This is a genuine question: do you (and the other guys above who have uncritically accepted the truth of that tweet) ever think that maybe these posts you read on Twitter are not the truth? I ask because I am 100% certain that if somebody here retweeted some unverified post from a random nobody on Twitter (that tweet you've reacted so strongly to doesn't even have a blue tick) that claimed Ukrainian soldiers were raping Russian babies in the Donbas, you'd dismiss it as Russian nonsense. Yet here, all it's taken is someone to post entirely uncorroborated claims of child rape against Russians and you've instantly jumped to call for torture and murder. While I don't doubt it feels good and acts as a catharsis, it's also dangerous. It shows how easily the uglier instincts of people can be manipulated into calling for violence with nothing more substantive than a baseless paragraph from someone with no credentials.
I've been following this thread from the beginning. I made a lengthy post in the newbies forum about the situation here in Russia (I'm in St Petersburg and have lived here for 20 years). I'm not sure if my 'promotion' to this general forum is necessarily a good thing because to be honest, for all the people on the previous page thanking Glaston for his uncritical retweeting of every single pro-Kiev tweet he can find, this thread is effectively useless as a source of actual information about this war. The vast majority of the stuff being posted is so detached from reality that this thread honestly feels like an alternate universe.
Throughout the course of this thread we've had tweets from "Western sources" that, 2 months ago, claimed the Russian army was going to collapse in 3 days; they claimed Russia's "only tank factory" (ffs) could no longer fix tanks because of the sanctions (a friend of mine owns a company that builds helicopers for Gazprom; as such he also has contracts with the Russian military. Trust me, EVERY sanction is relatively easy to get around provided a) you're ready to pay more and b) China is actively working with you), and they have claimed that "by June there will be nothing left of the Russian economy". Back when the invasion began somebody retweeted a "senior Treasury official" who promised that "the ruble will be rubble by the summer". And my personal favourite: one week ago in this thread there was a retweet about how "Putin has already lost one third of his army" (the Russian army has over 1 million active personnel and 2 million reserve personnel; do the maths. Besides which, 'only' 190,000 have been deployed to Ukraine). People above are thanking Glaston for his service, but you are receiving an entirely lopsided view and understanding of the situation. And from an emotional point of view, I get it, people here want to believe in a certain narrative (Russia is collapsing, Ukraine will be victorious). But I don't believe it's an accurate picture. At the least, it's nowhere near balanced. Heck, 2 weeks ago the SAME PERSON posted a tweet about how Putin was having cancer surgery that day...and then followed it up with another tweet about how Putin had spoken with Macron by phone that day. "Hi Emmanuel, make it quick, I'm about to go under the knife for major surgery for life-threatening blood cancer". That was incidentally the same day Glaston claimed his "psychic friend" had told him Putin was mortally ill. This thread has been a fascinating experiment in just how
little people really think about the things they are reading when their emotions have been riled up.
In 3 months Russia has almost entirely taken the whole of the east and south of Ukraine, which powers almost 80% of Ukraine's economy. Without continued Western support of billions per month the Ukrainian economy is going to collapse. In what reality does this constitute Ukraine "winning", as someone said above? How are you "winning" when your leader is having to literally beg everyone day and night for more weapons and money or else his country will collapse within a week? Now the emotion of war is still very strong and the West is still sending billions to Ukraine. As this war grinds on and prices across the UK and Europe continue to skyrocket, are you still going to be content to ship billions of euros to Zelenskiy? For a war that, despite what the Americans are saying (and knowingly lying about), Ukraine almost certainly cannot win? The "counter-offensive" so many of you are pinning your hopes on (again, what happened to the "senior officials" claiming back in March that the Russian army would collapse in 3 days because it can't service its tanks anymore?) isn't going to happen. Just look at the map. Look at what Russia has taken inside 3 months. Look at the numbers of troops each side has. Russia will grind down Ukraine town by town. They have all the time they need to do it because, I'll say again, the sanctions do not work, at least not when we're talking about the war machine. They are easy to evade, and even America has now accepted this (in March they threatened China and India with "serious consequences" if they helped Russia evade the sanctions; they've stopped making such threats because they know there's nothing they can do to stop it from happening).
In my opinion Europe is making a colossal mistake here. I'm NOT talking about their support for Ukraine; that goes without saying. Morally, defending Ukraine is the right thing to do. But politicians are supposed to think long-term and with clear heads, not only about what is "morally" right. Europe is divorcing Russia because Russia "doesn't share our values". Ok, fair enough. Nigeria and Qatar share your values? These are the countries Europe is tying its energy security to? And at 4 to 5 times the cost? This is suicidal. And in fact one amusing unforeseen consequence of Putin's invasion has been the apparent resurrection of socialist ideals in Eastern Europe -
Polish PM Calls on Norway to Share Oil and Gas Profits Windfall
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-22/polish-pm-calls-on-norway-to-share-oil-and-gas-profits-windfall
“But should we be paying Norway gigantic money for gas -- four or five times more than we paid a year ago? This is sick,” he said. “They should share these excess profits. It’s not normal, it’s unjust. This is an indirect preying on the war started by Putin.”
I mean, yeah, did you seriously not realise that cutting yourselves off from cheap Russian oil and gas would mean you'd end up paying 5 times more for your energy? At a time when the cost of living is already going through the roof? Germany is now decrying its relationship with Russia over the last 3 decades, but it is that relationship that saw Germany become the industrial centre of Europe, because its economy relies entirely on a constant supply of cheap energy. Kiss goodbye to that.
I recognise what I'm writing here will not be popular, but honestly, this thread is crying out for 'the other side' of the issue. I believe that in the years to come, Europe is going to massively suffer from what they are doing now. Russia will not. I think Europe is swimming blindly onto a massive hook, one that will only become fully obvious when 27 EU states start squabbling over a limited reserve of Nigerian, Norwegian and Qatari oil and gas (see the above 'spat' between Poland and Norway). At the very least they should leave themselves the OPTION of returning to Russia for various commodities in the future, if and when - shock, horror - Nigeria and Qatar don't actually turn out to be "reliable partners that share our Western values". But they're not, they're being pressured to make it a permanent and irreversible divorce, and young and inexperienced politicians (most notably Baerbock in Germany, who is a staggeringly reckless and ill-informed person) are walking straight into a very risky situation. The moment the EU starts to fraсture (as I believe it will) there's going to be a chaotic scramble over energy. The biggest strategic mistake the West is making is trying to isolate Russia from the global economy. It can't and won't ever happen, despite the narrative their people are being fed. The West is being guided by the kind of emotion we've seen in this thread, a level of emotion that incapacitates critical thinking and leads people to think that Ukraine is actually going to 'win' this war and (as someone suggested 2 pages ago) even "kick Russia out of Crimea within 3 years" (in no reality will that happen).
This post may receive some strong pushback, but all I suggest is that people do this: go back to late February/early March in this thread. Read a few pages of posts. According to all those tweets from all those "senior Western officials", the Russian economy had about 3 months to live. Now here we are 3 months later. The West gave Russia its biggest hit that was meant to knock it out and Russia quite easily absorbed it (now the EU have spent 3 weeks squabbling among themselves about a 6th packet of sanctions instead of having the brains to realise that they will only continue to harm themselves the more they impose them). The economy has not collapsed, the ruble is the strongest performing currency this year (via maniupation, yes, but the point remains that the West said it would be "rubble" by now), and our prices are not rising anything like they are in England (where my parents live). Yet despite this, the exact same Twitter folk who made nonsensical prediction after nonsensical prediction back in March are still, to this day, being trusted to give an accurate take on this war. By the sheer volume of the tweets, the avalanche of posts about every Russian tank, machine gun and bullet that has been taken out of action (with not one single post about Ukrainian losses - I'll say one last time, look at the map), this thread has basically been turned into the Twitter feed of the Ukrainian Ministry of Information, and I don't think it's helped anyone.
