Summary
Germany warns that Russia is rearming faster than expected, replacing war losses and stockpiling tanks, missiles, and drones.
Putin has redirected Russia’s economy to fuel its military, aided by supplies from Iran and North Korea.
While there’s no clear evidence of plans to attack NATO, Russia is creating the conditions for it.
On the Ukraine front, Russian forces are advancing in south Donetsk, nearing strategic town Pokrovsk, a key supply hub and coal mining center.
Analysts suggest Putin aims to seize land before potential peace talks.
We live in a world where might makes right. International laws and norms were killed on Oct 9, 2023.
World was always run on the rule that might makes right.
The erosion of international laws and norms –insofar as these were ever a thing and not merely a hopeful illusion– did not begin with Israel’s Gaza campaign; by the time Israel started bombing Gaza, international laws and norms had already been put into question by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the United States and the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, among others. The list is not exhaustive and any bias unintended.
Nothing like what’s happening in Palestine though. The US didn’t kill as many children or destroy as much infrastructure as Israel did. Despite the criminality of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, their intentions weren’t genocidal even if they did show complete disregard for human lives. Somehow Israel has impunity that no one else has, and committed war crimes at a rate and scale that not even Russia did in Ukraine. Israel intentionally created a famine in the Gaza Strip as part of its campaign against the Palestinians as a people.