This is very interesting, since if you go to the main website citeam.org, this article doesn't appear, yet it's clearly part of the website. I'm glad to see they've gone back to publishing large pieces. They've done good OSINT work in the past, and hopefully will do so again.
I found this link in an article at defence one
It's getting awfully tight over there, the world does not need a disgruntled uni student with a gun ( vis a vis WW1 ) right now
Indeed it's political, to demonstrate resolve and solidarity. The Russians however need no convincing about the fact that NATO will defend its territory if required. .
112.international
Yep and the other thing it's doing is uniting Ukrainians. They all mightn't like the current govt and some have Russian as their first language, but they are Ukrainian first and foremost and are taking up arms to defend the country against Putin and Russia.
It also has benefits if done properly; if one knows how far to push; if part of a long term coordinated plan/strategy and if it leads to the intended results.
It's probably addressed to the U.S. voter. Putin has heard the same message over and over again and he knows fully the consequences of an invasion of the Ukraine.
The last part makes me suspect the entire story. There was no "excuse" in Georgia. Saakashvili launched a full on attack on South Ossetia that went on for days before Russia intervened. The whole situation reached a fever pitch that ended in the massive artillery bombardment of Tshinval, in which ~1500 of the towns ~30 000 residents lost their lives. The Russian peacekeeping compound was attacked directly by Georgian troops. By the time Russian moved in, most of Tshinval was under Georgian control.
The Russians were slow in intervening because they were unprepared according to this article: The August War, Ten Years On: A Retrospective on the Russo-Georgian War - War on the Rocks Saakashvili’s decision to open hostilities beat Putin who had intended to invade and undertake a spot of regime changing later. Saakashvili’s gambit failed spectacularly and now he's a wanted man in his own country, had his Ukrainian citizenship revoked and kicked out of there and moved to Poland. Most recently he is in prison in Georgia, with his lawyers in Court in Tbilisi arguing for a personal physician and an "empathy" counsellor to be allowed to visit him in the prison. The judge ordered the penitentiary to adequately treat Mikheil Saakashvili, but did not ask for the admission of the personal physician and the "Empathy" council (mtavari.tv) .
Orban could be sulking at the moment. The European Court of Justice has denied Hungary and Poland's appeal against the EU sanctions imposed against them because of their instituting laws that are in conflict with basic EU human rights law. EU top court dismisses Hungary-Poland rule-of-law challenge | News | DW | 16.02.2022. He will not be a happy authoritarian dictator type chappy.
Glenn Diesen is extremely controversial in Norway, many consider him to be highly biased and representing Russian interests.
Sier og skriver det Russland helst vil høre – Norges Forsvarsforening (forsvarsforeningen.no)
Russland med front mot Norge | Kjell Dragnes (aftenposten.no)
Good propaganda is a mix of truth, half-truth and outright lies. Of course not everything by Diesen or other RT writers is totally inaccurate. Instead of reading RT and trying to figure out what is truth, what is half-truth and what is a lie, I prefer to avoid RT and by implication, also people writing extensively for RT.
I think that perhaps the closest to RT in for instance the US, could be Fox News. If I noticed that you posted an op-ed from Fox News then yes I would make a comment about it.
Other then repeated claims, I don't see any evidence in there that Putin intended to invade Georgia in general. I suspect that, had Georgia not moved against South Ossetia, there would be no Russian troops entering the region. Intent is notoriously hard to prove, but what few objective indicators exist, in this scenario, point in the opposite directions. The author himself notes that Russian troops were returning to garrisons following Caucus-2008 exercises. That doesn't indicate a preparation for invasion, provoked or otherwise. I think regime change was probably being considered as Russian troops took Gori, but it appears that diplomatic efforts prevented this. If the goal was regime change from the beginning, it's unclear why this would have worked.
No offence but that would be silly as it depends entirely on the actual contents. I usually wouldn'tt touch Fox News with a barge pole, especially when it comes to Middle East coverage but this doesn't mean that everything it writes is lacking in substance and facts.
I prefer to say "lazy" instead of "silly". Processing an op-ed from Fox News or RT would require me to examine the basic assumptions, logical constructs, and in general think a lot more than what I normally do, and that requires quite a lot of energy.
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