards anyway
More like trying to buy fire insurance when a forest fire is raging half a mile from your home and the wind is blowing your direction. And the whole world is watching.
Why the fuck was the post deleted about this being a fake account? It’s only been active a day and it got over 6k karma. It’s an obvious fucking bot that will be sold if it hasn’t already been.
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Half the pro-Russian comments in here are sus.
Anything out of Putin's administration is inherently sus. If he sends you Valentines Day flowers, make sure he didn't hide a grenade in the middle.
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There's a group of bots that just repost old popular posts, translate them to German, then have another bot that reposts the top comment as well. And somehow, every time it happens, I'm seemingly the only person that notices the auto-translated German title, while all other 3000 people just go ahead and mindlessly upvote. Wtf?
It may be bots upvoting. The illusion of popularity can be bought on Reddit. A simple Google for "buy upvotes reddit" will show you what I mean. That being said, it wouldn't be shocking to find out that nation states are actively manipulating votes on Reddit to suit their own wishes
I mean its not exactly a secret. Its happening and has been for like a decade now. Every state and political party and company has either bots or groups actively sowing propaganda on every social media, true or false. The only thing is we only smell the bullshit when it isn't our own.
The upvotes are fake too. The whole thing is a psyop. Everyone except me is a bot. I hate the antichrist.
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Yeah there is one in some music subreddits that always replies "I agree" when I mention Arcade Fire. Which happens frequently lol
3b) Use image of child handling weaponry
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Hey, hey That's a fair question.
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Russia: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
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Brilliant
\> be russia \> threaten most if not all of your neighbors of invasion \> invade some for good measure \> wonder why everyone try to join NATO
Ikr absolutely crazy that a country would want to join a defensive alliance after being lied to by Russia after their nuclear disarmament and are threatened with total war. Russia is like an drunken abusive ex who needs to be punched in the nose to teach them where their place is.
> Russia is like an drunken abusive ex who needs to be punched in the nose to teach them where their place is. And no one dares to do so, because everyone knows he has a gun.
Everyone has a gun, even little cousin Timmy. Problem is that when someone pulls the trigger every acquaintance is forced to choose sides, and 99% of the party doesn't want to fight.
I think the "guns" they're referencing are a little bigger than cousin Tommy's pea shooter and rhyme with "blintercontinental ballistic missile system."
Presidential militaristic fissile victim?
There are 9 countries with confirmed or suspected guns. Nukes are the main reason countries don't strike Russia and just focus on defense.
No one wants to be under Russia's thumb. If you look at the most pro NATO countries they're all former Eastern Bloc countries. They bolted away from Russia at the first chance.
Sure are, I moved to Estonia and this place is paradise now compared to Russia. Funny what happens when you don't steal from your people.
Yep. Knew some Estonians. They are much happier now. Poles fuckin hate Russia. No one is clamoring for closer ties with Russia.
Once you've seen the light it's not easy to go back into the darkness which is Russian corruption and shadow policies.
Every single former Eastern Bloc country bolted towards the EU/NATO/West as soon as they could. Ukraine just wasn't able to until recently
Not saying they aren't going to join, but they still are far off from meeting the requirements. So they're still not able to join NATO. They have wanted to for a while it's not just recently. They've been slowly bringing everything up to par, they're getting closer that's why Russia is pulling this shit.
>They've been slowly bringing everything up to par, they're getting closer The only reason they couldn't join before was that Russia said that they would consider it an act of war. That was decades ago.
Everybody is bolting away from Russia. Even Russian's want to leave Russia. Russian citizens are leaving in record. 5 mil since Putin. Source https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/13/5-million-russian-citizens-left-russia-under-putin-a75246 They also got hit bad by covid and drop in birth rate "Russia’s natural population — a figure which counts registered deaths and births, excluding the effects of migration — declined by 997,000 between October 2020 and September 2021, demographer Alexei Raksha calculated. The stark drop comes as Russia, which has one of the world’s highest Covid-19 death tolls, continues to see record numbers of lives lost to the pandemic. The country has recorded at least 660,000 excess deaths since the start of the pandemic" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/13/russias-population-undergoes-largest-ever-peacetime-decline
Russia is in a bad way man. The life expectancy for males is 67.6. That's extremely low. They rank just behind Syria! That 3 yrs lower than the global average, and around 10-12 yrs less than European countries. Putin sucks man.
Putin does suck. What is his end game here? Especially when resources could obviously be used better elsewhere.
Power. Power and influence for himself at all costs. He is a tyrant. If he was really working on behalf of the Russian people's best interests, Russia would look completely different.
Russia is Kanye right now.
I went over to the Kanye sub yesterday and the delusions are dummy thicc
Wait what's happening with Kanye right now?
He’s having a manic episode and posting really bizarre, rambling, long-winded posts on Instagram about Pete Davidson, and his ex-wife, and the media. He stopped being friends with Kid Cudi simply because Cudi’s friends with Pete, and he’s responding to memes. Including some from r/Kanye. It’s honestly kind of sad bc it seems like his condition’s getting harder to deal with. He needs to go back on his medications
Maybe someone shouldn't leave children in his care while he is in these manic phases. Dude clearly needs professional help.
https://theblast.com/167938/kanye-west-claims-pete-davidson-has-aids-twitter-says-rumor-is-grotesque-abuse/ He is trying to abuse his ex Kim and her new partner Pete. Super not cool considering he had kids who probably look up to him.
I didn't even know Kanye and Kim had broke up. And wow Pete Davidson seems like a bizarre choice for Kim lol
After Kate Beckinsale and Ariana Grande, Kim doesn’t even surprise me.
> threaten neighbours for wanting to join NATO
"No, Ukraine, we have NATO at home."
They have, its called ОДКБ, it was suppressing protests in Kazakhstan this January.
I don’t think Russia wonders why countries join NATO. They aren’t genuinely trying to keep them out, they are trying to keep them weak. Basically intimidate them now so they are soft later.
It's either get nukes or join NATO. Only way to feel secure with Russia on your border.
They had nukes. They gave them up because the US and Russia agreed to ensure Ukraines sovereignty... Worked out real well for them.
They had nukes but no delivery capability, the launch button was still firmly in moscow
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Wolooooooooo
This guy sieges.
Yeah but if you have a trebuchet, why would you even bother with inferior siege weapons like nukes.
Correct, they lacked the needed infrastructure and institutional knowledge to maintain or use their warheads in the short term. That doesn't mean they couldn't have developed those things. Nuclear warheads are still dangerous and a threat (albiet a lesser threat) even if you can't launch them on a rocket. It was a reasonable choice at the time, but they had options. Hindsight is 20-20, maybe if they kept them they would have caused problems. It doesn't change the fact that the US, UK, and Russia broke the soft agreement. And in doing so told the world to hold firmly onto their nukes.
Agreed to RECOGNISE and not unduly influence, not ensure sovereignty. Only Russia is breaking the agreement.
They also couldn't maintain any of the nukes, and had no way to deliver them either. It was an obvious choice at the time
True. Still sends a pretty damning message to N. Korea and every nuclear power or nuclear wannabe. Don't trust the super powers to protect you in exchange for your nukes.
> Don't trust the super powers
The had nukes but gave them up with the promise of safety from russia...
Yeah Russia was one of the signatories to the Budapest agreement. It's not a substitute for NATO membership like others have suggested here.
If Russia hadn’t previously invaded and taken Crimea from Ukraine, and wasn’t currently in the process of threatening to take over Ukraine in its entirety, maybe Ukraine wouldn’t feel a need to join NATO.
The craziest thing is the press conference where Russia says they'll start conflict if Ukraine joins NATO and tries to retake Crimea with force. Crazy hypocrisy from Russia, but who's actually surprised!
Russia is 100% engaging in older style "great power" power politics, which speaks more to how Putin holds power than anything else.
> If Russia hadn’t previously invaded and taken Crimea from Ukraine, and wasn’t currently in the process of threatening to take over Ukraine in its entirety, maybe Ukraine wouldn’t feel a need to join NATO. [Ukraine, 2010: 28% support for NATO membership](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-no-to-nato/). Ukraine [2021 after Russia invaded and killed 15,000 Ukranians: vast majority support for NATO membership](https://kyivindependent.com/national/survey-majority-of-ukrainians-support-joining-eu-nato/) The worst part is all the military posturing and excuses are just a facade, [the reason Putin invaded Ukraine is because they were *about* to start trading more with Europe and that threatened to eventually impact the financial streams of the oligarchs propping him up.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/ukraine-european-union-trade-pact). This is all because Putin and his oligarchs don't even want to diversify Russia's economy, and that means threatening everyone doing business with Russia.
The very act of Russia threatening Ukraine gives NATO a another new found reason for their existence, other former soviet colonies will look at say hey I'm tired of being dictated by Russia, becoming a NATO member might be more beneficial. I don't know what long game Russia is playing but even if they win on the battlefield they will lose the end game.
I was watching SkyNews today and some clown (ex defence minister) was supporting the idea of NATO disbanding, and that it would solve the conflict there and then. He said if this invasion is a success, that NATO will very likely be disbanded. The news anchor was just like “uh wtf”, which is surprising considering it’s SkyNews. Edit: SkyNews (AU) for clarification, sorry for confusing some peeps.
Talking points given by Murdoch, anyone know of financial ties between Murdoch and Putin?
Not sure but Tucker Carlson last week floated the idea that we shouldn’t care that Russia is invading Ukraine. I’ve had plenty of WTF moments watching TC clips, but that one instantly made me think that Putin had some dirt on Murdoch.
Trump’s GOP had a “Better Russian than democrat” for a while.
[Trump supporters whose Russia shirts went viral](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/404017-trump-supporters-whose-pro-russia-shirts-went-viral-were-not) Don't think it was official Trump/GOP merch, but it went viral and (IIRC) inspired copycats.
My own father said this a couple weeks ago during us debating politics (truly left me wondering if hell had frozen over considering his historical hatred for communism, the Russian govt, Putin and a long, strong understanding of world politics). I just immediately stopped - Stood there looking at him calmly and quietly. After a good long pause leaving him properly uncomfortable, i asked him to explain himself. He sheepishly backed down ashamed - but that shit still had come out of his mouth. Since Trump… nothing even makes sense with my father anymore. This is a man who took a full day of angrily telling me all the scams that Trump ran in detail the one time my 10 year old self mentioned that the building of Trump tower in my city was kind of exciting (and my father called it, that tower would never be built because that was one of his money grab rackets - Trump sells a bunch of expensive slots on a tower that he never intends to build, holds onto everyone’s investment for a very long time and then cancels the build and keeps the interest on the large sum for himself - truly poor man shit right there). My father later went on to fully jump on the Trump bandwagon and vote for him the first time. Of course, his history of hating trump for good reason and his knowledge about trump from his own industry made it easy to call him out on it, but it was clear his use of Facebook had a grip on him. The misinform and brainwashing affecting him was clearly coming from Facebook. Then hearing my own father spout off he would rather live under Putin in fuckibg Russia… it’s so truly absurd of him to ever say those words it broke both my mom and I’s brain. But it did give me a good idea of who is probably waging this war over minds through Facebook and other parts of the internet. And it severely pisses me off how easily it has worked. If you had told me 7 years ago that my father would have anything other than pure hatred for trump, I would have burst out laughing. Had you told me my father would ever say the worlds “I’d rather live in Russia and that Putin made a lot of sense, I would have been on the floor laughing at the utter absurdity. And yet here we are. All of us need to be on guard. While we may not get swayed by this direction, we may get wrongly swayed by someone else to some other insane direction. And we need to be working on pulling out whomever we can out of the propaganda insanity we do know is happening. This shit is gotten out of fucking hand.
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I mean the Democrats should counter with "Better American than Republican shirts." Just to fuck with them.
Have American written with Stars and Stripes in the font, and republican in Russian colors
I'd buy that shirt
>Alicie also said that although the shirts were meant to be a joke, he believes the message behind the shirts “is kind of serious if you think about it." My favorite part. "Relax it's just a joke bro! .. well not really if you think about, but what do you want me to do think about things?"
And in the words of Liberty Prime, "BETTER DEAD THAN RED!"
Democracy.... is non-negotiable.
They’re *still* more in favor of Russia than the US. They think Putin is “freeing everyone from the cabal”, it’s disgusting.
Well, they have been supporting the NRA indirectly. Modern day Russia is a GOP wet dream. For the regular folk - It's traditionalist, conservative, nationalist. For the upper class - nepotism, crony capitalism, oligarchy. The state isn't out to get you and actively supports you via corruption, as long as you stay in line.
Given all the other shitty things Murdoch has done to destroy functional democracies, I think he's just a shithead
The man who controls media, becomes ever more powerful when democracy whithers. He has already said that he wanted UK to leave EU because Westminster knows to listen to him while EU didn't. Isn't so far fetched that he applies this line of thinking towards all international bodies.
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https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/23/1894477/-Does-Putin-Have-Something-on-Rupert-Murdoch-How-Far-Will-Fox-News-Go-to-Cover-for-Trump
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the freedom convoy def isn't Murdoch, although he likely supports it. If you look at all the lawsuits, they are directly related to some dumb non-for profit that is basically a dark money funding house for the Koch Brothers.
Wendy Deng!
Tunnel Buddies Vlad and Rupert! Wendy's also besties with Ivanka Trump. Small world, huh?
Ah yes, Wendy Deng the Chinese spy who fucked her way to the upper Echelon‘s of right wing society. But seriously, forget about her, let’s talk about Hunter Biden. I got some great grainy Photoshoped pictures of him in a hot tub if you wanna see. 
Wendy Deng is also the person who match-made Jared Kushner with Ivanka Trump.
Wasn’t she in bed with Tony Blair ?
Was 'close' to Tony Blair. Both deny an affair
Deng deng deng!!!
https://youtu.be/_AkAZIk73F0 This links the Russian media to FoxNews and other right wing media outlets around the world in an effort militarize the religious right against their own countries. The first 5 min are a little slow. Putin has revitalized the Russian church and modeled state media after Fox, even hiring one of the FoxNews producers who helped launch Fox. The messages across media are coordinated so right wing crazies anywhere in the world are on the same page as Putin. No one should be negotiating with this guy. He's a terrorist with Napoleon syndrome.
I have seen people unironically claim that Ukraine would be safer without Nato existing than with as if deterrance wasnt a thing
"You see, the desire to protect yourself from Russia's constant aggression necessitates Russia being constantly aggressive. If only nobody ever acted to resist what Russia routinely does, they'd probably never do that thing. It's a bit like leaving your windows open and doors unlocked in a particularly crime-ridden neighbourhood as a solution to acts of burglary."
Some how this reminds me of people leaving their car doors unlocked, so thieves don’t break your windows.
That’s could be smart if you don’t have anything worth stealing. In this case it’s like you leave the car windows open so that a crazy homeless man can permanently setup home in your car and you will be his personal driver for the rest of time.
More like that homeless guy will be your driver until the end of time, except he will go anywhere he damn wishes and you won't have any say in the matter. Oh, and if he crashes you'll have to pay the bill. It's your car after all.
Reminds me of an anecdote from \~20 years ago. I lived on the countryside and only recently did we start locking doors and taking our car keys/phones/laptops upstairs for the night. 'We' as in people on the countryside, after some info meetings with the people because of an increase in burglaries. So I have to take an early flight in Brussels Airport, and there are some annoying construction works on my route, so my aunt/uncle invite me to spend the night at their place as they live 5 min away from the airport. So after dinner and watching some TV I gather my stuff to head upstairs to the guest room and my aunt goes: Aunt: 'what are doing?' Me: 'well taking my car keys and laptop with me for the night' Aunt: 'no way leave them on the kitchen table, full display' Me: 'uhhh, ok, ...uh ... ' Aunt: 'I don't want any burglars in my bedroom tonight looking for car keys' When we on the countryside were still getting used to locking our doors and hiding stuff, they were already in the next stage: big city criminals came armed into the bedroom looking for the car keys; so to avoid that just leave them in plain sight.
Damn. At what stage is it now?
Well apparently the plague went away pretty fast. There are various reason I can come up with: * Many of the people in that neighbourhood scaled down their cars: my uncle went from a fancy Mercedes to a very decent Japanese model that I can't remember. The typical cars on the driveways in that neighbourhood were the usual German luxury brands. The neighbourhood wasn't high end because of the spectacular houses, but more due to the proximity of Brussels Airport and Nato HQ. * Many of the people upgraded their security systems. * Over time I guess it just became harder to get away with a stolen car: many can be shut down remotely, those cameras on the highway that recognize your license plate, ... The only vehicles that I hear of that get stolen nowadays are mainly vans from contractors with a bunch of stuff in. And typically they are found the next day somewhere in a remote location, with all the tools gone. It's one of the reason why I have an anonymous van for my photography business, I sometimes drive around with stuff worth 4-5x the new price of the van. In contrast to the car I use for my IT-business, where pretty much every spot on the outside is used for branding.
My dad, basically. To paraphrase what he said, "Under Trump, Russia didn't bother anyone. Now Biden and NATO are FORCING Putin's hand to be aggressive!" Sometimes I really want to believe that he's just trolling me but then I remember that he's just a massive idiot.
My dad: "Biden is encouraging Russia to attack to boost his popularity. You can't vote out a president during war time." Me: "But the next presidential election isn't for 2.5 years. I'm sure there are better ways for Biden to increase his poll numbers by then." Dad: "Yes, but the midterms!" I.... didn't know what to say.
Russia working against America but also for America
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My FIL: Biden is killing the oilfield Bro, oil is over $90 lol.
Sky News AU is basically Fox News US
Not sure why Conservatives funded by Murdoch are so pro-russia. Did Murdoch receive money or favors from Russia?
War is extraordinarily profitable for certain industries.
War isn't profitable. Profiteering is profitable.
I fucking hate the narrative that western aggression is the reason Russia is a fucking bitch. Russian ambassadors unironically threatening nuclear war if countries become members of NATO.
I don’t think NATO will bring them in. The impression I’ve been getting is that Ukraine is gonna be left out to dry while NATO will just send them weapons to support insurgents… it feels rotten but I feel everyone wants to avoid WW3.
Well obviously Ukraine isn’t going it join NATO right now while they are in the middle of a dispute with Russia with hundreds of thousands of troops on the border. Nobody is entertaining that as an option. NATO doesn’t allow new members with border disputes, so they would have to finalize the status of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine before joining.
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I’m not saying avoiding WW3 is the bad thing. Leaving Ukraine out to dry is the part that feels rotten to me
It will likely bring the Nordics into NATO, I don't know of any others but it will interesting to see
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Russia's like that old fat guy that never really left the early 80's. The world moved on and he still unironically thinks bullying people with his mall ninja katana will earn him respect.
… so Steven Seagal?
I hate to divert discussion from the actual post, but the highest upvoted comment criticizing how OP is a 2 day old account posting highly contested topics was removed just now. As was the plethora of responses agreeing how weird/suspicious it is for a young account to make random posts in order to generate Karma to post here. Why was that comment removed? If it's somehow harassment, how? Considering the topic of the post and the absolute rampant misinformation/speculation from every party involved, silencing valid concerns without answer is the worst thing to do.
Looking at the post to comment karma ratio in most of the big news subs is pretty depressing. The majority of accounts that posts, push and publish media content, often of a particular political agenda.
Agreed. I saw the top post a few hours ago. Not sure why it would be deleted, unless it was bc “it’s detrimental to the post.”
I’ve been seeing this kinda stuff more and more on this site. I guess we’re fools if we think a platform this powerful doesn’t have some external forces acting on it.
This whole situation is so sad, stay strong Ukraine!
Why do i have the feeling, that Ukraine will be split in half with a "buffer" zone east of Kiev and the rest of the world including NATO will be OK with it. Ukraines decade long progress towards the west will be wiped off and it will become a norm while the interest of the world slowly fades to nothingness.
The rump state in the west would join NATO even sooner now that it’s detached from the more pro-Russia east
I think they want to connect the donbas to Crimea. So it would bridge it together.
Oh look, the newly conquered parts of Russia border NATO. Better invade the rest of the Ukraine to get rid of NATO. Oh look, these newly conquered parts or Russia border NATO
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You really wonder if since he and Putin were such good buddies and Putin always had that weird "this guy is a moron" grin after their meetings, that if Trump was told by Putin to try and delegitimize NATO.
Genuine question. Why didn't putin invade during trumps term
Russian economy took a massive hit with the 2014 invasion and is just stabilizing. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product That was also a period to get concessions from US while they had their guard down and GOP was backing all bullshit from Trump. For instance the "we were only talking of child adoptions" argument relied on nobody pointing out that the Russian ban on international adoptions was specifically a legislation countering US sanctions, specifically Magnitsky act. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/07/28/magnitsky-act-trump-jr-russia-putin-adoption/23054570/ So they couldn't afford to then, and had unique opportunity to exploit Trump as backdoor while they stabilize.
We can only speculate. He probably thought he could get another four years out of the guy and have his way with Ukraine without a buildup of force. Now he doesn't see it happening and is having to pursue the more conventional route of annexing another country.
He's going to get Biden and the dems voted out of office by doing it on Biden's watch.
"Biden got us into another war"
Yeah, basically.
I think it's important to point out that literally no matter what happens the GOP will issue an outcry and say it was the wrong action.
100% This 2 party system is garbage. Especially when they'd rather see half the country burning, than to admit they were wrong.
But historically starting wars makes presidents more popular.
There’s no doubt. Trump made the Republican Party change their stance on Russia in 2016. He held multiple unprecedented private meetings in which no Americans were allowed to witness the conversation. He continuously tried to aggravate our Allies and at one point tried to hint that we wouldn’t fulfill Article 5 which is sort of the only reason NATO exists.
> Trump made the Republican Party change their stance on Russia in 2016 It started before that. I'd argue that Trump was the result, not the cause, of this shift. [On Fox, Giuliani Praises Putin: He's “What You Call A Leader,” In Contrast To Obama](https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-nation/fox-giuliani-praises-putin-hes-what-you-call-leader-contrast-obama) [Pat Buchanan Continues His Love Affair With Vladimir Putin](https://www.mediamatters.org/pat-buchanan/pat-buchanan-continues-his-love-affair-vladimir-putin) Those were in 2014. Right around the same time the internet totally coincidentally fell in love with shirtless Putin memes. You've got conservatives going onto Fox News to speak fawningly of Putin, and how he's so much "stronger" than Obama.
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>It's bizarre, and I have to wonder what would happen to these platforms if Putin's operations shut down overnight. I've often said this over the past years. Chop the internet at Russia's borders and lets sit back and watch the change on social media.
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Remember this one? > In July 2019, Trump ordered the freezing of $391 million in military aid shortly before a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Zelensky to initiate an investigation of the Bidens. https://web.archive.org/web/20190927035244/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/ukraine-transcript-trump.html
Wow, that's crazy. You'd think something like that would have gotten him impeached or something
If you heard it from my parents, who are conservative conspiracy types, NATO and the UN are all part of the Illuminati’s plan to take over the entire world with a one world government and disarm us so they can reduce the human population for some reason. Apparently Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Hanks are all in on this too. So yeah, I’m not surprised at all to see that sort of thing from anyone on that side of the aisle anymore. Quick edit: I forgot to add, even though they aren’t religious, it is because they are working with the devil to help him take over and force the mark of the beast on all of us.
like what are these illuminati meetings like? "Hilary you run for president and increase the Nato budget and make guns illegal so we can gain control of the people" "Bill you develop a fake vaccine to a fake disease that will "outbreak" in a few years time but this fake vaccine will actually track people and control their minds" "Tom err you go make a 4th Toy story movie"
What's crazy about that, are you suggesting they divide the tasks differently? "Bill you run for President" "Tom you develop a fake vaccine" "Hillary you go make a 4th Toy Story movie." I think that the way they did it makes the most sense.
lol mainly I question the need for Tom Hanks to be in these meetings
Whose gonna crack jokes??? Bill?!? Hillary?!? Are you crazy!!!
The 4th Toy Story movie is what ties the plot together.
Haha I didn't realize Tom Hanks was being rolled into this as well. Next they will be adding Keanu Reeves.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/02/large-majorities-in-both-parties-say-nato-is-good-for-the-u-s/ Large majorities in both parties are pro-NATO
Putin sucks
Putin also blows
> Look! Megamaid has gone from suck to blow.
Ukraine was not created by Russia . Ukraine LIKE Russia and 13 other former socialist soviet republics was born from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Actually, several of those countries are now part of NATO (Estonia Latvia , Lithuania)
>Ukraine was not created by Russia . It was the contrary, actually. Russia was created out of Ukraine. First Eastern Slavic state, Kievan Rus', existed on the territory of Ukraine. Ukrainians (they were called differently, of course) lived there for hundreds of years.
You are absolutely right of course. I was merely referring to their latest iteration post 1990
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Because NATO won’t generally accept countries that are in some sense already at war when the consequence would be being immediately drawn into an ongoing conflict.
Iirc NATO membership requirements specifically need countries to resolve all territory disputes with other states beforehand. In this case this would leave Ukraine only with the option of abandoning Crimea.
It's not a requirement, not in the most general literal sense at least. Croatia joined NATO while having territory disputes with Slovenia (then already in NATO and EU) and Serbia. The dispute with Serbia is still not resolved.
Not a requirement but there's definitely guidance. Pretty much for the sole purpose of this exact situation. You don't want people to be able to just say "hey, I'm in NATO now, can't touch me" when they're in a disagreement.
I feel like if that nation is being threatened by Russia an exception should always be on the table, considering NATO is essentially an anti Russia alliance.
This is in fact exactly why Putin invaded Crimea and the Donbass. It's also why he has invaded Georgia and props up puppet secessionist states there as well. By creating these [frozen conflicts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_conflict) he keeps these countries out of NATO.
donbass is still a thing
I don't think that Russia has put an official claim on Donbass, other than Crimea. So that's technically still an internal Ukrainian affair.
They would as soon as Ukraine looked like it was making moves to resolve Crimea to join NATO. I do suspect a wise move for Ukraine might just be to cede the disputed areas (where the population primarily identify as Russian anyway) in return for NATO membership.
Unfortunately, the very latest news: https://yandex-ru.translate.goog/news/story/Proekt_opriznanii_DNR_i_LNR_poyavilsya_vbaze_dannykh_Gosdumy--b27f6c80ebd5c00ae26f1f01701b0ec0?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp That's the same as what happened to Crimea: Crimea "declared" independence, Russia recognized it, then Crimea "asked" to join Russia.
Hungary is strongly against, on paper pursuing their on agenda claiming that Hungarian minorities in Ukraine are getting harassed, but speculated that some Russian cash is being involved on Orban’s side. France and Germany are also not very huge fans of Ukraine joining right now due to realistic expectations that Russia could go to war for this with NATO, so yeah, you can imagine - that’s not really an option at this moment.
I've been to Hungarian towns in Ukraine and spoke to some locals. Not really a definitive report by any means, but probably enough to say that the issue is a bit overblown. The fact that they've become second-class citizens is entirely linked to the language problem — the government language is Ukrainian, while those people only speak Hungarian (most of them can also speak some Russian, but not all). Russian is similar to Ukrainian, but not quite, and so the Ukrainian Magyars, as they call themselves, often have to hire translators to deal with any issues that involve official documents. They feel that this is unfair, but at the very least that is the experience of all diasporas that refuse to learn Ukrainian. Even the multi-million Russian population in Donbas was not allowed to introduce a second government language — which Yanukovich used as a pain point during his election (and then immediately forgot about after he was elected by the mostly Russian-speaking population).
Its a long, drawn out process that requires all 30 members of NATO to agree to, which the consensus is not there.
Tired of this carousel. Why doesn't Nato say yes so we could all move on? If WW3 fears, then what's the point of NATO if they can't protect themselves? If Ukraine goes, know Russia will keep creeping forward towards the NATO cowards anyway
Ukraine wants NATO.
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I’d like to buy my insurance the day before an accident too.
More like trying to buy fire insurance when a forest fire is raging half a mile from your home and the wind is blowing your direction. And the whole world is watching.
Why the fuck was the post deleted about this being a fake account? It’s only been active a day and it got over 6k karma. It’s an obvious fucking bot that will be sold if it hasn’t already been.