Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
@ruth_deyermond
Mar 1, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
A short thread on the war and where we are with the Russian government’s goals of re-writing the European security order to reflect a weakened West and a stronger Russia.
To recap, in the last week, the Russian government has:
Launched an unprovoked invasion of the whole of Ukraine for no obvious reason;
Embarrassed itself militarily;
Caused NATO and the EU to unite as they haven’t done for years, if ever before;
Caused Germany to overturn 75 years of post-WW2 defence policy;
Caused Switzerland to break with 200 years of neutrality;
Caused Finland to debate joining NATO;
Caused neutral Sweden to send lethal aid to Ukraine;
Triggered crippling sanctions, which currently appear to be sending the Russian economy back to the 1990s;
Caused Nord Stream 2 to be cancelled;
Caused Western energy companies to walk away from Russian partners;
Caused a rethink of the energy relationship with Russia by European states – a critical relationship for the Russian economy;
Been shut out of most of Europe’s airspace;
Annoyed the oligarchs;
Got Russia kicked out of Eurovision, the World Cup, and international ice hockey;
Triggered an ICC war crimes investigation;
Triggered significant domestic protests, despite the great costs to the people involved in them;
Caused the EU Parliament to recommend accepting Ukraine as an accession candidate
Caused widespread discussion about Putin’s mental health;
Transformed a former comedian and Paddington voiceover from a not very popular president to a global icon of courage and resistance;
United countless people around the world in admiration of Ukraine.

But apart from that, it’s all been a great success.
I missed this out. Another triumph: Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Ruth Deyermond

Ruth Deyermond Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ruth_deyermond

Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
Feb 14
There will be people who are understandably desperate to hear this, but it's important to be clear-eyed about Rubio himself and what the Trump administration is doing. 🧵
Marco Rubio is positioning himself as the "I'm not disloyal to Trump, but I'm also not JD Vance" 2028 candidate. A Rubio presidency would have a very different foreign policy to the Trump administration. Maintaining/repairing relations with Europe now will be helpful later on.
It doesn't mean that a Rubio presidency would want or be able to commit the diplomatic and other resources necessary to fully repair the alliance with Europe, but it would almost certainly be less hostile. You can see him trying to lay the groundwork for that here.
Read 12 tweets
Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
Jan 1
It's New Year, so time to look back and forward. These are 10 things I think we need to recognise in 2026. It’s a response to what I think are profoundly damaging mistaken assumptions I’ve heard and read from practitioners, journalists, and analysts in 2025. Warning: very long🧵
1. Russia isn’t winning in Ukraine.
Russia has expended extraordinary levels of resources, lost hundreds of thousands of men, and restructured its economy all in the attempt to win a war it started for no obvious reason against a smaller, less well-resourced state.
Read 55 tweets
Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
Dec 16, 2025
On both right and left, there's a lot of anger about the assessment of threat from Russia and the need to prepare to meet it. There's a lot I could say here (as my students know), but most of it boils down to two things. 🧵 Image
Image
1. For over a decade, but particularly since 2022, the ideology of Putin's presidency has rested on the claim that the West is an existential threat to Russia - that the main goal of the West is to destroy the Russian nation and state, Russian values and culture.
The need to destroy the Western "existential threat" to Russia is one of the key ideological pillars justifying Putin's domestic repression, the distortion of the economy, and the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers. Putin's power now depends on the idea of war with the West.
Read 7 tweets
Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
Dec 5, 2025
Thread on the huge shift in US policy towards Russia visible in the new National Security Strategy - the biggest change since the collapse of the USSR. 🧵
This first striking thing about the new US National Security Strategy is how little Russia is mentioned in it: only 10 times. Every NSS since 1993 has mentioned Russia more than this one. The 1993 one only has fewer because it mostly still talks about the former Soviet Union. Image
The absence of Russia from the 2025 National Security Strategy looks really odd both because Russia is obviously one of the states having the most significant impact on global stability at the moment, and because the administration is so clearly interested in Russia.
Read 17 tweets
Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
Nov 29, 2025
How is this a shock to anyone who's been paying any attention to what Trump has been saying and his admin have been doing all year? I posted this in Feb, for example. Officials who simply chose not to believe it because it's all too difficult might want to rethink their career. Image
This one was in April. If your job required you to look at US Russia policy at all in the last year - or in Trump's 1st term, when he talked about economic relations with Russia and readmitting them to the G8 - none of this should be remotely surprising.
I'm not really surprised that some officials are surprised the Trump admin is prioritising economic relations with Russia. It's clear that some in Europe's policymaking communities simply can't get their heads round the fact that the post-1945 US-Europe relationship is over.
Read 4 tweets
Ruth Deyermond Profile picture
Nov 21, 2025
A quick run through of the Trump administration's proposal for a Ukraine security guarantee, which is a security guarantee in the same way that the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is a party committed to liberalism and democracy. 🧵
The proposed security guarantee is allegedly modelled on NATO Article 5, but that doesn't contain any of these qualifications for action, let alone all of them. Image
This proposed security guarantee requires that an armed attack by Russia would have to be significant *and* deliberate *and* sustained to merit a response. In theory, Russia could drop a nuke on Kyiv and that wouldn't meet the criteria because the attack wouldn't be sustained.
Read 14 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(