Wake Up, Europe

Nonsense. Europe is winning big time. Soros even gives the arguments for this.

- Europe has expanded its outer borders towards Russia for the last 25 years. Ukraine was once considered part of the Soviet "heartland". Well, it isn't anymore.

- The trend towards democracy and freedom is led by the young generation. In another 20 years, even in the worst case, the defenders of the status quo will have been replaced "by nature".

- Given structural reforms of Naftogaz and incentives for better thermal insulation of houses, Ukraine would become independent of Russian gas. And that is what they will do. And what every other European country already does. You think the German all-in for renewable energies (and the smart-grid this requires) is about pretty flowers and climate change?

Also, Russia has maxed out their military options already. They sure wanted to stage a full-out war (like the occupation of neighboring Georgia in 2008), but somehow couldn't. The economic ties with the EU and EU-friendly countries are too strong now.

When the dust settles in 10+ years, Ukraine will be out of Russia's reach and the EU more indepenent from Russia's natural resources. And that will happen irrespective of who bails out whose debt next week.

So, according to Soros, Putin is literally Hitler?

I'm not really comfortable with the idea of fighting the "deflationary forces that are already at work" by going to war against Russia. And I'm not comfortable either with fighting Russian power through a proxy country.

At risk of being labelled a troll, I'll say: go back to sleep, Soros.

The need to reform the EU bureaucracy is desperate, but it is very difficult to argue this when the debate around the EU being so all-or-nothing serves both pro- and anti- EU groups so well. I'm not using "reform" as a codeword for dismantling the EU here, quite the opposite.

Just a way out of the bullshit austerity programs instated in many European countries that helps the globalists instead of people in their respective countries. Yay to being part of the EU!

The key point he makes is correct, though: The west can't achieve its goals, if it is not willing to fight, either by investing enormous amounts of money into Ukraine, or by a military intervention. We should probably go for the first or accept that Ukraine is lost.

Putin has done a lot of good for post-soviet Russia. Russia in the 90's was full of murder and unpoliced brutality that people who grew up like us couldn't imagine.

the EU is not facing a threat, the US was- the US has funneled millions in trying to get Ukraine away from Russia and has succeeded, what they didn't count on was the fact that the extremists that were appointed power would galvanise Russia by outlawing Russian as a spoken/written language, this, of course prompted action because a _lot_ of Russians live in Crimea.

Russia has enough to worry about on it's own, it's not interested in expansion, every move we've seen them make has been to protect it's people from what it see's as harm.

Now, every time this topic comes up I'm chastised for being biased myself, but I very much see the US and Russia as two sides of the same coin, except we allow America to brainwash us and forbid Russia from telling it's side of the story.

Edit: My family are mostly from Eastern Ukraine, so I know what they tell me- there's no "Russian Troops" although they really wanted support- there are some supplies (water, generators etc; because the Ukraine government turned off the water and power) the people you see are using anything they could find- raided military bases and stolen gear.

Sorry but I do not believe George Soros has any sympathy at all for either Europe's, America's or Ukraine's problems, only if it affected his own investment outcomes. Besides, if he wants to play interventionist, he's in the wrong party.