Alexander Clarkson
@APHClarkson
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Lecturer for German and European Studies at King's College London. Opinions my own. RT not always endorsement. Also to be found at @APHClarkson @mastodon .social
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After a long road I'm proud that my book "Die Macht Der Diaspora" for
@Ullstein
, which explores the history of diasporas in Germany will be on sale from 29 September. It looks at diasporas from Ukraine, the Western Balkans, Turkey, Iran and the Arab World
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In a Mongolian Military Intelligence Agency back office in Ulan-Bator, a young officer presses pause on the Carlson-Putin interview and takes a few maps out of his desk
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The man from the EU Commission arrives to investigate who may have blown up NorthStream
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Surprise at how systemic looting is in Russian military culture reflects how many underestimate poverty of regions in Russia outside of a handful of cities such as Moscow, St Petersburg, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk
Small town and rural Ukraine is much more prosperous by comparison
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When Russian military bloggers realise that the reserves needed to hold Izyum are currently near the Chinese border for the annual Vostok exercise
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This has not happened in Iran since 1979
Confirmed by minutes.
This is a revolution
#IranRevolution2022
#Mahabad
governor office NOW
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If you track back from Chechnya, to Georgia 2008, to Syria, to Donbas War to now, it's pretty clear that the culture of the Russian military is steeped in war crimes not just as "excesses" but from the perspective from soldiers right to the most senior officers as "normal"
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Two weeks before the war started I told an incredulous US journalist that Ukraine's military intelligence services blended ruthlessness of Soviet traditions with NATO techniques and an Israeli way of seeing the world.
These are people who do not stop until a target is achieved
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Maybe, just maybe, the UK's closest allies are all in the EU?
The wacky Ambassador that the U.K. foisted upon the United States is not someone we are thrilled with, a very stupid guy. He should speak to his country, and Prime Minister May, about their failed Brexit negotiation, and not be upset with my criticism of how badly it was...
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Interestingly, for the past three months Ukrainian intelligence officials were very confident that all hell was about to break loose in Russia in ways that were dismissed by Western counterparts
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A lot of the speculation about Russian retaliation against Finland and Sweden does not account for how weak the Russian state's position in the Baltic is right now
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Panic-buying in Kaliningrad. Really hope Brussels, Warsaw, Vilnius, Berlin and Stockholm are focused on what is unfolding there right now
Паника в торговых центрах в Калининградской области.
Литва заблокировала грузовое ж/д сообщение между рФ и Калининградом.
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If Russia loses, all the people on Left and Right in the West that demanded a "compromise" that "accepts Russia's legitimate interests" will shift to accusing the West of having sucked Putin into a deliberate trap to crush Moscow
None of these people will rethink their positions
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Bucharest would do everything to avoid it, but high risk of Romania getting pulled in if things escalate in Moldova
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Liz Truss's Director of Communications, Jason Stein, used to work as Communications Adviser for Prince Andrew until the Maitlis interview
Well, that was interesting start to the morning. It would appear that Prince Andrew’s media advisors have moved on to number 10.
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Probably a good time to note that Woodward and Bernstein's source was a senior FBI official outraged at Nixon's treatment of the Bureau
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From a European perspective it is fascinating how parochial Musk and his clique are in their obsession with the tiniest detail of US culture wars and broadbrush ignorance of developments in Europe, China and the rest of the world.
Twitter wird zum verschwörungstheoretischen Alptraum - und zwar durch seinen neuen Besitzer
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Mass mobilisation in Russia ends up yanking 10 000s of working age people from key economic sectors needed to sustain basic agricultural and industrial production while putting enormous pressure on transport infrastructure needed to supply Russia's cities with food and goods
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The idea of Russia being a great power hegemon is so deeply embedded in narratives of Russian national identity that even some Russian liberals struggle with a reality in which such ambitions far outstrip Russia's economic and state capacity.
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There is something epically absurd in a BBC documentary claiming to tell the story of the impact of the UK leaving the EU on the British political system that manages to not talk to anyone from the EU side including Ireland, nor anyone in Scottish, NI or Welsh politics
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Again, the key question is not "why does Toby Young says stupid things?"
The key question is "what structural dysfunction in the British media and political system has enabled Toby Young to get so much attention and influence through saying stupid things?"
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Good time to recall that in Syria, the Russian military systematically attacked power stations, water facilities, hospitals, bakeries and schools with to break rebel groups fighting a vicious dictatorship.
A military culture anchored in a pre-Geneva Conventions world
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All the people from UK Facebook coming back to UK Twitter only to discover that Brexit isn't done after all
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A substantial part of the German intellectual, business and political elite has not adjusted to the possibility of Russian state failure and will find itself scrambling to adjust to that scenario if it happens.
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Lord Frost outraged at deal negotiated by Lord Frost is getting boring now.
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The EU is like a supertanker. It is extremely slow and difficult to change course, but once that course is set it ploughs through everything that is in its way.
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If the US is unable to provide aid to Ukraine and does not seem a reliable partner for other European states its concerns will be ignored by Ukraine and other European states
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Guys, the Russians will have figured out that the US and European NATO states are sharing targeting intelligence with Ukraine by the first week of March.
The handwringing over media reports on something all sides have know for weeks is getting silly.
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Canadians react to Trump's lead in the GOP primaries
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The destruction of the dam pretty much legitimises the EU redirecting Russian state funds to pay for Ukraine's reconstruction
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The Russian military is under such pressure in Ukraine that it has had to move many if not most assets it would use to intimidate Sweden and Finland from the Baltic to the Black Sea. All the fury on Russian TV about Finland and Sweden's decision to join NATO is a sign of weakness
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What British cityscapes actually looked like in the mid-20th century
Fed up with nostalgia for traditional British life that ignores the brutal working conditions, endemic poverty and smog
How did we go from the below to the above? What is the raw bleak quality that now drips its way into every corner of our national live?
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This isn't just about Ukraine, this comes down to whether Europeans can trust the United States to act as a reliable ally.
“I think this would be, if we don’t do it, the most serious foreign-policy mistake of our lifetimes,” Senator King tells
@sbg1
about restoring aid to Ukraine to beat back Russian invaders. “It will reverberate for fifty years.”
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It was baffling to me in January how the Russian general staff as well as NATO allies could underestimate Ukrainian military power and the ruthlessness of Ukrainian military intelligence services.
Yet that is what happened and here we are.
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This attempt to shore up the coalition with the SPD looks silly at a moment when other EU states are shipping tanks and artillery to Ukraine. Berlin looks unreliable and unserious to allies and partners. In 2022 Germany is to EU defence what in 2012 Greece was to the Euro
Germay's vice chancellor has backtracked his support for sending tanks to Ukraine, amid divisions within Berlin’s ruling parties over how much to get involved amid concerns about becoming Russia’s next target.
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The attraction Russia exerted towards elites in other post-Soviet states since 2000 was the promise of substantial financial rewards for loyalty to Moscow while still retaining access to all the luxuries of the EU, UK and US. Moscow can no longer offer that deal.
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With Sweden and Finland in NATO, the Baltic becomes a NATO lake on which the Russian Navy is completely outclassed
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We're several days from it dawning on UK politicians and journalists that the British army does not have the driver numbers to make more than a marginal impact on a national supply chain crisis
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An indefinite closure of all traffic through the Suez canal in 2024 could well tip Egypt into bankruptcy.
In trying to strike a blow against Israel the Houthis will have collapsed Egypt instead.
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Politician who rose to power promising to prevent the entry of Europeans into the UK begs Europeans to return to the UK.
“We want you back”
PM Boris Johnson invites European workers who left the UK as lockdown began to return now it is being eased and retail sector is reopening
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There is something Monty Python level absurd at BBC vox pop reports around Yorkshire towns that present as the voice of the British people the pensioners you meet at the pub at 2pm on a Wednesday while everyone else is at work
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Maybe Group E would look different if Germany had spent 2% of its GDP on defence
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Poland is not going to trigger Article 5 over these kinds of incidents if confirmed. Either way though Warsaw will shift even more equipment that enables Ukraine to retaliate
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This isn't just about Ukraine, this is about US commitments to Europe as a whole. A US political scene in which one of the two main parties is unwilling or unable to live up to commitments to allies is no longer one that can be trusted or relied on by Europeans.
Sources confirm that Trump is directly trying to tank Ukraine/border negotiations to deny Biden a political win and keep immigration as a campaign issue this year.
There's a few ways this might go. Few are good for Ukraine, and above all, precious time has been wasted. 🧵
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In Germany, populist politicians refuse to answer questions from a specific journo, all journos immediately leave the room
#AfD
-Pressekonferenz ohne Presse: Weil
#Brandenburg
s AfD-Fraktionssprecher Andreas Horst keine Fragen von
@Micha_BILD
erlaubte, verließen alle Journalisten den Raum. AfD-Vizechefin Birgit Bessin brach die PK darauf ab
Danke, liebe Kollegen!
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So wherever things are headed with Moldova, the Romanians and Moldovans need support and backing from NATO and EU partners now
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I'm old enough to remember when aspiring Telegraph columnists told us all the EU was about to collapse
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If the EU wants to paralyse the Belarus economy all it needs to do is offer easy access to work permits in the Schengen area for skilled Belarusian industrial and tech workers
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It's hilarious watching the US Right cheer the anti-globalist shtick of a leader whose ministers are currently begging the EU for more money as the Hungarian economy gets driven into a ditch
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The Romanian state leadership gets a lot of stick over recurring corruption scandals, but in foreign policy and defence terms NATO and the EU are lucky that for the last two decades Romania has been run by pretty sensible people
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Would not be surprised if in a scenario where Russia enters into a deep internal crisis, many letter-writing German intellectuals suffused with boomer utopianism end up blaming Ukrainians and Americans for outcomes rather than a Putin regime that hollowed out the Russian state
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The outlook of the Russian military is anchored in a world before the Geneva conventions. Of sieges, sacks, looting and mass killing as "just one of those things that happens and is needed in war". It's an outlook shared by much of Russia's foreign policy elite.
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A Tory government considering 56% rises in water bills to avoid the nationalisation of Thames Water even if it means electoral suicide for dozens of Tory MPs in Southern England looks like a fitting denouement for the Thatcherite experiment.
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There is a lot to criticise France and Italy over, but both have played a much more active role in supporting Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield than Germany. Note who Kyiv particularly targets with its frustration.
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At greatest risk as a result from the collapse of Russia's position in the Baltic are not the Finns or the Swedes but rather Kaliningraders. Moscow's paranoia about Kaliningrad "separatism" that only exists in Moscow's head means frustration there faces brutal state responses
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Barnier will answer every angry challenge by a UK journalist by politely pointing out that in December the UK signed on to the basic principles of what has been set out in today's EU document.
May now can either claim she was duped or that she did not understand what she signed
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How Scholz through dithering and downright obstruction of efforts of other EU states to help Ukraine is undermining moves towards European strategic autonomy that are essential insurance in case of another phase of US weakness will go down as another German foreign policy fiasco
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I think we can all agree now that trying to occupy and subdue a country of 44 million people that don't want you there with less than 190 000 troops is a terrible idea
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A situation in which every EU state around the Baltic is also a NATO state also means that EU requests towards Russia in terms of border control also gain added weight
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WTAF.
You can see why the Ukrainians are pretty cagey about sharing too much sensitive information with US partners if highly sensitive information circulates this widely in DC
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That paradox of a German anti-imperialist Left through to German business elites so trapped by a particular image of Russia that they cannot come to terms with a world where Ukrainians and other East European states might prove more skilled and resilient than Moscow
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Marine Le Pen clearly hopes that a hacking attack by a foreign power will let her restore France's sovereignty
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Can we stop with the "Prigozhin the caterer" talking points?
In the early 1990s restaurants, bars, even hot dog stands were ideal fronts for money laundering and every other form of organised crime. Not just in St Petersburg and not just in Russia.
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The UK is now officially a country that follows all EU laws and regulations it has no control over.
Congratulations.
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How would the UK press react if a German minister declared that all businesses should list foreign workers and spoke of national greatness?
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The anti-imperialist Left needs to ponder how an invading army of a declining imperial power seizing the children of its former colony and deporting them deeper into territory under its control would be defined in any part of the world
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The arguments for much tighter EU regulation of digital platforms run by a small clique of American billionaires who are increasingly intellectually and socially isolated from a world outside a Silicon Valley bubble look stronger and stronger
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I often use this clip from Osijek in Croatia from 27 June 1991 to illustrate how swift the descent from peaceful everyday life to war can be.
#CrveniFico
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So in
@faisalislam
's report just now, Vince Cable claimed that Theresa May in her meeting with opposition leaders said that "the people voted for pain" when asked about the damage No Deal might wreak.
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Russia is not dependent on the West says Russian minister whose family has luxury flats in London and who sent his daughters to study at Columbia and Imperial
Россия добилась самодостаточности в большинстве стратегических областей и не полагается в них на западных коллег, заявил Лавров. Он добавил, что это актуально и для любых других стратегических сфер, где разрабатываются передовые технологии:
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Attacking Wikipedia is the digital equivalent of kicking a puppy.
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The ability to avoid food and petrol shortages is a basic sign as to whether a state has enough strategic autonomy to control its own fate
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In an alternative reality President Hillary Clinton is boring an audience with renewable energy statistics while we get on with our lives
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There is nothing more neo-Ottoman than a currency crisis
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How do you explain the rise of Liz Truss to a German radio audience?
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Leave's inability to mobilise significant numbers of people in demonstrations opens up serious doubt over claims that anything other than Hard Brexit would lead to revolt in the streets.
That Leave couldn't counter today's Remain protests makes Brexitism look like a paper tiger
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The UK government is so deeply committed to building a global role for Britain that it is cutting its diplomatic service by 20%
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A Russian military outlook that brutalises its own officers and troops and glorifies a world in which moral norms are there to be broken is at the heart of the horror inflicted on Ukraine
And it will not differentiate between war outside Russia or civil conflict within it
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Ursula von der Leyen and Boris Johnson's visits to Kyiv also usefully signal that whatever other differences might exist within the Western alliance system there is unity over support for Ukraine and pushback against Russia.
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Most of regional Russia has poverty levels worse than Moldova interspersed with a handful of wealthy cities from Moscow, to Krasnodar to Yekaterinburg that have Germany level prosperity and household costs.
Soldiers and officers are recruited from these regions.
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Chinese state affiliated media just conveying Blinken's statement
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday the State Department is investigating possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.
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The moment every European NATO state hits 2% GDP spending on defence the MAGA isolationists and Quincyite Restrainers will simply move on to the next pretext around which they'll demand US withdrawal from Europe.
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2 more weeks before Lukashenko starts quoting Hrushevsky and claiming that Belarus and Ukrainians are united by their freethinking spirit unlike those pesky Muscovites, actually
Meanwhile: Lukashenka has already praised Ukrainian army, Ukrainian mobile groups tactics, says Belarusian armed forces should learn from that
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As the Putin regime degrades, everything the Russian military and security services have inflicted on Georgia, Syria or Ukraine. these institutions are perfectly willing to inflict on any Russian city or region that tries to decisively defy the Russian state
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The extent to which in the 2010s many serious figures waved away war crimes in Syria committed by Russia under the leadership of generals like Surovikin as "well that's just the Russian way of war" was deeply infuriating and paved the way for Russia's current atrocities
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The surprise you keep hearing among many German commentators over Ukrainian state and societal technological sophistication is both very telling and intensely annoying
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If the UK government feels it does not have to live up to negotiated agreements with the EU in relation to the Irish border, then the Spanish government may well decide it does not have to pay attention to agreements it has negotiated with the UK on Gibraltar. Escalation risks.
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That makes at least half a dozen senior Russian diplomats to have died suddenly since late December
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German pundits going on about "EU divisions" over Ukrainian government irritation about Steinmeier are underestimating the extent to which this is more a matter of a largely united EU that has to drag a German government along with it that is struggling to adjust to new realities
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1. Polish and Ukrainian politicians will continue to squabble over petty bullshit for decades to come.
2. When faced by a shared threat from Russia they will back each other to the hilt for decades to come.
Welcome to European integration.
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I have rarely seen a politician so brutally dismantled as Davidson was by Sturgeon here. The Tories would have been better off leaving Carlaw in place or keeping Davidson out of the Lords
How to hand an actual “arse on plate” recipe provided by Nicola Sturgeon
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The moment the UK imposes a US-style visa system on EU travellers, the EU states will impose US-style visa systems on UK travellers. The Tory Party is able to pitch this because of a widespread belief in the UK that consequences are for other people
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If you're wondering why even more Russophile French officials and officers have lost patience with Moscow you might want to glance at what has played out in the Sahel over the last few years.
The fine art of needlessly creating enemies.
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The idea that an authoritarian regime whose security services fail to anticipate an armed revolt and whose army fails to crush the advance of rebellious armed groups comes out stronger of any deals made to buy off rebel leaders doen't really stand up to any historical comparison
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State that according to many IR realists can not be pressured into concessions makes concessions after facing pressure
#BREAKING
Russia has said it will resume its participation in the Ukrainian grain deal, days after it suspended its involvement and raised fears of a global food crisis.
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A great power hegemon is able to sustain dominance through economic, political and military means. Russia lost the ability in the first two spheres some time ago and its military power is being ground down now. The challenge Europeans face is in managing Russian decline
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I was in a bar in Berlin full of policy wonks and journos when May appointed Boris Johnson. The moment his name flashed up everyone laughed
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Putting the Prime Minister in an official residence separate from a Downing Street that would be an entirely work environment should have happened 40 years ago
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