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V4 EU Battlegroup, or Visegrád Battlegroup, is a Warsaw-led EU battlegroup organized under the European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy, including military from Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. It's only 1,500 strong officially to match the EU's other battlegroups, but those groups operate on the assumption that any war involving the EU will necessarily invoke the North Atlantic Treaty and become NATO's war primarily. The battlegroup could easily be bolstered with more numbers, even just through Polish additions, if an extraordinary situation led to action outside of NATO's official purview, and if NATO somehow twisted its treaty into the right pretzel shape to allow it. That's a VERY big "if". But it's worth examining what that would mean for the countries involved.

Most importantly, Kiev has repeatedly participated in NATO Response Force exercises with the Visegrád Battlegroup.

Poland is currently led by PiS (yes.), presented by most NATO-approved observers as a "big tent" party for the right-to-far-right, but whose overwhelmingly dominant "centrist" group is represented most visibly by Mariusz Błaszczak, a racist-fascist extremist who describes himself as the new Charles Martel, a living hammer dedicated to smashing the Muslim menace. He was the face of the recent Poland-Belarus border dispute in which Warsaw proposed that Belarus was engaged in a conspiracy to pollute the purity of white Polish Christendom. That line that had its corners sanded down a bit before it was swallowed and regurgitated by the Western press.

Warsaw's position on Ukraine has been made abundantly clear with its attempt to secure Washington's backing for the shipment of MiGs and other hardcore military hardware to Kiev, combined with public crowing by Błaszczak and friends about how they'll let a billion Ukrainians in before they allow one Muslim to cross their border. Warsaw is also most likely the path by which U.S. intelligence is being passed to Kiev, as though its government were already part of NATO; a recent CNN ride-along propaganda piece had the crew of the spy plane all but stage-winking at the "reporter" while explaining that the U.S. can only share what it learns with NATO members, but those partners will decide for themselves whether to adhere to the same, which is an... interesting interpretation of the concept of "treaty". The precedent is likely already set for Poland to enact NATO's will in Ukraine outside of the treaty proper, though how far it's allowed to go is an open question.

Hungary, of course, is still in the grip of the infamous coalition between Fidesz-KDNP and the antisemitic neo-Nazi Jobbik. This government is an erstwhile courter of Moscow over the European Union, but after Moscow's cool reception to what would obviously be the most flighty of fair-weather friends, Budapest has recently forged closer ties with the European governments it once happily provoked. Hungary's ruling coalition jumped fully and immediately in line with the EU's anti-Russian sanctions—a significant departure from past decisions concerning Moscow. Jobbik's MEP gave a characteristically puffed-up statement on the eve of the agreement, where he declared that Russia would crumble immediately under economic pressure, and its military would follow.

Czechia's ruling coalition is dominated by ODS, a right-wing party which has forged close ties with Poland's PiS. Further, since 2014, a campaign of complex and interconnected conspiracy theories have been touted by the country's equivalents of the CIA and FBI, tales of far-reaching Russian plots with which Czechia's population has been inundated week after week, a deluge that might make even their big brothers in the U.S. green with envy. These claims purport to tie supposed Russian espionage activities in the Czech Republic to nearly every charge leveled against Russia elsewhere in the world, and further claim that the two agencies are constantly discovering vast amounts of Russian villainy daily, plots which the two agencies always defeat resoundingly before announcing their existence.

Russian "fake news"? BIS (security intelligence) and PČR (national top cops) claim to have uncovered and neutralized a vast and secret network of Russian brainwashing teams operating within the Czech media. The alleged "Skripal poisoners"? Busy bees, them, as the same two accused were also the cause of two ammo depot explosions in Czechia, twin terrorist attacks by a crack GRU unit... at least according to BIS and PČR. The latter conclusion led to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the country, and Czechia's from Russia, though at a time when so much similar tit-for-tat was going on with other countries that the stories were largely consolidated in the Western news press. Despite the volume of trade between Czech Republic and Russia, the propaganda has worked: Czechia has adopted one of the most openly belligerent positions toward Moscow in the entire EU, with the support of a population steeped in well-trained paranoia that sees GRU operatives lurking in every dark alley.

Slovakia is the country whose government is perhaps most on board for a real-deal Armageddon. Bratislava is prepping to send S-300 anti-air missile systems to the Kiev government, a provocation which has had the desired effect: aggressive Russian statements declaring such shipments legitimate targets, exactly the sort of sunshine in which Slovakia's current leadership makes hay. Bratislava's ruling right-wing coalition is led by OĽANO, a "non-partisan", "anti-corruption" right-wing party of the sort we've been discussing in Corea reunification thread recently—very much so, right down to the quasi-religious esotericism. Usually called "populist" in the Western press, in the most recent glib manner the word has been used, the party is actually run entirely top-down by a secretive inner circle. OĽANO operates on a dime-store Führer principle centered around Igor Matovič, former Prime Minister, current Deputy Prime Minister, publicity hound and Biden-level plagiarist. Party members and leaders describe Matovič in semi-divine terms as a miracle-maker, offer publicly to fall on their swords for him, and so on. OĽANO is ready for World War III, in other words.

Rumor has it that in the extraordinary NATO summit scheduled for the 24th-25th, Poland will propose the special mobilization of the Visegrád Battlegroup to enter Ukraine from the West without NATO's official support but with some sort of NATO blessing, that or some Polish-led adjacent or similar force. I don't know if that will happen. It would almost certainly have to occur outside the EU defense pact that formally organized the battlegroup, though that pact is entirely subordinate to NATO. Still, it seems unlikely that Washington would approve an agreement that could put Poland's relatively slap-happy fash government in a position to invoke the mutual defense clause, maybe under the flimsiest of pretenses, and attempt to draw the rest of NATO into a war with Russia.

In any case, the topic provides a window into some of the more deranged governments hostile to Moscow, the states chomping at the bit for an apocalyptic reckoning in Ukraine.
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A state ruled by the death drive... tell me they're not ready for a world consumed in ash and flame? I have a Holodomor to sell you
#6
lies half the time
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on the bright side, if our genocidal gerontocrats blow up the world at least we won't have to worry about addressing climate change or covid in any sort of meaningful way
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lies half the time
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lmao holy shit dude. That's TVP1, the main, state-run public-broadcast TV station of the Republic of Poland
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"since 1945". beyond parody
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lies half the time
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zhaoyao posted:
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Rhizzonians in Greater Fail AIDS: we are with you.
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nato will hit the big red buttons for PISS and SHIT and herr "long shear of light and then a series of low percussions" biden is FUCK
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Russia waited until the Slovaks’ S300 got to Nikolaev before they bombed it. Which means Washington is relying on Moscow to prevent nuclear war instead of trying to prevent it themselves, while at the same time, their stated policy toward Moscow is a coup that springs a neo-Nazi convict from prison and installs him as mini-Hitler. Seems fine
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#17
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Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have all proposed protectionist bans on grain imports from Ukraine, while Czech Republic sees street marches over inflation quickly coopted by former Trikolora leadership. Trouble in purgatory. This is what I mean about how cross-national far-right projects never work.
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Nice you see euro-communism succeeding so brilliantly.
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The facilitation of Clownlife and the interest in cultivating clown as a way of life on and off the stage