"#Xi’s peace offer to #Ukraine should be seen... as a #kabuki dance, in which the peace plan is offered in the full expectation that Ukraine will refuse it while giving the appearance of Chinese good faith, Professor Albion M Urdank wrote for the @FT. ⏬ He believes that "thus spurned, Xi will claim full justification in providing lethal weaponry to #putin so that he may carry on with success... The provision of lethal weaponry to 🇷🇺will mark Xi’s formal break with the west, for which he has been planning."

#putin escalates by voicing his plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on #Belarusian territory.

It was planned well before. In 2020 #Lukashenko illegally seized power. In February 2022, he conducted an unlawful referendum that ditched the country's non-nuclear status. ⏬ putin voices a plan to modernize Belarusian aircraft to make them nuclear-capable and train Belarusian pilots to operate them. In December 2022, putin deployed, and in February 2023, the Belarusian reported that they started operating the #Iskander-M dual-capable missile systems.

@RichardHaass nailed it. This war is about Russians willing to "eradicate Ukraine as a sovereign entity."

However, I can't agree with the idea that putin fears that russians may want to follow Ukraine's path to democracy and prosperity. ⏬

https://twitter.com/ProSyn/status/1638624095897276417

It's nothing else but Western wishful thinking and the projection of their mindset to the wild territory that has been living in unfreedom and perverted reality for centuries. Some still believe that the West "lost" russia by not helping it more.

"Successive Tsars imposed their will on the Church, transforming it into a mere instrument for their strategic objectives… #putin’s russia simply renewed and accentuated this “tradition.”
@EcuPatriarch ⏬ "Of special importance in this respect is #Panslavism, the ideology according to which all Slavs should be united under Moscow. This XIX century deeply racist ideology found its religious expression in ethnophyletism, condemned as a heresy by the Great Council of Const. in 1872.”

The #russian embassy in 🇬🇧 tried to mock @RishiSunak for legislation that prevents migrants from crossing the Channel on small boats.

They didn’t mention that 🇷🇺 is responsible for the largest European conflict since WWII that caused immense suffering and destruction in 🇺🇦.
1/5 The russians are responsible for 14,000 Ukrainians #killed in 2014-2022 and 8,173 more Ukrainians killed since 2022 (@UN_HRC). No one knows how many Ukrainians were murdered in #Mariupol, #Volnovakha, and other occupied cities, towns, and villages. 2/5

Continuation...

EVOLUTION OF DIPLOMACY. "Nothing about 🇺🇦without 🇺🇦" is extremely important for the Ukrainian nation. But it also serves the interests of other nations because it doesn't allow 🇷🇺to turn its aggression against Ukraine into a broader confrontation with 🇺🇸. It's a failed attempt of #Moscow to impose the great power competition scheme and trade its "cooperation" on global issues for allowing it to re-establish spheres of influence in Europe that justified the "suspension" of their participation in the new #START Treaty.

A year of the nine-year war (longread)

LONG-TIME APPEASEMENT (1991-2014). Due to the immense potential to destroy humanity, vast resources, and incurable optimism of the renaissance nations, 🇷🇺has been a prism through which the West has been looking at the nations in-between. The brutal second #Chechen war, orchestrated by @putin to grip power, was hardly noticed. 🇷🇺was let in from the cold just a year after the invasion of #Georgia.

A Chinese peace proposal is unlikely to satisfy Ukraine.

Beijing isn't happy with the idiots who have started the unnecessary war that greatly affects the whole world. ⏬ It undermines PRC interests: economic fallout in critical markets and globally, US leadership is restored, NATO is consolidated, Free nations, including Taiwan, are beefing up their defenses, US is adjusting its contingency plans re Taiwan, West imposes export controls on PRC.

Is the German government still guided by the Lindner doctrine?

German government @Bundeskanzler rejected a scheme proposed by @RheinmetallAG that would allow to immediately send 100 decommissioned Marder APCs to Ukraine.
1/5 The German government @BMVg_Bundeswehr knew that there were 200 Leopard 1A5 main battle tanks that are no longer used by the Bundeswehr available for Ukraine which badly needs them. 2/5

Indians @PMOIndia were infuriated by the West
@trussliz, @SecBlinken "lecturing" them that they needed to choose the right side of history (abstain from supporting russia).

Indians believe they need to persuade their national interest as the other states do. 1/8 Sine the Soviet Union, India enjoyed good relations with Moscow, so why should they spoil these relations? And why should they refuse the temptation to buy oil at a huge discount? While the global North isolated russia, the global South took a different stand.