Since missing the point and moving the goal posts appears to be a favourite pastime for folks, let me reiterate the main point I was making once again. For about thirty years, Moscow kept reaching out and kept hitting a closed door. In 1990, Gorbachev agreed to let a reunified Germany join NATO. US Secretary of State James Baker told him the alliance wouldn't move "one inch eastward." By 2004, NATO had added ten new members across Central and Eastern Europe, three of them former Soviet republics sitting right on Russia's border. Yeltsin wrote to NATO in 1991 floating the idea of Russian membership. Russia joined Partnership for Peace and signed a founding agreement with NATO in 1997. Enlargement went ahead anyway. Russia's own membership was never seriously on the table. In 1999, Russia wanted the Kosovo crisis handled through the UN. NATO bombed Yugoslavia without UN approval. Russia's prime minister got the news on his way to Washington and turned his plane around over the Atlantic. Then came Putin, who was very much pro-West if we wish to point at missed opportunities. He reportedly asked NATO's secretary-general when Russia might join. He addressed the German parliament in German. After 9/11 he was the first world leader to call Bush, shared intelligence, and didn't stand in the way of US bases in Central Asia. What came back? The US walked out of the ABM Treaty, invaded Iraq over Russia's objections, and NATO took in the Baltics. In 2007, Putin offered to share a Russian-run radar in Azerbaijan instead of the US building missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic. No deal. US systems went up in Romania and Poland anyway. The next year, America's own ambassador in Moscow warned Washington that Ukraine joining NATO was Russia's brightest red line. Weeks later, at the Bucharest summit, NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would become members someday. Medvedev proposed a new European security treaty in 2008 and published a full draft. It was politely shelved. Then came the "reset." Russia signed New START, opened a supply route into Afghanistan, backed UN sanctions on Iran, cancelled a missile sale to Tehran, and abstained on the Libya resolution instead of vetoing it. The no-fly zone turned into regime change, and Congress followed up with sanctions on Russian officials. In 2013, Russia brokered the deal to remove Syria's chemical weapons, sparing Washington a war it didn't want. A few months later, a European-mediated agreement in Kyiv fell apart within a day, and the West recognized the new government almost immediately. Merkel later said the Minsk agreements bought Ukraine time to get stronger. Moscow took that as proof the deal was never meant in good faith. And in December 2021, when Russia put written security proposals on the table, the central demand was rejected outright. Tell a country long enough that it will never be a partner, and eventually it stops trying to be one.

This is such a cynical and frankly ignorant take. Russia did open up to the West in the 1990s. It took Western advice only to see the GDP fall by roughly 40%, life expectancy plummet and the parasitic oligarchs plunder the state resources. This was the peak of oligarch power not the cure for it. Putin was keen on building bridges with the West, equitably. He was the first world leader to call Bush after 9/11, he backed the Afghan campaign and he spoke of partnership to the Bundestag amongst other things. The response was exit from the ABM Treaty by the US, NATO expansion to the Baltics in 2004 and a 2008 pledge that Ukraine and Georgia would join. Meanwhile the economy grew ~7% a year in 2000–08, poverty fell from 29% to about 11% by 2012, foreign debt was paid off early, and life expectancy hit a record by 2019. The West is only comfortable with Russia when she is broken and compliant. It has never accepted a Russia that set her own course. The only way she was welcome at the table was if she sat by the service exit and was grateful for the scraps while others gorged themselves at her expense.

Praying for the people of France. I'm hearing that 100,000 peaceful protesters have now been killed by the French police. Surely it's time for us to liberate them by blowing up their bridges and power plants and maybe a girls' school?

The former British home secretary and buddhist daughter of a Kenyan descendant of Goan Catholics, and a Mauritian Hindu descendent of Tamil, born in Harrow, studied in New York, married to a Jewish South African who lived In Israel says multiculturalism has failed.

Endelig har en norsk avis snakka med ukrainske menn om tvangsmobiliseringen og korrupsjonen som preger dagens krigssituasjon. Reportasjen må leses av alle nordmenn som vil fortsette å sende ukrainske menn til kjøttkverna i en krig som ikke kan vinnes. klassekampen.no/artikkel/202…

Especially funny that China in five thousand years has never invaded Japan, but Japan has attempted to invade China three times. Yet, they’re mad at China, instead of being mad at someone like the US who nuked them twice.

Yesterday the EU said the hole in Ukraine’s budget had been covered. Today it turned out there was no hole. Remember the $27 billion Zelensky put on every front page, the money we were supposedly missing for salaries, including the army’s? Brussels now says that gap was never confirmed. Officials sat down with Kyiv and concluded external financing for 2026 is already enough. A day earlier the same partners were still talking about finding money for the budget and the war. So which version was for the cameras, and which one is for the ledger?

Zelensky is claiming to have "Intercepted intelligence" about a massive Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian emergy infrastructure? The Russians announced it openly over a month ago. Heres my post on it, Sept 1st. More idiocy from the Coked up Dictator.

Putin is using reality as a weapon.

"European competitiveness had one key factor: very cheap gas from Russia, which has been over since 2022. But our big export market is China, and that's over too." - Macron Étonnant.

Here we see German Chancellor Friedrich Merz walking out of the ceremony where NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was handed the so-called "Peace Prize' for NATO. As people outside unleash furious chants of “Murderer! Murderer!”, Merz is casually leaving and smiling as though the deafening condemnation means nothing.....

Sikorski is boasting about stealing foreign assets. An extraordinary act of self-harm: states outside the EU do not accept the moralistic argument for throwing out the rules, and there are huge concerns about keeping money in what has become a rogue EU.

Europe: Putin can't blackmail us and use energy as a weapon anymore! Also Europe:

“Yes, officer. My hamper hasn’t arrived from Fortnum and Mason and I’ve a strong suspicion Iran is involved.”

South Korea’s president says Zelensky is lying, breaking agreements, and deliberately fueling war on the continent. I’ve been saying this for the last 7 years. Glad more people are starting to see it. Especially when it comes from people this respected.

104 Iranian sailors, many in their late teens, unarmed, thousands of miles away at a training event with other nations. Their final words to the US warship that slaughtered them "we are unarmed". The law of armed conflict states survivors to be recused - the US ignored this.

Erst rettet er ein Flugzeug, nur um dann kurz danach Blutverschmiert zu Netanjahu zu fahren ohne jegliche Klinische Untersuchung, ohne jegliche Befragung der Geheimdienste, Polizei. Voll logisch. Die Geschichte ist noch dümmer Inszeniert als die Drohnen Geschichte in Leipzig.

Lithuanian PM Mindaugas Sinkevicius has warned against exaggerating claims that a Russian attack on NATO could be imminent, saying there's currently no intelligence evidence that Moscow is preparing one. “You can’t exaggerate and say, ‘ioh, something is happening in the upcoming months or weeks,’” he said, in the presence of the military bloc's chief Mark Rutte. “Is there any proof, real proof, intelligence services are providing something on the table that Russia is getting ready for something? And there's actually none,” he added. “The risk remains, but it’s not fluctuating, increasing or decreasing.”

South Korea's Lee says Kiev is "praying for the outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula." Seoul will take "additional measures" if Zelensky doesn't apologise for disclosing two North Korean POWs.

Hi @x @tom_watson is a Labour Lord paid by @PalantirTech - meaning he should be highlighting his post as paid promotion. Failure to do so violated X’s rules and should lead to a suspension from X