The Russian Presidential Aide and head of the Russian negotiating group with Ukraine also said that recently the Russian Military Historical Society handed over several thousand books to the institutions where Ukrainian prisoners of war are being held, including textbooks on the history of Russia in the 20th century and pamphlets about Bandera
It’s also based on the words of Putin himself. He has frequently declared that he doesn’t respect Ukraine’s independence, that it’s not a real country, that it should be part of Russia.
He’s really not making a secret of his imperial ambitions. I don’t know why you’re trying to sell a different narrative.
I haven’t seen anyone making fun of Putin for not starting a nuclear war. Because that’s what he’s threatening. He uses nuclear blackmail to force other countries to let him take Ukraine, which ny itself is an incredibly dangerous precedent, and if it gets rewarded, he might use it again.
He wants entire buffer countries. He wasn’t content with just Donbass. It’s ridiculous that he wants a buffer, because he already has the largest country in the world. He poses a much larger existential threat to Ukraine and other neighbouring countries than they do Russia. It’s an absolute nonsense argument that tries to justify Russian exceptionalism and imperialism.
Demilitarising Ukraine makes Ukraine the buffer-zone. I didn’t mean to say that the aim was for Donbass to be the buffer. I just said that missiles in Donbass is particularly scary. Donbass was supposed to become independent from Ukraine to further Balkanise and weaken Ukraine and their ability to threaten Russia. Donbass being independent republics or federated with Russia doesn’t change the effect drastically.
Not Russia’s problem. Putin isn’t the president of Ukraine, and doesn’t make decisions for the good of Ukraine.
I’m not saying it’s moral. I’m saying it’s rational. Conquest is less rational. And more importantly, if your concern is ethical rather than campism, then on top of being more rational, it’s also much easier to work with and manage, to prevent wars. If the western powers were acting morally and wanted to minimise suffering among Ukrainian people, then using this model where we assume Putin has been telling the truth since 1999, then we could’ve given him concessions that would’ve made this invasion and the annexation of Crimea irrational. That would have prevented all this death, and allowed whatever economic integration with the EEA that Maidan proponents want.
This war is the result of years of intentional provocations by the west. Is Russia guilty for invading? Yes of course, they could’ve chosen self-destruction. Or perhaps there still was room to extract concessions from the west by grovelling and begging harder. But neither of those are rational actions. Who is also clearly to blame are the NATO powers who engineered and provoked this war, and destroyed off-ramps as they became visible.
This is also not imperialism. Imperialism is creating an empire and extracting wealth from your vassals. The Donbass will not be subject to unequal wealth extraction. That would be too risky with their precarious legitimacy. This is called expansion.
He’s using nuclear threats to deter attacks against Russia. Other countries are already trying to prevent him from taking parts of Ukraine. There are foreign weapons actively being used in Ukraine, foreign countries have enacted official sanctions against Russia, and yet Russia has never used a nuclear weapon on anyone. More than just foreign weapons and soldiers, the Ukrainian army is cooperating with the USA for military planning. Clearly no one is deterred.
Okay. If the reference doesn’t resonate with you, then your preferred media probably isn’t guilty of it.
I’m repeating the Russian messaging as told by TASS and RT, and by Putin in foreign interviews and from what I’ve seen of the yearly Putin Q&A. Is your impression formed from primary sources like the ones I mentioned or psychoanalyst pundits and ‘Russia-experts’? You were upset that OP would link a primary source earlier.
Initially I thought you were arguing in good faith and simply had a skewed understanding on some details. But your most recent reply is very disappointing and shows no effort on your part to consider my arguments or even understand the argument I was making.
Why do you believe Russia won’t cede land when it’s inconsistent with the map data? Russian battlelines wave in and out, while Ukrainian battlelines stay ridged until collapse. What their specific tactics are isn’t moralistic or something we can derive their quality from. I don’t know which of the two tactics is better. Perhaps they’re both the best tactic for their given army, irrespective of their goals. But you had it wrong. Why?
Why do you claim to want to find truth, but shun primary sources? And if you shun primary sources, why are you linking Ukrainian sources?
Why is it so important for you that Russia be unknowable and irrational? Is the reason that your world-view is built on a shoddy and precarious narrative that doesn’t survive scrutiny?