NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Berlin:
"We are Russia's next target."
"We must shift to a wartime mindset. Ukraine must have what it needs to defend itself."
"Russia is losing 1,200 soldiers a day. If Putin is willing to sacrifice ordinary Russians like this, what is he prepared to do to us?"
"Eighty percent of the critical components in Russian drones and missiles are made in China. China is a lifeline for Russia's war."
"Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years."
"Conflict is at our door."
"We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured."
I recall when Estonia’s chief of defence @RihoTerras was asked by a journalist in late spring 2014, “What would happen if ‘little green men’ appeared in Narva?” He replied simply: “We will shoot them dead.” https://t.co/FcFt5VmZU3
Putin needs a war with NATO because his power rests on convincing Russians that they are fighting for survival.
His rule depends on permanent escalation, on the constant impression that the state is surrounded, besieged, and therefore united only under his leadership. The rhetoric of existential threat is not a tool among others; it is the foundation of his authority.
This logic is not new. Every dictator who rose to power through aggression was trapped in the same cycle. Napoleon could not stop his campaigns without weakening his legitimacy. Hitler’s Reich collapsed the moment its advance stalled. Even Stalin’s system required permanent mobilization, whether through war, industrial “battles,” or purges. The dictator cannot offer stability, because stability would expose the emptiness of his promises.
For Putin, this means that the end of expansion is the beginning of decline. If Russia is not conquering, it is losing. If it is not escalating, it is being exposed as fragile. The survival of the regime requires external conflict just as much as oxygen is required for breathing. This is why any pause in aggression is temporary, and why peace, for such a ruler, is not an option but a threat.
If Ukraine has no choice but to accept “de facto” occupation — that’s because WE failed.
Not because Ukrainians failed, not because some mysterious “shit happened”, but because for years we ignored all the warnings, repeated all the mistakes of history, kicked the can down the road and refused to do what it takes to defend the rules and principles that enable sustainable peace and prosperity. This is on us.
We are the architects of this de facto defeat, so now we are trying to pretend it came out of nowhere and we did the best we could to stop it. In a spectacular display of unbombed westsplaining, Mark Rutte is suggesting that everything will be OK in the long run, like it was OK in the Baltic States after decades of de facto occupation by jolly old Uncle Joe Stalin.
Well, I have shrugged off a lot of dumb hot takes about my country over the last few years, but this one is literally sickening. Rutte is revealing that the latest genius 5D chess move to save Ukraine is to casually throw millions of people into a black hole of oppression, torture, rape, kidnapping, murder and destruction of national identity — “de facto, but not de jure”.
And the proponents of this plan will keep a straight face while they cite the misery of the occupation of the Baltic States as a shining example that Ukraine should happily walk into.
In his FT column, Gideon Rachman says little to fill the gap in Rutte’s world view:
"The Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic states after 1940 was never legally recognised by the US and most European countries. But it was a fact of life, until, eventually, the Baltic states regained their independence."
Yikes, let’s unpack that.
The occupation wasn’t “a fact of life”, it was a fact of death.
“Eventually” was after decades of deportations, killing, grinding terror and violent attempts to turn everybody into russians.
“Regained their independence” was being crushed under Gorbachev’s tanks while western leaders pleaded with us to give up our fight for freedom.
So… this is the path to peace we are supposed to offer to Ukraine with a smile? These are the glorious new security guarantees that will erase the shame of the Budapest Agreement and allow Ukrainians to have faith in the future?
There are even US Ambassadors talking about how countries can “earn” certain territories and therefore presumably “deserve” them. Would it be paranoid of me to wonder if we just opened the door for Russia to “earn” Narva and Vilnius “de facto”?
The full article is continued at the link below.
"If you live in Alaska, I need you to buy a Ukrainian flag and turn any area that Putin is going to be into a sea of Ukrainian flags - so many that, when Putin lands, all he's going to see is just yellow and blue." -
As President Trump and Putin prepare to meet in Alaska on Friday to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine, American reporter and blogger Joey Contino has called on Alaskans to greet Putin by turning the state into "a representation of what he has been attacking every single day." He urged everyone to join a peaceful demonstration and transform Alaska into a sea of blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags.
"Let him know that what he's doing is horrible and that the rest of the world - even on the far ends of the United States - you guys support Ukraine," @JoeyContino said.
Putin enjoys this war.
He loves it.
Here’s your answer.
He enjoys bathing in blood and watching the misery, death, and destruction delivered by his hand, at his own will.
He has all the money in the world, everything a human being can possibly have.
So war is his ultimate pleasure—it gives him purpose, strokes his wretched ego, lets him imagine himself the new Stalin, and enables him to sow pain simply because he can, sadistically.
It relieves his daily boredom amid infinite luxury and gives him a thrill from the safety of his bunker, at the expense of millions.
He enjoys being begged for peace, making the entire media world wait for a word from him until long after midnight—only to say nothing.
He enjoys spitting in the faces of world leaders through his petty, theatrical stunts: ignoring the Brazilian president’s visit, derailing the Istanbul talks, or making Steve Witkoff wait for hours outside his door, or wiping out an entire city block in Ukraine in the night, just because he can.
He doesn’t care whether he wins in the end or whether this war, with its absurdly disproportionate costs, makes any sense at all.
Putin is a small, insecure, immoral man who has found a new toy in waging the largest European bloodbath since World War II.
And he remains safe and unpunished while doing it.
Of course he won’t stop—his petty lust for power and sadism is far too pleased by what’s happening.