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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31917 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Poland must be “reminded” its western territories were “gift from Stalin”, says Putin

Lukashenko claims Poland is trying to annex Ukraine, Wagner troops want to invade

Just a reminder where Putin's eyes are looking at when/if he's done with Ukraine. We've been through this scenario before, where Putin prepared the invasion of Ukraine for 8 years, absolutely in public, never hiding his intentions, always claiming Ukraine is a fake state, ruled by illegitimate regime and must be liberated - and yet everybody was so surprised when the invasion actually happened. And yet, lots of people are lecturing me all the time about how Putin didn't actually want to do any of that and was forced to do it by "Western meddling". I don't expect many people to change any of their conclusions from this round of saber-rattling, and I don't also expect Putin to invade Poland tomorrow (or this year, or anytime before Ukraine situation has resolved one way or another), but the time may come to be oh so surprised again, because literally nothing pointed to this next move by Putin. And I am sure if that happen, the "meddling" will be blamed again. I certainly don't want to see this happening, but as things are going now, I am afraid I might.

This is just saber rattling for the moment. Putin has used expansionist rhetoric against all former Soviet territories, and it's foolish to think he wouldn't try to reassemble the borders of the USSR if he could. However, Poland is protected by Article 5 which Russia has shown is a red line it won't cross. That said, if anything were to happen to NATO, or if A5's protection were called into question, then the Baltics would almost certainly kiss their independence goodbye, and Poland would likely be in the crossfire next.

Poland was never formally a Soviet territory.

I was using the "Soviet territory" term more broadly. Poland wasn't a part of the USSR specifically, but it was kept in the Warsaw Pact (which were the USSR's client states) at gunpoint.

I don't recall saber rattling against east Germany.

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