Yes, of course, it's interesting that you mentioned it. I can tell you two things about this:
1. The Budapest memorandum "is not worth the paper on which it was signed" and, according to the United States, is not legally binding, although Russia strictly followed it and even the fate of Crimea was decided not by Russia, but by the citizens of Crimea themselves in a referendum, within the framework of the nation's right to self-determination, which is the cornerstone of international law and is explicitly included in the UN Charter.
2. The trigger for the start of the operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was Zelensky’s public statement that Ukraine could call into question the obligations under the Budapest Memorandum.

So what about the Minsk agreements?

The ban on the export of food and fertilizer from Russia was introduced until August. But Syria and Egypt have nothing to worry about, the ban only applies to unfriendly countries, which do not include African countries. Russia will not allow a humanitarian crisis in Africa related to food shortages, because it knows how much many of the countries of the black continent depend on food supplies from Russia.

Estonian know-how about the hose-assed cow as a source of natural gas cannot be discounted.

Russia's problems are fools and roads. What you call a problem is simply a configuration feature that naturally follows from the colossal excess of natural resources. The West deprived Russia of luxuries with sanctions, not thinking that Russia could deprive the West of basic necessities in response. Therefore, it is not necessary to wishful thinking, the West would like to get rid of Russian oil and gas, but so far it is not very successful.

You are right that Russia has good partnerships with India and China, and there are border disputes between India and China with regular flare-ups. I think Russia has enough authority and diplomatic wisdom to balance and mitigate the contradictions between India and China without making any particular preference for one or the other. This strategic alliance can become historically great, because there are now four active centers of power in the world (Russia, USA, India and China), and if three of them act in a coordinated manner, without prejudice to their own national interests, then the current model of a unipolar world, which imposes the United States on everyone, will cease to exist.

Let Europe not be offended that it is not on this list - its policy has long been no longer independent and is completely subordinate to the interests of the United States. There is a wonderful saying in India, I'm not sure that I can accurately translate it into English, but I'll try - a thousand years a city, a thousand years a forest. European civilization is fading, it has a rich history and cultural traditions, but it is not a center of power anymore.

Unfortunately, I know much more about the events in Ukraine than I would like.

But it doesn't seem like it's a case where you can say "enough of this shit, let's get on with the next story".
Yes, Putin is right. No matter how hard they try to portray Russian soldiers as orcs who steal toilet bowls from Ukrainians because they were first seen and other ridiculous epics of the Fourth Reich. In this story the Russians are on the bright side of the Force, as always.
Are you flattering me again or is this sarcasm? Just in case, thanks.
Do not dramatize, no one in their right mind will climb to clear seven floors underground of a bunker near Azovstal. I think it will either be flooded with water or the Nazis of Azov will be smoked out with chemicals not from the list of banned chemical weapons. Technically, even the tear gas used by the police to disperse demonstrators in democratic countries can also be called a chemical attack. Military experts from the Russian troops of radiochemical protection will find a legal way to solve this problem. The Marines of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who wanted to surrender have already surrendered, the rest have made their choice.
Here you get on a very slippery slope and I would like to warn you against this. The last war that is really a "war" on this planet was declared by the USSR to Japan in 1945 and it is still strictly speaking not over, because there is no peace treaty. All other armed conflicts after that do not have the formal status of war, including the US and Korea, the US and Vietnam, the US and Iraq, the US and Afghanistan, etc.

This S-300 complex was destroyed yesterday by a high-precision weapon strike. A refutation was received from Slovakia with reference to the statement of the Ukrainian side, but in the conditions of a full-scale information war against Russia around the world, the unfounded statements of the Ukrainian side are worth about zero. Yes, Ukraine still has remnants of air defense, and it even seems that they really managed to knock out a couple of low-flying K-52 Black Sharks with Stingers, but in general, the Russian aerospace forces feel quite comfortable in the air over Ukraine and every day the pilots perform their combat tasks. The big surprise of the Russians in this operation, which made a sensation on military resources, is the X-31PM anti-radar missile with a range of 300 km. If an aircraft with such a missile detects enemy radar radiation, the enemy no longer has a radar. The remnants of the air defense of Ukraine are forced to work almost blindly, turn on the radar for a short time, change positions, and use other tricks. But in the end there is no continuous zone of observation.

It is not outdated, it's just that NATO soldiers do not know how to fight. Let's be honest, NATO instructors do an excellent job of training sabotage teams. And when NATO instructors begin to train soldiers from third world countries, instead of sabotage groups, for some reason, gangs of terrorists usually turn out.

In urban battles there are always civilian casualties, unfortunately this is inevitable. Russian soldiers do their best to minimize them, even if it increases the risks for themselves. I'm talking about the fact that the Russians never deliberately kill civilians, realizing that in front of them is a man without a weapon. I am sorry if for some this statement seems far from reality, amazing news or some kind of revelation. There is not a single country in modern history where Russia took part in armed conflicts, and where Russian soldiers would be seen in some atrocities or inappropriate behavior towards civilians. Even in Afghanistan, local residents still warmly and respectfully treat Russian soldiers, although there are areas where a civilian is a civilian during the day, and in the evening he is a Taliban fighter.
An international investigation is already underway in Bucha, but everything is clear as day there. The national police entered the city and organized a purge of "collaborators", killing everyone who did not have a blue bandage on his arm, and especially those with a white one. Yes, even shooting a video about it, which they then tried in vain to remove from the network.

It is interesting that the provocation in Kramatorsk was quickly hushed up after the serial number of the Ukrainian missile surfaced. Shame on the killers of civilians, these Nazi degenerates and drug addicts will all be demilitarized and denazified soon. It is a surreal nonsense and at the same time a reality when the civilians of Mariupol say: I heard "Allah Akbar!"* and crossed herself - Thank God, the Russians have come.

*Chechens from the Kadyrov regiment, who are actively involved in the cleansing of Mariupol, are Muslims.

If you refuse to expand your view geographically, can you expand your view in time? I don't understand why you consider the current events in Ukraine taken out of context? Have you read the text of the Minsk agreements?

This is one of the fundamental problems of Western democracy, when it really works - politicians and decision makers have a very short event planning horizon. Even ten years seems like a very long time to look into the future so far. But in reality, 2-3 years and it is already necessary to pay all attention to the next elections, and everything beyond two election terms sounds like "never". Some Japanese corporations are said to have a 300 year development strategy. Of course, this does not mean that today's Japan is the way it was conceived by Japanese strategists in the 18th century, because life always makes its own adjustments to any strategy. But if there is no strategy, then you simply flow along the river of life like a chip and all your actions come down to reflexes to external stimuli.

Europe can be warmed by even the dried shit of Ukrainian refugees, if it is sufficiently democratic and carbon neutral. Only 10-15% of the gas consumed by Europe is used for heating, the main consumer of gas is industry, and fertilizers for agriculture are also made from gas. The rejection of Russian gas will cause the collapse of the entire energy-intensive industry in Germany and Italy.

I will answer you here because you made your topic about the Russian "default" self-moderated. The snn article you link to is bullshit and premature ejaculation. Russia has more than enough money to pay all its debts immediately and in full. But the West needs Russia to declare a technical default in order not only to freeze the $300 billion of the Russian Central Bank, but also to expropriate them. This is the most common theft and robbery, the West issued a "black mark" to itself and undermined confidence in the dollar and the euro (as well as in the Japanese yen, the British pound and even the Swiss franc). Further, in essence, the due date for the payment, which could not be met due to the freezing of funds, was April 5th. After that, there is a month of grace period until May 5th. After that, creditors can present for default, but a quorum must take place, which must still be collected, which is technically not easy to do. Further, if the quorum of creditors still meets, the rating agency must declare a technical default. It is not clear which rating agency will be able to do this, they all stopped working with Russia due to sanctions. Then there will be a trial, because Russia has payments in its hands confirming that it paid its obligations in good faith on time, but the bank did not process these payments due to sanctions. And only then will there be a real technical default, and Russia will lose access to the external borrowing market, which it has already lost due to sanctions.

Let's have your next weekly package of sanctions, Russia puts them in a package with packages.

Europe has considered Russia an aggressor since at least March 2014, when Crimea was annexed from Ukraine as a result of Operation "Polite People". There was a lot of noise in all political circles about this, the European Union, together with the United States, strongly condemned Russia's actions and imposed economic sanctions. Has Europe been able to get rid of, or at least reduce, its dependence on Russian gas in eight years and improve energy security level? The answer is no. There is no alternative to Russian gas for Europe, neither reasonable nor even unreasonable. And any statements to the contrary are cheap political populism in pursuit of pre-election popularity. "Pay for gas in rubles or die", it does not look like a difficult choice to think about for a long time.

Remember one simple thing, and if you have a bad memory, then write it down and read it every day before breakfast instead of morning prayer - a Russian soldier will never shoot at civilians, he will rather shoot at his commander who gave him such an order. Therefore, absolutely no one in Russia believes in cheap Ukrainian propaganda fakes, it is simply impossible because of the peculiarities of our mentality.

I don't know how events in Ukraine will develop, the future has a probabilistic nature and there are always more than one options. I think the scenario of this operation was developed in the strategic planning center and it has a dozen stages (assuming that the second stage is now underway), with a lot of branches in case of various response options of all involved and interested parties and existing centers of power in the world. I will try to outline in general terms the option that seems to me now the most probable. Ukraine has already lost Crimea, DPR and LPR, just deal with it. Romania will not get Transcarpathia, and Poland will not get the Lviv region - under no circumstances will there be territorial concessions to Europe, let them wipe their drool - they will not receive gifts from Russia. If Poland does not heed the exhortations of NATO and turns its back on Ukraine, it will receive a knockout blow from Russia of such force that NATO will immediately begin to taper to the west. I think there will be no special problems with the entire left bank of the Dnieper, this part of Ukraine is mainly Russian-speaking and pro-Russian. After the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass and the cleansing of the bunker near Azovstal in Mariupol, the question will arise of what to do with western Ukraine, where anti-Russian sentiments are very strong and "demilitarization" by Russian forces can easily turn into a mass genocide. I think here even the active peacekeeping participation of a third conditionally neutral side may be required, and for this China seems to be the most suitable candidate. China has a large, well-trained and disciplined army, and China's army is severely lacking in combat experience amid its evolving conflict with Taiwan (I think China last saw combat in 1979 or so). So there is a greater than zero chance that the Chinese army, supported by precision-guided missile strikes from Russia, will be engaged in the demilitarization of western Ukraine in order to continue to stop the supply of weapons from the West. Ukrainian 600 thousand infantry without the support of armored vehicles and aircraft for China is a light snack, not exceeding its natural population growth per day.

Sometimes it seems to me that some European politicians are not friendly with elementary arithmetic. Europe as a whole imports from Russia 200 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year (of which 100 billion cubic meters are imported by Germany alone). One tanker can bring 50 million cubic meters of liquefied gas, spending a month on the road and a week on unloading. In a year, one tanker can make about ten voyages and bring 500 million cubic meters or 0.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe. It will take 400 tankers to provide Europe with gas not by pipeline, but by transportation by tankers, and there are only 500 of them in the world. Plus, you need to build at least several large terminals for unloading these tankers, which will require 5-6 years of hard work and huge financial investments if you start right now. The number of terminals for receiving liquefied gas in Germany is currently zero (there are none at all). Plus, all these tankers need to be loaded with something, and the United States is now ready to supply a maximum of 15 billion cubic meters (out of the required 200), with a possible increase to 50 billion cubic meters. Plus, it is necessary to somehow convince all buyers from Asia, who are unlikely to be happy with this, to abandon the consumption of liquefied gas. Plus, liquefied gas is 15-60% more expensive than pipeline gas, depending on the season and the terms of long-term contracts with Russia for pipeline gas. This is the current situation with regard to gas, in a nutshell.

Europe seems to be scared to death of Russian nuclear weapons and hastily buying iodine pills, even though Putin's worst weapon against Europe is millions of Ukrainian refugees. Among them there are many adequate normal people who are simply looking for a better life for themselves (and you can’t blame them for this), but there is also a noticeable part of violent nationalists who grew up with the idea of ​​the superiority of the Ukrainian nation and now everyone owes them something. Europe did not believe for a long time that there was Nazism in Ukraine - well, now she will see everything with her own eyes.

This is a very serious test to determine the boundaries of European tolerance - is it tolerant of open manifestations of Nazism? So serious that it can be a matter of life and death.

In modern armed conflict, the one who controls the airspace usually wins. Russia took control of the air in Ukraine in the first hours of the start of the operation, it was then that everything was strategically over for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That is why, for the entire first week since the start of the operation, Zelensky asked and even demanded that NATO close the airspace over Ukraine - because this is a key moment. Turkey has not joined the economic sanctions against Russia, but as a supplier of Bayraktars, it has done more for Ukraine than the US and Europe combined.

The only real advantage of Ukraine now is a noticeable quantitative superiority in manpower. If the third wave of mobilization is successful, Ukraine can, in 2-3 weeks, bring the strength of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to 600 thousand soldiers and gain an advantage of 2-2.5 times over the number of Russian troops in Ukraine, together with the people's militia of Donbass. This is a noticeable advantage, and for defensive battles in urban areas - even overwhelming. And the difficult course of the cleansing of Mariupol shows this well. I am writing this paragraph so that you understand that I am not driven by naked jingoistic patriotism, but by a fairly sober understanding of the situation. Now reread the first paragraph again, because this paragraph does not cancel it.
I think nothing terrible will happen to them, neither mass genocide, nor concentration camps in Siberia, nor torture in the dungeons of the KGB, nor even hard labor in uranium mines. In Russia, in your kitchen at home, you can drink vodka with your friends and scold Putin as much as you like. Putin's rating was very low, it seems, in 2018, when he signed the law on raising the retirement age, although he had previously promised not to do this. The rating of the ruling party "United Russia" is still not too high, the people have not forgiven them for this. In general, people in Russia are very far from politics, well, except for taxi drivers (there is even a saying "it's a pity that everyone who understands politics is already working as taxi drivers and hairdressers"). People don’t hate Ukrainians either, if they don’t jump in front of you shouting “moskolyak to gilyak” and they don’t have a tattoo with a swastika on their forehead. There is rather a misunderstanding of how a fraternal country could lose its original identity in just one generation, ruin a powerful economy and industry inherited from the collapse of the USSR, and turn into an agrarian appendage of Europe with mass glorification of Bandera and the SS division "Galitchina", mixed with gay-parades. So don't worry about the Russian-speaking Ukrainians, or even the Ukrainian speakers - it's just that Russia will take away from you all the weapons more powerful than a hunting double-barreled shotgun and arrange a show trial of the Nazis, so that neither you nor others would be disrespectful. And then live as you want, God will be your judge.

This fundamentally changes the matter, then there is a reasonable grain in this. Of course, Ukraine is of interest to Europe as a donor of natural resources, and of course the current armed conflict violates these plans. I will say more, the Zaporizhzhya NPP is the largest in Europe (not counting Russian nuclear power plants), and its dropping out of the European energy grid directly threatens stable power generation in Europe, primarily in Germany, which has embarked on a policy of abandoning nuclear energy. The degree of Germany's current energy dependence on Russia is uncomfortable for Germany, and it has been looking for ways to get rid of it for years. To do this with the help of Ukraine seems to be not very successful so far, no one promised that it would be easy.

Yes, they are still my friends. You don't have to think the same way to be friends.

You and I are talking here, and the soldiers on the battlefield are doing their job. And the Russian soldiers are doing their job well. Europe's monetary and military aid will not help Ukraine against Russia, just as it has never helped Europe itself. There is no question of "who will win?" There are only questions of the number of victims and the scale of destruction.

There are such friends who are better to have as enemies, so they are at least of some use. But it is more prudent and much more profitable to be friends with Russia than to fight. Russia does not need a devastated Europe, it is beneficial for the United States, but not for Russia. Therefore, Russia does not break ties with Europe in a unilateral fashion, despite the hysteria with sanctions and the anti-Russian rhetoric of a number of European politicians.

Russian soldiers are banned from smartphones for security reasons. The experience of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, who first post their geolocation on the net, and then a rocket flies there and turns them into a piece of "well done" meat, clearly hints that these precautions are not in vain. They seem to be able to use a regular cell phone to call their families. Smartphones can also be used by operators of reconnaissance drones for official purposes and fighters of the Chechen Kadyrov Regiment (for whom the issue of their combat image in the media space is apparently more important than personal safety).

It was a big mistake for Ukraine to torture and execute Russian prisoners of war on camera. I personally know people with combat experience who a month ago had a neutral or even negative attitude towards this operation, and now they are ready to take up arms again.

I don't think there is any natural resource in Ukraine that Russia would not have enough of. The gas elephant theory is completely out of whack.

Just ask yourself - where did this idea about lightning-fast blitzkrieg come from in your head? What in Russia's actions or statements made you think so? I will answer for you - this idea was inspired by your Ukrainian propaganda. Russia acted quickly in the first few days of the operation, mainly with only one goal - to push the Ukrainian Armed Forces inland from the border with Russia by 100-150 km, so that the most long-range weapons of Ukraine could not shoot at Russian territory from stationary positions. After the successful solution of this problem, there was no special need for haste. Russia's strength is that it can afford to act reasonably slowly. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are not going anywhere from Donbass, watching how Russia slowly closes the encirclement cauldron from the north and south. I think in a month eastern Ukraine will be completely "demilitarized".

I think I got promoted, I'll take that as a compliment.

Cluster warheads are designed to destroy manpower and lightly armored targets; unlike high-explosive ones, they do not cause significant infrastructure damage. Many civilians died in this terrible tragedy, but the railway station itself did not seem to have been particularly affected.