Ukraine Invasion Part 18

[Ijsbear]

Place for information, discussion, points of view, useful links and above all, a hope that this sovereign land can regain its freedom.

Man from Mariupol vein go interviewed on outside source. He left for a work trip just before the invasion. Has been texting his wife every day for a month with no response 😭 can’t imagine how horrendous the not knowing is.

Vein go = being 🤨

I raised Merkel And for extremely relevant reasons which were proposed in two articles and a rare one from the guardian itself.

Merkel being from East Germany, fluent in Russian, background in the Soviet Union And her long stint at the wheel are excellent reasons to look at her policy with Putin.
She was at the helm of the European power house, remember everyone was supposed to learn German because it was the language?
She had the benefits of year's in office etc .

Merkel being from East Germany, fluent in Russian, background in the Soviet Union And her long stint at the wheel are excellent reasons to look at her policy with Putin

Boris who employed someone as his chief advisor who happened to have spent a fair bit of time in Russia in a doomed airline project, whilst allegedly chasing girls and drinking, quite happy hobnobbing with ex KGB offspring who ended up with a Knighthood and lots of lovely donations to Party funds are also excellent reasons to look at his policy with Putin.

@PaperTyger

I raised Merkel And for extremely relevant reasons which were proposed in two articles and a rare one from the guardian itself.

Merkel being from East Germany, fluent in Russian, background in the Soviet Union And her long stint at the wheel are excellent reasons to look at her policy with Putin.
She was at the helm of the European power house, remember everyone was supposed to learn German because it was the language?
She had the benefits of year's in office etc .

Yes all very well but its completely irrelevant.

Putin didn't invade Ukraine because Germany (among others) bought Russian gas, along with a host of other goods too, also took part in western space programs....

Merkel's policy toward Russia was not different from pretty much any western country, which was engagement, UK was perhaps the most keen on engagement with Russia, or rather the Tory party was.... now will we ever see the full Russian report?

At the end of the day there is only one person who is responsible for Putin invading Ukraine and it rhymes badly with Poo bin.

now will we ever see the full Russian report?

Unlikely, unless Anonymous get hold of it.

Putin didn't invade Ukraine because Germany (among others) bought Russian gas, along with a host of other goods too, also took part in western space programs....

But it did help him fund this war. Without Europe buying Russian gas, he wouldn't have the money. It's worth looking at anything that works in his favour. Have a think about it, from Putin's point of view (not a place I would like to visit), wouldn't you put everything in place to get the outcome you wanted?

@PaperTyger

I raised Merkel And for extremely relevant reasons which were proposed in two articles and a rare one from the guardian itself.

Merkel being from East Germany, fluent in Russian, background in the Soviet Union And her long stint at the wheel are excellent reasons to look at her policy with Putin.
She was at the helm of the European power house, remember everyone was supposed to learn German because it was the language?
She had the benefits of year's in office etc .

I actually think consideration of Merkel is interesting from the opposite perspective.

As pp's have pointed out, she wasn't the only politician in the West that courted Russian trade/money.

Personally I think there are a number of reasons why Putin chose to invade now (his age and a sense time was running out, covid isolation, a belief the West was battered and bruised by both the pandemic and humiliation of Afghanistan to name a few) but I think Merkel leaving office was also significant.

As above she was one of the few leaders in the West that really understood him given her background and don't underestimate the "power" speaking the same language (both literally and figuratively) brings.

They were both in power for a long time and during that period formed an understanding and mutual respect (and personally I think he respected her more than any other world leader he's ever dealt with).

As such the timing of this invasion after she left office could well be significant not because she appeased him but because he knew for the first time in decades he wouldn't have to explain or try to justify what he'd done to a person whom he fundamentally liked and whose opinion of him mattered (as much as Putin is capable of liking/respecting anybody).

It's also a shame that the Russian report won't be released. We deserve to know what's been going on in the UK too.

Strongly agree with BreadinCaptivity but for heaven's sake can we leave Merkel alone? It's been done to death now.

er, perhaps not the best phrasing there.

Putin tried to scare Merkel at a meeting in 2007 by bringing his dog (Merkel is scared of dogs) and this was her analysis of the incident.

www.vox.com/2014/12/1/7313443/vladimir-putin-merkel

Later, in discussing the incident with a group of reporters, Merkel attempted an explanation of Putin's behavior.

"I understand why he has to do this — to prove he's a man," Merkel said. "He's afraid of his own weakness. Russia has nothing, no successful politics or economy. All they have is this."

@Ijsbear

er, perhaps not the best phrasing there.

Maybe not .

@Ijsbear

Strongly agree with BreadinCaptivity but for heaven's sake can we leave Merkel alone? It's been done to death now.

I think it was Gerhard Schroder who agreed the Russian energy deals? He later went and worked for a Russian energy company when he left office. The Germans are really pissed off with him now and want to stop funding his office (as he is getting public money), I can't remember where I read it.

The reason why I mentioned her earlier was because

a) she is a woman and as such is far more likely to be critiscised/deemed guilty of absolutely anything.

b) Whenever she is mentioned negatively on here, it all feels like it has a 'two world wars and one world cup' vibe about it. Although I am fairly sure that is not the vibe those critical of her are going for.

Anyway moving on ....

@HappyWinter

yeah Ive posted a few times about it when Merkel keeps being dragged up and blamed

Wiki has some info on it. Schroder went to work directly for Gazprom a few days after he lost chancellorship, is now He is the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG and of Rosneft and supports the invasion.

The legal stuff was signed then, as far as I'm aware, and Merkel had serious doubts about it but the contracts were signed or something like that.

I hope that's the end of this repeated derailment.

Merkel.is a huge player in what we see today unfortunately.

Bush, Blair etc came and went but Merkel was from the Same material as Putin.
People who lived behind that iron curtain... they share something we can't understand.
My sil is older from Poland.
She's damaged from it. from the hardships and she was one of the wealthier one's as she had a farm!
They had that special shared experience, the longevity of rule etc.
The politico article says even her home area was loosing her votes? So that's why she's backed Nord stream as that would make her votes?

Has anyone'reference the two articles I posted earlier re Merkel?

I've told family I am very busy with work for 48 hours and will not be in touch, but actually it has been getting to me so much. That's me living in comfort in the UK at the moment where there is a negligible chance of being blown up in those 48 hours.

Bucha. The main contact in Kherson oblast, behind Russian lines, knew all about Bucha. We discussed it. She's scared. They all are. She and her mother are not letting her father go out for supplies as he is the sort who will react in a way that rubs a soldier up the wrong way in an encounter. So she goes out, knowing what risks she faces.

Unlike Bucha and the horrors being discovered around Kyiv and in the North East there aren't bodies in the streets where they are south of the Dnieper. The situation is different. Bucha is in Kyiv oblast (as in the province around but not including the capital) where over 90% of the population speaks Ukrainian as their first language. The Russian soldiers are pumped up with de-Nazifying by carving swastikas into the bodies of the women they rape [yes, that was the most chilling image for me from recent days]. These women they see as semi-human, not quite right Slavs they have come to sort out. It's different down in parts of Kherson oblast which is supposedly much more Russian. It's the weakest link in the Novorossiya arc though as perhaps just 25% or so speak Russian there as their first language and maybe 30-40% in the district where my relatives live. So here the Russian troops can think of themselves more as liberators and my relative will smile and speak to them in Russian if she encounters any, though her accent will mark her out as being 'other'.

So no bodies in the streets at least where she is. Not a lot of Russian soldiers either as it is a small settlement they tend to just pass though. People she knows have been roughed up, one severely beaten and one has been taken away, not to be heard from again. She's deleting messages from her phone so that if checked again there won't be anything suggesting she is less than delighted by being liberated.

The elephant in the room when they had a visit that searched their home was her brother. He's not there. They said he was studying abroad. He's actually in the Ukrainian army.

Swamp is an interesting word, used by both Trump back in 2016 and Russia very recently. Bit like Fake news has seen a resurgence ?

May he (and they) survive, @MMBaranova.

Another good Trent Telenko thread:

twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1511417219674161158?s=21&t=R4yWrmwdpygYPEI8WSrzMg

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/05/germany-angela-merkel-power-to-vladimir-putin-russia

Since then, all eyes have been on Gerhard Schröder, the unrepentant ex-chancellor who in his final weeks in power shook hands with Vladimir Putin to ratify the Nord Stream pipeline underneath the Baltic Sea. Just weeks later, Schröder slipped effortlessly through the revolving door to become chairman of Nord Stream.

Less clear is why Schröder’s course of expanding economic ties with Russia was broadly continued by his successor, Angela Merkel, and whether she did so purely out of passivity or to her political advantage.

Less clear is why she continued his eccomonic ties.

Less clear.

She continued with it ,

When Merkel ended her 16-year tenure in December, political obituaries singled out her dealings with Putin for praise

But since last week, voices have been growing louder in criticising her sidelining of the foreign policy and security experts who warned her against seeing Russia as a reliable partner in trad

There are also fresh questions over Merkel’s unwavering support for the Nord Stream project, whose first pipeline she ceremonially unveiled in 2011

In Merkel’s first term in power, a certain naivety towards the pipeline project could still be explained by her power-sharing arrangement with a Social Democratic Party (SPD) still moulded in Schröder’s image

Even after her re-election in 2009, Merkel supported the continuation and expansion of a pipeline, insisting for years it was a purely “economic project”, even if she later conceded that certain “political factors” could not be ignored.

“There was considerable political pressure for Wadan Yards to be rescued

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/i-dont-hold-back-merkel-to-pay-putin-a-farewell-kremlin-visit

And yet, as many in the west have sought to isolate Putin, she and France’s Emmanuel Macron have urged EU nations to maintain a direct dialogue with the Russian leader. As she enters the twilight of her term in office, allies of the Russian president believe Merkel will seek a breakthrough in talks on conflict in Ukraine when she meets with Putin on Friday.

Other critics see Merkel as far too soft on Russia. Her final visit comes as Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that links Russia to Germany, nears completion. The pipeline, which will allow Russia to deliver gas directly to Germany and bypass other countries that it currently uses for transit, has put eastern Europe on edge.

I hope that's the end of this repeated derailment.

No. Because its not clear and not fact. ^^