Checking out the details of the #Russia attack on the #Czechia ammunition depot in Vrbětice in 2014, I read with some amusement the then Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s excuses of how “Russian agents were not attacking the Czech Republic, they were attacking the property of a Bulgarian company”, and then further excuses them that “the cargo was supposed to explode on the way, not in the Czech Republic”.
That was truly an awesome excuse! The Russians wanted the explosion to happen on the road in some town or on the highway, but it exploded on the spot - okay, time fuses are complicated, not their fault!
To put it bluntly, if then in 2014 there had been a determined EU and #NATO response to that attack of an absolutely belligerent and aggressive nature (people died) - such as in 2021-2022 i.e. sanctions and a determined expulsion of Russian personnel etc. - then probably the war in 2022 would not have broken out at all.
Instead, a few years later, NATO issued a lame statement about “expressing solidarity with the Czech people” - I wonder why, since according to Babiš it was not even the Czech Republic that was attacked? Or was it, after all?
And it only issued it because Bellingcat revealed the real perpetrators of the attack, which the Czech government had apparently been withholding all this time…. presumably so as “not to escalate the situation”!
@schmaker
Well, sadly the efficacy of all COVID vaccines turned out to be a far shot from what they've been telling us — I'm not some anti-vax dude and I don' even think that Sputnik was much worse than the others (maybe only a tiny bit😅), but going such great lengths to get access to a vaccine that hadn't even proven to be effective at the time… I don't know — seems extremely fishy.
@kravietz @sesivany
@schmaker
So even in Russia they stropped using it.
And the third one, the most popular, produced in huge quantities, to be exported — was Sputnik. It probably wasn't even THAT bad — at least not as bad as its reputation was. As you can probably remember, Russia was carrying out antivax disinformation campaigns in the developed countries — but it backfired quite spectacularly!
@schmaker
People started translating articles published by RT in English back to Russian and sharing them on Russian social media and over WhatsApp 🤣
The reputation of Sputnik was ruined entirely — even when vaccination was made mandatory, some people were bribing the medical personnel to get the certificate, but not the vaccine🤦
@schmaker
I don't know anyone like that personally — my circles don't have too many people who are into conspiracies and antivax, but this was reported in local news outlets that I consider trustworthy.
Again, downplaying such a blatant act of sabotage to get access to vaccines from the country that had… these three. That is completely fucked up IMO🤪
@schmaker
In fact three vaccines have been developed in Russia: one was based on tried but old tech — this one was the most trustworthy, but it was produced in tiny quantities, it was nearly impossible to get vaccinated with it even in Moscow.
The second one had been raising questions since its inception — some experts expressed concerns that it couldn't work even in theory.
At some stage of trials it was proven to be ineffective — lack of antibodies, and was called off.
@kravietz @sesivany