Posted on 01/19/2022 8:46:31 AM PST by mac_truck
Whether or not Vladimir Putin moves his troops into Ukraine, he has once again confronted Europe with a most painful reality: while being too weak to defend itself, it can no longer rely on the United States to come to its rescue.
We are facing a reality in which Russia, despite its economy only having the size of Italy's, can bully and intimidate a continent thanks to its energy reserves and its readiness to project vast military power.
Sure, any Russian invasion of Ukraine would cost Russia a fortune and likely degrade into a grinding war of attrition. Invasion is unlikely to be president Putin's preferred option. Yet, this game of brinkmanship has another part of the equation. If Russia invades Ukraine, the costs for Europe will be equally devastating.
It will force gas-addicted European countries to find expensive alternatives and to severe billions in infrastructure, from pipelines, over pumping stations, to dedicated storages.
Russia also remains a key export destination and a supplier of other resources than oil and gas. Think of titanium. While the Kremlin has long prepared a gradual decoupling from Europe, the opposite remains unthinkable for most Europeans.
While a sizeable part of the Russian population would support an intervention in the eastern part of Ukraine, citizens in many European countries will find it hard to accept soldiers to die for what they consider a strange, peripheral country: Ukraine.
Countless times, I have heard very senior European business leaders sympathise with the leadership of Putin, to the point that one got the impression that they were more attracted to Russian strong leadership than Western liberalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at euobserver.com ...
Noboddy would ask you to.
I know these images quite well - don’t blame me.
After all, the outcome of WW 2 was the best thing that ever happened to some countries, wasn’t it?
Yes, and everything which happened to the Poles in WW2 is unspeakably saddening and regrettable. Who would not think so, unless he be an animal in human skin?
I just have a last question to you: is the violence meted out to Poles in WW 2 by the Soviets somehow “better” in your eyes? I hope not...
Of course not. But I will point out that the Germans did have specific plans to exterminate the entire Polish race in due course, the Soviets didn't have such plans.
Yes, tragically so.
To this day, it is unfathomable to me, and I’m a historian (as well as mentally handicapped, i. e. funnily, I myself would have been slated for extermination, too; my handicapped great-uncle was, actually, indeed murdered), where such hatred of fellow human beings comes from.
I myself have often asked God in prayer, why He would have let this happen.
Don’t be so sure that they didn’t have such plans. Ignoring that Stalin had absolutely no qualms to conducting something similar to the Holocaust with his Doctor’s Plot, the Soviets under Lenin also had conducted the Soviet-Poland War just after World War I, which also ended up exposing a taste of what a Soviet-run Europe would have looked like (and Poland wasn’t even their target, Germany was).
Besides, the fact that Poles when engaging in shootouts with both Nazis and Soviets generally tried to use TWO bullets instead of one on the latter to make sure they’re dead indicates the Soviets probably would have planned to exterminate the Poles if given the opportunity. Let’s also not forget their Katyn massacre.
It got defeated with 1793, and their refusal to actually condemn the Jacobins in the manner that they condemned Nazism later on.
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