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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   257 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 11, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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And the winner of the 2025 mental gymnastics olympics is EU

https://archive.is/HaqSi

The EU’s ambassadors handed emergency powers to the European Commission to keep €210 billion in Russian state assets blocked until the Kremlin pays post-war reparations to Ukraine, the Danish Council presidency announced on Thursday.

The EU’s new emergency powers will remain in place until “Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine, and provides reparations to Ukraine,” according to a legal text, seen by POLITICO, that was backed by the EU’s 27 ambassadors on Thursday afternoon.

Kremlin-friendly countries are thereby set to lose their power to release the sanctioned money simply by voting "no" on sanctions renewal. Were that to happen after the EU provided an assets-backed loan to Kyiv, the EU's 27 capitals would be on the hook to repay the loan to Russia.

The EU justified the seismic legal change on the grounds that handing back the assets to Russia would wreak havoc on the EU economy — and potentially fuel hybrid attacks by the Kremlin across the bloc.

Keeping the assets frozen “is a measure that is appropriate in order to avoid further repercussions of unprecedented magnitude on the economic situation of the Union caused by Russia’s actions,” the Commission wrote in the legal text.

So to explain - EU breaking the law will cause economical damage to EU, which is emergency, so we need to further break the current laws to prevent them. The idea of just not doing the initial breaking of the law hasn't come to their tiny minds.

Ackshually, it's illegal to take the assets of the irredentist country that is in actual and hybrid war in Europe

Ok, we'll make it legal

Oh no! Not like this

Agreed though, Europe needs to find its spine... Daddy Putin shows us how it's done: https://boereport.com/2024/05/20/moscow-takes-control-over-assets-of-western-companies/ https://kyivindependent.com/russia-advancing-legal-changes-to-confiscate-western-assets-reuters-reports/ https://www.reuters.com/business/moscow-takes-control-over-assets-western-companies-2023-07-27/

Except the irredentist country is not in any kind of war with Europe. But yeah - just steal them. Because this is in no way legal. There is no economic emergency. There will never be economic emergency.

But this is what happens when you have diversity hires in top EU positions.

Except the irredentist country is not in any kind of war with Europe.

The country all but says outright that its war is with Europe and Ukraine is just a proxy. Europe doesn't appear to disagree.

this is what happens when you have diversity hires in top EU positions.

If there were less diversity hires I would expect Europe to take the funds immediately and in general be less of a pussy.

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