Daniel Gugger 888 wrote that he views NATO's aggressive eastward expansion as a personal motivation for Putin to attack Ukraine. NATO has approached Russia for decades; it has expanded eastward seven times since 1999. He also pointed to Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania that can be reconfigured from defense to offensive systems within two minutes, as well as possible NATO troops and missiles along the 2,000-kilometer-long Russian border. As a comparison, Gugger cited the Cuban Missile Crisis. He wrote that the USA had first stationed nuclear Jupiter intermediate-range missiles in Turkey in 1961, which were reachable by Moscow within ten minutes. The Soviet missiles in Cuba were a response to that; the crisis was resolved through a deal in which both sides withdrew their missiles. Today, Ukraine is a similar red line for Russia as Cuba was for the USA in 1962. Gugger disputed that a potential NATO membership for Ukraine was solely based on a voluntary request. He referred to Victoria Nuland and her statement from 2013 that the USA had invested more than five billion dollars in promoting democracy in Ukraine. A year later, a leaked phone call from Nuland surfaced in which she spoke disparagingly about the EU and discussed the occupation of the Ukrainian government after Maidan. Gugger described the change of power as a coup financed by Washington and pointed out that Arseniy Yatsenyuk had become Prime Minister. Additionally, Gugger claimed that since 2014, more than 14,000 people, mostly civilians, had been killed by the Ukrainian army and the Azov battalion in the Donbass. He wrote that residential areas, schools, and kindergartens in Luhansk and Donetsk had been shelled for eight years, and the people there had voted against belonging to Kiev in a referendum in 2014. Putin cited the protection of the Russian population in the region as justification. In conclusion, Gugger asked who benefits from the war. Rheinmetall shares were worth about 90 euros before the war, and now they cost more than 500 euros; the company is reporting record profits in the billions. BlackRock has a direct stake of more than five percent in Rheinmetall and is simultaneously engaged with Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. Gugger also pointed out that Friedrich Merz had been the chairman of BlackRock Germany for many years. He wrote that taxpayers fund weapons while Ukrainians and Russians pay with their lives, and companies and individuals like Sigmar Gabriel receive record dividends. #NATO #Ukraine #Putin (translated)
