AI-generated videos promoting Poland’s exit from the European Union have appeared on Polish-language social media, featuring non-existent, attractive young women advocating for “Polexit”.
One TikTok account called “Prawilne Polki” published content showing women dressed in T-shirts bearing Polish flags and patriotic symbols, European analytics collective Res Futura said. The content targeted audiences aged 15 to 25.
The videos featured statements including: “I want Polexit because I want freedom of choice, even if it will be more expensive. I don’t remember Poland before the European Union, but I feel it was more Polish then.”
Putin had no reason to stop Trump from doing that.
Remember, until February 2022 Putin knew that Ukraine will become a part of the Russia in 2022. He had a lot of intel from actual Ukrainians living in Ukraine. He had spent billions for bribing various Ukrainian military officials. He knew that those Javelins will all be in the inventory of the Russian armed forces in spring 2022. Why would Putin have forbidden Trump from sending them?
Of course, Putin had not understood how much 2014 changed the Ukrainian thinking. The Russia was still more or less a friend until that. After it attacked Crimea, it absolutely was not. And suddenly very very few people would coöperate with the Russia even to the least extent. It’s difficult to explain how abrupt the change was! It was not possible for Putin to understand what had actually taken place, because the Russian heart is so very different from the Ukrainian heart. Russians would never have had a Maidan. It would absolutely not fit the Russian culture to do anything like that. The feelings behind that were simply unfathomable for a member of the nation Putin hails from. But in any country there are a few percents of the population that really wants to see shit where there is none. And those felt uncomfortable in Ukraine. And those people really did think their country was going to hell and that’s what they told Russians. That was really how for example Medvechuk saw things. While extremely unrepresentative of Ukrainians, those people were practically 100 % of those who gave any intel to the Russia.
And of course…
Putin rules through corruption. He gives people power by electing that for certain people no corruption will ever be noticed by the authorities. And at the same, he has the power to make the authorities see the corruption whenever Putin needs to get rid of those people. But if you choose only public officials who are corrupt, of course they will steal all the billions they were supposed to use in Ukraine. Especially since Putin told everyone around him, even Shoigu, that there will not be an attack against Ukraine – that everything is just training for the worst of the worst case scenarios. Preparation in case that EU goes crazy and attacks. And everybody knew EU won’t attack and they trusted Putin when he said he has absolutely no plans to attack anything in the western direction.
But yeah, Putin has done his homework. He had made a lot of effort to get it right. And therefore he knew it doesn’t matter what weapons Ukraine has. He “knew” that Ukrainians overwhelmingly want to join the Russia and he “knew” that all military districts in Ukraine had been bought with those billions he had spewed there. The more weapons Ukraine gets in 2018, the more weapons the Russia has in 2022 when it’s time for the next step of the plan – the Suwałki gap, next to which there had been several very very big wargames when the future events of 2022 seemed crystal clear to Putin.
It’s just… Sometimes you put a huge effort into your homework and still get a wildly incorrect answer, if you have unknowingly slept through the most crucial lessons.
That sounds too much like a story in which everything just happens to happen as needed. It’s still possible and I am grateful for the insights but I cannot imagine that much ignorance.
To mention one thing, the USSR must have insisted on controlling the Suwałki gap because they knew that the Capitalists were out to get them. But why conquer the gap now if that triggers the war that the gap is supposed to prevent?
Putin suggested the economic union from Atlantic to Pacific. He must know that it will lead to a dissolution of the nations so he can’t be that hung up on Russia.
Dissolution of what nations?
Russia, or rather the Russian Federation and its members, like EU member states are losing significance, e.g. by having to implement EU regulations.
The economic union suggested by Putin would have the same kind of power dynamics that USSR did. In EU independent member states lose their significance as the significance of EU grows.
When it comes to an economic union from Atlantic to Pacific, it would be strongly led by the Russia. It would have compulsory Russian in schools for those who don’t speak Russian as their mother tongue. Any increase in significance of an economic union led by the Russia would translate to increase in significance of Moscow. Dissolving the nations into something led by an autocrat in Moscow would not mean dissolving the Russian nation, but rather more assimilating them into the Russian nation. Just like nobody talks about the Mari and the Komi and the Sakha now, even though those are nations of their own, in a future Atlantic-Pacific economical union nobody would talk about Finns or Lithuanians. Those nations would be seen the same way as the Komis are seen now.
An economic union would be led by the strong economies. Russia would be dominated by France, Germany and at that time Britain.
Like today, people would speak English, unless the Slavic nations cooperate and push one language. Ironically, as a compromise that could have been Ukrainian.
It’s Russia that would lose control, in the east. The union would grow the cities there for business with Asia. The growth from Europe would be so strong that people would speak the common language of Europe.
The Russia would not agree to join this kind of an union. If there is ever to be an economic union from Atlantic to Pacific, it will be one led by the Russia. (And that’s why there never will be).
Of course for “reaching the Atlantic”, getting either Denmark or Sweden in that union would be close enough to count for the Russia.
The Russia is currently leading a similar Eurasian Union. For example, when people in Kazakhstan were talking too critically about Putin, the Russia sent its soldiers to help Kazakhstan protect itself against those people The Russia would not lose control, because it would never agree to join an economical union such as described by you. When the Russia talks about that economical union, it means a union centrally governed from Moscow. Just like the current Eurasian Union is governed.
Kazakhstan was about to have a color revolution. That’s the hybrid warfare of which we accuse Russia in the west.
Russia accepted their change to the latin alphabet. If they were oppressive and culturally dominant that wouldn’t have happened.
Suwałki gap did not exist when Soviet Union did.
Suwałki gap is the border area between Poland and Lithuania. It’s a narrow stretch of land with the Kaliningrad enclave of the Russia on one side and Russia-controlled Belarus on the other side.
During the Soviet times Lithuania was a part of USSR, meaning that it was not a gap between two parts of USSR, just a short and insignificant part of the long Soviet-Polish border.
How is the Suwałki gap supposed to prevent a war? A war between Belarus and the Russia?
I thought that there were not only political but also topological reasons for the significance of the gap but I can’t find anything besides that some historic battles happened there.
So the question is why he would be conquering the Baltics. For Russia’s glory seems to be the preferred answer. But strategically it doesn’t make sense to conquer more land for Russia, without, as it seems, any security improvements at all.
There are three security improvements to this:
Firstly, a flat land is difficult to defend. The Russia would want to bring their western borders to seashores and mountain chains. The Russia used to have pretty much those borders until 1917. I’m attaching a map of what would give the Russia the least amount of flatland to defend in case that the EU ever wanted to attack it.
(Of course there’s the wee question of why would we want to attack them, but a Russian mind would want to attack others if it can do so without getting into too much trouble and therefore assumes others are the same)
Secondly, Baltic countries and Finland are simply very close to St. Petersburg and even to Moscow. It would be easy to bombard especially SPb with missiles from Finnish and Estonian territory. Or even Moscow from Latvian territory.
And thirdly,
if there lots of Russian speakers in an area and it still manages to be democratic and prosper, it shows that Russians are capable of living under democracy. Putin has put a big effort into painting an image of Russians not being capable as a nation to live in a democracy. If anyone people in the Russia identify as “Russian” prospers outside the rule of the Czar, that someone is a threat to the Czar.
It doesn’t make sense to start a war that will most likely be lost to have better defence in a war that then will never happen because Russia ceases existing.
Compared to Nato countries that’s not true. Nato is attacking much more which forces Russia to think about security.
True but without Iraq, Libya and others that wouldn’t be important.
We are going to get chat control. Maybe the Russians would fall for it but we are also ruled by an Oligarchy, that must want to dissolve Russia. Unlike the Russians we pretend that it doesn’t exist while we acknowledge that the billionaires determine politics.
Why would it be lost? If they win the war in Ukraine because of western Europe wanting to protect Ukrainian civilians by forcing them to capitulate to the Russia, why would the same not work in the Baltics? And of course, if the Russia doesn’t win in Ukraine, it will not be going to attack Baltics either. The whole conversation about Suwałki gap includes the assumption that the Russia will win the war in Ukraine.
But if it wins in Ukraine, then Russians would be idiots not to attack Baltics and Finland. (And regarding “because Russia ceases existing”, I’m a bit lost. What did you mean with that?)
The original peace plan only gave the almost conquered oblasts to Russia. Of course, if Russia could influence it, minimizing the frontier would be optimal. But if it is to defend against a West that wants to conquer Russia then creating a casus belli by waging a war for it would be stupid.
It’s the West that wants Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
Here you are again talking about USA wanting the Russia and then somehow skipping from that to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (and maybe Sweden). Any such attack would happen with their involvement.
The original peace plan in 2022 included Ukraine sending its army home and the Ukrainian leadership resignating.
But yeah: You are linking to a Wikipedia page that tells what we know: USA has always wanted the Russia to fall. But you do that in a context where you say that Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and/or Poland “wants to conquer Russia” without telling anything about why we in these five countries would want to conquer the Russia. Your link gives no answers to that and without answering that question your argument is missing a crucial core part, without which it cannot function.
You say it’s the Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland that want the Russia and that USA is willing to help. You really need to tell why the hell we five would want to conquer the Russia? With or without help from USA.
Ah well. One of us two has lived in the Russia, the other one apparently has not. I am unhappy with the situation of democracy in Europe, but comparing that to the situation in the Russia means that you lack experience of at least one of these two areas. We are inching towards the kind of society they have in the Russia, but being on the way towards their system does not equal having their system yet. We are far from that.
I don’t know. What’s the difference from your point of view?
Our tax money is not funding neonazis, for example.
Both in the Russia and in Ukraine I saw a really big nazi problem. In the Russia it was big, but also in Ukraine almost as big. My first time in Ukraine was in 2015, so merely a year after their nazi problem had peaked in 2014. It was still very visible if you had any understanding of antifascism. It is maddening how indifferent western Europeans have become to fascism’s spread and growth. And here I don’t mean just “people I don’t like” when I say fascists, but people like Utkin who has SS tattoos on his shoulders.
An actor that is the biggest funder of organizations wanting to bring back National Socialism is not at all at the same level with what is wrong in EU. Only one of these are directly opposed to the declaration of human rights.
Similarly, the Russia has been continuing the genocides it was committing during the imperial times and Soviet times. The EU is not doing anything like that. (The Finns’ behaviour towards the Sámi gets closest, but is magnitudes less bad than what the Russia is doing.)
I would like you to list the attacks Finland, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Canada have done that have been much more than the attacks against Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Moldova, Ichkeria, Tajikistan, Georgia and Ukraine that the Russia has done. (And yes, I did open your phrase “NATO countries” to list a random selection of NATO countries, because that makes the question easier to answer. Because you said those countries have been attacking others a lot, and I haven’t really noticed them doing so.)
The USA are running Nato. To compare minor countries, that still managed to have colonial cruelties, with the USSR, to show that current Russia is more dangerous, doesn’t feel right.
There was a deal that European countries will allow USA to remain an uncontested military hegemon by making sure to not put resources into armaments. We saved a ton of money, and could use that money for nicer things. At the same time USA’s military hegemony gained it influence that it was able to translate into money. Both sides won. And, as a part of that arrangement, the USA was indeed running NATO.
Now we know that if there will ever be a war where NATO is needed, USA will not come for help. NATO is no longer the USA project it once was. Since we know that USA won’t help, we will not do a shit to help if they want to go for another war against Afghanistan or Iraq or do other similar horrors.
You say that comparing them to USSR although even they did colonial cruelties is… Weird? How does one country’s colonialism become okay through others managing to do the same in a lesser extent?
How is the Russia not more dangerous than Germany or Denmark is?
Just for clarification, you mean the old stuff?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia
Brezhnev could have been Ukrainian. Why hold Russia accountable for that?
Because the Russia has declared itself a successor of USSR and because USSR was very ostensibly a Russian project.
Look at where Ukrainian was spoken by the majority in 1920 and where it spoken by majority now. Almost half of the Ukrainian-speaking area is gone nowadays. Because of active efforts by the Soviet Union.
Or look at what share of the population of Latvia spoke Latvian as their mother tongue in year 1930 and what share speaks it as their mother tongue now. Some people argue that what was done in the Russian part of Soviet Union (known as RSFSR back then) does not count as a regional genocide, but what USSR was doing especially in Latvia absolutely did in any case.
A country that was genociding other cultures in order to become culturally fully Russian was a Russian country that had subjucated other nations. And the Russia is a direct continuation of that.
The Russia is accountable for everything it does. That’s why it should be held accountable for its invasion of Czechoslovakia.
But hey, now you somehow forgot to answer the original request! (For your question, whether I mean the old stuff… The answer is either yes or no. I cannot know which one, because I do not know what you mean with “old stuff”. But yeah, if you want to include some definite year, then tell me which one! 🙂 I wanted to include only recent things, therefore I only looked at what has happened after WW2)
So, I’ll reiterate the request you accidentally forgot to answer: I would like you to tell what attacks Finland, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Canada have done that have been much more than the attacks against Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Moldova, Ichkeria, Tajikistan, Georgia and Ukraine that the Russia has done.
The thing is, Putin has made a decision to never use Internet for anything. He has never done anything in it, because for him it’s a tool full of propaganda. His first contact with Internet was that his underlings were able to shape opinions across the globe extremely efficiently using Internet. He doesn’t want his brain to rot like that, so he absolutely refuses to use Internet.
Now, what sources exist for him, then? He doesn’t know what he is missing, so he is unaware of how pervasively all information exchange takes place over Internet.
Putin gets his information from TV-news, newspapers and from assistants that he has meticulously hand-picked, personally. He knows his own TV and newspapers are full of propaganda and therefore not very useful as sources. And he seems to honestly assume the same applies, to the same high extent, even, to foreign media as well. That means, he is basically left at his most trusted assistants for all information. He vets new recruits against the earlier ones: If the new one is telling things that are in agreement with what the older assistants, he can be trusted. If not, he has been compromised by American propaganda.
Also, it’s good to keep in mind where Putin comes from. He was the second child of a single-mother. The first child died, largely of hunger, during the siege of Leningrad. They had no food there, which meant that cannibalism was very common. You can figure out what happened to a child that died at a young age in that city. It’s either: He gets buried and another child starves. Or the other child is given food that will keep it alive. A single mother traumatized by such an experience, in post-war USSR in devastated northwestern USSR. No time for the child, really. The guy grew on the streets. And there’s nobody who doesn’t get traumatized by that kind of an experience.
Because of this personal history, Putin really believes deeply in the concept of thugs being able to trust other thugs. Because of his early development, where he has had to play the role of an adult at an age when he should still have been an innocent child for many more years, his brain is wired differently than that of an adult without a traumatic background. He truly does not understand that the people around him who lie to everyone else, also lie to him. And because of his vetting system, he has ended up hiring only assistants that coördinate their lies with the other assistants. If anyone steps away from the line and starts saying something different, Putin knows that the assistant has been compromised by CIA and fires him. And when Putin fires an assistant, that also means that the assistant’s children will lose their study places, etc. The family’s life will be derailed completely. That’s a type of a punishment for betrayal.
So, Putin seriously is entirely disconnected from real world actions. He gets information from his assistants, but has personally made sure that they all lie. And that they lie all the time. At the same time, Putin is giving orders that must be implemented verbatim. He gets information that there are 1000 soldiers in the centre of Pokrovsk and then he gives an order for 150 of them do some specific thing. And in reality there are 30 soldiers, and they are at the outskirts of Pokrovsk. Yet the command will be relayed and implemented verbatim. And then those 30 soldiers die for nothing.
I do not think “ignorance” is really the correct word for this phenomenon, though. So, in the end I do agree with you, in a way.
What’s your source? I could only find that Putin doesn’t use a smartphone which is very rational in his position.
The German Wiki states that his parents gave him a car. So he is not the child of a single-mother. He is also the third child, not the second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin
What are your sources for Putin’s self-isolation?
Making an internet search for putin doesn’t use internet brings a lot of results from 2023, but I did read about it around the mid-to-late 2022. It was told by a person I do trust, but I cannot find the precise source now, over 3 years afterwards.
Still, if you read through the various articles you find with that search, they together give a reasonable good image of what’s going on. (Beware, of course, that many of the sites are more than just fishy!)
Sorry for not taking time to dig through them more precisely!
Thanks, that’s good enough for me.