Summary
The White House has directed the State and Treasury Departments to draft a proposal for lifting some U.S. sanctions on Russia as part of Trump’s effort to restore ties and end the Ukraine war.
The proposal could ease restrictions on select Russian entities and oligarchs, though it’s unclear what the U.S. would receive in return.
Trump has signaled openness to sanctions relief despite previously threatening harsher measures.
Talks between U.S. and Russian officials have intensified, with economic cooperation, including rare earth minerals, emerging as a key topic.
If the US does lift sanctions on select oligarchs from Russia, I think the EU should consider sanctions on select oligarchs from the US.
I can suggest one such oligarch, Elon Musk - he’s associated with wielding illegitimate power, manipulating social media and interfering in elections (both national and primary) using wealth.
How about freezing his assets? I don’t think he has taken the prudent step of collecting all his money and stowing it under Donald’s presidential seat.
Unfortunately, the EU still didn’t even manage to block Twitter and even less to touch Starlink, or send promised money to Ukraine in less than months. I wouldn’t hold my breath on anything further out of what they’ve planned at least 6months ago already, and sanctions against US oligarchs was definitely not on the list.
I think the EU should consider sanctions on select oligarchs from the US.
I can suggest one such oligarch, Elon Musk
All of the billionaires who were mugging for the camera at the inauguration.
This is so wrong. I hate what we’ve become. As an American, I’ve never been proud of what this country has done but I’ve never been THIS ashamed. I feel like a joke.
There’s no more room for nuance. We (that is, our government) are the baddies. Straight up.
So let’s stop beating around the bush at what has to be done, violent revolution is the only path to freedom.
I’m approximately 2,700 miles from DC, so I’ll need several days’ notice for when the violent insurrection will be.
Can it wait a few more months? I need a bit more PTO. Rent doesn’t pay itself.
This is kind of an underrated sentiment. I think a big reason there aren’t more protests and revolting is because we really can’t afford it. The financial impact on each individual can be significant. Employers don’t support time off for anything of a political nature, not even voting.
I don’t believe this situation isn’t intentional. It seems that countries who take two hour lunch breaks and don’t let their jobs dictate their entire lives are far more likely to protest en mass.
Thing is, saving that house now by forsaking the country could lead to that same door being kicked down by the feds in just a few months for that liberal Facebook post you made calling trans people human. Get in the Gitmo van.
The BLM protests were the largest in US history. The fact is that most Americans have been coddled by a stable democracy and don’t care if they lose it, as long as someone puts a buck in their pocket. They think it won’t affect them because Congress bad, both sides bad.
Of the ones who do care, they think protests dOn’T wOrK because BLM or the Palestine protests failed. Completely ignoring the fact that other civil resistance movements have succeeded and are historically more successful than armed revolts against the upper class.
There is plenty of room for nuance, there’s just no nuance to be had.
To help Putin, he is bankrupting USA just like how he bankrupted his casinos.
So rise up against tyranny.
As an American? Surely you mean as a proud member of the new American Protectorate of the Russian Federation, comrade?
APRF, got a ring to it!
Anyway better start being proud or it’s off to Gulaganamo Bay…
Wow! It’s amazing how most of the voters who voted for him grew up hating “commies” but suddenly Russia is their ally. Astonishing.
Russia used to be godless commies, but now it’s viewed as a white, Christian capitalist state with a strong leader. It’s not, but that’s the bullshit Fucker Carlson and other Russian sponsored propagandists have been spewing for the last decade or so.
Maybe that’s cause Russia hasn’t been communist in a long while.
It hasn’t stopped people from thinking that “communism” is a synonym for “bad”.
What’s quite funny is that in Europe there was never really much hatred for communism. It wasn’t what we did, but we weren’t bothered by it. The red scare was an entirely American phenomenon.
However fast forward 40 years and suddenly it’s the reverse. America like Russia and Europe is talking about the threat of invasion.
True
I have nothing against americans, but this is Hitler level bullshit and if americans dont wake up after this (like revolt level wake up), they are no better than today russians orks or past german nazis sympathizer. Until they get their shit together by getting rid of this orange shit pile, americans can just go fuck themselves…
bUt wE hAvE oUr oWn PrObLeMs. tHiS dOeSn’T cOnCeRn Us.
Fucking shameful and depressing. Makes me realize that slogans like “never again” are not at all realistic because they’ll always be idiots who think shit doesn’t concern them, until it does.
I agree. As an American I didn’t understand how this could happen. However, and this excuses nothing, but read the book “They Thought they were Free,” by Milton Mayer. It explains how normal people were wrapped up in Germany. It was eye opening.
[From interviews in 1953] The author determined that his interviewees had fond memories of the Nazi period and did not see Adolf Hitler as evil, and they perceived themselves as having a high degree of personal freedom during Nazi rule
I never considered some Germans still favored the Nazi regime after WW2, or at least not a significant number, especially not otherwise normal people. I’ve ordered a copy of the book
It was the generation after the Nazis that did all the work to redeem Germany. The Nazis themselves never admitted that what they did was wrong, even when it destroyed their own country.
And of course they felt free. To the mediocre, the hateful, and the weak-minded, “freedom” means power over others, and the Nazis gave their supporters a tiny bit of that power.
Ordinary Men is another very good one. It uses testimony from after the war to establish the story of a real life German police unit and their commander who were ordered to start mass killing.
I hadn’t thought of it that way before but I think you nailed it. History won’t care who you voted for.
I’m trying hard not to accuse America per se but recognise that this is Trump and his administration being driven by Kremlin interference and direct involvement.
I cannot see the American people putting up with this nightmare but I fear it’s not hitting home as it should.
Ukraine is just a part of a bigger picture where Russia is actively interfering with Western politics, business, governments, elections and referendums with the aim of bringing down the West.
With the traditional USA out of the game Russia will move on to eastern Europe. In the meantime China makes it’s move on Taiwan and others in the region; the Trump USA taking Canada, Greenland, Western Europe; the middle east being carved between Russia and Trump USA.
It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better whilst Trump is in power.
I sincerely hope that the military, even red state members, would recognize invading Canada or any of these countries as being a real fucked move and not what they signed up for.
Even though the EU has been funding Russia with fossil fuel imports? Kinda feels like we’re the only country that was willing to make a stand and did it alone while Russia’s GDP rose last year.
And another piece of evidence that Trump is nothing but a Russian agent in the Oval Office. When will the US media finally start to ask about this?
And another piece of evidence that Trump is nothing but a Russian agent in the Oval Office.
Russian puppet, FTFY.
No puppet! No puppet! Yer the puppet! —Puppet in Chief
they did that a long time ago
In a few small outlets. I have not seen a big headline on the front page of a national paper, or an opener on the nayor TV networks news.
i believe it was called the Mueller special counsel investigation
Does this mean Russia won the cold war
Fuck man…kinda feelin that way ey?
pretty much, they switches thier strategy to using propaganda and bribing since the 80s;.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
In the Americas, United States, and Canada:
-Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony, such as, for instance, provoke “Afro-American racists” to create severe backlash against the rotten political state of affairs in the current present-day system of the United States and Canada. Russia should “introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics”.
When Ukraine’s president surprisingly shifted towards Russia, the people engaged in civil disobedience until there was a new president.
What will the US do?
Nothing. 50% of the country loves their strongman president more than freedom or common sense
Less than a third of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Less than less than a third voted against him.
“In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.”
~ David Foster Wallace
70% of Murca voted for him.
So you’re saying those who didn’t vote love him? How does that make sense?
I’m saying they voted tacitly in agreement with everyone that voted for him. Whether they love the man doesn’t matter. They supported him by voting with their asses.
I was originally replying to the post above that said: “50% of the country loves their strongman president more than freedom or common sense.” And I was specifically disputing the 50% figure in regards to “loving” Trump. So you’re arguing something else entirely.
It’s an important distinction because falsely claiming that half the country loves Trump legitimizes his authoritarian rule.
I understand what you’re saying. I also dispute the 50% number.
I’m saying only 30% of the country voted for him, 30% against, and 40% voted with their asses, making the effective amount of “love” 70%, not 50%.
Approval rating of ~50% notwithstanding, he has a 70% mandate to fuck shit up when we have 40% ass-voters.
And the other 50% thinks that the best avenue for social change is to attack people who don’t like the latest Disney movie.
You’re framing that as a difference in taste when in reality it was a difference in having shitty bigoted views or not. Haven’t you fuckers muddied the water enough?
Exhibit A.
Oh look, another Trumper obsessed with culture war issues that no one else cares about… I’m so surprised.
Exhibit B.
A US backed coup is not “civil disobedience” lol
kindly, Fuck off.
A couple of suspicious sounding phone calls intercepted from an embassy, when every embassy in the country was having their own discussions about their preferred outcome to the collapse of a government, do not influence millions of Ukrainians who know their own country and government, to take to the streets in a riot over being betrayed over something they voted for.
Yall, the USA just lost the fucking Cold War.
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The real lesson is to run down your enemies as they retreat. America failed to do that with the south after the Civil War. America failed to do that with the Sov Union. Looks like the allies failed to do that with the Axis as well. Every evil entity will roll over and beg for mercy with crocodile tears. Leave the people, annihilate the state.
Either recruit people to your side or marginalize and destroy them completely. There’s no in between.
It’s more subtle. Technically they won, but while they were winning, Russia was buying the power in US. Weird situation now where the winner becomes a vassal state of the loser…
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About 30 percent of Americans are treasonous cunts and the others have no idea what’s happening
Trump is malicious. Most Americans are just plain ignorant.
Ignorance has consequences tho.
And oh boy aren’t we seeing that right now
Only 22% voted for him, and a large portion of those fall into the ‘no idea what’s happening’ camp.
Just wait. In fucking Russia, civilians are not allowed to own an AK-47, AKM or any military based rifle. To take complete power, Krasnov will need to stomp on 2A.
I think Trumpism does not need to take away guns thanks to the correlation between Trumpism and gun ownership. Why would they disarm those who support them and carry out their wishes with a degree of plausible deniability, as in January 6th?
Because ultimately, those armed MAGA people’s faces are just too delicious for the leopards to resist. There’s already been discontent that they aren’t seeing the improvements they wanted, and some of them directly getting screwed by Trump and Musk.
As good as that would be and as much as I desire it, my impression is that too many of them are trapped in a disinformation bubble to realize what and who is actually causing their problems. Some might, like the former Republican who shot at Trump and the veteran who blew up a Cybertruck, if I understood their motivation correctly, but I doubt such incidents will ever reach such a scale that Republicans reverse their entrenched stance on gun ownership.
There is some correlation but many marginalized and left-leaning folks (if not outright leftists) seem to be arming themselves, based on my observations at least.
Given how things are going a fair number then probably won’t be card carrying Trump supporters for much longer. They’re already pretty pissed off with him.
The moron that tried used an AR-15 which shoots a tiny little bullet and not the appropriate calibre. If he had known anything about ballistics we wouldn’t be dealing with this.
That’s what you get with a bad education system.
I was taught how to consider bullet velocity and trajectory by the government when I was 20.
You probably also were taught to use at least a 30 calibre bullet like the M21 (which is what the Secret Service used to return fire)
I wasn’t being trained as an assassin.
Choosing the calibre wouldn’t be my prerogative.
What we were shooting with was just 7.62. Which now that I check equates to a .30cal actually. Never knew that, huh.
I did handle some .50cals, but not a sniper rifle, and I don’t know how sneaky I could be with a tripod mounted .50cal AA machine gun.
Tldr basic conscription but I did go the longer way voluntarily and am an NCO. I just recalled some basic ballistics lectures from your comment.
The AR bullet is less than one third the weight and much smaller than the 7.62 round which is why I said it was a shitty choice (and specifically why we still use Korea era armament to this day in the M 21, and 60, mini gun etc (NATO 7.62).
NATO 5.56 Is for ground troops and is designed more to incapacitate
7.62 and 5.56 is basically just a choice.
Thats what made us Finns joining NATO so hard (as in a side from all the politics and just practical matters), because we use 7.62 for all ground troops, especially because Russia uses it as well and wed like to be able to scavenge their ammo if they try any special military operations this way.
We’ve fucking tons of our own make of a AK variant, the RK. RK62 is decent but the sights are shit, RK95TP is awesome. That was my main weapon, had to keep a -62 for 2 months when I was in a poorer regiment for trainining. (Their boots sucked as well everyone from our brigade got a permit from the doc to wear holiday boots for normal service because they were just so much more comfy, like walking on air vs walking in glass.)
That 7.62 is not the same as NATO 7.62. The AK round has the diameter but not the length, weight or amount of gunpowder.
You are right that it doesn’t matter that much compared to 5.56, for a battle rifle, but NATO 7.62 is much more powerful and weighs a shitload more. It’s what I use to shoot 700m (and as I said above what US special forces still use as the standard sniper rifle M21)
Russia has been using 5.45 since the 70s (The ones with the brown magazine instead of black). I know the Czech SAR models were available in 5.56x45, 5.45x56, and 7.62x39 (NATO is 7.62x51)
You don’t have to be sneaky, just not fucking miss like the gormless cretin that last tried.
I mean, if you’re not sneaky and you’re setting up a .50cal turret where they’re holding a speech from POTUS, I’m pretty sure someone would have some notes on that.
I mean I’m Finnish, not American and I do understand American gun culture is pretty liberal, but is it that liberal?
Edit but oh boy would I fucking love to open up on that cunt on a stage. CHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOKCHOK
But he missed because the bullet he used was too small and too light and didn’t have a proper ballistic trajectory
5.56 effective range out of a 16" barrel is 500 yards. Trump was a mere 400 feet from Crooks.
“Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL and the former head instructor of the SEAL Sniper course, said a well-trained shooter could shoot very accurately with an AR-15 at the distance at which Crooks shot Trump, especially with a magnified optic such as an ACOG sight.”
Dude missed. The weapon and projectile are more than capable of delivering an accurate and lethal hit at that distance.
TL: DR, Skill issue.
No he was well within range for a 5.56. the problem was his scope wasn’t sighted in correctly and he sucked at shooting. https://youtu.be/ulh88aBI0iU At about the 5 minute mark he gets into the incorrect zero.
Just because it is in range doesn’t mean it’s appropriate
It was the wrong calibre for what he was doing. The wrong platform for his objective.
I can but 4” clay pigeons at 50m with a 9mm pistol but I should use something else.
Idk man it was less than 200 yards. The military does qualifications out to 500 with the same caliber. Right after it happened every journalist was out there saying it was an impossible shot, which it wouldn’t be for a reasonably skilled shooter. If you look it up most folks are saying 5.56 is effective out to 600 and a skilled shooter can group at 1,000 or more.
Idk why I’m arguing about this the kid was a useless shithead, just wish he’d done better I suppose.
Also, don’t aim for the head. Jesus. Aim for the chest.
And why only one shot? Keep pulling that fucking trigger.
Crooks did keep shooting… He killed one person and hit a few others.
Doesn’t work when the target is wearing discreet body armor, and the impact has to be instantly lethal. Trump isn’t, going to bleed out (they pre-deploy emergency services to large events) Even a lung hit isn’t going to kill fast enough. So center mass become “pretty much heart only”.
Shooting for the head and neck is pretty much the only option in that scenario.
That event was staged, look at Krasnov’s fucking ear. No scars!
You underestimate plastic surgeries
Get ready for weapon sales for Russia!
the secret service will be extra busy.
Does anyone else remember the 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton where she accused Trump of being a puppet for Putin, and he interrupted “No puppet, no puppet! You’re the puppet!”
Or when Alnur Mussayev, the Russian officer who served in the KGB’s 6th Directorate in Moscow, said that Trump was recruited as a Russian agent in 1987, under the codename “Krasnov”, when he went to Russia for a “real estate project”.
Remember when the SS lost all of their communication records from Jan 6th?
Europe please be ready. My tea leaves are pointing towards the use of nuclear weapons in Europe while the us is distracted with civil unrest.
Kick the US out of Nato and any special status in the UN. Sanction the everliving fuck out of everything US. This will destroy the retirement I was at least partially expecting to get, but fuck it.
Trump is such a master negotiator. Betray our allies, threaten to leave the UN, stop all cyber security operations against Russian, lift sanctions against Russia that are working, block Ukraine from joining the UN, and say that any chance of ending the war has to result in Ukraine ceding stolen territory.
All before negotiations even start. What a mastermind.
Ukraine is part of the UN. I think you meant NATO.
You are correct
Kind of proves there is no deep state right? Feels like they might have given the praetorian guard a nod.
There should be a rule in UN that any threat made to leave UN by the leader of the country should lead to immediate suspension and sanctions from the UN.
If you want to leave, submit a resignation and leave, no theatrics and threats allowed even if you are a TV show host president like Trump.
the UN is just a clubhouse where people agree to talk. nothing more
No country with nuclear weapons gives a flying fuck about what anyone at the UN says, coincidentally, many of them are permanent security council members.
I would like to see mass sanctions on the US. Isolate the crap out of them.
neither of those things are possible.
DJT is where he is, because of legalese. and as far as alliances and memberships to intnl groups go, the US is untouchable.
The US is sabotaging its own alliances. They’re hardly untouchable.
There is no mechanism to removing someone from NATO, or the UN, especially the UN Security council. literally meaning, there is no way it will be done that will be recognized
a far more effective method would be for protesting nations to leave those orgs themselves. UNSC members could literally drop nuclear weapons on half the world, and still be untouchable in the UN. its a broken system that aimed to add permanent power to the victors of WW2. except, all countries are corruptable.
The US is NATO.
Reward your friends, punish your enemies. Trump showing that he views Russia as an ally, and Canada as a threat.
You know what would help end the war in Ukraine? Letting Russia keep all their money and having no repercussions for their actions. That should do the trick.
Well it will help end the war, just in Russia’s favor
Yeah I figured this would happen. And when the cost of gas goes up because of his Tarrifs we’ll be buying oil from Russia again…
