I watched a 30 minute interview with Sergei Lavrov once, around the time that Russian air raids were causing a lot of civilian casualties with dumb bombs. His defence was essentially that collateral damage was a phrase coined by the USA and so he used that argument to avoid entering into any significant discussion about Russian actions.
Anyway, every country has hooligans, you are right. Personally I don't remember the president of AS Roma with a smirk on his face questioning how a small group of Roma fans could do anything against thousands of Liverpool fans, or the mayor of Rome saying that fighting is good and Liverpool fans should be more masculine.
Eh? Russia has a serious problem with hooligans who instead of using their fists will try stab you with knives. They're also far right and racist. It's nothing to do with Russiaphobia, it's the fact that you may run into more trouble there as an Englishman than you can handle seeing as they seem intent on showing us the English aren't as hard as we make out. You reduce to some pathetic gag about Putin making you pregnant when foreign hooliganism is rampant and shows a level of violence long since faded from our hooligans hayday.
I live in Leeds and remember when their two fans got stabbed and they weren't looking for trouble, same as I should imagine that Liverpool fan from Ireland wasn't either but you'd probably make another childish remark to their families.
I'm sick of the English always getting the sh!tty end of the stick and all the blame when it's been shown time and again that hooliganism abroad is violent and on the increase plus we're seen as everyones proving ground.
I used to think you're alright Andy but the above comments I'd expect from a twelve year old. You've lumped everything in with Russiaphobia when it's nothing of the case, amazingly some people don't give two ****s about loads of self important men dick swinging to no real end. It was the same with Trump v Kim, everyone getting sweaty about it and guess what? **** all happened. Maybe English fans are just concerned about getting put in a Russian hospital and not shagging Putin?
Bad Russia and Putin - for funneling weapons and off-duty troops into the Russian-speaking eastern half of the Ukraine
Bad bad Russia - for steaming into Crimea so that they hold their port on the Black Sea and deter NATO from expanding it's vice-like grip of Russian borders
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/artic...in-took-crimea
Really bad Russia - for supporting Assad whilst the West sat on it's hands, supported proxy armies and allowed ISIS to get stronger.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/articl...resident-assad
Good USA, UK, and the West in general - for toppling Libya and Iraq and causing mayhem, millions displaced, 100s of thousands dead. Supports a brutal Salafist regime in Saudi that regularly drops Western bombs on wedding parties and never bats a collective eyelid when Israeli snipers kill Arab children that dare to go near their border posts
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs...neral-confirms
So in summary, it is fine for the West to go around the middle-east doing exactly what it wants, but as soon as Putin says "whoa, hold on a cotton-picking minute" and gets involved in ex-Russian countries or Syria where it has long held influence, it is all of a sudden a pariah state run by a mad dictator......pot, kettle, black
Let's see how you feel if he does it to one of the Baltic countries which are Nato members.
There are big populations of non native speaking Russians in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. They don't speak the local language, live in Russian enclaves, in some cases, enormous areas, separate from the natives and even 2nd and 3rd gen, consider themselves Russian.
Wow, Lavrov would be proud. A couple of logic-based objections from this rabid Russophobe:
If you really believe that people who criticise Russia think that everything the West does is perfect, you're either mistaken or in bad faith.
Feel free to open an OT thread about any of the issues you raised around Western foreign policy, the one about Gaza should be entertaining as you try to take the moral high ground over Israeli snipers shooting people you have repeatedly said you despise (and worse).
Have you any idea how chaotic the world would be if invading other countries was justifiable on the basis of people there speaking the same language or of once being part of the same empire? It's a truly absurd position to take.