Version longue en français: https://www.bortzmeyer.org/coupure-russie.html
Several ISPs in France have started censoring rt.com via their DNS resolver.
Why are they doing this? I guess officially they'll say it's because of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and that's partially correct.
But also worth pointing out is that despite very uncritical propaganda from the regime about what happens in Russia, RT is one of the only mass media (non-independent publication) where you can have decent news about social uproar in France (gilets jaunes, anti-police-abuse riots, etc).
We haven't reached the point where posts to RT are censored on social media (where it's most popular) so i can't exactly say we have "one side" to the news yet but it's getting closer.
This message is both a fuck you to french ISPs engaging in censorship (remember Sci-Hub? TPB?) and a reminder to all the Putin fanboys around here what "there's only one side to the news" really means: Russia is already there (there's a few independent publications but they've been struggling for years with State censorship and journalist assassinations) and France is getting closer (on the other side of the narrative). The rest of you who live in countries with more free speech can't even realize what information control means so please don't take these words lightly.
Countries joining NATO want to join NATO. The majority of people in Ukraine want to join NATO. Russia is currently demonstrating to the world exactly why Ukraine wants to join NATO. Also Russia knows exactly NATO would never dare to attack Russia, just like NATO knows exactly Russia would never dare to attack them. Russia (Putin) is not scared about a NATO attack, he's scared he won't be able to insert a puppet government in Ukraine ever again. Let's not pretend it's about something else.
NATOs eastward expansion (in the past 30 years, not 60) is the product of those countries wanting to be in NATO. The Warsaw Pact was with the Soviet Union. Not sure if you noticed, but the Soviet Union does not exist anymore. Oops. I want to introduce my own whataboutism here: what about the Budapest Memorandum that Russia broke in 2014 by annexing Crimea?
Yes NATO did bad things and will do bad things in the future. This does not legitimize Russias invasion at all.
And sorry for being silent about things going on in the world years ago, I was too young to understand shit at the time. But anyway, when there's police fatally shooting hundreds of protesters, it's a sign the Maidan revolution was absolutely necessary.
Even Chinese state media (CGTN) is criticizing the invasion.
USA bad != Russia good
I come from Germany, we hate both of them here.
Where have I been the last 60 years? Nonexistent, mostly. Probably just like you. Stop this whataboutism
Again, NATOs eastward "expansion" is going on for 30 years, and it doesn't happen by force but by those countries voluntarily joining it. And Russia is still doing great advertisements showing why someone should join NATO. They do this to themselves. The only thing forbidding this expansion is an old agreement with the Soviet Union, which still doesn't exist.
Good question, I don't know where it's coming from either. I don't see it anywhere in this entire thread, so it must be coming from you. I already explained in another comment what a straw man is, thanks for the great example. You even combined it with Godwin's law.
But since you bring it up, why doesn't Russia bother getting rid of their own Nazis first? The Wagner Group? Why do they not-so-covertly sponsor many far-right parties in European countries? Why does a presence of Nazis even warrant an invasion? If Russia just never bothered annexing their land and sponsoring seperatists, things like Azov (which I assume is what you're on about here) would have never even existed in the first place.
I didn't suddenly "wake up" to this war by the way. I have friends and relatives in Ukraine, I have actually been there and seen the country and the people. Did you? I talked to people who were fighting the separatists, and who are fighting in Kiev now. The parents of a friend are stuck in Sumi right now, a shop next to their home was bombed a few days ago. They sure love being "liberated" by Russian artillery.
And before you say "whAt AboUT tHe USa??!": yes they invade countries too and it's bad too. Finally something we can agree on
I won't feed this discussion any further
Between 1959 and 1998 only Spain became a new NATO member (see your own graphic) which I would hardly call eastward expansion 🤨
My point was rather that Spain is in the far west of Europe and therefore I would hardly call it eastward expansion.
Makes more sense in that case, especially considering Greece and Turkey.
Also, I think, one can debate whether German reunification in 1990 counts as expansion since the 2+4 treaty states that no NATO troops may be placed permanently in eastern Germany and as far as I know this was not violated yet.
See this comment from 2 month ago. Never heard of Stepan Bandera and the battalion before.
It's hilarious that the Azov Battalion was formed from a bunch of racist rednecks because Russia invaded Crimea. And now you use it as the justification to for another invasion? Russia needs to learn to stay in it's lane.
As for Wagner Group, it is directly operated as a thinly veiled proxy army. They are a Kremlin asset whose leaders flash Nazi insignia as much as those Azov yokels. I wonder how the Ukrainian denazifacation of Wagner is going in Kyiv? Three foiled assassination attempts so far...
What the west should have done was Marshal Plan eastern Europe. Build them up with loans and investments rather let them wallow in corruption and poverty. Look at Japan and Germany today, compared to Russia. It was a cruel, conscious choice to use them as a cheap labor stock. And now we have to deal with the results: peace in our time? Or checking an aggressor before he starts World War III.
I'm not sure the Marshal Plan was a good deal for western Europe, although for sure it accelerated reconstruction greatly. But i'm sure eastern european countries could have fared better without western powers imposing that they must privatize everything, which was not a condition imposed on western european countries post-WWII.
I'm very much against Putin and this is not a defense of him, but the USA establishment basically created the Russian oligarchy overnight (after the collapse of the USSR) by pushing (forcing?) local authorities to sell every State asset as quickly as possible to the highest bidder while the economy is in ruins. So you end up with a handful of people owning the entire country while ordinary people need a bag of bank notes to buy bread. It's the very same technique they used in Iraq/Afghanistan after, and in many other places: it's a widely documented process, but i would personally recommend Naomi Klein's The shock doctrine and Adam Curtis' documentaries.
Once again, i'm not sure a eastern european "marshal plan" would have done better, but lack of western intervention post-USSR-collapse is certainly not what led to Russia being a capitalist hellhole.
Ha ha, yep, NATO scared Putin so much he invaded an unaligned nation in response. Nobody cares to invade Russia. Russia would be a NATO member, if it wasn't trapped in the cold war mentality of Putin. What do you get in return? Finland 2.0? Afghanistan 2.0? And a new batch of EU and NATO members. Putin has outmaneuvered himself.
As strong North Korea? They're totally dependent on China, too. Ukraine is Russia's next Afghanistan. Remember that fiasco? When American made Stingers cleared the sky of Spetsnaz helicopters? Does that sound familiar?
Here's some more whataboutism for you: Aleppo. Grozny. Go all the way back to Afghanistan, where this "non-genocidal" state carpet bombed during the planting season to starve the population. Projection, indeed.
Who genocided the muslim populations of the USSR? Was it the USA and western colonizers too? Does that ring any bells? From the wikipedia page on Deportation of Chechens and Ingush:
Just because western empires are evil does not mean other empires have to be good.
Please do. We've been talking about it for years, but more conversation/information is always welcome.
Are you saying that western powers were planning a military invasion of Ukraine? This makes no sense, as there was no major military deployment indicating it, nor was there any psyops in the west to mount a narrative justifying such invasion.