The alliance says it poses no threat to Moscow.
Lmao :hasan-ok-dude:
It's a defensive alliance.
One which has only been used to fight wars of aggression.
But that was just the member countries not NATO!
Actual argument I heard
"Don't be such a conspiracy theorist, it wasn't the police that killed your dog, it was just one officer"
More like "it was just nine tenths of the local police department" but :yea:
ok let's have other countries economically encircle the US somehow...
No big deal. Just inching ever closer to another world war. Don't worry about it.
major L in a long line of Ls for the (formerly fascist) state. ya hate to see it folks
I mean, imagine getting all the benefits of NATO without membership and then signing up to be Scandinavia's Greece. Excited to see future Finnish politicians whining about how they have to bust unions and degrade living conditions while vastly inflating their police and military budgets in order to comply with the NATO charter.
Talking to my relatives, many have been terrified that Putin was going to initiate Winter War 2 any second now since last Spring
Naturally- if there was one thing that was going to make Finland and Sweden rush to join NATO it was Russia invading a neighbouring country
Thanks Putin
I'm gonna make people on here mad, but Russia made a huge mistake with going into Ukraine (I know the strategic needs). Basically gave NATO a new lease on life, emboldened the most psycho anti Russia people, etc. Probably should gave just gone into the Donbas. Would have caused people to freak, but probably would have died down like in 2014.
100,000%. That’s part of why I didn’t think he would do it, because it’s so insanely counterproductive to his stated goals.
“I’m afraid of NATO so I’m going to give them proof that actually their fears and reasons for existing were valid all along”
War bad folks, don't do it, you'll just fuck it up
spoiler
Unless it's class war
thought that Russia would collapse as soon as the sanctions came in. Well, they thought wrong.
Russia and the CIA also thought Ukraine would collapse in weeks. This whole war is a series of people being wrong.
I do understand why they went in, but man any path with this sucks.
They could have just gone into Donbass, not all of Ukraine. Sure the manufacturing consent machine would act more or less the same but I think it wouldn't have had the same effect. They tried to take Kiev the very first day.
Probably should gave just gone into the Donbas.
I was like 95% certain this would have happened after Ukraine ramped up the ceasefire violations, wasn't expecting a full on invasion.
I agree that Russia was way too eager going into this and I'm pretty sure it's been dragging on for a lot longer than they were expecting despite their pokerfaces about how they never said it was supposed to be a short war. Personally I think them attempting to encircle Kiev right away wasn't a feint as they stated later but a genuine attempt they fucked up. If they had succeeded it would have probably ended the thing way sooner.
I think both sides are gonna want out of this shitshow at some point soon unless somebody significantly shifts the tide in one direction.
"Don't worry about it, we'll be having Chicken Kyiv in Kiev in like two weeks tops" :putin-wink:
Seems like every time people start a war they vastly overestimate how quick and easy it's going to be
To be fair, even the CIA thought Ukraine would collapse in weeks. Goes to show how Ukraine improved fighting wise in the years between Crimea and the invasion.
whining about how they have to bust unions and degrade living conditions while vastly inflating their police and military budgets in order to comply with the NATO charter.
This is already being done btw
well except the whining part.
My entire family hasn't been this jazzed up since the last time Finland won at hockey
Mine have been pretty ambivalent about it all, I've expressed my dislike for NATO a few times and my brother's wife seems to agree. My brother is the standard: "Well how can it be threatening to russia when we join a DEFENSIVE alliance, eh?"
Curious indeed. :thonk:
Sorry about your family though :meow-hug:
Even the left-wing ones have been glued to Ukraine news and believe Putler is dying from 10 different terminal diseases and wants to recreate the Russian Soviet Empire and become Premier Czar before he dies from ligma
Early on I tried to talk about the origins of the civil war and the West's involvement in it, pointed out the Black Sun patches, etc but they looked at me like I was talking about QAnon
Rasputin didn't die, he just dropped the "ras" from his name.
cutting off the beard is like superman putting on glasses, the perfect disguise
:yea: I overheard some pretty standard liberals talking about how the slav brainpan is just terminally locked into the murder & pillage pathway because of the MONGOLS, and I just about flipped a table
Russian Revolution, Stalin's purges, Winter War, Continuation War, Finlandisation, glasnost, perestroika, Berlin Wall is mainly what I remember from school
Berlin Wall gets talked about a lot in US schools, too. It's supposed to be this thing that's representative of everything that's bad about communism but the reality is that more innocent people have died in one month of US drone strikes than were killed trying to climb the wall over four decades (the number is about 140).
Yes
Edit: it's not a Texas-level situation though. Pretty sure the origins of the Winter War, the proposed land trades etc were all explained in high school
Don't remember much about the concentration camps, though that might be on my part
Teenage me "whatever, the Russians started it :vivian-shrug: "
Finnish culture loves their mythologised WW2 narratives and their veterans though which might stick in your mind more than history lessons
Also, the civil war discussion is tainted by this too. The reds were horrible looters and ill-disciplined raiders and the magnificent whites were pure and noble heroes.
My family fought for the Reds, and some died as POWs on White-run camps so they've always at least sympathised with the Red side
There was a recent Finnish movie called Sisu about the Nazi occupation of Finland during WW2. It was an amazing example of whitewashing propaganda that the Finnish position was neutrality/independence and that the Finns hated both Soviets and Nazis. The basic story follows a Finnish character in Lapland who's being chased by Nazi soldiers who want to steal his gold. It's mentioned in passing that he is a loose cannon solo soldier with dozens of confirmed kills of Russians, and so the Nazis better run if they're smart.
Maybe ironically the story is ripped from the Russian character Koschei the Immortal (Кощей Бессмертный).
Sisu, by the way, is a Finnish word that refers to the fighting spirit, grit and perseverance of Finns during the winter war.
I recently read a Finnish conspiracy is that the Putin surname comes from Poutiainen and his ancestors are from Oulu :thonk:
I always like to ask if people have ever played strategy games where neighboring players can start ringing your border with bases and units and what that usually means.
my brother’s sister
Doesn't that just make her your sister too? lol ive been thinking about this way too much.
no that's just me being dumb and mixing up sister-in-law with my brother's wife :blob-no-thoughts:
Didn't Finland send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq? Might as well be in already at that rate
How bloodthirsty is the average Finn anyway? I thought regular visits to the sauna would calm everyone down. Did all the saunatonttu leave?
Depends on the blood that's going to get spilled.
White people? That's a no no. Slavs? Fuck em all 1000000 dead slavs. Except Ukraineans right now, they're the good slavs since they're killing russians the forever nemesis of our proud and glorious fatherland
Congratulations of Finland for their coming acquisition of billion dollar planes that can't fly.
tbh this is just formalities, it's not like Finland doesn't have any military tie with the EU or Nato
Finland will 100% become just another US puppet state with US troops/bases inside it and US companies pressuring Finland to destroy any good thing that was imposed by the Soviets after WWII.
As far as the war in Ukraine in the short medium term its completely irrelevant.
A direct war between Russia and NATO would most likely go nuclear, most of these NATO members barely have any military left. Its all on the back of the US now.
As for FInland this is bad for them, literaly getting nothing out of it and even worse now they'll be forced to eventually send their weapons to Ukraine as well. Scandinavian Social democracy is on its last legs now, they managed to literally make every possible wrong choice.
Abandon good thing/bad thing thought
Embrace swirling pool of chaos belief
