More from @WeLoveNATO

WeLoveNATO 💪

@WeLoveNATO

May 15

Barack Obama (2014) said: "russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking." (interview in The Economist). Thread on why this matters / 1

Little discussed aspect of this war - russian demographics are going to be negatively impacted for decades because of this debacle /2

Prior to this war, demographics for russia were already looking pretty gloomy. The population is projected to shrink to 121 million by 2050, down a staggering 27 million (18.2%) from its 1995 high of 141 million people. (Source: UN report) /3

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WeLoveNATO 💪

@WeLoveNATO

May 12

Profound 1987 article by former Chancellor of West Germany. A ruthless assessment of russia's political and imperial mindset. He gave 6 reasons why russia can never get along with the rest of the world. Might as well have been written today. Here's the TL;DR...

1. russian messianic mindset
russia has an inherently messianic view of its own role in the world. russia believes it is the center of Christianity and its true standard-bearer ever since the collapse of the Byzantine Empire (continued)

This messianic thinking manifests itself in a variety of ways, such as seeing themselves as the leaders of pan-Slavism and, in the 20th century, as leaders of the global world communist movement. Various movements but all with the same core view of themselves as better.

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WeLoveNATO 💪

@WeLoveNATO

May 11

Thread on how russia has exploited democracy and pushed its expansionist agenda for the past 2 decades with the help of many collaborators, allies and partisans. My thoughts on some of the different categories of people it uses to advance its imperial growth:

1. OVERT ALLIES
example = Xi Jinping, who recently promised "unending friendship" and in return got russia to delay its invasion until after the Chinese Winter/Propaganda Olympics.

quick sidenote - same thing happened in 2008 when russia invaded Georgia. China asked them to wait until the day after the Beijing Summer/Propaganda Olympics. (worth a separate thread)

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WeLoveNATO 💪

@WeLoveNATO

May 9

@NATO

Since russia invaded Ukraine, @NATO activated its response plan and increased its ready active forces on the eastern flank 8-fold. Check out the stats: