As a bit of context. Abkhazia is internationally recognized as part of Georgia, but since 1993 declared indpendent with strong Russian ties and not under control of the Tiblisi government. There have been multpile wars with Georgia involving Abkhazian troops with Russian support.

European countries sending weapons to Ukraine do not need treaties. Russia invading a European country means that Russia might invade another European country. It is just a lot cheaper to just send weapons and other support to Ukraine and have Ukraine be bombed and their soldiers dead, then to end up in a direct war with Russia.

For the US Ukraine is a problem, as being soft on Russia, means other countries who want more land could attack countries, which the US has intressts in. For example China might see the US Ukraine support and figure invading Taiwan, just means they need to pay a lot of money to US lobbiest to avoid a US response. That might be wrong, but certainly not a good look.

China and Russia are not natural allies. Russia is very much afraid of China taking land in the Far East.

In other words you are saying that I am a racist.

I argued against Europe having benefited from having colonies in the Europe community, which by its nature is eurocentric.

As I said Europe should pay for its crimes and I fail to see, that crimes need to benefit the criminal to be considered crimes. However that obviously makes reparations a lot more complex.

If colonialism has made those countries poor, then they should have gotten rich once they were no longer part of a colonial empire. At the same time countries which had large colonial empires should have gotten poor, when loosing their empire.

What we mostly see is that this is not the case. Portugal got rich after its empire collapsed. Spain was about as rich as its former colonies for a long time. France and the UK did not collapse after loosing their colonies. There are rich countries, which never did have many colonies or only small ones for a limited time, like Germany, Scandinavia or Switzerland. You also have Oman, which did not get rich despite having had colonies. We also have Africa, which only has Botswana as a country genuinly benefiting from no longer being a colony. However that was after diamonds were found inside Botswana shortly after independence. Funnily enough Botswana also asked to be a colony. Everybody else more or less failed to get rich.

That is not to say that colonial empires should not pay for crimes they comitted or return stolen artifacts. The benefits of colonialism were mostly going to a small elite in the colonial countries and cost the states a lot of resources, which in many cases would have been better spend on other projects.

Russia has very few regional bases of power. Most of Russia is controlled by the Kremlin pretty directly and the parts of Russia lacking direct control also lack nukes. So the most likely option is a bit of maybe even violent infighting in the Kremlin and then the victor rules Russia. The Kremlin would also control nukes, so China is unlikely to invade.

Speaking of nukes, there are 8 launch sites for ICBMs, 3 nuclear submarine naval bases with nukes and two air bases with long range bombers aremed with nukes. So 13 locations need to be controlled. That seems rather possible to me. So honestly I doubt it will be too bad.

Ukraine has seen what the Russians are willing to do to Ukraine, so they themself will try to become part of NATO or the EU as much and as soon as possible. So it is pretty much NATO/EU or Ukraine building nukes, probably even both.

Russia would be weakend and needs some time to rebuilt. A defeat would mean that reconstruction period would take a long time. Looking at demographics and Russias economy maybe never.

Arte gets a bit of funding from the EU as well, to ad subtitles for some programming to Spanish, Italian, English and Polish. However outside the EU you sometimes need VPN to access to content.

euractiv.com is pretty good, but also privatly owned.

arte.tv news format journal is great, but only video and German and French public broadcasting. However they are very willing to have shows not talking about either country. However it is French and German and not English

theguardian.com is independent, but mixed in its reporting standards. Sometimes amazing sometimes just okay.

Qualified majority on foreign policy matters by the Council and a simple majority from the parliament. Also the option to defend the EU called out by the Commission to be able to act quickly.

Germany and France combined have about a third of the EUs population. Also the EU parliament is made up of different parties from the individual countries. Those parties disagree on a lot of things.

Sounds like a good idea, but it would probably be better to have a military and multiple civilian agencies specialized in different fields. Like medical, physics, chemistry and so forth research agencies. Also in edge cases both agencies should be allowed to do research or cooperate on it.

No, it is not. 5% hurdle means Linke, FDP and the other small parties will not get seats. In some polls they have combined 16% of the vote. So the coalition does not need 50% of the vote, but a bit less then 45%.

Were do you get your polls. Current average would be easily enough for CDU and SPD or Greens. So a two party coalition, which would probably work rather well. https://dawum.de/Bundestag/

Currently polling would basicaly mean the center right CDU/CSU would be chancellor, with a coalition with either the social democrats or Greens. Both would be enough for some comfortable leads. The AFD could also be an option, but I highly doubt it.

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The article does not talk about the Budapest Memorandum at all. So have you read the article?

I see the argument with the Budapest Memorandum everywhere and it is just not true. If it were true, all parties would have broken it, when Russia took Crimea. That would make all the actual security guarantees, which have been given to Ukraine for the time after the war worthless, while questioning NATO and the EU as alliances, with two of the most powerful members not actually delivering the protection they promised. So I find it very relevant to point this out.

The company is called For of Europe and they have pretty much everything in Europe these days. For example the Ford Focus was developed in Europe. So it really is just the brand. Everything else is pretty much European.

Also nobody agreed to protect Ukraine for giving up nukes. This is the text:

1. Respect the signatory’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).

2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”.

5. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non - nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.

6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.