in order to understand the mindset of the archenemy of the civilized world, this is the required reading 👇
and yes, for the first time I have read it 23 years ago, in summer 1999.
🧵 1/
just a glimpse of this Dugin "seminal" book "The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia", written in 1997.
yes, it is the map of the cordial geopolitical divide of zones of influence in Europe between two best friends: Russia and Germany
2/
and this explains why I was always against lumping russia & China together.
Dugin in 1997 was seeing China's territories as a part of russia's borderlands. He proposed to divide China like this👇
I bet there are Chinese statesmen, who are old enough to remember this.
3/
a little more on this China-related topic.
Former China's Ambassador to Ukraine about Russia’s impending defeat and the IR after the war.
Gao’s comments address China’s interests at a closed conference, bcs the debate going on in China beneath the surface.
4/
"Certainly russia wants to stop the war and hold on to its gains; some Chinese might gather from Chinese media reporting, that Russia wants peace; those troublesome fascists in Ukraine just need to lay down their arms and listen to reason...
5/
... I imagine many invaders such as the Japanese in China in WWII might have been willing to get a cease-fire or even a settlement if those pesky resisters of the Imperial forces would just stop fighting...
6/
Japan did make a deal with puppet governments in Manchuria and Shanghai to make a sort of peace one might say."
The tone of the article doesn’t suggest UA & the USA are opposing peace — Gao states that RF wants to hold on to its gains while UA wants to repel the invader.
7/
Yusheng knows Dugin maps from above. And Gao's parallels btwn Japanese invasion in China & russia's invasion in Ukraine are striking also bcs Dugin in 1997 has NOT seen China as a global player AT ALL.
Dugin was betting on russia's alliance with Japan & on division of China.
9/
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well, this is an unbelievably important text by @EwaThompson1 on subject matter at hand!
It took the Russian-Ukrainian war and its “uncontrollable consequences” to make acceptable the idea of placing Slavic Studies under the microscope of decolonization.
🧶
The war in Ukraine began to tear off the curtain that obscured a world of which American and European students of things Slavic have had no idea.
war in Ukraine is rearranging relative political weight of non-Germanic CEE.
Yes, I do recognize the importance of nuclear ICBMs in Russia’s possession, but I also recognize the realities of Ukrainian courage & willingness to sacrifice for the preservation of Ukrainian identity.
'To show a Leopard on the battlefield at such an early stage was probably intended to draw a lot of attention to that area, perhaps as a decoy. I cannot know that, but it's sth I would have done, given all the attn in the media about these excellent tanks' - @general_ben
'The destruction of a single Leopard caused a lot of excitement on Twitter, but it was actually recovered from the battlefield so that it could be repaired and put back in the fight. That's impressive.' - @general_ben
'The Ukrainian General Staff will want to keep the Russians guessing about the location of the main attack for as long as possible, and they won’t be too bothered (and will probably welcome) Twitter getting it wrong.' - @general_ben
hence the "Kiev chicken speech" in 1991
George Bush then made a fool of himself by denying Ukraine independence, insisting that Ukraine should stay in what was known then as the "ussr"... literally 3 WEEKS before putsch happened in moscow and Ukraine declared Independence. 2/
hence the Budapest memorandum of Clinton in 1994 and now I am not sure the city for the signing of such a doc has been chosen accidentally.
just think about it for a moment... to be tricked so much by russian active measures that all the Ukrainian nukes went to terrorussia... 3/
this is Yuri Shvets.
yet another "interesting" russian guy, who tries to be instrumental creating russian narratives in "all things Ukraine" -- mostly criticizing Ukrainian leadership, calling Ukraine corrupt, nepotistic and unprofessional.
short 🧵
the guy has a Youtube channel with more than a million subscribers and posts his video there.
again, mostly about Ukraine.
to me the guy has a strong Kashpirovskiy vibe, the popular medical figure in the late Soviet Union era, who used to play a role of a "magical healer" on TV.
both Shvets and Kashpirovskiy seem to know how to keep audience engaged not only with what they are saying but also with how it is said: videos are monological, no change of picture, only the eye contact and voice are active.
psychologically speaking videos are very professional
I agree with @bctallis.
Germans want Ukraine stay weak and in the stay of endless war with russia.
why?
🧶
first, because weak Ukraine weakens Poland and all the CEE countries too, which, in turn, gives time to Germany-France axis to crystalize.
second, eugenics.
Germany hopes to add up to 1 million Ukrainians to the count of their citizen -- all those Ukrainians, who are staying now in Germany.