Posted on 08/11/2023 10:09:13 PM PDT by Cronos
To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”
The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.
Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.
...Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.”
...Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”
Russia did not accept its borders.
What “Russians trapped”? You mean the Russians sent yo other nations to control those countries?
Because they are blinded by Putin’s propaganda.
They really believe Putin is the great white hope standing gir Christian and white people
Rev wrong “In 1945, the USA had 50 % of world GDP. Now it is 25%.”
In 1945 most of the rest of the world was destroyed or getting inde7.
The USA was the only industrial power left.
You don’t get it. The left has gaslit all the Boomer Cons into the idea that there are no racial intelligence differences.
If you start from that premise, anything less than representation by population fraction, of, say, tenure track Physics positions, is by demonstration, “systematic racism”.
And then the left uses that to created a politicized diversity hiring process.
This is being repeated throughout the economy. So we have more and more complex systems being presided over by less and less competent people - with the results everyone can see. And it is only getting started !
“Why do you think Poland and Lithuania etc requested to join NATO? “
Because when they joined, the US military was still functional. Now it is a 1 trillion dollar DEI/ESG circus, that can’t even produce artillery ammunition.
NATO really isn’t an alliance, it is actually a collection of dependents that mostly don’t do anything defensively for themselves, but get a free option to have their security backed up by the USA if they request.
At the same time, these free riders always have the option to do what Belgium did in 1936 - exit the treaties and declare themselves neutral.
None of them are meeting the increases that they promised, first in 2014, and then in 2022.
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-russia-defense-spending-increase-us-ukraine-1812755
I hope they enjoy their membership.
Typical Russian false stories
That’s what the story is at least.
But you don’t know why they joined nato.
The US is easily capable of talking them into joining and putting some cash into play.
Finland and Sweden both had their populations against joining NATO until February 2022 and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
AND
So do YOU, Marmema, admit that your above statement is misdirection at best
That's false --
1. the US military is more than capable today --> The USA went through its stockpile and is Eveying sixfold production boosts -- the USA can ramp up quickly and it is showing that
That's false --
2. the aim was mutual protection as well - even discounting the USA -- Central Europeans countries sticking together could (that was the thought before Feb 2022) give Russia a bloody nose -- now it looks like they could do better than that
That's false --
Article 5 of the NATO alliance was invoked ONCE - by the USA -- and the allies came to the USA's side
Of course the clown can end the war, he can sue for peace immediately. He refuses that, because he doesn’t want to lose power (and “technically” it would end his excuse for not allowing an election to occur, which would throw his ass out).
If he is taken out (either by Russia or by patriotic and sane Ukrainians) and merely replaced by another globalist warmongering puppet/apparatchik, that will be on that next individual as the reason for not bringing peace.
And NATO still needs to be disbanded as a threat to international peace. It accomplished its mission in 1991.
It is easy to see you are not an American. You are incredibly gullible.
Re US artillery ammunition production, the equipment install completion dates are March 2024 and Feb 2026.
https://twitter.com/snekotron/status/1691719211511320832
Nothing is happening for years.
Although a year after Russia attacked they finally added a second shift at Scranton - I will give them that.
That is a twitter snapshot of modernization upgrades
It is different from the fact that the USA is already ramping up for production of existing artillery ammunition
Nice try, Ivan.
Admitting that you’re posting from St. Peterburg?
NATO is an alliance that central and eastern european countries band together to protect themselves from Russian invasions.
Russia has, in the past 13 years, invaded neighbors that are not part of NATO
The clown as in Putin can end the war.
If Zelensky sues for peace then the Ukrainians will vote him out — the Ukrainians knows that giving up land to Russia for peace was already tried in 2014 and that failed. Russia can’t be trusted as per the Ukrainian experience
“They really believe Putin is the great white hope standing gir Christian and white people”
They’re disgusting in their shallowness and cavalier attitudes. All the thoughtfulness and seriousness of Tik Tok diplomacy.
If they had a modicum of obligation or intellectual honesty they would research the Russian military leadership wrt the welfare and treatment of people. The Russian military rips off, laughs at, and ridicules its own troops while simultaneously priority targeting civilians. plenty of first hand Russian solder reports of being asked by their command “what are you doing back here” or “why are you alive” following a failed attacks described as suicidal by the soldiers.
WEF is behind both sides in this war, the objective is classic anti-humanism. Kill the people and take what’s left after they’re gone. Classic Leftism. Murder and plunder perpetrated by evil, corrupt-to-the-core people supported by easily deluded fools.
NATO WAS an anti-Communist alliance created during the Cold War to seek the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Mission was accomplished in 1991.
Today, NATO is a globalist (Communist) bureaucracy that threatens war against non-members. It is an abomination and threat to world peace and America must remove itself from it and let it collapse as it should.
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