Too many who should know better are backing this war. It wouldn't be happening if a) Trump were a remotely serious president who knew the risks of embarking on something whose aims he still can't specify, and b) Netanyahu wasn't embracing regional chaos as his get out of jail free card.

Everyone, including Israel itself, would be so much better off had Israel traded a truckload of its short-term tactical brilliance for an ounce of long-term strategic wisdom. Or at least understood that they are not substitutes and that abundance of one cannot compensate for the lack of the other

Again, for emphasis: russia has not agreed to ANYTHING. Nearly 100% of the media coverage presents the current situation as: if Ukraine agrees to giving up Donbas, there will be peace. That is not the case! Stop acting as if it were.

Interesting talk 👇

Yet another war in violation of international law. Without the pretence of seeking UN approval.Unleashed while talks ongoing, making a laughing stock of diplomacy. Trump’s foreign policy is sickeningly predictable, with the only predictable effect being a decline of US power

This is how the "NATO expansion provoked Ru" crowd tries to wiggle out of evidence falsifying their theory again! After Finland/Sweden's NATO accession provoked no reaction from Ru, they said it didn't count because Ru's afraid specifically of Ukr in NATO. Now that taking Ukr NATO membership off...

The pro-russian part of the European political spectrum essentially brings together the Eastern European far right (AfD counts as EEuropean, imo) and the Western European far left. Supporting russia's fascist regime makes sense for the far right but what the hell is the far left smoking?

'Als Bart Schols een paar weken geleden in het bijzijn van Soundos El Ahmadi aan dat soort victim blaming had gedaan, dan was hij wellicht niet in één stuk naar huis gegaan.' Over de passage van professor Tom Sauer in 'De afspraak' www.humo.be/tv/zelfs-jos...

Very clear statement by Russian official that the goal is to control Ukraine. Giving Russia a slice of the Donbas won’t satisfy Russia or end the war.

Disastrous naivite. You either do security with Ru or against Ru. You can't have it both ways. The first way failed miserably as early as 2008. Clinging on to the idea that seeking Pu's agreement would lead to anything but Ru paralyzing/controlling Ukraine is delusional.

💥BREAKING: Viktor Orbán ordered the military deployed to guard “key energy facilities,” citing a possible Ukrainian “attack” to disrupt Hungary’s energy system. The move fuels fears of a staged national security emergency or false-flag incident ahead of the April 12 elections. This is really scary.

I suppose I should be grateful that the US didn't join Russia in voting against like last time. I note that Hungary also abstained, showing (again) that as long as Orban is in power it will be a very unreliable ally.

Kremlin liegt altijd over zijn plannen voor morgen en overmorgen. Er zou geen alomvattende invasie komen, zei het tot 24 febr. 2022. Maar over zijn werkelijke intenties spreekt Kremlin vaak de waarheid. Oekraïne is geen soevereine staat maar hooguit kolonie Rusland, schreef Poetin in juni 2021.

"But if Putin has failed in Ukraine, he’s succeeded extraordinarily in Washington." 💯 A sharply acurate 🧵

Innovators became rent seekers and are very aggrieved that they’re no longer treated like innovators. Sorry the public doesn’t see the world’s biggest companies and richest people pushing enshittified, mediocre, or damaging products as plucky start-ups doing exciting things. But whose fault is that?

The most corrupt Eastern European oligarchs must be nodding with respect at the stuff Trump administration officials are coming up with. This is genius

Your regular reminder that anyone who pushes "let's give Donbas to Russia to end the war" as a solution is either ignorant or pro-Russian. Donbas is not a "disputed" nor a special region and therefore its occupation by Ru doesn't solve anything at all. Ru wants all of Ukraine.

No surprise there. Ru wants Ukraine to surrender but can’t compel them. Ukraine isn’t losing on the battlefield and they don’t want to submit to Ru occupation. The US is not an honest broker but trying to help Ru achieve its goals diplomatically. US has stopped aid to Ukr so it has little leverage.

The administration thinks it's in a multipolar world of competing great powers and spheres of influence but also in a unipolar world sustained by American exceptionalism. Because it doesn't know much about IR, it doesn't understand its error. 🧵

Honderden ladingen met Europese technologie, ook uit België, blijven toe­stromen in Rusland, ondanks sancties. De belangrijkste Russische aanvalsdrone bevat zelfs recent geproduceerde componenten uit de EU. Onderzoek van @tijd.be @occrp.org @kyivindependent.com & co ! www.tijd.be/politiek-eco...

Slezkine and Shifrinson argue that the way to peace in the Russo-Ukraine war is de jure recognition of a new international border along the current front line. This argument is flawed. A 🧵: 1/8

OTD in 2022 the culmination of the western misinformation campaign was witnessed about Russia's mythical "invasion" of Ukraine.

Apparently fired copy editors and fact checkers too

Uitstekende column van @rikpeels.bsky.social waarom je niet te snel op overdreven vredes- dan wel oorlogsretoriek moet afgaan, maar moet kijken welke daden er eigenlijk achter schuilgaan.

Feb 2022: “We will not invade Ukraine” Feb 2023: “You made us invade Ukraine” The Tankie prayer of narcissism. "We won't. You made me".

Wie van de twee liegt: Trump of Poetin? Antwoord: beiden zijn leugenaars! Wat doen Europa en Nederland? Verontwaardigde teksten publiceren op X en elders! Beeld van Russische luchtaanvallen, ook op Kyiv, niettegenstaande Trumps mededeling over een moratorium tot 5 februari?👇

Western media doggedly omits the main reason Ukraine cannot cede Donbas— it’s fortified and it’d leave Ukr too vulnerable to reinvasion. Recognizing this fact reveals that the territorial and the security guarantee issues aren’t separate but one issue. Given that Ru obviously aims to keep trying…

Do not pass this off as the ravings of a looney, old, narcissist. These false reports are going to be used to try and corrupt the 2026 elections by increasing White House Power over the vote. It could spark off the greatest crisis in the USA since the Civil War.

Why does the US keep suggesting Russia must consent to Ukraine exercising its UN Charter-guaranteed right to self-defence, in concert w its partners? Of course Russia is never going to agree! UA & partners shd do what's right for UA's security, not for Putin's hopes of renewing the Russian empire.

"For more than 80 years, the US was the pre-eminent ally of Europe. The end of that alliance has seemed unthinkable, but it has nevertheless arrived, and wishing that things were different will not bring the alliance back to life." I wrote for @cepa.org on a post-US West. cepa.org/article/a-we...

The reason Anne Frank's story has resonated with so many people over so many years is not because circumstances have to be exactly the same as her's for anyone to care, but because anything remotely like it is wrong, and societies moving in that direction should oppose it well before they get there.

Today in @theguardian.com, I argue that Donald Trump’s foreign-policy playbook is increasingly about attention capture, or what I call geopolitical clickbait. Plus I outline why this matters for Europe & what to do about it. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Trump's relentless bullying of Ukraine presented as a "peace process" is making us sound like broken records. Like, how many times do we have to say that asking Ukraine to withdraw from its most fortified region in exchange for another useless Budapest memorandum offer is a dumb proposition?

Europe & Ukraine can keep flattering Trump, hoping that he won't stop the US selling weapons to UA or Europe, or supplying intelligence. They must not for an instant think that Trump is on their side. This is basically like Czechoslovakia being forced to give up its defences in the Sudetenland.

Anyone surprised by this story has been living in a fantasy world. Since Jan 2025, the Trump administration has been using lots of different tactics to force Ukraine to commit strategic suicide. This is just the latest. The real story is that people have not grasped this reality.

In the end there will be only one Trump Derangement Syndrome, and that will be those so deranged that they refused to accept that Trump was going to try and wreck the country.

Realists who advocate compromise w Ru always claim/assume that all Ru wants from Ukr is to control its foreign policy. As Ru keeps partitioning Ukr and working to absorb each chunk through genocidal Russification, the realists’ stubborn denial of Ru’s attempt to destroy Ukr nation discredits them.

Putin pioneered this. No opposition is legitimate. Regular, decent, “ordinary” people cannot possibly be against us because only we represent “the real people.” Tell-tale sign of authoritarianism.

OTD in 1935 Hitler assured Poland he would not invade them. A few years later he said Germans were being oppressed & killed so he attacked, carried out genocide and spent the last years of his life in bunker detached from reality. Imagine all that happening today.

Understand that unless the people and states start resisting this violence it will continue and escalate, and expect ICE agents to be all over polling locations in November. Loyalty to the in-group is the only thing that matters to the Trump regime, and the out-group is dehumanised and destroyed.

When faux-realists promise stability through concessions, they’re rolling out a red carpet to welcome a bigger war. They offer suffering to those who don’t deserve it, telling us this is the justified cost of a “peaceful” settlement. They are wrong twice. It is not justified. And it brings no peace.

Funny how Ru courts sometimes acknowledge in trivial/sideway ways stuff that the Ru state lies about. Years before 2022, a Ru court acknowledged Ru had invaded Donbas in 2014 in a case about benefits to a Ru soldier who fought there. This phenomenon is less dramatic or hopeful than it might seem...

1/Board of Peace is not about peace through cooperation but peace through dominance and extraction. Clear effort to replace rules-based international order with a structure that bolsters Trump and his effort to create a neo-royalist system. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/u...

Stanovaya is right that a peace deal is very far apart, & that for Russia it's not primarily about territory but about political control over Ukraine. Putin has been consistent on this, & Trump & Witkoff don't get it. 1/2

reads like the list of countries attending Russia's May 9 parades

Peak imperialism: your country is descending into the darkness at the speed of light, your own party is doing close to nothing to prevent it, but you travel around and condescendingly lecture other states about how to better resist the aggressor that your compatriots elected.

Everyone in Europe is having intense debates about the future of the transatlantic security alliance. Meanwhile, the president of the United States is reposting the claim that the real enemy of the US isn't Russia or China, it's NATO (and the UN and Islam).

This is also from my predictions thread on inauguration day. There's still a media tendency to frame Trump admin foreign policy as driven by ideas about US national interests but it makes much more sense to see it as a product of personal and oligarchic interests. bsky.app/profile/ruth...

People have to come to terms with the fact Trump confuses diplomacy for capitulation. He's posting this because he thinks it's a victory.

If you say that Putin should get Crimea or Donbas, then you can't say that Trump shouldn't get Greenland. It's the same redrawing of borders by great powers at the expense of smaller neighbours. Normalizing the annexation of Crimea has paved the way for Trump's Greenland demands.