“They are police state governments.”

Marijn Markus

AI Lead | Managing Data Scientist | Public Speaker

Universiteit Utrecht  

Capgemini

Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands 

April 6, 2026

🇺🇳 #UN’s agreements with russia have nearly all been broken by russia.
🇺🇸 Former #USA President Truman said it perfectly.

“We started out in 1945, when I became President, and the two wars were still going on, and the Russians were our allies, just the same as the British and the French and Brazil and the South American countries. And we won the war together.

We organized the United Nations in April 1945, and one of the first questions that was asked me, after I was sworn in at 7:09 o’clock on the 12th of April, was whether or not the San Francisco conference on the United Nations should go ahead. And I said it certainly will.

It went ahead and we finally succeeded in getting a charter and getting it agreed to by I think 51 nations, if I remember correctly.

Then our objective was to–as quickly as possible–get peace in the world.

We made certain agreements with the Russians and the British and the French and the Chinese. We kept those agreements to the letter. They have nearly all been–those agreements where the Russians were involved–been broken by the Russians.

And it became perfectly evident that they had no intention of carrying out the fundamental principles of the #UnitedNations Charter and the agreements which had been made at Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam.

And it became evident that there was an endeavor on the part of the Kremlin to control the world.

A procedure was instituted which came to be known as the cold war. The airlift to Berlin was only one phase of it.

People became alarmed here in the United States then, that there might be people whose sympathies were with the Communist ideal of government – which is not communism under any circumstances, it is totalitarianism of the worst brand.

There isn’t any difference between the totalitarian Russian Government and the Hiтleг government and the Franco government in Spain. They are all alike.

They are police state governments.”

☝️ A little snippet from the Truman library. Explains a lot of things.

I would add a note that today’s Russia is much more repressive than late Soviet Union.

In the 1980s, the USSR, with larger population, lost tens of thousands in Afghanistan, and soldiers’ mothers’ committees and protests all over Eastern Europe basically brought an end to that war.

🪧 In Putin’s Russia, such dissent is crushed. Russians don’t even bother to protest until their own internet is removed.

That too is why their war with #Ukraine continues.

History

Comment from :

Christopher J. Wajnikonis P.E. (TX), CEng (U.K.)

President, Engineering Consultant at CJW Aero-Hydrodynamics

The Freedom of Ukraine is the KEY EXISTENTIAL MATTER for the FREEDOM IN EUROPE! IT MUST BE SECURED NOW, & Putin’s ‘multipolar world dream’ will fall like a house of cards, which it is! The ruZZian threat will be kept at bay EVERYWHERE in Central Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa & in the Arctic! Xi Jinping would learn not to mess with us!

The U.S. may or mayn’t help in a war. Ukraine would be a MORE DEPENDABLE ALLY, if she’s strong & still around. Ukraine has the largest & best trained Army in Europe, but it’s the worst equipped. Ukraine’s position on the map underscores its importance for Europe’s safety.

This situation is binary. There are only 2 possible outcomes:

1. Putin must be defeated in Ukraine. (With more of our help. A no-fly zone for a start, but more may be needed.) 2. A sell out or a fall of Ukraine = strengthened Putin would start WW3 later that we might have to fight without Ukrainian help.

If one thinks that lGN0RANCΣ & CALL0USNΣSS justifies risking #2, instead of a victory per #1, I question her/his sanity. It includes all ‘diplomacy obsessors’.

Putin is unlikely to use nukes, because we are much better protected from him than he is from us. If he’s stupid enough to try, #1 is much better than #2 is.

Putin acts AGAINST the Raison d’État of the ruZZian federation. The soviets withdrew from Afghanistan because of a small fraction of Putin’s losses in Ukraine. The difference is that Putin is the absolute dictator, while after Stalin the ussr was run ‘more rationally’ by collective politburo.

• ruZZia is an enormous KLΣPT0CRAC¥.
• The country sells its resources & most proceeds are ST0LΣN by Putin & the oligarchs.
• Much of the funds destined for improvement & maintenance is ST0LΣN by federal & local officials.
• Putin rules with terror.

As the result:

• There is little progress, ruZZians live in poverty & primitive conditions.
• They’re so used to it that they don’t even expect improvements.
• Putin LlΣS to them that it is a fault of the West, whom he/they also blame for the fall of the ussr.
• Putin generates and whets their appetite to restore the ussr.
• They ‘buy the above cocktail’ & consider Putin as their best restoration bet, while maybe adding Berlin, Paris, London & Alaska.

This is a semi-stable niche.

Putin’s failure to deliver Ukraine to the ruZZians would be the end of him.

NOT STANDING UP TO PUTIN would GUARANTEE WW3 Putin would trigger later. Putin’s ‘interest’, not the ruZZian interest is the driver here.

………………….

📉 So the #USA economy is in freefall, its military stuck in a war in Iran it cannot exit, allies abandoning the regime left and right…and the Supreme Leader is crying on Social Media about Bruce Springsteen?

……………….

📊 #Germany alone contributes as much to #NATO as the entire #USA

Donald Trump has spent years selling Americans the same NATO grievance: that the United States is being exploited while #Europe gets #security on the cheap. One of his most effective political lines, one that begins to unravel the moment you examine the #data and how NATO’s common funding actually works:

NATO’s common budget is calculated using an agreed formula based on national income. Every member pays according to what their #economy can bear. That is the stated principle of the alliance.

What that principle actually produces:
📷 The United States – GDP $28.75 trillion contributes $836 million to NATO.
📷 Germany – GDP $4.69 trillion, one sixth the size of America’s contributes $836 million to NATO.
📷 Britain – GDP $3.69 trillion, one eighth the size of America’s contributes $578 million to NATO.

That is not burden-sharing, but the world’s largest economy securing the cheapest proportional deal at the table and then spending a decade telling its voters it was being “robbed”

⚖️ If a billionaire and a nurse donate the same amount to charity, the billionaire is not the generous one. The nurse is. The sacrifice is not measured in dollars, but in what those dollars cost.

That is NATO. #UK and Germany are the nurse here. America is the billionaire – contributing the same amount from a vastly larger fortune, then demanding recognition for its generosity.

Proportionally, European allies are carrying a heavier burden than Washington. The burden-sharing argument only works if you deliberately ignore what each country can actually afford.

☝️ This arrangement did not happen by accident or oversight. The common funding formula was negotiated, agreed, and signed off by American officials across multiple administrations. Washington sat at the table. Washington accepted the terms.

Trump did not inherit an unfair deal. He inherited an exceptionally cheap one – maximum strategic leverage at minimum proportional cost. Rather than acknowledge this, he repackaged a favourable arrangement as exploitation and sold it to his voters as victimhood.

That’s the grift. Deliberate, sustained, and highly profitable politically.

In reality, NATO delivers something no defence budget can purchase outright: legitimate global #leadership

📈 The alliance is the institutional framework through which American power is projected, validated, and accepted by the rest of the world.
Europe is not simply funding its own defence. It is part-funding the political architecture of American global influence.

Meanwhile, European defence budgets are rising sharply in response to genuine Russian aggression – the very threat NATO exists to counter – and one the Trump admin refuses to even address.

This NATO grift worked only when nobody checks the numbers.

Now you have.

Sources: NATO Common Funding Resource Plan 2025–2029, NATO 2024 Budget Announcements, World Bank GDP Data 2024