Diplomats say Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine has brought back darkest memories of occupation under Stalin

Nato must be ready for Russia launching an “existential” war against the Baltic states “masked by a blizzard of disinformation”, ambassadors from the three countries have warned.

Writing exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph, the top diplomats to the UK from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said that Russia could “pivot quickly” from Ukraine to invade the Baltic.

And they said that Vladimir Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine is evoking the three countries’ “darkest memories” of occupation under Stalin.

The Estonian ambassador Viljar Lubi, the Latvian ambassador Ivita Burmistre, and Lithuania’s charge d’affaire Lina Zigmantaite, wrote the joint article to mark Friday’s 20 year anniversary of their countries acceding to Nato.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I feel like you have it completely backwards.

      Democrats have always been “the big tent” party, which is part of their weakness, as their voters have a wide range of “demands” that are often, if not always, contradictory. You have to remember that this is a party that has to appeal to religiously conservative black people, while also appealing to upper middle secularists. They are trying to appeal to both conservative religious muslims, and at the same time the powerful voting Jewish bloc.

      It’s not an easy tightrope to walk, but it’s not regularly “ignoring demands of the party” it’s “which of these two competing demands of our party can we ignore that will hurt us less?” They basically try to appeal to the voter, but that’s impossible because they are trying to please too many disparate groups at the same time.

      Republicans have the advantage of having to appeal to a smaller group and set of beliefs, and then just get everyone else to fall in line behind it (although that is being tested now with MAGA delusionalists vs the traditional conservatives). Republicans have been pushing this fear of different people (immigrants, different religions)and liberal elites for decades now (as you note in another post, via things like right wing media). . . it’s just that they lost control of it when someone (Trump) rose up and fully embodied the id they had been fostering. . .and now they are just following the playbook where they have to get everyone to fall in in line behind that.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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      8 months ago

      US republicans are doing the opposite, they’re telling their voters what to believe

    • Navarian@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I’ll be real, that situation seems pretty fucked, but I have no idea about US politics really, I’m from Wales.

      That being said, our main political parties are essentially in this same state by the looks of things.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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          8 months ago

          The Democratic party is the only one actually implementing positive changes, and half the things they do gets neutered by Republican politicians and judges. Infrastructure bills, student loan forgiveness, etc, are you not paying attention?

          Republicans only fight for laws that hurt people.

        • Navarian@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          I can’t argue with your logic here, and neither can I fault your conclusion. All that being the case, though, what can US voters do in this case?

          Not vote? Vote 3rd party? Do you guys even have more than 2 parties over there? Seems like you have even more of a duopoly than we do over here in the UK.

    • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I don’t think this is exactly right. For the longest time Republicans were the same way, dangling a carrot of doing something to get votes but never actually doing it. I think Donald Trump has emboldened a lot of people to run for office that don’t understand that you don’t actually give the base what they want cause it makes you deeply unpopular with everyone else.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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          8 months ago

          What they’re saying is crazy bullshit fed to them by a propaganda machine

          Trump abandoned like 2/3 of his campaign points and hyped up the ones that mattered to him personally.

        • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I generally agree with you, I think the one part I disagree on is the why Republicans go along with this. Sure some of it is because of the purity testing kind of stuff but a lot of it is just because the Republicans for the longest time have paid lip service to these issues but never done anything about them. Like with abortion for example. But then you have someone like Donald Trump come in who is just like, well why don’t we do all these crazy things. And that is what emboldened more people like him, with no experience in politics and no understanding that you can’t actually give the base the way out there stuff without alienating the general public, to run for election and start winning in very red areas. So it’s less of a pressure on the party from the outside to start following this new MAGA movement (although that does exist too) and more of an internal transformation of the party under Trump.