They are more tolerant under post-Soviet Russia than Soviet Russia, No?!
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So, The Putin Doctrine of seizing territory where people (had to) speak Russian in the Soviet days and where settlement (of ethnic Russian) people in these areas (under said previous Soviet and Imperial Russian governments) makes domination of these areas (or having their pro-Russia puppet running the whole country) is sufficient legitimacy to annex territory? How many people speak English around the world where the US and England could annex them? How does that make the Russian government more ethical than the West wanting their puppet running things? Toe-may-to/toe-mah-to! Same thing. As I said, nobody wants to give the Ukrainian people a true legitimate chance at independence. B-b-b-but they are too corrupt? No sh*t? Where did they learn that from? Corrupt Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, Western exploiters? All of the above.
No angels, no saints, no morally superior folks involved on any side of this. That is the only truth.
I never said any of those things.
Putin doctrine? Where did you get that?
I had no idea that at least a second local language is taught in Russian Federations schools in 21 or 22 republics. There must be a reason for that. If some Russians proposed to stop teaching Chechen in Chechnya public schools, to remove those books, and fine people for speaking it in stores (as they did in Ukraine) what is the upside to compensate for the civil disturbance?
I understand the reasons for the WWII Germans and Japanese trying to grab some empire as they were late to that party. There was a big upside if they succeeded. I can't see a big upside to Kiev taking actions that would lead to war. The planned Mar 2022 invasion of Donbass would have done that. You can 'blame' many parties but a different route could have been taken to avoid war. I conclude that Kiev and especially DC wanted war. We seem to have been in more than a few in recent decades and not by accident.
No analogy is perfect. What if the US wanted to have Taiwan join NATO but doing so would trigger a Chinese invasion? Would we do it because of some right we say Taiwan has? After all, the western press would blame Pres Xi for the invasion so that would be worth the mess? Knowing all that should be have Taiwan join NATO? Shouldn't they have that right? Or no?
The US used some "responsibility to protect" as a reason to destroy Libya. We used a similar excuse to protect ethnic Albanians inside Kosovo to bomb Serbia. These places are on the other side of the world.
When Russia claims similar motivations to protect Russian speakers and ethnic Russians inside Ukraine on their border we pretend these reasons are fake.
I think the real bad guys in Ukraine are the US and the west. If the US had made it clear that in the event of war we would not aid Kiev their actions would have been different. People in the Donbass did not want independence or to be part of Russia. Read the old polls. They wanted some autonomy. You can read that. Speak their language and maybe elect local officials like their governor. Russia did not want them independent or part of Russia until this year. You can read that. Kiev could have extracted wealth and taxes as before. Win win. But that would avoid war which the US wanted and planned for for years.
The US via UK messengers blew up the Apr 2022 Istanbul proposals from Kiev because we wanted more war. We care about Ukrainians as much as Libyans or Syrians. Zero.
