Skiluros

Sense of belonging? This is exactly what I am mean by genocidal imperialism being universal among russians.

You (and other russians) fundamentally do not believe in self determination and will always find excuses to justify violence, occupations, torture and ethnic cleanings. The russians are even OK with being put down and abused by their own regime as long as there is imperial conquest.

I don't buy the "dark history" narrative. There is nothing inherent (in a physical sense) about russians that leads to degeneracy and debauchery. It's all the choices they make. The somewhat peaceful breakup of the USSR was a unique opportunity for russians and we can see the choices they made.

Source: I've lived in russia for many years and I speak fluent russian. I've also lived in North America, Asia and Europe and speak other languages.

I wish this wasn't true, but it very much is.

So what is the EU going to do about this?

There are $550 billion in frozen russian assets that could have been used if there was political will.

If needed, more could have been seized from russian oligarchs and citizens (e.g. ones who have openly showed support for genocidal imperialism - extremely common even among those in Europe).

There are also other methods like interment of executives/operatives who have been collaborating with the russians; this would not impact the average European or their lifestyle. If anything this would benefit the average citizen by lowering corruption and crime.

Look, I am not saying any of this is easy. I am just pointing out that it is possible to implement such measures and this is not a matter of "fairy tale thinking". It is possible, viable and has the opportunity to be very effective, the primary issue is the lack of leadership and courage. Everything else is largely an excuse.

I am biased, because I am Ukrainian (living in Ukraine), but from my experience it is impossible to deal with russians unless you can show them that you are able and willing to use violence against them. They do not respect anything else and they see good faith interactions as a sign of weakness.

And playing to the fears manufactured by russia has never worked, ever. You can see similar dynamics with nuclear sabre rattling.

This is clearly a ruse. Fucking cockroach Vance.

It's all a matter of leadership, courage and desire. If they really wanted to, they could have gone all in. It's not too late. Europe has much larger economic and industrial capacity than russia.

A lot of people in the West reflexively don't want to admit this, but this the view of the overwhelming majority of the russian population. They are committed and genuine genocidal imperialists.

Unfortunately, this does look like purely bla bla. They could have easily backed this declaration with some sort of action (providing Taurus missiles, making company exexcutives personally liable for military use products reaching russia).

Agreed. Germany wanted to have its cake and eat it too. They wanted all the economic benefits of integration and trade, but had no interest in difficult issues like EU governance, fiscal integration, rule of law (suspending Hungary from EU market access and Schengen for enabling and choosing corruption and criminality).

The seemingly naive approach to russia is another example. It's easy to come up with BS slogans like "freedom through trade", it's to actually do something and take often risky steps to put real pressure on russia.

Maybe mbin or piefed? They don't exactly seem to have 1:1 copies among oligarch run services.

On a more broader historical note, I think we simply have yet to learn the lessons of the information age.

The historical parallel would be WW1/WW2 after which people globally said "never again".

With respect to less abstract thinking, Germany continued to largely support russian imperialism, partly out of corruption (Schröder) and partly out of a foolish fantasy that the russians are going to reject genocidal imperialism just like that (Merkel).

It of course doesn't help that American technology oligarchs are deeply corrupt and lack humanity.