Per a presumably accurate translation, Putin's May 9 Victory Day speech went kind of flat. Rehashing of old tropes. No actual declaration of war nor deeper incitement to patriotism. Kind of laughable at the end to appeal to living in a multiethnic country.
NATO's secretary general Jens Stoltenberg joining the Team Biden warmongering ante-upping? He claims "Ukraine can win this war," .... if it gets extra help, natch. No talk of NATO trying to facilitate peace talk. No talk of cutting off Russian oil imports, which would be the real sauce actual extra help but that NATO/EU can't afford.
Turkey is making noises about blocking NATO membership for Sweden and Finland — unless sufficiently bought off by the US in the Middle East. One human rights sellout coming up?
Could Finland have a "caveated" or "opt-out based" NATO membership? Discussed here, but color me skeptical on NATO membership wanting that, especially when it's coming from a British touter of Finland joining.
Are there still hopes for a compromise peace? A Medium blogger discusses the possibilities while also passing along rumors that Putin has blood cancer.
Taylor Lorenz may have been right in her piece a few weeks ago on right-wing outrage, but she's simplistic at best in her piece about Biden's Orwellian Board of Disinformation. Plenty of leftists questioned it as being a likely nat-sec nutsack PR front to push, and push hard, the Biden / NATO / bipartisan foreign policy establishment party line on the war. We looked at Nina Jancowitz's past history and that was easy to call.
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