BMTea

So what makes him special lol? Everyone and their grandmother is giving Russia "sharp retorts". Sikorski and his wife are both idiots.

The EU-Ukraine agreement wasn't the single issue in 2014, though it the catalyst. Economic integration with the EU was seen by both the West and Russia as a vital step in reforming Ukraine so that it could become part of the Western alliance - this was said explicitly over and over in Western capitals and NATO papers. Inside Ukraine it wasn't seen that way, as most Ukrainians wanted to enjoy good relations with both sides but to elevate themselves to Western standards - until 2014. For Russia however, it meant the end of economic influence which was its chief way of exerting political influence to keep Ukraine neutral or friendly, and for an important subset of Ukrainian security and political actors who would win out during 2014, it was in fact a path to NATO.

You're forgetting that Euromaidan was first and foremost a nationalist and anti-Russian movement, and that the ethnic issue is really what led to the civil war and Russian hostility to Kiev. People for some reason tend to overlook this when talking about EU, NATO etc. The real litmus test for Russia as to whether Ukraine would become a "hostile" (ime pro-West) state was Kiev's relationship with ethnically Russian regions of Ukraine.

Did Sikorski pay for this article himself? LOL. Almost all the criticism is about his wife. They even neglect to mention the time he created a minor diplomatic kerfuffle by joking that Obama's grandfather must have been a cannibal.

The argument you make ignores a few - well, many - ENORMOUS caveats. The key question is security neutrality. Ukraine may have been considered in Russia's "sphere of influence" economically, culturally and to some degree politically, but on the matter of security that is absolutely not the case.

Since independence it has straddled the line, with several attempts to push closer to the West due to structural security disputes with Russia left over from independence. Just for one example, a nation that was in the Russia sphere of influence would not have sent troops to aid the US occupation of Iraq, an invasion Russia opposed, in order to win favor with the Bush administration.

I really dislike the attempt to frame very commonly use concept of neutrality, which is a term that even NATO scholarship on the issue uses to refer to Ukrainian non-alignment, as "prooaganda".

I dislike even more when discussions about the history of th issue are met with counterfactuals and hypotheticals. Then it becomes a counterproductive polemical debate where one can claim that Putin and Ukraine would be lovey-dovey besties forever if not for NATO expansion or that Putin would absorb Ukraine in a neo-Soviet Anschluss and march on Riga and Warsaw if not for NATO. It's not useful framing at all.

This meme seems to undercut its own argument. No one can honestly argue that post-Euromaidan Ukraine was intent on remaining a buffer between Russia and NATO. In 2014 Ukraine made it clear that it was resolved to go to the Western camp and was sick of Russian influence. So what exactly is the argument here?

Good news: Man standing in direct path of avalanche puts on snow shoes

What they actually said is not that VPNs are banned, but using them to access blocked content is. First they mention porn, which is straightforward religiously, but then they also state that accessing blocked "disinformation" is also haram, which is gibberish and has no basis in either religious or secular morals.

The IRA was a bipartisan effort

Had Trump been president a similar bill would have been pushed through due to a post-COVID consensus and a concern over falling behind China. Everything else were accomolishments around the margins outweighed by serious damage to public trust, international stability and affordability.

Biden's abysmal approval ratings are not a failing of Americans to give him proper credit. That's the same argument Reoublicans made during the boom economy of 2017-2019.

Oh yeah, definitely, it's all just Republican propaganda that both of the two parties in a two party system are co-responsible for national and international policy disasters. For sure. Biden definitely wasn't a lame duck president who decided not even to fight for major proposals he promised and instead squandered political capital to defend Bibi and kill babies. Yup.

In some ways migrant successes and not failures are bigger fuel for nativist paranoia. Decline of living standards for locals, malaise, substance abuse, opiod crisis etc. are all policy failures, and nativists are terrified that instead of fixing those issues so they can live well in their own nation, the government is happy to let foreigners with more drive and less baggage move in - after all, deindustrialized Ohio is infinitely better than Haiti currently is.

Of course the racial superiority and bigotry play a huge role (in my view the primary role) and economic precarity is a very poor excuse for the insane racism they've subjected these migrants to. They aren't responsible for the policies.

"We have a concrete plan to help you! For example, higher federal minimum wage!"

"Okay, take my vote!

Four years later

"You've been in office for four years. Where is the minimum wage hike?"

"Turns out we can't actually do it unless we have a supermajority of government. And then it's still questionable if we will. Vote for us some more in your state and presidency. Hope that others in other states do too. Also stop bitching, we are moral and the other people are fascists, do not fail us, you must defend women and minorities by keeping us in power etc etc."

"I had more money under Trump, fuck off."