#darvo putin

[odinsblog]

In the coming days/weeks, you’re going to hear a lot about how Ukraine should accept the terms of surrender (as that’s what they are) offered by Russia—how they’d be “stupid” not to, how Zelenskyy should “do the right thing for his people” and prioritize saving lives, how peace should be the priority and we can’t always get what we want.

Make no mistake: even if Russia intends to uphold these terms once Zelenskyy accepts them, this is a terrible deal for Ukraine and a terrible deal for the world.

First of all, there’s no guarantee that Russia will respect a cease fire or peace treaty. Obviously that’s always the case with war, but it’s especially the case when they’ve already violated multiple cease fire agreements by firing on and murdering evacuating civilians, including children. So there’s your peace treaty.

Second, the terms that Russia has presented include virtually all of Putin’s actual goals for this illegal invasion (obviously “de-Nazification” and “de-militarization” were just lies à la “weapons of mass destruction,” a rhetorical tactic that really ought to be familiar to any self-respecting American leftist). Ukraine would forfeit its claim on the territories Russia has already illegally annexed/recognized, it would be forced to change its constitution (!!!) to commit to never joining any “pacts” (EU, NATO, anything else that forms in the future), and it would retain Zelenskyy as a figurehead while installing a pro-Russian actual government leadership.

This is—and I cannot stress this enough—not a “compromise” or a “peace treaty.” It’s terms of surrender. And the lesson learned here is that Russia can continue invading and terrorizing sovereign states without any actual consequences—remember, Putin doesn’t personally care about Western sanctions. He doesn’t care if his people are plunged into poverty as long as he and his cronies aren’t, and they won’t be. He’s furious about the sanctions because he finds them personally offensive and because they confirm his victim complex, not because he’s legitimately worried for his people like Zelenskyy is.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Putin has made it extremely clear that he seeks to rebuild a Russian empire. He will not stop with Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk. (And make no mistake—Luhansk and Donetsk are not independent sovereign states like Ukraine; they’re simply Russian satellites.) He will not stop with forced regime change in Belorus, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine. (And even if he did—isn’t that awful enough?) He is not “concerned about Russia’s security” or “worried about NATO’s encroachment” or whatever his extensive social media operation has you believing. He’s not concerned or worried about anything. He’s a dictator expanding his empire. He is exactly what you all feared Trump was.

I believe that this “offer” from Russia to Ukraine serves two purposes, and neither of them is to establish a lasting peace and autonomy for each country. One is to give Putin a potential way to back out of a war that has already gone much worse than he expected and cost him significantly in terms of personnel and equipment. (Not the sanctions—like I said, I don’t think he personally cares about the sanctions and in fact sees them as a political tool to use to his advantage.)

The second and more important goal is to create a way for the international community to blame Ukraine for the continued war. “If you’d just accept the terms, you could save your people and prevent nuclear war.” It’s absolutely classic DARVO tactics that, again, any progressive activist should be familiar with. “Sure, it’s not your fault he attacked you, but you shouldn’t have reported it, made a big deal of it, gotten him ‘cancelled,’ made it public, etc.”

It’s not Ukraine’s responsibility to “prevent nuclear war.” Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for protection—protection that it has not received, although Western aid and military assistance has undoubtedly been helpful. Placing responsibility on Ukraine to accept unjust terms and illegal annexation of its land in order to “prevent nuclear war” only lends credence to the claim that only nuclear weapons can keep a country truly safe—after all, it would mean that Putin’s nuclear threats have allowed him to invade his neighbors, terrorize their citizens, destroy their resources, replace their democratically elected leaders with his own puppets, and steal their land—without even having to make any concessions himself.

So here’s my plea to my American progressive/leftist siblings. Please question what you think you know about Putin, Russia, and Ukraine. There are certainly far-right and neo-Nazi political forces in Ukraine as there are in any country, but Zelenskyy is a progressive, democratically elected JEWISH president. NATO and the EU have their (serious) issues, but they have not pressured or forced any former Soviet states to join—in fact, prior to this war, it seemed unlikely that Ukraine would be admitted. Ukraine WANTED to join to protect itself from Russia, which had already illegally annexed its land, empowered far-right groups within its borders, and forced regime changes in surrounding countries.

Putin is not an anti-imperialist revolutionary; he denounces American imperialism because it’s convenient for him politically and it keeps the American left from putting pressure on our government to divest from Russia. Sure, maybe the Democrats oversold Russian election hacking as an explanation for Trump’s win (although the more I learn about the extent of Russia’s disinfo campaign, the more I question this common leftist talking point), but that doesn’t mean that Putin isn’t bent on conquering Eastern Europe and subduing Western powers by any means necessary. This goes far beyond American electoral politics, and the answers here do not conform to American party lines. Do not fall into the trap of dismissing politicians’ statements about Putin and Russia just because you disagree with the rest of their stances.

Putin is a dictator. Sometimes it really is that simple. A former KGB agent, he came to power by staging the modern Russian version of the Reichstag fire (look up “Russian apartment bombings”), using that as an excuse to start a war and win it, and he has maintained his power through strong-arming and terror. The State Duma is entirely symbolic at this point; anyone who goes against Putin knows that they are likely not only to die, but to die horribly, just like Alexei Navalny almost did not long ago (look up “Novichok” and prepare yourself for some body horror).

I could go on. I won’t right now. But in truth, I deeply regret the fact that I haven’t done more over the past 8 or so years to disrupt the blatant Putinist propaganda I hear from a lot of my fellow progressives. I had other priorities and I didn’t give it the attention I should’ve. To be clear: nothing America or American progressives could’ve done would’ve stopped this war, only delayed it or hastened it. The war was inevitable because Putin wants to conquer Ukraine, and beyond.

So I’ll just say—please, please listen to people who fled Russia/the Soviet Union, and to experts who study Russia. The most likely threat here isn’t a nuclear WWIII; this isn’t about you. The thing people like me fear most is simply that Putin will continue subjugating, terrorizing, and ultimately conquering innocent citizens of sovereign states, and that the West will eventually just accept this as the price of nuclear deterrence.

I’m not a political scientist; I don’t know how to stop this war. All I know is that Ukrainian surrender isn’t it. Listen to Ukrainians, anti-Putin Russians, and other experts, form your own opinion, and most importantly, keep your wits about you. Not everyone in this world is a good faith negotiating partner. Some people are, unfortunately, just evil. Hitler was, Stalin was, Putin is.

(source)

[irradiate-space]

You make a lot of good points about how deescalation is a mutual thing, and I agree with you that the current post-2022-invasion and post-Crimean-invasion sanctions regimes should have clearer removal triggers, along the lines of "when Russia withdraws beyond this line".

But let's go back to the beginning. Why didn't Russia join NATO in the early 2000s? This timeline is assembled from several sources:

1994: NATO creates the "Partnership for Peace" program to facilitate coordination with non-NATO neighbor states. Russia, Czechia, Hungary and Poland are among the joining states.

1997: Russia and NATO sign a "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security", and create the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council. This is allegedly the condition for billions of dollars of IMF loans.

1998: Russia and NATO cooperate in the Kosovo conflict, where Albanian separatists in Kosovo were being genocided by Yugoslavia's Serbian military forces. (In 2003, Yugoslavia was renamed to Serbia and Montenegro, which lasted until Montenego broke off in 2006.)

1999: Russia condemns NATO bombings in Yugoslavia, which continued until Yugoslavia withdrew from Kosovo.

11 June 1999: Kosovo War ends. NATO and Russia establish a joint peacekeeping force, but NATO doesn't divvy up territory. Russia wanted its own separate peacekeeping sector. NATO wanted to avoid partition of Kosovo.

12-26 June 1999: Standoff between NATO and Russian forces at Pristina airport in Kosovo. Russia demands an exclusive territory of peacekeeping in Kosovo and blocks the airport. NATO blockades the airport, and neighboring nations refuse to allow Russian planes access to supply or reinforce the Russian troops at the airport. The situation is resolved diplomatically when Russian peacekeepers are given an independent chain of command in Kosovo, but no independent territory. The American officer commanding the NATO forces was later removed from his post; peace occurred because his subordinates disobeyed his orders to escalate.

7 August 1999: Start of the Second Chechen War with the War of Dagestan, where 2,000 Chechen separatists enter neighboring Dagestan. (Both provinces border Georgia.)

9 August 1999: Putin appointed deputy prime minister; same day promotion to prime minister of Russia; Yeltsin announces that he hopes Putin will be his successor as president. Putin announces his candidacy.

4 September 1999: An apartment building explodes in Dagestan. Putin blames Chechen militants. There is widespread suspicion that this was a false-flag attack by the Russian FSB to build support for a pro-war government.

September 1999: Creation of the Unity Party in Russia, backed by Yeltsin, Putin, and 39 regional governors.

1 October 1999: Putin declares the Chechen presidency and parliament illegitimate, announces land invasion of Chechnya.

19 December 1999: Unity Party wins 72/441 seats in Russian Parliamentary elections, riding popularity of Putin's war on Chechnya.

1999: NATO publishes a new Strategic Concept that gives it a more world-police role.

31 December 1999: Yeltsin unexpectedly resigns; Putin becomes acting president of Russia.

7 May 2000: Putin becomes president of Russia.

May 2000: Russia reestablishes direct rule over Chechnya, which it had not had since the end of the First Chechen War in 1996.

post-9/11: Russia provides intelligence to US forces in Afghanistan, and indirectly to NATO.

April 2001: Unity Party and the Fatherland - All Russia party unite to form the United Russia party.

May 2002: Russia and USA sign the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which reduced the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1700 per country by 2012.

May 2002: Formation of the NATO-Russia Council.

13 June 2002: USA withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited development and deployment of defensive countermissile systems, citing the risk of nuclear missile attack by rogue states (North Korea, Iran). Many countries object to this, because it would better enable the US to shrug off a retaliation strike if the US engaged in a nuclear first strike.

14 June 2002: In response, Russia withdraws from START II, which wasn't yet in effect. START II banned MIRVs.

"early" 2003: Russia withdraws from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.

September 2003: Russia gains a military base in Kyrgyzstan.

7 December 2003: United Russia party claims 223/450 seats in the State Duma

March 2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia join NATO

March 2004: Putin wins his second term as president.

April 2004: NATO signs agreements establishing Russian military liaison offices at NATO HQ

August 2004: Russian government retaliates against Yukos for its boss' Khodorkovsky's opposition to Putin. The Russian government seizes and purchases a major part of Yukos, Yuganskneftegaz.

September 2004: Putin ends direct election of regional governors.

November 2004: Start of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, after substantiated allegations of vote rigging favoring Yanukovich in the 21 November runoff presidential election.

I think it is obvious that tensions existed between NATO and Russia before the Orange Revolution, and indeed before Putin became president. But this also shows the story that Putin has made for himself: he came to power on the promise to reunite Russia and retake separatist lands, starting with the territorial claims in Kosovo. Chechnya in 1999, South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk in following years: these are part of a pattern of territorial aggression by Russia towards independent former Soviet republics.

But was Russia actually rejected by NATO?

September 2005: Germany and Russia sign agreement to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which comes into service in 2011.

November 2006: Russian critic Alexander Litvinenko dies of polonium poisoning in London.

August 2007: Russia plants flag on North Pole seabed, claims Arctic oil.

November 2007: In response to international criticism of the Litvinenko poisoning, Putin suspends Russian participation in the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty.

January 2008: Russian naval fleet exercises in the Bay of Biscay, off France.

February 2008: Kosovo formally declares independence; Russia objects to Kosovo's recognition by other countries.

April 2008: NATO publishes the Bucharest Summit Declaration, which welcomes the candidacy of Georgia and Ukraine through MAP, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro through IPAP, and Serbia through Partnership for Peace and eventually an IPAP. NATO offers a linked US-NATO-Russian missile defense network.

August 2008: The aforementioned war in Georgia. NATO says there can be no "business as usual" with Russia until Russia withdraws from Georgia. Russia declares South Ossetia and Abkhazia independent, using the Kosovo precedent.

April 2009: Albania and Croatia enter NATO.

May 2009: NATO military exercises in Georgia; Russia says it's too soon after the Georgian War.

September 2009: US withdraws plans for missile defense bases in Poland and Czech Republic, after Russian threats of military and nuclear force.

April 2010: Russian President Medvedev signs the New START treaty with the US.

June 2010: US backs Russian accession to the World Trade Organization.

June 2011: NATO-Russia joint fighter jet exercise.

Summer 2011: NATO intervention in Libya, which Medvedev and Putin objected to.

March 2012: Putin begins third term as President.

August 2012: Russia joins WTO.

Then we enter the time of Euromaidan, and the conquering of Crimea, after which NATO withdrew from cooperation with Russia. Then there were the Russian actions in Syria and Turkey, and more recently, Ukraine.

There's a lot of little thing which add up, but with the exception of the US withdrawing from the ABM treaty, it looks like there's a couple of patterns:

Russia is denied a potential future territorial claim by NATO, and throws a fit (Kosovo, Georgia, Ukraine)

Russia does something unilateral and stupid (Litvinenko, Bay of Biscay, Arctic claims, other assassinations) and receives pushback, so it does something to retaliate to the pushback (CFE treaty withdrawal, saber-rattling)

Putin may not trust the West, but the reasons he cites for not trusting the West are self-inflicted. Russia keeps making territorial claims, the West keeps making defensive preparations, and then Russia claims that the defensive preparations are scary and Russia is the victim. It's DARVO, plain and simple.

Sources used:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17840446

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18023381

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO%E2%80%93Russia_relations#NATO-Russia_Council

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_139339.htm

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_50090.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nato-clinton-ukraine-russia/

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

So the thing which I think puzzles me most about the whole Crimea situation is this: Russia allegedly invaded Crimea in order to gain control of the deepwater port of Sevastopol.

Russia has many miles of coastline on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Why doesn't Russia simply build its own deepwater port on its own territory, instead of paying leases to Ukraine (before 2014) or provoking international outrage (after 2014)? Surely it is cheaper to dredge and build a new port and associated infrastructure than to — checks notes — receive punishing international sanctions, deplete post-Cold-War military materiel reserves, destroy a whole generation of AMAB citizens, and become a Chinese client state?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 18, 2020 (Sunday)

Heather Cox Richardson

Today reinforced some of the developing storylines of the 2020 election.

Last night, at a rally in Michigan, Trump once again attacked Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for locking down her state in the early days of the pandemic. When the crowd started to chant “Lock her up!” Trump responded: “Lock them all up!” Just ten days ago, the FBI arrested eight men plotting to kidnap Whitmer and put her on trial for “treason.” Whitmer called Trump out for “inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.” She told NBC, “It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous, not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans. People of goodwill on both sides of the aisle need to step up and call this out and bring the heat down.”

Lara Trump, who is married to Eric Trump and is a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, disagreed. She told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Well, look, he wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all…. He was having fun at a Trump rally.” The Trump campaign then insisted that a small “8645” emblem on a table beside Whitmer during her television interview was “encouraging assassination attempts” against Trump. (To “86” something is slang for getting rid of it.) While observers have noted Trump’s use of gaslighting—making someone believe something that is not true—another abusive pattern is “DARVO,” which stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.”

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that political officials in the Trump administration have restricted his media appearances. He also explained that he now has federal protection because of threats to his life, and to his wife and children. “That’s sad,” he told Jonathan Lapook of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “The very fact that a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity to me that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety.”

The editorial board of the New York Times today ran a special section of the Sunday Review to explain to readers in thirteen essays why Trump “is unfit to lead the nation.” The essays cover his corruption, incompetent statesmanship, attacks on women and minorities, rejection of science, and so on. The editorial introducing the issue begins: “Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.” What follows is a blistering litany of the actions of the man who is “without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history,” the editors say. He is conducting “an intolerable assault on the very foundations of the American experiment in government by the people.” The editorial concludes: “Mr. Trump is a man of no integrity. He has repeatedly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…. Now, in this moment of peril, it falls to the American people — even those who would prefer a Republican president — to preserve, protect and defend the United States by voting.”

More Republicans who have appeared to move in lockstep with the president are distancing themselves from him. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) needs independents to swing his way in a tight race with Democrat MJ Hegar, a retired Air Force combat pilot. On Friday, Cornyn told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board that his relationship with Trump was “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.” Cornyn claims to have stood up to Trump, but privately.

In all this there is nothing really new.

But there is a story that might have new information in it.

Last Wednesday morning, October 14, the tabloid New York Post ran a complicated and unbelievable story about Hunter Biden dropping off three laptops at a repair store and never going back for them, the FBI subpoenaing hard drives, and the repair shop owner making copies before turning them over and then giving the copies to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who gave them to the New York Post. Allegedly, the material on the laptops was incriminating.

The story was pretty transparently bogus from the start, especially since Giuliani has been hanging around with Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who, according to the Treasury Department, is a longtime Russian agent. According to the Treasury, Derkach has been working to promote “false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 election.” Giuliani was an eager listener.

Today, Katie Robertson at the New York Times reported that the New York Post article was so suspect that its lead author refused to put his name on it. The two main sources for the story were Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former advisor who is under federal indictment for fraud, and Giuliani. Giuliani said he took the story to the Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.” One woman whose name finally appeared on the story is a former associate producer for Sean Hannity’s show and has been at the newspaper only since April. The other did not work on the story and only discovered her name was on it after it was published. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have all said they could not verify the story.

The startling new “revelations” about Hunter Biden mirror classic disinformation campaigns in Russia, and look a great deal like the last-minute “revelations” about Hillary Clinton’s emails “discovered” on a laptop in Fall 2016, all of which later came to nothing. Former CIA officer Evan McMullin tweeted: “For weeks, there’s been awareness in intel circles of Russian plans to return (with Trump) to their bogus Biden-Burisma narrative and, as I’ve warned, their plan to expand that to include bonkers pedophilia and human trafficking allegations against the Bidens. Don’t fall for it!”

And yet, certain Republican lawmakers are running with the story. Republican Representative Lee Zeldin of New York tweeted that “Joe Needs to answer some questions ASAP about this dirty $ setup.” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) went onto the Fox News Channel to suggest that the computer at the center of this story, allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, had child pornography on it. This prompted intelligence specialist Malcolm Nance to tweet: “Whoa. The Republicans tried to tie Hunter Biden to child pornography. This is a 100% FSB [Russian Intelligence Agency] tactic. The FSB ALWAYS claims/plants Child porn on their opponents.”

For at least a year now, intelligence officers have warned us that Russia is interfering in this election, trying to swing it to Trump. Despite the fact that Trump’s polling numbers are abysmal, our Electoral College system means that the swing of relatively few voters in key states could enable him to eke out a victory, just as he did in 2016. It is worth remembering that Trump’s plan in 2020 has never been to win a majority; it has been to win by gaming the system. It seems to me also worth remembering that Trump has consistently refused either to criticize Russia or to acknowledge that Putin’s agents are working to help him get reelected.

While many Trump campaign officials are already trying to blame each other for their candidate’s apparent weakness, Trump and his loyalists remain adamant that he is going to win. They are allegedly taking names of those whom he considers insufficiently supportive. He is mad at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has rejected the president’s plans for a coronavirus relief bill and who publicly criticized the White House approach to the pandemic. He has gone after Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) for her coolness toward Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) for his condemnation of the president in a phone call with constituents. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has made his dislike for Trump clear in recent statements, is also on the outs.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, says, “President Trump won in 2016 without the vocal support of the political insider crowd, and he’s going to do it again. The President enjoys the support of over 90 percent of Republicans….”

It is certainly possible that the Trump campaign is putting a brave face on the terrible polls, but the ham-handed attempt to dump disinformation about the Bidens is an excellent reminder that foreign operatives have been trying to influence our elections since 2016, and they have not gone away.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[weemietime]

Ignoring the fact that this post seems to suggest that Russia isn't invading Ukraine lmao, the fact that you put Russia and Israel in the same graphic talking about double standards is extremely fucking funny to me.

Putin killed more people in a single day than have been killed during the entirety of the Gaza war and yet funnily enough, here you are making memes low-key supporting Russia while calling Israel a genocidal colonialist ethnostate. Here's a tip, "bro," all of your antiwestern, anticolonialist rhetoric is being heavily astroturfed by Russia.

You know, the dudes in possession of the largest colonized landmass ever on planet Earth. So trust that they have an incentive to twist the definition of colonization to release Russia from any responsibility from its own extremely egregious colonial history.

It's easy to point the finger at Jews, but again, you are being astroturfed by the IRGC, who straight up invaded Iran and established an Islamic theocracy on top of the indigenous Persian population there. So yes, there is very significant incentive for Arabs to claim that they are indigenous to all these different areas of the Middle East, because the alternative (the truth) is that they are in fact the colonizers and invaders in this scenario.

If Hamas wants to stop dying, they can choose to stop invading a sovereign country with the explicit goal of annihilating its civilians. The DARVO bullshit and genuine oppressive colonialism against Mizrahim specifically by you fucking imbeciles is positively hilarious when pasted alongside "the double standards of the USA and Russia, you know Russia, who totally have no colonialist revisionist history."

Hope this helps, dipshit.

The double-standards of the US empire and its minions.

[genderatheist]

Putin is a KGB officer and is very good at organizing misinformation and DARVO.

The “everyone is russian there” is a big fat lie. Ukrainians are slavs. Slav is not the same as russian. Related, yes. But not the same. Putin is calling to unification of all the “russians” (who are not russian) exactly the same way that Hitler was calling for United Germany, and then accuses ukrainians of nazism when they refuse to be incorporated.

And even IF most of ukrainian citizens were actually ethnically russian, that still would give no right to deny their right so selvorganization.

Russia has been having wet dreams about slav supremacy since before WW1. https://www.britannica.com/event/Pan-Slavism And they haven’t stopped dreaming ever since. Once you know this history you keep on seeing this same pattern again and again and again in everything Russia/Putin does.

Although the congress had little practical effect, the movement remained active, and by the 1860s it became particularly popular in Russia, to which many Pan-Slavs looked for leadership as well as for protection from Austro-Hungarian and Turkish rule. Russian Pan-Slavists, however, altered the theoretical bases of the movement. Adopting the Slavophile notion that western Europe was spiritually and culturally bankrupt and that it was Russia’s historic mission to rejuvenate Europe by gaining political dominance over it, the Pan-Slavists added the concept that Russia’s mission could not be fulfilled without the support of other Slav peoples, who must be liberated from their Austrian and Turkish masters and united into a Russian-dominated Slav confederation.

I’d also recommend to read Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. It’s a very heavy book, difficult to read, but she’s very very on point about how states like Russia operate, or any other group who believes they’re the chosen ones to whom the world bends over.

Sorry for mistakes, my brain no work in English today.

people so anti US that they'd rather see ukraine invaded by russia to "own the yankees". bro, people are already fucking dying and more will die. don't "how come you never talk about **" me, i do talk about that shit when i hear about it, i don't control the fucking media. imagine capping for a fucked up dictatorship. ukraine is ASKING FOR HELP. most of the eu WANTS to help. this isn't us vs russia, it's most of europe, east and west, north america, asia, and oceania vs russia. believe it or not, aiding a country in self defence for its own democracy is JUSTIFIED, and supporting defence for one situation doesn't mean you support military intervention or war in every other situation, that's not how it works. defending for democracy = good. fighting for resources = bad. if the us or any other defending nation takes advantage of the ukraine in any way during this, i will condemn them.

i always forget that the internet is incapable of nuance and complex opinions for complex circumstances.