Exactly, we shall see.

I suspect you were also telling Europeans 6 months back how we will all freeze when Russia shuts off our gas. It turned out to be just another bit of GRU propaganda.

We will see how $1.3tn GDP Russia will fare against the $55tn economy of the West that it wants to destroy. The West has a stronger economy, finances, military, diplomacy, social cohesion, education, media ... any aspect you can name. Russia only has parity in nuclear weapons which it cannot use because of MAD. But, we'll see.

He miscalculated when he decided to go to war. He miscalculated badly. He was prepared to win in 5 days and thought that the West would not support Ukraine, that Zelenskyy would run, that NATO would be weakened and the EU would be weakened.

In reality, Ukraine beat the first wave of Russian attacks and pushed them back, he never expected this. The Russian army is shown to be ineffective. NATO is much strengthened and is now expanding. The West is increasing military spending. The EU is strengthened. Russia is failing.

Putin badly miscalculated everything that could be calculated ... He has no way back and is forced to continue a losing war.

>Isn’t it interesting how things are always ‘complicated’ when it involves enemies of the empire but never when it involves nato-countries.

All of these stories are complicated, because they involve two competing rights, the right of peoples to self-determination competing against the right to territorial integrity. Ideally, both would be satisfied. The details matter and they vary.

You mention Catalonia. The Catalan and Spanish parliaments negotiated how to align these two rights and reached an agreement satisfactory to both parliaments, an agreement the involved a higher level of autonomy for Catalonia. The Constitutional Court of Spain found this to be counter to the constitution. Instead of amending the Constitution, the right-wing government of the time pushed for conflict. If not for the right-wingers, this would have been solved. I have never said this was OK. What would be right would be to honour the agreement between the parliaments.

With Tibet, it was just a land grab by China with elements of genocide. Just as they are doing genocide on the Uyghurs.

Crimea was also a land grab, there was no serious attempt to negotiate an agreement, the referendums were complete sham and unrecognised by observers. In fact, Russia used its power in the Security Council to veto any attempt by the international community to protect minorities or mediate an agreement because Russia always wanted to grab that land.

With Kosovo, instead of negotiating as Spain and Catalonia initially did and granting more autonomy, Serbia took away the autonomy Kosovo already had. Furthermore, other peoples in Yugoslavia used their right to self-determination, but Serbia denied that right to Kosovars. Serb leaders publicly proclaimed that Serbia wins in war and loses in negotiations and decided to use force, sure in the power of the Yugoslav army. They miscalculated, just as Putin has miscalculated. By deciding to use force instead of negotiation, they caused the right to self-determination to trump the right to territorial integrity.

Civilised nations, such as Czechs and Slovaks did it all peacefully, joined the EU and no harm done to anyone. Life proceeds normally between Czechs and Slovaks. Serbia, China and Russia are violent and insist on resolving these matters using force. That is the key difference. These countries think themselves powerful and that they can have attached slave-nations. Serbia failed immediately. Russia failed in Ukraine and China will also fail eventually.

Who annexed the Soviet Union, who annexed Yugoslavia, who annexed Sudan? There is no comparison.

As to Taiwan, it is a very complicated issue as both China and Taiwan claim to be the rightful ruler of all China. When you show the intellectual ability and honesty to grasp simple cases like Crimea, we can proceed to an analysis of complicated issues like Taiwan. Before that, judging on what you have said, I feel it is way above your head.

This is completely irrelevant. Ukraine is a sovereign nation, member of the UN, recognised as such by Russia and entitled to its territorial integrity. Russia has also signed a formal agreement never to move militarily against Ukraine and filed it with the UN.

The annexations and invasions are all illegal. There is no way around this.

But that was after Russia broke its commitments and annexed part of a country it promised never to attack. Ukraine could not defend itself and negotiations provided it with a needed breather. The Minsk accords were already in contradiction of the the UN Charter and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

You can blow smoke all you like, but you cannot get around the fact that Russia had no right to the Donbas, had no right Crimea, all of it was illegal, done in bad faith in contravention of the UN Charter.

There is nothing about it in the signed documents. These documents are public, I have read them. Please show me a signed document that promises Russia not to spread.

What happened is that Russia requested that NATO not spread to Eastern Germany and when Germany consulted with NATO, they found out that this cannot be guaranteed. Germany went back to Russia and Russia said OK and signed the document without this clause.

Now, if someone promised something to Russia while drinking whiskey or coffee, that is not an agreement. The agreement is what was signed.

Again, Russia signed its promise not to invade Ukraine a long time after NATO expanded. This is just a ridiculous KGB excuse for the invasion of a sovereign nation. This invasion is entirely illegal and nothing can justify it.

>Like NATO not expanding one inch beyond Germany?

I've read all the documents, there is no mention anywhere in the agreements NATO promising not to expand. It was a request that did not make it into the final documents that where signed by Russia. And Russia knew all about this when they signed promising never to attack Ukraine.

There is nothing that can justify Russia breaking the terms of the UN Charter. Nothing.

Edit: The timeline goes like this:

1. Russian signs the German Unification agreement which contains nothing about NATO expansion.
2. Russian signs promising never to attack Ukraine.
3. Russia attacks Ukraine.
4. Minsk Accords try to stop the bloodshed.

So, now you invent that in 1. there was something about NATO not expanding, which is untrue. And then you claim not honouring 4. is as bad or worse than actually invading a country Russia promised never to invade.

And then you talk about double standards, while applying a double standard that screams to the skies.

Come on!

We can discuss each example on its own merit. This is Russia doing it and it makes the annexation completely illegal.

No, not at all. Ukrainians don't feel this way, they have their own culture, language, outlooks and customs that differ. If Russians really considered them to be one people, they would never be targeting Ukrainian civilians as they are ... and the Russian public would be more upset about it than they are.

This is just a propaganda statement by Russia. It's like "we're brothers, so your house is my house, right?".

There is no democracy in Crimea and Russia had no right whatsoever to annex Crimea as they signed an international declaration promising never to do so and filed it with the UN.

When you say "dominated" you really mean "majority". It is the only part of Ukraine where ethnic Russians had a majority in the last last census before Russia invaded.

I think there is a huge public misunderstanding of the technology. Technologically, the only way to obtain data on terrorism and cyberwar attacks is to collect it all the time. How the data is processed is what needs to be regulated in a democracy.

Russia is collecting all the data they can get about us. Even TikTok is spying on our children and their parents. And somehow, no one is bothered that the Chinese military has this data about us. Slowly, China and possibly Russia are gaining an advantage over us, because we do not know how to regulate spooks in a democracy ... they don't need to regulate, they just collect everything they can.

When Russia starts using cyber attack to disconnect our civilian infrastructure: electricity, water, heating, communications, transport, traffic etc. it will be too late to start collecting data.

Yes, we need oversight, absolutely. But the proper agencies also need the data. Oversight needs to be setup on how it is used. As it is, civil society is saying "if they have no data, they cannot abuse it". This is no longer a viable strategy and China and Russia are preparing to wage war against us, a war that will initially be cyberwar, because everyone is nuclear.