Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #russia_ukraine
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#Russia_Ukraine: Russian propaganda talking heads increasingly justify Russia's need to destroy Ukraine's critical infrastructure. Without even understanding what they are talking about, they argue that civilian critical infrastructure cannot be separated from military.⤵️
They show a lack of elementary knowledge about critical infrastructure, which in reality are all the assets that make a country livable for the population and manageable by the government.⤵️ 
But I guess the Russian propagandists don't care, they want to justify deliberate military attacks on critical infrastructure this fall and winter. I was writing in March that Ukraine should be helped to protect its critical infrastructure. ⤵️
#Russia_Ukraine: Russia's defense spending exceeded $9 billion a month in April, or about $300 million a day (twice as much as before the attack on Ukraine). This is almost half of the amount that Ukraine needs to resist aggression and other implications of the war.⤵️
In April, Zelenskiy admitted that Ukraine needs monthly aid of up to 7 billion dollars to overcome the losses caused by the Russian war. While Ukraine demands Western help, Russia is maximizing its budget surpluses due to high oil and gas prices.
#Russia_Ukraine: Several scenarios are executed at the same time by Moscow: 1) Forcing Kyiv to enter the separatist regions through activating contact line shelling from Russian-controlled regions to justify aggression to protect the Russian-speaking population;⤵️
2) (Dis)informative activity pushing "genocide" + "refugee" narratives in order to activate a "Kosovo scenario" of recognition, if necessary to push special status for breakaway regions; and,⤵️
3) Using the destabilization of Ukraine to pressurize the West to accept a NATO “non-membership” for Ukraine (and Georgia) to avoid a current or/future war with Russia. Other scenarios seem to be of secondary relevance.
#Russia_Ukraine: It is not clear what Russia's exact goal is in triggering the issue of recognition of breakaway territories. One explanation may be that Russia is using the "recognition" story to pressure Kyiv to implement the Minsk Agreements. This makes even more sense⤵️
after both Macron and Scholz discussed this with Zelensky. The fact that Putin rejected the idea of recognition so quickly could be the result of an orchestrated move from the Duma side to improve Putin's image as a more pragmatic political actor in the eyes of the West.⤵️
Another intention probably lies in distracting attention or creating more confusion around the military buildup. This last one began to be questioned before the recent appearances of withdrawing some elements of the military buildup. In any case, neither aggression nor⤵️
