Perhaps the US manipulated Russia into starting this war to make the US military rich.

I follow your posts and I can understand the emotions. But saying things like "one must", "one has to", "we all know" - Ms. Amanpour is much better at that.

You know, we can always dig the topic deeper and deeper with question "who started first?" and probably we will go back to the freaking Stone Age.



I propose something else instead. I will write how I see it and you can tell me where I'm wrong:

1. There is a group (Putin and Co. + oligarchs), which wants to drain undue money from Russian citizens.
2. In order to keep that draining going steadliy they need to maintain status quo by propaganda and promises about coming back to "Great Russia times" and saying that NATO is dangerous for Russia.

Now, please imagine we remove that extreme greed from that group. What are we left with? Because I believe we are left with normal, civilized country which doesn't need to be afraid of NATO and can prosper peacefully together with rest of Europe.

If you agree with me up to this point you can clearly see that extreme greed=evil, which makes things quite black&white.

Now you can tell me where I'm wrong with my view or assumptions

thanks, its a start, please go on....

15:56 UK government ignored warnings about Putin, says ex-defence attaché
Former defence attaché: Warnings of Putin's invasion ignored in favour of UK banks

I follow your posts too and frankly your last post was....wow.

I don't care about CNN btw, but Christiane Amanpour is good. That interview just demonstrated how good at lying some people are. Please watch it and maybe you can explain to me to why that Kremlin spokesperson she interviewed did nothing but deny the obvious i.e. the invasion, the aggression. I watched that guy, I don't need CNN to explain to me anything.
Maybe you can do it without "one must, one has" and all the mannerism that apparently you spotted at me.
(I don't think I have used them more often than others here but hey ho..)

I saw that interview too and thought one of Peskov's comments was particularly troubling from the point of view of a possible spread of the war, i.e. the allegation that several countries in eastern Europe apart from Ukraine have biological weapons programmes.

He said that too? lol
Must watch it again, though it really makes me sick.

Edit: oh yeah, he said that US has developed programmes "in various countries" around Russian federation including Ukraine.

As I said, "minister of truth".

Excad AND Greenmount, thanks for replies with substance. I will get back in 24 hours at latest. Apologies in advance - I had no time to participate in this discussion in the last 6 days and I need time to quote as precisely as I can to illustrate the point, at least in the Peskov interview.

I post another reply below - please do not mix both in one pot, the next post is for information sharing purpose only. Thanks!

So, this came through in two social media channels (I deliberately do not mention which ones) a while ago

Extraction Operation Contracts in Ukraine

https://silentprofessionals.org/jobs...gents-ukraine/

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/r...ing-Kyiv-fight

For those wanting to read the arguments why this is the fault of 'The West' see here:

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-conte...-Crisis-Is.pdf

Yeah, I stopped after the first page. I think this justification is for those who cannot accept that Nato has expanded for a reason and no country is responsible for the acts of another. At this moment Russia is the aggressor not Nato, not Ukraine or anyone else.

I also wondered if this horrible war could have been avoided through diplomatic talks, negotiations etc and I have no answer to this date. But I started to believe it was planned for a very long time.
I am sick of the blame game, it just doesn't help anyone in Ukraine.

repeat the same in front of the mirror

@vladest
I think arguing with each other on EF is silly....Aleydis is definitely against this war as far as I understood and even if our opinions may differ in regards to why, how, what for it all started we can still be more understanding with each other here....if a bunch of people who are basically nice (I think) cannot agree to disagree or maybe just leave the room when the atmosphere is too heated....what can we expect from this crazy world..

How would the military become rich, they are not in combat?
A US military member assigned to or deployed to a combat zone receives bonus combat pay (officially called "hostile fire" or "imminent danger pay"), at a rate of $225 per month.

After reading that Putin openly threatened the US with nuclear war is there anybody else getting a Cuba vibe?

The military industrial complex is raking in the cash. Check the Dow Jones.

Mearsheimer is a boardgame fool who rather sides with the Russians than admitting he was wrong.

So what? War is a nasty business and both sides try to get the best fighters by whatever means.
The Russians have been using the Wagner group for mercenaries in Ukraine for almost ten years.

Reiterating whatever "promises" claimed to be given to Gorbachov is naive.
Everybody knows a politician's promise is only as good, at best, until the next election, or to quote a former UK Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, "a week is a long time in politics.
An even worse situation with any US promises where the political strategy/direction can change 180 degrees every four, or eight, years.

As several have posted here to make a political promise real you must have a treaty, remember, as they say, a verbal promise is only worth the paper it is written on.

Everybody knew the Soviet Union was collapsing. The Western powers were charitable to Gorbachov by pretending he could somehow control this collapse but, in reality, it did not matter what they negotiated or promised - the Soviet Empire was finished.

personally, i think assigning blame is a waste of time. let alone name-calling. there's a humanitarian disaster already in progress and the focus should be to avoid as much as possible further tragedies.

unfortunately, if no satisfactory deal can be had, for russia, they might consider their next best option to be to just destroy ukraine rather than risk having a nato-aligned country on their doorstep.