O/T:- Ukraine [Incorporating 'Congrats to Russia' thread]

[andy6025]

Of all the places you could brainlessly regurgitate Putin's ridiculous lies and propaganda, why a football forum?

Putin's the one who destabilised Russia by invading Ukraine with zero justification, losing the war, and implementing conscription instead of just pulling out. A series of unforced errors.

Putin is the cause of Russia's problems, not NATO. Did NATO tell him to invade? Did NATO tell him to dig his heels in after he lost? Russia's national best interests can now only be served by removing him from power, giving back every last postage stamp of Ukrainian land they've stolen, returning the kidnapped Ukrainians and paying reparations. Then and only then can the sanctions be negotiated.

Failing to undertake any of those steps will lead Russia into economic and technological oblivion likely leading to the breakup of (what is left of) the Russian state.

I think there are a few things you’re mistaken on that will likely result in you being surprised by the turns of events that will likely shape this war. These are oft repeated mistakes, promulgated by our main stream media, so their repetition is unsurprisingly endemic among the population.

The first is that, even when considering only the Russian side, Putin is solely responsible for the war. The fact is that Putin and the office of the presidency are but one part of the political establishment in Russia, and to many Westerners surprise, he’s actually what one might consider a ‘moderate’. What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the Russian political establishment are even more enthusiastic about achieving even more military goals in Russia than Putin himself, and they would have done so yesterday without him at the helm. These sentiments are backed by the overwhelming majority of the Russian people. As professor Stephen Cohen said in the top link that I provided in my last post, (paraphrasing) ‘if you really got ‘democracy’ in Russia, then you wouldn’t like what comes out.’

However, with the false ‘branding’ that goes on by our western intelligence services, our political elites and our mass media, its unsurprising that we think otherwise. In our aggression towards non-aligned countries, we commonly reduce our ‘adversaries’ to mere personalities rather than to the collective will of opposing systems. In Russia it’s the evil mastermind Putin. In Iraq it was Saddam Hussein. In Libya Gaddafi, Serbia had Milosevic and so on. We harbour these misguided interpretations that if we only take out the evil leader then a friendly country will emerge that will prosper forever. This has yet to work anywhere.

The second dangerous falsehood that propagates is the lead up and conduct of the war so far, with all the talking points you’ve mentioned - Nato didn’t force “Putin” to invade, Russia is losing, they’re kidnapping people, etc., etc. There’s much too much to go into here, but the devil really is in the detail. All I’ll say is this: develop your critical thinking skills and read, read, read. While there is access to Russian sources (in English, even), there’s a whole world of media out there that isn’t Western. They’re telling a much different story from the ones we’re being fed. They are generally more analytical and more factual. And they are part of the reason why, out of all the countries and peoples in the world, only a tight knit group of Western countries (and a few Asian-Pacific countries) are taking part in the sanctions against Russia - which, in practice, turn out to be these countries simply sanctioning themselves.

Last. To your point of ‘why talk about this on a football forum?’ There are many reasons to talk about politics anywhere, not least because I find it interesting, and, to play off on a popular fred - I’m not much impressed by our leadership.