The actual article seems to indicate there is no evidence, just speculation, and nobody believes anything in particular yet. The uneditorialized title is "Investigators skeptical of yacht’s role in Nord Stream bombing".
Simply don't protect yourself from invasion by Russia if you are a potential target for Russian invasion, and Russia will not be forced to invade (at least for now.)
Russia's concern is they will not be able to invade former Soviet countries if they join NATO, which gets in the way of their imperial ambitions. NATO is not going to invade Russia.
It's a funny jump of logic a lot of people make. Sometimes people profit off of war, therefore all wars are secretly arranged by a cabal of war profiteers in back room deals. There's lots of variations but there's often a core true statement that is then used to leap to wild theories without any evidence.
But a big part of the expense is buying arms. That means that someone is making and selling those arms. And the seller is doing really good business.
I completely disagree with sprash, but you're going too far in the opposite direction. War profits are in fact a thing. It's good business for at least some. Where I disagree with sprash is that I don't believe that those people are the tail that is wagging the dog.
> … and Western support turned his last-minute coercive expedition into full-blown war.
His what?
Massing a hundred thousand troops on the border isn’t “last minute” and they had their sights set on a (quick) regime change after a shock and awe campaign to force surrender.
Another thing people in the West seem to earnestly believe is that this story begins on 2022-02-24 and that the use of military force renders historical context irrelevant. This standard is, of course, never applied to the military adventures of the West.
From a Russian perspective, Putin gave Ukraine 8 years to build a competitive army, with extensive NATO help. Back then, Russia could have forced a more serious settlement or regime change fairly easily. Maybe it was necessary to wait, to prepare Russian economy for the inevitable wave of sanctions. (Which, I might add, have failed spectacularly in their original, stated intent of bringing Russia to its knees.)
However, it appears that Putin really did hope for the qualified success of settlements as weak as Minsk I/II, or a possible third iteration. Coerced, if necessary. Either way, all that failed and now war is raging and hundreds of thousands of slavs (most of them from Ukraine) are dead, with many more to follow.
This is obviously not an outcome that Putin desired. This is, however, an outcome that seems to make some people in the West very happy indeed. “Weakening Russia” is what they call it, gleefully. And they keep pushing, keep stoking the fire. War is peace.
However, they deeply, fundamentally miscalculated. That will become very apparent over the next decade.
More just that he wouldn't be so stupid. People just listed all the reasons it was a dumb, short-sighted idea. Which, turns out they were right, except about how stupid Russian leadership was. They seem to have honestly believed it would be a three day war, that Ukrainians were going to welcome them as liberators, and that they actually had all the equipment that they did on paper.
The “three day war” and the other stuff have always been American talking points that have been regurgitated uncritcally a million times. Yeah, people in the West have been sold the idea that Ukraine is winning (talking about the real Ukrainian losses (not the fantasy numbers you sometimes hear) is strictly forbidded tho), I noticed. Let’s wait till it’s over I say...
I guess you don't watch Russian TV? I'm lucky (or maybe unlucky) enough to speak Russian so I have access. They say much more bombastic things than just these points all the time. They have their own reality distortion field over there and it leads them to make terrible decisions.
I'm quite certain that Russia is not secretly winning the war, but it's just that nobody can tell because of how great it's going.
Can’t watch Russian TV because the wise rulers of the superstate I reside in prevent me from doing that, for my safety. Not that I’d want to, because I don’t expect good information there either. Thankfully, there are other ways to inform oneself of the course of the war.
Well, sounds like the Ukrainian side is about to start it’s much-anticipated Decisive Battle offensive. The overall picture should become clearer once the dust from that has settled.
Talking heads on political TV shows are not politicians or affiliated with the government. Them having an intense belief in something does not mean that government officials do.
Nobody in NATO wants to invade Russia and have a nuclear war. 20% of homes there don't even have indoor plumbing. Nobody wants anything from Russia except to not be attacked by them.
Only time I've seen Nato bombing was with UNSC approval to combat genocide. In I'm fairly sure the bombing in Serbia was supported by at least some of the ethnic Albanians being attacked by the government, which would nullify the claim "Nobody in my country wanted to be bombed by NATO"
"NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations Security Council to use force in Yugoslavia. Further, NATO did not claim that an armed attack occurred against another state. However, its advocates contend that NATO actions were consistent with the United Nations Charter because the UN Charter prohibits unprovoked attacks only by individual states. The principal legal issue remains, however, since NATO as such is not a member state of the UN, whether the member states of NATO, the United States and the European powers that sent armed forces to attack as part of the NATO bombing campaign, violated the UN Charter by attacking a fellow UN member state: (1) in the absence of UN Security Council authorization, and (2) in the absence of an attack or a threat of imminent attack on them. "
Probably somewhere in Beijing and Moscow on the same day when bombing started, they were opening bottle of champagne because they got "excuse" to do same later when they need it.
I think that even one single human loss is disaster and hate to go along this road but please inform yourself more on "evidence" of those claims and heavy exaggeration of victim numbers.
If you truly believe that every human life is worth alot, then it must be hard to accept what happened and I sincerely empathize with that. But denying it won't really solve anything, and furthermore it enables history to repeat itself.
Yeah, your country just wanted to be left alone to conduct a bit of ethnic cleaning and some light genocide in peace, but NATO just wouldn't mind its own business.
That we should take into account that NATO is already 'at their doorstep', regardless of which weapon systems are where, since they can be deployed anywhere later.
