Does it matter where the source is?
This would not have happened in an alternative universe where Putin is a good leader who was actually trying to improve the lives of Russians.
This is going to be a disaster for the Russian people as well.
This would not have happened in an alternative universe where Putin is a good leader who was actually trying to improve the lives of Russians.
This is going to be a disaster for the Russian people as well.
[1] https://www.voanews.com/a/icc-may-investigate-possible-war-c...
OTOH, ICC has no practical power to bring Russian personnel (other than those captured in combat by Ukraine) before it for trial, and the US “invade the Hague” law on the ICC might prove a model for Russia should the ICC gain custody of Russian personnel somehow.
It is already disaster. Putin has basically threw Russia back to a stone age. I've no idea how long it'll take for him to go one or the other way and for Russia to recover back to anything resembling normal life.
And there was no immenent threat of Ukraine entering nato anyway. This is just Russia using it as excuse.
Nothing obvious about Russia needing to annex surrounding countries again.
Putin in his speech blamed Lenin for giving away the territory of the Russian empire in creating a Ukrainian Republic, and claimed that Ukraine is not a real country so does not deserve sovereignty. He later said its leaders are drug dealing Nazis, presumably including the Jewish Russian-speaking president.
Nothing the Russian state says about the origins of the conflict seems very credible. A more plausible origin is Putin’s megalomaniacal imperial ambitions and paranoid fear of being eventually displaced by a homegrown pro-Europe, pro-democracy movement in Russia.
Ideology seems to be part of it but Russian security concerns are part of it too. Suggesting that NATO expansion was a mistake is not the same thing as blaming this war on NATO.
Anyone who does blame NATO should ask themselves why Ukraine wanted to join in the first place (because the Ukrainians know the Russians won't respect their sovereignty).
This pushes the justification for Putin's response away from "unprovoked and savage".
IMO I think the US is partially responsible for this crisis. We've never stopped expanding our influence, for better or worse. Perhaps we pushed a little too hard here.
</armchair>
(edit: changed pro-russia to pro-Putin. E2: Flipped again)
But none of that matters, it's just a figleaf to justify an attack, if not for 'NATO' then for some other bullshit reason.
Everything you said was true years ago as well, a form of it was even true during the Cuban missile crisis, as the US had missiles at the border of the soviet union too, there is nothing unique or newfound geopolitically about the timing here to support this “security issue”.
Russia creates contexts for invasion. It hands passports out to pro-Russian residents in parts of Ukraine, and then invades to “protects its citizens” so that it could theoretically be judged the same way as other countries that do interventions.
Adding all of that to an ideological retcon from 100 years ago, and all you have left is an irrational madman who wants to be in the footnote of a history book as attempting empire rebuilding.
Putin’s own advisors are afraid of him and cant give him a straight answer about anything, they're afraid of the international consequences of this as well.
None of this supports the idea of a leader doing anything in the interest of Russians or the concept of a Russian empire.
We’ll never even get to know what an independent Donetsk and Luhansk even means. Microstates? Districts of Russia?
This is just all way off and a mess. Its come down to just choosing a side and watching the results unfold.