Peter Neefs

Ukraine already tried "territories for peace" in 2014. It didn't work. In 2022, Pu invaded again. The complexity of the war isn't in who gets to control Donbas today. It is how to stop Ru from invading again given Ru's insistence that Ukr belongs to it. Trump is ignoring the issue and has no plan.

Its amazing and depressing. A few days ago the conversation was all about what kinds of sanctions Trump will put on Russia, now the talk is about what territory Ukraine will be asked to cede to Russia.
And some people still think Trump might help Ukraine....

You give me huge chunk of your territory, including major cities. And I will graciously stop killing you. Maybe. For now.

Sincerely,

Russian Federation
Permanent member of the UN Security Council

Great historical 🧵 here 👇

Acute analysis. It’s essential at this point that “the coalition of the willing” moves from vaguely aspiring to police a peace settlement that will not come, to providing the military & economic backing to enable Ukraine to decide its own fate. Trump’s US is now more help to Putin than to the West.

In Alaska begint het retro-imperialisme aan zijn volgende etappe. Ditmaal met morele steun van allerlei lui links die zichzelf anti-imperialistisch noemen. Als de geschiedenis zich al herhaalt, is dat dit keer geen farce.

Since the end of the Cold War, summits have been used by US presidents as a mark of approval and withheld when they disapprove of Russian actions. Trump is, once again, signalling the value he places on Putin's friendship. It's a profound humiliation for the US.

Whatever Trump says, one thing is crystal clear: Putin does NOT want peace. He wants Ukraine’s capitulation which he cannot achieve militarily to be handed to him diplomatically.

To elaborate a bit on why inviting Putin to Alaska for talks on ending the war without Zelensky (or European allies) represents, among many other things, the death of US diplomacy 🧵1/

YouTube video by Russian Media Monitor Russian state TV discusses an upcoming Trump-Putin summit

Meanwhile in Russia: state TV discussed an upcoming Trump-Putin summit, rejoiced that Ukraine is being excluded and said that Trump has learned his lesson, since he is no longer demanding a ceasefire or seeking any concessions from Moscow.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q-3...

I’m shocked and disappointed at how quickly everybody reverts to « Ru is a great power » and « great powers will decide Ukraine’s fate » against the ample evidence that Ukraine holds its own and Ru cannot advance and cannot militarily compel the capitulation that it keeps asking for.

People just don’t get it. If trump was really angry at Putin and wanted to sanction Russia, he could do that right now. He has that power. Yet time and again he delays, and says he will do it in “weeks”.
The only rational conclusion is that he doesn’t want to sanction Putin.

However! Militarily/economically/strategically Ru is in no frigging position to demand Ukrainian capitulation and great power status. Its summer offensive failed, it's bogged down in Donbas still, and its economy is showing strain. It can outlast Western support for Ukr only if the West gives up.

If this happens, at a minimum Putin, a war criminal under ICC warrant for abducting Ukrainian kids, gets a meeting with the US president for nothing, ending 3+ years of isolation from Western leaders. But Putin will be hoping for so much more from Trump.

Russia launched a website to "select" Ukrainian children, according to Save Ukraine.

Mykola Kuleba, the founder of Save Ukraine, reported that an online catalog has appeared in Russia where people can "choose" a Ukrainian child from the occupied territories.

After 3 years of violent war against Ukraine and 25 years of increasing authoritarianism, it's time to finally decide:

Is Russia fascist? ⬇️

I saw many atrocities as a senior aid official in Gaza. Now Israeli authorities are trying to silence us Devastated hospitals, mass graves, bodies eaten by dogs in the street. After speaking out, I discovered my visa will not be renewed, says Jonathan Whittall of UN OCHA

Don't look away.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The most persistent delusion is that Ru can be satisfied w a partial win in Ukr (territory and/or forced Ukr neutrality) and then cooperation can restart. Ru wants the West’s destruction. It’s not powerful enough to achieve it but it won’t stop trying if the West were to become more accommodating.

The core problem is this, he doesn’t practice principled anti-imperialism. He practices inversionism: if the U.S. supports something, he reflexively takes the opposite side, no matter how brutal that side is, no matter the evidence.

the trump vision of global order is fundamentally neo-feudal. capitalism barely figures here
hegemon.substack.com/p/geopolitic...

The Helsinki accord was a masterpiece of European diplomacy. Fifty years on, we need its spirit more than ever | Kai Hebel and Richard Davy The OSCE hasn’t stopped Putin’s aggression, but it has the potential to help broker a peace in Ukraine when the time is right, say authors Kai Hebel and Richard Davy

50 years of the Helsinki Final
Act 1975.

Having worked with “old guard” activists [a.k.a dissidents] in 🇺🇦🇵🇱🇨🇿🇸🇰🇨🇱🇦🇷🇧🇷 - I know personally how important the Helsinki Human Rights Declaration was to their work in the 1970s and 1980s.

That’s right the effect went beyond Europe and Canada and US.

OTD in 1975 USSR signed Helsinki Accords promising to respect borders & let countries join what orgs like they want.

As we, the self declared successor state, have *always* followed this, you can trust over a peace deal with Ukraine now.

Another interesting read about the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act @engelsbergideas.bsky.social 👇

Er is ook nog een economisch effect: marktconcentratie en winsten die wegvloeien naar het buitenland. Dus als je alle effecten in rekening neemt, lijken de lokale frituren toch minder slecht te zijn dan die fastfoodketens, niet? :-)

The more that members of the Trump administration talk, the more it sounds as if Plan A to stop the war was to coerce Ukraine into capitulation and Plan B was to keep repeating Plan A until it worked. When it became apparent that wasn't going to happen, they were out of ideas.

Russia wants to destroy Ukraine.
In doing so, it is also breaking the pledge it made 50 years ago today in the Helsinki Final Act.

Respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and every country’s right to choose its alliances.

We will not let Russia tear these principles apart.

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

I saw George Mitchell give a talk last night about the diplomatic effort to end the Troubles, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and he said something so sobering but obviously true: if social media had existed in the 90s the negotiators would never have been able to get an agreement.

Sancties hebben geen enkel effect volgens Bouchez.

Realiteit?
➡️ EU = grootste investeerder in Israël met 72.1 miljard euro
➡️ EU = de grootste handelspartner van Israël
➡️ België = 7de grootste handelspartner van Israël binnen de EU

De feiten staan niet aan zijn kant. Bouchez wíl gewoon niet.

✅🇺🇦 The Rada adopted draft law #13533 on restoring the independence of anti-corruption bodies of Ukraine.