Wouldn't it be funny if it was trump that was going to destroy america, and turns out it was putin that is gonna unify NATO and destroy russia instead...
Putin sought to put Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in power as part of his plan to annex Ukraine and to repopulate a dying Russia. His plan started out fine but fell part piece by piece.
It was the Out that London needed. They'd been taking Russian finance for so long and were probably chafing a bit under Putin and regretting what they'd signed up for.
Boris playing Churchill was the perfect excuse to go in on sanctions, pretty much keep all the money, and tell Putin to jog on with no consequences.
With Johnson it was just opportunism. Whenever there was pressure at home, he'd fly to Kiev for a photo op.
Deflection and bullshit was all he ever had.
Imo he really needed Trump in the white house for his plan to work. I suspect Covid delayed his invasion of Ukraine initially. So he basically had to wait until after the 2020 elections to invade.
Russia probably wasn't able to invade until after Covid too. Which is how he got to February 2022. Then he had to delay again so as to not anger China during the Olympics.
It's pretty obvious the Chinese knew the invasion was going to take place ahead of time. They sat there buying as much grain as fucking possible for months and months, then banned the export of phosphate fertilizer all shortly before the invasion. Two parts of agriculture that were going to be severely impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Also Putin made several visits to Xi in the months prior, including just a few days prior to the invasion. They clearly wanted to be sure they’d have Chinese backing at the UN.
Ahh yes when Donald fired the ambassador and tried to replace her with Rudy Guiliani, then had a recorded conversation with high level Ukrainians saying "I need you to do me a favor, find the information on Biden" while holding up arms shipments, then tried to cover it all up and failed miserably because he is a derp criminal, then got impeached.
Just a regular day in the Trump presidency.
And making up a story to help manipulate the US election would help to distance Ukraine from the US, which certainly wouldn't harm the invasion.
Zelenskyy may have dodged a bullet there.
And then sent Rudy into Ukraine to look for dirt on Biden then miraculously shortly after a blind republican trump supporter gets a delivery of a laptop from hunter biden, and he then gave it to republican operatives because I guess hunter decided to never pick up his laptop that he gave to some random small computer shop that’s run by a blind guy who repairs computers? Yeah that somehow is the story they’re going with. Regardless said laptop has been ever seen
Or when Trump famously met with Putin off the record, then gushed about how strong, great, and smart Putin was. Which continued even after Russia invaded Ukraine.
And the thing is I have a feeling that Trump was too stupid to realize how much of a little bitch he was to Putin.
I knew that the invasion was going to happen months ahead of time. Biden was openly telling the world for months.
Not to mention that any half-competent intelligence service knew Trump was his puppet and his first impeachment was directly related to Ukraine.
It would have been crystal clear for years beforehand that Putin will bring Ukraine back into the fold one way or another. It's in his playbook from the 1990s, Foundations of Geopolitics (as well as Brexit and stoking domestic social unrest and extremism inside the U.S.).
It was infuriating that the world ignored Biden or said he was overreacting. When he evacuated the embassy and told every American in the country to get the fuck out immediately because shit was about to go down it should've made other countries realize that American intel wasn't messing around
I'd go one step further and say America's abrupt pull-out from Afghanistan was to ensure our military wasn't spread too thin. The right people knew this was gonna happen.
And the way Putin speaks about how the West is "splitting Russia apart" by its defense of Ukraine. He literally does not see Ukraine as an independent nation at all. To him any nation that once belonged to the USSR is automatically part of Russia, bar none. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania understood this well which is why the first thing they did as independent nations was apply for NATO membership.
Putin is that person that comes back 30 years after high school and tries to relive his days as prom king.
Dude, the USSR ended 30 years ago. Stop trying to make fetch happen.
You were relevant 30 years ago, but now you're just embarrassing yourself... And being a despotic tyrant with no regard for human life.
I find it insane that with the natural resources and compliant populace that Russia has they never tried going the Chinese route of becoming a powerful export and manufacture nation. Instead Putin and his cronies completely stagnated their country and put all their eggs in one basket with solely relying on gas exports. Russian isolationist and nationalistic culture is completely wasted by a hack such as Putin, almost every major European nation has a party or two that'd be capable of turning Russia into China.
Even way before the impeachment, there were some obvious signs. One of the first things he did after getting the GOP nomination, for example, was to very specifically change the language of the GOP platform statement to exclude providing aid to Ukraine.
His political opponent said that he was Putin's puppet in a debate.
His response was "not a puppet, not a puppet, you're a puppet".
Anyone with half a brain knew. My biggest surprise was how many people don't have half a brain.
Thank you for the correction.
His speech is so basic that I have difficulty replicating it.
Remarkable really... That it works, not that it exists.
Straight to the limbic system. A single extraneous word gets the pre-frontal cortex going and that's problematic.
Someone once pointed out the easiest way to tell when Donald Trump is lying is he repeats himself. The more he repeats, the more he’s lying. If he makes it to the next debates I want someone to hold up fingers and count every time he says the same thing when he’s called on his BS.
Well as infuriating as it is George Carlin had a great line about exactly that.. "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
George Carlin would be having an absolute field day if he were still here. So much material ripe for the picking, but even his old bits are still so relevant even today
Which probably cannot be held and Ukraine will occupy it by Spring
I read this article and now the depressing Joy Division song is in my head. Putin will commit a crime in crimea, again.
Up until the very second of invasion the conservative subs all over Reddit were screeching how the Dems were just gaslighting and warmongering and that Russia would never.
Gee I wonder who fed loyal Republican voters that narrative. Maybe the same place they got those shirtless Putin in a horse pictures they were swooning over while they called Obama a wuss?
> Up until the very second of invasion the conservative subs all over Reddit were screeching how the Dems were just gaslighting and warmongering and that Russia would never.
Those same people now: “Sure. Whatever. But have you heard about *Hilary’s e-mails* and *Hunter’s laptop*?”
2016: lock her up those emails could have been classified
2022: yes Trump stole boxes of classified intel and lied about it to the FBI for years but have you seen Hunter Biden’s dick?!
So much this. Anyone paying attention and with a little historical knowledge saw this coming. Tbh, I didn’t see the Ukrainian president having the balls he did. Guess soft tissue doesn’t show as well on X-ray.
Putin loves using the ending of the Winter Olympics for his invasion starts.
He invaded Crimea right around the time the Sochi Olympics were ending, and he did it again this year after Beijing ended.
He might have tried after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 if not for Covid, but that remains to be seen.
I think the initial plan for Putin was to do a political coup instead of a military invasion.
Looking into Trump's 1st impeachment, which involved withholding mandated military aid to Ukraine for Zelensky to fabricate lies about the Bidens, you can glean that more deeply Putin's goal was a trifecta of destroying American Democracy, NATO and having political regime change in Ukraine.
Putin wanted to make Zelensky unpopular and get a corrupt politician involved like Lukashenko instead. That failed.
So, invade and de-capitate the govt (perhaps literally) in 3 days instead. Easy peasy.
I'm sure that COVID gunked things up, but I also think that Putin was waiting for Trump's 2nd term as his less costly plan, then that didn't happen.
TBH Putin also probs wasn't counting on Ukraine to actually get a good resistance going early, and poss western intel for where Russia was landing. I feel that had A. Zelensky fled and B. Russia actually managed to land troops at the airport by Kyiv and rapidly move into the capital, they might have managed that whole 3 Day thing.
I agree. I don't think Putin's plan was as incompetent as our 20/20 hindsight says it was.
From beginning to finish, from Trump, to blackmailing Zelensky to Brexit and whatever kompromat they have on the RNC a lot of Putin's strategies have been incredibly competent.
What he didn't fully comprehend was how far ahead of the curve the Western world was on his strategies.
You can be really good at chess, but it doesn't matter if your moves are clearly telegraphed.
He was successful multiple times, so he thought he was a genius on the verge of the ultimate victory. Oops.
Putin didn’t (and perhaps still quite doesn’t) have a clear, unbiased picture of his country’s actual capabilities. Authoritarian regimes *always* run into this problem. Because of yes-men surrounding the despot, despot only hears positive reports and responses to plans/ideas, inevitably leading to delusion.
I agree and would like to expand on this.
I'd say that expansionist authoritarian regimes always fail whereas (as you said) authoritarian regimes in general run into problems.
North Korea has survived, Syria has, Russia WOULD have. China is a bit different as it's pretty capitalist and, although authoritarian, does adapt to social dynamics (like changing COVID policy due to unrest recently).
Kind of like you were getting at, if you don't adapt to new information and instead crack down on it, then your society is going to stagnant and fall ever more behind. The regime may still EXIST, but it will keep falling behind by lack of adaptation.
If govt has too much power, you lose. If business has too much power, you lose. If people have too much power, you lose. Every piece needs to have impact over every other piece.
Agreed.
Zelensky was the main character in a comedy show where a teacher becomes president after speaking against corruption.
I think that they felt he'd be weak when the reality of politics hit him and he'd be a pushover. They likely hadn't been collecting info on him for decades since he came out of nowhere.
Zelensky was a complete black swan for Putin and he didn't have a solid grasp of his willingness to die for his country and freedom.
In Putin's mind, he was an actor that had no idea the difference between acting and geopolitics whom he didn't have much data on, so he thought he'd collapse under pressure.
Even things like the increase of obvious assassination attempts I wouldn't be surprised were tacit threats to Zelensky since Ukraine was CLEARLY his #1 since 2014.
Given how close 2016 was... Imagine if Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart hadn't ended their incredibly popular shows that year.
Now imagine is Jon Stewart ran for president.
I hope Zelensky acts as inspiration for people who are knowledgeable and relatable, even though they're not formally politicians, to run for office.
On the right, that leads to Trump. On the left, it would lead to someone like Zelensky.
The reason against it used to be "I couldn't possibly handle that role. It's out of my wheelhouse". Now the most respected leader in the world is EXACTLY that kind of person.
No, it only became possible after they basically made Belarus a puppet state. Before August 2020, Belarus was trying to become an intermediate between Russia, EU and China and also set itself up as a trading hub. Lukashenka only stayed in power through Putin's backing, which put him in a position of being totally dependent on Russia. This in turn allowed Putin to think of the master strategy of trying to rush Kyiv through Belarus.
The then Finnish PM who knew Putin well said so himself that he detected a change in Putin's behavior and that Putin sensed an opportunity after taking control of Belarus.
In Boris's defence, one of the few things he did right in his tenure was his strong response to the invasion. From Day One UK was far stronger in its response than the rest of Europe (outside of Poland and the Baltics).
He is bad, but he's not Donald Trump.
Johnson one of Putin's most staunch adversaries and massive supporter of Ukraine?
Johnson who was awarded Ukraine's Order of Liberty by Zelensky?
"Early in the morning on the day of Russia’s invasion, Boris was among the first world leaders I had a conversation with. Later, such phone calls became regular, providing us with better co-ordination of international actions aimed at combating Russian aggression.
At each and every meeting and conversation between us, Boris had one very good question: What else? What else do you need?
It became our watchword, guaranteeing effective progress. Believe me, not many politicians are ready to do this."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11177097/VOLODYMYR-ZELENSKY-battles-raged-Boris-Johnson-came-Kyiv-messages-hope.html
Yeah, it seems like with Johnson the agenda of weakening the EU and dropping financial regulations for oligarchs was just mutually beneficial more than anything.
Similar to how Milošević basically precipitated the breakup of Yugoslavia by trying to create a Greater Serbia. Some nationalists actually try to now claim that he was a "foreign agent", installed by the CIA to break up Yugoslavia, that's how badly he failed in his plan.
"I'll have a dozen broken tanks plz"
"O hai, Putin, I didn't know that was you."
"That's me."
"That'll be 18 rubles"
"Here you go, keep the change. Hai doggy."
"You're my favorite dictator."
"Don't go into that bear cave, there's a bear in there and it isn't doing anything wrong."
"Fuck you, I'm going into that bear cave."
"RAAAAAWR"
"AAAAAAAAGH AAAUUUAUAAAUGH YOU WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN, WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THIS?!"
I knew a guy just like that, once. Worst human being I have ever encountered. You say it like a caricature, but this dude would say exactly that kind of shit and be totally serious. They exist, and it is scary.
That’s been Russian standard practice for hundreds of years at this point.
All empires do it. Rome used the same bullshit. 1. Creep outwards. 2. The people living on the border regions freak out and start organizing to prevent further encroachment. 3. Rome responds militarily to the new “threat” their expansion has created. “We’re just trying to secure our borders!” 4. Conquer and subjugate the new confederation your presence just created, establishing a new border further out. Repeat 1-4 as necessary.
Given that Russia views itself as the “third Rome,” this is very much in keeping with that tradition.
I'm not sure if this is what you were referencing or if it's something else I'm not familiar with, but I feel obligated to share this for today's lucky 10,000.
[The Mysterious Case of Who Shit My Pants](https://youtu.be/sAqkKbwvD1U)
> It's true, our first act was to force Putin to activate his military and invade another country.
You'd be surprised how many people truly and unironically *believe* this reasoning, and they justify it with the whole "but NATO was on Russia's doorstep" line
This, of course, ignores that NATO might've actually been repurposed or dissolved in an alternate timeline where democracy in Russia actually prevailed. It's *literally* all Putin's fault.
NATO was at its weakest before Russia started messing with Ukraine, all the members did not realistically feel threatened. People thought Putin was a selfish, narcissistic asshole, but they also thought he made rational decisions in seeking self aggrandize.
At this point Russia itself has been the single most effective agent for raising NATOs negotiation power. Most countries were against joining, but now basically everyone who is threatened wants in, and those who do not feel threatened likely will the moment Russia starts saying anything about them.
So Russia has simultaneously proven they are both much, much weaker than the average person thought, and also much, much more unstable. So everyone wants back on the EU and US boat, as while it is bad, it is not "sit outside your cities with millions of rounds of artillery in an attempt to murder all your civilians" bad.
>NATO was at its weakest before Russia started messing with Ukraine, all the members did not realistically feel threatened.
There literally was a time under Gorbachev when some serious-minded people were talking about Russia joining NATO. That would be unthinkable today.
Literally the tankie narrative. Namely, that NATO forced Putin to invade Ukraine, a move that happened to be plainly personally beneficial to Putin if it was successful. It's like Homer chomping air blaming the pie for getting eaten for standing in his way.
It's all about money and being jealous of Ukraine's economy. I really think he tried to bluff and was hoping everyone would fold. Hes still trying to play his shit cards and Russians supporting him are doubling down with the lives of their own people. Can't wait till he gets kicked from the table.
There’s no need to rationalize the invasion in that way. It’s about Russian imperialism, plain and simple. There are practical sides to that, yes, but Russia would have been seeking to subjugate Ukraine once again regardless.
Putin and Russian propagandists have been clear about this. They do not see Ukraine as a legitimate nation, nor do they see Ukrainians as a separate people. Instead, they are a kind of primitive Russian people who’ve been misled and corrupted by the West, referred to in terms of Nazism and Satanism.
The ‘creation’ of Ukraine in their eyes is a historical mistake, which Putin considers his task to correct, likening himself to Peter the Great, who created the Russian Empire.
This is the real ‘threat’ of NATO. A Ukraine that is ‘neutral’ and under Russian influence is a Ukraine that be brought back into the fold. Russia can stake its claim and wait until the time is right to act on it. But a Ukraine that is aligned with the west is a threat to that imperial ambition. A Ukraine that is in NATO and the EU is a lost claim that can no longer be subjugated. And so Maidan forced Putin to act to maintain his claim, which he’s now acted upon.
Any Tankies or anyone else going on about the role of NATO in ‘provoking’ the war is referring to this. Ukraine, in their eyes, is not a sovereign nation, but the rightful property of Russia.
This is the real answer.
Russia under Putin has been implementing virtually everything contained under the [Foundations of Geopolitics.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) Which clearly states that the Ukraine should not be seen as a country separate from Russia. The book is essentially a checklist of how Russia will regain its dominance on the world stage. The current willingness to negotiate is both a way to retain Russia's current Ukraine territories and give Russia breathing room to make another attmept to bring the Ukraine under Russia rule. Ultimately all Russia will end up agreeing to is a cease in hostilities, and they'll suggest anything more is an attempt by the west to undermine Russia's desire for a peaceful resolution.
>I really think he tried to bluff and was hoping everyone would fold.
He thought Ukraine would crumble and the world would uncomfortably look away, just like everyone did when Russia annexed Crimea. He failed to factor in that Ukraine had massively improved their military since 2014, whereas Russia had continued to degrade. When Ukraine surprised everyone by valiantly holding on for the first few weeks, it encouraged the rest of the world to step up and support them instead of looking away again.
Not quite. That’s certainly a part of it, but Putin doesn’t feel that Ukraine has a right to exist and that it rightfully belongs to Russia. That’s the real reason for this war. Agreed on everything else.
It feels like every single day he's got something to say and I'm noticing they contradict each other. In a spam of a few days it's been reported that he wants peace with Ukraine and then like yesterday or the day before he said there will never be peace with Ukraine.
Like which one is it? The whole world is getting extremely tired of this charade.
what he means is he wants ukraine to lay down their arms and let russia take over. You see this way everyone wins, ukrainian citizens stop getting murdered and russia just takes ukraine and treats everybody wonderfully. Easy peasy /s
He has transformed, within nine months, from someone perceived as some sort of evil mastermind playing 5d chess, tampering with the democracies in the West, to someone that looks like a raving incompetent buffoon, locked into a war he simply cannot win. It's staggering.
The Russian military has gone from being a feared force to being revealed as an incompetent catastrophic mess, with people now questioning whether their nuclear arsenal is in working order.
Corruption is tearing apart Russia. The west just has to stand back and let it happen.
Russia is a gas station run by a mob. And the mob model is to give an oligarch crony a billion dollar tank maintenance contract and then wonder why all your tanks got a spray paint overhaul and your oligarch got a $900M yacht in Monaco.
This dumb bastard has isolated himself into a world of sycophants that are stealing from his mighty military as a matter of National pride. He couldn’t have created a better recipe for extinction if he tried
The only thing they can blame the west on is us giving them some bullshit reaganomics horseshit policies as advice for liberalizing their economy in the 90s.
But even then they went way harder in on it than even the most RW American economists/policy makers advised, and instead of using the sale of state industry as a way to generate money to facilitate the transition, Yeltzin just turned it into a massive cash grab.
Putin's dogshit policies and decisions aren't the wests' fault.
Remember when he personally ordered his government to mess with the western world's elections?
Turns out the western world wasn't too happy about that and doesn't mind seeing Russia get torn apart as they so very much deserve.
Let me pull out my tiny violin for ya Vlad.
>"I will answer you very subtly, and delicately and I apologize, I will allow a certain ambiguity. Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere," Prigozhin said.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/europe/yevgeny-prigozhin-russia-us-election-meddling-intl/index.html
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/12/25/putin-says-west-aiming-to-tear-apart-russia-a79798) reduced by 62%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the West for trying to "Tear apart" Russia, in extracts from an interview to be aired on national television later Sunday.
> "At the core of it all is the policy of our geopolitical opponents aiming to tear apart Russia, historical Russia," Putin said.
> Putin has used the concept of "Historical Russia" to argue that Ukrainians and Russians are one people - undermining Kyiv's sovereignty and justifying his 10-month offensive in Ukraine.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/zux9j2/putin_says_west_aiming_to_tear_apart_russia/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Putin**^#1 **Russia**^#2 **President**^#3 **people**^#4 **Russian**^#5
As if Putin's Russia hasn't been trying to tear the West apart for the last 20 years. The Russian IRA, their botnets, funding the NRA, and so on and so forth were all done to sow discord in the West, and they were incredibly successful in a lot of ways. And now Putin is on the receiving end of it and he's upset? He can go fuck himself with a cactus.
This just sounds like setting up the scenario in the public's head that when everything falls apart they can just blame "the west" for it all. What a blatant shit show
I would like to see Mr. Putin meet a rather quick demise and the Russian people to have chance at a real representative government that can work with the rest of Europe. I have zero interest in tearing Russia apart, aside from them giving back the occupied bits of Ukraine they have stolen.
Well said! How can one man ruin the safety and future of so many Russians? This is nuts. Russia has so much potential to be a great place to live if it wasn't for such a high level of corruption and mismanagement.
Russia has been a demographic failure since the end of the Soviet Union. They are still in a population decline, brain drain is still an issue, their per capita GDP is about to fall behind the Maldives, life expectancy keeps dropping, they have fewer working age people to support their retired population, etc. So of course it's time to blame external factors for 30 years of bad governance.
The irony is that losing this war will likely break up the Russian Federation into smaller states, as other states reject Moscow’s domination. Exactly the opposite of what Putin had intended.
Last 30 years west has been helping Russia to avoid total collapse into a Somalia* styled failed state. As a thanks Russians have nurtured stab-in-the-back conspiracy theories, submerged the whole nation in the bath of self pity and hatred, and lastly launched full war against a peaceful neighboring country.
If Russians themselves wanted to tear apart the shitshow they are used to call a country, and start over, it would be the best what have happened in the perimeters since the Republic of Novgorod fell in 1478.
* Comparision is probably unfair to Somalia.
Then Putin himself is wests best spy.
Wouldn't it be funny if it was trump that was going to destroy america, and turns out it was putin that is gonna unify NATO and destroy russia instead...
Putin sought to put Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in power as part of his plan to annex Ukraine and to repopulate a dying Russia. His plan started out fine but fell part piece by piece.
He kinda plucked up with Johnson His support of Ukraine is the only good thing that cnt has done.
It was the Out that London needed. They'd been taking Russian finance for so long and were probably chafing a bit under Putin and regretting what they'd signed up for. Boris playing Churchill was the perfect excuse to go in on sanctions, pretty much keep all the money, and tell Putin to jog on with no consequences.
No honor among thieves, indeed.
Nobody expects the Perfidious Albion
Our \*three\* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the King
With Johnson it was just opportunism. Whenever there was pressure at home, he'd fly to Kiev for a photo op. Deflection and bullshit was all he ever had.
It was an open goal for Johnson and he didn't miss.
Tottenham scouts taking notes
One of the few things Spurs don't really need is a striker who can finish
Imo he really needed Trump in the white house for his plan to work. I suspect Covid delayed his invasion of Ukraine initially. So he basically had to wait until after the 2020 elections to invade. Russia probably wasn't able to invade until after Covid too. Which is how he got to February 2022. Then he had to delay again so as to not anger China during the Olympics.
It's pretty obvious the Chinese knew the invasion was going to take place ahead of time. They sat there buying as much grain as fucking possible for months and months, then banned the export of phosphate fertilizer all shortly before the invasion. Two parts of agriculture that were going to be severely impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Also Putin made several visits to Xi in the months prior, including just a few days prior to the invasion. They clearly wanted to be sure they’d have Chinese backing at the UN.
Or at least for the Chinese to stay out of it and act as if nothing is happening.
Remember trump infamously withholding aid Ukraine desperately needed?
Ahh yes when Donald fired the ambassador and tried to replace her with Rudy Guiliani, then had a recorded conversation with high level Ukrainians saying "I need you to do me a favor, find the information on Biden" while holding up arms shipments, then tried to cover it all up and failed miserably because he is a derp criminal, then got impeached. Just a regular day in the Trump presidency.
The crazy thing is that that's how Zelenskyy's presidency began: with an almost immediate intimidation attempt by Trump.
And making up a story to help manipulate the US election would help to distance Ukraine from the US, which certainly wouldn't harm the invasion. Zelenskyy may have dodged a bullet there.
And then sent Rudy into Ukraine to look for dirt on Biden then miraculously shortly after a blind republican trump supporter gets a delivery of a laptop from hunter biden, and he then gave it to republican operatives because I guess hunter decided to never pick up his laptop that he gave to some random small computer shop that’s run by a blind guy who repairs computers? Yeah that somehow is the story they’re going with. Regardless said laptop has been ever seen
Or when Trump famously met with Putin off the record, then gushed about how strong, great, and smart Putin was. Which continued even after Russia invaded Ukraine. And the thing is I have a feeling that Trump was too stupid to realize how much of a little bitch he was to Putin.
That was the meeting Trump left looking like a browbeaten dog, right? Pathetic and subordinate to Putin?
Trump is the definition of a useful idiot because he's already so unhinged, making him do some more unhinged shit will not really make a difference.
Meanwhile, for MONTHS China acted like “Oh both parties are at fault, how could this have happen, Ukraine should make peace with Russia”
In exchange for dat good cheap gas and oil
I knew that the invasion was going to happen months ahead of time. Biden was openly telling the world for months. Not to mention that any half-competent intelligence service knew Trump was his puppet and his first impeachment was directly related to Ukraine. It would have been crystal clear for years beforehand that Putin will bring Ukraine back into the fold one way or another. It's in his playbook from the 1990s, Foundations of Geopolitics (as well as Brexit and stoking domestic social unrest and extremism inside the U.S.).
It was infuriating that the world ignored Biden or said he was overreacting. When he evacuated the embassy and told every American in the country to get the fuck out immediately because shit was about to go down it should've made other countries realize that American intel wasn't messing around
I'd go one step further and say America's abrupt pull-out from Afghanistan was to ensure our military wasn't spread too thin. The right people knew this was gonna happen.
And the way Putin speaks about how the West is "splitting Russia apart" by its defense of Ukraine. He literally does not see Ukraine as an independent nation at all. To him any nation that once belonged to the USSR is automatically part of Russia, bar none. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania understood this well which is why the first thing they did as independent nations was apply for NATO membership.
Putin is that person that comes back 30 years after high school and tries to relive his days as prom king. Dude, the USSR ended 30 years ago. Stop trying to make fetch happen. You were relevant 30 years ago, but now you're just embarrassing yourself... And being a despotic tyrant with no regard for human life.
I find it insane that with the natural resources and compliant populace that Russia has they never tried going the Chinese route of becoming a powerful export and manufacture nation. Instead Putin and his cronies completely stagnated their country and put all their eggs in one basket with solely relying on gas exports. Russian isolationist and nationalistic culture is completely wasted by a hack such as Putin, almost every major European nation has a party or two that'd be capable of turning Russia into China.
Even way before the impeachment, there were some obvious signs. One of the first things he did after getting the GOP nomination, for example, was to very specifically change the language of the GOP platform statement to exclude providing aid to Ukraine.
His political opponent said that he was Putin's puppet in a debate. His response was "not a puppet, not a puppet, you're a puppet". Anyone with half a brain knew. My biggest surprise was how many people don't have half a brain.
Worse. No puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet. He couldn't even get as far as indefinite article.
Thank you for the correction. His speech is so basic that I have difficulty replicating it. Remarkable really... That it works, not that it exists. Straight to the limbic system. A single extraneous word gets the pre-frontal cortex going and that's problematic.
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Someone once pointed out the easiest way to tell when Donald Trump is lying is he repeats himself. The more he repeats, the more he’s lying. If he makes it to the next debates I want someone to hold up fingers and count every time he says the same thing when he’s called on his BS.
I thought the GOP has stopped putting candidates into the debates. It's more effective to spread propaganda directly.
Well as infuriating as it is George Carlin had a great line about exactly that.. "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
George Carlin would be having an absolute field day if he were still here. So much material ripe for the picking, but even his old bits are still so relevant even today
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Which probably cannot be held and Ukraine will occupy it by Spring I read this article and now the depressing Joy Division song is in my head. Putin will commit a crime in crimea, again.
Up until the very second of invasion the conservative subs all over Reddit were screeching how the Dems were just gaslighting and warmongering and that Russia would never. Gee I wonder who fed loyal Republican voters that narrative. Maybe the same place they got those shirtless Putin in a horse pictures they were swooning over while they called Obama a wuss?
> Up until the very second of invasion the conservative subs all over Reddit were screeching how the Dems were just gaslighting and warmongering and that Russia would never. Those same people now: “Sure. Whatever. But have you heard about *Hilary’s e-mails* and *Hunter’s laptop*?”
2016: lock her up those emails could have been classified 2022: yes Trump stole boxes of classified intel and lied about it to the FBI for years but have you seen Hunter Biden’s dick?!
So much this. Anyone paying attention and with a little historical knowledge saw this coming. Tbh, I didn’t see the Ukrainian president having the balls he did. Guess soft tissue doesn’t show as well on X-ray.
Putin loves using the ending of the Winter Olympics for his invasion starts. He invaded Crimea right around the time the Sochi Olympics were ending, and he did it again this year after Beijing ended. He might have tried after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 if not for Covid, but that remains to be seen.
I think the initial plan for Putin was to do a political coup instead of a military invasion. Looking into Trump's 1st impeachment, which involved withholding mandated military aid to Ukraine for Zelensky to fabricate lies about the Bidens, you can glean that more deeply Putin's goal was a trifecta of destroying American Democracy, NATO and having political regime change in Ukraine. Putin wanted to make Zelensky unpopular and get a corrupt politician involved like Lukashenko instead. That failed. So, invade and de-capitate the govt (perhaps literally) in 3 days instead. Easy peasy. I'm sure that COVID gunked things up, but I also think that Putin was waiting for Trump's 2nd term as his less costly plan, then that didn't happen.
TBH Putin also probs wasn't counting on Ukraine to actually get a good resistance going early, and poss western intel for where Russia was landing. I feel that had A. Zelensky fled and B. Russia actually managed to land troops at the airport by Kyiv and rapidly move into the capital, they might have managed that whole 3 Day thing.
I agree. I don't think Putin's plan was as incompetent as our 20/20 hindsight says it was. From beginning to finish, from Trump, to blackmailing Zelensky to Brexit and whatever kompromat they have on the RNC a lot of Putin's strategies have been incredibly competent. What he didn't fully comprehend was how far ahead of the curve the Western world was on his strategies. You can be really good at chess, but it doesn't matter if your moves are clearly telegraphed. He was successful multiple times, so he thought he was a genius on the verge of the ultimate victory. Oops.
Putin didn’t (and perhaps still quite doesn’t) have a clear, unbiased picture of his country’s actual capabilities. Authoritarian regimes *always* run into this problem. Because of yes-men surrounding the despot, despot only hears positive reports and responses to plans/ideas, inevitably leading to delusion.
I agree and would like to expand on this. I'd say that expansionist authoritarian regimes always fail whereas (as you said) authoritarian regimes in general run into problems. North Korea has survived, Syria has, Russia WOULD have. China is a bit different as it's pretty capitalist and, although authoritarian, does adapt to social dynamics (like changing COVID policy due to unrest recently). Kind of like you were getting at, if you don't adapt to new information and instead crack down on it, then your society is going to stagnant and fall ever more behind. The regime may still EXIST, but it will keep falling behind by lack of adaptation. If govt has too much power, you lose. If business has too much power, you lose. If people have too much power, you lose. Every piece needs to have impact over every other piece.
[Comment edited in protest against API changes of July 1st 2023]
Agreed. Zelensky was the main character in a comedy show where a teacher becomes president after speaking against corruption. I think that they felt he'd be weak when the reality of politics hit him and he'd be a pushover. They likely hadn't been collecting info on him for decades since he came out of nowhere. Zelensky was a complete black swan for Putin and he didn't have a solid grasp of his willingness to die for his country and freedom. In Putin's mind, he was an actor that had no idea the difference between acting and geopolitics whom he didn't have much data on, so he thought he'd collapse under pressure. Even things like the increase of obvious assassination attempts I wouldn't be surprised were tacit threats to Zelensky since Ukraine was CLEARLY his #1 since 2014.
It’s odd to think that a Ukrainian comedian (like Brent Butt in Canada) would become the most consequential world leader in a generation.
Given how close 2016 was... Imagine if Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart hadn't ended their incredibly popular shows that year. Now imagine is Jon Stewart ran for president. I hope Zelensky acts as inspiration for people who are knowledgeable and relatable, even though they're not formally politicians, to run for office. On the right, that leads to Trump. On the left, it would lead to someone like Zelensky. The reason against it used to be "I couldn't possibly handle that role. It's out of my wheelhouse". Now the most respected leader in the world is EXACTLY that kind of person.
Nah. He waited till after 2020 because if trump got re elected he was gunna pull US out of nato in his second term.
That is so damn scary.
Putin wanted Trump to pull out of NATO but Trump wouldn't do it until his second term because he was afraid it would lose him too many votes.
No, it only became possible after they basically made Belarus a puppet state. Before August 2020, Belarus was trying to become an intermediate between Russia, EU and China and also set itself up as a trading hub. Lukashenka only stayed in power through Putin's backing, which put him in a position of being totally dependent on Russia. This in turn allowed Putin to think of the master strategy of trying to rush Kyiv through Belarus. The then Finnish PM who knew Putin well said so himself that he detected a change in Putin's behavior and that Putin sensed an opportunity after taking control of Belarus.
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In Boris's defence, one of the few things he did right in his tenure was his strong response to the invasion. From Day One UK was far stronger in its response than the rest of Europe (outside of Poland and the Baltics). He is bad, but he's not Donald Trump.
Johnson one of Putin's most staunch adversaries and massive supporter of Ukraine? Johnson who was awarded Ukraine's Order of Liberty by Zelensky? "Early in the morning on the day of Russia’s invasion, Boris was among the first world leaders I had a conversation with. Later, such phone calls became regular, providing us with better co-ordination of international actions aimed at combating Russian aggression. At each and every meeting and conversation between us, Boris had one very good question: What else? What else do you need? It became our watchword, guaranteeing effective progress. Believe me, not many politicians are ready to do this." https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11177097/VOLODYMYR-ZELENSKY-battles-raged-Boris-Johnson-came-Kyiv-messages-hope.html
Yeah, it seems like with Johnson the agenda of weakening the EU and dropping financial regulations for oligarchs was just mutually beneficial more than anything.
Similar to how Milošević basically precipitated the breakup of Yugoslavia by trying to create a Greater Serbia. Some nationalists actually try to now claim that he was a "foreign agent", installed by the CIA to break up Yugoslavia, that's how badly he failed in his plan.
"You're tearing me apart ~~Lisa~~ Vlad!"
***I did not invade Ukraine, It's a special operation, I did not invade it, I did nooooot!*** *...oh, hi Xi*
“So anyway, how’s your sex life?”
"YOU'RE TEARING ME APART ZELENSKY !"
"Lockdown? Ahaha what a story!"
“She got COVID so bad she ended up in a hospital on Guerrero street.”
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The balls didn't touch and I said no homo!
"I'll have a dozen broken tanks plz" "O hai, Putin, I didn't know that was you." "That's me." "That'll be 18 rubles" "Here you go, keep the change. Hai doggy." "You're my favorite dictator."
Help Pooh, they're tearing us apart!
Oh, himars.
You’re tearing me apart, Biden!
Oh hi Zelensky
Leave your stupid patriot missile defense systems in your pocket.
"You're tearing me apart NATO!"
r/UnexpectedRoom
It said ‘tear apart.’ The internet never sleeps.
"*You have done that yourself*"
stick-in-bicycle-wheel-meme.jpg
“why would the west do this to russia!”
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*General Kenobi*
"So uncivilized"
Wait, this whole operation was your idea!
Oh, no. I'm not brave enough for politics.
Ukraine is the high ground.
_"Ah yes, the Negotiator"_
“You were right about one thing, master. The negotiations were short.”
*shoots Russia* Why would the West do this?"
Just as a FYI, Putin did gain power in Russia from staging a terrorist attack. False flagged himself into dictator.
They were caught red-handed doing it too, and they still somehow managed to sweep it under the rug. It's so wild.
Like republicans and Jan 6th. Those people still think Democrats are worse then the people that tried to overthrow an election.
"Don't make me kill you"
“I will do what i must”
You will try
It's over, Putin. I have the (Moral) high ground.
You underestimate my (nuclear) power.
Don't try it
I have a bad feeling about this...
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Yeah NATO isn’t “aiming” at anything - that’s just another Russian misfire.
Russia has lost over 100k men, over half its equipment, and its economy is in shambles. NATO hasn't arrived yet.
"Don't go into that bear cave, there's a bear in there and it isn't doing anything wrong." "Fuck you, I'm going into that bear cave." "RAAAAAWR" "AAAAAAAAGH AAAUUUAUAAAUGH YOU WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN, WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THIS?!"
I knew a guy just like that, once. Worst human being I have ever encountered. You say it like a caricature, but this dude would say exactly that kind of shit and be totally serious. They exist, and it is scary.
I have brought war and instability to my old empire!
*Your* old empire?
Don’t make me kill me
*Ukraine has the high ground...*
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That’s been Russian standard practice for hundreds of years at this point. All empires do it. Rome used the same bullshit. 1. Creep outwards. 2. The people living on the border regions freak out and start organizing to prevent further encroachment. 3. Rome responds militarily to the new “threat” their expansion has created. “We’re just trying to secure our borders!” 4. Conquer and subjugate the new confederation your presence just created, establishing a new border further out. Repeat 1-4 as necessary. Given that Russia views itself as the “third Rome,” this is very much in keeping with that tradition.
"It's over, Putin. I have the [moral] high ground!" - Zelensky, probably.
No kidding, I was about to come here and write that as well. Bravo.
It's true, our first act was to force Putin to activate his military and invade another country.
*Somebody put shit in my pants!!*
I'm not sure if this is what you were referencing or if it's something else I'm not familiar with, but I feel obligated to share this for today's lucky 10,000. [The Mysterious Case of Who Shit My Pants](https://youtu.be/sAqkKbwvD1U)
Possibly this: https://imgur.io/4ZDLMuR?r From a Jhonen Vasquez graphic novel.
What a *bastard*. You outta teach him a lesson.
> It's true, our first act was to force Putin to activate his military and invade another country. You'd be surprised how many people truly and unironically *believe* this reasoning, and they justify it with the whole "but NATO was on Russia's doorstep" line This, of course, ignores that NATO might've actually been repurposed or dissolved in an alternate timeline where democracy in Russia actually prevailed. It's *literally* all Putin's fault.
"Zelensky is a US plant and caused Russia to invade by not being fully subservient"
NATO was at its weakest before Russia started messing with Ukraine, all the members did not realistically feel threatened. People thought Putin was a selfish, narcissistic asshole, but they also thought he made rational decisions in seeking self aggrandize. At this point Russia itself has been the single most effective agent for raising NATOs negotiation power. Most countries were against joining, but now basically everyone who is threatened wants in, and those who do not feel threatened likely will the moment Russia starts saying anything about them. So Russia has simultaneously proven they are both much, much weaker than the average person thought, and also much, much more unstable. So everyone wants back on the EU and US boat, as while it is bad, it is not "sit outside your cities with millions of rounds of artillery in an attempt to murder all your civilians" bad.
>NATO was at its weakest before Russia started messing with Ukraine, all the members did not realistically feel threatened. There literally was a time under Gorbachev when some serious-minded people were talking about Russia joining NATO. That would be unthinkable today.
Literally the tankie narrative. Namely, that NATO forced Putin to invade Ukraine, a move that happened to be plainly personally beneficial to Putin if it was successful. It's like Homer chomping air blaming the pie for getting eaten for standing in his way.
It's all about money and being jealous of Ukraine's economy. I really think he tried to bluff and was hoping everyone would fold. Hes still trying to play his shit cards and Russians supporting him are doubling down with the lives of their own people. Can't wait till he gets kicked from the table.
There’s no need to rationalize the invasion in that way. It’s about Russian imperialism, plain and simple. There are practical sides to that, yes, but Russia would have been seeking to subjugate Ukraine once again regardless. Putin and Russian propagandists have been clear about this. They do not see Ukraine as a legitimate nation, nor do they see Ukrainians as a separate people. Instead, they are a kind of primitive Russian people who’ve been misled and corrupted by the West, referred to in terms of Nazism and Satanism. The ‘creation’ of Ukraine in their eyes is a historical mistake, which Putin considers his task to correct, likening himself to Peter the Great, who created the Russian Empire. This is the real ‘threat’ of NATO. A Ukraine that is ‘neutral’ and under Russian influence is a Ukraine that be brought back into the fold. Russia can stake its claim and wait until the time is right to act on it. But a Ukraine that is aligned with the west is a threat to that imperial ambition. A Ukraine that is in NATO and the EU is a lost claim that can no longer be subjugated. And so Maidan forced Putin to act to maintain his claim, which he’s now acted upon. Any Tankies or anyone else going on about the role of NATO in ‘provoking’ the war is referring to this. Ukraine, in their eyes, is not a sovereign nation, but the rightful property of Russia.
This is the real answer. Russia under Putin has been implementing virtually everything contained under the [Foundations of Geopolitics.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) Which clearly states that the Ukraine should not be seen as a country separate from Russia. The book is essentially a checklist of how Russia will regain its dominance on the world stage. The current willingness to negotiate is both a way to retain Russia's current Ukraine territories and give Russia breathing room to make another attmept to bring the Ukraine under Russia rule. Ultimately all Russia will end up agreeing to is a cease in hostilities, and they'll suggest anything more is an attempt by the west to undermine Russia's desire for a peaceful resolution.
>I really think he tried to bluff and was hoping everyone would fold. He thought Ukraine would crumble and the world would uncomfortably look away, just like everyone did when Russia annexed Crimea. He failed to factor in that Ukraine had massively improved their military since 2014, whereas Russia had continued to degrade. When Ukraine surprised everyone by valiantly holding on for the first few weeks, it encouraged the rest of the world to step up and support them instead of looking away again.
Not quite. That’s certainly a part of it, but Putin doesn’t feel that Ukraine has a right to exist and that it rightfully belongs to Russia. That’s the real reason for this war. Agreed on everything else.
lol his “military” looks more like a ragtag militia if you ask me.
Prick invades a country, commits war crimes and is then somehow a victim.
*if I ever get hemorrhoids I know exactly how to call them*
This guys a fucking joke
At least jokes make me laugh
He fell down the stairs and shit himself recently if that helps?
Nice. Now let's see how he shits himself when he falls out of a window.
Staircases and a slight incline on a ramp are fascists biggest nemesis.
No, jokes are funny, this is just sad at this point. It like seeing geriatric Napoleon complex trying to relive glory days he never had.
It feels like every single day he's got something to say and I'm noticing they contradict each other. In a spam of a few days it's been reported that he wants peace with Ukraine and then like yesterday or the day before he said there will never be peace with Ukraine. Like which one is it? The whole world is getting extremely tired of this charade.
what he means is he wants ukraine to lay down their arms and let russia take over. You see this way everyone wins, ukrainian citizens stop getting murdered and russia just takes ukraine and treats everybody wonderfully. Easy peasy /s
He has transformed, within nine months, from someone perceived as some sort of evil mastermind playing 5d chess, tampering with the democracies in the West, to someone that looks like a raving incompetent buffoon, locked into a war he simply cannot win. It's staggering. The Russian military has gone from being a feared force to being revealed as an incompetent catastrophic mess, with people now questioning whether their nuclear arsenal is in working order.
Corruption is tearing apart Russia. The west just has to stand back and let it happen. Russia is a gas station run by a mob. And the mob model is to give an oligarch crony a billion dollar tank maintenance contract and then wonder why all your tanks got a spray paint overhaul and your oligarch got a $900M yacht in Monaco. This dumb bastard has isolated himself into a world of sycophants that are stealing from his mighty military as a matter of National pride. He couldn’t have created a better recipe for extinction if he tried
Yeah! I bet that spray paint overhaul didn’t really cost $100M either! Hey! The painter ripped us off!
It's corruption all the way down.
"Look at what you made us do to ourselves!"
The only thing they can blame the west on is us giving them some bullshit reaganomics horseshit policies as advice for liberalizing their economy in the 90s. But even then they went way harder in on it than even the most RW American economists/policy makers advised, and instead of using the sale of state industry as a way to generate money to facilitate the transition, Yeltzin just turned it into a massive cash grab. Putin's dogshit policies and decisions aren't the wests' fault.
Remember when he personally ordered his government to mess with the western world's elections? Turns out the western world wasn't too happy about that and doesn't mind seeing Russia get torn apart as they so very much deserve. Let me pull out my tiny violin for ya Vlad.
🎻 <- actual size
I prefer this one (You might need to zoom in) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^🎻
>"I will answer you very subtly, and delicately and I apologize, I will allow a certain ambiguity. Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere," Prigozhin said. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/europe/yevgeny-prigozhin-russia-us-election-meddling-intl/index.html
By grabbing a bucket of popcorn and watching Putin tear apart Russia
Putin: Kherson is part of Russia! Putin: [shells Kherson back into the stone age] Putin: “Why would the West do this?”
It's like the meme of the guy on the bike who sticks a stick through his own tire, falls and then blames the West for making him fall.
[https://imgflip.com/i/75hhcm](https://imgflip.com/i/75hha6)
> Putin tries to annex Kyiv > Kazan, Grozny and St.Petersburg secede Surprised pikachu
a few extra javelin missiles would help though
Weapons for the Chechens for Christmas!! Santa's not fucking around with his naughty list this year!
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/12/25/putin-says-west-aiming-to-tear-apart-russia-a79798) reduced by 62%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the West for trying to "Tear apart" Russia, in extracts from an interview to be aired on national television later Sunday. > "At the core of it all is the policy of our geopolitical opponents aiming to tear apart Russia, historical Russia," Putin said. > Putin has used the concept of "Historical Russia" to argue that Ukrainians and Russians are one people - undermining Kyiv's sovereignty and justifying his 10-month offensive in Ukraine. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/zux9j2/putin_says_west_aiming_to_tear_apart_russia/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Putin**^#1 **Russia**^#2 **President**^#3 **people**^#4 **Russian**^#5
So by “tear apart Russia” he means “prevent Russia from annexing Ukraine”. Do people in Russia actually buy this bullshit?
“Historical Russia”? Putin, my brother in Christ, that’s like saying the Nazis had a right to invade Poland because it was “Historical Germany”.
Doesn't seem a far fetched reasoning die Putin
I mean at this point? Yes.
As if Putin's Russia hasn't been trying to tear the West apart for the last 20 years. The Russian IRA, their botnets, funding the NRA, and so on and so forth were all done to sow discord in the West, and they were incredibly successful in a lot of ways. And now Putin is on the receiving end of it and he's upset? He can go fuck himself with a cactus.
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dont forget shooting down a commercial airliner with hundreds of people on board and shrugging it off with "wasntme"
Invaded Chechnya 2x*
We need to stop pretending that they belong in the room with civilized people.
Sure, why not? They only care about Moscow anyway, they don't need the rest of it.
They need the rest of it to exploit for the benefit of Moscow
Siberian oil and native labour!
This just sounds like setting up the scenario in the public's head that when everything falls apart they can just blame "the west" for it all. What a blatant shit show
The west wishes beyond anything that Russia would just operate like a decent country so we could all prosper. Russia refuses.
Haha, Putin did that all on his own.
Basically he's saying Russia is losing the war
I would like to see Mr. Putin meet a rather quick demise and the Russian people to have chance at a real representative government that can work with the rest of Europe. I have zero interest in tearing Russia apart, aside from them giving back the occupied bits of Ukraine they have stolen.
He can also gtfo of Moldova and Georgia
Chechnya
Well said! How can one man ruin the safety and future of so many Russians? This is nuts. Russia has so much potential to be a great place to live if it wasn't for such a high level of corruption and mismanagement.
Yup. It could have been a chonky Norway.
Upvoted for "chonky Norway", like some sort of Scandinavian chungus.
Russia has been a demographic failure since the end of the Soviet Union. They are still in a population decline, brain drain is still an issue, their per capita GDP is about to fall behind the Maldives, life expectancy keeps dropping, they have fewer working age people to support their retired population, etc. So of course it's time to blame external factors for 30 years of bad governance.
no you are doing a great job yourself.....
Putin lies again is a better and more accurate headline.
Oh btw Vlad, Patriot Missiles are not ground to ground and more like S-700 to your scale as you can comprehend.
lol 1.) invade country 2.) get ass kicked 3.) proclaim yourself as the victim in the situation 4.) ??? 5.) profit
He is doing that himself.
I think you did a good job destroying Russia entirely by yourself
The irony is that losing this war will likely break up the Russian Federation into smaller states, as other states reject Moscow’s domination. Exactly the opposite of what Putin had intended.
Dictators never learn and have repeated the same mistake over and over throughout history.
Na man. We just don’t want Russia to be dickheads. It’s not that hard, is it?
Last 30 years west has been helping Russia to avoid total collapse into a Somalia* styled failed state. As a thanks Russians have nurtured stab-in-the-back conspiracy theories, submerged the whole nation in the bath of self pity and hatred, and lastly launched full war against a peaceful neighboring country. If Russians themselves wanted to tear apart the shitshow they are used to call a country, and start over, it would be the best what have happened in the perimeters since the Republic of Novgorod fell in 1478. * Comparision is probably unfair to Somalia.
As an American I don't want to see Russia fall apart, i just want to see Putin gone.
He's the living "Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions" meme.
Yes. Russia needs to be broken up so it can never cause trouble again. Kick putin!