Thread by @BonicMichael

There’s an alternative reality saturating the media. There are two sides to every coin. In the Russia-Ukraine conflict the Western narrative is one side, Russia’s narrative is the other. Western media however negate Russia’s perspective, dismissing it as

2/propaganda. The Western narrative is innocent Ukraine has been invaded by monster Russia hellbent on rebuilding the Russian Empire. Facts tell a different story.
US and NATO responses fail to address Russia's main concerns, says Foreign Minister Lavrov
cbs58.com/news/us-and-na…

3/"The written responses presented by the United States and NATO to Russia's security demands fail to address Moscow's concerns over the eastward expansion of the military alliance, Russia's Foreign Minister said Thursday as fears of a possible invasion of Ukraine remain high.

4/""There is no positive reaction on the main issue in this document," Sergey Lavrov told journalists in Moscow. "The main issue is our clear position on the inadmissibility of further expansion of NATO to the East and the deployment of strike weapons that could threaten the

5/"territory of the Russian Federation."
This left Putin w/ unanswered questions: Would Ukraine become neutral? Would it enter the Western sphere, become anti-Russian & be armed w/ NATO cruise missiles? Lavrov even said that if Russia’s security concerns about eastward NATO

6/expansion weren’t addressed there’d be conflict. We're now neck-deep in the conflict. So this conflict is ALL ABOUT RUSSIAN SECURITY GUARANTEES. Russia's endgame then is a neutral Ukraine that never joins NATO, as this diffuses Russia's perceived NATO threat.

7/Putin addressed a crowd of 100,000+ Russians saying: “The US is using Ukraine to threaten Russia.”

https://twitter.com/_AfricanSoil/status/1504823387817971712?s=20&t=A0cVIhf0gal0RBf9MMRckQ

8/Putin understands Russia-NATO relations better than anyone. As far back as 2007 in his Munich Speech he warned NATO that breaking its word and expanding eastward was a threat to Russia that had to be addressed.

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1505423348725022720?s=20&t=6bDi3FJCpXh54yDqcIx7Gw

9/There's also the matter of the Russian-speaking Eastern Ukrainians in Donbass whom Putin gave free Russian passports and whom the Ukrainian Army & Azov Battalion have been fighting since 2014.

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1505628612237557761?s=20&t=y-0OuKfaxMqoSf5Ga0hAPA

10/Bricks in the Western narrative (that acts as a wall blocking perception of objective reality - what’s actually going on) include:
* NATO doesn’t threaten Russia
* Putin’s War isn’t about NATO
* Putin is a madman bent on rebuilding the Russian Empire who must be stopped.

11/Ukraine is the first step. The Baltics, Poland & Hungary are next.
* The pro-Russian separatists in Donbass are terrorists attacking the Ukrainian people
* Ukraine is fighting to defend the democracy of the free world
* Russia is losing
* The only way to end the war is to arm

12/Ukrainians w/ everything they need so they can defeat Putin
The Russian military machine appears to be slowly but surely bringing Ukraine to submission to end to any bid of Ukraine joining NATO. Putin has Zelensky in an arm bar submission hold but Zelensky isn't tapping out.

13/You have to ask: Is Putin a madman who won't hesitate to trigger Article 5 to invade other countries (after Ukraine) to rebuild the Russian Empire? Or an ultra-rationalist cool & calm chess player who sees 8-9 moves ahead & an EU breaking up who has

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1504822718402744326?s=20&t=ZImFtTaStocB6WkZRfNOQw

14/simply forced the issue (b/c NATO pushed Putin too far by its increased eastward expansion while ignoring Russia's security concerns) by proactively taking military action against Ukraine to eliminate its ever joining NATO? Russia tried diplomacy; it didn't work. The US, a

15/much larger country, invaded Iraq on the pretext of WMDs (of which later it was found there was none). It's clearly acceptable for the US to invade Iraq, but unacceptable for Russia to invade Ukraine to prevent it from being a NATO member, right? 😉 Right.
Either Ukraine will

16/win or Russia will have it's conditions met:

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1505637271805911043?s=20&t=ZImFtTaStocB6WkZRfNOQw

What lends credulity to Putin being completely rational (i.e. the furthest thing from being a 'madman') is that these terms of ceasefire👇don't reflect a 'monster' bent on empire building but a Russia seeking

17/only to have security assurances from the West that NATO won't be threatening Russia any time soon. Russia wanted a diplomatic solution and didn't get it, so it resorted to a Special Military Operation [Operation Neutralize Ukraine?] to coerce a geopolitical solution by force.

18/Such is the nature of things in a Darwinian political world. Lastly, it should be noted Zelensky recently said Ukraine had to get nukes again. Sorry but that isn't an option to Ukraine, which gave all its post-USSR nukes to the NPT for paper assurances. It should've kept them.

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