In 2022, I said, “Russia won’t be able to afford this war for long.”
I believed that even if the world feared its blackmail, leading democracies would treat it as the terminal threat it is—and snuff Russia out economically.
I thought better of many’s intentions. I can’t anymore. When people think I’m negative, or that saying “Europe’s hiding behind Ukrainian children” is too crass, I want to remind them: I started by taking it all at face value.
But after nearly a decade and a half of war I no longer assume best intent—and don’t think I’m wrong for that.

So, #NATO75
After reading various NATO-related analyses in the past days, it’s clear that the political problems (corruption, fear, miscalculation) and their origins are well understood.
However, practical solutions remain elusive, as time continues to become increasingly scarce. Many good analysts today precisely name these political shortcomings, adding, “Leaders must see, understand, realize…” — but any psychologist will quickly point out a problem with this line: practically no one will see, understand, or realize anything simply because they must.

Accusing someone of being on the Kremlin payroll is wrong, at the very least, because without evidence, it’s legally liable slander. However, when someone’s talk is frequently indistinguishable from Russian — it should be a serious feedback to consider.

/long 🧵 Many foreign journalists and experts on Ukraine often blame unproductive dialogue for their decision to mass-block feedback from Ukrainians, expressing frustration at insults, especially accusations of affiliation with the Kremlin.

I’ll put it simply: If powerful democracies, after decades of disarming Ukraine and empowering Russia, fail to help Ukraine secure victory swiftly now, we’ll have more violence, more wars, sooner than we think, in places that are now unthinkable. It’s a matter of when, not if. The post-WW2 victors of the West inherited the role and status of the worldwide “peace” police, enjoying its many privileges. However, over decades, they failed to instill in the next generations the responsibilities that accompany these privileges.

Every day individuals on the front and within occupied territories are fighting Russia. It’s their perspectives that need backing, far more than the arguments of experts and politicians who, amidst other weak excuses, claim that ATACMS/F16 are not crucial for Ukraine. Children take up arms to defend occupied Berdiansk and fall victim to Russian aggression, while adults in Sachsen vote for the Russia-backed AfD. One is a tragedy unfolding, the other, a tragedy in the making. Both come from a shared lack of political resolve to defeat Russia.

My communication experience is that outside of SM the people I talk to don't really get the concept of “imperialism”.
Using it to explain Russia often confuses them more than helps to understand the subject. Simple terms that explain evident, frequent destruction go a longer way. The word "empire" evokes arcahic images of ceasers or jade palaces.
Russia has built itself an image of a secular country that's been good at imitating democracy and has a KFC and a Pinko shop in most remote cities. So, the word "imperialism" creates a contemporary dissonance.

Since the “earliest days” of Russia’s war against Ukraine, much of the Western world was none of the described.
Unless the “earliest days of the war” for @galbeckerman is 2022. It’s just such a huge and overlooked problem: some of the main sources of information about Ukraine for the broad majority of foreigners are media outlets like this. And they weave casual misinformation right off the bat. And they’ve been doing it for years with no qualms.

“We need to have a meaningful conversation” has to stop being an excuse to help facilitating Russian talking points into the English-speaking spaces. First, because “meaning” will get lost in the “conversation” part, which Russia still dominates quantitatively and partially qualitatively - by the sole absence of pushback.
It would be magnitudes more “meaningful” to increase the needed pushback for starters.

If “westernization” is about the culture of democratic values, then Russia has never even adopted it. They pretended to play along while they could grit their teeth and abuse the value system for their own gains. But there was never any acceptance, just advantageous tolerance. 🧵

https://twitter.com/andrewmichta/status/1647165305008066560

The emerged post-SU Russia has been laced with anti-Westen sentiments from the beginning. Western prosperity being continuously juxtaposed to Russia being “more humane than the soulless money-worshippers”. The moods got louder, more perverse but they’ve always been mainstream.

It’s a contemporary error to think that autocratic states purchase (pardon, “invest into”) foreign assets in Europe directly.
Like the Hamburg Port or Frankfurter Airport incidents, that produce international headlines and make security specialists express vocal concern… 1/9 In reality big, direct, visible cases like that are comparatively rare. Most of the time investments trickle in via something like perfectly secular Swiss companies ran by, say, Russians with Singaporean citizenships.
A more elegant version of the Cyprus 🇨🇾 scheme. 2/

🧵Cultural literacy, historical and linguistic accuracy being not as important as military aid is a priority management fact.
Which only makes it more painful to realize that Russia can afford spending large resources on both military aggression and cultural lobbyism. 1/ “Why are you so bothered by …? Don’t you worry more about your people dying?”
I do. For years. I also worry about all the anti-Ukrainian work in media, sports, arts that Russia has done to validate and justify killing my people, while living a comfortable life in impunity. 2/

The anniversary produces a lot of “let’s-pat-each-other-on-the-back-for-good-work” content from many speakers that I struggle to resonate with.
Nobody’s out of the woods yet.
The balance of positives and negatives still, unfortunately, doesn’t quite add up. All I see, all I can think of, all where my focus is - are the negatives. Monumental negatives. My reflections are not on the war, because the war is the worst.
But not the scariest.
The scariest is the systemic unwillingness to deal with the mistakes that led to it.

There is something everyone needs to understand. The issues being raised about #AtomicHeart aren't about the ethics of you, the gamer, buying the game. It's about the ethics of the publishers and their eagerness to embolden warcrime supporters to make an extra dollar. A 🧵⬇️ First of all: MultiPlatform has an amazing and thorough article documenting the chaotic development practices and close Russian connections enveloping AtomicHeart.
I'll summarize some of its points below to elaborate on. multiplatform.com/2023/01/18/wha…

Sometimes I think many bright minds followed me out of solidarity, but see the views I share on the Russian “opposition” or Germany’s role in this war as crass.
Well. I think calling Zeitwende policy “naive” or propagandists who equip Russian terrorists “opposition” is crass.

https://twitter.com/krides/status/1602202375846068225

I insist for Germany’s whole political tradition to be addressed. Thinking about nepotism under Kohl I struggle to pin all slowness of innovation on Germans’ cultural aversion to change. Thinking about foreign policy under Schröder & co. “naive” is the last adjective I’d use.

Some Ukrainians don’t have detailed family stories about #Holodomor to share. I’ve learned that my grand-grandmother always got quiet and her eyes would fill with extreme, inarticulable terror if someone gently asked her about it. One time she merely said: “Starvation is the worst. You can willpower your way through many hardships. But not famine.”
She survived the NS German occupation. And when Ukrainians share this experience it’s not to whitewash nazis. It’s to give a perspective of how terrible the Soviets were.

Wish people who come at Ukrainians with their expectations about conduct would give themselves a general privilege check. Try to survive this winter with little-to-no utilities, hustle between war trauma and obligations, hold a breath when reading updates from the frontlines 1/ Spend half of the time in bomb shelters, wondering how to live with the knowledge of what another torture chamber in places like deoccupied #Kherson uncovered.
Every day deal with death, sicknesses, struggle and uncertainty – 2/

Dostoyevsky was an outspoken believer in Russian superiority via its Christian-Slavic moral exceptionalism. His literature flirts with these ideas, while his diaries explicitly capture Russia’s timeless chauvinism that resonates with many casual fascists up to date. 1/14 Nonchalant chauvinism remains prevalent in Russia in a way that makes Dostoyevsky’s far from being outdated. He sounds like everything a typical, modern, educated, “free-thinking” Russian would unabashedly concur to just about a few years ago. Elaborate verbosity included. 2/

Strasbourg is one of the pinnacles of European discourse about democracy and human rights. The coda at the end of a session that frequently addressed the genocide of Ukrainians by Russians looks a bit out-of-place, to put it mildly.
Fun is good. Tactlessness - less so.

https://twitter.com/mykhailova_a/status/1589676182903328768

And if I were completely honest it looks a bit like mocking. Especially in the presence of speakers whose family and friends are either under pure hellfire at the frontlines or hiding in cold bomb shelters, without water and heating.

Remember Iranian drones being called “scrap”? That scrap killed people. Tractors beating tanks? The tractors still run into mines.
Those “ill trained, poorly equipped” will fire at my friends.
It’s very important not to lose perspective while laughing at Russians: they will kill.

https://twitter.com/andrewperpetua/status/1588955629443776512

Only ≈1/10 of the 300k drafted Russians are untrained. They are by far not as unmotivated as I read of it English-speaking spaces. And their volunteers buy them gear. In Germany. Fly off to Turkey with it easily and everyone gladly pretends not to know what those items are for.

The past two weeks have been grim. But it’s especially hard to understand that they’re just a small fraction in the bloody streak of Russia’s continuous terror that no generation of Ukrainians was really able to escape. And that Russia faced no consequences for it. 1/9 My professional mission is to help people of different cultures understand, respect each other, avoid and solve conflicts, make better decisions.
As a Ukrainian I wish the countries that care about human values and rights would isolate Russia. It needs the self-reflection. 2/9

When I talk about Russians to foreigners I’d often hear a subtle contradiction to my words that starts with “but you have to understand…”

And I want to interrupt right there to say “no, please, you have to understand: what it’s like to be killed by Russians, for generations” Part of me wants to cancel all “realpolitik” solutions simply because they don’t apply. If Russia is your neighbor “secular diplomacy”, “cooperation” are empty words. Whole countries get coerced into deliberately vulnerable positions for the sake of business and IR theories.