Exactly. It’s wrong to try to frame Putin in any context that is not of Russian nature. The Hitler comparisons are just flat out wrong. Hitler was not the first, nor the last leader who tried to gain territory.
Well put.
This is TOTALLY a Russian experience.
My husband and I visited St. Petersburg in 2008. I did NOT want to see Moscow. Russia was most interesting but made me NOT want to go back. Nothing unpleasant but very expensive, rather depressing and downright bland.
So many of their "famous" sights looked like French knock-offs. The guide said that the Russians DID imitate the French often, lavishly and continuously.
I'm glad we went.
Side note: My husband, by then, was quite ill from lung cancer and he needed a wheelchair to get through their famous museum, the HERMITAGE.
Well, to borrow a wheelchair a passport had to be left as insurance against said wheelchair disappearing forever. THAT said a LOT about the Russians. The kicker was that the Russian guide, a young woman, had to leave HER passport with the museum officials. Our USA passports were worthless to them...HER passport insured that the wheelchair would be returned.
Disagree. A number of Hitler's territorial land grabs were justified by saying that he was protecting ethnic Germans.
OK don’t use Hitler. Stalin does nicely. And today his partner will be China instead of Japan. People better wake up because the next war is going to be nuclear. Or surrender.
Comparisons are fine he needs to be stopped now before it’s too late. And the big strike will probably come in the Pacific like last time.
These types play for keeps they will not hesitate to destroy America just because the liberals and most Americans think it’s unthinkable.
I think you're absolutely right here. Compare him to Peter the Great or even Catherine the Great if you want an historical analogy. Putin's acting as a Russian nationalist, even an imperialist. He has dreams of reviving Russian greatness.
It's really disengenous to compare Putin to Hitler while Svboda clowns are goosestepping around Kiev giving Nazi salutes.
As a friend of mine said after taking a Russian history class, "The Russians have always been the Russians."
If you want to read a good book about Russian expansionism in the 18th and 19th Centuries, "The Great Game" by Peter Hopkirk is a terrific read. The usual pattern for absorbing Central Asia from the shores of the Caspian to the borders of China and Afghanistan was to send traders, then send soldiers to protect the traders while insisting loudly that they had no intentions of taking the area. Then the local commander would sieze control on some pretext of a threat to the traders or soldiers and, while Moscow swore that they hadn't planned this, they would proceed to absorb the territory. The British would be outraged and the Russians would swear it wouldn't happen again. Then traders would start moving into the next khanate.