I suppose that the thinking was “they’re fascists, they believe in traditional values, we can recruit them to fight the gays and the trangenders and all that woke nonsense”.
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An amateur error. While fascists certainly co-ordinate across borders in terms of sharing tactics and supporting bids for domestic power, in the end they’re all rabid ethno-nationalists. That precludes any true right-wing version of an “international”.
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IIRC Romanian fascists hate Hungarian fascists because the Hungarians want to reclaim land lost to Romania. Romanian fascists hate Italian fascists because the Italians talk shit about Romanians and equate them with Roma (Gypsies).
Meanwhile:
The European Political Community, first proposed last May by the French president Emmanuel Macron as a forum distinct from the EU, is emerging as a direct result of Russia’s war of aggression. The aim is to create a European democratic space including, but not limited to the EU. It will be a way of providing Ukraine with long-term institutional support and a clear democratic anchorage. After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the west turned the other way; now it must avoid that mistake.
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It’s only sometimes an error: anyone expecting universalist platforms compatible with fascism is a sucker; but the boundaries of the mythic true ethnostate absolutely can and often do not align with the boundaries of the nation state as currently constituted; in which case you can sell a technically international but ideologically intranational platform.
The crazy part is going after such an intensively self-selected group as the defenders of Azovstal, who weren’t exactly fighting to the last because it was cushy and lucrative, and trying to sell them on the idea. It’s certainly possible that some of them will end up as part of a local party advocating for social policies that make the EU sad at some point in the postwar future; but if you are willing to endure prolonged, brutal, and more or less hopeless fighting against the Russians it’s going to take a truly heroic level of socially reactionary beliefs to keep ‘the west’ from, bare minimum, retaining the status of ‘friend of convenience’ until the last Russian has been sent home in a box.
There might well be some takers(though each torture dungeon and mass grave that gets discovered probably peels off a few more), it’s not like all the opposition to Euromaidan was regime security forces; but they probably weren’t at Azovstal.
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Asked if the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons had risen, Zelenskyy said through an interpreter: “It’s hard to say.”
He questioned whether Putin had enough control over the Russian campaign to direct a tactical nuclear strike. The Russians found it “hard to control everything that is happening in their country, just as they’re not controlling everything they have on the battlefield,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy said Putin understood that the “world will never forgive” a Russian nuclear strike.
“He understands that after the use of nuclear weapons he would be unable any more to preserve, so to speak, his life, and I’m confident of that,” Zelensky said.
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Wait, I thought we were supposed to trust Bild as much as we trust Fox/OAN?
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Courtesy of Belarus…
Speaking of Belarus:
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The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed the men were taken to the public safety building in Gambell. Town Clerk Curtis Silook said the men were flown off the island on Tuesday. According to Silook, the men told villagers they had sailed their boat from the city of Egvekinot in Northeastern Russia, approximately 300 miles by sea. Other villagers said the men told them they were fleeing the Russian military.
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Staff Writer, Wealth Team.
Eww
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Nobel Peace Prize winners announced
The Nobel Peace Prize has been given to one individual and two organisations.
Ales Bialiatski - a human rights advocate from Belarus - takes the award along with Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation the Center for Civil Liberties.
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Damn…
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“That part looked really insane,” school student Vitaly Shatrov, 17, from St. Petersburg, told The Daily Beast. “Putin, who many compare to Hitler for the violence against Ukrainian people, speaks with teachers from some bunker about Nazis.”
Brave words, Vitaly
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Five killed in Ukrainian shelling of key bridge in Kherson region – reports
At least five people were killed and as many injured after Ukrainian forces struck a bus while shelling a strategically important bridge in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Russia’s Tass news agency has reported.
Russian-installed authorities in the region said the strike took place as the bus drove civilians across the bridge near the village of Darivka. The claims of the attack have not been independently verified.
Reuters reports videos shared by the Russian armed forces news outlet Zvezda showed the burnt out wreckage of what appeared to be the chassis of a bus, and a badly-damaged van behind it with smoke pouring out its front compartment.
“Ambulance crews promptly arrived at the scene and provided emergency medical treatment to the victims,” a Telegram channel run by the Russian-installed health authorities said.
The Daryivskiy bridge, which spans nearly 100 metres, is one of the only Russian-controlled crossings across the Inhulets river, a tributary of the vast Dnipro.
The bridge is strategically important as it joins two Russian-occupied areas of the region and is just 20km (12 miles) north-east of the city of Kherson. It is in one of the areas of Ukraine which Russia has claimed to annex.
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