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No that's not what he's saying. They were led with the promise of NATO/EU membership with no intention to back it up. https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukra

by starkd 5y ago

No that's not what he's saying. They were led with the promise of NATO/EU membership with no intention to back it up. https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia?s=r https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia...

astrange 5y ago
Aaron Maté's journalism consists of reposting things Konstantin Kilimnik told him which is why he's spent the last few years claiming every political story mentioning Russia is fake, they've never hacked the US, etc. If Russia didn't want Ukraine to turn towards the EU, they shouldn't have annexed the parts of Ukraine containing all the citizens who didn't want to do it.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > Konstantin Kilimnik Would this be the very same Konstantin Kilimnik who was the Russian Intelligence Officer found by the Special Counsel, US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the US Treasury to have worked with Paul Manafort and the Donald Trump campaign during the 2016 election? Gee, I wonder why Aaron Maté would want to minimize Russia's moral culpability here. Snark aside, I think one of the easier things we can stop doing here in America is stop sharing Russian disinformation from not disinterested bloggers, who have proven themselves to be very very wrong about the nature of Vladimir Putin and the allure of autocracy in general. This whole "Democracy and freedom are incompatible" idea circling techno bubbles needs to end asap.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Yes, but that was kind of a joke so don't read too much into it. (I do remember he reported an anonymous Twitter account wasn't Kilimnik because he DMed them and asked if they were.) The Substackers, I think, mainly moved to those positions on their own because there was space to make money on it, and polemical opinion writers and disinformation agents end up working off each other because it's convenient rather than actually conspiring. Probably.
- starkd 5y ago
  The article literally starts out condemning the Russia's invasion as illegal. That doesn't mean the West did not bungle this or should be exempt from criticism. When you lead a country with promises of NATO protection, when you KNOW it is going to be provocative, you better be prepared to defend it. The West did not do this and offered no real plan for this circumstance. We shouldn't be afraid to criticize our own government, when it fails.
mcbutterbunz 5y ago
Oh so instead of "look what you've done, you made me hit you", its "look what the US has done, they made me hit you"

by starkd 5y ago

astrange 5y ago

Aaron Maté's journalism consists of reposting things Konstantin Kilimnik told him which is why he's spent the last few years claiming every political story mentioning Russia is fake, they've never hacked the US, etc. If Russia didn't want Ukraine to turn towards the EU, they shouldn't have annexed the parts of Ukraine containing all the citizens who didn't want to do it.

ModernMech 5y ago
> Konstantin Kilimnik Would this be the very same Konstantin Kilimnik who was the Russian Intelligence Officer found by the Special Counsel, US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the US Treasury to have worked with Paul Manafort and the Donald Trump campaign during the 2016 election? Gee, I wonder why Aaron Maté would want to minimize Russia's moral culpability here. Snark aside, I think one of the easier things we can stop doing here in America is stop sharing Russian disinformation from not disinterested bloggers, who have proven themselves to be very very wrong about the nature of Vladimir Putin and the allure of autocracy in general. This whole "Democracy and freedom are incompatible" idea circling techno bubbles needs to end asap.
- astrange 5y ago
  Yes, but that was kind of a joke so don't read too much into it. (I do remember he reported an anonymous Twitter account wasn't Kilimnik because he DMed them and asked if they were.) The Substackers, I think, mainly moved to those positions on their own because there was space to make money on it, and polemical opinion writers and disinformation agents end up working off each other because it's convenient rather than actually conspiring. Probably.
starkd 5y ago
The article literally starts out condemning the Russia's invasion as illegal. That doesn't mean the West did not bungle this or should be exempt from criticism. When you lead a country with promises of NATO protection, when you KNOW it is going to be provocative, you better be prepared to defend it. The West did not do this and offered no real plan for this circumstance. We shouldn't be afraid to criticize our own government, when it fails.

mcbutterbunz 5y ago

Oh so instead of "look what you've done, you made me hit you", its "look what the US has done, they made me hit you"