To put this into perspective, the US provided Ukraine with $64.62bn of military aid and $50.72bn of humanitarian and financial support in the four years between January 2022 and December 2025.
80 Days is a really wonderful literary game that captures the joy and adventure of travel (quite a nice escape during the pandemic). There's tons of replayability with different routes and subplots to discover.
Sponsorblock offers by far the best experience. It skips over channel intros and outros, engagement prompts, sponsored segments, tangents, etc (configurable per channel) and offers jumping to "highlight" (that is, the most important part of the video).
Highly ironic that the best experience is free, and no paid option gets even close. Tim Cook watching paid Youtube on Apple TV device has far worse experience than some random kid with Firefox and Sponsorblock gets for free.
> They have such beautiful names for this: "The end of history". Yes, really. "The peace dividend". "The unipolar moment". "Military-to-civilian conversion".
Who is this "they"?
* "The end of history" - coined by Francis Fukuyama, an American political scientist.
* "The unipolar moment" - coined by Charles Krauthammer, an American political columnist.
* "The peace dividend" - older term, popularized by George HW Bush, an American president.
* "Military-to-civilian conversion" - older term, popularized by Seymour Melman, an American professor of industrial engineering.
But it is a talking point. The cable simply shows an American diplomat who has swallowed the hook and reiterates how Russians want to be perceived as thinking. One of the main efforts of Russian diplomacy is to invite foreign dignitaries and representatives to Russia, surround them with "researchers" and "experts" working directly under Kremlin guidance, to create a false impression for guests of how "Russian experts" "really think". This creates so-called useful idiots who unknowingly become champions of Putin's regime, believing they possess some inside knowledge that others lack.
The narrative shared in the cable is hilariously detached from reality to anyone who is intimately familiar with modern Russia. Putin, who lets OMON beat and sexually assault peacefully assembling (not even protesting!) Russians within sight of his office windows, is supposedly worried about the treatment of Russians abroad.
You're saying that the US embassy in Moscow doesn't know how Russian politicians and military figures think, and is full of useful idiots.
Another theory is that the US embassy has constant contact with Russian political and military figures, is very familiar with how they think, and accurately reported their views back to DC in order to help the US government formulate its foreign policy.
Ironically, I think you're the one who has swallowed a narrative hook, line and sinker.
It is the US government that threw reciprocity overboard, openly and publicly humiliating allies and partners throughout the past year, threatening to invade several NATO allies, publicly mocking soldiers from allied countries who had fought and died in US-led wars, and kicking Ukraine at its most vulnerable moment in an attempt to coerce it into surrender. Not to mention global economic warefare in the form of illegal trade barriers. The US government championed isolationism, and this is what the first taste of isolationism feels like.
For most of the world, the US-Iran war carries minimal upside (the reduction of Iran-sponsored terror groups in the Middle East) for considerable risk (terror attacks on their citizens). Previously, allies and partners were willing to grant access to their airbases and provide other forms of support and put their citizens at risk to maintain good relations with the US, because that meant something. With Trump in the White House, the US has become an unreliable and unpredictible banana republic, where government action is not grounded in sound policy or long-term international relationships, but depends entirely on the moods of El Presidente and serves his personal wallet.
He has made time and time again clear that he is not bound by any earlier agreements and commitments, so it should not come as a surprise when others respond with the same and propose starting negotiations from a clean slate.
There was no coup in Ukraine in 2014. It's one of those immediately revealing things like height of the chimneys in Auschwitz; just barely mention them and we all immediately know who you are.
Sure. And you keep babbling and restating your point instead of proving it because you've got an overwhelming proof, you're just too polite to share it with us.
Is this trolling by stupidity? You are irredeemable. I wasn't talking about elections, I meant everything before it that caused premature elections in 2014.
Was there something major that happened in 2013-2014 involving violence that interrupted the term of elected, legitimate president Yanukovich? Can you recall?
> Was there something major that happened in 2013-2014 involving violence that interrupted the term of elected, legitimate president Yanukovich?
Yes; under extreme Russian pressure, Yanukovych blocked the passage of the highly anticipated Ukraine-EU trade treaty. This led to massive protests. He sent paid thugs (titushky) to harass and beat the protesters, but the protests only grew larger. When he panicked, about 100 protesters were shot in a single day. From that moment, he was politically a corpse and lost the support of even his own party. He ran away into hiding to escape arrest, and the Ukrainian parliament assembled and unanimously voted to hold snap elections, which took place a few months later.
This is the polar opposite of illegal seizure of power by a small group of people, or a coup.
Are there any key details you're leaving out? Is there a chance you creatively picked what to leave out in a way that serves the view you're sympathetic to?
> only like 3% of that program was spent on actual AID, like food and medicine for the third world, but most of it went to funding media, news and journalists across LatAm, Asia, Africa dn EE
Source please. This doesn't pass the smell test, because the largest expenses in international aid programs are usually related to healthcare and agriculture. Propaganda is very cheap compared to producing and distributing malaria drugs or grain to the most remote corners of the world or building water sanitation plants in places that have no roads and no electricity.
> Speaking as a half Russian, half Ukrainian living in central europe, btw.
Speaking as a standard-issue vatnik, rather, hitting all the traditional made-up grieviances of the national victim narrative that is supposed to legitimize Putin and his buddies robbing the country blind. And as always, the most passionate patriots live abroad.
Since your post is dead already, I'll respond here:
> speaking as someone who has an interest in history
If you have interest in history, then why are you clinging to the meme-level Soviet boomer grudges? It's strange to see the USSR mismanage itself to the brink of starvation and then watch Russians blame foreign governments, who to the best of their abilities provided aid and expertise to help find a way out of that situation.
Sure, you can say that their advice was often misguided, but as much as Yeltsin was shocked to see what a regular western supermarket looked like, Europeans and Americans were shocked to see the poverty of the USSR and couldn't even fully grasp that kind of life. You can entertain our western friends by describing how plastic bags with foreign logos like Sony or Adidas were treated like luxury items in the USSR in the 1980s and carefully folded and stored after every use, or how it was children's chore to cut up newspapers for toilet paper because that's the best many could access; or how it was common even for the best and brightest engineers to put in a full day of work, and then go and work on small plots of land in the evening to grow food for their families. It was an unbelievable shithole.
The difficulties that followed the dissolution of the USSR were of your own making, in no way limited to Russia alone. To survive, the entire former USSR and the Eastern Bloc had to pivot overnight to producing something globally useful instead of milling screws at artificial prices for the now-extinct Soviet arms industry. Most swallowed their pride, did what needed to be done, and ultimately saw a meteoric rise in living standards.
Russians turned out to be pussies who balked at the first difficulties and allowed the KGB dinosaurs who had led the USSR into disaster to crawl back and take the lead again. And by the look of it, Russia is heading toward a rerun of the late 1980s and early 1990s, bogged down in pointless wars as its economy rapidly deteriorates.
The narratives you've thrown around are a cheap cope, assigning blame for Russia's failure to modernize to external actors. All of us who lived in the USSR and its aftermath and have an IQ above room temperature know that it is unfiltered bullshit. What interests me is why you cling to it. What would happen if you let go of the victimhood narratives and actually faced the fact that Russians fucked up the ample opportunities they had?
It's the same with the current war against Ukraine, which was lost in the first three weeks, and now is just a meatgrinder with no prospect of success. Why is it so difficult to admit that you fucked up, and let it go? The narratives about coups, Kyiv neo-nazis etc are all obvious cope, and quite pathetic as such. Nobody's forcing you to hold these views in Germany, so why do you hold them?
Interesting where are you from and how old are you?
> The narratives about coups, Kyiv neo-nazis etc are all obvious cope, and quite pathetic as such.
The narratives about the benevolent West reaching out it's hand to help and framing every perspective which contradicts yours as "victimhood" (your post history) is also quite pathetic.
> Nobody's forcing you to hold these views in Germany, so why do you hold them?
Free will? My own opinion? Gut feeling? Literature? Culture? Personal history and experiences? Nobody is forcing you to spew russophobia, insults and outright NAFO propaganda but here you are.
> The narratives about the benevolent West reaching out it's hand to help and framing every perspective which contradicts yours as "victimhood" (your post history) is also quite pathetic.
But that is exactly that - strange Russian victimhood. The entire USSR and the Eastern Bloc went through a societal collapse, yet Russians treat it as an exceptional event that affected only them and believe it was an intentional humiliation.
Enough time has passed that people who were in top leadership positions at the time have retired, and their memoirs and internal documents have been published. None of these sources show any such intentions, quite the opposite, people like Swedish PM Carl Bildt were scared stiff of potential humanitarian disasters and millions of potential refugees and they did everything they could to stabilize the socio-economic conditions in the former USSR. I vividly remember the photo of the first western cargo ship with a grain shipment in the port of Leningrad, and the celebratory tone that accompanied the photo in the newspaper. Now it's suddenly all forgotten.
Instead of getting credit for their hard work, they are blamed for the fact that Russians fucked up the USSR to the point that it was on the verge of starvation.
> Free will? My own opinion? Gut feeling? Literature? Culture? Personal history and experiences?
Arguments like "coup in Kyiv" are demonstrably false. Only ignorance can defend them.
> The Yanukovych treason trial revealed various witness testimonies and
other evidence that he fled from Kyiv and then Ukraine not because of
his responsibility for the Maidan massacre but because of a number of
assassination attempts by the Maidan forces, in particular the far right,
and after their attempts to capture him and his residence near Kyiv and
likely execute him (Katchanovski, 2020, 2023a).
Witnesses testified at the Yanukovych treason trial that right after the
Maidan massacre the presidential motorcade was shot at a checkpoint,
which was manned by activists with Right Sector and Svoboda flags and
that the bullets hit one of the cars and a gun of one of the Yanukovych
bodyguards. Helicopter pilots, who flew Yanukovych in Ukraine after the
massacre, testified that the air traffic controllers relayed them an order
from Maidan leaders to land the helicopter with Yanukovych under threat
of its being shot-down by military planes. The witness testimonies also
referred to information received by his security personnel about a plan
involving Svoboda activists to assassinate him during a congress in Kharkiv
where he flew after the Maidan massacre, and then on the road near
Melitopol (See Eks-okhoronets’, 2018; Katchanovski, 2020, 2023a).
Lmaooo, who the fuck is this guy, I want to smoke what he smokes.
Was so afraid for his life that you can see more than 10 packed bags, family and multiple pets in the open.
don't know man - somehow he doesn't waste time on dead hn posts in order to convince other people of nafo trash. instead he's doing research, publishes peer reviewed articles and writes books about whats happening in his home country. perhaps you and libertine should do the same instead of posting bbc clips and wikipedia articles.
if you're so inclined, you can just hop his citations. yes, sometimes he cites his own papers but you can follow the path until you'll find the original source. his sources are for the most part stenographs, reputable news articles, witness interviews and for the maidan massacre he analyzed all the footage from news reels and cctvs he and his colleagues could find.
and by the way: he's Ukrainian, lives in a nato country (Canada) and works at a legit university. was it you or libertine who asked me why I think what I think, 'despite' living in Germany - here's another specimen for you.
reality hits hard, boys.
edit: it was mopsi whos mind was blown. fitting name for a shiba inu;)
> It's clear from this comment that you do not understand the complexities of US politics.
Overall, it doesn't seem like a very complex problem. The US simply does not have a vote of no confidence nor the tradition of using it when unfit people like Trump and his traveling circus reach the highest levels of government and need to be stopped. Instead, people pacify themselves with fairy tales about "checks and balances", which are nothing more than gentleman's agreements in a world with very few gentlemen, and no substitute for actual legal procedures for removing inept leaders. To pick an example from this week - where I live, Pam Bondi would have faced a vote of no confidence and loss of her position the very next day after her House hearing during which she made hysterical deflections and personally attacked members of parliament.
The "complex" part seems to be that Americans appear unable to even imagine holding public officials accountable like that. Instead of the American public's expectations of their leaders rising over time, they are rapidly declining before our eyes as governance inches closer to trash entertainment like reality TV and pro wrestling.
Any time you catch yourself oversimplifying a nation's politics to a single issue, rest assured that your understanding of the situation is equally oversimplified.
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