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https://twitter.com/lukeharding1968/status/1826298021883068572Over the years, people have suggested lots of explanations for Trump's admiration for, even deference to, Putin: money, kompromat, manipulation by smarter people around him, a preference for dictators, a combination of some or all of these.
https://twitter.com/ruth_deyermond/status/1804429379713298793To repeat: there was no chance at all of Ukraine joining either NATO or the EU in the years before Russia decided to start its latest colonial campaign of stealing Ukrainian land and torturing, raping, and murdering Ukrainians.
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1804421118410797109One widely acknowledged reason why Ukraine had zero chance of joining NATO in Feb 2022 was that Russia had been occupying parts of it for 8 years. Again, everyone including Putin knew this made NATO accession impossible - that was probably part of the reason Putin did it.
https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1789879343004483636The idea that the West (its states, institutions, political culture, values) are Russia's main enemy and an existential threat is now built in to Putin's presidency. There's no way back from that as long as post-Feb 2022 Putinism is the structuring principle of the Russian state.
https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1789199118448939177European NATO members (the ones that don't have pro-Putin leaderships) need to think urgently about how they cooperate to ensure their security if Trump is re-elected in November. This message doesn't help with that.
https://twitter.com/FormulaGe/status/1731598372237103529By encouraging Georgia to seek NATO admission in 2008 without the necessary support from members, the US created a strong incentive for Russia - with its delusions of rights over its "near abroad" - to act to stop it before reluctant members changed their minds.
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1699382734710300929And this is happening at the same time as the humiliation of Russia, allegedly one of the world's great military powers and previously a major arms exporter, having to turn to North Korea for weapons.
https://twitter.com/KShoshiashvili/status/1633484860747546624Just yesterday my MA class was discussing Georgia and Moldova since the collapse of the USSR. Among other things, we talked about was the way the relative positions of the two states on membership of the EU and on European/Western identity has changed in the last decade.