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.
It is time to develop a way to remove nations who clearly don’t have the EU’s best interest at heart. Hungary is long overdue to be bounced from the EU.
While I understand the sentiment, such action doesn’t match the long term goals of the bloc to unify the continent. Another solution needs to be found to ensure single bad actors cannot hold up actions which severely impact the remaining stakeholders - I have no idea how it could be done though.
Xoxo, Another useless armchair observer
I think that is a fair point. One possible option would be to withhold any financial assistance to Hungary. As of 2021, they cost the EU 4.2 billion euros (https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/).
Noice. That makes €10.8billion for Ukraine.
Yeah, and they’d be a much, much better partner.
Ukraine isn’t in the EU.
Correct. But if we stop blowing money on Orban and his cronies, then it can be sent to Ukraine instead.
Ohhh, gotcha. I understand now. lol. It’s been a long morning…
They can become part of the union when they get their shit together.
Another long term goal of the EU is to promote peace and democracy across Europe.
Allowing Orbàn to further democratic backsliding at home and undermining of the EU’s democratic processes and missions goes contrary to that goal, and the usual withholding of EU funding isn’t a sentence at all to a quasi-dictator who revels in the fact that reduced funding means more social misery means easy elections for a populist who blames every problem on the EU.
Kicking out Hungary is a solution of last resort and we aren’t there yet, but in a system where Member States could turn totalitarian (and as Sovereign states we have no legal means to force out a dictator), exclusion must be on the table if we are to uphold our democratic values.
they need to get rid of the 100% thing. two thirds and three fourths majority is hard enough.
Agreed.
Yes. Same goes for NATO, which has no expulsion mechanism right now.
reallly? sorta surprising for something the us it basically behind.
It started out as an alliance of western European states, the US and Canada in the aftermath of WWII. At that point, they were pretty sure nothing unexpected was going to happen soon, and I doubt they saw it as anything more than a gentleman’s agreement that could easily be broken off. It’s evolved into the military arm of the collective West slowly and probably mostly recently.
Turkey was added (along with Greece) in the 50’s, probably on the basis of being a weak nation, easily commanded, that they didn’t want to fall to the Soviets. Hungary on the other hand was added after the Cold War, in the period where the West thought that it was the end of history and they didn’t even have to try, everything would magically go great.
Nope: The Bosporus. Turkey isn’t weak the last time that happened was in anticipation of the fall of the Ottoman empire, they don’t take orders from anyone but OTOH their general geopolitical stance is very much NATO-compatible so they’re a match. Do take note of how Turkey played the whole Sweden/Finland accession thing to get its regular concessions for the Bosporus but without actually damaging anything – they know how to rock the boat without drilling holes. Bit dramatic but, well, they’re southerners. Greece needed to join at the same time as Turkey otherwise there would’ve been war between the two because Ouzo or Raki or something.
Hmm. Well, Greece at least ended up being a banana republic for a while. Having those straits is huge, though, you’re right.
This is what makes the EU dysfunctional - there is not a way to bounce a member from the EU nor a way to override a member states veto. The state can even veto changes to try and override vetos.
The EU continues to exist in a black hole between a super state and a club of nations. Until it resolves that long standing conflict small states like Hungary can hold the whole EU hostage to its demands.
The problem is you’d have to override national sovereignty to get rid of Hungary and once you do that the EU suddenly looks much less democratic. The EU may be too big to force such a fundamental change through now.
The solution to the current problem is obvious - European nations should bypass the EU to provide funds for Ukraine. But that is not palatable to the EU as it undermines the EU itself, making it irrelevant to an area it’s trying to take control of - security.
Okay so an EU-only version of NATO. All that money goes through it. Thanks Hungary, problem solved.
They’d have to almost unanimously decide that being entirely unanimous is no longer required, bending the rules to change the rules, because that is the only way to unfuck themselves. Let Hungary object, but if they’re alone, write it into law anyway. What are they gonna do, leave? I guess if their membership is no longer useful to Russia, they might.
What if they were to have a rule such as 'if a state vetoes a bill that has like 90+% support 3 consecutive times, then they will be unable to veto the bill the 4th time. That way if its obvious all the other people agree on something to hold that strong a majority its not indefinite.
Removing isn’t a thing. Complete suspension of everything, very much yes. And Poland won’t save them now, doubly so over Ukraine.
I don’t think Serbia will ever become a member of the EU
Another Russian proxy.
War is bad.
Every day we extend this war, more and more people die, statistically mostly civilians. While we are spending billions on bombs, China spends billions on healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
And for what? So that the part of Ukraine that was trying to secede during the civil war has to stay? Because Russia is going to start a war with NATO after spending a hundred thousand lives trying and failing to avoid having most of its population and industry a few hundred miles from a hostile NATO member?
This is in nobody’s interest except the shareholders of weapons manufacturers.
Russia can end this war tomorrow. Any and all deaths are on them. Hell, if Russia would just stay out of their neighbours business, there would have been no civil war in the first place.
If Russia would quit invading their neighbours, their neighbours wouldn’t have had the motivation to join NATO in the first place (see Sweden and Finland as the most current examples).
Joining NATO is not a defensive move, every single war its fought has been offensive in nature, and to quote Anthony Blinken “You’re either at the table or you’re on the menu”
Go hit the bottle again. It absolutely is a defensive move. Them and other countries near Russia were happy not being in NATO until Putin started attacking neighbors… He’s made it clear he wants to restore the USSR and its power…
Ukraine’s mistake was not moving faster/sooner to join NATO…
If Russia has legitimate reasons, why are all the reasons they give for their actions always a bunch of lies?
Why did they have to stage false flag terror attacks on their own soil to justify an attack? Why do they have to doctor footage, make up fake citizens, and twist history?
If they have the truth on their side, why not tell the truth?
I’m not saying the invasion was legitimate or justified, those concepts don’t even factor into state actors. I’m explaining the things that motivated it.
They’ve said over and over that it was over the failure to enforce the Minsk II agreement. But lies are convenient and animating so you get both. Same reason the US media pretended that Iraq had chemical weapons and was involved in 9/11. The populace probably would have been happy to go to war without those reasons, but it makes it easier and increases domestic support for the ruling party.
But they didn’t really motivate it though
The alternative is what? Putin just hates the Russian and Ukrainian people so much he decided to create a humanitarian disaster? That he wanted the wealth and productivity of land that currently looks like a WWI battlefield?
Lets be realistic. Putin is an agent of Russia’s national bourgeoisie, he wouldn’t have power if he didn’t offer anticommunism and stability for the oligarchs he depends on.
Yeah this war made Russia sooo stable
Putin is a madman who wants more power and more land and more people under his control. They genuinely thought the Ukrainians would give up within days.
All the intel from that time shows they didn’t expect lasting resistance. They expected to be able to hunt and execute everybody who had been part of the old government without any hickups, then just take over. And this was supposed to happen after a false flag attack on Russian soil, blamed on the Ukranian government, most likely together with a PR flood trying to convince the population that they would be safer under Russian rule due to their own government “being too dangerous / erratic” or whatever else.
The balance between Putin’s and other oligarchs’ power is not very stable given how many of them he has had killed. He’s relying on fear to keep them all from ganging up in him way once, just like how he relies on fear with everything else.
“every single war it’s faught”
So that would be Afghanistan.
The Balkans were just generally on fire in the 90s and NATO enforced a no fly zone and sent peacekeeper forces after the fact.
There’s a few more peacekeeping missions and no-fly zones (Lybia for example), then some training missions, some humanitarian missions (Pakistan for example), a few air campaigns against non-state entities (“terrorists” but realistically that’s often just a matter of perspective), and a bunch of anti-piracy actions.
So it’s “every single war” with heavy emphasis on single.
Peacekeeping? Libya had the highest HDI of Africa before NATO’s “peace keeping”. But it’s hard to separate the blame of NATO and just America for arming the factions. Same with the balkins.
Dude, at least visit Wikipedia before you argue. Lybia was an example of NATO enforcing a no-fly zone, not peacekeeping. And Lybia’s HDI was back to pre-civil war levels three years ago (ie the 2021 data matches the 2013 data).
Are you going to pretend that Muammer Gaddafi was a benevolent and beloved dictator, and that there’s no way Lybians would want him to fuck off all of their own?
No it fucking isn’t. NATO lists all actions they’ve taken part of on their website. If the action is there, it was NATO, if it isn’t, it was not a NATO action.
I’m assuming that your meaning is that every single offensive campaign NATO has taken part in was one it started without provocation. That’s a very interesting argument, so please provide specific evidence to back the claim you are making that every single NATO offense was an aggressive one. And don’t just give me some form of “do your own research”, you’re making a claim so back it up.
Furthermore, reading between the lines, it seems you may possibly feel that these alleged aggressive moves by NATO justify Russian imperialism, in this specific case the invasion of Ukraine. If that’s the case, do you think Putin’s comments regarding the reestablishment of the Soviet Union have nothing to do with the war?
Strange, and which countries did NATO invade then?
Because the only case NATO was called was after 9/11, but since it was about invading an other country all of it was voluntary. So the majority didn’t even participate.
War is bad.
Nobody was trying to secede. Ukrainians would like to stay Ukrainian and it’s good to help people who want help.
What of the Russian-speaking population who was still in revolt before the invasion? You know the civil war and all that?
Oh the Russian speaking population that sprang up in rebellion from nowhere in pretty much a single day with a clear and organised command structure from day one, with matching gear, uniforms and weapons and a bizarrely poor understanding of the local geography despite supposedly being locals. You know they attacked a movie theatre because they thought it was a local government center? Those rebels? The ones the locals didn’t recognise? The ones whose casualty numbers had a weird correlation with Russian servicemen dying from unexplained causes? Those rebels?
Now I normally don’t call ‘Russian bot/troll’ too often but Russian propaganda about this is so poor I have a hard time coming to any other conclusion.
Do you honestly not know that most of eastern Ukraine speaks Russian? Like this is an easily verifiable fact you can just google.
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
I should really proofread my comments before I post them but then again you don’t strike me as worth the effort. I am well aware eastern Ukraine speaks Russian and has for a long time, I was talking exclusively about the rebels coming from nowhere.
That makes your argument worse because if it was locals they wouldn’t be so radically stupid
Gotta love the Sudetendeutsch-excuse.
Stop listening to Russian propaganda? By and large it didn’t exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukraine
This escalated into open civil war with Russia supporting one side and the US supporting the other until the invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas
They were fighting right until the day of the election. Zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the fighting, and he ordered them to do so, but the units refused to stand down.
They didn’t stand down because Russian troops on “vacation” kept getting lost. It was an invasion from the very start.
You forgot about a country called Ukraine there buddy.
I gotta say, of all the conflicts going on in the world, Ukraine/Russia has got to be the one with the clearest “good” side and “bad” side. Pick another conflict to be edgy about.
For the people in Ukraine, this protracted war is the absolute worst possible outcome. Ukraine will never be a safe country again in either of our lifetimes. The state has had to privatize and sell off public assets like the power grid and take out massive loans. Ukraine will never be a prosperous country again in either of our lifetimes.
As far as black and white conflicts go, there’s a country currently dropping 2000 lb bombs on a tent-city of mostly starving children, that formed from refugees of it’s earlier bombing campaign, who are mostly refugees of even earlier ethnic cleansing campaigns.
While that is unfortunate, it’s still better than the alternative…
It absolutely is not. Nothing Russia could possibly impose on the people is worse than an entire generation of men lost to the meat grinder and the poverty that follows this kind of economic damage. A quick loss would have a million more Ukrainians living in their homes today instead of displaced throughout the world, and a hundred thousand still alive.
Wrong. Ask Ukraine or all the other former SU countries. They already know how it is to “live” under Russian occupation. If you’re such a fan of that, go move over there for yourself, and join VK so you can at least spare us with your moronic propaganda.
Please stop abusing the flagging system. “Misinformation” is not against the rules. You flagged them over a dozen times for that.
Hey @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world, I haven’t reported any misinformation myself, but just pointing out that your community rule 3 says, “Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.”
TBH I’ve noticed a lot of accommodation for the feelings of tankies in mod decisions here recently. I get that you probably want to be “balanced”, but could we maybe just agree that it’s a FACT that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not justified or legal, even if it hurts the feeling of those who like to defend the actions of the war criminal Vladimir Putin?
If you agree that this is indeed a fact, then perhaps you might also consider clamping down on all the tankie posts that amount to nothing more than apologia for authoritarian dictators? If not, I’d love to know your reasoning for allowing them to post their toxic propaganda here.
It’s disinformation, not misinformation. He’s willfully spreading propaganda that aims to sow discord within our societies. I guess you’re just as bad as the worldnews community on lemmy.ml. An accomplice. I guess you too will reap what you sow eventually.
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I am shocked, shocked I say to see some one with a lemmy.ml account spouting talking points to back up vicious right wing dictatorships that are aligned against the west.
Well, maybe not that shocked…
https://fedia.io/m/politicalmemes@lemmy.world/t/701056/Lemmy-ml
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That ml instance might as well stand for machine learning, because you have the same amount of empathy, common sense and coherence.
The iirony meter just broke
The reducro ad adsurdum of your position is that all states should immediately surrender to any sufficiently armed state which threatens them.
Correct, it would be absurd to apply that analysis to all states everywhere forever without any examination of the history or nuance.
sigh this is the logical consequence of your position
So the meat grinder of Russian mass murder every time they take over a city is better than fighting back?
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The situation for Ukrainians in cities Russia took control over is soo soo much worse than you can imagine. Torture, killing most adult males, horrific abuses - and you say that pushing Russia back and reclaiming cities is the worse choice???
and who’s fucking fault is that? you have absolutely no sense of decency.
How decent can you be while supporting more bloodshed and immiseration?
I doubt your motives.
Decency would be supporting the victim, not justifying the aggressor.
The victims are the people. Every day this war goes on means more victims. The only reason I examine Russia’s reasoning is to predict future behavior, moral judgements on Russia or Putin’s character have nothing to do with this since the only moral action is what benefits the people.
Then spend your energy on stopping Russia. It has the same effect as Ukraine surrendering.
Your arguments fall flat if you disagree to that.
putin could end the war at any time by ceasing to try and take ukrainian land…
would have saved the lives of half a million russians lost in ditches. but putin doesn’t care about them.
Replace “we” with “Russia” and you get it
Giving Russia what they want is in nobody’s interest except Putin and a select few of his politicians. They’ll then use the land in Ukraine to try to grab more land in Europe, notably Poland, Finland, and Moldova, through more war
there was no civil war except in putin propaganda.
History didn’t start in 2022.
There’s been a civil war since shortly after the 2014.
Zelensky was elected as the peace candidate, but was unable to get the right-wing militias that had been inducted into the reformed state’s army to stop shelling eastern Ukraine, which Putin used as part of his justification to invade. There were also some nasty laws passed, such as banning Russian from being used in schools.
I don’t believe Putin genuinely thinks an invasion is helping the Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine, rather I think that’s a pretense to address an existential security concern, having NATO-backed right-wing militias within reach of most of Russia’s population and industry.
There has been Russian agents pretending to be locals since then. That doesn’t make it civil war, it makes it an invasion
Remember when Russia was planning false flag attacks on their own territory so they could blame it on Ukraine before invading, but then they got called out and no such attacks happened because Russia knew the world knew and the Russians would know too who did it if Putin had his own population slaughtered again (like he did to first get elected), and then they invaded anyway without literally any justification at all?
a little known commander, general Sherman
“secede” and what else, that was most brazen imperialist land grab since ww2
how is that war with NATO going? zero NATO casualties, half million russian killed and wounded by now with no end in sight, after running through decades worth of soviet hoard of weapons. and what for? all for a distraction, psychopatic entertainment for russian nationalists, everything to keep putin’s approval ratings high. he tried to pull it out for the 4th time, and this time he met prepared resistance. end of war will be end of putin, but he doesn’t want to step down, so until someone pops him there won’t be peace
I’m not gonna look towards the guy who spent most of his career massacring indigenous people to figure out who deserves what.
As thrilled as you are to fight Putin to the very last drop of Ukrainian blood, you have to understand this is sociopathic right?
It’s unlikely that would affect the Russian war effort. I’m no expert in Russian politics, but I do cursory research and I’m not aware of any person or party waiting in the wings to take power that would support unilateral withdrawal from the lands its held for like 2 years.
Why is it sociopathic to want Ukrainians to be free instead of being tortured and abused daily for the next several decades?
I don’t think you actually believe Ukrainians will be safe if they stop resisting. You should know, because if the majority of Ukrainians actually would prefer Russian rule they’d just stop fighting and no amount of weapons sent to them would keep the war going.
And yet, they chose to resist.
When you do the math of “Half a million dead Russians, and it didn’t cost us a single life”, you betray that Ukrainian lives literally do not matter to you and that you consider dead Russians a good thing.
That would require the Ukrainian government represents the interests of the majority of people in Ukraine. There’s only a handful of governments whose actions are consistently in the interest of and supported by its people. None of them are in eastern Europe.
Shit Tankies say.
You cannot allow aggressive states to just take other people’s lands.
.ml detected, opinion rejected.
Go back to your shithole tankie.
Oof that’s very closed minded of you.
Not really. Being open minded doesn’t mean you give equal credence to nut jobs, conspiracy theorists, racists, etc.
I wouldn’t listen to a Nazis opinions on Jews.
I wouldn’t listen to a zionists opinion on Palestine.
And I don’t listen to a tankies opinion on Ukraine.
That’s not at all what I meant.
I’m an ml user - just because it seemed okay to me when I first started with Lemmy - and now I learn it’s got a rep for being for tankies etc
If you look through my comment history you’ll see I’m probably just some lefty twit from Europe.
I by no means meant you should tolerate the scum that promote Putin or Pooh Bear’s agenda.
Just don’t assume everyone on .ml is a cunt. Be more open minded and less label driven.
If you don’t want people to lump you in with the tankies, you can simply not associate yourself with said tankies.
Just like I’m going to assume anyone on truth social is a right wing chritsofascist. There might be a dide on there that’s sane and alright, but I don’t care.
Oof that’s very closed minded of you
You are wrong.
This war is also in the interests of Putin.
Putin decided to start the war of aggression.
Putin invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear arms on the guarantee of security from Russia. Russia has violated that guarantee by invading them.
Putin can end the war today.
US can not end the war today. Even if it left Ukraine alone, Ukraine would still fight to the end.
EU can not end the war today. See above.
The fastest and easiest way to end the bloodshed is for Russia to withdraw today.
Leaving Ukraine to defend itself wouldn’t even end the bloodshed. After Russia has completed its revised objectives it would invade the entirety of Ukraine under newer revised objectives. Then it would invade other neighbours under other revised objectives. The bloodshed would continue until the USSR is reformed and a new cold war begins.
Those suggesting the only way to end the bloodshed is through capitulation to the aggressor need to study their history better to see that capitulation to the aggressor never stopped an aggressor, it just lead to them going further until stopped.
Imagine if the USA invaded Mexico - no one would be saying Mexico should end the bloodshed. And the USA’s adversaries sure as hell would be doing everything they can to help Mexico.
For those in the back: Putin withdrawing from his war of aggression is the only known way to end the bloodshed today. All other solutions would result in further bloodshed.
Except they were engaging in serious peace talks back in March of 2022.
We could have had this same peace 2 years ago, and avoided so much needless destruction.
Pay walled.
Sorry, try the “bypass paywalls clean” plugin.
Except if you’d read the article you’d see that’s bullshit and doesn’t support your claim at all.
Quotes from the text: “And the Russians knew these provisions would make it more difficult for the Ukrainians to accept the rest of the treaty. They might, therefore, be seen as poison pills.”
“Still, the claim that the West forced Ukraine to back out of the talks with Russia is baseless.”
And calls it “putin’s manipulative spin”
It’s Foreign Affairs, literally a state-department mouthpiece, you have to read between the lines and understand the way they use emphasis and conjecture to manipulate the narrative.
The atomic unit of propaganda isn’t lies, it’s emphasis.
First of all, that’s your source, not mine. Also, if they wanted to keep their warmongering interests hidden why even publish that article? You make no sense
Secondly, really? Your argument is “you’re supposed to believe putin, not the ones that conducted interviews, did research and wrote the article”? That’s biblethumping-level of weak, c’mon… “Nooooo, you’re interpreting the holy texts wrong”
I didn’t say anything about believing Putin, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him. My point is that you have to read any media critically and understand how they are trying to twist the facts. I chose a state department-aligned source so you wouldn’t disregard it out of hand.
The fact is that Russia offered a peace deal that would have ended the war with Russia even giving back much of the territory it had taken 2 years ago, Zelensky pulled out of the peace talks when he had guarantees of unlimited support. The writer’s bias of course, makes them suggest that actually Russia didn’t really want Ukraine to accept the peace deal.
The only thing the article shows is that putin is a lying sack of shit and that they’ve been negotiating a peace since february 2022. The fact that they couldn’t agree on terms and you blaming it on western support is purely your interpretation, has nothing to do with facts. It literally said in the article that russia’s first first peace proposal was capitulation. And negotiations brought it down to “neutral” russian puppet, at which point negotiations crumbled. There’s no bias there, that’s what happened. Even the last version of the draft was something that was unacceptable to Ukraine. Anyway, I’m done. You’ll keep blaming Zelensky, because that’s all you’re capable of doing, I’ll keep blaming putin, because he’s the one that started this and the one that can stop it. There’s no point in arguing further.