Stephan Goss

I also think a few things need to be acknowledged: 1. GD's message of: "Vote for us or your children will die in another war with Russia" is effective and not without merit. Especially for the older generation that knows what Russian repression is like. Hard to say if the war would have been hot, cold or somewhere in between (green men) but the implication was clear and Georgia was going to lose. Believing that they will not get Russian style repression with GD is likely a fallacy but one can hope that Ukraine will break Russias back before Georgia gets full RU attention now. Even if you didn't like GD, voting against a war in the short term isn't all that unreasonable especially given how weak western support is for Ukraine. Certainly can't expect the EU to do anything meaningful. 2. When I spent time in Georgia in May, the protesters were continuously chanting anti-Ivanshvili chants. But they never chanted FOR anyone that could put the country on the right course. There was no real opposition candidate but many opposition parties without unity. Hard to convince people to go into a hot or cold war against Russia without a leader that will fight for you. 3. I think Georgians overestimated the ability of peacful protest and voting to get rid of the Russians once they run the government. If Russians believed in free elections and the will of the people, the world would be distinctly different.

A tiny clique in charge of the ruling party has stolen Georgia's European future. They stole that European future in good part by bribery, intimidation, direct violence, and some manipulation of the voting process. The tiny clique also took that future away by overwhelming many voters with their dystopian vision of the world -- a vision that has nothing to do with Europe. Where the vote was comparatively free and fair, in parts of Tbilisi's capital, the opposition parties clearly won. 1/n

Thanks for your support Robin! Hopefully Georgia will get a free and fair vote today!

@Nebyerhydse @IFJGlobal I don’t speak Georgian so could be the Georgian phonetic pronunciation?

I tried to enter Georgia (the country, not the state) to photograph the election. I’m an @IFJGlobal accredited journalist. On arrival my passport had clearly been flagged. They took it, I waited for 1.5h and then got paperwork saying I was denied entry and was being deported.

And as a fun parting gift they also lost all my luggage. Apparently it never made the deportation flight.

Forgot to add in my sleep deprived state, they took away my phone for the whole time as soon as they put me into holding and didn’t return it until right before boarding the deportation flight to Dubai. I landed safe and sound though!

@RayBaseley @IFJGlobal Yeah I saw your post before I left and figured: certainly this won’t be a problem for me! 😂

@GossStephan @IFJGlobal Hey Stephen! The same happened to me, crazy… The grammatical errors are crazy…

@FRHoffmann1 Agreed. Poland, the Baltics and the Nordics certainly should consider the same.

I cannot understand why people are surprised or shocked by Zelensky's nuclear weapon statement. Ukraine's desire to acquire a nuclear deterrent is a logical conclusion given the current state of the war and Western policy towards it. In fact, I would encourage the acquisition of a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent. It's the obvious solution to Ukraine's most pressing problems. The main issues are the technical, political, and military obstacles that make this pursuit extremely challenging.

@PhillipsPOBrien That feels premature, given election year politics, I could easily see the WH sending large aid shipments after Nov 5th. Not that Biden has been particularly strong, but the exceptional weakness has certainly aligned with the election cycle.

Hi All, In case you missed it, sent out my weekend update yesterday. It seems like Biden has thrown in the towel on Ukraine for the rest of his administration. Trump will be worse. We can only hope Harris is better.

@Mylovanov Ukraine doesn’t need peace with russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world needs peace from russia.

Those who argue for «peace for territories» are in denial Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, Russia signed 7 agreements recognizing Ukraine's territorial integrity Peace with Russia is only possible if Ukraine can enforce it, giving up land is irrelevant 1/

The vast majority of the “pro-peace” pundits, most of which have of course never set foot onto Ukrainian soil, either don’t understand or ignore what would happen to the people sacrificed to Russia in a peace deal. Their false assumption is that a peace deal would stop Ukrainian civilian deaths when it is the exact opposite. If left alone, Russians will be able to torture, rape and murder occupied Ukrainians at an even larger, industrial scale, just like they did in all the occupied areas, except their army won’t be busy fighting. Ukraines choice is to lose thousands upon thousands of soldiers or to lose even larger amounts of civilians to an ethnic cleansing of immense scale. That was Russias goal to begin with and 3 years of active resistance war combined with people openly declaring their hate for Russia will make their revenge exponentially worse.

This is a truly dreadful piece. Giving up territory to Russia, as the Economist advocates here, would not be realistic, but suicidal. Not only would it consign the people of those territories to torture, despotism and death; not only would it reward Russia for its aggression; not only would it teach other dictators that aggression pays; but it would leave Russia with one foot on Ukraine’s neck, ready to attack again at the moment of its choosing, should Ukraine behave in a way it does not like — or just because it feels like it. Ah, but the Economist also wants Ukraine admitted to NATO. Uh huh. On what understanding? The point of NATO membership is Article V: mutual defence. The main effect is supposed to be deterrent: knowing that other NATO members would come to its defence if attacked, would-be aggressors refrain from attacking — meaning Article V never needs to be invoked. But is that how Russia would interpret Ukraine’s NATO membership? Or would it see it as a consolation prize, a bit of meaningless verbiage to compensate it for giving up the defence of its people in the occupied territories? And, given that context, would it be far wrong? Consider how the Economist itself explains what NATO membership would mean: “In opening a debate about this Article 5 guarantee, Mr Biden could make clear that it would not cover Ukrainian territory Russia occupies today, as with East Germany when West Germany joined nato in 1955; and that Ukraine would not necessarily garrison foreign nato troops in peacetime, as with Norway in 1949.” And then this extraordinary passage: “NATO membership entails risks. If Russia struck Ukraine again, America could face a terrible dilemma: to back Ukraine and risk war with a nuclear foe; or refuse and weaken its alliances around the world.” So: if Russia struck again, Ukraine’s NATO membership would not guarantee the other NATO members would come to its defence, to prevent Russia from taking the territory it has not already taken. Rather, it would merely pose “a terrible dilemma,” in as much as it would risk “war with a nuclear foe.” Can there be any doubt what the Economist would counsel in that event? Can there be much more doubt that the US, having already retreated from defending Ukraine — and forced Ukraine to surrender territory — once, would do so again? Are we to believe that, having refused to place troops on Ukraine’s soil, even as a NATO member, in advance of an attack, it would rush them in once an attack was under way? This is appeasement, disguised as deterrence, and should be rejected as such. Shame on The Economist for publishing it.

@YaroslavAzhnyuk They even explain in their FAQs that they do not use end to end encryption except for secret chats, which they’ve hidden in an obscure UX corner. So TG team and anyone they share with can read all the messages. Yet somehow people believe they are private because Durov says so…

Charges against Pavel Durov are incredibly serious. This may get bigger than Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried and Jan Marsalek combined. And when it comes to the potential use of Telegram by Russia in their war against Ukraine - pay attention to 1/X

Don’t fall for TG’s privacy marketing. There are plenty actually private options available like @signalapp. Those apps are banned in Russia, the supposed haven of free speech, while Telegram isn’t just allowed, it’s the main comms for Oligarchs and the Russian military.

Its basically guaranteed that the usual pro-Kremlin voices will be extremely focused on calling this an anti-privacy crackdown which is ludicrous given that TG never provided privacy to begin with and made decisions that actively let them monitor the communications.

Durov’s Arrest and the potential civilian impact: Durov was effectively the head of communications for the Russian invasion army. But not just them, also for the Russian propagandists, politicians, oligarchs as well as the paid and unpaid friends of Russia all over the world.