If adult wants to take Putin at his word and have that as an explanation for the war, then he really needs to sit down with this piece and read it very carefully. It's about Putin's speech on the eve of the invasion. Much of it is about how Ukraine and RU are the same nation, the same people, and that UKR can't be a western nation because it is part of mother Russia.
NATO is a part of the equation, but by far the bigger piece is the blood and soil argument that UKR is RU and therefore must be rules by the Kremlin.
Adult's blaming the US for the war is woefully simplistic and ignores the blood and soil nature of that part of the world.
He had a green light to do whatever he wanted under Obama for 8 years. If he wanted Ukraine to be part of Russia he would have invaded the day after the Maidan Revolution.
He did not.
Your argument is "Putin is evil and wants to conquer the world" and you call other ideas simplistic???
Putin doesn't want to rule the world, he wants to rule all of the former soviet union. especially the slavs.
As for why didn't he invade before...well Hitler didn't invade anyone until 1939. Why the wait? Why not earlier? It's complicated and it takes a long time to build up a sophisticated army. Putin thought he had paid for that fancy army. he was wrong.
And he thought his spies had bought off influential ukrainians. They hadn't.
Adult, putin's goal is to have the Kremlin once again rule all of UKR. that's the goal. From the start. To have a puppet government. Stop with pretending anything else.
They had a puppet government before the US toppled it in 2014.
If Russia's sole goal was direct control of Ukraine they wouldn't have waited 8 years to invade. Use some common sense for the love of Christ...
obviously the USA did not topple the UKR government although they played a small role.
and obviously you are not going to read that WSJ piece because why would you if it shows how wrong you are and opens your mind?
I will readily concede that there have been some really horrible misfires on the left about the war in Ukraine and this is another one. The main premise of Camps argument is that conflicts from Iraq to Iran are all tied to efforts to break US dollar hegemony, in particular in energy markets. The big problem is that most of the cited cases are those where countries have proposed moving to the euro (and it is pronounced "you ahn" not "yen"--that is the Japanese currency). Both the EU central bank and US central bank have been in lock step in enforcing sanctions against Russia.
But this is just one in a long line of arguments that attempt to make Russia's invasion of Ukraine a direct result of US foreign policy. These arguments just stack BS on top of BS. The Maidan revolution was a conspiracy between the US and ultranationalist in Ukraine to start a proxy war with Russia. But while ultranationalists were on the front lines of the Maidan revolution (primarily because they were armed and willing to fight the police and military's violent suppression of the protests), a coalition of ultranationalist parties (Svoboda, Right Sector, etc.) only got 2.15% of the vote in the 2019 election. Zelensky won with 73% of the vote running on an anti-war platform.
Russia doesn't like NATO expansion, but it has a nuclear arsenal and has developed hypersonic missiles. No one is going to invade Russia because they will get nuked. Russia's real beef with NATO is that it provides protection for former Soviet satellites that Russia wants to control. Russia invaded Ukraine at a time when there was nothing going on as far as Ukraine attempting to join NATO.
US conflicts are all tied to liberal hegemony. Liberal democracies don't go to war with other liberal democracies.
US foreign policy since WW2 has been about promoting democracy and fighting communism and authoritarianism.
The lessons of Iraq, Iran, and even Ukraine proved that not all peoples are suited for democracy.
How can you admit the US helped overthrow the Russian puppet government in one breath and then say the invasion being related to that is BS? The Russian separatists have been at war with Ukraine literally since the revolution.
Russia doesn't want NATO on it's border specifically because they can counter their ICBMS hundreds of miles inside of Russia. Putin has said this repeatedly.
And you’re the dumb buck who signed up for the one in Iraq 😂
This simplistic though process would make someone very susceptible to disinformation. Food for thought...
LOL! Yes the sophisticated approach is to only get your information from advocates and assume they're being 100% honest. LOL!
Jesus....
"Truth is somewhere in the middle" is rudimentary fallacy (of the so called golden mean) of which a common 2nd grader could provide adequate counter-examples
US conflicts are all tied to liberal hegemony. Liberal democracies don't go to war with other liberal democracies.
US foreign policy since WW2 has been about promoting democracy and fighting communism and authoritarianism.
The lessons of Iraq, Iran, and even Ukraine proved that not all peoples are suited for democracy.
How can you admit the US helped overthrow the Russian puppet government in one breath and then say the invasion being related to that is BS? The Russian separatists have been at war with Ukraine literally since the revolution.
Russia doesn't want NATO on it's border specifically because they can counter their ICBMS hundreds of miles inside of Russia. Putin has said this repeatedly.
And you’re the dumb buck who signed up for the one in Iraq 😂
Ridiculous self own.
I was in the military long before the Iraq war which just reinforces my point that soldiers don't get to choose where they fight.
Every link you post is either a low quality news source or a rando YouTuber. You then dismiss all western news sources as being brainwashed with propaganda.
If there are legit sources that support your side of this debate, you should post them. Most people would rather read that, than consume a bunch of post-truth conspiracy theory trash.
I've read the "western sources". You've read nothing BUT the "western sources" which is why you're baffled by any information that the left doesn't want you to know about.
Contrary to ignorant opinion the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
LOL! Yes the sophisticated approach is to only get your information from advocates and assume they're being 100% honest. LOL!
Jesus....
"Truth is somewhere in the middle" is rudimentary fallacy (of the so called golden mean) of which a common 2nd grader could provide adequate counter-examples
What would your 2nd grade counter argument to the golden mean be?
I've read the "western sources". You've read nothing BUT the "western sources" which is why you're baffled by any information that the left doesn't want you to know about.
Contrary to ignorant opinion the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
I've read the "western sources". You've read nothing BUT the "western sources" which is why you're baffled by any information that the left doesn't want you to know about.
Contrary to ignorant opinion the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
You firmly established zero credibility weeks ago. But sometimes, morans like you do yourself a disfavor and encapsulate your idiocy PARTICULARLY well:
"...the truth is always somewhere in the middle."
Sounds awesome to a basement genius. SOMEHOW managing to forget, oh, say, Hitler and the Holocaust, every rape ever, and a few billion other things throughout human history.
My god. Turn off your computer.
He is on here day and night. An Iraqi invasion war mongerer.
I figured his constant posting would last five days, tops.
They had a puppet government before the US toppled it in 2014.
If Russia's sole goal was direct control of Ukraine they wouldn't have waited 8 years to invade. Use some common sense for the love of Christ...
obviously the USA did not topple the UKR government although they played a small role.
and obviously you are not going to read that WSJ piece because why would you if it shows how wrong you are and opens your mind?
The WSJ piece doesn't show how wrong I am it shows how wrong the people who wrote it are.
"Mr. Putin wants to return to a world of empires with spheres of influence, which makes Ukraine the key challenge, said Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher and editor."
This is an idiotic statement. The world is and has ALWAYS been about spheres of influence.
Russians in February: we will conquer Ukraine in a blink of an eye, Russia strong 💪 Russians in April: 2 Ukrainian helicopters flew 50km on our territory, successfully attacked us and safely returned home because we couldn’t do anything 😢