I haven’t had much to say about the whole Russia / Ukraine thing because I’m somewhat ambivalent about the whole business.
On the one hand, yes, Vladimir Putin is a megalomaniac Russian bastard like so many of his political predecessors (Lenin, Stalin, Peter the Great etc.), and Russians themselves are a bunch of assholes (see: Russian oligarchs, Russian mafia, Russian hackers, Russian corruption etc.).
Unfortunately, the Ukrainians are not exactly little angels themselves. While they lack the global power of Russia, Ukraine is just as corrupt as their next-door neighbor, as shown with their dealings with our very own Biden criminal enterprise, to name but one example of their bastardy.
In other words, if Russia is the #1 Asshole in this area of the world, Ukraine is very definitely #1a.
Hence the Kissinger Statement, first spoken about the Iran / Iraq War of the 1980s: “It’s a pity there has to be a winner.”
I’m not saying that the Ukrainians shouldn’t resist Putin’s invasion with might and main and kill as many Russians as possible; I’m just saying that we should reserve our sympathy for Russia’s next target, e.g. the Finns, who definitively do not deserve the Ukrainian treatment.
My sympathy and support for Ukraine is firmly grounded in the knowledge that if Russia isn’t stopped in Ukraine, we’ll have to extend that sympathy and support to whichever country is next. As you say, likely Finland or similar. Personally, I feel like the Ukraine situation is a dream come true. As a child of the cold war, I was taught that the USSR (and Russia, really) was our greatest enemy. And I’ve seen them do nothing but shitty things since the USSR collapsed.
And here we are seeing them on the path to destruction without cost of any American lives, and at a monetary cost representing a fraction of what we’d spend to do it ourselves. I love it; bunch of commie dictator fucks are getting exactly what they deserve.
Agreed. I’d say that Lincoln and Sherman didn’t stage the worst part of the Civil War in Georgia because they loved Georgia, but I doubt the younger generations will get the reference.
The best place to fight a war is in enemy territory, the best men to fight it with are your other enemies. Ukraine isn’t quite that, but it’s as close as we’re going to get.
When you see one of the school bullies being assaulted by an even bigger bully, you probably wouldn’t be on either one’s “side”, but you’d be forgiven for wanting to see the bigger bully get the worst of it. Similarly, while I’m not on Ukraine’s “side” per se, I’d like to see them get the better of the Russian aggressors. Zelensky isn’t really “the good guy”, but I’d sure like to see him ram a fistful of shit so far down Putin’s throat that he gets teeth marks on his deltoid.
“Vladimir Putin is a megalomaniac Russian bastard like so many of his political predecessors (Lenin, Stalin, Peter the Great etc.), and Russians themselves are a bunch of assholes (see: Russian oligarchs, Russian mafia, Russian hackers, Russian corruption etc.).”
Every word in that statement is factually false. If you were not brain-washed into oblivion you would know it.
Putin is a Russian nationalist. He saved the Russian people from the Hell created by Wall Street during the regime of the drunken Yeltsin. It is because he took back the assets stolen by the Wall Street thugs that he is so vilified.
As to Ukraine. The US started that war (as it has started every war since 1991) by attacking and removing the legitimate, democratically elected Ukrainian government and by installing the current Nazi junta. For 8 years the Nazi junta, aided and abetted by the criminal regime in Washington, shelled civil neighborhoods in the Donbas, including schools and hospitals, and they killed thousands of ethnic Russian civilians.
You might remember, over 20 years the US military killed almost 1 million civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more in Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Yemem… The favorite targets of US drones are birthdays, weddings and funerals. We even murdered an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and his two children.
The great irony is that since the fall of the Soviet Union it is Russia that is a free country that supports traditional values and Christianity. It is the US that is a police state governed by pedophiles, trannies, atheists, and aliens. It is the US that has crumbling cities infested by feral black gangs and homeless people, not Russia or China.
We live in a dead culture and a dying economy. Russians live in a living culture and a thriving economy.
Are you the same Bob Sykes that supports Russia over on Commander Salamander’s blog?
If rmsykes is so fed up with USA and enamored of Russia, why doesn’t he move there and leave us alone in our misery?
What, and act sensibly in accordance with one’s beliefs?
Or you could enlist in the Ukrainian forces.
rmsykes, well put.
Ain’t it amazing that the MSM is vilified, and rightly so, for all of the half-truths and outright propaganda they spew, yet are believed without question when it comes to this topic?
rmsykes’ commentary is the only rational one here.
I find it almost unbelievable that otherwise intelligent people unquestioningly accept the “material” spewed by the U.S. Dept of State and echoed by the media; just the latter would give me cause to pause.
“Vladimir Putin is a megalomaniac Russian bastard like so many of his political predecessors (Lenin, Stalin, Peter the Great etc.), and Russians themselves are a bunch of assholes (see: Russian oligarchs, Russian mafia, Russian hackers, Russian corruption etc.).”
— Every word in that statement is factually false. If you were not brain-washed into oblivion you would know it.
I prefer to think of myself as “brainwashed by history”.
So Lenin, Stalin and Peter The Great weren’t megalomaniacs? Sheesh… I wonder exactly who has been brainwashed, here.
You know very well that is not what he said. He was replying to your “comment”, not to your “reference”. That’s a cheap attack, Kim, and I know you are better than that.
The criminality of the US gov’t is so blatant now I don’t know how it’s possible for any sane person to not be aware of it. Basically, it is the US gov’t that is the bad guy in this Ukraine-Russia dust up. Puti is doing the necessary house cleaning.
My mistake. The Russian oligarchs are a bunch of delicate flowers, there’s no such thing as the Russian mafia, Russian hackers are actually a collection of misunderstood philanthropists, and there is no corruption in Russia, not has been, ever.
This is what happens when one uses absolute argument openings like “every single word is false.”
Peter The Great was one of the first Russian mass murderers, and Lenin was only outdone by Stalin in his murderous edicts and power grabs.
And frankly, I don’t give a fuck that Stain was actually a Georgian by birth. As head of the Soviet government, he was a murderous megalomaniac who had all dissent stifled and all opponents either executed or sent to the gulags.
There’s not a single falsehood in any of the above statements.
Go on; try me.
OK. Not sure where you got your opinion about Peter being a mass murderer. He fought wars and suppressed revolts, like every other ruler. For example, Louis XIV, both sides in the English Civil War, and Maximillian II.
And the Soviet Union (nor the Tsarist Empire) was not Russia. Not only was Stalin a Georgian but Iron Felix was a Pole and the most reliable Bolshevik troops were Latvians. And there were plenty of Ukrainian Bolsheviks, mostly among ethnic Russians living in the Ukraine in 1917 but also including Trotsky who was born there. (Under the Tsarist classification system he was a Jew but a non-believer who was actually registered as a Lutheran for a while.) Kaganovich who was a major actor in the Holodomar came from a similar background. But under current neo-con theory all these Bolsheviks are Ukrainian. People also forget that the Bolsheviks bugged out from Ukraine in 1918 and left it to be occupied by the Germans. After the Germans collapsed, the Poles invaded occupying the country, including Kiev). Most of Western Ukraine was Polish before the partition and the PLC controlled even more of the area further back. The Germans were back in 1941, killing most of the Jews except those who were able to escape to the East (i.e. Russia).
The Tsars were more German than Russian and Catherine the Great who by the way absorbed the Crimea and the Black Sea coast was purely German.
And there is no such thing as the Italian mafia either. If you had a Ouija board, you could ask J. Edgar.
Stalin wasn’t Russian and Peter wasn’t a megalomaniac (at least any more than any other ruler of the time). Perhaps you mean Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan the Terrifying and Peter the Great were both mass murderers and fit descendants of a dynasty that began with Viking land pirates and survived Mongol conquest and rule by collaborating. But at least they weren’t secret policemen for the second most murderous regime that ever existed on Earth – that’s Putin.
Ukraine hasn’t invaded anyone since the 13th century – when Kievan Rus (the original Viking-Russian dynasty) was conquered by the Golden Horde.
But ever since the Mongols crumbled and a splinter of the Rus in the village of Moscow picked up the pieces and became Tsars, Russia has been a warmaker and invader. They invaded every land within reach: the Ottoman Turks and the tribes to their south, Ukraine, Siberia, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and various Slavic tribes completing the circle to the Balkans and Turkey. Under the Bolsheviks, first they attacked their own people in the farmlands to steal their food, then tried to reclaim Poland, did re-conquer the Baltic States, and carried on border wars with Japan in Manchuria. Stalin divided Poland with Hitler, which was a disastrous mistake – but somehow he wound up with all of Poland and the lands south of that to the Greek & Turkish border, as well as a chunk of Japanese territory. But the western nations learned from this to never give a Russian an inch, and Russia now faced overwhelming military force on all the borders of it’s empire. So Stalin and his successors dropped direct invasions in favor of subversion all over the world, adding Cuba, Vietnam, and half of Korea to their client states. They were still looking for ways to force more nations under their misrule when all the errors a totalitarian regime makes caught up with them.
And now there’s Putin. He hasn’t learned from the collapse of the USSR, he wants to be Tsar even more than he wants to be Stalin, and he’s trying to build the 3rd Russian Empire. Ukraine is where we can stop him…
We shouldn’t call Putin a bastard. We don’t *know* that his parents were not married to each other. And we don’t even know what species they were.
“You might remember, over 20 years the US military killed almost 1 million civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more in Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Yemem…” Every word in that statement is factually false. The killers of the innocent civilians were other innocent civilians who merely happened to believe in a different flavor of Islam. Kool-Aid, anyone?
Ukraine was trying to clean up it’s act where corruption is concerned, but when the corruption is that deep, and has been for that long, it’s a tough battle, and a lot of the corruption was from so-called “Oligarchs” with (alleged) ties to Russia.
It’s a mess, and there’s so much lies and propaganda that it’s impossible for someone who has a life to sort out.
But Russia isn’t even trying to clean up it’s act. But then Biden, and to a MUCH lesser extent Trump, the Bush family…The Clintions.
So it’s not like we’re throwing stones from moral high ground.
My biggest concern is that we “promised” Ukraine we’d help protect them in exchange for their nukes. If we don’t look like we’re trying to live up to that promise, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea will wind up nuclearized in short order. Israel may come out of the closet. Brazil maybe.
Then the less stable countries–Saudi Arabia, UAE etc.
Good God, people. This isn’t that hard. rmsykes is a nut.
Russia under Putin is an aggressive country trying to re-establish its lost empire, the Soviet era. Russia’s brief flirtation with something that sorta looked like democracy died fairly quickly, and what the world ended up with in Russia is a corrupt kleptocracy with empire-rebuilding ambitions and nukes.
Current Ukraine has some of the same problems, because it is born out of the same stew – it has connections to the former Russian empire, and long cultural connections to Moscow. It has also been the victim of Moscow in recent memory (Holodomor, anyone?) as a Russian vassal state in the old USSR. The old Soviet Republic borders weren’t, as most borders aren’t, entirely the same as the ethnic populations; that wasn’t a big deal in the Soviet era, as Ukraine was a vassal state, but it matters more now. Those ethnic crossovers are merely excuses, of course; this stupid war is entirely an attempt by Putin to rebuild the Soviet Empire while he still can, as the demographics and economic realities are rapidly combining to make Russia a poor 2nd rate country. He had to act now – wait another generation, and Russia is a shell of its former self, and Putin himself is gone.
Is Ukraine perfect? No, there are no perfect nations; there is corruption there, as there is corruption everywhere. In this instance, is Ukraine in the right? Absolutely. And the West now has the opportunity to seriously degrade Russia’s offensive capability while risking very little blood and some treasure – and treasure that, if it comes down to it, we can afford, if we just choose to do so. America is going broke, to be sure, but military spending is not the problem: social spending is. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and various income security programs are the bulk of federal spending, not the military. And NATO has vastly more resources that Russia; this is a war that the West can afford to fight, and Russia can’t, if it comes down to it.
Personally, I’m willing to send weapons and ammunition to Ukraine pretty freely. We built that stuff primarily to kill Russians, and it’s killing Russians, and with no American blood. The war is exposing the Russian bear as relatively toothless, and we are getting a first-hand look at the effectiveness of many of the weapons systems we have. We are, or should be, observing what is happening very carefully, and seeing if there are lessons to be learned there. It is not in America’s interest to let Putin rebuild the Soviet empire; success by Russia in Ukraine will bring more expansion by Putin or his successors.
However, and of this I am absolute: I am NOT willing to send a single young American to fight in Ukraine’s war. Not a single one.
There is one other factor. This is clearly an expansionist war by one state against another, a la Germany 1939-45. And in a country that the world pressured to give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union, in the name of trying to reign in nuke proliferation; there was a great (and understandable) fear of nukes being in the hands of more and more nations. In short, Ukraine gave up its deterrent with the world’s tacit assurance that we have their back. If the West does not support Ukraine here, how many other nations will see that they cannot rely on the West and the world to stop aggression, and need to nuke up themselves? Nuke technology is not that difficult today- any number of nations are capable. Japan, S. Korea, Malaysia, and yes Taiwan come to mind immediately. Do we want a world where nukes are far more common? I don’t think we do.
Love the comments above. As an old guy I have the same opinion as old guy Kissinger (Dr Strangelove). What is the old saying ? Attributed to Napoleon roughly…. ‘Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.’
Growing up in the late 1950’s / 1960’s there were lots of vets around. A neighbor had a great comment when I asked him about service in the war. He had served in both Europe and Asia. He said that “we should kill everyone in Europe and make it a hunting preserve”. I second the emotion.
Finally with regard to the Finns, my advice (haha) to Putin is to go ahead invade Finland. Little countries like Finland and Israel don’t take well to bullies. Actually Honey Badger comes to mind. The Russkies didn’t do so well 80 years ago in Finland and they won’t do so well today either.
There are a fair few Ukrainian refugees locally. The adults are all women; their menfolk are back home. I very much doubt that Zelensky is a saint but Putin is vastly the worse sinner.
Who the refugees are and who stayed home and why are key differences one finds with Ukraine refugees and Syrian/Turkish refugees.
I won’t say my SYMPATHIES are with Ukraine, but I believe we should support them, though (given the idiot in the HWite House) we’re probably doing it wrong.
Item 1) I can’t find a clear map of the boundaries of the area, but the more we can choke Russia off from warm water access, the better.
Item 2) Better to fight the Russians on territory we don’t care about than on territory we do.
My sympathies are with Ukraine. I am no longer married to my Ukrainian wife, but I have no use for the Putin Puppet government of Yanukovych or the previous murderous Kuchma government. Hunter Biden was paid big bucks to protect the remnants of the Yanukovych government from the Poroshenko government that succeeded it. The current Zelenskyy government is not perfect but is probably the cleanest in the region in the past two hundred years (admittedly a low standard).
It may help to remember that pretty much everything you hear from Russian propagandists like rmsykes is a lie. The snake pit of western consultants that included major players like the Podestas as well as small fry like Manafort and flunkies like Hunter Biden, was closely tied to that Putin Puppet government of Yanukovych. Russia likes to pretend that they and the US are the only important players in Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people have been striving for Independence at least since they were called Ruthenians.
I don’t know if Ukraine can make independence stick this time. They are surrounded by larger powers in a way that makes them even more vulnerable on the world stage than Poland and not much safer than Finland. My Ukrainian wife lived in Hostomel when we met, and had friends in nearby Bucha and Irpin. I don’t know what became of any of the people I met from those towns back then, but that is exactly where the major fighting outside Kyiv happened a year ago.
“Russians themselves are a bunch of assholes.” So therefore if a few self-styled leaders of a country are assholes, that makes the entire nation assholes. So therefore because Biden et al. are assholes, Americans themselves are a bunch of assholes. Good luck with selling that down at the local watering hole.
And obviously you have never encountered the greatest tribute band of all time, Leonid & Friends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_torOTK5qc
Well, Kim’s subject here certainly pulled back the cover exposing those addicted to CNN type of lying. Sad.
Are there any similarities between Nato-Ukraine vs. Russia, and USSR-Cuba vs. USA?
Does Russia have their equivalent to the Monroe Doctrine?
The Russian equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine is that they believe every socialist movement worldwide owes them allegiance and that any territory they have ever conquered by force or by fraud belongs to them in perpetuity. There are those on this thread who seem to agree with those communist aims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnut-E_eEM0