WWIII? Or just a little fuckery?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Isolated, paranoid, deluded. But Vladimir Putin isn't a mad despot... he's evil, writes the Russian President's biographer Professor MARK GALEOTTI

The scary thing is that it could have been written about Trump, saving a few details . . . of course.

[liberty]

Here's something disgusting. The Europeans outnumber the Russians two to one, but without our help, the Russians could easily defeat all of them except France and Britain, who have nukes. The Europeans should see that as a disgrace. If the US ever gets tired of protecting them, they will be enslaved by the Russians. The problem with their defense is not their potential but their culture. The western part of the continent is morally weaker than we are; they simply won't protect themselves. The eastern part, the old Soviet-dominated portion, is still a tough people. The Western part of Europe has the industrial base for National Defense, and the east has the people, So what is the logical thing to do?

To provide for their defense, I think they should be federated. That might be hard to sell to the people of Europe because they like most people don't want to turn their lives over to the control of a distant central government. Europeans are good at empire; they don't do federation very well, except Switzerland. But perhaps a constitution could be written in such a way it would protect the right of the individual states. Then they might be able to sell it to the people of Europe. If they don't unite, they will eventually fall into the hands of the Russians.

[TPFKA@W]

You haven’t met any Finns.

[BoSoxGal]

I'm not sure it's possible but even if it were I think it's a bad idea.

Their action invading Ukraine is a violation of article 4 of the UN charter.

But then if we opened that door I suppose the USA and UK and other nations would be eligible for expulsion for the invasion of Iraq.

Incidentally Congress is calling for Russia to be expelled from the UN Security Council - but it appears impossible under the charter.

Congress wants to oust Russia from U.N. Security Council

Thu, February 24, 2022, 6:33 PM

A resolution calling to kick Russia off the U.N. Security Council for its invasion of Ukraine — which has virtually no chance of being enforced — is circulating among House members from both parties, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The development comes as a recessed Congress tries to assert its role in punishing Russia. It whiffed on passing a sanctions package before the invasion.

Driving the news: The resolution is being led by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in coordination with a House Democrat, according to Tenney's office.

"It’s obviously a tall effort to kick Russia off," Nick Stewart, Tenney's chief of staff, told Axios. "But, it’s one diplomatic tool we have to up the pressure and increase the isolation."

"It’s in a sense a messaging bill, but it also empowers our diplomatic counterparts."

The details: The resolution, a copy of which was obtained by Axios, calls for the U.N. to "take immediate procedural actions" to amend Article 23 of its charter to remove Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council.

The resolution argues Russia's invasion of Ukraine and support of breakaway republics "pose a direct threat to international peace and security" and "run contrary to its responsibilities and obligations as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council."

What they're saying: Several members have publicly expressed support for the idea, including Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), the vice ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told Axios in an interview he supports the resolution as well.

"I think Congress should be weighing in to say these guys should be treated like the pariahs they are and they shouldn't have a seat at any table," Bacon said.

The resolution is being circulated to all House members in both parties, Stewart said.

Reality check: According to the U.N. charter, all permanent members of the Security Council have to sign off on any amendments, giving Russia the ability to block such a move.

Russia's veto on the Security Council also would allow it to block any U.N. effort to condemn or intervene in its invasion of Ukraine.

Causing further headaches to the West is that Russia's ambassador to the U.N., Vasily Nabenzya, is serving as the panel's rotating president this month.

He was presiding over an emergency meeting of the council at the precise moment Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine — triggering criticism of Russia's membership on the panel.

eta: Expulsion from the UN is possible, after persistent violations of the charter - and by recommendation of the Security Council. Catch-22!

UN trivia: the only nation ever expelled from the UN was Taiwan, which got booted after the UN voted to recognize the PRC in its place. Here’s a history primer on that courtesy of Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/ ... 0-years-on

[Crackpot]

Short of turning several Russian cities into craters, I'm not sure what the options are.

A full and widespread embargo might work but it will be a strain on European countries that rely on Russian oil for heat

[Big RR]

Agreed; but short of committing troops, which is probably a bad idea unless we want to risk having nuclear retailliation), it's really the only route to pursue.

[BoSoxGal]

I admittedly knew very little about Volodymyr Zelensky - whose name is entered into Safari’s auto fill function, indicating it’s being typed a whole lot by a whole bunch of iPhone users.

I’d heard in passing he was a former TV comic actor who played a fictional president of Ukraine who stumbled into the job. Then I guess on a whim he ran for president in 2019 on an anti corruption platform and received nearly 3/4 of the vote. He has two young children and he’s only 44 himself. He does have a degree in law. His grandfather was the sole survivor of 4 brothers, the others killed by Nazis in WWII. He is a Jew.

Was it a sign of incredible bravery that after being in the safety of Munich earlier this week he returned to Kyiv? That his young family is also still in Ukraine, in hiding? Or a sign of lamentable foolhardiness?

Putin will have him killed, surely, if Russian troops find him.

[Sue U]

Putin's justification for invading might have been laughable if not for these horrific consequences. He claimed, absurdly, that the Russian mission was to 'de-Nazify Ukraine' – while behaving exactly like the Nazis who invaded Ukraine in 1941.

Although surely highly overblown, the claim is not quite so fantastical as it sounds. Ukraine has incorporated an expressly neo-Nazi, anti-Russian regiment into its rather weirdly organized armed forces, whose former leader has started his own far-right white nationalist gang political party; see Azov Battalion.

[Big RR]

Of course, he could make the same claim about most western european countries and the US; most have significant neo nazi presence, likely even in their military. Maybe not an exclusively neo nazi regiment, but likely still plenty of them in the military.

[BoSoxGal]

Putin's justification for invading might have been laughable if not for these horrific consequences. He claimed, absurdly, that the Russian mission was to 'de-Nazify Ukraine' – while behaving exactly like the Nazis who invaded Ukraine in 1941.

Although surely highly overblown, the claim is not quite so fantastical as it sounds. Ukraine has incorporated an expressly neo-Nazi, anti-Russian regiment into its rather weirdly organized armed forces, whose former leader has started his own far-right white nationalist gang political party; see Azov Battalion.

I read the wiki entry. From what I read, it sounds like this unit ranged in size from the low hundreds to at most the low thousands in numbers. At one point in the article it is asserted 10-20% have neo Nazi/white supremacist views.

I just wonder how that compares to the number of US military members who hold neo Nazi/white supremacist views. Or US law enforcement in its various incarnations.

It was interesting to read that Congress at one point refused to fund training of this Ukrainian military unit because of this, yet the US military has failed to make much progress in addressing these ideologies among its own ranks. https://amp.scmp.com/news/world/united- ... ying-purge

[Big RR]

My guess is that whie supremacists make up less of the regular military (which, las I read, was over 40% non white) than in the reserves and national guard where local units might well be made up of good old boys who hold those views and keep out nonwhites (I think the guard is made up of 20% nonwhites).

[BoSoxGal]

WashPo has a good piece on Putin’s Nazi lie:

Putin says he will ‘denazify’ Ukraine. Here’s the history behind that claim.

Miriam Berger1:16 p.m. EST

A Ukrainian woman holds a drawing showing the heads of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler in Kyiv on Feb. 12. (Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

The rhetoric around fighting fascism resonates deeply in Russia, which made tremendous sacrifices battling Nazi Germany in World War II. Critics say that Putin is exploiting the trauma of the war and twisting history for his own interests.

In his narrative, the West overlooked the role the Soviet Union, Russia’s predecessor state, played in the fight. In the war’s aftermath, the United States and other Western nations formed the NATO military alliance as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.

Now, Putin sees NATO as an existential threat — and Ukraine’s bid for membership as a red line for Russia’s security.

“When Putin was growing up, the Second World War was at the center of Soviet identity and the enemies were the fascists,” said Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University.

The irony now, Snyder said, is that Putin appears to be “fighting a war the way that actual Nazis did,” invading neighbors on the pretext that their borders are irrelevant.

But Putin’s attempt to recast Ukraine’s government as fascist drew widespread condemnation Thursday, including from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is both Jewish and had family members die in the Holocaust.

Three of Zelensky’s great uncles were executed as part of the German-led genocide of European Jews during the war, the president said on a trip to Jerusalem in 2020. His grandfather, who was the brother of those killed, survived.

“Forty years later, his grandson became president,” Zelenksy said in an address.

The Ukrainian leader also fired back at Putin’s Nazi claim Thursday, saying on Twitter that Russia had attacked Ukraine just “as Nazi Germany did.”

One of World War II’s worst massacres took place near the Ukrainian capital in 1941, when German-led forces killed tens of thousands of Jews in the ravine of Babi Yar.

“As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history,” Zelensky said on Twitter, addressing Putin. “Russia has embarked on a path of evil.”

According to Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, “there is a history of some Ukrainians fighting on the Nazi side … but a very small group.”

McFaul made the remarks in an appearance on MSNBC Thursday.

Putin, he said, “is pulling on that thread from history to say that what you had was a neo-Nazi usurpation of power [in Ukraine] in 2014,” when Ukrainian protesters ousted the Russian-backed leader and the new government pushed to join NATO.

In response to those protests, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and began backing a separatist insurgency in the country’s east. The conflict there has simmered for years.

Operating in Ukraine are several nationalist paramilitary groups, such as the Azov movement and Right Sector, that espouse neo-Nazi ideology. While high-profile, they appear to have little public support. Only one far-right party, Svoboda, is represented in Ukraine’s parliament, and only holds one seat.

Now Putin is trying to paint Zelensky’s government as “Nazis supported by NATO,” McFaul said.

According to Putin, he must fight to save the Russian-speaking community in eastern Ukraine.

In his speech announcing the start of the operation, he said that the “goal is to protect the people who are subjected to abuse, genocide from the Kyiv regime.”

“To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and put to justice those that committed numerous bloody crimes against peaceful people, including Russian nationals,” Putin said, according to Russia’s state news agency.

His language is also a red flag that he intends to overthrow the government in Kyiv, said Sergey Radchenko, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University.

The Kremlin has long tried to “present the whole idea of Ukrainian nationalism as a neo-Nazi movement,” he said, adding that the narrative is historically false.

Following Putin’s logic, Radchenko said, Russia’s end goal in Ukraine could be to rid its government of “Ukrainian nationalists … who in their eyes are Nazis.”

At the same time, Snyder said, Putin’s moves to label Ukraine’s government as fascist are “completely emptied of any specificity.”

During the Cold War, the term came to apply to anyone in the West or those who opposed Russia, he said.

“Anyone can be a fascist” in Russian propaganda, Snyder said, adding that it “carries a vague emotion … for anyone anti-Russian.”

Ukraine’s state-run Twitter account on Thursday posted an image of what appeared to be a tall Adolf Hitler caressing the face of a smaller Putin.

“This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now,” the caption read.

See the pictures here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... y-ukraine/

[BoSoxGal]

I figured out how to get it off Twitter:

[Gob]

stealing that!

[BoSoxGal]

The Ukrainian army and citizenry is putting up an admirable defense against the Russians.

They report Russians deaths in the multiple thousands already, though Russians across the border may never know that - I saw photos in one article of portable incinerators that the Russian army brings with them so they can destroy the dead rather than send body bags home. Sounds incredible but I wouldn’t put anything past the mass murdering tyrant Putin. He probably figures he can report the dead as AWOL and then avoid paying their death benefit or pension to the surviving family.

I wonder how far Putin’s insanity will take him - and all of us - as this doesn’t pan out as he had envisioned.

[Jarlaxle]

The right sanctions might work, but we need to economically isolate Russia entirely from world finance--no access to banking or capital, feeze the assets, prevent their citizens from having that access as well. I doubt it would play well with the oligarchs who live for their moeny, and they may well get rid of Putin. But I'm not sure we have the resolve to do that, especially when they have oil.

I also suspect the Chinese will happily buy every barrel of oil Russia will offer, regardless of any sanctions.

[Jarlaxle]

Agreed; but short of committing troops, which is probably a bad idea unless we want to risk having nuclear retailliation), it's really the only route to pursue.

Walk away. This is simply not our problem. Stop shoving our nose where it does not belong.

[BoSoxGal]

Agreed; but short of committing troops, which is probably a bad idea unless we want to risk having nuclear retailliation), it's really the only route to pursue.

Walk away. This is simply not our problem. Stop shoving our nose where it does not belong.

Are you really that ignorant of history? Of the threat Putin poses to the rest of the world?

I hope the CIA is working with Russian counterparts to take this motherfucker out of the equation, permanently. He looks ripe for a massive coronary event - or what can be made to look like one.

I can’t believe that there aren’t dozens of people in his circle who wouldn’t rather he was neutralized. He is a danger to Russia as much as to the world.

[Jarlaxle]

Putin poses little threat to the rest of the world. He's a jumped-up gangster, wants to enrich himself, his minions, and Russia in that order. I'm sick of the US playing world police...walk away.

[BoSoxGal]

Thank goodness for the people of Ukraine and the world that you aren’t in charge. Fuck America First isolationism.