A large number of EU resolutions on Ukraine are being blocked by Hungary, said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
Hungary is digging in and refusing to wave through billions in military aid for Ukraine, prompting growing dismay among other EU countries.
"I have to calm myself [when] I talk about this issue, because it’s getting really ridiculous now,” a senior EU diplomat said of the standoff with Hungary, speaking before Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers. “What’s happening is outrageous.”
Diplomats had hoped to have a new €6.6 billion package ready ahead of this week’s meetings of foreign and defense ministers in Brussels. The deal included €860 million for arms procurement, reported by POLITICO last week.
Not everyone who speaks Russian wants to be Russian.
True, from the vitriol I’ve seen directed at Russians living in former Ukrainian territories, it’d genuinely be a toss-up whether they’d go with the guys who invaded and occupied them or the ones who passed anti-russian laws and have banderites talking about ethnically cleansing them in parliament.
There’s really no good outcome for anyone involved, and a longer war makes all of them worse.
Tell Putin
Both parties agreeing to peace as soon as possible would be ideal, but we only need one party to stop this war. I don’t speak Russian and my country is not enabling Russia to continue the war, it’s enabling Ukraine to continue the war.
But if I did have psychic powers and could tell Putin what to do, I’d tell him to sue for immediate peace, ideally with the occupied regions having internationally monitored referendums on whether to join Ukraine vs Russia, but ending this phase of the conflict and moving on to the decades of militia violence and terrorism ahead would be worth even giving up that.
So if your home was invaded in a war that became an unrelenting meat grinder you’d advocate surrender and submission? You’d happily allow things to degenerate into a decades-long insurgency? You’d happily endure the heavy-handed crackdowns the invading government enforced on anyone and everyone who held even the slightest shred of sympathy for the insurgents? You’d accept that the bloody and brutal insurgency was better than the full-scale war despite the constant uncertainty? No, you wouldn’t, would you? You’d advocate surrender and submission again. You’d tell the insurgents to lay down arms because people were dying, you’d tell them that enduring the invader’s harsh rule was better than the suffering inflicted in the fight. You’d tell them to give up.
I do not understand how you do not see the stance you take as the insult it is. I do not understand why you think people should stand down as their freedom is stripped away from them. Putin has made it clear, in a great many speeches, that they resent and reject the idea of Ukranian identity. Yet you tell the Ukranians to surrender and hold no ire to the Russians who levelled so many Ukrainian cities with artillery.
We’re getting a decades long insurgency whether Russia or Ukraine controls the region. There was an insurgency before the war, and there’s sure as hell gonna be one now. Ending the war is the only way we can slow the rate things are getting worse for the people there.
As far as which insurgents, that’s much more complicated, you can’t just say all insurgent factions are good or bad.