[orochi235]

What's the alternative, though? The leader of your country is terrorizing Europe in ways not seen in almost 80 years. We all know all-out war between nuclear states is not an option, so what should Western nations do? Just sit back and ignore the indiscriminate war crimes?

It's ironic to me, given how clearly Putin's worldview presumes that power is all matters, how quick Russia has been to cry foul over sanctions. If you want to live in a world where the one with the biggest stick gets to do whatever he wants to everybody else, you should probably at least make sure you have a big stick first.

I'm sorry that your local McDonald's closed, and I do have some sympathy for the Russian people, most of whom probably wanted nothing to do with this war. I have an enormous amount of sympathy for those brave enough to speak up in the face of frankly terrifying state oppression. But honestly, after enabling that maniac for 22 years, I do think Russian citizens bear a little bit of responsibility for this senseless war (not to mention all the other ones!). And if you think that's unfair, well, how about what's happening to the citizens of Ukraine? Is that fair?

It's in everyone's interest that we all learn to get along. Nobody wants the Russian people to suffer for no reason. I hope you guys eventually figure out how to stand up an honest and functioning democracy, for your sake as well as everyone else's. But we can't condone this senseless brutality, and if that makes you see us as your enemy, that's unfortunate, but hopefully temporary.

[russiano]

> It's ironic to me, given how clearly Putin's worldview presumes that power is all matters, how quick Russia has been to cry foul over sanctions.

Unfortunately this is exactly how the world works. Decades of unipolar world order may have led to the wrong impression though

I really liked the recent Noam Chomsky's interview on the subject of geting along. It's called How To Prevent World War III

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-t...

[orochi235]

Noam Chomsky has had a remarkable career, but he's really old and was never anywhere within shouting distance of the political center. Neither is Current Affairs, for what it's worth. His argument seems to be that Putin's belligerence is effectively an act of God, and that our only choice from now until eternity is to submit to it. Dr. Chomsky's childhood was apparently so long ago, he's forgotten that appeasing a bully only ever makes him worse.

For the record, no country is capable of making another country's citizens resist an invasion to the last man. Look what happened to the army in Afghanistan. Despite what Russian state TV is telling you, Ukrainians want to fight far more desperately than the rest of the world wants them to. They all grew up learning about the Holodomor, for one thing. And that was true even before Putin razed a bunch of their major cities and killed tens of thousands of people. The US is just providing weapons—many of them old and Soviet-made, no less—to a people desperate to protect themselves from what they clearly see as a fate at least as bad as, if not worse than, death.

Nothing about this is inevitable. The world works however the people in it want it to work. We can build a better one, or we can all decide that we're OK repeating the endless brutality of the past. The West has (imperfectly, sporadically) chosen the former since the fall of Nazi Germany, and the result, despite all the missteps, has been an unprecedented era of global peace and prosperity. Russia was welcome to join this fraternity in the 90's, but instead was consumed by corruption and mob rule and retreated inward to misguided nationalism and xenophobia.

It seems to have been forgotten in Russia that the Soviet Union was a disaster, and its primary victims were its own citizens. Stalin murdered tens of millions of his own people. It promulgated a culture that installed bloodthirsty dictators who were almost as bad in dozens of countries, and whose ideology was so ineffective that it led to devastating famine in many communist countries. It gave us Chernobyl. For all the talk about hating Nazis, the USSR (and, increasingly, Putin's regime) much more closely resembled Nazi Germany than any country you'd recognize nowadays, except maybe China or North Korea. Soviet vassal states all voted to leave the USSR by >80% margins the second the regime collapsed.

Russia is hell-bent on being recognized as a great power, but there's little to substantiate that claim. The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption. It turns out the military is only really good at committing war crimes. Russia's two greatest military victories—a point of great national pride—are both seen by historians as much more akin to enemy self-owns than great acts of brilliance or might. Its intelligence agencies have likely been the single most destabilizing force in world politics over the last hundred-plus years, dating back to the Tsars. Many of the most persistent and idiotic conspiracy theories—e.g. the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the CIA creating AIDS as a weapon to use against Black people—are literally fabrications of Russian intelligence programs. Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest. And you're either one of the only countries brazen enough to regularly carry out state-sponsored assassinations, or the only ones sloppy enough to keep getting caught. You even cheat at the f--king Olympics.

Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families in the last two months: https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died.... It's amazing how many of them have fallen from tall buildings over the years, too.

You're right, as long as Russia has a bunch of nukes, they'll be treated with a certain amount of deference. But don't conflate fear—which Putin wields very effectively—with respect, which will never, ever be earned on the world stage through this kind of behavior. You can't butcher and threaten your way to esteem. It's a lesson Xi could stand to learn as well.

[russiano]

I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism

>Despite what Russian state TV is telling you

I am trying to read as many different sources as I can. I think the only thing that every party could agree on is that ukrainians are fighting harder than expected. Nearly every other event and opinion is controversial and you have to check many sources first to get a vague idea of what's going on. The fog of war is real, despite what Twitter's collective opinion is telling you

>Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest

Right, our dictator bombed Libya back to the stone age and killed Gaddafi who kept economic migrants from countries devastated by our colonial past and present at bay. Oh, wait, I am not from France!

>The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption

>Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families

Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy

[orochi235]

> I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism

This seems like a convenient way of just hand-waving away the entire concept of morality. Maybe this is how Russians view the world, but it's not how anyone else does. They say this is part of the problem with Putin: he just can't conceive of a world where every entity isn't a CIA or FSB puppet. It also illustrates why the civilized world feels like it can't in good conscience keep trading with a nation that acts like this.

It's not like this whole thing materialized out of thin air. Ukraine has been trying to free itself from Russia's grasp for decades. Everything that's happened there has Putin's fingerprints all over it: puppet leaders who promise one thing and then betray their people to Russia; the jailing of former leaders on garbage corruption charges; the red-handed vote rigging; the not-very-well-concealed assassinations. This isn't the norm anywhere else in the developed world.

Another hallmark of Putinist rhetoric is whataboutism. I mean, when everything you do is so cynical and violent, I guess it's the only real defense you have. Debating what actually happened in Libya is an enormous distraction—which may be the entire point—but the US had nothing to do with that uprising until Gaddafi sent a column of tanks after a bunch of poorly-armed rebels and the world reacted in horror. Was it a mistake to intervene? Maybe. But that's nowhere comparable to straight-up invading a peaceful country (twice!).

It's funny to hear anyone in Russia hand-wringing about the well-being of "economic migrants." Russia is one of the most ethnically segregated countries in the world and has done absolutely nothing for refugees anywhere except create more of them. It's widely believed that Putin's intervention in Syria was designed to displace as many civilians into Europe as possible, with the goal of causing a populist backlash. It may be downright evil, but he's gotten away with it for years.

In terms of which sources to trust, the Russian government has done nothing but lie to everybody for the last 20 years. US intelligence accurately predicted the invasion even when it seemed to take most Russian soldiers by surprise. There's all kinds of primary-source war footage, if you can stomach it. And Putin's objectives keep drastically changing, which sure makes any claims that he's succeeding seem suspect. As does the really harsh media crackdown and the threats to jail people for years just for saying the word "war." You don't have to aggressively "sway" public opinion like that when the truth is on your side.

> Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy

I really hope you're kidding. Those things never stop where they're intended to, and it's certainly not your interests they're being carried out in.

[russiano]

I like how every time US has absolutely nothing to do with regime change and somehow the wiki page on that is mile-long. I guess this ok, because there are obviously "civilized" countries with proper morals and other countries that are eager to do a transition to democracy, just in need of a little push. With Yanukovich, it was already a democracy, almost a right one but not exactly

Whataboutism is about dropping the subject in favor of an unrelated topic, which is different from calling out double standards. I have a convenient example of the latter - the events that are unfolding right now on Solomon islands. Would you think threatening a sovereign nation for entering a military alliance while talking about Ukraine's freedom of association is hypocrisy? Please note that this not an attempt to justify the war, just questioning moral integrity

>the not-very-well-concealed assassinations

Wholly agree here, their incompetence is staggering

>Russia is one of the most ethnically segregated countries

What are you talking about? I lived most of my life in Russia and this is a ridiculous statement. Have you been to Moscow?

>You don't have to aggressively "sway" public opinion like that when the truth is on your side.

I am sorry to say that, but if you find your media tells truth and only truth that you can't question, it's time to get suspicious. I am saying that as someone who watched freedom of press deteriorating over the last 20 years

>I really hope you're kidding

I am. That was a phrase from a meme and I couldn't resist using it, sorry :)

[orochi235]

I'm not saying diplomatic realism is useless, or that countries shouldn't act strategically to further their own interests. I'm saying that you have to balance those needs against the very basic moral standards that are hardwired into (almost) all of us. I'm not talking about hypocrisy, but about the basal revulsion all decent people should feel in seeing hospitals bombed and innocents massacred.

Yanukovich was caught rigging an election in 2004. He got caught and lost the subsequent clean version. He then had the gall to run again years later (with loads of support from Putin), somehow managed to win, immediately threw a bunch of the old leadership in prison, and then set about breaking the promises that got him elected. That's why he got run out of office, and the fact that he fled to Russia when things got hot is very telling. The US had nothing to do with any of this. _Of course_ we were cheering for the people of Ukraine. Of course we were excited to see a people we viewed as long-suffering fighting so hard for their freedom. But Putin drove them away on his own, and Americans have no particular interest in Ukraine (or Russia, for that matter) that goes beyond wanting to see the world be a peaceful place that's conducive to free trade. And fwiw, the length of a Wikipedia page likely has a lot more to do with the community's level of interest in a given topic than it does the level of State Department complicity in that topic. :)

I was imprecise with my wording. The population of the USSR, as I understand it, was pretty deliberately shifted around in the 20th century to prevent uprisings, and I'm sure the former Soviet ethnicities themselves aren't segregated. But I have friends of color—people who obviously are not from the area—who _have_ been to Moscow and say it was uncomfortable in ways that nowhere else in Europe had been. Anyway, my point was more that you don't see Russia accepting refugees from the Middle East or anywhere similar: the country exists entirely on the supply side of the migrant crisis.

The situation in the South China Sea is complicated. I'm not going to pretend it's my area of expertise. That said, the Western agenda there is to ensure freedom of navigation for everybody, and prevent China from seizing one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. I'd also point out that no one has invaded anyone else (with the arguable exception of the Chinese dredging operations that sparked this whole controversy to begin with).

I agree completely that when you can't question the truth, it's time to get suspicious. That's exactly the point I was trying to make about the recent Russian media blackout. People outside of Russia have access to all kinds of information about the war, including official Kremlin statements. The Western media report on what Putin's spokespeople are saying. It's just that it usually turns out to be demonstrably false. The Biden administration, on the other hand, announced the invasion days before it happened. I don't trust them because they're my government; I trust them because they accurately predicted the invasion and because the reporting on the ground continues to corroborate what they're claiming.

I think I do a pretty good job of listening to other perspectives. I even watched a few autotranslated segments of Russia-1 before YouTube blocked it. (Olga Skabeyeva is freaking terrifying!) But how many times do you have to be lied to by somebody before you stop trusting them?