It's funny that you say so ,since attempts to draw these countries into NATO is indeed one of the main reasons the world is creeping towards WWIII. Anyhow, we've crept rather far from the point - which stands - that the government which has won the elections with foreign funds bent over backwards to integrate the country into foreign structures, not actually bothering to negotiate entrance conditions any (this hurt in the EU case). Granted it was partly an attempt to claim internal credit and bask in the glory of it, but hey, it was the neoliberal asskisser class that also lent as much support as it could to US military avanturism in Jugoslavia and In Iraq.

LOL! My voting record shows the opposite.

So you say :P.

You're really clutching at straws with this blame it on NATO expansion. There was no threat to Russia and certainly no justification for invading another country.

I don't think the hostile party is the one to determine whether there was any threat associated with their action, or we might as well have to go with the Russian statement that no war is going on, and it's all a special millitary operation on UA's territory.

The Russian analogy to NATO expansion would have been to station military forces in a vassal state like Belarus and beef up the military presence in neighbouring regions such as Bryansk, Kursk and Rostov Oblasts.

The Russian analogy would have been a permanent military presence first in Cuba, then Haiti, Columbia and finally Mexico. Somehow, I don't think the US would take this in stride.

But just for a moment, say your NATO expansion theory is right, you don't have a leg to stand on because Russia has broken its own promises in staggering hypocritical fashion. Russia actually gave security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons as part of the Budapest Memorandum. If Ukraine hadn't done that, you can be sure this illegal war wouldn't be happening right now.

Yeah, no. Any value to the Budapest agreements ended when post-2014 Ukraine (not even continuity of government can be put forth) went off with loud plans to join NATO and started talking about nuclear armament. Coupled with the fact that the US like to station nukes at their allies' territory, this was very much gearing to a "Ukraine with nukes" situation. However...

all kinds of war crimes, raping and pillaging, wanton destruction, ethnic cleansing, genocide and more. You need to get down off your high horse. Ignoring the breach of the Budapest Memorandum and Russia's behaviour in Ukraine while harping on about somebody else's behaviour is so typical of Russian disinformation and deceit.

All of this characterizes Ukraine's conduct in the areas of Doneck and Luhansk people's republics, whose call for aid was the justification Russia used for the SMO. Ever since the start of the civil war and the crimes against humanity that precipitated it (such as the burning of people in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa), there have been clear atrocities committed by both Ukrainian forces and various private criminal groupings, eventually integrated into them like Azov and Donbas. Incidentally... this is a clear precedent the US has given to the world in 1999 - except of course, Russia focused on military targets rather than immediately flattening Ukraine's civillian infrastructure, like NATO has done to Jugoslavia.

This is all moot though, and you know it. Putin also claimed to be denazifying Ukraine, which again, another lie. Pretty impressive given the country's president is Jewish and just another example of one of Putin's Nazi style big lies [wikipedia.org]

The only nazi-style big lie is the claim there aren't Nazis in Ukraine. The post-2014 country has them crawling out of woodwork, and it's indeed one of the reasons I have zero support towards their regimes - their much vaunted heroes Bandera and Suchevyc have, besides committing genocide in Volyhnya and aided in the purge of Lvov's professors, been part of special police units Roland and Nachtigall, and later SS-Galizien, all of which were involved in various "counter-insurgency" activities in Slovak territory, and post-war, the fleeing banderites have turned to brigandry on our territory, murdering and looting near towns of Varin, Kolbasov, Ubla and others.

You might also note the interesting prevalence of hakenkreuzes among the brave defenders of Mariupol, mind you, these aren't jailbirds taken into a PMC but, these days, official members of the military. Oh, did I mention Zelensky recently handing out the "Edelweiss" insignia to one of his mountain brigades a clear reference to Abwehrgruppe 218 "Edelweiss", a counterinsurgency unit, once more, responsible for extensive war crimes. It's almost as if Zelensky's descent is no guarantee against espousing fascist historical paradigm for the post-2014 nation, just as Putin's former party membership doesn't make Russia communist, nor does Biden's irishness make the US government catholic.

How unfortunate that I happen to have a memory.... And idk, what are they teaching you at Langley, Johnny?

Yet, the only real danger to Lukashenko came from ,you know, his attempt to get close with the West.

As for the colour revolutions, by and large they've brought their constituents nothing good, and indeed a good number of them were reversed in effect. Ukrainian being a glorious example, what with the country being driven into multiple crises with the new kleptocracy, culminating in the bad winter where Tymoshenko attempted to dupe the Russian state gas provider ,them turning off the taps, gas prices skyrocketing and supply becoming sparse... and Juscenko's son buying a new Maybach in a classic "let them eat cake" move.

Takes a bit of guts to say noone is fragmenting Russia or asking to fragment it in response to an article calling for it (which isn't anything new either)

The relevant link also, since something went wrong with my post

You do understand that no amount of "neener neener I didn't actually promise anything, old chap" is going to keep the pissed other party from punching you in the dick when caught in-flagranti?

For your second point, has the US invaded the Solomon Islands? I must have missed that in the news... Can you send the links?

Well, they didn't have to, as Solomon Islands have backed down, to the extent of my knowledge. Similarly, if Ukraine would have backed down and declared neutrality, plus actually adhered to Minsk accords, there would have been no war.

I'm not particularly certain what you mean by

I like how you ignored it was both a referendum to join or NOT join

considering it's how a referendum works. Besides that... The Slovak Radio poll might have been about correct, with marked error bars you get when adding in the categories of "somewhat yes / somewhat no" - where it would be something like 24 to 19, fairly close. best I could find of a more detailed poll breakdown and evolution - note the support growing as of course, some highly misleading arguments were being used at the time, such as the vastly decreased military expenses we'd have. Also, it was an odd case where both governments, the one we had until 1998 and the shills that came after broadly aimed for both NATO and EU membership, although for different reasons and with very different negotiation strategies, so in terms of the political class ,there wasn't serious opposition to the move (as opposed to from the citizens themselves).

As for Polis... I wouldn't take their numbers seriously on anything, including this :P

As opposed to neocon shills like you?

As you can read there, support grew for a referendum on entry, while what happened was the lack of one.

Top officials say a referendum is not needed, arguing that voters clearly expressed their wish to enter the alliance in last September's parliamentary elections, when they voted for pro-NATO parties.

I wish this had been the greatest lie spoken by that particular government, but sadly, it's far from it... I mean ,the entirety of GORILA casefile happened under their purview. Mind you, spectator is a part of SME, which was a neoliberal newspaper by that point - had you been reading Pravda for instance, you'd get a very different picture, at the time. Although , arguably, it had still been legible at this point - the quality really decayed something like a decade-ish later.

Yeah, it wasn't considered a true promise by the US. . Meanwhile, Russia's red line has stayed in place, and once it had been crossed, it generated just the response it did.

May I remind you of the recent US threats against Solomon Isles with regards to them allowing Chinese military deployment? Solomon Isles, mind you which are nowhere near the US mainland?

Yes, it was a diplomatic failure by Gorbacov's government to have essentially gotten drunk on a bread roll, with a lot of hot air and few real assurances being given. That doesn't change the fact this was meant seriously by both sides at the time, frequently reasserted to be serious, and only broken when a) Russia had decayed further under Jelcin's drunken misrule and b) neocons fully taking over US foreign politics.

The Baltic states didn't join NATO to threaten Russia or undermine its security, but to protect themselves from a dangerous and unreliable neighbour. NATO was even looking like it might be over when Donald Trump was president, but all of that was instantly reversed by Putin on 24th Feb 2022.

Yeah, no, you yourself know this isn't true, what with persistent NATO misadventures like placing missile sites in Poland and attempting to place the same (or rather, the associated radar base) in Czech Republic, with the thinnest of excuses of supposedly being aimed to protect against incidents from Iran. What happened in Ukraine fits within this pattern of lowkey provocation reminiscent of a slimy man at a cinema, placing his hand on his neighbour's knee and slowly creeping up to see what will it take for her to slap him.

Let's be honest: the truth is, this isn't about NATO, it's about the EU. Putin is far more worried about Ukraine joining the EU than joining NATO, as you can see by his political interference over the years. Once in the EU, a country's gone fromr Russia's influence. The EU poses a much greater long term economic and cultural competitor to Russia, especially when you're an authoritarian dictator. There are some exceptions, but even countries like Hungary will sort themselves out after Orban.

Oh, don't be ridiculous. EU is a laughing stock that is busily shooting itself in any and all visible feet via its quest to abandon such evils as fossil fuels, agriculture, transportation and living standards, and that's not starting about the cultural aspects. I mean, the latest attempt at fomenting regime change in Georgia has rather failed after the pro-western protests have provoked counterprotests of equal, if not bigger magnitude, with people there expressing their disdain for "gayropa". And since the insanity isn't being dampened down, this will only get more pointed.

It didn't constitute brainstorming -it was an assurance meant seriously then, often repeated, and even used as an argument internally, by the side in US politics opposed to NATO expansion. However, it suffered from the big problem with any assurances given by democratic countries - it didn't much outlive the nomenclature that had given it.

It's certainly how Slovakia ended up joining, without any form of plebiscit (as expected, as the majority were clearly against, unlike EU entry where public support went very narrowly for, as evidenced in the referendum). Furthermore, DoS happens to have had undue leverage in quite a lot of european countries, both indirectly through the third sector and directly through charming ouvertures like the wiretaps NSA had on essentially all of Germany's government - one has to wonder at the extent of blackmail that had been going on there.

Again, repeating the same lie a hundred times won't make it true. At the time, Ukrainian leadership was willing to discuss up to returning to 24th February arrangements, i.e. status quo ante bellum, as it became clear it will be a swift victory for neither side. Ukrainian government's western backers had other ideas

Your world wars were created by the west's ambivalence. The west which stood by as the Nazis invaded and annexed European countries one after the other. The west which was so desperate to appease to prevent a war that they let a power grow causing the largest war in human history. You have forgotten your history. You may not be a retard by the exact definition but I think very little of you.

Not in the least. The west stood by, steering Hitler to strike after the east because they hoped for a germany vs. USSR conflict, with them swooping in at the end to cut up the heavily hurting winner. (as evidenced by post-war Churchill's dreams of Operation Unthinkable) This, of course, didn't work.

And to the contrary, I have not forgotten whose soldiers have died in droves to liberate my country and whose flag brought us freedom - and it wasn't the american one.