It also often sees itself as a nation within a nation that’s entrusted with a messianic geopolitical mission of westernising the perceived un-European savages. Ukraine war and Gaza are highlighting all of these traits.

This comes after the suspension of US arms supplies to Ukraine. That was one of Putin’s pre-conditions for ceasefire, but we don’t know if that decision is linked to the talks in any way.

By endorsing a political leader who is clinging to power by starting wars.

Those in that camp who are pro-Putin (there’s a few, like AfD or Orban) are at least honest.

Who cares about the outcome, it’s all about the process. (5 End)

Therefore you must live in a symbiosis with your enemies whose political survival agenda is identical to yours. Escalate and balance simultaneously while feeding the insatiable securocratic apparatus, war industry and the most cannibalistic section of the political spectrum. (4)

Backtracking is impossible - it involves public humiliation and criminal proceedings. Even outright victory is dangerous - people will start asking questions in the times of peace. (3)

Exponential escalation is the modus operandi of the authoritarian far right. If conflict-mongering is the essence of your political strategy, then you’ll keep escalating conflict until you get swallowed by it. (2)

Unsurprisingly, the same author ventures into eugenics in another piece. (6 End)

news.err.ee/1609463608/h...

Even Dugin - a certified fascist and a guru of European neo-nazis - is not dumb enough to purport in the 21st century that Asian is a synonym of uncivilised or aggressive. (5)

The piece primarily mirrors Duginist obscurantism and suchlike fraudulent political philosophy in Russia, but gosh it’s so unsophisticated compared with Russian equivalents. (4)

Being “Asian”, Russia therefore cannot be reformed - only defeated and rendered powerless, the author concludes. Therefore, no peace talks, but a forever war. Win-win - never heard. (3)

Russia is inherently “Asian” - the author, a senior Estonian diplomat, mentions both Mongolia and China as its role models (who cares that Mongolia is a stable democracy today). (2)

It is the securocratic class that’s leading us down this path, defence lobbies, people who thrive on conflicts, security agencies that love infowars and hate transparency, media personalities that cater for them. People with names and affiliations.

The reason people say things like is that in all truthfulness they believe that the risk for their countries is zero while the risk of their expertise being questioned after Ukraine gets a much worse peace deal than Minsk or Istanbul’22 is going to be pretty huge. (3 End)

Britain was involved in planning the failed Krynki operation, according to UP. There were claims about its involvement in other operations. The danger of a direct clash has been there since HMS Defender incident in 2021. Top experts/ex-officials like Hill should really weigh up their statements. (2)

Peace talks will likely proceed despite intensifying mutual strikes which strive to change the balance despite all the evidence that it is very unlikely to be changed, unless there is a major escalation engulfing other countries. (6 End)

But continued contacts with Trump’s administration and Trump’s own ambiguous reaction to Ukrainian strikes will probably make the Kremlin think twice before overreacting. It knows it’s winning on the battlefield and that Ukrainian/Western resilience has its limits anyway. (5)