They’ve risen up before. Russian people might have a higher tolerance for suffering, but they also have a breaking point that is difficult to predict. Putin knows his history and knows he is playing with fire. He knows he needs to end this war on favorable terms and doesn’t have an unlimited supply of time or people. The last major uprisings in Russia (1904 and 1916) started about a year and a half into wars that were not going swimmingly. Putin has taken harsh measures to mitigate dissent, but even that has limitations. A year from now will the Russian people still tolerate this war with twice the casualties and just as little to show for it as they have now? I don’t know. But history says probably not.
Fair point, but if things stay south in Ukraine it will embolden any coup plotters if they know the popular support is gone.
The Ukrainians just wanted freedom. That's all. No starvation or imprisonment. As far as what Putin's perspective is, having a particular perspective does not justify murder on a massive scale. And no, Ukraine joining NATO is not an "existential threat to Russia". It does take away the OPTION of invading Ukraine without major consequences. That is all. There are many ways to deal with disagreements that do not involve an invasion force. The U.S. does not need to invade Canada or Mexico every time we disagree with them on something. How does this limitation on Russia constitute an existential threat? Ukrainian collaborationism with the Axis powers
Well, I wouldn't call Nazi occupation "freedom." Maybe you would? And I'm sure the Ukrainians felt very free as Nazi soldiers hung Ukrainian mayors and governors from street lamp posts throughout Ukraine as they rolled through. Yes, we all know you are excellent at celebrating the viewpoint of the West. I live in the West and would like to see the West do quite well for itself too. But could it be that the West has been promising not to expand NATO eastward for years and backtracked on every promise and Ukraine happens to be Putin's red line? I tend to think that's probably the way he views it. Combine the eastward expansion of NATO which was promised to Russia wasn't going to happen and the events he saw in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, I'd say Putin has reason to be concerned. You cannot tell Vladimir Putin what is and isn't an existential threat to Russia, especially when you have broken so many promises to him before regarding NATO expansion and you ginned up a war for regime replacement with false information in Iraq. Does that justify his campaign against Ukraine? Absolutely not. It is horrific the things he is doing in Ukraine. But it does help explain it.
I’d wager the American people are closer to breaking than are the Russian people. And Putin will likely greatly outlast Biden.
Putin said nothing of pushing back Poland's borders nor is he trying to do so that statement came from Medvedev. To be fair the Polish border has always staged troops from NATO on their border and Russia does the same. Secondly we are not talking about a border that separates Russia from Poland. It is the Poland / Belarus border and Russia would consider an attack on Belarus from Poland as an attack on a Russian ally. Belarus to form new paramilitary force amid Ukraine conflict While hailing the importance of defense cooperation with Russia and expressing support for the Kremlin’s action in Ukraine, Lukashenko has emphasized that he will only send Belarusian troops into Ukraine if his country is attacked. This is what happened a year ago when Russia amassed troops on the Ukraine borders.
I don't comprehend how anyone would consider it cheering for one side or the other when having discussions on the progress of war. This is not a game of football or baseball or basketball where one cheers for a team regardless of win or loss. Fact is I don't have a dog in this fight and no matter this war turns out it will not make one bit a difference to me or the substantive majority of the American populace. No one is going to lose any sleep. No one is going to lose their job. No one is going worry about an invasion against the US. No one is going to change their lifestyle one way or the other. The American populace gets zero gain out of this war that our tax dollars are paying for.
O.k., first of all, welcome to the world of communist propaganda. You must be new here. If you are a communist leader, and you have a fairly outrageous idea, you don't float it out there yourself. You have an underling float it out there. Someone with a little horsepower, but not someone with one hand on the levers of power. Someone like Medvedev. Medvedev says nothing without the prior approval of Putin. Going rogue with your speeches in a communist government can get you a date with a balcony, if you catch my drift. If the idea draws an undesired response from the other side, you simply deny it, much like you are doing, by saying that it didn't come from the top dog. (You are an excellent lapdog for Putin, by the way--if your current job does not work out, you could send in an application...) Secondly, why would a Russian official be floating an idea out there about Belarus moving its border with Poland? Unless Belarus is only a vassal state of Russia, and incapable of thinking or making decisions for itself. In what world do officials from one country go around proposing random border changes for two other countries? In reality, what this is is a threat to Poland (the secret is out!).
I take it you missed the part about what is happening on the Polish Belarusian border and why such a statement would be made?
The second sentence is probably true given that Vladimir isn't constitutionally term limited. Putin wins right to extend his rule until 2036 in landslide vote As far as the first sentence is concerned we will never find out if the Russian people are close to breaking although as I pointed out in a previous thread hundreds of thousands of Russians are expressing their opposition to the war by voting with their feet.
It's not Russia's place to make statements about two other countries' shared border! How can that be any more clear? Does the word "sovereignty" mean anything to you? Russia is walking all over the sovereignty of these two other countries by telling them they are thinking of moving the border between them. Russia is already walking over the sovereignty of Ukraine since they decided to invade last year. All Putin has left is a series of empty threats, and nuclear weapons. No one is afraid of his military anymore.
I hate that so much of this thread has turned in to people spending so much time trying to justify putins decisions to invade a major European country within the context of the west having provoked him. it’s so ridiculous. Russia has nukes they were never under any threat of being attacked. Ever. Why are we wasting so much breathing space carrying putins water? So absurd. if you want to talk more about that stuff start your own thread. This should be a thread devoted to stuff happening on the ground and not making excuses for or justifying Vladimir putin. for example - Human Verification
Ukraine only sided with Nazi Germany for a New York minute, until the Nazis showed their true colors and started abusing them. When the Germans started rolling through Ukraine, the locals had high hopes that they would be left alone, and the Nazis would continue through their country without stopping and taking control. That didn't happen. They were happy that the Russians fled before the Germans, because they had good reason to dislike the Russians. If the western promise of not expanding NATO were important to Russia, they would have insisted on getting it written down in the form of a treaty. They did not. Verbal promises are sometimes dependent on circumstances. The "existential threat" baloney is just propaganda, mostly put out by Tucker Carlson, Moscow's mouthpiece in America. Putin is not so stupid to believe that Ukraine, whether it joins NATO or not, is an "existential threat" to Russia. He knows as well as we do that NATO membership just means that he cannot attack Ukraine without a good reason anytime he feels like it. That does not make it an existential threat to Russia. Putin would laugh if he thought most Americans were dumb enough to believe that. Existential threat means that Ukraine would have a good chance of invading Russia and taking Moscow. The U.S. would probably intervene and prevent that (just to keep the nukes from flying). Putin invaded because he wants what Ukraine has: agriculture out the wazzoo, and rare metals and steel production. They also have prosperity, something that Russia struggles with. Ukraine also has the legal rights to a pretty nice vacation spot called Crimea with a Russian naval base at Sevastopol.
Yep, I guess you could say I am cheering for the Ukrainians, because what has happened to them in this war has been terrible, but I'm not ignorant of the fact that there is still a very good chance Russia comes out of this victorious. The truth is it's going to be really, really difficult for Ukraine to drive Russia out of these areas that are (or were) inhabited by ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea are all primarily ethnic Russian and Russian speaking regions. And depending on who you believe, the Russians could have killed Ukraine's power grid a long time ago if they wanted to.
Prosperity? Pre-war, Russia's GDP per capita is almost triple that of Ukraine's. You're just making it up as you go along. Put down the pompoms and come back to reality.
