State of the EU address: 'Putin will fail and Europe will prevail'

The first statement made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her annual State of the European Union address on Wednesday was not verbal, but visual. Clad in bright blue and yellow alongside other senior politicians, she showed support for Ukraine's battle with Russia, making clear even before the speech began that the war would top the agenda.

With Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska in Strasbourg for the occasion, von der Leyen pledged Europe's "unshakeable" commitment to Kyiv, sending a defiant message to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

"Putin will fail and Europe will prevail," the chief of the EU executive branch said. "I want to make it very clear, the sanctions are here to stay," von der Leyen stressed, listing off the damage so far inflicted on Russia by punitive measures: a financial sector "on life support," the departure of almost 1,000 international firms and car production down 75% from last year.

You gonna just avoid the biolabs?

Er, no. In fact on multiple occasions I've talked about them very specifically. Here's an example: https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4092653/posts?page=41#41. I also did quite a bit of background research into what goes on in the 46 biolabs in Ukraine, and basically found a big fat mother-humper of a nothing burger.

The UK has over 600 biolabs. They have all sorts of nasties. Oddly enough, almost all are used for banal things like researching diseases. In fact, at one point only 8 were registered locations for “bioweapons” research and most of them were looking specifically at detection, diagnostics and treatments NOT at the creation of such substances.
Ukraine has 46 - far fewer than the UK. Maybe we can expect 2 at most to be of the level of bioweapons research. Even then, if even one of those was being used to develop biological weapons to target the nonexistent pure Russian genome, I’ll eat my hat.

Hands up how many people on Free Republic who've actually been in a biolab even once in their life and knows what one even looks like without googling.

I've worked in several biolabs, early in my career (not as a biochemist).
My job included risk management, safety monitoring and FMEAs.
I've been in Class 1 clean rooms, primate labs, animal testing labs.
I've also been involved in the design of safety-critical systems.

You know what the poster child is for biolab screw-ups? The Soviet Union! Bacillus anthracis release in Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union. Look it up.
Chernobyl still is the poster child for how to completely balls up the safety at a nuclear plant. Ooh, that one's also Soviet. Quel coincidence.

If you buy the Russian press on biolabs, consider this Kremlin theory from last April: THE CHINA VIRUS CAME FROM AMERICAN BIOLABS: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-04/28/c_139912021.htm How about you ask President Trump if that really was happening under his watch, before Biden.

Here, read something not shat out by QAnon and a bunch of gullible dim-bulbs sucking off a Russian propaganda feed: https://time.com/6162111/ukraine-lab-leaks-disinformation/

The ability to launch missiles from ukraine to moscow in minutes?

Theoretically. It was irrelevant as long as Ukraine had no WMDs.
We had that same debate with Tony Blair telling us Saddam could hit us with WMDs in under 45 minutes.
File under: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Another nothing-burger based on fantasy scenarios.

Funny how America claimed the right to destroy Cuba because it MIGHT have had the ability to launch nukes at Washington

Russia really was parking nukes and subs on America's doorstep. Ukraine hasn't even pointed a dummy rocket at Moscow in the entire duration of its independence. The only nukes Ukraine's sent to Moscow were sent by truck, in an inactive state, to a neighbor they thought was being serious when it signed the Budapest Memorandum.

Russia cannot do the same

Russia has every right to do the same... To a country that actually IS threatening it on an existential level. That country ain't Ukraine. Nonetheless, the world is full of communities of useful idiots who have talked each other into the mother of all ultra-paranoid self-perpetuating war delusions on this specific point.

Ukraine has NEVER had any WMDs of any kind aimed at Russia. Period. Ever.
NATO was never going to let Russia tell it who can and who can't join NATO. That one's in writing, check December 2021.
Nonetheless, NATO had no intention of letting Ukraine become a member.
And NATO was never going to be stationing WMDs aimed at Russia in Ukraine, or the Baltic states. Period. Ever.

Putin knows this. Xi knows this. Zelenskyy knows this. The EU knows this. The US Government knows this.
Heck, even President Trump knows this.

otherwise why would Russia have taken this risky military operation?

Every time someone asks that, I wonder if they have been paying attention to anything in the last 25 years.

Ukraine was not, is not, and is never gonna be an existential threat to Russia, any more than the Channel Islands' somewhat pro-French dodgy tax haven status does, did or ever could present an existential threat to the United Kingdom.

In this world there are legions of outlandish claims, hundreds of seriously wild, implausible, "too good to be true" claims (Nigerian prince needs YOUR help with his millions, or London Bridge For Sale), and finally there are claims that are simply just so stupendously daft they cannot be anything but intergalactic scale uber-trolling. "Ukraine poses an existential threat to Russia" is in that category.

OF COURSE Russia's intelligence services and senior politicians never believed for one minute that it has EVER faced an existential threat from its little brother - a country that had no navy, had a tiny military, also was corrupt enough to be bribed at every level of government by rich Russians, was small town working class or agricultural for the most part, and had ALREADY surrendered all its nukes to Russia.

Putin was far more worried about the ultranationalist sharks circling around him and he knew his time was running out to do SOMETHING mad, bad and dangerous enough to stay in office long enough to see one more ex-Soviet Socialist Republic dragged back into vassal statehood before he croaks.

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