O/T:- Navalny

[TSANHO]

Just trying to put some context t some of Putins abhorrent decisions really. I just think that what he said about reaching out to talk and settling things held some serious truth, as supported by RFK saying that a peace deal was close before Biden sent Johnson in to scupper the deal.

By no means is Putin a fair or completely honest guy….he’s a cretin, albeit a pretty intelligent and powerful one, but not much worse than our governments. Incarcerating and vilifying people for telling the truth and invading and destabilising countries based upon complete fabrications.

Putins interview was a very interesting one, has anyone from the west come out to counter what he has said?

[Old_pie]

J

Putins interview was a very interesting one, has anyone from the west come out to counter what he has said?

I've only read summaries including those from Poland. If he were British he would be sending troops to re-establish the British Empire on the basis that it really should be his. If he were Roman he'd be sending troops to re-establish the Roman Empire. Unfortunately he seems to be backed by generals etc who lament the loss of the USSR and wish to re-establish it.

It astounds me that Hungary have a PM who, despite being in a NATO country, seems to be a Putin supporter whilst I still recall the TV images of tanks rolling into Budapest to crush any thoughts Hungarians had of leaving the Warsaw Pact and aligning with the West. Must have been another "special military operation".

[Newish Pie]

By no means is Putin a fair or completely honest guy….he’s a cretin, albeit a pretty intelligent and powerful one, but not much worse than our governments. Incarcerating and vilifying people for telling the truth and invading and destabilising countries based upon complete fabrications.

I don't mean to pick on this comment or on TSANHO in particular, but there's a trend or pattern which seems to be everywhere you look at the moment. It's the 'everyone is as bad as each other' or 'everyone lies' or 'they're all the same' argument. As an argument, it can have a certain appeal... cynicism is always easier; it can feel like you're making up your own mind; and there's usually a grain of truth in it, because we're dealing with real people and the real world rather than goodies and baddies and heroes and villains.

But I think it's a dangerous and seductive and potentially lazy position to adopt, and it's one that propagandists exploit to the fullest.

If as a propagandist, you can't defend the indefensible, all you have to do is to persuade enough people that the other lot are just as bad, or that everyone's at it, or that there's no such thing as facts. Plenty of examples of this, but my personal unfavourite was the desperate attempt at damage limitation after Partygate by repeatedly trying to claim that Starmer was guilty of the same thing. In the US, the Trumpists do this all the time.

Sometimes it's true that all sides in any given dispute are genuinely as bad as each other, but that needs to be an earned conclusion after weighing everything up... not what it often is, which is a kind of surrender to cynicism when faced with arguments that need careful thought and evaluation, rather than just surrendering to false equivalence. It's only balance when the facts and the arguments are balanced.

I try to be very careful with any source pushing (or trying to get me to conclude) that they're all as bad as each other, because usually it's just an attempt to muddy the waters and try to persuade people to give up and fall back on cynicism.

[Jampie]

I just think that what he said about reaching out to talk and settling things held some serious truth, as supported by RFK saying that a peace deal was close before Biden sent Johnson in to scupper the deal.

What was RFK's source on that?

[andy6025]

A few people in this thread have indicated that they believe that Russia’s invasion had nothing to do with NATO encroachment into Ukraine.

However I would remind them that Zelensky, president of Ukraine,
Jens Stoltenberg, the president of NATO, and members of Ukraine’s negotiating team, including their chief negotiator Davyd Arakhamia have publicly stated their disagreement by confirming that Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO is the primary reason for Russia’s “special military operation.”

In the video linked to the article below, dated March 22, 2022, Zelenskyy is shown saying,

“Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it. This is the most important point. It was the main point for the Russian Federation as far as I can remember. And if I remember correctly this is why they started the war… I understand it’s impossible to force Russia completely from Ukrainian territory. It would lead to World War Three. I understand it and that is why I am talking about a compromise. Go back to where it all began. And then we will try to solve the Donbas issue, the complicated Donbas issue.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ts-2022-03-27/

On Sept 7, 2023, Jan’s Stoltenburg gave a speech to the European Union parliament in which he admitted that NATO enlargement was the primary reason for Russia’s invasion. He said,

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-...Mog&format=amp

Furthermore, there were peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March or 2022, the month following the start of the invasion. While the negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful, several members of the Ukrainian negotiating team, including their chief negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, has admitted that Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO was clearly Putin’s primary objective in negotiations. In an interview with Natalia Moseichuk on Ukrainian State tv, he said:

“They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. It was the most important thing for them. They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, – as Finland once did, – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.

In fact, this was the key point. Everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning’ about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah-blah-blah."


One may argue whether or not sovereign nations have the right to join their own defensive alliances unhindered - it’s certainly a fair debate. But what I find to be a more pertinent question is whether or not the leadership of certain NATO member states (namely the United States) rightly predicted that Ukraine’s path to NATO would lead to a Russian invasion, and if so, was that their intended outcome? I think certain evidence points to ‘yes’, although I’m open to hearing evidence that they were completely surprised by the result.

[Kent Magpie]

A few people in this thread have indicated that they believe that Russia’s invasion had nothing to do with NATO encroachment into Ukraine.

However I would remind them that Zelensky, president of Ukraine,
Jens Stoltenberg, the president of NATO, and members of Ukraine’s negotiating team, including their chief negotiator Davyd Arakhamia have publicly stated their disagreement by confirming that Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO is the primary reason for Russia’s “special military operation.”

In the video linked to the article below, dated March 22, 2022, Zelenskyy is shown saying,

“Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it. This is the most important point. It was the main point for the Russian Federation as far as I can remember. And if I remember correctly this is why they started the war… I understand it’s impossible to force Russia completely from Ukrainian territory. It would lead to World War Three. I understand it and that is why I am talking about a compromise. Go back to where it all began. And then we will try to solve the Donbas issue, the complicated Donbas issue.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ts-2022-03-27/

On Sept 7, 2023, Jan’s Stoltenburg gave a speech to the European Union parliament in which he admitted that NATO enlargement was the primary reason for Russia’s invasion. He said,

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-...Mog&format=amp

Furthermore, there were peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March or 2022, the month following the start of the invasion. While the negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful, several members of the Ukrainian negotiating team, including their chief negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, has admitted that Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO was clearly Putin’s primary objective in negotiations. In an interview with Natalia Moseichuk on Ukrainian State tv, he said:

“They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. It was the most important thing for them. They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, – as Finland once did, – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.

In fact, this was the key point. Everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning’ about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah-blah-blah."


One may argue whether or not sovereign nations have the right to join their own defensive alliances unhindered - it’s certainly a fair debate. But what I find to be a more pertinent question is whether or not the leadership of certain NATO member states (namely the United States) rightly predicted that Ukraine’s path to NATO would lead to a Russian invasion, and if so, was that their intended outcome? I think certain evidence points to ‘yes’, although I’m open to hearing evidence that they were completely surprised by the result.

Andy, what is your view on Navalny's death? Who if anybody do you think is responsible?

[andy6025]

Andy, what is your view on Navalny's death? Who if anybody do you think is responsible?

I don’t know for sure but I think it’s reasonable to suspect that he was assassinated. Whether that was done because he’s a grassroots lover of freedom and democracy and was a threat to Russia’s political establishment, or whether he was a CIA/MI6 asset that was on their payroll to destabilize Russia at the behest of western foreign powers - I really don’t know.

Political assassinations are nothing new. Many believe Jefferey Epstein was assassinated in an American prison because he posed a threat to important and powerful politicians and celebrities, etc. Gonzalo Lira, as another example, was a Chilean journalist/blogger who recently died in an Ukraine jail for the crime of having criticized the Ukrainian government in YouTube videos. And yet another example is that Israeli troops appear to intentionally assassinate journalists reporting on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. And lastly, Yevgeny Prigozhin (Aka “Putin’s Chef”) is believed by many to have been assassinated on Putin’s orders for his brief rebellion that the west cheered on and momentarily thought was going to be a monumental turning point in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Yes, political assassinations certainly have a long history, and supposed “democracies” are no exceptions. Mysteriously though we have a tendency to project that we’re somehow above them. But the CIA has a long history of it, from Congo to Latin America and beyond.

[upthemaggies]

Yes, political assassinations certainly have a long history, and supposed “democracies” are no exceptions. Mysteriously though we have a tendency to project that we’re somehow above them.

Lest we forget, our very own David Kelly

[andy6025]

Lest we forget, our very own David Kelly

Yes, well brought up. I think there’s a documentary about his case that is said to be quite good, but I can’t remember what it’s called.