Quote (Malopox @ 18 Nov 2024 22:25)
Your initial comparison is incorrect as I already pointed out in my other post (#45624) - Yanukovich was by no means a traitor. Corrupt? Maybe. But not a traitor. He toed a careful neutrality line playing both sides against each other to get the best deal out of EU and Russia. Russia offered a better deal with less covenants attached and Yanukovich - mandated by the democratic majority of the country to do such a deal - signed it. It’s how democracies work literally. There can be no discussion about it. It’s a fact. He had the legal right to do it and the popular support to do it.
What followed then was an illegal overthrow of a legitimate democracy. I’ve spoken to many people from Donbass, Crimea and Kiev over the past decade and protests against Yanukovich were not nationwide. Only in the west of Ukraine and Kiev (capital) with people being bussed from Lviv and so on. People that tried to reach Kiev from Crimea were attacked and their buses burnt.
As I said again. Poland Lithuanian Commonwealth fully occupied Moscow for few years between 1610 and 1612 and their cruelty was so bad Russians revolted, liberated all lands to the south including Kiev and managed to completely dismantle Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth a century later. Poland disappeared until the collapse of Austrian-Hungarian empire. Don’t wake the bear. FAFO.
The paragraph about imperialistic desire is nonsense. Where do you get this stuff? Neither Putin nor Russsians have any intentions to rebuild any empire and simply beg to be left alone to develop quietly for a couple of decades amassing badly needed capital through trade and cooperation. Russians acknowledge the collapse of USSR as a tragedy as so many people were personally affected, but do not seek to rebuild it.
Russians didnt want polish king in 1610-1612 not because he was cruel, but because he was catholic.
The idea at first was to make a polish prince to convert religion to russian, but he was too young for such a difficult task, so it didnt work out.
Also the Russians had a different view of their country, Poles where liberal with strong private property and personal freedom, while Russians were autocratic with no private property. The difference was too much to make a succesful union of both countries imo.
Anyway we, the people of west, do not need to worry about waking up Russian bear, as he is already awake and eating countries.
The question is where do we stop him, do we stop him in Ukraine by assisting our Ukrainian friends (EU candidates), or we want Putin to test NATO in a few years.
This is interesting read about Russia:
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-ongoing-reality-of-russian-imperialism/This post was edited by Ironfister on Nov 19 2024 01:59am