Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Official Thread)

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

bloomberg.com
China Opposes Russia Sanctions, Calls U.S. Actions ‘Immoral’
Bloomberg News
3-4 minutes
China expressed opposition to sanctions against Russia and criticized the U.S. for inflaming the Ukraine crisis, suggesting its support for NATO’s expansion had left President Vladimir Putin with few options.

Beijing didn’t view sanctions as “the best way to solve problems,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Wednesday at a regular press briefing in Beijing. She also criticized the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for placing offensive weapons near Russia, asking whether “they ever thought about the consequences of cornering a major power.”

Hua called the U.S. the “culprit” of the Ukraine situation, saying it was “adding oil to a burning house while pointing fingers at others trying to put out the fire.” “This act is irresponsible and immoral,” she said of the U.S. moves.

The latest in global politics

Get insight from reporters around the world in the Balance of Power newsletter.

Email

Please enter a valid email address

By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and to receive offers and promotions from Bloomberg.

The crisis in Ukraine has forced China into a delicate balancing act as it seeks to support Russia against the U.S. while also portraying itself as a responsible global power. President Joe Biden has placed sanctions on Moscow for its actions over disputed Ukrainian territory, the latest hitting the builder of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and its corporate leadership, and warned more could be coming. Other U.S. allies have also hit Russia with punitive economic measures.

Putin Escalation Leaves China’s Xi With Tough Balancing Act

China often rails against U.S. sanctions, which have been placed on Beijing over issues like alleged human-rights abuses in the far western region of Xinjiang and moves to jail democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Hua also contrasted the actions of the U.S. with those of China, which she said were more constructive.

“Unlike the U.S. which has been sending arms, escalating tensions and hyping up the possibility of war, China has been calling on all parties to respect and value each other’s legitimate security concerns,” said Hua, who conducted the daily Foreign Ministry briefing for the first time since September.

“We have been making efforts to resolve the issue through negotiations and consultations to protect regional peace and stability,” she added.

Zelenskiy Urges Russia to Hold Off on Escalation: Ukraine Update

Hua also downplayed comparisons between the crisis in Ukraine and Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory and threatened to take it by force if necessary.

“Taiwan is not Ukraine because Taiwan has never been a sovereign, independent state,” she said. “It has been an inalienable part of China.”

— With assistance by Philip Glamann

(Updates with details of the latest U.S. sanctions on Russia and Hua comments on Taiwan.)

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Ahhhhh shyt.

NOT good...


nytimes.com
Biden Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine
Edward Wong
10-12 minutes
Americans presented Chinese officials with intelligence on Russia’s troop buildup in hopes that President Xi Jinping would step in, but were repeatedly rebuffed.

Credit...Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Feb. 25, 2022Updated 10:06 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.

This account is based on interviews with senior administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.

China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic, economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.

But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.

In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media. Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.

Some American officials say the ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades.

The growing alarm among American and European officials at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M. Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union. For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical ideas about power and governance.

In the recent private talks on Ukraine, American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the American accounts.

On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”

Image

Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”

She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign journalists.

Ms. Hua’s fiery anti-American remarks as Russia was moving to attack its neighbor stunned some current and former U.S. officials and China analysts in the United States. But the verbal grenades echo major points in the 5,000-word joint statement that China and Russia issued on Feb. 4 when Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin met at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In that document, the two countries declared their partnership had “no limits” and that they intended to stand together against American-led democratic nations. China also explicitly sided with Russia in the text to denounce enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Last Saturday, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, criticized NATO in a video talk at the Munich Security Conference. European leaders in turn accused China of working with Russia to overturn what they and the Americans say is a “rules-based international order.” Mr. Wang did say that Ukraine’s sovereignty should be “respected and safeguarded” — a reference to a foreign policy principle that Beijing often cites — but no Chinese officials have mentioned Ukraine in those terms since Russia’s full invasion began.

“They claim neutrality, they claim they stand on principle, but everything they say about the causes is anti-U.S., blaming NATO and adopting the Russian line,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University professor who was senior Asia director at the White House National Security Council in the Obama administration. “The question is: How sustainable is that as a posture? How much damage does it do to their ties with the U.S. and their ties with Europe?”

The Biden administration’s diplomatic outreach to China to try to avert war began after President Biden and Mr. Xi held a video summit on Nov. 15. In the talk, the two leaders acknowledged challenges in the relationship between their nations, which is at its lowest point in decades, but agreed to try to cooperate on issues of common interest, including health security, climate change and nuclear weapons proliferation, White House officials said at the time.

After the meeting, American officials decided that the Russian troop buildup around Ukraine presented the most immediate problem that China and the United States could try to defuse together. Some officials thought the outcome of the video summit indicated there was potential for an improvement in U.S.-China relations. Others were more skeptical, but thought it was important to leave no stone unturned in efforts to prevent Russia from attacking, one official said.

Days later, White House officials met with the ambassador, Qin Gang, at the Chinese Embassy. They told the ambassador what U.S. intelligence agencies had detected: a gradual encirclement of Ukraine by Russian forces, including armored units. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, had flown to Moscow on Nov. 2 to confront the Russians with the same information, and on Nov. 17, American intelligence officials shared their findings with NATO.

At the Chinese Embassy, Russia’s aggression was the first topic in a discussion that ran more than one and a half hours. In addition to laying out the intelligence, the White House officials told the ambassador that the United States would impose tough sanctions on Russian companies, officials and businesspeople in the event of an invasion, going far beyond those announced by the Obama administration after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

The U.S. officials said the sanctions would also hurt China over time because of its commercial ties.

They also pointed out they knew how China had helped Russia evade some of the 2014 sanctions, and warned Beijing against any such future aid. And they argued that because China was widely seen as a partner of Russia, its global image could suffer if Mr. Putin invaded.

The message was clear: It would be in China’s interests to persuade Mr. Putin to stand down. But their entreaties went nowhere. Mr. Qin was skeptical and suspicious, an American official said.

American officials spoke with the ambassador about Russia at least three more times, both in the embassy and on the phone. Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, had a call with him. Mr. Qin continued to express skepticism and said Russia had legitimate security concerns in Europe.

The Americans also went higher on the diplomatic ladder: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke to Mr. Wang about the problem in late January and again on Monday, the same day Mr. Putin ordered the new troops into Russia-backed enclaves of Ukraine.

“The secretary underscored the need to preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said a State Department summary of the call that used the phrase that Chinese diplomats like to employ in signaling to other nations not to get involved in matters involving Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, all considered separatist problems by Beijing.

American officials met with Mr. Qin in Washington again on Wednesday and heard the same rebuttals. Hours later, Mr. Putin declared war on Ukraine on television, and his military began pummeling the country with ballistic missiles as tanks rolled across the border.

 

[Neo. The Only. The One.]

This is an amazing insight. So many people are missing the religious orthodox beef taking place






Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Religious War

No breh. Just no.


My nikka, where do you find all these ppl with all these wild takes?

No wonder you keep posting all them crazy leftists who are now having to admit they were wrong about Putin. Why are you hanging out in these wacky circles?

Dear God

 

[Ozymandeas]

Not knowledgeable enough to speak on China but what the fukk is Maduro going to do here? he's gonna expand were? with what man power? all the "allies" he has in the region have no power whatsoever or, when the time comes, will leave him to dry if it means their own country will be in danger.

Im not an expert on Maduro but I know since he’s been sanctioned by the US, he’s been dealing more closely with Iran, China and Russia. I’m sure he’s watching Afghanistan fall and Ukraine about to follow, knowing his position is just as precarious. I wasn’t talking about “expanding”. Moreso about becoming more entrenched with those countries.

 

[Eye Cue DA COLI GAWD]

Adolf Putin won't like this

Lol @ people thinking NATO would do this unless they knew Putin was content with Eastern Ukraine

Putin will take all of Ukraine and that point it's essentially a border standoff with NATO till he decides which country he wants to use to call their bluff

 

[Jmare007]

Im not an expert on Maduro but I know since he’s been sanctioned by the US, he’s been dealing more closely with Iran, China and Russia. I’m sure he’s watching Afghanistan fall and Ukraine about to follow, knowing his position is just as precarious. I wasn’t talking about “expanding”. Moreso about becoming more entrenched with those countries.

The financial and political help Venezuela and Maduro needs are not worth the trouble for anyone. There's very little Venezuela can offer those countries to warrant the type of effort it would need to succeed in South America.

 

[Arithmetic]

 

[Arithmetic]

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

Venezuela is a broken state, almost a quarter of the entire population has decided to leave the country, and some of those who have stayed have tried to get Maduro the fukk out. The coup of 2019 failed and showed how little we south americans care about our neighbors (I'm Chilean and it's embarrassing how half or more of my country perceives the rest of the region, specially places like Venezuela).

Maduro being a threat to anybody outside of Venezuela? Nah breh, no one fukks with him like that and the moment he threatens to put a foot outside it's borders he'll be dead pretty damn quickly. Either by US intervention, Colombia stepping up or a venezuelan breh saying enough is enough.

To be fair, America has also put a lot of effort in to destroying the Bolivarian Revolution let’s not take away credit from ol Uncle Sam. A larger version of Cuba with oil? Lmaooo ain’t no way in hell they’d allow this to last. Nicaragua should be glad they more non descript as a country.

Definitely was mismanagement on the part of the govt too, but America and much of the right wing elements in Venezuela and across the border in Colombia have also had a role in the current crisis there. Remember, just because it seems logical doesn’t mean it’ll happen. Spain under Franco was a natural ally of Hitler/Mussolini due to fascist background and the latter two’s involvement in helping Franco win the Spanish Civil War. However, Franco/Spain remained on the sidelines instead of joining their fascist kin in the Axis because the civil war left them in no condition to join. At the end of the day govts have to do what’s best for themselves and Caracas or Havana or any other govt in the Americas that’s antagonistic towards America probably won’t get into this aside from symbolic support as a means to preserve their own mandates.

 

[mastermind]

They would really cripple Russia if they all collectively stop doing commerce; no oil, no goods, nothing. He got reserves, but not enough to circulate an entire country. It’s winter so they don’t have too many crops. Starve them all! Either he will cave or the folks around him will make him do it.


We won’t do it because we go high, but folks gotta stop trying to be good to bad people.

Russian oil and gas makes up the fossil fuel for a large chunk of NATO nations. There is no way they would do that because that leads to stupid high gas prices.

WHat should be the plan is to dramatically lessen and then end our dependence on fossil fuel, but the west doesn't want to do that.

 

[the next guy]

Why aren't more people marching in support of Russia?



Where is the popular support for Putin's actions?

No where. Even the regional officials are against this.

I don't get why he did this.

He could face a coup

 

[FAH1223]

What's your red line.?

If the Russians are dumb enough to attack and kill NATO ships and soldiers, then retaliation must happen.

But no one is rying to risk nuclear winter in any sort of retaliation. Plus, they have all sorts of assets in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean in addition all this shid being at their own border. And how many of these NATO countries are at the mercy of Russian gas?

That's what I said. And if Russia keeps firing on sovereign ships, this is what's gonna wind up happening.

I disagree. Turkey actually has a lot of power here. They can close Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to warships. The straits are the only way that ships can reach the Mediterranean from the Black Sea.

IF there was ever going to be a No Fly Zone over Ukraine or more specifically, Western areas near the capital, you'd think during this 8 year war it would have been done at some point. But no one here in the USA or in the EU was ever serious about actually defending the Ukrainians. Just send enough weapons and funding to give the Russians a fight in their backyard.

 

[Arithmetic]

 

[Leasy]

Ahhhhh shyt.

NOT good...


nytimes.com
Biden Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine
Edward Wong
10-12 minutes
Americans presented Chinese officials with intelligence on Russia’s troop buildup in hopes that President Xi Jinping would step in, but were repeatedly rebuffed.

Credit...Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Feb. 25, 2022Updated 10:06 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.

This account is based on interviews with senior administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.

China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic, economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.

But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.

In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media. Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.

Some American officials say the ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades.

The growing alarm among American and European officials at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M. Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union. For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical ideas about power and governance.

In the recent private talks on Ukraine, American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the American accounts.

On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”

Image

Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”

She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign journalists.

Ms. Hua’s fiery anti-American remarks as Russia was moving to attack its neighbor stunned some current and former U.S. officials and China analysts in the United States. But the verbal grenades echo major points in the 5,000-word joint statement that China and Russia issued on Feb. 4 when Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin met at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In that document, the two countries declared their partnership had “no limits” and that they intended to stand together against American-led democratic nations. China also explicitly sided with Russia in the text to denounce enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Last Saturday, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, criticized NATO in a video talk at the Munich Security Conference. European leaders in turn accused China of working with Russia to overturn what they and the Americans say is a “rules-based international order.” Mr. Wang did say that Ukraine’s sovereignty should be “respected and safeguarded” — a reference to a foreign policy principle that Beijing often cites — but no Chinese officials have mentioned Ukraine in those terms since Russia’s full invasion began.

“They claim neutrality, they claim they stand on principle, but everything they say about the causes is anti-U.S., blaming NATO and adopting the Russian line,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University professor who was senior Asia director at the White House National Security Council in the Obama administration. “The question is: How sustainable is that as a posture? How much damage does it do to their ties with the U.S. and their ties with Europe?”

The Biden administration’s diplomatic outreach to China to try to avert war began after President Biden and Mr. Xi held a video summit on Nov. 15. In the talk, the two leaders acknowledged challenges in the relationship between their nations, which is at its lowest point in decades, but agreed to try to cooperate on issues of common interest, including health security, climate change and nuclear weapons proliferation, White House officials said at the time.

After the meeting, American officials decided that the Russian troop buildup around Ukraine presented the most immediate problem that China and the United States could try to defuse together. Some officials thought the outcome of the video summit indicated there was potential for an improvement in U.S.-China relations. Others were more skeptical, but thought it was important to leave no stone unturned in efforts to prevent Russia from attacking, one official said.

Days later, White House officials met with the ambassador, Qin Gang, at the Chinese Embassy. They told the ambassador what U.S. intelligence agencies had detected: a gradual encirclement of Ukraine by Russian forces, including armored units. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, had flown to Moscow on Nov. 2 to confront the Russians with the same information, and on Nov. 17, American intelligence officials shared their findings with NATO.

At the Chinese Embassy, Russia’s aggression was the first topic in a discussion that ran more than one and a half hours. In addition to laying out the intelligence, the White House officials told the ambassador that the United States would impose tough sanctions on Russian companies, officials and businesspeople in the event of an invasion, going far beyond those announced by the Obama administration after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

The U.S. officials said the sanctions would also hurt China over time because of its commercial ties.

They also pointed out they knew how China had helped Russia evade some of the 2014 sanctions, and warned Beijing against any such future aid. And they argued that because China was widely seen as a partner of Russia, its global image could suffer if Mr. Putin invaded.

The message was clear: It would be in China’s interests to persuade Mr. Putin to stand down. But their entreaties went nowhere. Mr. Qin was skeptical and suspicious, an American official said.

American officials spoke with the ambassador about Russia at least three more times, both in the embassy and on the phone. Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, had a call with him. Mr. Qin continued to express skepticism and said Russia had legitimate security concerns in Europe.

The Americans also went higher on the diplomatic ladder: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke to Mr. Wang about the problem in late January and again on Monday, the same day Mr. Putin ordered the new troops into Russia-backed enclaves of Ukraine.

“The secretary underscored the need to preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said a State Department summary of the call that used the phrase that Chinese diplomats like to employ in signaling to other nations not to get involved in matters involving Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, all considered separatist problems by Beijing.

American officials met with Mr. Qin in Washington again on Wednesday and heard the same rebuttals. Hours later, Mr. Putin declared war on Ukraine on television, and his military began pummeling the country with ballistic missiles as tanks rolled across the border.

fukk China because they about to do the same shyt. America and EU need to reel in these corporations and take business out of China asap. They basically funding their own troubles in the future. China doctrine since beginning of time is expansion

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

@Pressure care to actually bring your disagreement to the table or you content with negging? hlnbc posters be emotional as shyt on here with the flag waiving, goofy ass nikkaz feels like I’m talking to 10th graders n shyt

Lemme guess “bu bu bu bu but Russia bad, America good!”

Edit: That’s what you negged me over?!