European Union must have a central role in Ukraine peace deal, Ursula von der Leyen said.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Your first two, and the penultimate, sentences show how little you understand the EU and its countries, while by the quote Victoria Neuland shows herself as merely vulgar and likely incapable of reasoned opinion.

@ArishMell And thanks for proving my point. The EU and western Europe more broadly are a bunch of old men pretending they still run empires with the armies to match and are delusional enough to believe their own propaganda.

On some level even they understand this because they demand American backstops. Meaning they are willing to talk the talk but need Americans to actually fight their wars for them.

You have the Brits, France and Germany babbling about threatening to send a force of 10k into Ukraine if there is a pause in fighting.

Umm...ok that is about 3 weeks worth of troops before they are all dead and recent NATO exercises proved rather embarrassing because they proved they cannot effectively move half that number of troops and none of their heavy equipment in anything less than months.

Ukrainian soldiers who were sent to Europe to be trained are saying themselves their "instructors" have never seen combat and have never trained with drones.

Most of NATO member states that have deployed troops have never deployed more than a couple thousand troops anywhere since the 80s.


And Victoria Neuland was just brutally honest about the EU being irrelevant.

Europe doesn't have the money or the troops to fight a serious war with anyone.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow The EU is run by men and women all far too young to have ever managed colonies, it is not a military alliance as such, and if most of its nations' troops have seen little or no fighting action that is because the world - at any rate Europe - has been too peaceful!

Of the European nations, the British armed forces probably have the most recent active experience, but it is true that methods of fighting have changed with the advent of weapons such as the mass-produced, fibre-optical controlled drones.

One purpose of exercises is to find weaknesses and learn from them!

I was dismissive of Victoria Nuland because as a former diplomat I would have expected more diplomatic language. Swearing achieves nothing.

You say Europe (collectively) could not afford a war. To be honest, no-one can nor would want to; but could the USA? Especially a protracted war of attrition very far from her own territory. Even Russia can't really afford the one she started against her direct neighbour, having expected to succeed with little more than a coup backed by an AFV column.

@ArishMell I said they are people living under the delusion that they still run colonial empires. I never said they actually were 200 years old.

Why the EU and NATO are incapable of fighting a war they want to start is irrelevant.


The British Army is the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic war and the best they can do with the combined "might" of France and Germany is threaten 10 000 troops. A total joke.

The point is NATO is still trying to train people with tactics from the 1980s.


Victoria Neuland's comments were leaked from what was supposed to be a private conversation by former members of the SBU who were loyal to Ukraine, not Washington. Since that has not happened in a few years I assume they have all been purged and likely sent to die at the front.


You are not wrong but you have a bunch of armchair generals in Brussels, London, Paris, and Berlin who want to start a direct war with Russia they can't afford and can't fight without Americans doing all the heavy lifting and still lose.

I mean shit you have people like Kaja Kallas who think they speak for the EU. A country that has not been relevant for centuries and in the last big war fought for the Axis powers which might explain why they are enamoured with the Ukrainian Banderites. People like this trying to cash cheques they can't back up with belligerent talk that if fighting expands will have other people dying for their bravado.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Your are WRONG that the leaders of the EU and of its constituent parties think they still run empires. Only a few European countries had those, and gave them up long ago.

Your WRONG that anyone in the EU wants to start a war.

There is NO "bunch of aermchair generals wanting" to go to war with Russia.

No-one wants wars. The most war-loving nations now are Russia, Iran, China and the USA - in no particular order but the USA did like to think herself the world's guardian; superior militarily, politically, economically and culturally to everyone else.

We would all rather Russia behaved like a civilised country and could be a good friend, as it was starting to be after the USSR collapsed, but it won't with Vladimir Putin in control.

You are right that the UK's armed forces are too low, and that is indeed a matter of serious concern in the country. It may be true for other European nations too.


The European Union is NOT a country, and it has not existed for centuries. It is a modern, political and economic bloc of about two dozen independent nations; its roots economic but partly also a desire that European nations live in harmony with each other after centuries of periods of fighting; and it is run by people from all those nations.


The start fact is whatever may be right or wrong internally about Ukraine, she is an independent country that Putin want Russia to take over and subsume for his own ambitions. And if that succeeds, who next? Moldova? Georgia? The Baltic States? Finland - which joined NATO as a reponse to the invasion?

@ArishMell Their leaders do. Your feelings about it don't change that. And all the major players in the EU are former colonial empires.

And no it is not ancient history. France still has colonies. A few less thanks to Russia of late. Which is why Macron is so pathological about starting a fight with Russia.

The UK has been pretending it is still an empire since the 60s.

I am not wrong that the EU and NATO want war. That is just objectively true. Or at least their leaders do. They don't care because Ukrainians are doing the dying for their imperial LARPing.


And claiming no one wants war is just dishonest or naive. If you want the war to keep going forever that is the definition of wanting war.


And your claims about Russia, China and Iran are just xenophobic nonsense. None of those countries have started a war in over 100 years. For the west it is a matter of months between wars.

And I see you are delusional enough to believe that the American global empire is some magical camelot out for the good of mankind.


More nonsense about Russia that is the complete opposite of reality. The US and Western Europe marched on Russia for 30 years tearing up every treaty ever signed with Russia along the way.

The west has literally never honoured any treaty signed with Russia.


The fact that you think Russia, China and Iran need to behave like well behaved children shows the Western supremacist mentality that the entire globe is required to bow down to American and EU dictates.


The EU and NATO are a collection of American vassal states. Nothing more.


And again you straight up lie about Ukraine. It has not been an independent country since 2014. It is an American and British colonial outpost.

Russia doesn't want an enemy army camp on it's border and for the west to honour the deals they agreed to 30 years ago. But the west has proven they will not honour any diplomatic agreement making war inevitable.

Just look into the statements made by American officials themselves. They are even honest about this. They knew fucking with Ukraine would provoke a war in 1991. They don't care.


Maybe educate yourself on history and basic facts instead of this bad cold war propaganda move plot you have invented out of thin air.


Georgia? NATO tried to use them to start a war with Russia to humiliating results. Then when they failed they took their former president who is a war criminal in Georgia and installed him as governor of Odessa in Ukraine.

The EU rigged elections in Moldova to make sure they were a foregone conclusion in their favor.

The EU overruled elections in Romania because they didn't like the results.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow The only colonialists are the Russian Federation!

Though the USA and China are both competing respectively to stay and to become, the world's most dominant nation.

China would not be afraid to fight but prefers, and is using, other means.

@ArishMell That is factually wrong.

But you want to believe a cold war cliche so facts don't matter.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I do not follow cliches. The Cold War ended last century.

China is now the world's second largest economy, behind the USA, and has strategic political and economic advantages that democracies like the USA and the EU nations lack.

@ArishMell You do.

And your entire position depends on ignoring the cold war ended.

Actually by many metrics China has surpassed the US and BRICS surpassed the G7 4 years ago.

But it is also not relevant to this topic.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I'd not realised China has already overtaken the USA but it does not surprise me.

By "Cold War" I mean that between the USSR and NATO. There is now a far less clear-cut situation, with many different interests and factions; so yes, perhaps we are in a sort of "cold war", but even if not I fear the world is much less stable and safe than it was then.

@ArishMell The only thing that matters here is the 30 year march towards Russia's border by NATO a hostile offensive military alliance that literally exists to be antagonistic to Russia (and Germany but everyone memory holed that one). The only thing that has substantially changed is Russia is no longer an economically destroyed country run by an alcoholic managed by the White House.