When they opened the archives of the Kremlin (which they have since re-closed), we found out that many orthodox priests were killed resisting the communists. I repented not having faith in my eastern brothers. Today the Russian orthodox church sells itself to Putin for a few lousy pieces of silver. Cathedrals with stained glass windows featuring Lenin, Stalin and Putin.
God will not be mocked.
You must be ignorant, or think I am, about Russia. Ethnic Russians share the vast Russian Federation with many other people. For a time, some federal subjects were allowed self-rule including in language. But, no more, Putin has taken away the rights of the Republics.
The Russians are Europeans but not western. They are eastern Europeans. (This is basic knowledge. You must know this.) Russia traces its cultural lineage to Kiev and prior to that to Constantinople. In the west, the cultural lineage goes something like this, from Rome to the Holy Roman Empire, to Protestantism, liberal government and capitalism. The Poles easily align with the west, even though subjugated by Imperial Russia and by the Soviet Union for many centuries. Other eastern Europeans, such as the Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Romanians, have their own national stories; and, being sovereign nations, they are able to reconcile their national histories with their present.
Over here, in America, we were “conceived in Liberty,” as Lincoln put it, and don’t have a shared national history.
There are effectively no opportunities for alternative leadership in Russia. Hence, there is no meaningful opposition party or opposition leaders. Your man is a dictator who has consolidated power even more completely than any Party Secretary during the Soviet era. Russia, therefore, will have to collapse because it cannot change. Of course, collapse is what Russian has been doing the past century. You collapsed during WWI and you collapsed after Afghanistan.
You will collapse because of your stupid war in Ukraine. Well, unless Putin blames his generals for misinforming him, and seeks some kind of a deal from the west.
Apparently you are. Peter the Great traveled in Europe and was so embarrassed by his own primitive empire that he embarked on a radical program of "Europeanisation", including the building of St. Petersburg on the Baltic. It failed. The boyars and the masses wouldn't accept it.
A quick search find this thumbnail history:
https://www.thinkchina.sg/history/why-peter-great-and-emperor-kangxi-failed-modernisation-test
"In the 21st century, Russia - like its neighbour who is the descendant of Emperor Kangxi - still has to threaten war to prove its greatness. After going around in bloodstained circles towards a utopian state with Karl Marx and Lenin, it is back where it started, with even less taste than the time of Peter."
"The West is wary of Russia because the Tsarist autocracy created by Peter the Great is only interested in expanding outward rather than improving its values."
Next you'll use the word “annex” like some other guy to make up some polemic/rhetorical difference for how us attacking, invading and sponsoring coups isn't so bad either, since we didn't annex them. Laughable-
Add to this list of similarities that the Russians (Rusland in German, or land of the Rus) share. The Rus are Vikings originally from Sweden (ever wonder why so many Russians are blond and have blue eyes?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people
Anyway, it's funny you want to start playing the game of definitions and creating some litmus test in order to be European or Christian enough, coming from a society where we have 15,000 different Protestant flavors today (literally), some of which think dogs go to heaven, others worry a lot about climate change, still others have female priests and worry a lot about the feminist cause while supporting abortion, finally some are 100% on board with LGBTQIA and have homo priests and bishops, allow for homo weddings... What about churches that de facto adopt socialism as part of their doctrine like the Catholics are doing under Francis? Are you telling me there is no mixing of religion and politics in the US?
When in a glass house...
Are we 100% the same? No. But are we very similar? Yes.
It's really a struggle over control of the worlds energy reserves and we are the one that is offensive and expanding into their sphere of influence all while pretending like we're defensive. We keep using the same old faux arguments of “democracy (Venezuela), human rights (Libya), WMD (Syria/Iraq) and sovereignty (Ukraine)” as rationalizations. The US controls 2/3rds and Russia 1/3rd of the worlds energy resources and everyone either falls on our side like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar; or their side like Venezuela, Iran, Libya, Syria...
This isn't the Cold War anymore. It's not us being defensive, a free and decentralized society, with a true free press and some government transparency and accountability, facing off with a Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union that is in part on an ideological conquest. Today, the line (if there even is one) regards who is the good guy and bad guy is far more blurry.
People like you want to pretend that our bombs, missiles, covert operations, lies, cheating, propaganda, assignations, censorship, torture, kidnappings are somehow more moral compared to those “evil Russians.”
Wooops, sorry about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri Image: https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/921c0226-26a6-48ed-9a77-a30b21d7d9ce_w1024_r1.4349164467897977_fpx64.12_fpy50.webp But we did it for democracy, sovereignty and human rights, so it's OK. Like GITMO was OK too, right? Do you realize, while you use these cliche's to justify every war, we were kidnapping people in allied nations (extraordinary rendition), dragging them off to third party nations, where we tortured the $hit out of them (enhanced interrogations) and then lie and claim “we don't do that” like Bush W. said even though his signature is on the authorization for such. And no worries, no US bureaucrat has ever been held accountable! When you do it for democracy, human rights and sovereignty, you can do almost anything, like blow up gas pipelines allied nations depend on. When God tells you that you are right, when you have a genetic predisposition for being moral, like we have, you can violate treaties like Minsk and Montreux, lie about NATO East expansion, withdraw from the Ballistic Missile Treaty, stomp all over someone else’s back yard, and then in a total hypocritical fashion (since we would NEVER tolerate a foreign power on our border) expect Russia to swallow such a $hit pill.
The position we put Russia in regards Ukraine was so over the top ridiculous, that this is actually one of the reasons why IMHO, I believe it is probable that it was at least a major consideration and a known expectation that a war would happen. A war between Ukraine and Russia would benefit us Geo-politically in our struggle with Russia over control of their frontier nations by weakening an already weak near peer in conventional terms. Best of all, such a conflict would have the Ukrainians bleeding and the Euro's (NATO) partially financing it, while we are the ones standing to benefit on the world stage. In other words, we saw a weak opponent and opportunity to play someone against them, benefiting us in our ability to take away what is theirs elsewhere: Libya, Venezuela, Syria, Niger, etc. But I do not think things worked out the way we expected. Machiavelli is probably more appropriate than your stories of democracy, sovereignty, and human rights regards Ukraine.
It's not that Russia is the good guy, they are not. But neither are we. In typical fashion you try to dehumanize the “enemy” no differently than we did with the Germans, Japanese, Indians, Mexicans, Blacks in the past, and of course on their side there are people who do the same to us. Many people have been dehumanized: Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Chinese, etc. but it's usually wrong. People are pretty much people and when folks attempt to dehumanize a group, that should actually set off alarm bells regarding the one attempting to do such.
