Wendi (雯迪) Cao (曹)’s Post

12:10: What does farage, putrid, mump, xi, fico and orbán all have in common? They’re pure 💩💩💩? power-hungry chancers? Say absolutely whatever it takes to con unthinking or dumb or hurting people? Both / all? With thanks to Peter 🇬🇧🇺🇦, he writes: ‘Sorry Farage, but Putin is provoked by Ukrainian independence, not NATO expansion.” I am very happy to share my debut article for POLITICO, where I argue that by amplifying Putin’s bogus claims of NATO responsibility for today’s war, Western politicians like Trump and Farage risk legitimising Russian imperialism’:

In politics, almost nothing is what it seems. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin has tried to form a working relationship with the west but has been repeatedly rejected. Why? For centuries, a top principle of British foreign policy has been to never let Germany & Russia form an alliance. So a few questions: Who blew up Nordstream 2? Is the war in Ukraine: Ukraine vs Russia? US vs Russia? NATO vs Russia? or Britain vs Germany?

Kirill Babayev, director of the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences, recently published an article in the Chinese media saying that the demonstration of strength by China and Russia may be the only way to get the West to negotiate and compromise And it's actually the same logic for Ukrainians: Russians will be forced to come to the negotiating table only when Russia gets a taste of what a real and severe military strike by Ukraine and the West. Putin believes that Russia has been lucky so far on the battlefield. Then wait until Ukraine and the West now give Putin the chance to feel unlucky. Only then will this war end. In addition, the more the war in Ukraine moves in Moscow's direction, the more Xi Jinping sees China's support for Russia as the right thing to do. Unfortunately, Europe is facing a dictator, namely Putin, who only knows the logic of military power. So the only way to contain it is to conquer him. The only effective way to stop Xi's support of Russia, is defeat of Putin's invasion. https://lnkd.in/dd_B4tbA

Vladimir Putin will continue the war until he can claim that he has reached his strategic aims: international recognition of his annexations in eastern Ukraine, installation of a Quisling regime in Kyiv and a pushing back of NATO. Read more in our newest report by Dr. Rudolf G. Adam: https://lnkd.in/dxFa-M9U

NATO is ready to receive Ukraine. Ukraine is positioning to join NATO. Going by the level of damages done to Ukraine by Russia. Ukraine is not likely to consider any other option than to join NATO. Putin is a wizardry genius, powerful in the class of Adolf Hitler, if not more than. NATO wants to keep an eagle eye on Russia. Putin has just secured another 6 years term, NATO is feeling insured with Putin’s power & longevity. Without strategic decisions, war could escalate further. Donald Trump demonstrates the wherewithal to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia/Ukraine & Israel/Palestine. The forthcoming USA Presidential election is pivotal for global peace & decorum. The policy thrust of who becomes the next USA President will be crucial in dissolving or escalating the tension in international politics of power, crisis & war.

we can infer that a sense of victimhood and grievance over the perceived humiliation and weakening of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union likely plays a role in shaping Russia's assertive and revisionist foreign policy under Putin. events like NATO expansion and the color revolutions in former Soviet states reinforced Russia's view that the West was seeking to undermine its interests and influence.

https://lnkd.in/gPY3AjEt A constructive proposal: Ukraine will be a NATO member U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced on April 4 that Ukraine would become a NATO member. Putin has warned that this move will be the most serious of the red lines. However, it's a very constructive proposal because: 1. It will significantly boost Ukraine's morale. 2. It will consolidate the West's military aid to Ukraine. 3. It will tip over the balance between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine has withstood for two years with only half of the West's help. What is Putin's chance to conquer Ukraine when Nato officially steps in? ZERO, although it could become a tug of war. 4. A tug-war in Ukraine will remind Putin how the Afghanistan War sped up the Soviet Union's collapse. How fast will Putin's empire clap? 5. A tug-war in Ukraine will cause more Russians to die, an economic downturn and Russian people to rebel. Putin's end will be, unfortunately, another Sadam! 6. It won't trigger WW3 because the world is reasonably peaceful and stable. The Ukraine war is only one area of instability, And Putin would be too stupid to escalate it into a world war with nuclear bombs and become a sinner of history. Accepting Ukraine as a NATO member will turn the table significantly and move towards ending the war. And NATO will add a chapter to the history of humanity. #NATO #US #Russia #Ukraine #Putin #Blinken #SovietUnion #AfghanistanWar #WW3 #NuclearBomb #Writingcommunity #Writerslift #Departmentofdefence

"The Russian ruler’s evident indifference toward Finnish and Swedish NATO membership makes a mockery of his claims of feeling existentially threatened by Ukraine’s far weaker ties to the alliance. If Putin genuinely felt NATO posed any danger to Russia, he would have vigorously protested Finland’s decision to join and taken steps to strengthen Russia’s military presence along the country’s new border with NATO. Instead, he did the exact opposite. Even if one were to suspend disbelief and imagine a future NATO invasion of Russia, there’s no practical reason to view Ukrainian membership as some kind of definitive military redline for the Kremlin. The three Baltic states, which have been NATO members since 2004, also border western Russia, and are just as close to Moscow and other major Russian cities as Ukraine is. If NATO harbored plans to seize the Kremlin or bomb St. Petersburg, it could do so from bases in the Baltics just as easily, without requiring a Ukrainian springboard. [...] Russian resentment over NATO’s post-1991 growth isn’t entirely artificial, of course, but this displeasure has little to do with genuine security concerns. Instead, the Kremlin is bitter over its dramatic loss of influence in nearby countries, which are now no longer vulnerable to Moscow’s traditional methods of coercion. While NATO represents no plausible threat to Russian national security, it does create substantial obstacles for Russian imperialism. In other words, NATO prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors."

#Ukraine’s #Kurskoffensive marks #Putin’s third major humiliation of the war 👁️Atlantic Council https://lnkd.in/gMY_SiKb 😜The first humiliation: February-September 2022😩 First, of course, there was the routing of Russian forces in the battle of #Kyiv in the early phase of Putin’s #invasion of Ukraine. The embarrassing withdrawal of Russian forces from near the Ukrainian capital in March 2022 was quickly followed by more military humiliations for the Kremlin, including Ukraine’s April 2022 sinking of the #Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s #BlackSeaFleet. And if you thought it couldn’t get much worse for Russia than losing its #flagship in a land war to a country without a #navy, you would be wrong. In September and October 2022, Ukraine launched lightning #counteroffensives to liberate large swaths of Russian-occupied territory in the #Kharkiv and #Kherson regions. [….] 😱The second humiliation: June-August 2023 🫣 Putin’s second great military humiliation came not at the hands of Ukraine, but from within his own inner circle. The June 2023 #mutiny of #YevgeniyPrigozhin and his Kremlin-connected #mercenaryarmy, the #WagnerGroup, exposed deep cracks in the Russian #politicalelite as well as the hollowness and rot of the #RussianArmedForces. [….] 🥵The third humiliation: August 2024 😣 The #UkrainianArmedForces’ #invasion of #KurskOblast—conceived, planned, and executed in strict secrecy—came as a shock and instantaneously transformed the #narrative of the war. Instead of the steady drumbeat of news about incremental Russian gains in the #Donbas, a headline in the New York Times said it all: “Deception and a Gamble: How Ukrainian Troops Invaded Russia.” From the #masssurrenders of unprepared and outmanned Russian troops, to the chaotic #evacuation of #civilians, to the steady advances of Ukrainian forces deeper into Russian territory, the Kursk operation exposed the weakness not just of the Russian Armed Forces, but of the #Russianstate itself. [….] #putin #vladimirputin #putinhumiliation #kremln #moscow #russia #russiaswar