Is Russia starting to lose the war?

@metal-brain said
Kosovo was part of Serbia. Don't you understand that?
Kosovo was part of Serbia like Crimea was part of Ukraine. Kosovo and Crimea were both annexed. Kosovo by NATO and Crimea by Russia.

If you read my actual with an English to Russian translator at your side you’ll see that I’m very open to Russia retaining Crimea but not the land bridge it recently built by murder and mayhem.
Kosovo has been a Muslim majority country since the days of the ottoman.Empire so stop talking like an idiot.
Stop lying NATO did nit annex Kosovo it simply gave the Serbs who seek a ‘Greater Serbia’ a lesson in why it’s best for the Balkan’s to be a place where age old ethnic and religious groups who inhabit need to live in peace with each other and g

@kevcvs57 said
If you read my actual with an English to Russian translator at your side you’ll see that I’m very open to Russia retaining Crimea but not the land bridge it recently built by murder and mayhem.
Kosovo has been a Muslim majority country since the days of the ottoman.Empire so stop talking like an idiot.
Stop lying NATO did nit annex Kosovo it simply gave the Serbs who seek ...[text shortened]... e where age old ethnic and religious groups who inhabit need to live in peace with each other and g

Kosovo was not a country until 2008. Before that it was part of Serbia.
You are a pathetic liar. NATO annexed Kosovo from Serbia. NATO bombed the crap out of Serbia until they had to give it up.

NATO waged an unprovoked war against Serbia to annex Kosovo to maintain the heroin trade. NATO protected Muslim heroin dealers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/13/balkans

Then NATO protected the opium growers in Afghanistan. NATO protects the heroin trade.

@metal-brain said
Kosovo was not a country until 2008. Before that it was part of Serbia.
You are a pathetic liar. NATO annexed Kosovo from Serbia. NATO bombed the crap out of Serbia until they had to give it up.

NATO waged an unprovoked war against Serbia to annex Kosovo to maintain the heroin trade. NATO protected Muslim heroin dealers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/13/balkans

Then NATO protected the opium growers in Afghanistan. NATO protects the heroin trade.

Yeah ok 💩 for brains.
Because there was definitely no heroin in Europe or the US before 2000 that’s definitely where it all went wrong 🙄

@metal-brain said
Kosovo was part of Serbia like Crimea was part of Ukraine. Kosovo and Crimea were both annexed. Kosovo by NATO and Crimea by Russia.

Basic problem: the postwar world never evolved an accepted mechanism to allow peaceful and orderly secession on the basis of self-determination. Things would have worked much more smoothly if the Crimea, or Kosovo, or other territories like them, had been able to trigger a lawful vote for or against independence.

Of course, it's not surprising that such a mechanism was not established by the fledgling UN (which might have had the moral authority to do so), since nationalism was in the ideological doghouse after the activities of the fascists during World War II. And, of course, the five permanent members of the UN security council consisted of two old-fashioned European imperial powers, one rickety old Asian empire pretending to be a country, one federation that associated secession with civil war and slavery, and one federal union that in practice was highly centralised, was ideologically opposed to nationalism and had annexed several of its neighbours.

@metal-brain said
Kosovo was not a country until 2008. Before that it was part of Serbia.
You are a pathetic liar. NATO annexed Kosovo from Serbia. NATO bombed the crap out of Serbia until they had to give it up.

NATO waged an unprovoked war against Serbia to annex Kosovo to maintain the heroin trade. NATO protected Muslim heroin dealers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/13/balkans

Then NATO protected the opium growers in Afghanistan. NATO protects the heroin trade.

Rather a lot depends on which era one takes as a starting point. Pre-WWI maps show countries which ceased to exist after the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII.

https://www.diercke.com/content/europe-world-war-one-1914-978-3-14-100790-9-36-1-0

Some of those countries, such as Montenegro, reconstituted themselves when the Soviet Union dissolved. Serbia’s borders also changed several times in last 250 years. So it’s somewhat arbitrary to say one country or region can declare independence from post-Soviet-era Serbia but another cannot.

@moonbus said
Rather a lot depends on which era one takes as a starting point. Pre-WWI maps show countries which ceased to exist after the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII.

https://www.diercke.com/content/europe-world-war-one-1914-978-3-14-100790-9-36-1-0

Some of those countries, such as Montenegro, reconstituted themselves when the Soviet Union dissolved. Se ...[text shortened]... o say one country or region can declare independence from post-Soviet-era Serbia but another cannot.

Your historiography is a bit inaccurate. In 1914, the greater part of central and Eastern Europe was under the control of three big empires: the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian (the Ottoman Empire had already lost almost all its European territory). Montenegro was a rare and eccentric case of a small independent principality / kingdom which existed before World War I and disappeared afterwards. It was after 1918 that many European countries became independent: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all emerged out of the collapse of large empires at that time. The Montenegrin assembly itself voted to unite with Serbia in November 1918; a few days later, the union of Serbia and Montenegro was voluntarily joined by the former southern Slavic territories of the Austro-Hungarian empire to form Yugoslavia (officially known, at first, as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes).

None of this had anything to do with the Soviet Union, which in the post-WWI period had little international influence and had actually lost territory; it was obliged to recognise the independence of Finland and the Baltic States, formerly part of the Russian Empire.

Vastly strengthened after World War II, the Soviet Union was able to impose a Communist system on much of Eastern Europe, but almost all of the countries they controlled remained officially independent. The three Baltic States were incorporated directly into the Soviet Union, but these were the only countries actually to vanish from the map of Europe at that time (they regained their independence in 1991).

Although Yugoslavia also became Communist, it quickly fell out with the Soviet Union and pursued an independent course; so there's no such thing as "post-Soviet-era Serbia". The various constituent republics of Yugoslavia mostly did achieve independence after a bloody civil war in the 1990s. Montenegro, however, remained part of a federation with Serbia (initially still called "Yugoslavia", later "Serbia and Montenegro) until 2006, when it seceded peacefully after a referendum. So it didn't reconstitute itself "when the Soviet Union dissolved" (since it had never been under Soviet control), but fifteen years after the fall of Yugoslav Communism.

@moonbus said
Rather a lot depends on which era one takes as a starting point. Pre-WWI maps show countries which ceased to exist after the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII.

https://www.diercke.com/content/europe-world-war-one-1914-978-3-14-100790-9-36-1-0

Some of those countries, such as Montenegro, reconstituted themselves when the Soviet Union dissolved. Se ...[text shortened]... o say one country or region can declare independence from post-Soviet-era Serbia but another cannot.

Apparently you know little about the American Civil war. Lincoln did not allow for the South to declare independence. He butchered millions to preserve the union and is still remembered as a hero despite waging a war of choice.

@teinosuke said
Your historiography is a bit inaccurate. In 1914, the greater part of central and Eastern Europe was under the control of three big empires: the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian (the Ottoman Empire had already lost almost all its European territory). Montenegro was a rare and eccentric case of a small independent principality / kingdom which existed before World War I ...[text shortened]... nce it had never been under Soviet control), but fifteen years after the fall of Yugoslav Communism.

We are agreed about one thing: Yugoslavia was cobbled together from bits left over from previous Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were talking about forming a state already in the 1840s, which at various times up to the end of WWI included 'states' no one but historians now recalls the names of (such as Syrmia, Banat, and Zeta). So it really is arbitrary what decade you're looking at.

@metal-brain said
Apparently you know little about the American Civil war. Lincoln did not allow for the South to declare independence. He butchered millions to preserve the union and is still remembered as a hero despite waging a war of choice.

Do you have a point? No. Your modus operandi here is merely to sow contradiction and discord.

@moonbus said
We are agreed about one thing: Yugoslavia was cobbled together from bits left over from previous Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were talking about forming a state already in the 1840s, which at various times up to the end of WWI included 'states' no one but historians now recalls the names of (such as Syrmia, Banat, and Zeta). So it really is arbitrary what decade you're looking at.

It's not a matter of "agreement"; your basic factual claims in the previous post were in error. You claimed their were lots of countries visible on a pre-WWI map which later disappeared. In fact, there were very few, while lots of countries that had been subsumed into large empires appeared on the map after World War I. You claimed that Montenegro fell under Soviet control; it didn't. It ceased to be independent because it (more or less voluntarily) became part of a South Slavic kingdom which later turned into a non-aligned state with an unusual form of Communist economy.

If we are "agreed" that "Yugoslavia was cobbled together from bits left over from previous Hapsburg and Ottoman empires", that's because it's a historical fact. It's rather odd to talk of "agreement" when facts are concerned. I suppose, however, that the phrase "cobbled together" is an opinion rather than a fact; the choice of words imples that Yugoslavia was an awkward and artificial creation. But in the context of nineteenth-century nationalism and early-twentieth-century ideas of self-determination, unifying the Slavic peoples of Southern Europe in one country seemed to make obvious geographical and ethnic sense. As you say, it was an idea that by 1918 had been talked about for a lifetime (and indeed, had been a dream of some South Slavic thinkers for centuries).

I hardly think it's arbitrary what decade you are talking about... except that, of course, judging the validity of claims to independence on the basis of their antiquity is a fool's errand.

@teinosuke said
It's not a matter of "agreement"; your basic factual claims in the previous post were in error. You claimed their were lots of countries visible on a pre-WWI map which later disappeared. In fact, there were very few, while lots of countries that had been subsumed into large empires appeared on the map after World War I. You claimed that Montenegro fell under Soviet c ...[text shortened]... , judging the validity of claims to independence on the basis of their antiquity is a fool's errand.

It would have been keeping with the principle of self-determination if the Serb ethnic areas of Bosnia and Croatia had been allowed to join Serbia after the dissolution of Yugoslavia; instead the West and NATO intervened and forced those areas to remain under those countries control (though nominally in Bosnia's case). Of course this was justified under the "bad guy" argument regarding atrocities committed by Serbian fighters, but that remains an unjust collective punishment.

Kosovo's break away from Serbia made possible by NATO military intervention was hypocritical given the prior history.

@no1marauder said
It would have been keeping with the principle of self-determination if the Serb ethnic areas of Bosnia and Croatia had been allowed to join Serbia after the dissolution of Yugoslavia; instead the West and NATO intervened and forced those areas to remain under those countries control (though nominally in Bosnia's case). Of course this was justified under the "bad guy" argu ...[text shortened]... ay from Serbia made possible by NATO military intervention was hypocritical given the prior history.

How is giving the Muslim majority in Kosovo their own statehood a collective punishment of the Serbs who already have the biggest state in the region.
I don’t understand how enforcing a workable settlement in a region plagued by ethnic and religious based atrocity and counter atrocity depending on whose aligned with the controlling power external to the region is anything other than a recipe for forever conflict.
Perhaps the UN should oversea referendums in all these disputed regions of Europe and the security council agree to enforce / support the outcomes regardless of their geopolitical preferences.
It’s a pity Tito died and Yugoslavia dissolved itself but that’s where we are and enough people have died

@kevcvs57 said
How is giving the Muslim majority in Kosovo their own statehood a collective punishment of the Serbs who already have the biggest state in the region.
I don’t understand how enforcing a workable settlement in a region plagued by ethnic and religious based atrocity and counter atrocity depending on whose aligned with the controlling power external to the region is anything o ...[text shortened]... a pity Tito died and Yugoslavia dissolved itself but that’s where we are and enough people have died

No I meant militarily enforcing Kosovo independence on the basis of self-determination was hypocritical when Serb areas in Croatia and Bosnia were denied self-determination by military force from the same alliance.

@no1marauder said
No I meant militarily enforcing Kosovo independence on the basis of self-determination was hypocritical when Serb areas in Croatia and Bosnia were denied self-determination by military force from the same alliance.

Well possibly it’s certainly not about just making one group happy for me. As I say I’m not against it being a patchwork of smaller states as long as it results in a settlement that is reasonable in objective non partisan sense and can survive the geopolitical machinations if it’s larger neighbouring states in Europe.

@no1marauder said
LMAO! What a simple minded child you sound like.

The West doesn't give the tiniest (word for excrement deleted) about "murderous crackdowns" by governments willing to play economic ball with Western multinationals and institutions that serve the global wealthy.

I didn't see this tripe earlier, which is yet another false statement from No1Marauder.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26280710

The EU has agreed to impose sanctions on Ukrainian officials "responsible for violence and excessive force" after the bloodiest day of clashes in Kiev.

So much for not caring about the crackdowns, eh?