This a Briton based channel, which imho are reserching before publishing:
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Hello,
this is the first war a goverment is preventing their own population to know that there is a war. Not avoiding to call it a war, but putting a 15 year prison sentence to anybody who is reporting details of reality.
Btw: Last number I heard of Russian incarcerating because of protesting: 9500.
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Good information there, thank you. Ukraine may be a poor country but they have considerable resources.
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Ok,
Well in order to join the EU a country has to do a lot of reforms as well. The way the EU/(earlier EEC) worked was that early on there was still some evolvement early one.
When e.g. the Baltics joined NATO and the EU it was more or less take the system and get the massive economic benefits. I think it was the only way it could be done. It did lead to some frictions though.
As for the Ukraine, one of the problems is their state of democracy which is not very good and still isn’t unfortunately. Up until now it was one of the reasons to not let them in the EU. Kind of similar to Turkey which also seemed to be on the way to joining the EU long time ago.
There used to be a great Polity 4 Index which did a good job at historical Democracy development (we used it in the Uni) but is no longer updated. It gives the up and downs and to side step France in the “De Gaulle times” is also interesting for those who want to know. It is a bit academically written BUT it speaks for itself.
Polity IV Project: Home Page (systemicpeace.org)
As for democracy in the UK, here is a 2021 survey pointing out the issues. As much as I am for the Ukraine I think Von der Leyen was WAY out of line by promising the Ukranian EU membership. That is not her call to make and she was criticized for it by other EU memberships. Not because the were evil Putin minions which is a risk we run is this polarized World but there are these rules and systems in place and what is practical. And again Putin is the worst of the worst.
Here is a analyses of the Ukraine for the last year explaining the issues in a similar way to the Polity IV index, for one Zelensky is a good guy but also he has limited influence is his problematic country and it is a country will 44 million people. Instant EU Membership might not be a magic bullet, feel free to disagree. Polity research and assessing Democracy is difficult to research in any case, languages/information control etc. Even genuine research is a bit tricky. This one has lots and lots of footnotes which you can (and probably shoud) follow.
Also it is a lot longer read/ watch than your average Journalism minute by minute breaking news. Hope this helps!
Ukraine: Nations in Transit 2021 Country Report | Freedom House
Yes I watched that and also this
I find both of these men and their channels very good. And as Chris said, “Germany just through 20 years of Shenanigans out the window”
All I can say is I guess it makes sense. You only had enough for limited capabilities and now they are the wrong capabilities. The United States has gone through some of this as well. The Marines are changing their approach completely by giving up their tanks and going back to more of an specialty in Island warfare in case we have to fight in the Pacific I believe.
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I read this and it was very interesting. An awful lot of footnotes are in languages I do not speak.
To get an idea of how they measured this, I read what they said about the US. While I agree we have issues I think their editorial comments were quite slanted and superficial so it would make me question using this as more than a contributory source. But thank you for pointing it out.
And no, EU admission would not solve Ukraine’s issues and might create more issues for Europe as a whole.
I did see Poland is trying to get a deal together to send old Warsaw Pact aircraft to Ukraine. The US was supposed to replace them with US planes. Smart for both countries as it makes Poland more committed to US equipment than European equipment.
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I had this feeling on the US the old Polity 4 was quite good. It seems research is getting more political. We had a bunch of scandals here with lousy research which sailed through peer reviews with flying colours 
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I hear that. I imagine the last 2 years have been hard on everybody’s freedom if it’s covered honestly.
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I agree the last 2 years had been hard to everybody. But not to my freedom. I have been free when staying at home to save lives, wearing a mask to keep others from sharing my bronchial biota. I have not been alive to know about unfreedom in NS-Germany, but I have visited the GDR often enough to have seen things “hard to everybody`s freedom”.
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From what I understand Poland has not agreed to a deal, quite rightly because (a) they cannot degrade their Air Force for a single second and (b) getting replacement planes is not easy. The backorder time on F16’s is two years. Plus a ‘theft of planes’ trick at Lviv is more difficult that one expects.
Getting substitute planes directly from the USAF is not easy either due to model differences.
There is concern Russia could see that as a deal too far and attack. Which is macabre considering the arms that have flowed to Ukraine but war does not have to name sense.
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Agree, I think that sending in Mig-29 Fulcrums either by buying or giving them away will be seen as a further escalation as these are politically harder to see as “defensive weapons” as opposed to anti-air. Also with Russian air superiority/supremacy (why else would the Ukraine demand a no-fly zone?) these Fulcrums might not survive very long and need spare parts etc etc as well and pilots as I assume that the Polish Models are pretty old and might have their own modifications, Polish language buttons etc.
This may sound trivial but these are unstable planes (so they can turn fast) any small mistake can be disastrous and you need good runways to land anyway. Note: I am no expert either except for having some training time in a few jets e.g. Mig-15 which is extremely trickly to land as it is almost uncontrollable at “slow” speed and is prone to drop a wing as punishment for bad flying!
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I guess this is a symbolic gesture to pile up pressure on the Russians, show support and draw attention.
The logical thing to do was to provide Ukraine with drones and some kind of cruiser missiles. That what I think are happening in secret.
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The question of joining the EU is definitely political in the end. Democracy and Economics do play a role, but they are not definitive. Also, there is different levels of joining the EU. For example, Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007, but are not yet part of the Schengen zone (allowing for free flow of goods and people) in 2014, nor the eurozone. Actually many, mostly eastern european countries are not yet part of the eurozone.
You also don’t need a perfect score to join the EU. Generally you just need to be good enough, but this is not a set in stone requirement. Ukraine may be a young democracy that has issues with corruption, but it is not like this is absent in states belonging to the EU. On the economy front, the question depends much more on whether you can be integrated with the EU economy and its laws and regulations than of whether it is actually a wealthy or poor economy. Since its signing of the association treaty in 2014, Ukraine has steadily been changing its Soviet era laws to conform more with EU standards. I have taken notice from this in the field of watermanagement specifically when I visited in 2019. They may not be quite there yet, but it is not unthinkable that they may be in the future.
In the end, to become an EU member, you need to be accepted by all of the other member states individually and even if you meet all the requirements of democracy and economic development this may not happen. It is wellknown that the EU has suffered from expansion fatigue in the recent decade and this was much more of a burden on the admittance of new member states than other constraints. It’s not untihnhikable that with this conflict many people will reconsider their previous position on EU expansion and this could thus very well start a new expansion wave. If Ukraine is going to be part of that remains to be seen. The only certainty I see is that it will not happen during the active conflict, but in 5 or 10 years? Who knows
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Yeah EU membership is a political decision for the member countries. It will have no impact on this war but long term it could be a game changer. Who knows.
The impacts of this conflict are just beginning to spread. Ukraine is getting supplies but they are on their own for now. It will be their courage that saves their country.
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Putin, his advisors, and all of his strategoi in places like Kherson appear extremely unprepared for the resistance because they don’t understand why the Ukrainians are fighting back. After all, in 2014, when Russia went into Crimea and backed separatists in the Donbas, there was little real opposition in Ukraine or Russia. At the same time, most Americans(including myself) did not want to get involved in that conflict.
Three things have changed:
- Putin is resorting to far more vicious and deadly tactics in this war AND
- Putin is attacking the indisputably legitimate leader(Zelenskyy) of Ukraine. Putin is literally trying to murder Zelenskyy now.
- Putin is attacking places that have never been historically integral parts of Russia since its independence from the Mongols in 1283. In 2014, Putin was taking places like Crimea that had historically been part of Russia and where the majority of the inhabitants opposed the revolution that had just happened in Kyiv.
For the three reasons above, many people,including myself, thought that a diplomatic solution was the most effective way to proceed back in 2014. Now, the situation is totally different. Putin is clearly trying to exterminate the Ukrainian people.
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I agree with almost everything you say here but I think the word exterminate is extreme at this point. It is so far is a straight up conquest by a military machine which is not that precise like we demand of US and Israeli aggressions. When our side bombs a hospital it is a big stain on what we are trying to do. To Russia, it is just business.
Exterminate freedom? Certainly but exterminate to me is not what I’m seeing. I have seen it before in my life and hope never to see it again.
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Yes, this time it is war. But your following sentence is not based in any facts. It is at least a emotional overreaction or you becomming the monster you want (but can not) fight.
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@dan.harnden, @gerhard-w-koester
Perhaps I should say “exterminate Ukrainian identity.” However, Putin’s soldiers are shooting at families trying to flee and threatening to execute protesters in the public square.
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Agree with that 100%. War crimes are happening and I don’t think the west has much influence there.
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