[NFHale]

Russia is not the threat. Democrats are the threat. Lather, rinse, repeat…

[kiryandil]

Beevor drinks the neokoolaid.

Well, the Brits were never a discerning lot...

[nicollo]

Peter the Great got his ass kicked by the Ottomans over control of the Black Sea.

While the Swedes regularly stomped him everywhere else, Pyotr did get Kiev.

Let’s just say this area of the world is complicated — and we would do well to stay out of it.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

There’s a lot of Mongol blood in Russians. It shows.

[Long Jon No Silver]

The home country of this toilet paper news paper did an incredible amount of lusting over other peoples lands. Russia expanded by land. Britain and Spain in particular, by sea. Get over Russian imperialism and expansion It’s a fact of history.

[marron]

Keeping in mind the Russian context within which he operates, Putin has been a pretty good leader until now, pretty savvy.

But I believe he got bad news from the doctor and wanted to secure his place in history by returning Russia to its historic borders, and returning Ukraine to the fold. He thought it would be a quick and relatively bloodless operation. He did not expect it to turn into a full on war. Biden’s disastrous handling of the Afghan war told him that Biden was no threat, and he believed the Zelensky government would collapse almost immediately.

When Biden threatened more sanctions in response to the buildup on the eve of war, he interpreted that as a green light (as did I); Russia has dealt pretty successfully with myriad sanctions, what’s one more?

Actually, almost everyone believed the same thing. It was a miscalculation that has cost him his legacy, and thousands of lives both Russian and Ukrainian. At this point he needs to find a way to claim a victory that will justify all that it has cost.

[devane617]

Having recently read many books on the Russian Revolution this article is spot on.

[Long Jon No Silver]

All that lusting into native border lands as European colonisers spread west in the U.S.

[CarolinaReaganFan]

Daily Mail propaganda is always good for a laugh!
.
Finally a plausible description of these pontoon crossings over the last 10days or so (aka “tampon crossings” if you listen to defense Politics Asia - which is actually good and rather balanced)..
at least 4 crossings - 2 thwarted,1-successful-1- partly successful
losses were heavy on both sides..Russians may have lost half to 2/3 of the 75 vehicles in the photo. Rus artillery has also been accurate..from link below “the hills were littered with ukranian bodies”. The russians control a swath of territory on the Bilohrivka side of the river that stretches from Bilohrivka to Rubizne. The Rus captured one town and fighting continues in two others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qyr06Ydw5w

[BenLurkin]

Two powerful Empires want the Ukraine to be their own.

The Russian Empire and the EU’s Fourth Reich.

Let them fight for it. The USA needs to walk away from the Urkaine as fast as possible.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Emotional headline from a fake news source

[Allegra]

Ra ra…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VmkySNDX4dU

[Dr. Franklin]

American schools and universities do a very poor job of teaching this part of the world. There was a great opportunity to deconstruct Tsarist Russia and deny key former parts to the Bolsheviks. Lenin offered the Poles all of Belarus and half of modern Ukraine at Riga in 1921. The allies were against it. Separating Belarus and Western Ukraine from Russia to that allies looked too much like the German plan from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The allies secretly hoped that the Bolsheviks revolution would simply collapse by itself, and wished for a restoration of, the Russian Empire in some form.

So, they recreated Poland by itself, without the benefit of of its partners in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This left the new Polish nation lightly industrialized with the highly industrialized Germans on one side, and the backward, giant neighbor on the other. It also left Poland extremely dependent on the French, and later British, for defense against the Germans. When the allies abandoned Poland in 1939, it was lost.

Something else was possible, especially if Poland had been part of a larger political union. Pilsudski, the master of Poland's rebirth, had attempted to create an alliance of states like Finland, Hungary and Romania, to counter balance both Germany and the USSR, but that ultimately failed. The Hungarians and Romanians were at odds over their borders, and the Finns, and others were not interested in forming a mutual defense alliance. The result of Putin's aggression is that Ukraine has been pushed into a much closer alliance with Poland, and Finland is looking to join NATO. Perhaps the leaders in the region have finally started to learn the lessons of history.