Apparently an under-estimation.
To be clear, you're saying the exact words of the deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence, as quoted by one of Britain's most pro-Ukrainian newspapers, are "Russian propaganda"? The exact words of the US Secretary of Defense, as delivered before the House Armed Services Committee are "Russian propaganda"? The words of Ukrainian president Zelenskiy are "Russian propaganda"? And finally, the words of Ukrainian soldiers, as quoted by US media, are "Russian propaganda"?
If 27 months of being wrong about the trajectory of this war is to teach you anything it will hopefully be that not everything that contradicts your assessment of the situation is "Russian propaganda", and not everyone talking common sense is a "paid Russian troll". There is a very basic reason why you’ve been wrong about this war: Russia’s leaders fundamentally mean what they say. Western leaders do not. Ukraine is the latest victim to belatedly discover this. You are listening to the wrong people. Yes, as someone pointed out a while back, I was demonstrably wrong in this thread about the time-line of this war (because I had no idea the West would be insane enough to actually think they could defeat Russia by pumping Ukraine full of weapons). But I have not been wrong about the trajectory.
As for engaging with you, I'll be blunt: you would be a waste of my time. I'll explain why. The first thing you did in your first response to me was to list your CV. And you know when people write "lol" on the internet and you know that at best they probably only smiled a bit? Well I legitimately laughed out loud reading it. And I say this to you with good intentions: the people you're impressing on here with that are the same people who have spent 2 years being impressed with the exact same kinds of blog posts from Phillips O'Brien and Ben Hodges and Hamish de Bretton-Gordon and Michael Clarke and all the other "NATO military experts" who have spent over 2 years promulgating nonsense about this war ("military expert" Phillips O'Brien was interviewed yet again by the BBC 2 weeks ago, talking about how the supplemental would put Ukraine back on the offensive. This is the same guy who said in March 2022 that the Russian army would collapse by May of 2022), but who nevertheless keep on getting posted in this thread as authorities.
That combined with your hubristic posts in the China thread and your statements about being very pro-West and being a part of Euromaidan - look, long story short, I get you, ok? I've had years and years of speaking to and reading folk like you. Your pictures of bicycle GPS glued to Russian jets, your facile grasp of history, your absolutely fundamental - this is common to almost all you ‘NATO military intelligence’ folk - lack of understanding of Russia; I get you. And you guys are exhausting to talk to because there is nothing on earth that can ever be said that will convince you that you're wrong. Look at your reaction just now - a terse and snarky dismissal of everything as "Russian propaganda", even though they are literally Western outlets quoting Western or Ukrainian officials.
So that's first. Second is this: your first reply to me was to deliver your CV as evidence for why you're qualified to speak on this subject (a major red flag, and very incidentally nothing you wrote in it tells me you're as remotely qualified as I am; its only merit was in helping me understand why you believe the things you do in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary). Your 2nd engagement was to call for me to be banned from this forum. Why? Because I had posted about the supplemental’s demand for a Ukraine strategy and I'd said the Biden Admin would not provide one. I have since been proven correct about that. But being right doesn't matter, does it? What matters is: you went straight to "ban this guy", simply for posting an opinion you did not like and that broke no rules of the forum.
For context - one page before my post, we had someone continuing to spam the place up with infamously garbage Ukrainian propaganda Twitter channels about how the Russian army is putting its soldiers on the tops of tanks as human shields (this genius actually had to have it explained to him why this was nonsense - it didn't occur to him naturally. Ironically this guy laughed at me a few months back for lamenting the state of Western media literacy). This was apparently fine with you. No calls to ban him for crapping up the thread with patent trash yet again. 2 weeks before that, we had another guy, the Quebec fellow, actively calling for Ukraine to mass murder Russian civilians in Crimea. To “get tough”, as he put it. Also seemingly fine with you. No calls for him to be banned.
But my posting an opinion you don’t like? Straight to “ban him”.
So you see what I mean. I get you. There are many, many like you and this war has brought them all to the surface again, as Iraq did and as Libya did (“oh but no, no, this one really IS black and white!!”). I’ve said many times in here for the last couple of years and I’ll probably say it many more times: I wish you “freedom and democracy” guys could hear yourselves sometimes. You are legitimately scary people. You are what you claim to hate. The guy who predicted fascism to one day return in the guise of liberalism had you in mind. Insults, ad hominem and calls for people to be banned for their opinions – these are the default settings of the self-appointed defenders and arbiters of a ‘civilised and liberal world order’.
The guy beneath you asked why I rarely post in any other thread. For many, many years I only lurked on this forum. I was born in Manchester, still have a house in Middleton, and United are my 2nd team. But this Ukraine war is deeply personal to me. I have family in both Russia and Ukraine, as many people involved in this conflict do. This war is not, as it very clearly is for certain people here in this thread, entertainment. I have watched with horror as the lunatics in Western governments have led Ukraine down this garden path, cheered on by weapons salesmen like Hodges and Clarke and their (literally) millions of #slavaukraini followers (I know, I know “But it was PUTIN who invaded!!!” Thanks for the 6-year-old’s grasp of the situation). Ukraine has been systematically destroyed by idiots invoking Neville Chamberlain and totally misstating why this war has happened. With proper Western leadership, it needn’t have gone this way. Ukraine needn’t have been destroyed, with its best-case scenario now being to retain some level of “sovereignty" (per Austin’s words in that video I posted), where “sovereignty” means “saddled with unpayable debt for generations” and losing the most lucrative parts of its territory, not to mention a generation of men.
And what’s depressing is that almost 2 and a half years in, you guys still are not learning the lessons of why you’ve have been consistently wrong about how this would turn out. You are still waffling on about how you represent “the world” and then being dumb-founded when the majority of the world doesn’t go along with you (Josep Borrell acknowledged this recently*). You are still not listening to anyone outside your increasingly small echo chamber. Everything contrary is still just “Russian propaganda” to you. People like me are still just “paid trolls”.
A miserably predictable pattern has played out. 2 years ago there were 2 broad groups of people. Group A was very, very large. It consisted of poorly-educated people drunk on proxy nationalism declaring that Ukraine was going to defeat Russia. Group B was very, very small. It consisted of people saying that Ukraine would be destroyed if this war wasn’t stopped as soon as possible with peace talks. Group A laughed at Group B and called them delusional fascist-sympathising morons. People who hadn’t heard of Neville Chamberlain a week before started writing with supreme authority about Neville Chamberlain.
2 years on, what Group B said would happen has happened and Group A have been proven wrong. And nevertheless, Group A is continuing to laugh at Group B and call them morons/trolls/bots etc. Because that’s how they operate. It doesn’t matter how many times reality shows them to be wrong again and again and again. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, you name it, it will never matter how many times they utterly f*ck everything up with their hubris, they still will never countenance being wrong. Easier instead to dismiss everything as “Russian propaganda” and call for people to be banned.
There is a poster here, I will not name him but I have reported him multiple times (the only time I’ve ever done that). He’s from either Finland or Estonia, I forget which. I have literally never engaged with him. But he periodically sends me PMs calling me every name under the sun. I do not engage with him, ever, as a matter of principle. His disgusting behaviour puts him beneath me. His last message was to tell me he hoped I was having to go to lots and lots of funerals. All of this is accompanied by the inevitable laughing emojis of course (those ‘civilised’ freedom-fighters again you see). And you know what? Yes, I do know people killed by this war, from both Russia and Ukraine. I’ll say again, this war is personal for me. There are people in the Israel thread who basically only post there. I don’t see anyone demanding they justify their presence on the site by posting in other threads as well.
I’m not here to engage with you, 'AfonsoAlves'. That’s my basic reply to you. For the same reason I don’t spend time trawling through the tweets and transcripts of all the other “NATO military intelligence” crowd that I named earlier. It’s impressive to people who haven’t already been reading the whole tired gibberish for literally decades. I’m here to post information that won’t get posted by other people, and from exclusively pro-Ukrainian Western sources so as to circumvent the “Russian propaganda” accusations (again, I under-estimated you). That’s it. People are free (so long as you don't have your way of banning opinions you don't like) to read it or not, they can dismiss Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence as “Russian propaganda” (!?) if they want to. But I’m going to post it regardless until told not to by a moderator, in among the smorgasbord of Ilya Ponomorenko tweets about how drunken Russian generals are cramming their smallest soldiers into cannons and inadvertently firing them at their own cities. I will not intrude on your NATO propaganda posts (sorry, but that’s simply what they are in my opinion) here or in the China thread. Possibly the one time I will directly ask your opinion of this war will be when it is over, Russia has achieved the 4 aims it stated it would back in 2022, and I will ask you what, if anything, you have learned from all this. The fates of places like the Philippines and Taiwan rest on all the “NATO military intelligence experts” finally learning some lessons. This for now however will serve as my engagement with you. Because again, there is nothing in it for either one of us.
*Borrell's statement that I mentioned earlier. He's the EU's high representative for foreign affairs. And so, "Russian propaganda" no doubt.
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/02/26/western-dominance-ended-eu-josep-borrell/
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