What an ignorant take on the situation, but then again your take is always the same as the msn since you've never had an original thought of your own.
I could be wrong, but it's pretty obvious that Putin watched a democratically elected leader of Ukraine get ousted by the west and figured it was only a matter of time before they try the same thing in Russia. The fact that the average idiot here thinks they would have stopped with Ukraine is Putin's motivation.
1) I don't watch read anything from MSN or watch MSNBC, so you're wrong.
2) I never said my thought here was original. There is no need for original thought here anyway, and in fact, original thought would just be wrong. Putin is power hungry. He has said Russia is constantly humiliated due to the fall of the USSR, and he feels it is disrespectful for NATO to expand. Putin has been causing trouble for a long time. His issue isn't just that Ukraine had a revolution and ousted his puppet President. You should stop your love of Putin. He's a bad guy. You are an idiot.
Actually msnbc does have one very sharp legal mind and I would recommend conservatives and liberals to watch him. The Beat, with Ari Melber.
Ultimately, I believe he's an imperialist who wants to expand the territory and control of Russia. As a secondary goal, I think he wants to challenge the hegemony of the West and perhaps create an axis with China that can operate completely outside of the US / Western Europe paradigm.
I think he's also genuinely threatened by NATO and wants to create a buffer zone.
However, there's a lot of propaganda coming out from both sides. Ukraine was doing a lot of really shady things before the war. Ukraine was also flaunting their independence in Russia's face, knowing Russia had imperialist intentions.
War is complex and dirty. It's easy to label one side as "bad" and the other as "good" but the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Flaunting their independence? What in the actual f could you possibly mean by this that is not a terrifying rationalization of empire?
Nothing you ever say should be taken with any consideration based on that alone.
Stop it with the killing civilians propaganda. Every military in combat does it. The military come from the people. If parents, siblings and cousins of military personnel are against their nation's war effort and believe surrender is a logical solution, military and political leaders follow the lead of the people. When didn't U.S. intentionally kill civilians? U.S. heavy bombers intentionally fire bombed German cities, German civilians WW2 to degrade the fighting spirit. U.S. heavy bombers intentionally fired bombed civilians, Japan, WW2. In Viet Nam, U.S. Burned the Villages in Order to Save the Villages.
You know that things can change, right? Your most recent example is from a war 50 years ago. Since at least the Gulf War - and certainly in AFG and Iraq - the US has gone to great lengths to reduce civilian casualties. Any where near perfect? Nope. But in the majority of cases, tries quite hard. Very easy for me to believe that Putin is far, far less concerned about it.
If US forces took concentrated fire from a building in Iraq and Afghanistan 9 times out of 10 the building was leveled with artillery or close air support.
Once soldiers have to choose between PR and staying alive they will always opt for staying alive.
The Russians are doing what all soldiers do.
There's endless videos of mobs blocking roads and men stopping columns to berate the soldiers and the Russians haven't done anything to them.
War is ugly. Only the ignorant and naive think what's happening now is any different than what's always happened just because the people have cameras.
What an ignorant take on the situation, but then again your take is always the same as the msn since you've never had an original thought of your own.
I could be wrong, but it's pretty obvious that Putin watched a democratically elected leader of Ukraine get ousted by the west and figured it was only a matter of time before they try the same thing in Russia. The fact that the average idiot here thinks they would have stopped with Ukraine is Putin's motivation.
The leader of Ukraine was ousted in 2014 by Ukrainians and Putin being worried about the same thing happening in Russia is a large part of his motivation. As an economic leader of Russia, Putin is an enormous failure and survives in his current role only by authoritarian tactics. Democracy and accountability to the citizenry rightly scare the crap out of him.
Putin saw the violent revolt in Kazakhstan and resistance movement in Belarus as warning signs that he needed to asserts Russian dominance in the region to keep his own population from turning on him. Russians have tolerated Putin because he did turn around the economy after Yeltsin destroyed the country and let oligarchs buy up all of the old Soviet industries for pennies on the dollar. But their patience with him has been growing thin over the past few years as the Russian economy crashed with energy prices in 2015 and with the crash in energy prices at the outset of the pandemic. If you are 50+ in Russia, you are better off now than you were before Putin. If you are younger, things have just been getting worse over the past 5-7 years.
I think Putin actually means what he says. He does not want NATO on his borders. But that is not because he fears invasion by NATO forces. He fears boost phase anti-ballistic missile systems on his borders because those could be used to neutralize a Russian nuclear launch, giving the US a first strike advantage. Russia has recently been included in OPEC largely due to its ability to assert itself militarily in the Middle East as a supporter of Syria and tacitly backing Iran. This caused the Saudis to realize that they cannot count on US hegemony in the Middle East anymore. MBS met with Putin during the oil crash in 2015 and later invited Russia to join OPEC plus in 2018. It is no coincidence that the Saudis have refused to increase production. But, if Russia has missile defense systems on its borders, the US can again dictate what Russia can and cannot do in the Middle East. So, the issue of NATO expansion is hugely important for Russia.
The nationalist goals appear to be more propaganda and an effort to get the general population to back the invasion of Ukraine. It seems to have gone over like a lead balloon in Russia as most people are just worried about their economic position and couldn't care less about Putin's history lessons. Same for de-nazification. There are just as many neo-nazis in Russia as there are in Ukraine.
The debate over Russia's motivations usually ends up trying to shift blame to the US for NATO expansion and backing right wing elements in the Maidan revolution. This then turns into a chicken and the egg problem. How are we supposed to know that Putin would have never set foot in Ukraine had NATO not expanded following the collapse of the Soviet Union? Putin tolerated a very large expansion of NATO in 2004 under W Bush and even allowed NATO to use a Russian airspace to help support the war in Afghanistan. And the countries that joined NATO in 2004 had significant concerns over Russia after seeing how Putin smashed the separatist movement in Chechnya. And talks of NATO expansion into Ukraine were nothing more than that in 2021 and 2022. So, while the US intentions for NATO expansion have been more about geopolitical hegemony and control over global energy supplies (no coincidence that the largest NATO expansion was under W Bush), the states who sought NATO membership were right to fear Russian aggression.
In the end, if you want to assign blame, blame the game. Both Russia, the US and the other big NATO powers have been using NATO expansion and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine as pawns in an effort to attain global hegemony and control over global energy supplies. I really doubt that Russia would have accepted any sort of treaty with the West in which Ukraine sovereignty was guaranteed in exchange for an end to NATO expansion and de-escalation of military deployment in NATO states. Russia has always wanted to win Ukraine and needed to win Ukraine to prove to the world that it could stand toe to toe with the West and win.
Despite years of our own officials warning that violating this agreement would cause major problems, our war hawks deny this agreement ever took place.
What an ignorant take on the situation, but then again your take is always the same as the msn since you've never had an original thought of your own.
I could be wrong, but it's pretty obvious that Putin watched a democratically elected leader of Ukraine get ousted by the west and figured it was only a matter of time before they try the same thing in Russia. The fact that the average idiot here thinks they would have stopped with Ukraine is Putin's motivation.
The leader of Ukraine was ousted in 2014 by Ukrainians and Putin being worried about the same thing happening in Russia is a large part of his motivation. As an economic leader of Russia, Putin is an enormous failure and survives in his current role only by authoritarian tactics. Democracy and accountability to the citizenry rightly scare the crap out of him.
To draw an equivalence between this and the apparent current Russian objective of removing the current Ukrainian government by overwhelming and indiscriminate use of military force is nonsense.
The situation in 2014 was complex and no doubt western forces as well as Russia played a role, but the characterizations of that era being pedaled here by the usual trolls are just stupid and transparent gaslighting. This is worth reading for background:
To preempt the inevitable, "but wikipedia" response, this essay is backed by hundreds of references. If a respondent has something accessible and higher quality, please feel free to provide it.
You mean the violent coup against the elected president by all of ukraine which lead to eastern provinces breaking away as they realize their democratic choice was not respected
Despite years of our own officials warning that violating this agreement would cause major problems, our war hawks deny this agreement ever took place.
It is baffling that leftists obsess over absurdities like the mental anguish it causes a female to be called a "fisherman" and what pronouns people need to hear but absolutely refuse to believe that other countries can have ideologies that differ from their own.
Russians do not think like Americans. Period. Stop trying to rationalize their behavior from an American perspective it's idiotic.
The leader of Ukraine was ousted in 2014 by Ukrainians and Putin being worried about the same thing happening in Russia is a large part of his motivation. As an economic leader of Russia, Putin is an enormous failure and survives in his current role only by authoritarian tactics. Democracy and accountability to the citizenry rightly scare the crap out of him.
To draw an equivalence between this and the apparent current Russian objective of removing the current Ukrainian government by overwhelming and indiscriminate use of military force is nonsense.
The situation in 2014 was complex and no doubt western forces as well as Russia played a role, but the characterizations of that era being pedaled here by the usual trolls are just stupid and transparent gaslighting. This is worth reading for background:
To preempt the inevitable, "but wikipedia" response, this essay is backed by hundreds of references. If a respondent has something accessible and higher quality, please feel free to provide it.
You mean the violent coup against the elected president by all of ukraine which lead to eastern provinces breaking away as they realize their democratic choice was not respected
The will of the people ONLY matters if the left likes their will.
In 2019, Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State and therefore privy to classified information, said that Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard are Russian assets. Perhaps Jill and Tulsi need to be rounded up and brought in for questioning by the FBI to determine Putin's motives.
The will of the people ONLY matters if the left likes their will.
Then we're clear that having 100,000 Russian soldiers shelling their cities and having President Zelenskyy at the top of the Russian kill list is not "the will of the Ukrainian people"?
Putin does not need to be understood. Just like any other autocrats in history he is simply a selfish, deluded, cold-blooded killer and needs to be disposed of.
You seem to repeatedly claim that people are calling you a Russian bot for merely trying to understand Putin's motivations, but I'm not seeing it, at least not a "brigade" of it.
The leader of Ukraine was ousted in 2014 by Ukrainians and Putin being worried about the same thing happening in Russia is a large part of his motivation. As an economic leader of Russia, Putin is an enormous failure and survives in his current role only by authoritarian tactics. Democracy and accountability to the citizenry rightly scare the crap out of him.
Putin saw the violent revolt in Kazakhstan and resistance movement in Belarus as warning signs that he needed to asserts Russian dominance in the region to keep his own population from turning on him. Russians have tolerated Putin because he did turn around the economy after Yeltsin destroyed the country and let oligarchs buy up all of the old Soviet industries for pennies on the dollar. But their patience with him has been growing thin over the past few years as the Russian economy crashed with energy prices in 2015 and with the crash in energy prices at the outset of the pandemic. If you are 50+ in Russia, you are better off now than you were before Putin. If you are younger, things have just been getting worse over the past 5-7 years.
I think Putin actually means what he says. He does not want NATO on his borders. But that is not because he fears invasion by NATO forces. He fears boost phase anti-ballistic missile systems on his borders because those could be used to neutralize a Russian nuclear launch, giving the US a first strike advantage. Russia has recently been included in OPEC largely due to its ability to assert itself militarily in the Middle East as a supporter of Syria and tacitly backing Iran. This caused the Saudis to realize that they cannot count on US hegemony in the Middle East anymore. MBS met with Putin during the oil crash in 2015 and later invited Russia to join OPEC plus in 2018. It is no coincidence that the Saudis have refused to increase production. But, if Russia has missile defense systems on its borders, the US can again dictate what Russia can and cannot do in the Middle East. So, the issue of NATO expansion is hugely important for Russia.
The nationalist goals appear to be more propaganda and an effort to get the general population to back the invasion of Ukraine. It seems to have gone over like a lead balloon in Russia as most people are just worried about their economic position and couldn't care less about Putin's history lessons. Same for de-nazification. There are just as many neo-nazis in Russia as there are in Ukraine.
The debate over Russia's motivations usually ends up trying to shift blame to the US for NATO expansion and backing right wing elements in the Maidan revolution. This then turns into a chicken and the egg problem. How are we supposed to know that Putin would have never set foot in Ukraine had NATO not expanded following the collapse of the Soviet Union? Putin tolerated a very large expansion of NATO in 2004 under W Bush and even allowed NATO to use a Russian airspace to help support the war in Afghanistan. And the countries that joined NATO in 2004 had significant concerns over Russia after seeing how Putin smashed the separatist movement in Chechnya. And talks of NATO expansion into Ukraine were nothing more than that in 2021 and 2022. So, while the US intentions for NATO expansion have been more about geopolitical hegemony and control over global energy supplies (no coincidence that the largest NATO expansion was under W Bush), the states who sought NATO membership were right to fear Russian aggression.
In the end, if you want to assign blame, blame the game. Both Russia, the US and the other big NATO powers have been using NATO expansion and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine as pawns in an effort to attain global hegemony and control over global energy supplies. I really doubt that Russia would have accepted any sort of treaty with the West in which Ukraine sovereignty was guaranteed in exchange for an end to NATO expansion and de-escalation of military deployment in NATO states. Russia has always wanted to win Ukraine and needed to win Ukraine to prove to the world that it could stand toe to toe with the West and win.
I am glad you stated Ukraine and N.A.T.O., from U.S. perspective is about medium range nukes in Ukraine.
The will of the people ONLY matters if the left likes their will.
Then we're clear that having 100,000 Russian soldiers shelling their cities and having President Zelenskyy at the top of the Russian kill list is not "the will of the Ukrainian people"?
Are you honest enough to admit that will of the people is different in different places?
Do you think farmers in Iowa have the same opinions as Demcorat's in tent cities in Portland?
The separatist regions in Ukraine probably don't share your views on Russia or their intentions.
Actually true. I am glad letsrun posters have no authority in the real world. Letsrun posters would have U.S. troops fighting Putin/Russia.
You obviously wouldn't even fight for your own family...
It's not rape if you let it happen sweetie! Just try to enjoy it!
At least I have stated a rational argument. You come on here, complain about leftist media are brainwashing the nation into fighting in Ukraine then you prove your stupidity by advocating for political policies, as you say leftist media brainwashed you to choose. How stupid can one be?
You know that things can change, right? Your most recent example is from a war 50 years ago. Since at least the Gulf War - and certainly in AFG and Iraq - the US has gone to great lengths to reduce civilian casualties. Any where near perfect? Nope. But in the majority of cases, tries quite hard. Very easy for me to believe that Putin is far, far less concerned about it.
If US forces took concentrated fire from a building in Iraq and Afghanistan 9 times out of 10 the building was leveled with artillery or close air support.
Once soldiers have to choose between PR and staying alive they will always opt for staying alive.
The Russians are doing what all soldiers do.
There's endless videos of mobs blocking roads and men stopping columns to berate the soldiers and the Russians haven't done anything to them.
War is ugly. Only the ignorant and naive think what's happening now is any different than what's always happened just because the people have cameras.
You're making silly generalizations. All combatants are not created equal. Some worry about civilian casualties a lot, some none at all, and some somewhere in between. The modern U.S. military worries about them quite a bit. And we know, based on past actions, that Putin cares about it far, far less. And, it would appear, that's also true of this conflict. Surprise, surprise.
Just stop pretending that every service member in every service in every conflict is applying the same standards to decide upon whether or not to use force in a given place at a given time. It's simply not true, and it gives too little credit to those who worry about it, and far too much credit to those who don't.
You obviously wouldn't even fight for your own family...
It's not rape if you let it happen sweetie! Just try to enjoy it!
At least I have stated a rational argument. You come on here, complain about leftist media are brainwashing the nation into fighting in Ukraine then you prove your stupidity by advocating for political policies, as you say leftist media brainwashed you to choose. How stupid can one be?
Someone on letsrun payroll gives me a down arrow the second I post. Childish.
You obviously wouldn't even fight for your own family...
It's not rape if you let it happen sweetie! Just try to enjoy it!
At least I have stated a rational argument. You come on here, complain about leftist media are brainwashing the nation into fighting in Ukraine then you prove your stupidity by advocating for political policies, as you say leftist media brainwashed you to choose. How stupid can one be?
Real men would strongly disagree that bending over for an aggressor is "rational".
I haven't advocated for any US action on Ukraine. I've simply pointed out that we had a hand in causing the situation and we would respond exactly the same way Russia is responding if the exact same thing happened in Mexico or Canada. Google the Monroe Doctrine and maybe take a peak at US history.
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