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Ryuu96 on 04 February 2024
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Tober said:
Biggerboat1 said:

Look, you seem to be arguing in good faith, unlike the other guy, but you're being unbelievably naive. Putin is not 'doing what he thinks is right for Russia & the Russian people'. Please give one example that shows Putin gives one ounce of a shit what happens to his people? Did you see all those protestors of the invasion disappear? Or the scores thoughtlessly sent to their deaths throughout this conflict? Or really, any Russian who doesn't tow his line, what happens to those folks?

I guess Kim Jong Un really cares about his people too right? Your thinking seems to be the guy at the top of any government must really value the welfare of their citizens, despots included - again, incredibly naive. Putin has installed himself as a forever leader & somehow you conclude that he cares about the concerns of his people - like what planet are you living on?

You know what's different about Russia now compared to the Napoleon/Hiter eras? How about 6K nuclear warheads. As deterants go, I'd say they don't come much better. Who in their right mind is going to try to invade the world's biggest nuclear power? There's zero chance that an invasion was going to happen, Putin & everyone else knows that - you're making the mistake of believing anything that comes out of the guy's mouth.

There are many things in this world that are shades of grey (Isarael/Gaza for instance), but Russia/Ukraine isn't one of them. There's a clear bad guy - it's really not that complicated in this instance.

And before you say, it doesn't matter who is right & wrong, it kinda does. If this type of 'bad' behaviour is not met with consequences then it'll just encourage more of it, from Russia as well as other bad actors.

Others on this thread are very knowledgeable on this topic & I hope that you allow yourself to absorb some of what they're saying.

I consider myself somewhat of a world traveler. Been all over the place from the Americas, Africa, Asia and yes parts of Russia. Russia is incredibly big and diverse with cultures and languages. We see Russia as merrily the Euro part of it as depicted in most media, but the truth is that it is a federation where most states are pretty autonomous. Perhaps Putin is a dictator, but to me it is hard to believe a dictatorship would work in a nation of this size. This is not to defend Putin. I have no bets in this.

Perhaps I am naive, but then I consider myself informed naive. I don't get my info just by listening to talking heads on TV. I met people across the world, spoke to them, got to know them. I'm trying to speak nuance in this threat. In the end it's about economic power. This fuels any governments policies abroad and yes this includes war. If it's the "West", China, Russia or who ever, it's all the same. Economic arm wrestling, bribery, government toppling or bombing people. Just means to the same end.

Obviously I do not condone Putin's actions in Ukraine, I just argue that this is not caused by a madman waking up one morning and thinking I want to make a statue for myself.

Those "autonomous states" are having thousands of their people being tossed into a meat grinder and receiving a much larger share of the conscription than the likes of Moscow and St Petersburg because ultimately they aren't autonomous and Putin is the leader of them all and wants to remove ethnic minorities from the population.

Your mistake is thinking the argument is that Putin suddenly woke up one morning and decided to be a madman, that isn't it, Putin has always been one, he has always been a horrific human being. Putin's invasion of Ukraine didn't start in 2022, it started in 2014. Putin has jailed political rivals (see Navalny), has blatantly poisoned people on UK soil (see Litvinenko). Russia's actions in Moldova (specifically Transnistria) and Georgia (specifically Abkhazia and South Ossetia) mirror their actions in Ukraine. Putin's involvement in the absolute decimation of Chechnya. Their role in Syria.

Putin has always shown horrific actions throughout his political career but the West looked the other way in exchange money or diplomatic relations, it took until Ukraine's full scale invasion for them to stop looking the other way at Putin's actions. For years now, Putin has poked at the West to see what he could get away with, slowly pushing the boundaries overtime, whilst at the same time attempting to ensure the West is reliant on Russia via energy, he tried to make Europe dependent on Russian energy so that when he makes the ultimate push, the West wouldn't do anything out of fear.

This is why he attempted to blackmail the West with energy, why he attempted to blackmail us with the Nord Stream pipeline, stop supporting Ukraine and lift the sanctions and we'll supply you with energy again, Russians were practically salivating on their state run media that Europe would freeze to death over the Winter, this blackmail attempt failed as Europe weaned itself off Russian energy quicker than expected but nevertheless it was an attempt.

Practically all media sources in Russia are state run or terrified of saying something against the state, people were arrested in Russia simply for holding up signs which said "peace" and they were arrested for protesting against the war along the lines of "discrediting the armed forces of Russia" if this isn't a dictator state then nothing is.