@mykhaylo The kids of military age in the Netherlands received a letter last week reminding them military service has not been abolished, but merely suspended, and that the security situation in the world means they could get called to serve at some point. No concrete plans yet though, but it's definitely a sign.
@mykhaylo Imagine Captain Pickard on Enterprise, they are under attack, Scotty shouting "Shields are at 50%!" and Pickard just responding "So what? It's just the shields, not the ship. No worry".
Ukraine is the shield for Europe and NATO. If Ukraine falls, russia will be at full swing, developed and tested new missiles, capturing all remaining Ukrainian resources. The next country after that could actually be done for in three days. We won't have two years to decide whether to send jets or not.
@SrEstegosaurio in order to be able to get rid of it we need to get rid of imperial wars of conquest. Otherwise it’ll be like in the ancient saying: a country not willing to sustain its army will sustain somebody else’s.
@mykhaylo
No, France is not discussing reinstating military service, and certainly not in response to war in Ukraine. French far right politicians have been talking about it since it was abolished, but it's a political statement about building a united nation, not a military necessity. @bert_hubert
@sossalemaire@bert_hubert well the post is not about France anyway, I was just glad to read someone was taking the situation seriously. Apparently not.
@mykhaylo@bert_hubert The french army is adamant they don't need conscription. They were when I was among the last to go through military service, and they still are. Some of them want conscription for the nation's cohesion (as if 1 year of military training was better than 15+ years of school...), none that I know of want it for defense. Maybe they're wrong, I know very little about the subject!
@sossalemaire@bert_hubert thank you for telling! At the moment Macron is the only one at least talking about the possibility of military intervention. But that’s probably just him creating strategic uncertainty.
@mykhaylo
Okay, deal: you guys can choose to fight russia any way you want to, with money or in person; but you do it with your OWN money or person, not mine by using tax money, okay?
Because i don't buy that bullshit that if ukraine loses russia will turn around and attack NATO head on.
They didnt even get to Kiev in two years, yet they are just one step away from attacking the worlds largest military alliance (by FAR!)?
Please. Not even Russians are that deluded.
@incoherentmumblings oh sure. Let’s pacify Germany by letting it have Czechoslovakia, what does it have to do with US anyway, right?
If they conquer Ukraine they will forcibly conscript Ukrainians to fight for them, just like they did in Donbass. They will also ramp up production and take a few years break (maybe).
Meanwhile, they’ll keep spending billions screwing with everybody’s elections, turning every NATO country they can into Hungary.
Russia did not get (parts of) Ukraine without a bloody war.
So your analogy falls flat on it's face before it even took the first steps.
RU did not forcibly conscript people in the Donbas, because Russia wasnt even IN the Donbas when they set up their armies to fight against the coup government. And you can't set up full armies of people who don't want to be in them: They have guns to revolt if you try that.
@mykhaylo
Russia may spend billions to influence elections and recruit soldiers just like everyone else does, but they will never reach the potential in either of these that NATO already uses.
Russia is a small fish compared to the actions of various NATO states, so while i can see how you as a Ukrainian would focus on RU, they're really neither the only nor the greatest threat to world peace.
@incoherentmumblings oh sure. Except a few points. One, there's such thing as reputation. NATO has been pledging full support to Ukraine for years, and everybody is looking at what the war will end with. If Ukraine loses, NATO will not be treated as seriously as it was before.
Two. Russia is not alone. There's Iran, and most importantly, there is China. It's not a war against Ukraine, it's a war to change world order. If Ukraine falls - Taiwan falls next. And who will stop China? NATO?
@incoherentmumblings also no matter how powerful NATO is you cannot fight everybody at the same time without it turning into World War.
And there are so many fights to fight: protecting EU from Russia, Taiwan and Japan from China, Israel from Iran, South Korea from North Korea.
And I'm not even going into Russia's friends in Latin America, cause I'm only vaguely familiar with politics and history there, but I'm sure there's land to be redistributed.
@incoherentmumblings on the other hand, if Ukraine does win it will strengthen NATO both in terms of reputation and in terms of getting Ukraine and it's most experienced army in the world right now to be part of NATO.
@incoherentmumblings Three. There's spending billions to influence elections, and there is spending billions to buy politicians all over the world. Last time I checked, the second one was not legal basically anywhere.
And i already got to say "i told you so", because i have been warning that NATO policies would lead to war with Russia for 30 years.
Just like Kissinger, Kennan, Chomsky and Mearsheimer and basically every geostrategic scholar that isn't a Neocon has.
So yea, this isn't on me, and i won't be held responsible for it.
Ukraine is just one more victim of US neocon geostrategic ambitions to weaken and contain Russia - and your leaders fell for the Honey trap.
The best thing for Ukrainians right now would be immediate ceasefire and negotiations, accepting loss of territory before it gets even more expensive and even more people get crippled and killed.
This war, like most, only serves the interest of a handful of powerful people, and everyone else has to pay the price.
@incoherentmumblings and not just Ukraine. Look at the centuries of history of wars and negotiations with Russia. There is a very clear pattern, and it's not in favor of negotiations.
You are making a mistake of judging Russia by a) modern and b) democratic standards, when in fact not much has changed since 16th century and conquest of Kazan.
Kazan tried negotiating and giving away territories. Didn't work.
@mykhaylo
Well, Russia already accepted Ukrainian independence.
If you look closely, you will notice that the declaration of independence speaks of a neutral independent ukraine.
That is what Russia could have accepted.
So i guess it depends on the perspective. For Russia, the Maidan coup made previous promises obsolete, and they do have a point: It was, after all, an unconstitutional transfer of power, so it's easy to argue that it's not the same country anymore.
@incoherentmumblings revolution is not unconstitutional, this is a russian narrative. In Ukraine the PEOPLE are the source of power, and we have the right to directly manifest the power if the government is not doing what people want it to do. Same like in France, by the way.
Rigging elections by Yanukovich on the other hand was unconstitutional. But it's good to clearly see where you're coming from.
@incoherentmumblings good thing I was there and witnessed it first hand. But as mentioned, I already clearly see where you're coming from, so you don't have to make any more points.
@incoherentmumblings oh, by the way, US is not really giving us money. It’s giving us old military equipment that will need servicing and upgrades, creating jobs in the US.
And don’t even get me started on US finally having a chance to destroy one of it’s existential enemies by spending like 5% of it’s defense budget.
@mykhaylo
At least Guy Verhofstadt from Belgium was very clear in this and how urgent and bad the situation is Ukraine.
Hopefully at least these 7 are supplied as soon as possible.
What about the emergency regarding the carpet bombing, assassination, starving of civil in Palestine and NGO members over there with our on money and material support?
@petit_suisse@VoordeMus Two is distance. Palestine is far from Europe. Ukraine is IN EUROPE. War in Ukraine today is war in EU tomorrow.
But guess where all the media coverage, popular sympathy, and most importantly - attention goes.
I would say that Palestine happened too timely to be considered a different situation. It’s part of the same war. And Iran seems to be ready to show that Russia is not alone.
so many people in #EU and #USA are more interested in #Palestine because they think that there #Israel (a Western country) is in control, and so, they think, they can control it
the situation in #Ukraine is outside their "first-world" worldview
they cannot fathom, and the cannot tell to themselves, that a non-"Western" country has its own agency and independent goals, that these motives are imperialistic and that they are willing to wage war to achieve them
from this "first-world" worldview (that the West/USA is always in control), also comes the idea that #Russia was "provoked" and that the Ukrainian war is a proxy war of the #USA or #NATO.
which is the most stupid idea: just look at how much hesitant European/Western countries are to provide military aid to #Ukraine: the Western countries didn't want a war with Russia, they wanted to continue to trade peacefully with it.
@elCelio interesting take, but yea, when you think of it, Israel feels more Western to the West than Eastern Europe.
At least regular people still see the former as a grim place, riddled with poverty and petty criminals migrating to the West in search for a better life and to steal your wallet. When in fact, it is not like that.
There are lots of multinational companies, many of them being the same big companies generating big profits and revenues in the West. We have Microsoft, Amazon, Accenture, all having offices open in cities across the region - just to name a few - employing thousands or tens of thousands of people. We have big European retailers like Auchan, Decathlon, Hervis, Carrefour, IKEA or Leroy Merlin all being big on the local markets. We have McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Popeye's all dominating the fast food market. You can buy lots of big brand clothes in here. You can buy pretty much whatever car you like, from Ford, to Porsche, to BMW, Tesla etc. Here in Romania, Alstom is a big player in the rail industry. It deals with the maintenance of the Bucharest metro trains, and the system is widely appreciated. They will also supply 37 new, first-hand EMU trains to the rail operators across the country and has multiple tenders to modernize our railways to increase their top speeds to 160 km/h (that's 100 mph if you live across the pond).
We also have a powerful local industry producing cars (check for Dacia), rolling stock (most successful being the trams from Astra Vagoane Călători or the locomotives from Softronic), ships and we have a booming IT industry. Specifically for Ukraine, there has been a lot of inovation coming from there in the last decade.
And don't get me started on what Poland is producing.
Also check how cities are getting better and better, with more facilities, amenities, check how vibrant they are. Look how great cities like Bucharest look, or Cluj Napoca, or Budapest, Prague, Krakow, Warsaw, Bratislava etc. Ukrainian cities like Kyiv or Lviv were also some booming economic poles before the Russian invasion.
We're pretty much getting on par with Western Europe and the Western world at large, dealing with pretty much the same problems as you all (to which you can add Russia).
Sure, our societies are a lot more conservative (with some hot spots in the bigger cities being the exception), but that is the only probable downside to a Westerner. And the younger generations are quickly changing that.
Defending Ukraine means protecting the civilised world in front of the barbaric Russian agression. Every day Russia is not beaten on the frontline is a disservice done against countries like Poland, Romania, the Baltics and others that are struggling to go away from the older soviet model of development and into the free and developed world, that are following the footsteps of development of the West.
And don't get this comment wrong wrong. Russia is a great country as well - full of culture, with a rich history, great (ordinary) people and so on. But the development model it chose lead to high social disparities, inequality, hypercentralization of power, repression against the regular people, corruption on all levels and, worst of all, tyranny. Now Russia wants to impose their system back to it's former sphere of influence and beyond - which is what this war is all about. In order to fix this part of the world, Ukraine must beat Russia for good, so every cm/inch of land returned to Ukraine from the hands of the Russian invaders is one more cm/inch to a better Eastern Europe and a better world overall.
As Professor Epstein correctly noted, Russian culture has been disqualified. It has consistently produced monsters that jeopardize everything good in this world.
@petit_suisse@VoordeMus without giving any evaluation to what is happening there are two things people in Europe seem to forget.
One is scale. Hundreds of thousands of people died in Ukraine. Tens of towns raised to the ground. 7 million refugees left the country. The scale is incomparable with Palestine.
Anyone who brings Palestine into a discussion about Ukraine is a russian shill, no exceptions. Look at this guy - account created 4 days ago, 3 followers, 1 following, couple posts about laptops then suddenly parroting russian narrative. https://spotthetroll.org/
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