Valuable insight thanks

Yes good point

In terms of Moscow’s loss of control, the EU was proving far more effective than NATO. Like the NATO secretary general said, the EU spread represented the start of the crisis, but the invasion was Russia’s fault. Because they’re belligerent assholes…

Lots of effort to make it immaculate but the 3 different types of wood in the downstairs clash horribly, eurgh…

I’ve started saying “Oh Buddah” just to mix it up a bit

You’re not thinking forth dimensionally, Marty!

Putin feared the EU because it was expanding far faster than NATO. EU expansion offered valuable trade links to former soviet countries and in turn required they implement anti-corruption legislation, and in the words of NATO secretary general Robertson above “changed every aspect of society”. That’s what Putin was afraid of.

Look at what happened to Georgia.

Old soviet regime runs economy into the ground. In 2003 pro-democracy NGOs help organise a peaceful student protests that culminates in the Rose Revolution. Autocratic government out, democratic government elected for first time, immediately start plans to align with EU to recover the economy.

2006 signs joint statement with EU on economic cooperation. Also opens pipeline cutting out Iran and Russia and delivering Azerbaijan oil directly to EU friendly Turkey.

So in 2008 Russia invades Georgia’s Tskhinvali and Abkhazia regions in an attempt to destabilise the country. This fails.

2013 Georgia signs deeper level of EU cooperation. Ukraine parliament makes legal guarantees it’ll start to align with EU.

Putin was out of time, his Caucasus route to the middle East was closing forever, economic influence via the black sea was closing off, so he grabbed Crimea. It was the EU not NATO that surrounded him.

And that’s what the NATO secretary general said.

If I had to guess if say Putin saw NATO expansion as a problem but rather slow and so not urgent. Whereas EU expansion could actually be a worse because of how quickly it spreads. Not least because countries seeking deeper trade ties with the EU are basically committing themselves to anti-corruption reforms and thereby slipping from his grasp long long before any serious talk of NATO is happening (see: Georgia, or my long summary elsewhere in these threads)…

I think on this occasion I’ll defer to how a secretary general of NATO chooses to phrase it

No, I was making the point that it’s currently popular to shit on the West exporting its ideals, but when it’s something as blindingly obvious as “maybe 9 year old girls shouldn’t be forced into marriage” then maybe on this one occasion that sense of superiority is well placed and necessary

I feel you’ve not read my first paragraph (or last quoted sentence) closely enough…

Russia doesn’t need the Crimean oil reserves, it’s more than they wanted Ukraine to not have it. Even then, energy security wasn’t as much a motivator as was securing access to Sevastopol, a critical warm water port and the only place capable of housing the black sea fleet. Although control of that port, in turn, is largely to do with projecting energy control over a wider region.

Russia was leasing Sevastopol from Ukraine (til 2042). It had become increasingly important to Russia’s other objectives being a staging location for supporting the incursion into Georgia, and also Russia’s involvement in Syria. Both of which are key to Russia’s broader goal of region control and energy security (not Ukraine per se).

It may be that Russia was far more sensitive to EU membership than NATO because EU membership travelled much faster and was already outflanking them (see map at bottom)

In the early 2000’s, increasing ineffectiveness of the old Soviet style leadership in Georgia was bankrupting the country and making corruption rife. This was increasingly apparent to international businesses there and a student population that enjoyed (somewhat miraculously) the relatively free press in the form of TV stations critical of the regime and its corruption.

Subsequently, foreign NGO presence helped organise and contribute to the peaceful 2003 Rose Revolution which saw the older soviet influence brushed away in favour of new democratic parties. (Put your favourite conspiracy / neocon / deepstate analysis hat on, a major financier of the NGOs was George Soros)

The new leadership sought to put Georgia on better economic footing and in 2006 together with the EU issued a statement on the 5 year Georgia-European Union Action Plan within the European Neighbourhood Policy which was a major snub to Russia.

Russia’s desire to maintain a foothold within Georgia subsequently provoked the 2008 Russia Georgian War over Georgia’s northern ‘South Ossetia’ region. Not only because Georgia is the gateway to projecting power into the Middle East, but more immediately because in 2006 Georgia opened the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline which cut Iran and Russia out of the picture and connected Azerbaijan oil fields up directly with EU friendly Turkey.

Russia failed to make anyway headway with their support of South Ossetia. Then in 2013, Georgia and the EU took the next step in closer alignment, an Association Agreement. With Russia’s efforts to expand influence into the Caucasus region curtailed and weakening in power to project strength over energy producing regions, Putin saw the need to permanently secure Sevastopol as becoming critical.

The Ukrainian parliament had begun legal alignment with the EU the same year.

Hence in 2014, Russia took Crimea.

(If you look at the map of EU plus Georgia, you can see how close EU alignment could be seen to have ‘provoked’ Russia to act. Though very much only in the sense that they are anti democratic and imperialist)

It’s widely celebrated that Jean Baptiste Kempf, who could have easily sold VLC for tens of millions, declined to do so (or more accurately lead the steering group that jointly decided) keeping the enormously popular video player free and open source

https://old.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/x0azkz/this_is_jeanbaptiste_kempf_the_creator_of_vlc/

Unstable for a variety of historical reasons…

Original primitive animist beliefs and Christian groups seem to have amalgamated in the first centuries CE.

The region was overcome by Islam coming from the Arab peninsula which then dominated its northern population centres and set up slave raid expeditions to the predominately animist / Christian south.

In the 1800s Egypt had taken control of the region and then Britain by virtue of their control over Egypt.

When Egypt rebelled and demanded independence from Britain in the 1950s the (soon to be) president demanded the same for the Sudan region as he was Sudanese. It’s unclear if Sudan was remotely ready for this kind of independence the way Egypt was.

Discovery of oil and a predominantly conservative Islamic Arab northern population has caused Sudan to function like a gulf petro-state with about half of its economy being due to gold / oil extraction but very little of this helping the general population which remains in crushing poverty.

More extreme Islam since 1983 has seen academic independence suppressed (authors, poets imprisoned, islamic studies mandatory if studying anything etc).

Sudan’s list of civil wars (Darfur etc) are generally characterised as animist / christian resistance movements against an oppressive islamic government. (Or, to take an opposite view, are wars of conquest by a disenfranchised rural population because in Sudan’s petro economy, the controller of Khartoum is winner takes all)

Animist / Christian South Sudan finally managed independence in 2011. The peace apparently being bolstered by the economic coercion of gulf and Chinese corporations who seek a peaceful extraction of South Sudan’s oil…

TL;DR blame Britain, or conservative Islam, depending on how long it’s been since you were a student

These were a couple of PhD geeks who hit it big, it’s certainly not inevitable that intelligent people get absorbed with money, see the creator of VLC for example. It’s just sad that these guys could have been rich AND kept the internet ‘pure’ and research focused. But instead commerce has crept in and taken a shit on what was once a clean simple brilliant search service.

While Russia is the belligerent actor and it is their fault, pre-2014 Ukraine was hardly “neutral”, having mulled both NATO and EU ascension discussions. The latter being the actual provocation rather than the former. (This isn’t at all to say any of this is Ukraine’s “fault”, only to point out they were not “neutral”)

In early 2013 the Ukrainian parliament agreed to make legal steps towards EU ascension (source 2014 pro Russia unrest in Ukraine)

Which is what Lord Robertson, the former Secretary General of Nato, has stated was the start of the crisis:

"One theory, propounded by realists such as the academic John Mearsheimer, is that Nato expansion in eastern Europe was the reason that Putin invaded Ukraine. Robertson dismissed the idea. “I met Putin nine times during my time at Nato. He never mentioned Nato enlargement once.” What Robertson said next was interesting: “He’s not bothered about Nato, or Nato enlargement. He’s bothered by the European Union. The whole Ukraine crisis started with the offer of an EU accession agreement to Ukraine in 2014.”

Putin fears countries on Russia’s border being “fundamentally and permanently” changed by EU accession. “Every aspect [of society is affected] – they woke up very late to it… I don’t think they ever fully understood the EU,” Robertson said, adding the caveat that the EU was not at fault because accession was what Ukraine, as a sovereign nation, wanted." [end quote]

Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/05/george-robertson-nato-why-russia-fears-european-union

You don’t think the West has a better approach on whether or not 9 year old girls are forced to wed?

Am enjoying Ludwig, a BBC crime detective drama with David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin. You can watch it if you can get to the BBCs iPlayer.

Original 1973 film also worth watching

It was meant to be

That’s quite some whataboutism. I’m clearly talking about the insanity of 9 year old girls being forced to wed…