They can laugh, but step back a second and see it from their viewpoint.
There are many in Russia who firmly believe that NATO encroachment caused the war. To you and I the idea that Western Europe would invade Russia is patently absurd, but it is deeply ingrained in the psyche of Russia.
How would we react if the Russians were in Cuba, Quebec, or Mexico? Oh, wait. We did react to the Soviets expanding into Cuba and the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war because of it - we even attempted an “invasion” using our CIA....
Putin made a mistake in my estimation because he had won the negotiation for the time being, but in the eyes of Lavrov Putin reacted to what the Russians view (and have said) as an existential threat to their nation and Moscow.
The Western world-view seems incapable of understanding how we got here and many parrot the opinions of Soros, Nuland, Hillary, Graham, Rice, Powers, and the usual neocon suspects about why this conflict happened and what it is about.
Respectfully - We can all wish that Russia would withdraw from the Ukraine and sympathize with (even cheer for) the Ukrainian people, but when you are on the same side as that list of people it might be time to start asking serious questions about how we got here and what is our role in this moving forward.
“How would we react if the Russians were in Cuba, Quebec, or Mexico? Oh, wait. We did react to the Soviets expanding into Cuba and the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war because of it...”
Wrong! We didn’t much care about Soviet troops in Cuba; what we DID care about was the Soviets introducing into Cuba OFFENSIVE nuclear missiles capable of striking the entire “lower 48” of the US, with the exception of a small slice of pie in the extreme Pacific northwest.
“Putin made a mistake in my estimation because he had won the negotiation for the time being, but in the eyes of Lavrov Putin reacted to what the Russians view (and have said) as an existential threat to their nation and Moscow.”
An existential threat from Ukraine? A much smaller and much weaker country than Russia? If Russia saw Ukraine as an existential threat Russia is indeed a Potemkin country no stronger than, say, Ethiopia.
“The Western world-view seems incapable of understanding how we got here and many parrot the opinions of Soros, Nuland, Hillary, Graham, Rice, Powers, and the usual neocon suspects about why this conflict happened and what it is about.”
Well, you’ve just showed whose side you’re on; the “neocon” slander is a tell.
“Respectfully - We can all wish that Russia would withdraw from the Ukraine and sympathize with (even cheer for) the Ukrainian people, but when you are on the same side as that list of people it might be time to start asking serious questions about how we got here and what is our role in this moving forward.”
You conveniently ignore that there is a large group of people — myself included — who cheer for Ukraine in its fight against the existential threat from Russia IN SPITE OF who Ukraine’s president is and IN SPITE OF the current U.S. administration.