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Russia and explaining the current events

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Aye. I lived with a few Poles last year in my student accommodation and I was truly shocked by just how much they truly despise Russia.

Can you really blame them after what Stalin did in WW2 & the Cold War?

Reply 201

Anonymous263

Original post by Tempest II

Can you really blame them after what Stalin did in WW2 & the Cold War?

To be fair Stalin did that to everyone regardless if they were polish or russian
And Stalin wasn't even from russia :P

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Reply 202

castlemadeofsand

Original post by Malorys ballsack

Russia needs to be put down like a sick dog. It wishes to expand in the name of ethnic nationalism and revive the authoritarian Russian Empire with Putin as tsar.

You literally just mindlessly mimicking rhetoric that you have read somewhere.

Back in the day as the Soviet Empire was in its twilight years as Gorbachev's government made concession after concession aimed at speeding up the federation's inevitable decline, an agreement was made whereby NATO would not expand beyond its then reach.

Fast forward 20 years and NATO has now swallowed up most of Eastern Europe. Ukraine, like Belarus, has long been a historical ally of Russia and i guess in their minds, acted as a bulwark against NATO expansion onto a sizeable stretch of Russia's borders. The western allied president was so ineffective that Ukraine ended up voting back into power the corrupt Yanukovych who they had previously marched on the streets to get rid of back in 2005. Fast forward 8 years and a widespread movement against corruption and other grievances against the government was hijacked by way of a cash injection and general direction from the US State Department in order to depose the more Russian leaning President and install one more oriented towards their interests. Suddenly Ukraine is suddenly interested in joining NATO. Suddenly Russia finds its worst nightmare in so far as NATO, an organization founded completely in order to act as a force against Russia's predecessor, is potentially on its doorstep. To say that any angry reaction to this amounts to expansionism whilst previous foreign policy doctrines of the US which classed any sort of interference in foreign states in which it held puppet leaders as tantamount to war, is a complete farce.

Crimea may have been annexed under the more politically legitimate guise of re-uniting 'ethnic Russians' but the actual reason of protecting its Black Sea Naval Base, when compared to the actions of other states in defending their interests, isn't as expansionist as you make out. Rather than claiming this whole episode as a nasty expansionist Russia lashing out at its neighbours, perhaps it is better to see it as two major world powers either trying to expand its influence (US) or trying to hang on to as much influence as it can (Russia) and in the mean time a country is being teared apart (Ukraine).

Reply 203

reciproversexclu

Some say the US want to push sanctions to such extremes to incite another manufactured 'colour' revolution to overthrow the Russian government

http://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/13/the-new-round-of-sanctions-the-pre-war-period/#more-3665%C2%A0

Here is another interesting take:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-zuesse/58429/russias-leader-putin-rejects-ukrainian-separatists-aim-to-become-part-of-russia#comment-325259

Reply 204

Juichiro

Original post by Rakas21

Your right that there is a degree of phobia towards Russia but I don't think its unfounded for many of the reasons that Uber makes out.

The main one though is trust. While the west is not perfect I trust that the worst thing they will do to me is read my emails and accuse me of being a terrorism if I'm not white. Contrast this to Russia who have invaded Georgia and Ukraine.

To be honest I really don't think Russia shares some important fundamental values of ours (or their government anyway). While China and India will end up far more powerful they are both nations who like most care about their peoples prosperity, power is simply the result of that as evidenced by the economic dominance China is accruing in Africa. Putin however seems to care only for power, his economy is dependent on one thing, his people are on average poorer than the Polish and other than about 10 years they've only ever known dictatorship or economic collapse.

Putin was not even elected in a manner deemed free and fair.

Elaborate?

Reply 205

Rakas21

Original post by Juichiro

Elaborate?

China is the 4th largest investor in Africa but is also Africa's largest trading partner and buys 80% of their mineral exports, in effect Africa is dependent on them since western countries either don't need what they have or already have other sources or would not pay the amount. In regards to the economic dominance it simply means that in the same way the USA and USSR could force countries to back their foreign policy objectives, China could exercise the same influence ('you want that contract for Cobalt at price x, don's sanction us for taking island y').