I find it increddible, that almost the whole personal that allowed putin to wage this war, is still in some ways in office and power in europe. What happened to disgraced figures stepping back, to give the new and capable a chance to recover ? Steinmeier, Van der Leyen, the posts change and become more honorific, but with such a legacy of ashes, who would want to stay at the press conference?
shame to admit, I wasn't able to predict the start of the war even though I was in Russia at that time. It's was always some news on the periphery of my brain. At somepoint there were news about the russian army "stopping their maneuvering" and I thought "ah, this was a scare tactic after all, no one is insane to start a war"
I guess in Russia they control the news. In the UK there was quite a lot of Russia about to invade stuff in the news. They even had the date down pretty much as it was assumed Putin was waiting for the end of the winter olympics so as to not annoy the Chinese.
I think it's a shame that the west wasn't more forceful to stop Putin invading. I mean the US, UK and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum when Ukraine gave up its nukes, agreeing to respect the borders. It would have been quite reasonable for the USAF/RAF to threaten to take out invading troops and maybe have saved thousands of lives.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 27.2 ms ] thread[Link is in german] https://schmid.welt.de/2026/02/25/braucht-deutschland-einen-...