O/T:- Betting odds for US Election [The USA Politics Thread]

[Lullapie]

Putin has been claiming NATO direct involvement since the first weeks of the war. He threatened to regard the provision of each and every new piece of equipment as an "escalation". He has been lying the entire time and nothing he says can be trusted.

The reality is Putin is the one who started the war and has escalated it himself. Us providing Ukraine with weapons to defend themselves is not escalation. Allowing Ukraine to use those weapons to strike targets in Russia, when Russia has been striking targets in Ukraine for a thousand days straight and counting, is not escalation.

As per usual, it is the left that is portraying Putin as being the 100% bad guy. Now I am definitely not pro, but I am also not anti-Putin. As I don't live in Russia or wholly understand Russian politics, listening to the western media and forming a view on world politics from what they 'report', in my experience, is not a good way to go though.

What I do know, is that many countries have their own form of democracy. Many of the Russian people believe that their form of democracy is the only way and that Western democracy is weak. In Russia, if something is seen as 'weak' then it is bad.

Putin has been very good for Russia - that is why many of the ethnic Russians love him to an extent of making him a virtual deity. The country was broken when he took over and the Russians yearned for a strong leader in the form of Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin. That is not how the Western media like to portray Putin though. He is often ridiculed and mocked.

Back to point. When looking at most of the reporting of what is happening and what has happened in the Ukraine, the media talk about Russian aggression. What they are failing to point out (I believe intentionally) is that from the 1700's, Ukraine has in the main, been part of Russia. Since then and especially under the rule of Stalin, Ukraine had been populated with many ethnic Russians.

When Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014, the population was nearly all Russian. It may have been a pre-cursor to taking more land, but the Ukraine cause wasn't helped by the snuggling up of the Ukraine to NATO. To the Russians, this was the equivalent of the Cubans taking on Russian Nuclear missiles in 1962 and threatening the US. To Russia, it was a direct threat.

Again, I'm not defending what Russia did in the Crimea, but if you believe in self-determination, then why shouldn't the Crimea be Russian? Why shouldn't the Scots rule Scotland?

Day by day, all I see is warmongering by the current US administration. The Democrat administrations since Obama first came to power have been a litany of starting new wars. Obama alone started 7 campaigns.

The latest moves by the Democrat Party is to cause as many problems as possible before leaving office. I don't blame Biden. I personally think he was quite happy that Trump won the election over Harris.

It's folly to pick out one part of the conflict and say one side is wrong because of it. If you learn anything from history, it is that wars are caused by a chain of events, not just one particular action and this 'chain' escalates into something much bigger than first anticipated.