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But Putin has always been the man he is now – the war in Chechnya began in 1999.

Also, afaik, journalists writing against Putin were attacked (arrests, taking over of business) right as he got into power. The changes leading to contemporary ideology, effective rehabilitation of Stalin, the state murders were happening right away.

The events around Russia apartment building, the ones suspect of being done by FSB and Chechnya war were in 1999.

They can easily fix that by annexing former SSSR territories (about 230 million)

Germany also has a huge population, especially by European standards, even if somewhat less huge than Russia’s. Both Germany and Russia are outliers, being in some ways far from the European average. What makes Russia much more distinctive, is in how many different ways it is an outlier - arguably in a fair few more ways than contemporary Germany is, which makes it a much bigger outlier overall.

> They have nuclear weapons for sure, but I wouldn’t like to speculate about their maintenance and availability.

For a decent-sized nation state, nuclear weapons aren’t actually that hard to manufacture and maintain and deliver, especially if they aim at basic functionality and aren’t trying to be on the cutting edge. The biggest obstacles for most such countries are (1) the rest of the world will try to stop them through sanctions, clandestine operations, even military action; (2) if you don’t have domestic uranium deposits, it is very hard to buy uranium for military use, all major sellers will insist you promise to use it for civilian purposes only and submit to regular inspections to prove that. As an accepted nuclear weapons state, Russia doesn’t have to worry about (1); Russia also has substantial uranium reserves and is one of the world’s leading uranium exporters, so it doesn’t have to worry about (2) either. So I think Russia’s nuclear arsenal is likely to be reliable and usable.

A very common thing for humans to have. US, UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, China – to list just a few countries which have a lengthy history of it, there are many more–and some will question whether some of the countries I have listed have really moved beyond it. (I'll even say my own country, Australia, has a decent amount of it – even if the form it takes looks rather different from that of some other countries.)

> 'Security Council' is not that important.

> Nukes are actually not important

> Their 'former empire' is not relevant

I think all these things tie into national attitudes and culture. Many Russians remember when their country was one of the most powerful countries in the world (at the height of the Cold War, arguably second only to the United States, and the Soviets even managed to beat the Americans at some things); even for those too young to remember it, it was a large chunk of the life of their parents/grandparents. The degree to which their country has fallen is rather obvious to all, and things like the permanent UN Security Council membership and the nuclear arsenal serve as enduring reminders of that past "glory". Many Russians have no interest in going back to the "glory" days, but a substantial chunk of the population do, and there are many more who may be susceptible to propaganda promoting the idea – and that makes them open to supporting, or at least not overtly opposing, government policies aimed at doing that. By contrast, there are many other countries who either have never had that kind of history, or else for which the days of "imperial glory" are much more distant, well beyond the memory of the living–and citizens of those other countries are far less likely to acquiesce in imperial designs, especially when those designs start to impose costs on everyday life.

Maybe notions of owning all of Europe ceased with Napoleon, but France trying to extend its borders Eastwards was happening right until the EU took shape.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine_crisis

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revanchism

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Ruhr

5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Protectorate

The EU doesn't have the monopoly on being European or European values.

Which means the majority of Europe/Asia distinctions are drawn around economic, cultural and particularly political borders, none of which are natural but to a degree rather arbitrarily defined by humans depending on their particular agenda.

In that context "othering", up to a scale of denying whole nation states their geographical location and cultural influences, has never lead to better and more peaceful relations, quite the opposite.

Not for lack of trying. The U.K. very much wanted to be part of the EU/EEC almost from inception. Going to war with a union you want join isn’t generally seen as a good way prove the advantages of your joining the union.

Additionally the U.K. and France did build extremely close economic ties during and after WW2. Much easier to trade with your neighbour than random countries on the other side of the planet.

Switzerland and Finland are both part the European Economic Area, the treaty the provides the underpinnings of free trade in Europe. All joined the EEA because it was clear that building wealth and prosperity through economic integration was a smarter approach than trying to invade your neighbours.

> South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Canada, US, Mexico have not fought wars against each other either.

Many of these counties are separated by significant physical distance, making war unlikely and difficult, or simply don’t have resources worth stealing via war. What to be gained by invading Singapore or Japan? They have no natural resources worth talking about, and country under force foreign rule tends to be an unproductive one.

Canada and US almost went to war several times before WW2. Primary preventers of those wars were either colonial rulers not wanting to get into a shooting war with another colonial country, or the simple fact that both countries had plenty of natural resources already, so bother with the expense and difficulty of invading a neighbour for resources you can dig up in your own back yard?

At the end of the day, there’s only a handful of reasons that make warfare worthwhile. Primarily the reason is access to naturals resources you don’t have within your own territory. But why bother invading if you can just trade instead? Much cheaper and easier, hence economic integration becomes an obvious path forward. Once you’re integrated, why would risk easy cheap access to resources by invading? You pour huge amounts of money, time and people in to a war, and gain what? Slightly cheaper access to resources, but if you consider the cost of war, it’s obvious that just trading for resources is cheaper, faster and easier.

That’s fine, and I agree it’s an issue, but maybe tone it down a bit for next time. I’m used to this tone from Hungarians both online and in real life, but I’d rather not allow such false impressions to seep into the wider discourse.

There’s enough “Poles and Hungarians bad” narratives going around without us having to add fuel to the fire.

This is just not true tho. Had Ukraine was not prepared, they would fold the way Russia expected them to. Instead, Ukraine did quite a lot of army reforms, lobbied to get guns long before war. They did not expected Russians to attack right now, because Russia seemed unprepared ... which they was. But they were not ruling out eventual attempt to takeover.

It is also not true that no-one anticipated. There were people both right before and longer before talking about eventuality - including Biden and American secret services. There were some people who did not cared about topic. There were many people who either knee jerkedly refused the eventuality, without looking at what is going on in Russia. Then there were people who rejected to possibility for political or financial reasons.

But, the notion that no-one was predicting it is simply untrue.

Now lets look at the USA. Could be Oil/Gas independent, but current government makes that difficult. Dependent on Russia and China for many commodities and rare earth metals. Manafucturing sector has been exported to China over the past 20 years, meaning that many goods are not even made in the USA anymore. Huge shortage of semiconductors - which are used in every electronic product these days including cars. The USA must start the move of Manafucturing many more products again locally. They will cost more... but if it doesn't do this it will likely be in a very bad position if China tries to take over Taiwan.

In summary global supply chains must be re-adjusted, which will take years. Whether this helps prevent further war... or adjustments are because of war will depend on how things are handled by United States politicians and business leaders. At this stage I suspect it will likely be because of war for the US/West and China will have been planing for this eventuality.

Don't say you're being charitable when you're being cruel.

Anyway your key point was that they’re the victors when they’re clearly not. Even if Russia completely pulled out tomorrow they’d have suffered incredible losses.

The seeds of today’s conflict had been planted one by one in the past 22 years and even beyond. What started as a an ambitious goal of an undivided Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok ended because of inertia, decisions with unforseen consequencss and a level of mistrust into stark divisions between Russia on one side and the EU and US on the other.

This was not inevitable and indeed not the intention. 2011-2012 and the Western support for anti-government and anti-Putin protests in Russia marked a sharp deterioration of relations and the 2014 Maidan uprising, annexation of Crimea and Donbass war cemented the course we see today.

That the president of Ukraine indicated his willingness to forego NATO membership did nothing to change the above. Ukraine was training with NATO, receiving support and fighting an indirect war with Russia, so it seems unlikely that the words of the president were given much weight in Russia.