“Putin saw 70 rapidly approaching and said to himself.......”it’s now or never””
He also saw 8 million or so Russian speakers about to be ‘cleansed’ in Ukraine, so we’ll never know what his real motivation was.
“He also saw 8 million or so Russian speakers about to be ‘cleansed’ in Ukraine...”
No, he didn’t. And you know he didn’t.
Come on, Bob. That old claim has been disproved over and over. One would think Putin could have come up with a better excuse, and not have had to resort to an old Hitlerian one.
Pro-Russia FReepers routinely trot out the old fiction that the Ukrainians killed 14,000 civilians before Russia invaded in 2022 as some sort of rescue mission. Those same FReepers engage in the time-honored ruse of the left: Misrepresentation.
The fact is, between April, 2014 and the end of 2021 there were 14,200 - 14,400 TOTAL deaths as a result of the Donbas civil war. Of that number, some 3,400 were civilians. There were also some 400 - 500 Russian TROOPS killed in Ukraine in the first full year of that civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
Those 8 million Russian speakers were “about to be cleansed” since 2014. Seems Ukraine is very inefficient with its supposed genocide. Never mind that the vast majority of them were and continue to be perfectly happy to be citizens of Ukraine. Including my in-laws, who somehow magically have not been cleansed, or deprived of any of their property, while fluently speaking Russian every day in Donetsk. Except now thanks to russia they have very little food, no heat and no ability to leave.
It truly is amazing the horseshit that gets spewed on this site by people who probably have never been outside of their home state, never mind the USA and have absolutely no idea what is actually going on in the world.