Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 6

They do and it's not just The Ukrainians, it is Russians now too......

Can you make photo of your fear-o-meter display? How many time passes since last calibration?

My Boredometer is already out of scale, so I visit this place not so often.


Your trustworthness credit is already below zero. I receive news from Donetsk from insider, that I know (and not only from outside, of course) ;) And I know that 155 mm NATO artillery shells and missiles originating from Avdievka/Maryinka areas, that regularily hit residental blocks in Donetsk, is not someone's "fantasies".

Well then try to sound like the intelligent young russian in this video, rather than the elderly state duma loon.

youtube.com/watch?v=ucKqR3wcJJI

We prefer actual facts. Who to believe? Verified information from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, or a r*SSian online troll who compulsively lies, spouts propaganda and even tried to deny the r*SSian chemical weapons attacks in Salisbury and Syria.

never relax around russians unless you want a knife in the back.... Germany relaxed....

more seriously: putain never wanted to have a friendly relationship with world leaders... he wanted them to bow to him and worship him the same way bobko and velund worship him.

it's the collective narcissistic wound - russians are socialized that they're superior to everyone else and when reality fails to corroborate that and the world doesn't admire them they fall into murderous rage....

a major part of the atrocities they've committed in Ukraine are pure narcissistic rage at a people that bow to them

Kinda important to remember the view many people had of Putin back then and what he had actually done so far.

Most people tended to ignore what Putin did domestically. Russian war crimes in Syria were yet to happen and the annexation of Crimea was a relatively bloodless affair. Merkel and others were rubbing shoulders (literally) with war criminals like Bush Jr who had (at this) point much larger body counts so there was hardly a reason for not doing the same with Putin.

Is he wanted by the International Criminal Court as well?
Too bad the Hague tribunal wasn't around in the times of Shukhevych and Bandera.

In a just world he would have been, but the status and power of the USA protects him.

If we (rightfully) accuse Russia and Putin of waging a war of agression, we must apply the same standards to Western leaders.

The war against Iraq may have been conducted much more humanely and against a vile regime, but it had thr same non-existing legal justification as Putin's war of agression against Ukraine.

The point was that the West had a much weaker leg to stand on in terms of morality in 2014 than we do now.

.....all true.....the other point I wonder about ist what happened with Putin himself!

There he sat....accepted....recognized....respected....equal to the other world leaders....even having a good time just enjoying a football game with the elite.

Now look at him...isolated....shunned....a pariah of the world community....what a fall down!

Did he not foresee that possibility as he gave the order to invade? Or did he and he never cared???

Perhaps he is under the delusion that he can regain that respect? I read a few months ago that he still hopes for a second Yalta, negotiating with the USA and China as equals over spheres of influence.

....dementia! You heard it here first....

More probably excessive hubris.

Living in a bubble surrounded by yes men telling him that his army of orcs was invincible and thinking he'd got effective leverage on countries that buy hydrocarbons from him.

Of course the opposite is true. His orcs are crap and while the developed world will still use fossil fuels for decades, the policies for the future will involve multipolar supply and an acceleration in the move towards renewables.

Yeah...of course....that is always a danger of this kind of leadership!

I don't think that that's how people at that level operate. Putin, Erdogan, Xi are like the Tsars, Sultans, and Emperors of the past. The total degree of control over things within their borders, is so much more intoxicating a drug than being gladhanded by some western elected officials that will be out of office within mere years, and then likely will come crawling back to the Kremlin to collect some consulting fees for their new boutique advisory shop (Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Schroeder, etc).

Putin likely doesn't see other Western leaders as peers. He's already one of the longest serving leaders in the world - up there with the likes of Mugabe and Dos Santos. He sees himself as an elder statesmen, that others should come to for advice. Don't think he's too worried about missing a G7 or G20 meeting.

Putin has long since moved on from things like money or acceptance at Davos. He's trying to write himself into Russian history as one of its greatest leaders.

that Ukrainians wanted to be freed from the 'tyranny' of the Kyiv government.... that's why the original invasion was so poorly planned... russians (and their shills in the west) thought that Ukrainians would join them and welcome them with flowers...

this is a great argument for term limits, the longer a person is in office (Merkel, putain, Erdogan, Orban...) the less they understand issues at ground level and the more likely they are to make catastrophic mistakes based on the faulty info they get (Northstream2! What's the worst that could happen?)

Actually, from the very little that we know - both the intelligence community and the defense establishment cautioned Putin against the operation.

There is even a sort of video proof, from last year, where Naryshkin is publicly dressed down by Putin for having doubts.

I just wonder if he was already that far removed back in Rio, in the Maracana stadium. If he had these thoughts and beliefs then already....and if not what changed him?

Okay...maybe I just just stop wondering, it's useless, I know!

Of course he did. Read a biography of Putin, you'll see.

He had a certain naïveté regarding being able to build a working partnership with Clinton and Bush, early on, but then all of that evaporated pretty quickly after Iraq.

Your claim is baseless - as opposed to my claim that Russia is doing to Ukraine what the US would do to Mexico or Cuba if the roles were reversed.

In kilometers, how close are the US arms to Russia and vice versa? Put those on the map and tell me again that it's Putin's imagination.

Hmmm.....maybe he believed he could pull another Iraq and get away with it like Bush?

Thing is, he actually did go away with Syria, but he underestimated the fact that Ukraine is EUROPE....that is our own backyard, not some dusty far away hell hole nobody cares about!

That fact alone is and always will be a game changer...


I'm grappling for any kind of possible explanation...only guessing, thats all. But you also don't know the total truth, right?

No. Russia - when it was deep in the depths of the 1990s and was a basket case - had a surprisingly decent economic relationship with Saddam's Iraq. Not only did he buy weapons from us, but also our companies had interests in a few key oil fields.

The US went in, installed a puppet government under Bremer, reoriented all of Iraqs weapons purchases to American kit, and organized new auctions for drilling rights - many of which went to Chevron, Exxon, Halliburton, etc.

This was pretty shocking to Putin.

Libya was the same, but arguably worse.

Unlike President of USA, Putin does not publish his medical records, so who knows if he isn't held together with a diaper and duct tape... besides there's always an option someone serves him radioactive tea.


Ah yes, the typical Russian response: "yes, we're shi*tty, but so it everyone else".

Tell me then, who will win the next presidential elections in the US? Do you know? I sure as hell don't.

While I'm sure that Putin will win the next presidential elections in Russia.

That's the difference.

For the total truth, I would have to be in Putin's head.
But I have the next best thing: a comparison between what he is doing to Ukraine to what a US president would do to Cuba under similar circumstances.

One of them was actually ready to go to war with the Soviet Union...that's how much he disliked Nikita's plan.

We are Russians. We don't suffer from a messianic complex. We don't have a concept of "Manifest Destiny", like in America. We don't think of ourselves as a shining "city upon the hill". None of our politicians have ever tried referring to Russia as "the indispensable nation".

We do what we can to get by.

Nobody even knows if the TV appearances are him or one of his many unfortunate doubles.

They'll verify it at The Hague though, before they hang him.

If Putin did not exist, you would have to invent him.

A comparison between what somebody IS doing to something somebody WOULD do? Of course you can compare between how your neighbour IS shagging your wife to how you WOULD shag his, but the situations are not exactly analogical, are they?

Putin did invade a country in Europe and - as BB very rightly noticed - you can't compare starting a war in Europe to bombing the sh*t out of some desert goatf*ckers. Get real.


... or was bluffing. We don't know that.

Why not?

Because Russia is Europe. Yes, of course, we like to tease you with the Mongol-Asia jibes, but that's what it is - silly quips for fun, but you are basically a European country. So, for a European country the difference between starting a war in Europe and in some Kurvistan is like having a crap in the middle of your own living room in front of all the guests and going for a stag night to a far-away country on a different continent and defecating in somebody's garden. Whilst you can argue that the latter is in bad taste, the former is outright scandalous.

You have an undeniable gift for analogy. It's hard to argue with you, in instances like these...