As it is correct, that they are virtually not in power, framing them as pro-russia is some sort of false flag. Just because they are not anti-russia, like every other party, does not automatically mean that they are pro-russia. AfD and BSW together got more then 25% of all votes. So, you are correct, they virtually are not in power, but they have some real power just by being there.
This HN post here is the best example for this mechanism.
AfD has SO many connections to the Kremel. At least a big part of AfD is obiously influenced by russian agenda. BSW is a different topic. They might just align with many points russia likes, but you can not be sure either.
BSW or AfD with power in the Bundestag would be russias wet dream in regards to german politics.
How many levels of "appear to" are we supposed to tolerate in order to minimize the perspective here? Here's where we started:
>The Germans in this article all appear to be aligned to [...]
So the person we don't like seems like they might be affiliated with a political party which seems like it's pro-Russia — this is unreasonably contrived when you zoom out and look at the whole argument.
Is there a rating site or alignment test for wiki articles and their authors? I'm aware of the inherent left bias on wiki and while I still find it informative I am forced (because of their behavior) to consider the subtextual implications in the language they use as well as what is willingly (and sometimes very intentionally) addressed or omitted. it would be nice to have a wiki-bias chart like the media bias chart.
Everything should be referenced with sources. If a reference is weak or even wrong it should be removed. Everybody can apply to be an editor.
I know that Wikipedia has a liberal touch BUT its sources can be used to interpret it yourself. With or without wikipedia, AfD has members with proven connections to the kremel.
>framing them as pro-russia is some sort of false flag.
They just take russian talking points and deliver them to their voters. It's just conveniently the same shit. And business trips to russia are just there to enjoy the scenery.
If they talk like russians, are present in russia, do interviews in russian media and don't condemn russian warcrimes...
Germany is a member of the EU and NATO, the eastern nations of which are openly, publicly, and officially threatened with Russian invasion to the point they are now preparing for conflict.
Straw man argument.
Neither Russia wants to invade Germany nor is Ukraine our neighbor (and if it is, then is Russia too).
Despite that is the US the most armed country in the world, not Russia.
I fear the things are much much more complicated then you think.
Yeah, of course Russia does not want to invade Germany - it is just arming itself to the teeth. And of course Russia did not want to invade Ukraine in 2021 - they were just building up their military on the border since Mar 2021 [0]. So Ukraine was safe all the way up to the of morning Feb 24!!! <s>Only those bad war-mongers would think that Russia was going to attack Ukraine </s>.
NATO is bigger and it has more soldiers and bigger armies, why do you think Russia will invade NATO, it's just ridiculous. :( It is not Russia that is increasing in territories, it is NATO that is approaching Russia over the past few decades.
Speaking as a Russian citizen, I remember hearing "NATO will invade us anytime now" pretty much since early 90s. Yet somehow in 30 years since then it is Russia, not NATO, which has repeatedly invaded its neighbors.
And the rhetoric that Russia is directing at the Baltic states - and has been for many years now - is largely indistinguishable from the pretext used to invade Ukraine. So those states at least have very good reasons to believe that they are next; and they are in NATO.
Just to be clear: Russia has invaded Ukraine, has declared that the country has no right to exist and ukraine people will be exterminated, but it is NATO that is the aggressor?
No one unarmed was exterminated and no one say that will be exterminated. You're exaggerating. None of the unarmed people were harmed on purpose. Yes, there are crimes in war. And there are precedents when the perpetrators were arrested. Yes, some words about "existing" really don't sound nice and strange, but if you really want to figure all out, then you need to watch the original full speeches, rather than quotes selected by interested Western media. But Ukraine and West reaction is not adequate. Ukraine nationalis really comitted bloody crimes, even european court confirmed it(https://www.echr.coe.int/w/judgment-concerning-ukraine-2). Ukraine and the West could really fight for their territories without war by peaceful ways. Ukraine also had no plans to hold a referendum on joining NATO, although not all people who support the West and the European Union would support joining the NATO military alliance. No Russia will be able to hold the territories if the entire civilian population went on strike against it. Sorry if you're not interested in looking into this deeply and you can't be persuaded.
For one thing, when you invade a foreign country, "we're only killing people who are armed and trying to defend their homeland" doesn't make it any less of a crime.
But also, the civilians who got shot in Bucha, and countless others in similar situation, would very much disagree.
Not at all. The US has tried to minimize its involvement in this war before it even started.
In the run-up to the full-scale invasion, Biden spent more time saying what he would not do than what he would do.
Think that, to this date, the US has not supplied a single fighter jet. The only airframes Ukraine received were provided by European nations.
About 30 Abrams tanks were delivered by the US, and that only after it was clear Ukraine's 2023 counter offensive had failed.
Since Trump's return to power, not a single aid package has been approved. To the contrary, the Trump administration has sided with Russia and North Korea on UN General Assembly votes about Ukraine.
Remember that in the 1990's the US put Ukraine under pressure to give up its nuclear arsenal (2nd in the world at the time) against promises that its sovereignty and independence would be respected (Budapest memorandums). Who is going to believe the US now?
Russia is basically ok with Ukraine being a buffer state so long as it doesn't become a NATO ally. At this point Ukraine will probably have to give up the Russian ethic regions adjoining Russia to get peace.
Imagine if Mexico tried to join BRICS or the Warsaw pact back when it existed. You can see the realpolitik logic here. If you want stability and peace for the Ukrainian people, do a deal. Ukraine wasn't in play but for NATO expansion eastward. Now it is, and it is the fault of the United States that this situation was created.
US politicians crow about what a great deal for them the Ukraine war is since others are fighting and dying to fight USA's enemy*. Very blood thirsty.
* The enemy of the USA ruling class, I personally don't harbor any animosity towards Russia though I dislike their form of government—a form that resulted from US attacks on the post-Soviet political economy.
> * The enemy of the USA ruling class, I personally don't harbor any animosity towards Russia though I dislike their form of government—a form that resulted from US attacks on the post-Soviet political economy.
So, Russia bears no responsibility for its own government, which is somehow manufactured by the US? OK, that's a new one on me.
Ukraine started seeking NATO membership when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. NATO members refused, following this flawed logic "that it would provoke Russia". In 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, Ukraine was still a neutral country.
The reality is that Russia had had NATO countries on its borders (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) for years before it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. And two years ago Finland joined as well. Russia did nothing to prevent this.
NATO is a defensive alliance. The only thing it threatens is Russia's imperialism and expansionism.
Russia broke countless agreements where it recognized Ukraine's borders and independence, so Russia's signature is now worthless.
Everyone knows how Russia treats the peoples of lands it conquers: torture, executions, deportations etc. No country could accept these terms. It would amount to national suicide. For this reason Ukrainians have to choice but to keep fighting.
> Would you just roll over and let Russia invade your country?
Apparently, many Ukrainian men would. Or maybe they'd seen it like a mere change in upper management, initially. Otherwise the Ukrainian government would not have felt it necessary to forbid them from leaving the country or to press/force them into military service.
(And, frankly, the people affected are the only ones whose opinion should matter in this situation.)
> Bleeding to repel the Russian invasion, you mean
It's always easy to spill other people's statistical blood from the other side of the planet.
I'd have taken the March pre-2022 deal rejecting NATO alignment in a heartbeat. In fact, even as the deals Russia offered got steadily worse they were always calibrated to be a better alternative than continuing to fight and lose.
NATO isnt powerful enough/motivated enough to help Ukraine fight off Russia despite pledging unlimited support in March 2022 (now proven to be a hollow lie).
There was nothing logical about Ukraine's decision to reject neutrality and to try and set itself up as a NATO military bulwark along Russia's most vulnerable border.
I'd have taken that too, with security guarantees. Otherwise what do you do when Russia comes back for another bite of the pie? That's why they want to join NATO.
"Give it independence" is a very misleading way to state it. Ukraine has declared its independence unilaterally; it's just that Russia wasn't really in a position to do anything about it then.
Yeah, they invaded twice and in each case a little diplomacy would have been sufficient to roll back the invasion. Diplomacy which was categorically refused for terrible reasons.
Hey, if you want to fight and die on behalf of your Western empire then Ukraine will be only too happy to have you and every Ukrainian of fighting age about to be thrown on to the front lines will be only too happy to trade places.
But, I get it - it's easy to treat little things like honest diplomacy and other countries' security concerns with complete disregard when you're not the one being thrown on to the front lines to die as a result of it. Only Ukrainians are forced to do that.
>Repeating Putin's talking points probably isn't going to convince anybody
Putin's a terrible human being and so are his supporters but he's not all that different to his western imperialist counterparts and the supporters of their narratives - people like you.
> Yeah, they invaded twice and in each case a little diplomacy would have been sufficient to roll back the invasion.
That's just a stalling tactic. The very people who built Russian diplomacy and personally mentored figures like the current foreign minister Lavrov have commented that Russia's offers have never been serious, pointing to details such as the fact that the people leading the negotiations are low-level functionaries without any authority to negotiate anything. You don't send errand boys if you're serious about negotiations.
Diplomacy is always a murky world but in this case there is one and clear stand out example where what you said is true. It was announced that Minsk 2 was purely meant as a stalling tactic to allow re-armament.
Unfortunately for your little theory it was Ukraine and Angela Merkel who admitted this and not Russia.
This was made even more painfully obvious just before that day in Feb 2022 when Russia demanded Ukraine adhere to this multilateral (i.e. also agreed by Europe) agreement theyd already agreed to and Ukraine just point blank refused, preferring to fight.
Russian diplomacy follows a Clausewitzian model (i.e. that you're better off in tbe long run if you are up front about your intentions), unlike the western model where one day you announce talks with the Iranians pledging good faith in your negotiations and the next day you launch a surprise bombing raid, hoping this means you got 'em good.
These are just stale deflections. Russian diplomacy is indeed stuck in Clausewitzian times: diplomacy is seen as an extension of military strategy and not as a tool for building durable cooperation. This becomes especially apparent when compared to how former great rivals like France and Germany, the UK and Spain, or Sweden and Denmark now conduct their relations with one another.
When you put Russia against this, it's abundantly clear how hopelessly outdated present-day Russian diplomacy is; it has much more in common with the distant past than with the modern day.
>Russian diplomacy is indeed stuck in Clausewitzian times: diplomacy is seen as an extension of military strategy and not as a tool for building durable cooperation.
Except that is what they are doing with BRICs with the entire rest of the world. It's only the American-led western hegemonic bloc they're clashing with - exclusively puppets and military junior partners of the United States like France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Outside of this hegemonic military/economic bloc nobody has sanctioned Russia, which is why the effect of the sanctions we levied ended up being so pathetic. At the same time there is a huge appetite for joining the BRICs because the rest of the world is that fucking sick of us.
>When you put Russia against this
"This" is an empire in decline. The west is already following the same path as the USSR in the 1980s (dutch disease, massive industrial decline, fast incoming military overspend), except tailed off with more tacit and explicit support for genocide as a cherry on top. We're the best.
> In fact, even as the deals Russia offered got steadily worse they were always calibrated to be a better alternative than continuing to fight and lose.
They were always calibrated to be refused and there is a reason for that: NATO expansion is a red herring that Russia wants to use as an excuse for the invasion.
> There was nothing logical about Ukraine's decision to reject neutrality and to try and set itself up as a NATO military bulwark along Russia's most vulnerable border.
Ukraine has been neutral, and in fact quite friendly to Russia, both according to its Constitution and popular polls, up until the point Russia annexed a piece of its land and invaded another piece in 2014. By doing that Russia has shown that no promise of neutrality can save Ukraine from its tanks. I am surprised that some people are still talking about neutrality in good faith in 2025.
Remind us why a purely defensive alliance lead by a country on the othrr side of a planet needs to be closer and closer to the borders of the country against which that alliance was created?
Because small countries of Europe that don't want to be invaded by Russia seek to join the alliance that was specifically created to prevent such eventuality for its members.
That's why of the 4 wars it has taken part in in the last 30 years, 4 have been wars of aggression while 0 have been defensive (article 5 was invoked for 9/11 but occupying afghanistan wasnt a defensive move it was an imperial move).
It's a dog eat dog world out there for sure but sometimes the 14 year old boy isnt safer joining the crips for protection from the bloods. Sometimes he's just sacrificed as a pawn in a wider turf war as the crips' promises of protection ring hollow.
This is nonsense. The primary motivation for NATO is defense - the fact that it was not involved in defensive wars is rather evidence of its extreme effectiveness, being strong enough collectively that nobody even tries. OTOH countries not in it have been invaded (like Georgia and Ukraine).
It neither needs nor wants to be closer, and the long-standing rejection of Ukraine's membership application is a testament to that. Yet every neighbor of Russia is desperate to join it to secure themselves against yet another expansionist dictatorship in Russia.
They are openly supporting Russia, take their money, visit them while meeting high ranking Russian assets and are spreading the same Ideas. There is no framing here.
