daodao
Established Member
How would you describe the Western-backed/instigated putsch in Kiev on 22/2/14, the key event that has led to the current crisis?
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Russia invades Ukraine
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They were still more tightly controlled than US states.
I wasn't aware that the tens of thousands of people we saw out on the streets were all undercover soldiers
What is it about Russia, that it always seems to attract a cadre of sycophants and apologists, whatever period of history we're in.
The country always seems to hold some people in thrall for some reason to the extent that they seem unable to see through its actions.
The country always seems to hold some people in thrall for some reason to the extent that they seem unable to see through its actions.
To be fair, there are also those who see the US in a similar glowing light.
Not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. And I’ve not seen any evidence that there were undercover western military forces or even hired supporters in the crowd. Perhaps there were. But what we can definitely be sure of is that the FSB and Russian paid ‘supporters’ were there on the pro government side.
@daodao Do you have evidence that the toppling of Yanukovych was ‘instigated’ by the ‘west’? Given that western countries were massively divided at the time on how to approach the situation (to the point that US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland was quoted as saying ‘F*** the EU’) I’ve certainly not seen anything to suggest this.
DustyBin
Established Member
I think it’s a combination of different factors. Two that immediately spring to mind are those people who just don’t like the West (the US in particular) so gravitate towards Russia as some kind of antidote, and those people who genuinely think Russia should be a fully functioning member of the international community, and could be if the West cut them a little slack. The latter perspective I have (or rather had) some degree of sympathy with as I’ve expressed previously, but any remnants of that evaporated on the 24th of February……
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Most dictators seem to go on for ever. Remember Robert Mugabe?
I suppose whilst you have the support of the military then being removed is quite diffcult, lose that and you're a gonner.
As has been discussed in a lot of places, I am not sure people are particularly interested in Russia per se, but rather a 'strong' leader like Putin. Cut to the chase and that basically means liking a white nationalist who has very clear views on things like sexuality, people of colour, gender rights and - well - rights in general. Putin isn't woke and most certainly 'tells it like it is'. He's not going to give in to those 'nasty libs'.
It's hardly a surprise that people like Nigel Farage or Donald Trump and their many followers see how Russia looks demographically and think that's exactly what they'd like.
Of course when Putin does things like this, they have to step back a little, but they seemingly still can't resist complimenting him on being smart, tough etc because he's still a figure they admire and would still like to see emulated here. They'd be more than willing to live with someone like that in charge if they did the same things here. Not to them, obviously, but the undesirables. Let's ignore the fact that they would likely find out the hard way quite quickly that they wouldn't be safe.
Let's be honest, there are people who quite likely also respect what Hitler was trying to do. Some people have been caught saying good things about Hitler, but usually it's kept pretty much under the carpet and you only get the careful dog whistling. Every now and then someone breaks through the facade, but I think we're now seeing support for Putin wane because of the atrocities in Ukraine - but it almost certainly isn't changing opinions behind closed doors.
That Russia can also help make people very rich (the useful idiots concept) if they go along with things is obviously a factor too.
Yes, that sounds very plausible to me, together with some lingering sympathy for the countries experience during WWII perhaps.
It has to have been the West at fault. Ukrainians have no agency other than that given to them by their betters the Russians. Your average Ukrainian understands that really they're part of Russia but unfortunately have been forced by the West and its puppet regime to take up arms against the liberating forces from Russia that have been sent to secure both Russia but also more importantly Ukraine from Western aggression. The conflict we're currently seeing is sadly those rogue elements of the Ukrainian state who are resisting the natural order of things.
Or something. I don't know how to sound properly like a Putin apologist/anti-Western conspiracy theorist really.
A country where about one in twelve people are Muslim?
No, it's not demographics, some people just like Putin's no-nonsense approach and his subversion of democracy however that manifests itself. The invasion blindsided people like Farage because it was such a brazen and indefensible crime.
John Luxton
Established Member
Interesting comment. As a child of the cold war Russia was the evil empire. To me who is very anti anything left of centre the place was just BAD! I never dreamt in the 70s or 80s the Warsaw pact would disintegrate.
Then Gorbachev came along the wall came down, the Communists were booted out.
I then thought the west and Russia could make up and it certainly started going in the right direction all the animosity could be ditched and the threat of a major nuclear conflict ended.
The problem came when the west rather than just waiting a reasonable period of time to build up better relations with Russia just welcomed in so many states to NATO and the EU in a very short order of time.
Yes East Germany obviously had to be let in as part of the reunification process but I am not so sure the other states should have been assimilated into the EU and in particular NATO quite so quickly. I am not suggesting it should have never have happened but it should have been a much more gradual process.
Basically we provided Putin with a campaigning tool to play on the threat from the west. If those countries had been demilitarised and neutral as per Sweden and Finland he would not have been given the ammunition.
There is nothing more politicians enjoy recruiting support by the use of fear in the past 100 years.
We just have to look at how fear of other races, other religions, other countries and more recently a bad strain of flu have been used to manipulate and control.
Perhaps I am getting cynical as I grow older - yes but I wouldn't say I was an apologist for Russia but someone who wants to know why the west got it so badly wrong. Hence I am prepared to look at the Russian view as well as that of the west.
Blindly waving the flag for your side is not always the wisest thing todo.
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brad465
Veteran Member
Yes a military coup did it for Mugabe, which I certainly didn't expect, I thought he'd die in office. It's possible such a coup could do it for Putin, but should not be something to either expect or hope will work out for better.
That obviously pre-supposes that the West did get it "so badly wrong". Clearly those countries that did want to join the EU and/or NATO felt it was the right thing, but yes, that course clearly didn't pander to Russia's persecution complex/imperial delusions.
John Luxton
Established Member
Magabe was very much a creation of British meddling. When Ian Smith declared UDI our interest in Rhodesia should have ended. I think Mugabe was a classic case if unintended consequences.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
Essentially your argument is that eastern European states should have remained in the Warsaw pact against thier will then at some point become neutral regardless of thier desires. In following this plan they would give up thier ability to determine thier own foreign & perhaps domestic policy agenda to Moscow and ensure they were always vulnerable to exactly the activity displayed in Ukraine today.
The questions you should ask is: Why did they want to join the EU/NATO? Why didn't/don't they want to align to Moscow freely?
BTW - neither Finland nor Sweden are demilitarised.
"Yes, you have thrown off Communism and want modern, democratic Western societies and all that but sorry, we can't help you with that because we have to pander to your former overlords".
I guess I just imagined the Finnish and Swedish Air Forces, Navies and Armies then?
There's a very low threshold of what qualifies as "Putin apologist" in our discourse in Britain.
Assessing the myriad causes of a conflict is sensible and helps us understand why, exactly, tens of thousands of people are being butchered now and how conflicts might be avoided in future.
Hardly anyone thinks Hitler was justified or had even the tiniest morsel of excuse to invade Czechoslovakia or Poland or Denmark or any other place he chose to expand his horrid reich. But just saying "Hitler bad, the end" is not really helpful. Have none of you ever sat a history exam?
In assessing the causes of WWII you would never get away with avoiding mentioning the global economic depression and German hyperinflation, the punishing sanctions imposed by Versailles, the failure of the League of Nations, alongside things like alarmingly unchecked militarism in Germany, its sense of humiliation and, of course, Hitler himself.
Economic trouble plus strongman leader plus an inability to make tough choices at home and be real with your own people is a toxic cocktail. Russia has been on the path to some sort of war in Ukraine for about ten years.
The complete lack of understanding and wilful ignorance of what Russia actually is and how this intractable problem might be managed is pitiful. "Never been, don't wanna go, don't wanna know". The idea you can simply go "lalalala", fingers in ears, and try to ignore Russia is laughable, not even pub level debate. Nobody disputes Ukraine's unalloyed right to self-determination. They have that right, absolutely. It is their homes being invaded, not the other way around. Ukraine has the support of the West for very good reasons.
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Sweden is not a neutral country.
Assessing the myriad causes of a conflict is sensible and helps us understand why, exactly, tens of thousands of people are being butchered now and how conflicts might be avoided in future.
Hardly anyone thinks Hitler was justified or had even the tiniest morsel of excuse to invade Czechoslovakia or Poland or Denmark or any other place he chose to expand his horrid reich. But just saying "Hitler bad, the end" is not really helpful. Have none of you ever sat a history exam?
In assessing the causes of WWII you would never get away with avoiding mentioning the global economic depression and German hyperinflation, the punishing sanctions imposed by Versailles, the failure of the League of Nations, alongside things like alarmingly unchecked militarism in Germany, its sense of humiliation and, of course, Hitler himself.
Economic trouble plus strongman leader plus an inability to make tough choices at home and be real with your own people is a toxic cocktail. Russia has been on the path to some sort of war in Ukraine for about ten years.
The complete lack of understanding and wilful ignorance of what Russia actually is and how this intractable problem might be managed is pitiful. "Never been, don't wanna go, don't wanna know". The idea you can simply go "lalalala", fingers in ears, and try to ignore Russia is laughable, not even pub level debate. Nobody disputes Ukraine's unalloyed right to self-determination. They have that right, absolutely. It is their homes being invaded, not the other way around. Ukraine has the support of the West for very good reasons.
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Sweden and Finland are not demilitarised, and rightly so. They both have very effective armed forces. and they both have conscription. I was in Finland last week and had a beer with someone who had just demobbed!
Sweden is not a neutral country.
John Luxton
Established Member
No I didn't suggest they should have remained in the Warsaw pact.
Neutrality has positive benefits look to Switzerland. They survived a very tumultuous 20th Century.
Any demilitarisation could have been monitored by the UN to ensure fair play and avoid either Russia or the West having an undue influence.
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Not pandering to former overlords at all. Illogical argument it's all about building trust across Europe.
Swiss neutrality is assisted by two things. One, they fund wars and all sorts of illicit activity with their horrid banks, making them an unwise choice to invade. And secondly, most of Switzerland is very, very difficult to invade and requires a very small force of soldiers to defend, thanks to the geography of the country.
If Switzerland was a flat plain country it would certainly not be neutral.
We had over forty years of containing Russia relatively successfully and shielding ourselves from its political/economic influence. I see no reason not to pursue a similar course now.
How would denying membership to the EU and/or NATO to former Warsaw Pact countries and instead "waiting a reasonable period of time to build up better relations with Russia" be anything other than pandering to Russian sensibilities?
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Annetts key
Established Member
The trouble with the wonderful idea of demilitarisation is that it encourages trouble. Who would defend a demilitarised country or area from an aggressor?
And why should it be a smaller country that is never likely to be a threat to the larger country (Russia)?
If demilitarisation is the way to go, then an equivalent area of land inside Russia should also be demilitarised. And both demilitarised areas would have to be monitored by an independent organisation.
Absolutely no chance that Russia no matter who is the leader/head of state would ever agree to this.
And why should it be a smaller country that is never likely to be a threat to the larger country (Russia)?
If demilitarisation is the way to go, then an equivalent area of land inside Russia should also be demilitarised. And both demilitarised areas would have to be monitored by an independent organisation.
Absolutely no chance that Russia no matter who is the leader/head of state would ever agree to this.
Big difference in that it wasn’t Russia but the Soviet Union, which had a different agenda and lower capacity to do so. Fast forward and we don’t live in the same times.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
but not decide to join the EU/NATO? Or at best join at some undefined point in the distant future. Independence but not freedom eh?
Perhaps being surrounded by mountains helped with that! Hitler and his chums planned to invade.
You cant be that naïve surely! Also: Neither Finland nor Sweden are demilitarised.
but that is EXACTLY what you suggest. You can be "independent" but cant make any policy decisions that might upset Moscow.
I ask again: Why did these countries not FREELY align with Moscow?
We're still talking about an authoritarian power aiming to exert its influence further West in Europe. Yes modern Russia appears to have had a greater economic capacity to do so, but as we have seen, a lot of that was down to the West's own past choices.
Shrop
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Aug 2019
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But compare this with the view that a lot of people have about the USA. The USA went into Iraq on a pretext of avenging 9/11 when people around the world were screaming that this was a wholly inappropriate action. Yet Bush and his "cadre" were so needy of demonstrating power that they ignored what many were telling them and went in anyway. Meanwhile the American people were being fed huge amounts of propaganda that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, as I know from travelling in the US at that time and speaking to many of them. Relatives in Canada also spoke of their despair at the propaganda that was being fed to US citizens at the time.
Then there's Trump, who was clearly guilty of inciting a riot which lead to multiple deaths, and yet he's not only walked free from this, there's a fair chance he will be running for another presidency in a couple of years time.
The point is, in the UK we tear our hair out about Russian propaganda, and what their dictatorial leadership gets away with, yet when it's the USA we're much more forgiving. Okay, the situations are different, but the traits of propaganda and unjustified invasions are nevertheless there. All of it has abhorrent aspects, it just seems to be a sorry feature of modern society that so many people are either over the top modern woke, or perpetuating centuries old human nature of aggression and deception. I wish I had the answers.
But it's not the same power with the same agenda, and it is now 2022 with mass media and cyber warfare. Russia is an open country. The Soviet Union was not.
It's just a facile argument - you could apply your quote to Germany in 1914 or 1939 but our responses were different. The Russian Federation of 2022 is not the Soviet Union of 1977. The West must respond to Russia but must be extremely careful how it does so. And it must not simply carbon-copy its foreign policy of how it countered pre-glasnost and pre-perestroika USSR.
Annetts key
Established Member
I’m not sure that even if none of the former USSR European countries has joined NATO, this would have made any difference with regards to Putin invading one or more of these countries.
Putin is a blatant liar. He says whatever he feels will give him an advantage or which he thinks will provide a justification for his actions. But what he says, either for domestic consumption or for the ‘benefit’ of the west / rest of the world is unlikely to be the real reason behind what he is thinking.
So trying to come up with a solution based on what Putin says (or the official policy from the Russian state) is a hiding to nothing.
It appears to me, as it does to various others, that Putin’s aim is to try to expand Russian control and influence over more of the former USSR countries. Ukraine had not managed to join NATO before Putin was ready. And he saw the opportunity of even a limited amount of influence diminishing every day.
Putin, since he has come to power, and especially since 2012 has been increasing military spending.
Although the invasion of Crimea was successful, the war in the Donbas region has not delivered what Putin wanted.
It takes time for military spending to result in your military forces becoming more effective. So Putin waited. Putin must have decided it was now or never to deal with Ukraine. He probably hoped that a large show of force (the military exercises) would get Ukraine to back down. But that did not happen.
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Putin is a blatant liar. He says whatever he feels will give him an advantage or which he thinks will provide a justification for his actions. But what he says, either for domestic consumption or for the ‘benefit’ of the west / rest of the world is unlikely to be the real reason behind what he is thinking.
So trying to come up with a solution based on what Putin says (or the official policy from the Russian state) is a hiding to nothing.
It appears to me, as it does to various others, that Putin’s aim is to try to expand Russian control and influence over more of the former USSR countries. Ukraine had not managed to join NATO before Putin was ready. And he saw the opportunity of even a limited amount of influence diminishing every day.
Putin, since he has come to power, and especially since 2012 has been increasing military spending.
Although the invasion of Crimea was successful, the war in the Donbas region has not delivered what Putin wanted.
It takes time for military spending to result in your military forces becoming more effective. So Putin waited. Putin must have decided it was now or never to deal with Ukraine. He probably hoped that a large show of force (the military exercises) would get Ukraine to back down. But that did not happen.
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The military spending of the USSR was far greater than Russian military spending. The USSR military forces (at least on paper) were in their day far larger than current day Russian military forces.