It will be telling how both China and Russia respond.
Very interesting development. Of course, there is no way Zelensky is initiating this, rather it his American masters. I’d say (for once), its a clever move by the US…putting more pressure on the CCP…
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I’ve tried to make a summary from some press releases preceding the war. People have short memory and attention span. I’ve translated from Russian the quotes of the key figures in Russia and made it in chronological order. Let’s start from the Washington Post article on 30 October 2021.
30 October 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-troop-movements-near-ukraine-border-prompt-concern-in-us-europe/2021/10/30/c122e57c-3983-11ec-9662-399cfa75efee_story.html
The rebuttal from Russia foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (type in youtube “мария захарова клубничка” for some cringe ))): “this is fake news information campaign against Russia”.
12 November 2021. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary: “such headlines are the blatant and groundless mounting of pressure by the West. Russia is not a threat for anyone”. “This is a camouflage to hide the aggressive intentions of Kiev to solve the problem of the South-East by military means”.
30 November 2021. Putin is on a video conference with the investment forum “Russia calling (Россия зовет)”. A participant’s question: “should the investors be wary about possible intrusion of Russian troops into Ukraine?”. Putin: “Look. There were the talks about possible invasion of Ukraine in the beginning of this year, when we conducted West-2021 (Запад-2021) military exercise. As we see, it has not happened”.
26 December 2021. Dmitry Peskov answers the question of propagandist Vladimir Solovyov: “Will Russia invade first?”. Peskov: “Russia never invaded any country first. Russia survived from so many wars, Russia is the last country in Europe who even dares to pronounce the word “war””.
21 January 2022. Press conference in Geneva, foreign minister Lavrov speaking after meeting the secretary of state Blinken: “You are saying we are going to invade Ukraine? We’ve explained already many times, this is not true. By constantly telling that this is going to happen, you instantly ask: “why now?” Our reply: “when we don’t have to invade?””.
8 February 2022. Putin after a talk with Emmanuel Macron: “the movement of our troops on our territory, I want to emphasize, our territory, is thought to be as a threat of Russian invasion, in this case, to Ukraine. The Baltic states say they feel threatened, so as our other neighbors. On what grounds – not clear.”
15 February. 9 days before the invasion. Lavrov: “the allegations of Russia’s attack is information terrorism”. After meeting Poland foreign minister Zbigniew Rau, a Polish journalist asked again: “so there will be no invasion?”, Lavrov: “no invasion, why so dunce, I don’t like to repeat myself”.
22 February 2022. Putin when acknowledging independence of DPR and LPR. “We expect, and I want to emphasize this, all our controversy will be resolved in the course of negotiations between the current authorities of Kiev and authorities of these independent republics”
25 February 2022. Putin: “Occupation of Russian territories is not in our plans. We are not enforcing anything to anyone by forth”.
Also, selective memories, and bias towards existing beliefs. Some also lean towards outlandish conspiracies…
This is a general problem of post-truth world we live in…
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People, most of us aren’t very exceptional 
Reposting these, just in case there’s some misunderstanding:
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You are being completely naive if you think a country (in this case Russia) is going to openly admit its invasion plans to the world 3-4 months in advance. Of course he lied over this……as unfortunately do many world leaders and politicians.
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I am very far from naive, I understand it very clearly. My purpose was to summarize some facts/activities from today’s vantage point, after all these events have already happened and part of history, summarize and ruminate about what were the premonition, signs, etc. Usually we live our daily lives, have our current daily problems, politics and historical processes are at the back of our minds, until some shit happens like a big earthquake. 24 February was such an event. We don’t even know for sure what is going to happen in Taiwan by the end of this week, only some people in Beijing know for sure.
The best we can do is to make some consensus about the political culture, their pattern of behavior, I know Russia very well and know the language and their mindset, the history behind. They made a deal about grain on one day, Putin, Erdogan, etc. Next day they airstrike Odessa port.
MSM turning on the inept US government, it seems.
Most significant war [in Europe] since WW2?
Err… Break up of Yugoslavia didn’t happen then?
Recent news looks like it contains both a minus and a plus for Ukraine.
First the minus:
The video title omits the words “parts of,” which can be heard in the report:
(boldface mine)
Now the plus:
Looks like the fancy Yank arty is helping out some after all.
It’s August!
Care to expand on that a bit, most folks have that figured out.
Look at the title of the thread.
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Aspersions ba?
It’s as though thirty something’s are saying, with all honesty, that this is the worst thing to happen in their lifetime!