Posted on 07/08/2024 9:29:40 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Excellent exposition!
Part of the joy of FR is the exchange of knowledge. I get more than I can begin to give. Glad you found it worthwhile. 🙂👍
“...Had we backed down from our position of belligerence, Putin would have never invaded Ukraine...”
Not according to Putin and his words to his own people as to the purpose of the “Special Military Operation.” In addition, what trends on Russian social media is what Putin wants to trend. And Russian social media lighted up with applause for the speaker of the Russian Duma’s words about “Reversing the illegal transfer of Alaska.” Putin’s entire body of work illustrates his wide-ranging territorial ambitions. The reason Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania support Ukraine fanatically is because they feel they are next ... Poland too.
So, you are saying Putin is not like Stalin who Putin admires? Under Stalin, Solzhenitsyn got an eight year sentence for being coyly critical of the supreme leader. Some of the sentences handed out under Putin are longer for the same offense.
Why is there another new Stalin monument way out where Stalin was exiled/imprisoned. It is a costly giant letter on the hillside type sign.
You just go ahead and gloat over the destruction of my wife’s home area due to the Russian invasion. Some of her extended family was exiled to Solovki during Stalin’s time. The same Russian mindset commits atrocities in the Donbas currently.
Don’t think you are fooling anyone with you fake pro-life arguments. You are as pro-life as Himmler. Your ignorance of Ukraine is made up for by your arrogance. You are truly pathetic.
>>>>
Putin’s aggression was obviously not out of fear of NATO
<<<<
In 2008 he told NATO directly that pressing into UKR (or Georgia) would lead to war.
So, NATO responded by saying it was a matter of when UKR joins NATO not if. At the time, plenty of Western diplomats and international relations experts suggested that NATO’s continued interest in UKR and Georgia would lead to war — AND that it was not warranted.
From 2008 onward NATO/CIA/MI6 pushed hard into UKR (and Georgia for awhile). Putin’s response in Georgia foreshadowed his response to NATO’s continued pressure into UKR. NATO didn’t care, they welcomed war as a means to weaken Putin and Russia for only the small cost of UKR and RU lives.
One may disagree with Putin’s red-line regarding UKR and NATO but to suggest it did not exist or that NATO did not aggressively “cross-it” is wilful ignorance.
Putin can put red lines everywhere. He hates the freedom that most of eastern Europe now enjoys. The willful ignorance is making a case that Putin feared a NATO offensive.
NATO is needed because Russia is aggressive. That is why Sweden dropped its cherished longstanding neutrality and clamored to join NATO. It became obvious that Putin has wide-ranging territorial ambitions.
The reality is that Putin has never stated that he admires Stalin. He has praised Stalin for being an effective manager in WWII to help defeat Hitler's Nazi Regime. But he has also said that the people must also learn from Stalin's mistakes. He also acknowledged that Stalin’s repressions were a dark period in Russian history.
Like us, he loves his nation, but he is not making excuses for Stalin's shortcomings either. I disagree with him on many issues, but that doesn't mean he should shirk his duty to protect the Russian citizens from external threats. That is actually a positive that he stands up for his citizens, especially when our leader wants to replace us with illegal invaders.
Under Stalin, Solzhenitsyn got an eight year sentence for being coyly critical of the supreme leader.
Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, he initially lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist, and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically minded Eastern Orthodox Christian.
While not thrown into a Gulag:
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a Marine Corps officer, gained national attention for criticizing the Afghanistan withdrawal. He was jailed in a military prison for violating a gag order, but was later released.
Scheller, the commander of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion, posted a video questioning his superiors after the chaos following the evacuation from Afghanistan on August 26. He was removed from his job that Sunday and resigned three days later. Scheller’s family stated that he was subjected to intense pressure after posting the video, including a psych evaluation.
But then look at what Biden has done to J6 protestors, whose crime for the vast majority was merely entering the Capitol and many have have been sentenced to years in prison, after spending years without even being charged. One a grandmother in her 70s for going into the Capitol to pray. She too was sentenced to years.
Need I remind you of the lawfare leveled against Trump, Bidens political opponent. The show trials that have taken place would probably make Putin blush.
You just go ahead and gloat over the destruction of my wife’s home area due to the Russian invasion. Some of her extended family was exiled to Solovki during Stalin’s time. The same Russian mindset commits atrocities in the Donbas currently.
I am not gloating about anything that has transpired. That's another problem you have. You do not listen to what people say. I have stated all along that it is our country under the stolen presidency of Biden that has created this conflict from the get-go. A conflict that had a simple solution, not expand NATO into Georgia or Ukraine. Another fact that ignore as if that statement is carrying the plague. BTW, had you bothered to actually watch the videos I provided you would have seen that John Mearsheimer confirms the point that Putin was prodded into taking action. That he really didn't relish the prospect of invading Ukraine, and that there is zero evidence of Putin desiring to take Europe. But you refuse to listen, because it counters your entire narrative. I'm sorry that it affects you directly, but it still has no bearing on this nation, but supporting one side over the other does have direct consequences to this nation that is teetering itself on total destruction. ,p> Sorry, but for me, and many others, our nation comes first.
The best I can offer your wife's country is to stop the carnage, now. Quit waiting for it to be returned in its entirety. That possibility was taken away when Zelenskyy made the wrong choice to fight Russia and relying upon Biden.
Furthermore, I would prefer that Zelenskyy turn against Biden and expose all of his crimes in Ukraine.
Don’t think you are fooling anyone with you fake pro-life arguments. You are as pro-life as Himmler. Your ignorance of Ukraine is made up for by your arrogance. You are truly pathetic.
Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions, even wrong ones. You are full of wrong opinions. Therefore your attempts at insult has zero affect on the truth, something that is foreign to you, because as I have said before you are a brainwashed fool tool. You keep bring up Stalin to equate him to Putin.
So, I assume you believe the lies that equate Trump to Hitler, because facts are not important to you. You prefer the propaganda over the truth because the truth disputes your hatred. Perhaps when Putin dies the next man up may fulfill your fears, but that won't change your hatred for Putin, while you ignore the crimes of Biden.
You're beyond pathetic in my opinion.
Thanks. 🙂👍
In your perverted logic you believe since I compare Putin to his hero Stalin that I must “equate Trump to Hitler”. How is that??!!! If you were around during the 2020 election counting shenanigans you should remember I was one of the STOP THE STEAL Freepers and attended Trump’s speech on the Ellipse.
Your own Louisiana Senator, John Kennedy, who is one of the more activist conservative members of the Senate, supports Ukraine and supports Trump just as I do. How is it that a Louisiana boy like yourself claims to know Putin’s inner mind and all his speeches yet know nothing of your own senator? Is it because you attended Louisiana State University in Krasnoyarsk?
Why did you give me a lesson on Solzhenitsyn? Is it because you had a cut and paste piece handy. You did not address the longer sentences handed out under Putin than Solzhenitsyn received under Stalin. You just smoke screened as you did about the new Stalin monuments, and the rehabilitation of Stalin under Putin reversing Khruschev’s deconstruction of Stalin’s cult of personality and his place beside Lenin in the cadaver hut outside the Kremlin walls. The rehabilitation of the hammer and sickle flag is also Putin’s doing. As for Solzhenitsyn, he visited my old boss, Senator Jesse Helms when he first came to America. I’ve read his WARNING TO THE WEST, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, THE GULAG ARCHEPELAGO, CANCER WARD, LENIN IN ZURICH, COLLECTED SHORT STORIES AND PROSE POEMS, and AUGUST 1914. I know Solzhenitsyn but thanks for your poorly composed thumbnail anyway.
You actually believe Putin loves his country??!! Putin loves power and clings to it, gutting Russia’s constitution along the way. He loves money and steals it by the billions from his poor country (Elon Musk called him the richest man in the world). He murders his opposition including political leaders Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny. Many others have been imprisoned while journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered to shut up her investigations. At least Putin has countless palace complexes like the new one in Gelendzhik which he built to rival Versailles but with Italian flavor. He also has countless yachts and mistresses. Thanks to his all-out invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed and maimed. Yes, he must really love his country.
But as a true KGB loyalist, for you it is “My Putin right or wrong!”
All you are capable of doing is to keep regurgitating propaganda, which keeps the endless wars running at full speed, and the killing goes on and on and on, you dumb cuck.
You should move to beautiful Ukraine so you can see your policy up close & personal. Then perhaps you will see what a foolish endeavor this is that only hurts Ukraine more & more the longer it continues.
You are a buffoon who absolutely ignores reality. Enjoy your fantasy, and good luck when you meet our creator.
You ignore reality and like all commie propagandists you project what you do on your opposition. Yes, the conversation is over because you are a loser and cannot answer my points. You defend genocide and are a complete Putin stooge.
Furthermore you can't connect dots correctly, which is why you are susceptible to propaganda in the first place. I've tried to make you see the truth, but like a thirty horse led to water I can't make you accept the truth, just like one can not make the thirsty horse drink the water.
As long as you are going to stick to the propaganda, continuing this stupid conversation is an exercise in futility. You are wrong on every issue you bring up, and it is the propaganda. I know you do mot like what I am saying, but I will continue to say it, because it is the truth.
You are just too pigheaded to listen to the truth. Like a liberal there comes a time when one must stop trying to teach them facts, and you are just like a liberal. Facts do not matter to you. You are content with propaganda.
Like I said move to Ukraine, and see first hand what you are doing to what you claim is a beautiful country. I have no reason to doubt you. But while there, remember that it is you and your fellow zeepers who are degrading it on a daily basis, because it's all or nothing at all with you zeepers. At best your odds of defeating Russia is somewhere between slim & none, with none the odds on favorite.
You believe that the U.S. will come riding in on its white horse to save Ukraine. That's another fantasy you hold as being the reality. The reality is that the U.S. has no intention of engaging in a direct war with Russia. Don't expect Europe to come to the rescue of Ukraine either. Because they too are not interested in engaging Russia in a direct war. That's why they desired a proxy war. With Ukraine having everything to lose, not them.
Until you begin to see the reality, you will wallow in the misery that the propaganda fantasy provides in the long run. Brief glimmers of hope replaced with continual spells of overwhelming periods of disappointment & despair.
All of you zeepers see the obvious, that being that Russia invaded Ukraine. What you refuse to accept is the true why and how that why became the reality. As long as you refuse to look into that why, you will forever be just useful idiots of the evil that ins ruling our nation that was responsible for the outcome.
Until you do that you are living in the fantasy, not reality.
If and when you ever turn from the fantasy and enter into reality, and I honestly do not have much faith that will ever happen because you & the rest of the zeepers are stuck on stupid and want to make the arguments that Russia is the USSR, and Putin is Stalin. But if you do make that transition, we can begin to once again talk based upon reality not the fantasy brought to you via the courtesy of propaganda.
Putin said that Ukraine was part of Russia before the invasion. You don’t accept that fact. It is so easy for you to negotiate away someone else’s hometown to live under tyrannical Russian rule. Well, patriotic Ukrainians know what that is like and do not want a repeat.
You love peace at the price of freedom. You have no understanding of Patrick Henry.
Another American revolutionary motto is taken very seriously by Ukrainians: VICTORY OR DEATH.
Unlike you, I’ve been to Ukraine and its Donbas. I know what I’m talking about but you only repeat Russian propaganda talking points.
You are the one that should be in one of the first gulag camps of Solovki. You support evil and should reap the harvest of it.
Again that is not what he said. What he said was:
He denied Ukraine’s statehood, claiming that it was created by the Soviet Union and is not a real country. He has argued that Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood and that it is an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, spiritual space”.
If you look at Ukraine's history that is a somewhat factual statement. The closest it ever came to be somewhat recognized, was when Stalin took control of it. For hundreds of years it was the possession of several other entities.
You love peace at the price of freedom.
More BS from you. They could have had peace and remained free. All they had to do was remain neutral and not join NATO.
Do you think the U.S. has not used their hegemony on weaker countries? You're naive if you think we do no throw our hegemony around to make other countries capitulate to our demands. In Africa we use our hegemony to try and force African nations to accept homosexuality. It's that very reason the are turning away from the U.S.
What I do believe is that you do not put your freedom on the line unless you personally have the power to withstand a threat by a bigger more powerful neighbor. Furthermore, you do not put your country in jeopardy based upon promises of other nations who will claim to have your back.
Another American revolutionary motto is taken very seriously by Ukrainians: VICTORY OR DEATH.
That's fine, we got some help from France, but that was over 200 years ago, and we came close to losing that fight for our freedom.
They already had their freedom, they should have protected their freedom, instead of jeopardizing it against a nation that had significant advantages over it.
The way to protect that freedom was to reject the NATO expansion incentive, because Putin has stated that NATO expansion into either Georgia or Ukraine were red lines that Russia would not tolerate. If you believe they had the right to join NATO, then they are responsible for what happens when they exercise that right. It's not the responsibility of this nation to protect their rights.
But you can blame our country for trying to force Russia to accept our NATO expansion into Ukraine which created the situation that finally escalated into a kinetic war.
Unlike you, I’ve been to Ukraine and its Donbas. I know what I’m talking about but you only repeat Russian propaganda talking points.
Besides bein irrelevant it's just more BS. I do not read Russian propaganda. I listen to the sage knowledge of people who have a far greater grasp on what went down in Ukraine. One such person is John Mearsheimer.
A person I have tried, without success, to introduce you to, but to no avail. Which is why you make these erroneous claims of me getting my information from Russian propaganda.
The fact that you have been there is irrelevant, because you seem to not really know the long history of Ukraine, or more importantly the history of the landmass that we now call Ukraine.
You are the one that should be in one of the first gulag camps of Solovki. You support evil and should reap the harvest of it.
Wrong because I do not, even though you continually claim I do, support Russia or Ukraine. It's not my battle, and the battle I am concerned with is this nation, period.
Furthermore, I am fighting the evil that has taken hold of my nation. Ukraine has there own evil that they need to deal with.
I feel for the Ukrainian people, but I bet the Ukrainian people do not care about the American people, nor do I ask them to. We both have leaders that have betrayed us.
As a result I do not have the conviction to help them out of their problems, because I am more focused on our problems.
Do you get it yet? I doubt it. You're an obtuse person who is very emotionally wrapped into Ukraine's problems. So move yourself there. Ukraine is not a NATO nation, and I doubt it was ever really going to be one. This nation used that nation to be the frontline in a proxy war with Russia.
Wake up to that fact and quit blaming me for Ukraine's problems.
More importantly do not try to label me with the BS you continually try to regarding my position on Ukraine which I hold no allegiance to or have concern for the nation.
The people are a different story, and their best bet right now is to get to the peace table ASAP & engage in talks while trying to get the best deal from Russia as they can. That has always been their best bet, because neither the U.S. or the EU leaders had any real intention to engage Russia directly.
They were lied to, as you were lied to by our leaders that have lied to the U.S. citizens for decades, and the lying was the work of both political parties.
It was not me or others that are against our involvement in the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
But you continue to reject to place the blame where it really belongs, which is why you are a useful idiot, and will remain that until you begin to see the truth.
Wake up.
If your next response is once again a repeat of the previous ones, I will refuse to respond any further, because your emotional responses coupled with your stupidity are a bore.
So you say that travel and investigation in an area is “irrelevant”. That is very anti-intellectual of you. When I was a journalist in El Salvador working for Mario Rosenthal, I traveled to all 14 departments of the country and especially the “zona conflictivas” of Usulutan, Morazan, and Chalatenango. Even your Ivy League Mearsheimer would probably agree that you need to not just rely on his and Medvedev’s opinions and you should get off your lazy cowardly butt and investigate Ukraine in Ukraine if you insist on pushing Medvedev’s perverted talking points persistently.
Putin not only said that Ukraine is Russian but he also said that “Russia knows no borders.”
You and your Mearsheimer cannot make the case that Russia’s only option was to send armored columns into the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine. It would not have even been an issue if Putin had not worked to destroy the era of good-feeling that Yeltsin brought and instead worked for confrontation with his neighbors and looked to “friends” like Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and North Korea. Tell me again about how KGB Putin loves his country. Ha!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.