Is Russia about to invade Ukraine? (2 Viewers)

[superchuck500]

Russia continues to mass assets within range of Ukraine - though the official explanations are that they are for various exercises. United States intelligence has noted that Russian operatives in Ukraine could launch 'false flag' operations as a predicate to invasion. The West has pressed for negotiations and on Friday in Geneva, the US Sec. State Blinken will meet with the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.

Certainly the Russian movements evidence some plan - but what is it? Some analysts believe that Putin's grand scheme involves securing Western commitments that NATO would never expand beyond its current composition. Whether that means action in Ukraine or merely the movement of pieces on the chess board remains to be seen.

VIENNA — No one expected much progress from this past week’s diplomatic marathon to defuse the security crisis Russia has ignited in Eastern Europe by surrounding Ukraine on three sides with 100,000 troops and then, by the White House’s accounting, sending in saboteurs to create a pretext for invasion.

But as the Biden administration and NATO conduct tabletop simulations about how the next few months could unfold, they are increasingly wary of another set of options for President Vladimir V. Putin, steps that are more far-reaching than simply rolling his troops and armor over Ukraine’s border.

Mr. Putin wants to extend Russia’s sphere of influence to Eastern Europe and secure written commitments that NATO will never again enlarge. If he is frustrated in reaching that goal, some of his aides suggested on the sidelines of the negotiations last week, then he would pursue Russia’s security interests with results that would be felt acutely in Europe and the United States.

There were hints, never quite spelled out, that nuclear weapons could be shifted to places — perhaps not far from the United States coastline — that would reduce warning times after a launch to as little as five minutes, potentially igniting a confrontation with echoes of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Russia Issues Subtle Threats More Far-Reaching Than a Ukraine Invasion

If the West fails to meet its security demands, Moscow could take measures like placing nuclear missiles close to the U.S. coastline, Russian officials have hinted.

www.nytimes.com

Blinken Will Meet With Russia as U.S. Pushes for More Diplomacy

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will meet with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia in Geneva on Friday as the United States warns that Russia could soon attack Ukraine.

www.nytimes.com

How to think about war in Ukraine

Start with the Ukrainians

snyder.substack.com

 

[J-DONK]

Mike Turner? The same guy who came up with a fake story about a new Russian threat just to try to get Ukraine funding & FISA 702 passed without a requirement to get a warrant when spying on Americans? He's a mouthpiece for the defense contractors and intelligence services.

if by self-reflection you mean taking to Twitter to find and collect 3-5 different tweets that are loosely counterpoint to this ( usually will include something about CIA/Operation Mockingbird ), run here, post them, no dialogue, just the tweets/links themselves, disappear for 2-3 days in hopes of pivoting off the real story that members ( current ) of the GOP.

That kind of self-reflection?

 

[SaintForLife]

Self reflection for a defense contractor and intelligence service mouthpiece using the old Russia playbook? Yawn

 

[J-DONK]

Self reflection for a defense contractor and intelligence service mouthpiece using the old Russia playbook? Yawn

I wish we had a catalog for all the conspiracy theories you espouse involving the Russia-Ukraine war.

 

[samiam5211]

Self reflection for a defense contractor and intelligence service mouthpiece using the old Russia playbook? Yawn

Yes, the new Russian playbook where we admire their shopping cart escalators is a much easier read.

 

[SaintForLife]

I wish we had a catalog for all the conspiracy theories you espouse involving the Russia-Ukraine war.

Let's put that list up against all the supposed bombshell Trump Russia stories that ended up being complete BS.

I mean you guys still believe the Trump Russia collusion story. The same one created by Hillary which included one of the main sources of the Steele Dossier being log time Clinton operative Charles Dolan.

How can a genius like yourself fall for and still believe such an idiotic and discredited narrative?

A Democratic PR executive and ally of the Clinton family who contributed information to the infamous Steele dossier said Thursday that he made up the sourcing of a claim that wound up in the discredited anti-Trump report.

Charles Dolan Jr., a former aide to Hillary Clinton, testified in John Durham’s trial against Igor Danchenko on Thursday that he heard a claim about Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign while watching TV and regurgitated it to Danchenko, telling him that he had heard it from a “GOP friend” over drinks.

“I actually got it off of cable news,” Dolan said, according to the Washington Times, adding that he was “trying to throw [Danchenko] a bone because he was helping me.”

The nugget of information was relayed to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and purportedly provided insight into why he had left the campaign. It made it into ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier via Danchenko, despite the sourcing being completely fabricated.

Danchenko, a private researcher and former FBI informant, emailed Dolan in August 2016 informing him that he was working on a “project against Trump” and asked the Democratic operative for “any rumor, thought, or allegation” related to Manafort.

“Let me dig around on Manafort,” Dolan responded, later emailing Danchenko the lie that he “had a drink with a GOP friend of mine” who told him Corey Lewandowski, who previously served as Trump’s campaign manager, “hates Manafort” and “is doing [a] dance” about Manafort’s resignation.

“I thought I’d embellish a bit,” Dolan said on the witness stand.

Clinton crony Charles Dolan Jr. lied about source of Steele dossier claim

A Democratic PR executive and ally of the Clinton family said on Thursday that he made up the sourcing of a claim in the discredited report.

nypost.com

 

[superchuck500]

Mike Turner? The same guy who came up with a fake story about a new Russian threat just to try to get Ukraine funding & FISA 702 passed without a requirement to get a warrant when spying on Americans? He's a mouthpiece for the defense contractors and intelligence services.

Yes but in this case he’s clearly right. It’s not really debatable. It’s true.

 

[SaintForLife]

Yes but in this case he’s clearly right. It’s not really debatable. It’s true.

Turner is a mouthpiece for the defense contractors and intelligence services and he's not a credible person.

Ah yes anyone who doesn't want more Ukraine funding, doesn't believe the US government narrative about Ukraine, thinks there shoulf be a ceasing is pushing Russian propaganda.

It's such an idiotic and juvenile way to try discredit anyone who doesn't fully support the Ukraine war.

New age McCarthyism.

George Bush, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.

 

[MT15]

Turner is a mouthpiece for the defense contractors and intelligence services and he's not a credible person.

Ah yes anyone who doesn't want more Ukraine funding, doesn't believe the US government narrative about Ukraine, thinks there shoulf be a ceasing is pushing Russian propaganda.

It's such an idiotic and juvenile way to try discredit anyone who doesn't fully support the Ukraine war.

New age McCarthyism.

George Bush, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.

Is it as idiotic as disagreeing with someone on one thing 20 years ago and then labeling that person as unreliable forever? Or 50 years ago, like when you tried to smear Biden because he spoke at Byrd’s funeral? (Ignoring the fact that Byrd had repudiated his racist past - and using it to smear Biden as a racist). The stuff you have pulled on this board should - should - prevent you from posting nonsense like above. You should ditch the people who tell you stuff like that smear about Biden, and other crazy stuff. One would think after you get owned on here time and again you would learn to ignore those people. But you do not learn.

For the gazillionth time - wanting a ceasefire isn’t why we say you push Russian propaganda. Putting the blame for Russian aggression on the US and Ukraine and NATO with stupid stories about Nazis and persecution of religious leaders and “NATO aggression” is why we say you are on Russia’s side in this war. It’s because you do spout Russian propaganda.

 

[efil4]

Told yall

Now he uses "New Age McCarthyism" interchangeable with "Operation Mockingbird"

 

[J-DONK]

Turner is a mouthpiece for the defense contractors and intelligence services and he's not a credible person.

Ah yes anyone who doesn't want more Ukraine funding, doesn't believe the US government narrative about Ukraine, thinks there shoulf be a ceasing is pushing Russian propaganda.

It's such an idiotic and juvenile way to try discredit anyone who doesn't fully support the Ukraine war.

New age McCarthyism.

George Bush, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.

If the chairman for the intelligence committee can't speak on disinformation, who can?

Glenn, Tucker, David Sacks? LOL

 

[superchuck500]

Turner is a mouthpiece for the defense contractors and intelligence services and he's not a credible person.

Ah yes anyone who doesn't want more Ukraine funding, doesn't believe the US government narrative about Ukraine, thinks there shoulf be a ceasing is pushing Russian propaganda.

It's such an idiotic and juvenile way to try discredit anyone who doesn't fully support the Ukraine war.

New age McCarthyism.

George Bush, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.

Except that's just not what he's saying at all if you read his comments. He's not saying every member who's against Ukraine funding is towing the Russian line. He's saying that some of the things some of the members are saying and the positions they are taking are fully in line with the Moscow propaganda. He's talking about those who are taking a position that Russia's conduct is defensive in nature or otherwise justified based on US and western conduct. That specific rhetoric, he says, is pretty much the same as what you see on Russian TV.

I don't care what you think about him or whether you think he's credible. I think Donald Trump is among the most prolific and notorious liars in the world but I can still say he's right if he says the sun sets in the west.

 

[Maxp]

Keep pushing that boulder up the hill...

 

[DaveXA]

Except that's just not what he's saying at all if you read his comments. He's not saying every member who's against Ukraine funding is towing the Russian line. He's saying that some of the things some of the members are saying and the positions they are taking are fully in line with the Moscow propaganda. He's talking about those who are taking a position that Russia's conduct is defensive in nature or otherwise justified based on US and western conduct. That specific rhetoric, he says, is pretty much the same as what you see on Russian TV.

I don't care what you think about him or whether you think he's credible. I think Donald Trump is among the most prolific and notorious liars in the world but I can still say he's right if he says the sun sets in the west.

Indeed and well said.

He simply has no objectivity when it comes to Russia in Ukraine let alone Russian influence in the US Congress of all places. I have yet to see any comment that holds Russia even party responsible for their actions against Ukraine.

 

[LA - L.A.]

I think this joke from that thread is spot on and hilarious.

 

[LA - L.A.]

Keep pushing that boulder up the hill...

, Sissyfuss.

 

[SaintForLife]

Except that's just not what he's saying at all if you read his comments. He's not saying every member who's against Ukraine funding is towing the Russian line. He's saying that some of the things some of the members are saying and the positions they are taking are fully in line with the Moscow propaganda. He's talking about those who are taking a position that Russia's conduct is defensive in nature or otherwise justified based on US and western conduct. That specific rhetoric, he says, is pretty much the same as what you see on Russian TV.

I've said previously that Russia bears the moral and legal responsibility for the invasion, but it's complete BS to claim Russia was unprovoked.

There are multiple statements by NATO officials, US officials, official US documents, etc all saying that NATO continuing to expand to Ukraine is a red line for Russia.

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve been told that the issue of NATO expansion is irrelevant to the war, and that anyone bringing it up is, at best, unwittingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, at worst, apologizing for or justifying the war.

So it was curious to see NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier this month say explicitly that Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his criminal war as a reaction to the possibility of NATO expanding into Ukraine, and the alliance’s refusal to swear it off — not once or twice, but three separate times.

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament on September 7. “That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.”

“He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite,” Stoltenberg reiterated, referring to the accession of Sweden and Finland into the alliance in response to Putin’s invasion. Their entry, he later insisted, “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he's getting the exact opposite.”

It’s not clear if Stoltenberg was referring to the draft treaty Putin put forward in December 2021 and simply mixed up the seasons (the provisions of each are the same), or if he’s referring to an earlier, as-yet-unreported incident. In any case, what Stoltenberg claims here — that Putin viewed Ukraine’s NATO entry as so unacceptable he was willing to invade to stop it, and put forward a negotiating bid that might have prevented it, only for NATO to reject it — has been repeatedly made by those trying to explain the causes of the war and how it could be ended, only to be dismissed as propaganda.

The only logical conclusion, if we’re to listen to the hawks, is that the man in charge of the very alliance helping Ukraine defend itself from Putin is, in fact, working for the Russian leader and spreading his propaganda.

This isn’t the only instance from a member of the NATO establishment. Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee in May this year, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said, alongside Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, that “we assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions to ... ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally.” Earlier in her testimony, Haines had said that Putin’s invasion had backfired by “precipitating the very events he hoped to avoid such as Finland's accession to NATO and Sweden's petition to join.”

Likewise, in a March 2023 interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Russia expert Fiona Hill — who served as an intelligence analyst under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as on the National Security Council under President Donald Trump — told the paper that “it was always obvious that NATO’s enlargement to Ukraine and to Georgia was a provocation for Putin.” Yet the opposite claim, that the invasion was entirely “unprovoked,” has become such an article of faith in Western discourse that this word is ubiquitous in news reports and official statements on the war.

On a similar note, an August 2022 Washington Post report based on “in-depth interviews with more than three dozen senior U.S., Ukrainian, European and NATO officials” reported four separate instances of high-ranking Russian officials telling their U.S.counterparts in the lead-up to the war that NATO expansion was a core part of the grievances motivating Moscow’s threatening troop build-up. That included Putin himself, who told President Joe Biden in a December 2021 video call “that the eastward expansion of the Western alliance was a major factor in his decision to send troops to Ukraine’s border,” according to the report.

To some extent, this isn’t surprising. As the analysts, journalists, politicians, and others pointing to NATO expansion as a leading cause of the war have copiously documented, the decades before the invasion saw countless members of the Washington national security establishment, from famed Cold War strategist George Kennan and current CIA Director William Burns to a parade of diplomats, military officials, NATO leaders and even Biden himself, warn that the alliance’s eastward creep was a fundamental source of Russian unhappiness and that it would provoke Russian hostility and aggression — or even spark war.

...As with officials’ words, you can find similar points in documents before the war. A 2020 U.S. Army War College paper states that “future admissions to NATO for states in Russia’s near abroad will likely be met with aggression.” A 2019 paper from the Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation — and sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office — states explicitly that the Kremlin’s fear of a direct military attack by the United States is “very real,” plus that “providing more U.S. military equipment and advice [to Ukraine in the war on the Donbas] could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it,” including by “mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.” The 2017 National Security Strategy states outright that “Russia views the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) as threats.”

When officials say the quiet part about Russia and NATO out loud

Was the invasion about the alliance's expansion to Moscow's doorstep? Depends on who's telling the story.

responsiblestatecraft.org

There is also a 2008 leaked cable from current CIA director William Burns warned that Ukraine membership in NATO was the “brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”
Link to the leaked cable:

Cable: 08MOSCOW265_a

wikileaks.org

Here are some of the hyperlinks from the article

Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia

Lost in the outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the fact that many in the West have long warned that widespread NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could spark just such a conflict.

theconversation.com

NATO and the Road Not Taken - Boston Review

Condemning Putin's war must go hand in hand with imagining a more just security order.

www.bostonreview.net

Diplomatic Cables Prove Top U.S. Officials Knew They Were Crossing Russia’s Red Lines on NATO Expansion

Nearly a year in, the war in Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and brought the world to the brink of, in President Joe Biden’s own words,

www.counterpunch.org

Video of Joe Biden Warning of Russian Hostility if NATO Expands Resurfaces

Ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin repeatedly warned the West about NATO's expansion, viewing it as a threat to Russia's security.

www.newsweek.com

I don't care what you think about him or whether you think he's credible. I think Donald Trump is among the most prolific and notorious liars in the world but I can still say he's right if he says the sun sets in the west.

I'm able to do that as well if someone is telling the truth, but based off what I posted above he's full of shirt and government officials have long warned that NATO expansion would cause Russia to increase fighting and seizing of territory.

 

[DaveXA]

I've said previously that Russia bears the moral and legal responsibility for the invasion, but it's complete BS to claim Russia was unprovoked.

There are multiple statements by NATO officials, US officials, official US documents, etc all saying that NATO continuing to expand to Ukraine is a red line for Russia.

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve been told that the issue of NATO expansion is irrelevant to the war, and that anyone bringing it up is, at best, unwittingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, at worst, apologizing for or justifying the war.

So it was curious to see NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier this month say explicitly that Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his criminal war as a reaction to the possibility of NATO expanding into Ukraine, and the alliance’s refusal to swear it off — not once or twice, but three separate times.

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament on September 7. “That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.”

“He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite,” Stoltenberg reiterated, referring to the accession of Sweden and Finland into the alliance in response to Putin’s invasion. Their entry, he later insisted, “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he's getting the exact opposite.”

It’s not clear if Stoltenberg was referring to the draft treaty Putin put forward in December 2021 and simply mixed up the seasons (the provisions of each are the same), or if he’s referring to an earlier, as-yet-unreported incident. In any case, what Stoltenberg claims here — that Putin viewed Ukraine’s NATO entry as so unacceptable he was willing to invade to stop it, and put forward a negotiating bid that might have prevented it, only for NATO to reject it — has been repeatedly made by those trying to explain the causes of the war and how it could be ended, only to be dismissed as propaganda.

The only logical conclusion, if we’re to listen to the hawks, is that the man in charge of the very alliance helping Ukraine defend itself from Putin is, in fact, working for the Russian leader and spreading his propaganda.

This isn’t the only instance from a member of the NATO establishment. Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee in May this year, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said, alongside Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, that “we assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions to ... ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally.” Earlier in her testimony, Haines had said that Putin’s invasion had backfired by “precipitating the very events he hoped to avoid such as Finland's accession to NATO and Sweden's petition to join.”

Likewise, in a March 2023 interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Russia expert Fiona Hill — who served as an intelligence analyst under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as on the National Security Council under President Donald Trump — told the paper that “it was always obvious that NATO’s enlargement to Ukraine and to Georgia was a provocation for Putin.” Yet the opposite claim, that the invasion was entirely “unprovoked,” has become such an article of faith in Western discourse that this word is ubiquitous in news reports and official statements on the war.

On a similar note, an August 2022 Washington Post report based on “in-depth interviews with more than three dozen senior U.S., Ukrainian, European and NATO officials” reported four separate instances of high-ranking Russian officials telling their U.S.counterparts in the lead-up to the war that NATO expansion was a core part of the grievances motivating Moscow’s threatening troop build-up. That included Putin himself, who told President Joe Biden in a December 2021 video call “that the eastward expansion of the Western alliance was a major factor in his decision to send troops to Ukraine’s border,” according to the report.

To some extent, this isn’t surprising. As the analysts, journalists, politicians, and others pointing to NATO expansion as a leading cause of the war have copiously documented, the decades before the invasion saw countless members of the Washington national security establishment, from famed Cold War strategist George Kennan and current CIA Director William Burns to a parade of diplomats, military officials, NATO leaders and even Biden himself, warn that the alliance’s eastward creep was a fundamental source of Russian unhappiness and that it would provoke Russian hostility and aggression — or even spark war.

...As with officials’ words, you can find similar points in documents before the war. A 2020 U.S. Army War College paper states that “future admissions to NATO for states in Russia’s near abroad will likely be met with aggression.” A 2019 paper from the Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation — and sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office — states explicitly that the Kremlin’s fear of a direct military attack by the United States is “very real,” plus that “providing more U.S. military equipment and advice [to Ukraine in the war on the Donbas] could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it,” including by “mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.” The 2017 National Security Strategy states outright that “Russia views the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) as threats.”

When officials say the quiet part about Russia and NATO out loud

Was the invasion about the alliance's expansion to Moscow's doorstep? Depends on who's telling the story.

responsiblestatecraft.org

There is also a 2008 leaked cable from current CIA director William Burns warned that Ukraine membership in NATO was the “brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”
Link to the leaked cable:

Cable: 08MOSCOW265_a

wikileaks.org

Here are some of the hyperlinks from the article

Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia

Lost in the outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the fact that many in the West have long warned that widespread NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could spark just such a conflict.

theconversation.com

NATO and the Road Not Taken - Boston Review

Condemning Putin's war must go hand in hand with imagining a more just security order.

www.bostonreview.net

Diplomatic Cables Prove Top U.S. Officials Knew They Were Crossing Russia’s Red Lines on NATO Expansion

Nearly a year in, the war in Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and brought the world to the brink of, in President Joe Biden’s own words,

www.counterpunch.org

Video of Joe Biden Warning of Russian Hostility if NATO Expands Resurfaces

Ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin repeatedly warned the West about NATO's expansion, viewing it as a threat to Russia's security.

www.newsweek.com

I'm able to do that as well if someone is telling the truth, but based off what I posted above he's full of shirt and government officials have long warned that NATO expansion would cause Russia to increase fighting and seizing of territory.

It's the same mantra, again and again and again. Keep repeating until it somehow, magically, becomes true.

 

[efil4]

It's the same mantra, again and again and again. Keep repeating until it somehow, magically, becomes true.

there is a term for that.

its called "illusory truth effect"

His posting style is dead spot on this method of propaganda. Without fail. Never deviates because the moment he does, he trips over his own shoelaces.