Some horrific reading:
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Sure, but my original comment included the qualifier “while in office.” But whatever, we can agree they’re both awful and caused many needless deaths.
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Russia’s foreign minister has accused Nato of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine
Wait… I’m confused… I thought Russia had supplied Ukraine with hundreds of tanks and heavy vehicles, just driving them into Ukraine to be picked up at the roadside by farmers. 
So… Russia is fighting alongside NATO in a proxy war with itself?
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Touché:
(the rest of that thread is likewise confirmatory and depressing)
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Complaints about NATO “proxy war” in Ukraine come off pretty disingenuous considering that Russia is waging an actual, open war of conquest there.
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Of course Putin doesn’t see it that way. He’s conducting a special operation to solve a regional (or even internal) security problem, and NATO is exploiting the situation to attack Russia.
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The fallout from this is all over Germany right now. Schröder is an easy target, and he doesn’t do anything to dodge the bullets so far - quite the contrary.
Interestingly, right wing and left wing press are united in condemning him for the phrases reported in the NYT piece. Also interestingly, several outlets use the mentioned “copious amounts of white wine” as a marker for Schröder’s low morals. German public opinion is a weird place…
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I thought that puritanism was fashionable now.
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Hey, Germans invented Protestantism. It never was out of fashion here.
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If so, he’s doing just right. The Puritans, at least the ones that went to North America, drank a lot. Excessive drinking was pretty well accepted as normal. Being a drunkard was not ok, though. Too much public drunkenness would get you a “scarlet D” to be sewn onto your clothes.
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Russia: Ukraine is oppressing Russian speakers.
Also Russia: The Ukrainian language does not exist. Even the Nazis speak Russian to each other.
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It’s a bit weird how Russia latches on to an interpretation of genocide so expansive that it can include the deemphasis of Russian language and culture, and yet somehow so narrow as to not include forced deportations, mass killings and other war crimes.
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Now imagine that Trump were still in the White House. You think the US would be sharing any intelligence with Ukraine, particularly in real time? I doubt even if Zelenskyy had given Trump dirt on the Bidens they’d have gotten much in return. It sounds like the quick sharing of data was as valuable as any weapons system that would have taken weeks to ship over there and set up.
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Made up intel? Yes. Guliani intel.
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Speaking of art, Russia and Nazis…
Oleg Kulik faces criminal prosecution on charges of “rehabilitation of Nazism” for his sculptural installation Big Mother , which was shown earlier this month at the Art Moscow fair. It is the latest sign of an ideological crackdown in Russia since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that “denazification” is the goal of what is officially described as Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
For years the Kremlin has been turning Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany into a sacred event that is commemorated in increasingly ritualized form on the annual 9 May Victory Day holiday.
Kulik’s work came under fire after militant pro-Kremlin politicians said it mocked the towering monument The Motherland Calls located in a complex in Volgograd that is dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad during the Second World War.
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By definition, not “intelligence.”
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