I know people who feel nostalgic about 90s and it's time of freedom and opportunity for them, but for me it's the time of poverty, crime and extreme stress when two father's friends died from heart attacks while in their prime.
It does work like that. The EU just plays a zero-sum game.
"As part of its strategy to secure supplies of critical raw materials, the European Union signed an EU-Ukrainian strategic Partnership on Critical Minerals with Ukraine in July 2021. This agreement, which covers around a hundred projects, aims to secure the supply of ten essential raw materials. It forms part of the European Action Plan on Critical Raw Materials, which seeks to diversify sources of supply and reduce dependence on suppliers from outside the EU.
This partnership brings together several major players, including the European Raw Materials Alliance, a platform that aims to ensure a sustainable and secure supply of raw materials for the European industry, and the European Battery Alliance, a strategic initiative to build a competitive and sustainable battery value chain in Europe." [0]
The only thing the EU is saying is "Get out of the Ukraine and we maybe remove sanctions in some distant future if you behave". You may think that it is a right stance towards Russia but it leaves no place for talking and you can't put the blame for lack of talking on Russia.
> EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas
She's a rabid russophobe and was put into her position exactly for that reason.
The problem with "not talking to EU" is that it is the side keeping Ukraine funded and fighting. Russians keep talking to USA, which has increasingly smaller leverage to have influence on anything in the conflict.
> She's a rabid russophobe and was put into her position exactly for that reason.
Compared to Putin calling European leaders piglets. I don't think that next EU Foreign Policy chief will be much different. Thus it sounds more like an excuse not to engage with EU.
Here is yesterday's Euronews article[0] which quite clearly shows who doesn't want to engage.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin should make tangible concessions before the European Union picks up the phone to re-establish direct communications, High Representative Kaja Kallas said on Thursday as more European leaders call for direct engagement with the Kremlin as part of the Russia-Ukraine peace process currently being brokered by the White House."
"Instead of focusing on who should talk to Putin, Kallas added, European countries should devote their energy to further crippling his war machine"
"The European Commission, a long-standing advocate of the strategy of diplomatic isolation, later admitted that direct talks will happen "at some point" but not yet."
>Russian leadership's willingness to take massive casualties of their own with little if any political fallout
All Russians joining the war after partial mobilization of the autumn of 2022 are doing this voluntarily. The West and Ukrainians managed to really piss off many Russians. It isn't Putin's war anymore and it isn't even the war of the whole Russia yet.
Yes, you either put your trust with CCF, BBC and this man, or Russia, both sides could claim the same about the other. I don't have any experience with CCF, I do trust BBC, I don't trust that man, so in the end I trust that what BBC writes is closer to the truth.
That's a mistake. BBC has perfected the art of omitting relevant information thus creating a completely different story.
My favorite example so far is that after that debacle with Canadian parliament giving standing ovation to a very old Ukrainian who fought against the USSR (and also collaborated with Nazi, as some Canadian Jewish organization was quick to point out), the BBC counteracted "Russian propaganda" by pointing out that almost all Ukrainians fought against Nazis in WW2, completely forgetting to mention the fact that post-2014 regime in Kiev glorifies former Nazi collaborators and demolishes memorials of Soviet generals who fought Nazis.
The most cynical was the renaming of major avenue in Kiev leading to Babiy Yar (the place where thousands of Jews were massacred) to honor Bandera and the renaming of the avenue that used to honor Nikolai Vatutin[0], Soviet general who fought Nazis on the territory of Ukraine, after Shukhevych[1], another Nazi collaborator and mass murderer.
It's not a black & white "believe everything they say".
It's a "You have these two parties, with different stories, who do you trust more?" and in this case, easily BBC, even though they, like any media organization, commit mistakes sometimes.
And again, I don't trust what BBC claims without thinking about it myself, just like I won't take what CNN says at face value. But context matters.
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