- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
His plane has crashed and he’s on the passenger list, but it’s not proven yet that he was on the plane. He’s the person, who faked his death in the past.
It seems like oddly coincidental timing that Russia also officially relieved Surovikin as head of the airforce today (he still hasn’t been seen since the mutiny): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/23/russia-removes-sergei-surovikin-as-head-of-aerospace-forces
Not saying he’s definitely dead, but I doubt this is him faking his own death so much as him slipping an assassination attempt if he’s alive.
Ah yes. The general who the Kremlin said was “resting.” Nothing ominous about that.
Death is the ultimate rest
Agreed, coordinated take down of Prigozhin and his allies.
I heard it played out exactly like the opening scene from Dark Knight Rises, too.
i want to get a hug from Tom Hardy too.
It would be extremely painful
for you
You’re a big guy
For you
I remember it was such an awesome opening in imax
It was an awesome opening in a public park restroom too
There were 10 people on the plane (3 pilots, 7 passengers) but they only recovered 8 bodies…
THERE’S A CHANCE HE’S ALIVE!
North Koreans going to Ukraine was a psyop. They were actually hired by Prigozhin to go to Russia and resurrect him after tricking everyone he died
If he manages to wiggle out of this one I will lose it I swear haha.
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They expect
oneeight of us in the wreckage, brother.the fire rises
Oh thank god!
Imagine blowing up a $5M Embraer just to fake his own death - and kill others in the process.
I’m sure Putin’s chef had money lying around, but burning all that cash sounds a little desperate to me.
Raise hands if you’d rather die for realsies to save $5M in expenses
That’s not what I said.
Impressive Russia was able to push an entire plane out of a high rise window.
Hexbear and default lemmy libs coming together to laugh at prigozhin getting merced is so goddamn funny lmao.
Literally the no more brother wars meme
No more half measures, Vladmir
Never get on board a helicopter, and never go on board a plane if you just pissed off a guy famous for offing his political enemies. Come on guy, that’s politics 101.
I’ve never seen tankies and libs ever so united in celebration.
It’s as if leftists do not actually like Putin or any of the other ghouls on the Russian side, but are instead critical of NATO and willing to consider NATO opponents as rational actors instead of cartoon villains.
I oppose NATO over other Ghoulish countries because it’s a greater threat to the world right now.
How is it a threat to anyone outside of Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
You can also find similar examples for Africa and Asia.
The Cold war ended more than 30 years ago.
I think Iraq is a fair point. The rest are weak sauce as fuck for a variety of reasons that I’ll not trouble myself to enumerate.
That said, I myself was never onboard with the US invasion of Iraq or our long time presence in Afghanistan. They were both bullshit and never would have happened had it been up to me.
Russia is a country run by cartoon villains. Can you not picture Shoigu sneaking up behind someone with a large round bomb that says ACME on it, only to discover that the fuse has been accidentally lit by a soldiers cigarette?
I think most people of the left or right can see the situation for what it is. However Russia is obviously crafting messages to appeal to those on the extremes. When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at. When you see people from the hard right screeching about Ukrainian immigrants or the cost of the war vs America / Europe first then you know they’ve been gotten at.
As for Prigozhin, I think most people, even Russians are glad that he is dead but for different reasons. Seems clear that Putin murdered him for his disloyalty but nobody in Ukraine is going to mourn his loss for the spent force that is Wagner.
Ghouls can be rational actors without not being ghouls.
If a ghoul’s fundamental values involve control, domination and power, doing everything they can in a bid to control a strip of land recently found to have plenty of energy natural resources would be a rational action from their point of view, even if it involves provoking immense suffering upon millions of people. You don’t get to say that US presidents’ actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin’s actions cannot.
If NATO has historically sucked, but countries surrounding the country led by that ghoul rationally feel the need to protect themselves, it’s logical they’ll want to join NATO.
The question here is why you’re far more willing to accept the rationality of Putin than the rationality of his victims when they legitimately ask for NATO’s support to defend themselves, and instead attribute them the category of sheep easily manipulated by NATO rather than accepting their autonomy and sovereignity to make their own decisions.
You don’t get to say that US presidents’ actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin’s actions cannot.
This is the start of a cogent argument but it needs to be followed through.
The flip side of the coin is that you don’t get to accept that “US presidents’ actions can … be explained by … want[ing] endless growth and control” and reject any notion that it would use Ukraine to secure endless growth for itself. This may not be you. But it follows logically for those who understand that the US/NATO is the greatest threat to world peace.
If profit drives Putin, why Ukraine and not another neighbour who hasn’t been courting NATO and accepting western money, weapons, training, etc since at least circa 2014? The answer is because the US chose Ukraine to provoke Russia.
If profit drives Putin, why Ukraine and not another neighbour who hasn’t been courting NATO and accepting western money, weapons, training, etc since at least circa 2014? The answer is because the US chose Ukraine to provoke Russia.
Well, there’s really no reason to use hard power on any country that hasn’t been courting NATO. You can just use soft power (Belarus, Kazakhstan) in that case. Precisely when this ceases to work and a country does starts approaching Russia’s rivals, Russia appears to employ their military power (Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine).
Good points. Soft power seems to have been starting to work in Ukraine, too, until Maidan in 2014. For me, the key thing is ‘approaching Russia’s rivals’.
On the one hand, Russia’s not going to like that. On the other hand, if we accept that Russia exercising soft power in e.g. Belarus and Kazakhstan means hard power isn’t necessary – they’re already within its orbit/under it’s wing – then when e.g. Ukraine approaches the US and turns away from Russia, the US has already effectively taken control of Ukraine before Russia invades. Albeit through soft power.
And that throws a different light on the civil war in which Ukrainian militias are shelling ethnic Russian Ukrainians for being ‘separatists’. Because it means it’s being supported by Russia’s arch-rival, the US, a country well known for such destabilising and provocative antics, as the recent history of West Asia attests.
The Donbas separatists were already well supplied, and the Crimea was already well invaded, by RU, well before the West really started pouring support. I hope this sheds a different light on things for you
I have no idea what timeline you’re working with. The US was meddling in Ukraine since at least 1994. This ramped up in 2005. It supported a coup in 2014. Then the civil war started. The US was involved from before and throughout.
You seem to live in a fantasy timeline where Putin didn’t invade Georgia for the same reason
I’m glad you’ve brought that up. Because it, too, suggests that Russia invaded Georgia for the same reason: yank meddling and provocation:
Though Georgia is located in a region well within Russia’s historic sphere of influence and is more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, Bush nevertheless launched an ambitious campaign to bring Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russians, who had already seen previous U.S. assurances to Gorbachev that NATO would not extend eastward ignored, found the prospects of NATO expansion to the strategically important and volatile Caucasus region particularly provocative. This inflamed Russian nationalists and Russian military leaders and no doubt strengthened their resolve to maintain their military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. …
Amid accusations of widespread corruption and not adequately addressing the country’s growing poverty, Saakashvili himself faced widespread protests in November 2007, to which he responded with severe repression, shutting down independent media, detaining opposition leaders, and sending his security forces to assault largely nonviolent demonstrators with tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets, water cannons, and sonic equipment. Human Rights Watch criticized the government for using “excessive” force against protesters and the International Crisis Group warned of growing authoritarianism in the country. Despite this, Saakashvili continued to receive strong support from Washington and still appeared to have majority support within Georgia, winning a snap election in January by a solid majority which – despite some irregularities – was generally thought to be free and fair.
Now where have we seen that kind of thing
before—I mean since?Bush was also involved in provoking Russia in Ukraine, btw, before his eventual successor went ahead and pulled the same stunt again, knowing what the result was in Georgia:
In remarks likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Bush said Ukraine should be invited during this week’s Nato summit in Bucharest to join Nato’s membership action programme, a prelude to full membership.
He also said that there could be no deal with Moscow over the US administration’s contentious plans to locate elements of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.…
Bush said after talks … in Kiev[:] “I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAP [Membership Action Plans], and there are no tradeoffs - period.”…
Germany and France are leading opposition from within the EU to such a move, arguing that it would needlessly antagonise Russia and provoke a new crisis between Russia and the west. …
In central Kiev, several hundred protesters defied a court ban and shouted anti-Nato slogans in Independence Square, the focal point of the 2004 pro-western “orange revolution” protests, which swept Yushchenko to power. A few thousand protesters were massed in the square today ahead of Bush’s arrival. For many Ukrainians, joining Nato is not a priority. Only 30% of respondents in the former Soviet state support the move.
Who knows why Germany and France changed their tune by the time it came to Ukraine a few years later? We know why Ukrainians wanted the yanks to gtfo; they saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want to be sacrificed for US goals. Unfortunately, corrupt officials sold the people out.
Turns out it’s hard to point to a war that doesn’t have grubby US fingerprints all over it.
So country wants to leave Russian SOI: arm local separatists, wait until country intervenes, then send in military and push for regime change. #noimperialism
I don’t know what you think I’ve been trying to say. And I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
It seems they also have a tendency to consider NATO as cartoons villains. Also, tankies are not the average lefties, they are at the extreme of the left.
It seems they also have a tendency to consider NATO as cartoons villains
If NATO did not want to be considered cartoon villains, they shouldn’t be so cartoonishly evil.
Thank you for confirming.
You seem to be under some kind of belief that people should be ashamed of an accurate assessment of NATO, and that it is some sort of mistake to stand by it. This is weird
NATO does more good than ruZZia for the world
Wait so are tankies anti-NATO? All leftists are anti-NATO lmao
gaddafi was sodomized to death with a knife. i can hardly think of a more cartoonishly evil organization.
“Cartoon villain” here means “a villain who is just intrinsically evil and does evil things as a result.” Contrast this with real people, who generally have material or ideological motivational for the actions they take.
The left views NATO as evil not because it’s full of cartoon villains, but because it is an organization that consciously, due to material and ideological motivations, chooses to immiserate the global south for the benefit of its constituent countries’ ruling classes.
Define tankie
I assume that means you haven’t read “Left-wing” communism, an infantile disorder by Lenin.
Fuck it, one struggle
He died so the lemmy community could heal 🕊
It’s kinda beautiful actually. He and 9 others died so that 253 people would stop bickering for 37 minutes 😭
😌
No one likes mercenaries after all.
big emojis
“prigozhin got whacked lmao”
We from neither are also pretty whelmed by this turn of events
He already mentioned liberals
Nobody even knows what people who say that mean. By context it seems to imply moderate right wingers or some “enlightened centrists” which ironically will also join the choir of calling people that. Just trumpist lingo “woke/lib/commie/feminist bad”
I dunno, this seems good for Putin to me. But I’m not an expert in geopolitics and war…
Eh, it’s debatable. He had already shipped Wagner off to Belarus and folded the Wagner troops into the Belarus military, so Wagner was pretty effectively de-fanged at that point. The only thing Putin gained by this was sending a message to anyone else that decided to stand up to him, although if anyone still didn’t understand that Putin tends to assassinate people who displease him they haven’t been paying attention since like 1980 when Putin was still actually KGB. This is very on brand for Putin, although it is a bit novel to apparently go with airplane “crash” rather than his usual standbys of poisoning, “falling” out of windows, or tripping down flights of stairs/elevator shafts and landing on bullets.
On the other hand, it does make Putin look scared and weak that he felt the need to assassinate someone who he had already effectively defeated, without needing to fire a shot at that. I still wonder how he pulled that off. He must have either had some seriously damning dirt on Prigozhin, or else made him one hell of a deal to get him to about face and march right out of Russia. Maybe Putin just straight up threatened to nuke him if he got any closer to Moscow and he decided not to try to call Putin’s bluff.
It’s a lemmy special
If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later
should’ve remembered this simple rule
Guess you could say the plane was denazified.
I’m gonna sound like a fringe conspiracy theorist here, but you guys, What if this was no random accident? What if someone intentionally made the plane crash? But who? And why?
Nonsense. The plane obviously accidentally collided with a surface-to-air missile that was randomly flying at the aircraft’s vicinity. Nothing to see here, move on.
Must have been the wind.
Somebody left the window open, plane fell out.
It was shot down by Russian air defense.
that’s the joke
No… it can’t be…
Wait, am I reading this right that the plane was shot down by russian air defence? If this is backed up at all by anything like a russian source, then this will just further enforce option that russia can not be trusted to do anything it says and that putin is weak and threatened (both are true but I thought the kremlin would at least try to say/show otherwise).
How does russia keep messing up this bad? I am constantly shocked and awed.
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Yeah, a pointless one that makes them look like predictable idiots. Most will not be unhappy at his death and those that would be are on russia’s side of this conflict. This (if it is what it looks like now) is like making a martyr just for assholes.
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Putin is killing people and the purpose of the window assassinations is meant to be clearly not an accident. The whole point is to send a message, not to try and fool people.
I don’t understand the logic here. When the putsch occured and then ignomously fizzled out, I saw Putin as weak for letting Pringles walk out with a (relative) slap on the wrist. Taking Prigo out of the picture was overdue. Obviously, anyone would feel threatened by an semi-autonomous mercenary army, so removing its leadership and breaking it up is just a rational course of action that probably should have been done sooner from that POV
Putin absolutely couldn’t let Prigozhin walk, nobody could have. It’s not just about the semi-autonomous mercenary army, if a government lets someone get away with an attempted coup d’état they’d effectively encourage others to give it their best shot as well because there was no effective punishment. Assassination is, well, a very Russian approach to the issue, but every government on this planet would have taken some form of action.
You are absolutely right. The US would have an armed coup leader strung up so fast. Maybe not assassination style, but there would most definitely be a quick trial and execution. If the US government couldn’t catch the person, I imagine that assassination would be on the table.
I can’t tell if this has turned into satire yet or if it needs one more reply to get there
It is the method used that has me baffled, if this happened as reported then they did not even try for any sort of plausible deniability.
I’m not really surprised. They got more and more open about their assassination attempts for years. They’re not meant to covertly get rid of enemies, they’re very public warnings to other dissidents. It’s rule by fear.
Russian assassination are pretty clear. Anyone with half a brain can put the pieces together, but there is just enough plausible deniability that there cannot be direct retaliation legally or politically. It is a clear threat but just barely veiled enough to avoid legitimate retaliatory action via legal or international responses.
Do you think if Putin goes on the record during his next q&a saying “little Ehrmantrotsky here just got what he deserved lol” that there’s any chance the RU ‘legal’ system is coming after him?? Shit I don’t know how to post pics here yet but really
If they took him out before the deal was made sure, this soon after just shows weakness and a lack of credibility. They did the equivalent to getting into a bar fight, talking it out instead and then in front of every one sucker punching the other guy.
you know you don’t have to forcibly try to interpret every event as a sign of Russian weakness
Truly. The mental gymnastics are impressive sometimes.
Losing multiple cities to a tiny domestic invading force of mercenaries after completely losing control of said force due to lack of command discipline, and finally only being able to force them to disband by threatening the families of the mercenaries involved isn’t exactly a sign of strength, though, is it? It’s not exactly what we’d expect of a professional modern military.
It would be like if Erik Prince took his Blackwater army and started marching on Washington, capturing towns along the way, and the US army was helpless to stop them until the American government threatened to hunt down and kill the family members of Blackwater mercenaries.
That would be considered unusual, and not really a sign of political or military strength.
If Erik Prince marched Blackwater through some American cities and – instead of sending the U.S. military to start a hot war on its own soil – American leadership pressured Prince and Blackwater to go home, would you be calling the president weak for not turning Virginia into a battlefield?
would you be calling the president weak for not turning Virginia into a battlefield?
hexbear emojis
I would think American leadership completely dysfunctional if they allowed that situation to occur. If they did not have enough command authority to trust that the US military wouldn’t confront Prince with immediate and overwhelming force when ordered, the US would be a laughingstock. The scenario is borderline unimaginable in a developed country with anything resembling a modern political infrastructure.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Russia. I was originally trained as a Sovietologist, when that was still a thing you could be an -ologist of. I could talk for hours about strategic weapons systems and Russian prep for NBC warfare and what the politics in the Kremlin were like under the troika approach and why the fascistic tendencies of Putin in rejecting Russian political history in favor of personal enrichment and plundering the nation have irrevocably broken Russian politics.
But that’s for another day. Putin responded the way dictators in developing nations do, not like someone who actually has command and control over their modern military forces. I mean, it’s a Russian tradition to threaten the families of people who publicly disagree with leadership. In the US, the forces brought to bear against Blackwater’s attempted putsch would have been so overwhelming that his own men would have arrested him. But as much as I hate Blackwater and think Prince should probably be in prison for war crimes, their cadre was recruited from a different class of people than Wagner.
the US military wouldn’t confront Prince with immediate and overwhelming force
You realize that’s the worst-case scenario of the incident we’re talking about, right? A sane leader would want to avoid starting a pitched battle in their backyard at all costs, and that’s entirely independent of speculation about control over the military.
The scenario is borderline unimaginable in a developed country with anything resembling a modern political infrastructure.
We had a half-assed putsch of our own not even three years ago.
They were losing a war to a bunch of tractors and their flagship was sunk by a country without a navy.
It’s not Russian weakness, it’s Russian stupidity.
Didn’t realize those billions in aid were for tractors.
They stopped Russia with tractors.
Now they’re pushing them back with real gear.
Jokerfication: when you kind of pity someone for being this propagandized, but laugh at them because it’s pretty funny
pushin em back 15 miles is good for you?
Do you know how many people pointlessly died for nothing?
were? so you admit that Russia is winning?
besides, this is not what this thread is about, go cope to someone who cares
No, they were losing to tractors, and Moskva was sunk without a navy.
Now they’re getting real gear and training to play.
The only thing Russia ever wins are Darwin awards. Fucking being proud of almost hurting a country a fraction of your size right next door, like the US being proud of conquering Ottawa.
Say hi to those F-16s for me.
Say hi to those F-16s for me
We’re literally dumping decades old hardware on them just so we can keep justify buying more F-35s.
Say hi to those F-16s for me
I’m sure they’ll be just as effective as the Leopards, the ghost of kieyiev will destroy the entire Russian army
Fucking being proud of almost hurting a country a fraction of your size right next door, like the US being proud of conquering Ottawa.
Look up the US attack on Grenada
The US could never conquer Ottowa
You are right, I don’t have to.
It’s more like taking it outside then shooting them and their buddies in the face. Message sent
then this will just further enforce option that russia can not be trusted to do anything it says and that putin is weak and threatened
If they let him live, they’re weak. If they kill him, they’re weak.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
The USSR is not the russian federation and the later is an oligarchy. Why do you think such cold war arguments (that over simplify) have some sort of play in this conflict?
I also noticed you skated right on by the “can not be trusted” part of my quoted text.
Do you think I’m talking about the USSR, or about how American propaganda cultivates the mentality of “they are wrong no matter what they do”?
Your entire argument was about the soviet union and its cold war relationship with the US. I have had it up to my nipples here on how fixated you all are on the US, I am not from the US, I don’t like the US, I am sick of somehow having to explain to people who apparently think the US is evil but simultaneously think the world revolves around it.
WE GET IT YOU ARE AMERICAN AND YOU ARE DIFFERENT BUT LIKE MOST AMERICANS CAN NOT STAND WHEN SOMETHING IS NOT ABOUT YOU.
The quote is from “inventing reality by michael parenti”. the cold war is an EXAMPLE, the authors POINT is that media will interpret literally ANY EVENT in a bad way to make enemies look morally inferior and bad.
Are socialist states immune from this fallacy?
But I am not media, the post I made is my honest take, and in this case the media stating this news is wagner and the russian state. How does this wall of text help me understand the apparent flaw in my statement?
They are suggesting that you have learned to reason backwards from certain conclusions.
Nah connect the dots by yourself, you cant be this unironically oblivious.
Do you know what an example is? What about an analogy?
Why do you ask? I think you replied to the wrong post
If this is backed up at all by anything like a russian source
The Guardian is reporting this:
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in June would give ample motive to the Russian state for revenge. Media channels linked to Wagner quickly suggested that a Russian air defence missile had shot down the plane.
Yes, I am hoping we get more info from anyone else then Wagner group soon.
The capitol riot was a threat to our precious democracy! / prigozhin’s coup attempt shows how weak putler is!
Tbf both were a sign of a troubled state but the Wagner mutiny was waaaaaaaaayyy more serious than Jan 6.
What? I am lost. Are you making some sort of US connection here?
The implication is that both events were ineffective at achieving anything meaningful, other than tasing one’s balls to death and getting shot by an anti aircraft missile
Sorry, how are ether events ineffective or not meaningful? You are still talking about one and we are all here talking about the other.
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No, but when they actually try to say something I do like to engage.
No, but when they actually try to say something I do like to engage.
Well do concider yourself more than welcome to stop by our news megathread and join us in rolling in the muck like the filthy geopolitical news hogs we are
One side uses its legal system to deal with an institutional threat, while the other performatively offers an olive branch and then stabs them on the back. Not quite the same. One side smells a lot like a mafia
The USA has always been a fascist country (just ask Native Americans and descendants of slaves). If you think slapping a few leaders on the wrist is going to stop fascism here, I would invite you to have a look at the history of Weimar Germany.
This is true, but I was answering to a comment implying an equivalence between the indictment of the traitors in the US and a the extrajudicial plane crash in Russia. If instead of getting a slap on the wrist they were being thrown out of windows at someone’s whim, I would not feel more reassured about the state of the US.
Russia decapitation their own PMC org that tried to coup them does not mean they cannot be negotiated with
No but the agreement being broken that was created though Belarus does.
Minsk I and II
Sorry I do want to talk about the other broken treaties but I think you replied to the wrong comment.
I think the implied argument is that if Putin is untrustworthy and if you’re implying that means that he can’t be trusted to comply with agreements made with Ukraine, then we need to look at historic agreements between Russia and Ukraine. Two recent agreements between them include Minsk I and II. Ukraine, not Russia, violated both.
Oh I was not under that impression, both in my memory russia violated.
Both sides might have violated the first Minsk agreement. As to who violated it first? My understanding was that Ukraine did. Eventually it broke down. As for the second, it depends whether you consider an omission as bad as an action. Ukraine violated Minsk II by ignoring it, which led to the SMO: https://macmillan.yale.edu/news/frustrated-refusals-give-russia-security-guarantees-implement-minsk-2-putin-recognizes-pseudo. Interestingly, France and Germany were part of these talks and officials have stated that they only ever intended to delay a war to better arm Ukraine; i.e. the NATO/Ukrainian side never intended to honour the agreement from the beginning.
I feel like Lukashenko will probably understand
Oh I am sure he is just fine with it, but it does not really give any confidence to anyone entering into any agreement with russia with a 3rd nation brokering (say a ceasefire).
This take perfectly embodies how libs only care about aesthetics.
These large perfectly monolithic groups of scary people that you don’t like.
I am lost and this is a reply to my own statement. May I ask you to expand on what a “lib” is, how I erred to be labelled as one, and finally how it is you think I care about aesthetics?
Can’t speak for anyone else but I may be able to answer this.
A lib is a liberal, someone who is pro-capital, not an anti-capitalist (very little overlap with how liberal tends to be defined in ordinary language in the US). Optics, relating to how people see the event, is idealism not materialism. Liberalism is idealist, unlike Marxism, which is materialist.
The dig at liberalism and aesthetics is likely a critique of the implication that what this looks like has much to do with the material reality. That’s an aesthetic argument. It doesn’t matter what this looks like because the optics don’t affect the material relations. Someone who elevates the optics at the expense of the material relations is making an idealist, likely a liberal argument.
Hence the comment embodying an aesthetic argument of the kind that liberals often make.
Ok, thank you, but what in my comment was at the expense of the material relations?
You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re taking this in the spirit in which it’s intended. When Marxists criticise idealism, the target is the liberal world outlook, not the individual.
By implication, really. Focusing on what people think of Russia’s/Putin’s trustworthiness rather than on it’s record or the factors that would keep it honest, so to speak. It’s Ukraine that violated Minsk, apparently prompted by France, Germany, and ‘NATO’. Looking at the optics, that seems a little more duplicitous than assassinating someone who attempted a coup (if this was an assassination and if what happened before can be called a coup).
Would I trust a single person, e.g. Putin to uphold an international agreement? It doesn’t matter. It’s not a one-man show. War is expensive and the longer it goes on for the more expensive it becomes, in support as well as the cost of arms, soldiers, etc.
Nobody has to trust Putin. An agreement would be maintained because material factors require it to be maintained. What westerners think it’s by-the-by. (I’m assuming you’re not Russian as you were asking about Russian sources—I’m not asking you to confirm or deny as I don’t want you to dox yourself; I’m just trying to give an answer that makes sense from the available evidence.)
Tank(ie) you for the detailed explanation!
Time for some self-reflection.
Please guide me on this, other wise these are just vague statements that make us both look silly.
You’re pissing in the wind trying to get anything from a Tankie unfortunately.
Jumps in, stirs shit, refuses to elaborate, leaves.
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https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1694397010680361239?s=20
Wings generally don’t just fall off without some kind of help.
honestly how could you be stupid enough to get on plane w/ that guy? this was the single most predictable event of the entire conflict.
“Plane crash” lol
They literally blew his nazi loving ass out of the sky.
Well the plane did crash against the missiles sent towards it.
I am shocked I tell you. Who could have predicted such an accident
rest in piss ye won’t be missed
never get in a helicopter (or other small aircraft)