The idea of providing infrastructure (ports, railways, telegraph) for Africa and other colonized parts of the world is a common trope in British, French, Belgian and countless other pro-colonial narratives, used to depict the subjugation of people as a benevolent gift of progress. Thank you, massa.
It's interesting that he speaks of them as something very old, but such batteries were still widely available in Europe not too long ago. I have a pack of Duracell PowerCheck AAA batteries made in Belgium and labeled good until 03/2029, which suggests a manufacturing date of 2019.
> Only if you are willing to ignore the facts that don't fit into your model. Namely specific triggers for Putin's actions like 2008's NATO declaration of imminent NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and American involvement in 2014 coup. [0] Or many years of Putin's warnings accompanying NATO expansion.
That's Andrei Illarionov, he says a lot of things.
I opened the video anyway with the intention of watching it, but after seeing the title "Putin's fake about "NATO non-expansion to the East" closed the tab.
Here is why:
"30 years ago today: Kissinger on Russia & NATO expansion Dec. 5, 1994 PBS Newshour, w/ Jack Matlock" [0]
"Matlock: There is one of the factor here that we seem to be forgetting, and we did, though it was not a legally binding assurance, we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev, back when the Soviet Union existed, that if a United Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward. And, you know, I think that the current Russian government is very clear
Host (interrupts): So we would be..., but that assurance was given to the Soviet Union.
Matlock: That is right. It is not a legally binding, but it was, you might say, a geopolitical deal. And if we simply ignore it, then I, certainly if I were a Russian, it would be hard for me to interpret this, even though it may not be intended that way, and it is not, as anything less than an attempt to shut Russia off from Eastern Europe.
Host: And that was a line that Yeltsin used today, that it would isolate Russia and sow the seeds of discord."
Note that Kissinger doesn't dispute that fact even though he gives different objections.
Matlock used to be an ambassador to Russia in the late days of the USSR but he is not a Russian sympathizer:
"It's not that you refrain from doing something because it will offend Russia. If Russia is doing something that we don't want it to do, we should offend them."
Gorbachev himself said that even if they wanted to, officials in the West cannot give such assurances, because the voters can replace them at any moment, and added that if they had had an agreement, they would've written it down for exacly that reason. Soviet diplomats were not dumb.
Not to mention that the alleged assurance is anachronistic, as the Soviet foreign minister at the time has pointed out. Germany bordered the Warsaw Pact and there was nowhere for NATO to "expand" in 1990 and thus nothing to discuss. Map: https://i.imgur.com/TQgnuIF.jpeg
>Everyone of importance on the Soviet/Russian side has refuted this.
Whose people you cite also happen to emigrate to the West or at least from Russia.
>Soviet diplomats were not dumb.
Or very interested in not looking dumb after it turned out that they were fooled. In other words, what they say happen to make them look good.
It makes incredibly valuable when American diplomats say that the promises were given even though it makes them look bad because the promises were broken (or about to be broken).
> Whose people you cite also happen to emigrate to the West or at least from Russia.
Gorbachev and Yazov never emigrated. They both died in Moscow in the early 2020s.
> Or very interested in not looking dumb after it turned out that they were fooled. In other words, what they say happen to make them look good.
This is unfounded speculation. Shevardnadze has explained in detail how this narrative is a misunderstanding (or in many cases, a willful misrepresentation) of the 4+2 treaty. The main issue in early 1990 was the details of German reunification. After East and West Germany became a single state again, would Germany leave NATO? Would NATO be present only in West Germany, or in former East Germany as well? This was the contemporary context, since a unified Germany would share a long border with the Warsaw Pact.
Things often claimed about "NATO promises" are actually right there, written down in articles 4 and 5 of the treaty. The treaty prohibited the stationing of non-German forces and military exercises in East Germany until the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops. Both Gorbachev and Shevardnadze have said that NATO kept its promises and the agreement was concluded when the last Soviet forces left Germany in 1994.
The rest of your comment is again a straw-man argument - Matlock (American ambassador to the USSR at that time) was talking about promises not given in a legally binding way and you are citing some treaty.
> ... which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions.
No. That's the part you're making up. The mood has simply shifted from fighting all the way to the Russian-Ukrainian border, to forcing Russia to leave Ukraine alone through other means, such as destroying the oil and gas infrastructure that powers the Russian economy. Everyone, even Russian officials, admit that Russia is in deep-deep trouble if the attacks continue.
They'd fare much better. Ukraine had a large pool of conscripts, a professional cadre with combat experience from the Donbas, and deep Soviet stocks to draw from, while Western Europe abolished conscription and destroyed its Cold War stockpiles a long time ago. The current reintroduction of conscription and massive investment in defense are clear signs that European armies were (and for some time, will remain) inadequate.
Compared to Ukraine, Europe has enormous amounts of money and modern weaponry, including nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines, hundreds of f-16s, f-35s, and twelve times the population of Ukraine for twenty times the size. For God's sake.
There simply isn't an "enormous amount of modern weaponry", otherwise it would have been given to Ukraine a long time ago.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids. But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack.
Are you saying that if we had them, we would have given all our weapons to Ukraine? Lol.
Europe's aid to Ukraine is also limited by the fact that it doesn't want to be seen as an active part in the conflict, so it provides only arms with a limited range and that can be used only defensively. All this of course would not apply if it were attacked directly.
> Are you saying that if we had them, we would have given all our weapons to Ukraine?
No - I am saying that this "enormous amount of modern weaponry" that you speak of doesn't exist anymore. The large Cold War era stockpiles were simply destroyed. Even basic weapons, like artillery shells, are now in short supply.
>The same applies to tanks, artillery, and pretty much everything else.
It literally does not.
US built 6700 Bradleys. US built 10,000 Abrams. Thousands of these machines are already stationed in Europe just waiting to shoot Russians.
Germany built 3600 Leopard 2 tanks. They built 2k Marder IFVs.
Saab built 300 Grippens.
The Brits alone built over 400 main battle tanks. France alone built 800 of theirs.
You should divide all these numbers by half or more to estimate ones with modernization upgrades, but Russia ran out of modernized equipment a while ago, and NATO 80s equipment has demonstrably outclassed Soviet leftovers.
The US is bad at producing Artillery shells because we utterly refuse to use State power to induce business nowadays, because of stupid "Capitalism good, gubermint bad" ideology, but Europe ramped up shell production. Manufacturers have openly said that all they need is a commitment, and they will build capacity.
The anti-air missile problem is because NATO always intended to rely on US air power (and our thousands of aircraft) to utterly own the skies and deny any air attack. Also the Shahed situation is somewhat novel. The US once produced 40,000 HAWK Anti-air missiles, which would be perfectly sufficient against something like Shahed.
Nobody wants to disarm themselves to give everything they have to Ukraine, but there is substantial arms that are just waiting for use, while Ukraine suffers. US alone could arm Ukraine twice over and not even feel the pain. Most of our equipment is considered not useful against China and is slated to be replaced, but we STILL refuse to sell it.
Germany might have built 3600 Leopard tanks since the 1970s, but as of 2025, it has only about 300 in service with the Bundeswehr, of which roughly 200 are combat-ready. France, the UK, and Italy each also have around 200 tanks in active service; Spain has fewer than 100.
Nor are there thousands of American tanks in Europe ready to fire at the Russians. The last permanently stationed US tanks were withdrawn from Europe in 2013. At any given time, about 100 to 200 US tanks in total are scattered across Europe on temporary rotations (exercises etc).
These figures pale in comparison with independently verified Ukrainian tank losses, which currently stand at 1267, with total losses estimated between 1500 and 1900. In early 2023, the Ukrainian high command requested 300-500 tanks from allies for the next counteroffensive. The US was unwilling to provide such support, and other countries could not supply anything comparable, even through a joint effort. Hence the stalemate.
If Europe had deep stockpiles to draw from without compromising its own military readiness, the picture would be completely different. During the Cold War, Europe maintained such stockpiles, but they were dismantled in the 1990s and early 2000s as a cost-cutting measure.
> Who went to Ukraine on behalf of USA to scuttle peace talks?
There was nothing to scuttle. To this day, Russia stands by the original demands of taking over Ukraine's government, disbanding its army, and blocking foreign aid to Ukraine. Or in other words, unconditional surrender.
> USA wanted this war. Putin's mistake was taking the bait.
After the invasion stalled in March 2022, I predicted that in ten years' time, Putin would be blamed for being a CIA agent sent to destroy Russia. Looks like we're halfway there. :)
They’ve occasionally given signs they’ll accept “just” keeping Crimea, a big swath of Eastern Ukraine, and structurally weakening Ukraine and blocking it from outside alliances.
Which also amounts to unconditional surrender, but with extra steps.
The very same UN stresses that these numbers severely undercount due to lack of access to occupied territories and mostly reflect deaths in free Ukraine. The figures from the areas where most of the fighting has taken place remain unknown. Realistic estimates go far beyond the death toll in Gaza; people illegally conscripted from the occupied territories into the Russian armed forces alone add several tens of thousands more deaths.
> Sure Russia has absolutely shit the bed in the beginning of this conflict but now they're being carried by China's massive economy and they're slowly but surely winning this conflict
By what measure? All the declared objectives - "denazification" (the destruction of Ukraine's sovereignty), "demilitarization" (the destruction of Ukraine's armed forces), "protection of ethnic Russians" (now dying under Russian missile attacks), and so on - have obviously failed. The frontline has been static for years, while Russian losses are at record highs. Despite hundreds of thousands of dead and nearly a million wounded since 2022, Russia has not managed to capture even a single one of Ukraine's 22 regional capitals. Is this how victory is supposed to look like?
