Sorry, how does that in any way validate your hallucinations about wanting to be invaded? There still wasn't an actual referendum. Russia still rolled in the tanks. You're still assuming consent to be invaded.
Why would there need to be a referendum when there is already a government representing those populations? There weren't referendums for the many hundreds of US military bases around the world either. You're assuming that those governments didn't want them or request them. The Russo-Georgian war was sparked by South Ossetian terrorism against Georgia followed by Georgian retaliation against South Ossetia; South Ossetia should of course have waited a few months in order to have a lively public debate and referendum on whether they wanted Russian intervention while under assault by the Georgian military.
So a question: if you believe being aligned with the UK means member states all have to follow NATO military instructions, uhrm... why has that never happened even once? Why is there absolutely nothing in any EU treaty to that effect?
Why did NATO's first military engagement come after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? That something has not been invoked yet does not mean it isn't there.
It was a conspiracy theory the right-wing rags went on about that our army was going to be incorporated into an "EU army".
So not the same thing at all.
...
OK?
*facepalm* indeed
Are you really now trying to paint the EU of all things as a Washington pawn and tool of American dominance ?
*looks at the Greek debt crisis*
Oh, yeah, the EU is totally not a tool of western capitalist exploitation at all.
"Genocide", according to the UN, is not necessarily limited to aspects of race/ethnicity; it also covers active efforts to suppress nationalities. In that respect, many of Russia's actions here step perilously close, if not over that line.
But not if it's Ukraine doing it.
I imagine that combining it with his slide into authoritarianism (imprisoning his opposition) and the fact that distrust/dislike of Russia was more widespread also drove people to the street. Combining unpopular policy with repression and broken promises tends to motivate people more than unpopular policies on their own.
Cool.
Yanukovych came to an agreement with the opposition speaking on behalf of the protestors, but the neo-Nazis decided to break that agreement and among other things threaten his life anyway. Which is what actually caused the fall of the government, not the marches. And then various Nazi groups were incorporated into the police and military where they would, of course, never threaten anyone again.
What Seanchaidh also conveniently overlooks when he talks about substantial Russian populations in those areas is that Russia aggressively handed out Russian passports to citizens of those areas. The whole point of doing so is that it helped justify Russian interference in those areas in the name of protecting "its" people. It has done the same in Ukraine.
And neither of those places are annexed. Georgia isn't annexed.
Pretending that making it easy for people in certain places to get passports is like distributing Grimoires of Chaos magic or something doesn't help Silvanus's argument.
1) The increase in fossil fuel prices hurts the US economy more than the USA can benefit from selling gas to the EU.
2) The USA already sells its gas. It's not like there was a huge amount of unused gas production capacity going wasted in the USA because those pesky Russians were hogging the market. *
Stop trying to understand the United States in terms of its broad national interests or (even more absurdly) the interests of its population. That's not how it works or what motivates the decisions it takes. The United States will absolutely enrich small sections of its ruling class to the detriment of its overall economy, or even sometimes to the general detriment of its ruling class; elites sacrificing the power of their institutions in order to maintain or gain influence within those institutions is a tale as old as time, especially if it's the masses of people that end up suffering most of the consequences. Capitalist class solidarity only goes so far; they're competing with each other too, and the policy of the United States is often a battlefield for that competition. The undermining of the NHS is an example of how this has worked in your country. The degradation of water quality in many places in the United States, most famously Flint, is an example of this in the United States. Junking the trolley system and railroads in order to make everyone buy cars is another one: we enriched the car manufacturers at the expense of basically everyone else. This sort of corruption has shaped what the United States is today.
We will absolutely pursue a course which will enrich owners of natural gas companies, and enact sanctions designed to raise the local prices of natural gas everywhere that our companies are selling it (which is the relevant part of what cutting off Russian gas does). The United States and Canada were indeed selling their gas. And they could have been selling it for
more. The difficulty of activating additional gas production just means that prices will go up (yet more) instead. The way in which higher gas prices hurt the US economy is inflationary, so the people who are hurt most are those who need things but can't afford to buy them: the poorest! Costs are passed on to the consumer, and as a result growth is slowed or reversed and wise companies cut back production. This is not really that harmful to the ruling class. In fact, it may even be beneficial; inflation apparently due to COVID coincided with record profits in 2021. The people suffered, but that's not important.
