Things have changed since the 1600s. Defending disenfranchised persecuted Russian speakers is not subjugation. It is freedom fighting
Yeah, the Russians are actually much less civilized now post-communist collapse as back then.
There will be NO greater anti-americans than the pro-russian brigade on FR. At least on this site.
How many of those Russian-speaking people actually consider themselves Ukrainian? I have read that after the Russian invasion some Russian-speaking people in Ukraine started to speak Ukrainian.
How many of the Russian-speaking people who consider themselves Russian were settled in Ukraine after the infamous Stalinist famine or are descendants of these settlers. Russia can’t use the consequences of a policy of a totalitarian communist state as a pretext for its claims.
If those Russians don’t like it in Ukraine, they can always move to Russia. If Uncle Vlad were a wise ruler, he would welcome them with open arms. He needs more ethnic Russians in Russia because non-Russian ethnic groups have a higher birthrate.
How hard is it to understand that you can’t simply start a war with a neighboring country, which may well cost 100,000 lives, just because you don’t like its politics?
How hard is it to understand that you can’t wage war in the way Russia does: to raze whole cities to the ground? Civilized people call it a war crime. If the US did one tenth of what Russia did in Ukraine, its military commanders would be court-martialed and - possibly - the president would be removed from office.
How hard is to understand that Putin wants to restore the Russian empire and uses ethnic Russians in Ukraine only as a pretext? He himself said that the Ukrainians weren’t a nation. He wants to destroy the Ukrainian nation. Civilized people call it genocide.
How hard is it to understand that the word “freedom” has no meaning in Russia? Russia has ALWAYS been a despotic state. If Russia doesn’t want to be treated as a despotic state, it has to PROVE that it isn’t a despotic state anymore