I’m 50/50 on this one. He’s either going to be right for the first time, or find a way to spin this into MMT.
Yes, because Ukrainians refused to kneel - both literally and figuratively.
So the more Ukrainians fight for freedom, the more Russian hatred of them grows - in Russian eyes trying escape slavery of the all-powerful Tsar is a cardinal sin and provides a stark contrast to their chosen condition. That people who speak the same or similar language do not have to live in bondage.
Because what does fighting for freedom say about those slaves who voluntarily chose bondage?
You want something? A metaled road? Electricity for a few hours a day? Relatively clean drinking water? Get on your knees, grovel, record a video and maybe, just maybe the occasionally merciful Tsar will bestow his grace upon you.
And the Ukrainians chose not to live like that, and are voluntarily dying for that choice - freedom.
First off there was a coup on 2014 in which the U.S. was behind. Surprise! The Donbas region(full of Russians) didn’t want to follow the coup government. So what happened? They began to get bombed. I read 8k were killed. So you have that and NATO’'s aggressive expansion Right on the border of Russia. What would the U.S. do if an adversary couped the Mexican government and that controlled government wanted Mexico to join an alliance that the adversary was a part of? Then we have the destruction of the Nord stram pipeline which the I.S. has denied having any part of, using the excuse that it was Russian sabotage. As if they would destroy their own pipeline. Not to mention the plethora of U.S. politicians(President included)saying the Nordstream pipeline must be destroyed. Now why would they want that to happen? Maybe to stop an inexpensive way for others in Europe to get oil and force them to buy from U.S. suppliers. It’s all about the benjamin’s. A common theme in U.S. coups. Freedom is one of the last things this war is being fought for even if it is given any consideration at all. Ukraine will most likely eventually lose in the end. Meanwhile many people will die and for what?
Propaganda.
Do you speak Russian? Have you even been to Russia?
You’re mixing “Russians” and “Russian speakers”. There was a 100k+ pro-Ukrainian rally in Donetsk during Maidan. All “separatist” leaders in 2014, from the FSB colonel Girkin to the methhead-working-in-a-car-wash Motorola were from Russia proper.
Soldiers and civilians on both sides in eight years. The majority on the Ukrainian side.
NATO has been on the border of Russia since 1949. And 50 miles from the second largest city in Russia since 2004. But Ukraine is supposedly the problem.
Europe voluntarily weaned itself off Russian gas and oil, even Germany (Hungary and Austria excluded)
No they will not. And what’s the alternative? A bullet in the back of the head? Ukrainians understand that Russians want to “solve the Ukrainian question once for all” (Putin and Medvedev’s words) with extermination, like in Mariupol.
Everyone is going to die. So if avoiding death is your reason to live, you have chosen to be a loser.
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Yep. According to my old buddy Vladimir, Russia wants to exterminate Ukraine and wipe the language from the face of the earth. Penalty for even speaking the dialect in official company- Death.
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He’s just going to come back and call you a brainwashed rube of a sub-human (or something like that).
We’ve been fighting this battle in other threads. Kind of like Ukraine - We are winning the war but the the rhetoric from Russia ain’t changing.
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I was in Ukraine for a couple of weeks during the summer, volunteered my niche engineering knowledge to make some buildings and by extension people somewhat safer from Russian missiles.
I mean, it’s unspeakable horrors without end, but some of the best behavior humanity has to offer. One thing that sticks is a dawning realization for them - “oh wow, they really want to exterminate us all” as one formerly pro-Russian old commie told me.
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Have you watched any of Peter Zeihans stuff on this conflict?
Just curious to see if you think he’s right or wrong.
His ideas seem compelling and logical, but I don’t know enough to really judge.
LOL.
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He doesn’t know what NATOs founding charter is.
Lets just let him say more dumb stuff.
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Welcome to the show @darnell_becker it’s been funny and irritating at the same time.
This guy literally believes that the US is the most propagandized country on the planet…
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How old is this castoli dude? 18? 19?
I was simple when I was that age too. And thought I was enlightened. That’s normal.
Don’t tell me that 71 stands for his birth year. if so…
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Yeah…it actually does stand for that.
I figured he was just a stoned teenager blowing his mind out in his bedroom.
If that’s a guy in his 50s then it’s a different matter. I wouldn’t laugh at a guy in a wheelchair so I won’t laugh at this castoli character either.
I watched some of Ziehan’s stuff on this conflict and I think he wrongfully assumes that Russia is acting based on external threats. Of course, Putin claims that this is about external threats, but all of the most significant threats to Putin’s power are internal. Why would he be fixated on external threats? Also, Ziehan seems to assume that Putin is implementing a well-planned Russia strategy instead of simply acting in his own personal interest. In short, my opinion is that Ziehan’s analysis is great but his base assumptions are absurd.
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I’m saying this not as an American, but as someone who knows people in former Eastern bloc nations like the Czech Republic and Poland.
These people DESPISE the Russian govt, and rightfully so. The Soviet govt put the people of Eastern Europe through hell, and their justification of “we saved you from the Nazis” is bullshit, since we Americans didn’t oppress the people of Western Europe who we saved. NATO didn’t “expand” and it isn’t “aggressive.” The people of Eastern Europe wanted to join NATO ASAP because the Russian govt is an existential threat to them. If you are in a place like Lativa or Poland, then Russia is the barbarian at the gates.
The Russian govt has ZERO say over what the people of other nations decide, so if places like Ukraine and Finland want to join NATO, then so be it. If we oppressed and terrorized Mexico for 50 years, then Mexico would be right to join an alliance with our enemies because we’d be the bad guys.
This Ukraine war has become stupidly politicized in the U.S., but this is one of the simplest good guy vs bad guy wars in recent memory. It’s 100% over freedom, despite govts and weapons manufacturers using this war for profit and political goals. World War 2 was also used for profit and political goals, but the Nazis and Japanese still needed to be stopped.
Fuck the Russian govt.
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He makes some good points, but as @Silyak pointed out, he’s exaggerating the external threat for Russia. Paradoxically, Russian geopolitical rivals are intent on preventing Russia’s disintegration, as they were with the USSR.
Putin’s Russia is a 16century colonial power living exclusively on extracting and selling natural resources and is now upset that their attempts to make an example out of uppity runaway slaves (whose lands happened to be rich in natural resources) are thwarted.
This may sound chauvinistic, but I believe real experts on Russia should be either from ex-Soviet countries or Eastern Europe. For a Westerner, Russia can be bears, shirtless dudes downing bottles of vodka in the snow, Dagestani wrestlers like Khabib or Islam or even Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy for a naive Russian lit major. For us Russia is enraged Russian soldiers murdering your grand-grandmother eighty years ago for having indoor plumbing (they were doing the same last year, killing off entire Ukrainian villages for having street lights and gas)
I like Vlad Vexler, he makes good points on Zeihan:
And this is the real Russia, not Putin’s palaces or expensive whores in Dubai:
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