The Kremlin is burning?

[Sardaukar]

I am starting to think we should go "quid pro quo". 

Might teach a lesson. 

[Roman Alymov]

8 hours ago, Sardaukar said:

I am starting to think we should go "quid pro quo". 

Might teach a lesson. 

Who are "we"?

[Stuart Galbraith]

9 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Who are "we"?

Well, as you asked..

 

[Ssnake]

Ah, Lenin!

[Roman Alymov]

10 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Well, as you asked..

 

Most people on this video are now dead or very senior (the video is 57 years old as far as i understand) so "we" here are dead?

[Stuart Galbraith]

Listen to the lyrics man, the truly heavy lyrics!

https://genius.com/The-beatles-i-am-the-walrus-lyrics

I know, I should never try an inject obscure humour into a Tanknet thread. You all run on unleaded these days.

 

[Mike1158]

If nothing else, I get it.  Obscure for non native speakers perhaps.

[Sardaukar]

11 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

Who are "we"?

If you haven't noticed, "we" are NATO. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 hours ago, Mike1158 said:

If nothing else, I get it.  Obscure for non native speakers perhaps.

As always, I thenk you.

[Roman Alymov]

13 hours ago, Sardaukar said:

If you haven't noticed, "we" are NATO. 

You mean NATO the one kicked out of Afghanistan by clerical militia and now loosing key trade sea route to desert nomads, or some other NATO?

[Josh]

3 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

You mean NATO the one kicked out of Afghanistan by clerical militia and now loosing key trade sea route to desert nomads, or some other NATO?

Yes, the NATO that lost to the same people your country did. And the NATO unburdened by a grinding war right now.

[JWB]

NATO was kicked out of nothing. NATO left because of disinterest.

[Sardaukar]

11 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

You mean NATO the one kicked out of Afghanistan by clerical militia and now loosing key trade sea route to desert nomads, or some other NATO?

I feel your inferiority issues, been bum-fucked by nomads from Mongolia

Oh, to edit, having second strongest army in Ukraine, hired from prisons.

Edited April 6 by Sardaukar
Just to piss Roman off

[Mistral]

6 hours ago, JWB said:

NATO was kicked out of nothing. NATO left because of disinterest.

Equipment left behind begs to differ. Or we have such short memory

[Sardaukar]

1 minute ago, Mistral said:

Equipment left behind begs to differ. Or we have such short memory

That debacle was something.

Really shameful thing.

[Roman Alymov]

8 hours ago, Josh said:

Yes, the NATO that lost to the same people your country did.

   Thank you for bringing up this analogy. I hope you understand that when USSR left Afghanistan in 1989 (by the way in massively better organised way and leaving behind functional Gov that actually OUTLIVED USSR and only collapsed year after USSR, in 1992)   -that USSR was the country falling apart and soon to collapse. Also worth to note A-stan rebels USSR was fighting against were supported by West.

    NATO was kicked out by rebels supported by nobody and left nothing functional behind. How do you think, what this fact, taking into consideration analogy you have kindly provided, is saying about NATO?

8 hours ago, Josh said:

 And the NATO unburdened by a grinding war right now.

Could you please remind me how many tanks and SPGs are left in UK Army now, for example? 

[urbanoid]

9 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

   Thank you for bringing up this analogy. I hope you understand that when USSR left Afghanistan in 1989 (by the way in massively better organised way and leaving behind functional Gov that actually OUTLIVED USSR and only collapsed year after USSR, in 1992)   -that USSR was the country falling apart and soon to collapse. Also worth to note A-stan rebels USSR was fighting against were supported by West.

    NATO was kicked out by rebels supported by nobody and left nothing functional behind. How do you think, what this fact, taking into consideration analogy you have kindly provided, is saying about NATO?

Could you please remind me how many tanks and SPGs are left in UK Army now, for example? 

Sure man, nobody at all backed the Taliban. It's not like they had (more or less) safe havens and a whole support system just over the border. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

NATO was no more kicked out of Afghanistan, than the Americans were kicked out of Vietnam. In fact, in both cases, its very clear it was a political decision to abandon the war, because no more progress towards victory could be perceived to be achieved.

The same is true of the USSR of course, so im not really sure why Russians so feel the need to reelect these pointless lies. is it possible they are trying to hold us responsible for the theatre shooting? which is surely doublethink, because I thought it was supposed to be Ukrainians?

[Roman Alymov]

6 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

Sure man, nobody at all backed the Taliban. It's not like they had (more or less) safe havens and a whole support system just over the border. 

Over what border exactly?

[urbanoid]

Just now, Roman Alymov said:

Over what border exactly?

Eastern one.

[Roman Alymov]

2 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

Eastern one.

There are only two countries East from A-stan - mighty superpower Tajikistan and US ally Pakistan.

[urbanoid]

1 minute ago, Roman Alymov said:

There are only two countries East from A-stan - mighty superpower Tajikistan and US ally Pakistan.

Yeah, the latter one. At least part of their intelligence services and establishment has a certain idee fixe, that if India overruns them in a war, they'll still have Afghanistan to retreat to and continue fighting.

[Roman Alymov]

11 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

Yeah, the latter one. At least part of their intelligence services and establishment has a certain idee fixe, that if India overruns them in a war, they'll still have Afghanistan to retreat to and continue fighting.

So US&Co is in such a great shape that even their allies (who are sponsored by US by the way) are supporting rebels against them? Is't it the problem of US&Co political management, the same brilliant managers who have converted de-facto US coloiny Russia into open adversary? 

   Two articles  worth reading

"2 Apr, 2024 19:17

Dmitry Trenin: Russia is undergoing a new, invisible revolution
The US-led bloc has pushed the country to develop a new awareness of itself and its place in the world
Dmitry Trenin

By Dmitry Trenin, a research professor at the Higher School of Economics and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also a member of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).

When President Vladimir Putin, back in February 2022, launched Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, he had specific, but limited objectives in mind. It was essentially about assuring Russia’s security vis-à-vis NATO.

However, the drastic, expansive and well-coordinated Western reaction to Moscow’s moves – the torpedoing of the Russo-Ukrainian peace deal and the mounting escalation of the US-led bloc's involvement in the conflict, including its role in deadly attacks inside Russia – have fundamentally changed our country's attitude towards our former partners.

We no longer hear talk about “grievances” and complaints about “failures in understanding.” The last two years have produced nothing less than a revolution in Moscow’s foreign policy, more radical and far-reaching than anything anticipated on the eve of the Ukraine intervention. Over the past 25 months, it has been quickly gaining in strength and profundity. Russia's international role, its position in the world, its goals and methods of reaching them, its basic worldview – all are changing.  

The national foreign policy concept, signed by Putin just a year ago, represents a major departure from its predecessors. It establishes the country’s identity in terms of it being a distinct civilization. In fact, it is the first official Russian document to do so. It also radically transforms the priorities of Moscow's diplomacy, with the countries of the post-Soviet ‘near abroad’ on top, followed by China and India, Asia and the Middle East, and Africa and Latin America.

Western Europe and the United States rank next to last, just above the Antarctic. 

Unlike in the previous decade, when Russia’s “turn to the east” was first announced, these are not just words. Our trade partners, not just political interlocutors, have also switched places. In just two years, the European Union, which only recently accounted for 48% of foreign trade, is down to 20%, whereas Asia's share has soared from 26% to 71%. Russia's use of the US dollar has also plummeted, with increasingly more transactions being conducted in Chinese yuan and other non-Western currencies such as the Indian rupee, the UAE dirham, as well as the instruments of our partners in the Eurasian Economic Union, and the ruble itself.
     Russia has also ended its long and tiresome efforts to adapt to the US-led world order – something which it enthusiastically embraced in the early 1990s, grew disillusioned about in the following decade, and unsuccessfully tried to establish a modus vivendi with in the 2010s. Instead of surrendering to a post-Cold War set-up, in which it was left with no say, Russia has begun pushing back more and more against the hegemonic US-centered system. For the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution, albeit in a very different way from then, the country has de facto become a revolutionary power. While China still seeks to improve its position in the existing world order, Russia sees that state-of-affairs as being beyond repair, and is instead seeking to prepare for a new alternative arrangement.

For the time being, instead of the “one world” concept, which the Soviet Union even accepted in 1986, under Gorbachev, Moscow's contemporary foreign policy has now split into two. For Russian policymakers, the post-2022 West has turned into a “house of adversaries,” while partners for Russia can only be found in the countries of the non-West, for whom we have coined a new description, “the World Majority.” The criterion for being included the group is simple: non-participation in the anti-Russia sanctions regime imposed by Washington and Brussels. This majority of over 100 nations is not considered a pool of allies: the depth and warmth of their relations with the Russia vary greatly, but these are the countries that Moscow can do business with.

For many decades, our country has been exceedingly supportive of various international organizations; it sought to join as many clubs as possible. Now Moscow has to admit that even the United Nations, including its Security Council (which Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member, has traditionally hailed as the centerpiece of the world system), has turned into a dysfunctional theater of polemics. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which Moscow long wanted to see as the premier security instrument in Europe, is now nearly totally dismissed due to the anti-Russian stance of its NATO/EU majority membership. Moscow has quit the Council of Europe, and its participation in a number of regional groupings for the Arctic, the Baltic, the Barents and the Black Seas has been put on hold.

True, much of this has been the result of the West’s policy of trying to isolate our country, but rather than feeling deprived of something valuable, Russians have few regrets over having had to leave or to suspend membership. Very tellingly, having re-established the supremacy of national legislation over international treaties, Moscow now cares little about what its adversaries can say or do about its policies or actions. From Russia's standpoint, not only can't the West be trusted any longer; the international bodies that it controls have lost all legitimacy.   

This attitude toward Western-dominated international institutions contrasts with the view of non-Western ones. This year, Russia’s presidency of the recently enlarged BRICS group is being marked by hyperactivity in preparations for hosting. Russia is also most supportive of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which its close ally Belarus is about to join. Together with countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, it's working closely to build new international regimes in a number of areas: finance and trade, standards and technology, information and health care. These are expressly being designed to be free from Western domination and interference. If successful, they can serve as elements of the future inclusive world order which Moscow promotes.

So, the changes in Russia’s foreign policy run very deep indeed. There is a question, however: how sustainable are they?

Above all, it should be noted that changes in foreign policy are an important, but also a relatively minor element of the wider transformation which is going on in Russia’s economy, polity, society, culture, values, and spiritual and intellectual life. The general direction and importance of those changes is clear. They are transforming the country from being a distant outlier on the fringes of the Western world into something which is self-sufficient and pioneering. These tectonic shifts would not have been possible without the Ukraine crisis. Having been given a powerful and painful push, now they have acquired a dynamic of their own. 
It's true that February 2022 itself was the end result of several trends that had been gathering momentum for about a decade. Feelings that fuller sovereignty was desired finally became dominant after Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012 and the re-unification with Crimea in 2014. Some truly fundamental changes with regard to national values and ideology were made in the form of amendments to the Russian Constitution, approved in 2020. 

In March 2024 Putin won a resounding victory in the presidential elections and secured a fresh six-year mandate. This should be seen as a vote of confidence in him as the supreme commander-in-chief in the existential struggle (as Putin himself describes it) against the West. With that backing, the president can proceed with even deeper changes – and must make sure that those he has already wrought are preserved and built upon by those who succeed him in the Kremlin.

It is important to note that the Russian elites, which since the 1990s have been closely tied to the West, have had to make a hard choice recently between their country and their assets. Those who decided to stay have had to become more “national” in their outlook and action. Meanwhile, Putin has launched a campaign to form a new elite around the Ukraine war veterans. The expected turnover of Russian elites, and the transformation from a cosmopolitan group of self-serving individuals into a more traditional coterie of privileged servants of the state and its leader would make sure that the foreign policy revolution is complete.

Finally, Russia may not have been able to start moving so quickly in the direction of sovereignty had it not been for the Western policies of the past two decades: the increasing demonization of the country and its leadership. These choices have succeeded in making perhaps the initially most Westernizing, pro-European leadership that modern Russia has seen – including notably Putin himself and Dmitry Medvedev – into self-avowed anti-Westerners and determined opponents of US/EU policies.

Thus, rather than forcing Russia change to fit a Western pattern, all that pressure has instead helped the country find itself again. " ( Dmitry Trenin: Russia is undergoing a new, invisible revolution — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union )

"A New Russia Has Emerged
Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

Dmitry Trenin reports that Russia has come to its senses and, as I have long recommended, turned her back on the West, a morally debauched, socially dysfunctional, and politically disunited and disintegrating polity.

For years Russia was handicapped by its pro-Western intellectuals, but the West’s demonization of Russia has forced them to change their spots or to leave. Free of the former influence of these Russian traitors, everyone of whom Stalin or Lenin would have shot, Russia has emerged as the leader of the world majority that is tired of Western bullying.

The fools in Washington, instead of undermining Russia in the interest of US hegemony, have created their replacement by Russia as world leader.

The fools in Washington fail to comprehend that a country blinds itself when it curtails freedom of speech, discredits truth in the interest of self-serving agendas, and destroys the patriotism and security of its ethnic base.
All across America and its empire everything is failing. Schools and universities are propaganda centers against white Americans, the military is a disunited tower of babel, massively expensive weapons systems are problem-plagued, the social and economic infrastructure is disintegrating, health care has been turned into a profit machine–at the public’s expense–for Big Pharma. Both water and food are polluted. Government bureaucracies have taken control over children away from parents. Economic opportunity is shrinking. Integrity cannot be found. People who insist on truth in place of propaganda are persecuted.

It is difficult to believe that 20 years ago Russia looked to the West with hope." ( A New Russia Has Emerged – The Burning Platform )

[RETAC21]

31 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

... and US ally Pakistan.

 

Pakistan and India are not allied to anyone, they just look after themselves and occasionally, their interest are aligned with someone else. Pakistan, specifically, is only interested in stirring shit up in India and "influencing" Afghanistan. This is now, in the last 30 years and during the Soviet intervention.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pakistans-role-in-the-afghanistan-wars-outcome/

Note the 2010 date, the conclusions are wrong, but note that Pakistan's role is the same.

[urbanoid]

13 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

So US&Co is in such a great shape that even their allies (who are sponsored by US by the way) are supporting rebels against them? Is't it the problem of US&Co political management, the same brilliant managers who have converted de-facto US coloiny Russia into open adversary? 

Pakistan is barely an ally to be honest. Sure, it was closer to the US during the Cold War as India was closer to USSR, but they're a nuclear power with their own interests and... not much of internal stability.