Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)

Marduk said:

Coup which wouldn't have happened if Russia didn't treat Ukraine like a vassal state not allowed to choose its own foreign policy.
Treat your allies like dirt, suffer easy opportunity for hostile change of guard taken by competition, lose allies. Very important lesson for Russia right there, one it was trying and failing to learn since centuries.

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Nonsense, the US did the same thing in 2004 and the rest of the color revolutions. The core of US policy towards Russia is the Wolfowitz Doctrine:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

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Russia has been acting defensively against a US/NATO that has been encroaching on it since the collapse of the USSR. Meddling in Ukraine is to give it a buffer zone wherein no potential foe is able to set up to invade them. Not respecting Russian history of it having to face repeated destructive invasions from the west is going to result serious conflict. Same as the US would react to say China couping the government in Mexico and starting to build up their military with Chinese advisors and intelligence personnel.

Marduk said:

We all know that Maidan merely got western support, the sentiment behind it was brewing up since years and we can point out earlier events that contributed.
It is a ridiculous presumption that any revolution against a genuinely shitty government is inherently "western puppet coup" just because the west opportunistically supported that change, for obvious reasons.

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It was cultivated by the west. You could say the exactly same thing about the autonomous republics of the Donbass and Crimea; they were anti-Maidan and got Russian support to break off. It isn't like they simply only created by Russia and even western sources have said internal support for Russia is high in those areas.

It is a complex history and ultimately had the west not been pushing right up to the borders of Russia, something everyone knows Russia is VERY sensitive to due to their history, none of this would have been an issue.

Funny to how you say it was simply because of a shitty government when things remained as shitty if not got worse after the 2014 coup. Article from 2021:

Funny too how Zelensky got into power due to being created by a oligarch who was exiled from the country:

Zelenskyy was viewed by some as Kolomoyskyi's candidate. Zelenskyy appointed Kolomoyskyi's personal lawyer as a key campaign advisor, travelled to Geneva and Tel Aviv to confer with the then-exiled Kolomoyskyi on multiple occasions, and benefited from the endorsement of Kolomoyskyi's media empire. Once in office, Zelencky appeared to remove officials deemed a threat to Kolomoyskyi's interests, among them the Prosecutor General, Ruslan Ryaboshapka and the Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Yakiv Smolii, and Zelenskyy's first prime minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk, who tried to loosen Kolomoyskyi's control of a state-owned electricity company.[100][101]

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Plus he helped finance some of the Azov type militias:

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 again highlighted the presence in Dnipro of the volunteer "Dnieper Guard" (Варти Дніпра, Varty Dnipra), first formed in 2014 with Kolomoyskyi support in response to the war in Donbas. Mayor of Dnipro, Borys Filatov has dismissed suggestions that the group is Kolomoyskyi's "private army". The Ukrainian billionaire, according to Filatov has helped with some equipment purchases, but the volunteer guard performs defence and law and order functions under the leadership of the national police.[102]

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Oh and he also owned Burisma:

• Kolomoisky had a “controlling interest” in Burisma Holdings, the New York Post reported. Burisma employed Hunter Biden as a board member for a widely reported salary of $50,000 per month. Russian media, quoted in State Department emails, referred to Burisma as “part of Kolomoisky’s financial empire.”

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• Kolomoisky publicly said in 2019 that he refused to cooperate with efforts by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to get his help in investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma—and potentially Joe Biden, multiple news outlets reported. House Democrats’ impeachment report on Trump also cited the incident in late 2019.

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• Emails from 2015, published last year by the New York Post, show a Kolomoisky protege communicated with Hunter Biden about a meeting between the protege and Joe Biden, then vice president under President Barack Obama.

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• Court filings from 2019 by a private investigatory firm allege that legally obtained bank records of Hunter Biden show payments to him from the Kolomoisky-owned PrivatBank.

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Marduk said:

Because Ukraine doesn't want to be "left alone" and for a damn good reason. Being "left alone" means staying poor while Russia waits for a good opportunity to bring it back into the fold by hook or by crook. It is an untenable position, why would Ukraine want to be in it.

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Not really:

Moscow to buy $15bn of Ukrainian government bonds and cut gas price after Kiev resists signing EU deal amid mass protests

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Literally the same as the EU:

Given that Russia is at least 300% wealthier per capita than Ukraine ending the corruption and economically working with Russia would have been a boon. Thing is that most of poorest parts of the Ukraine are in the west, so they stand to profit from entering the EU, since they could flee west like Poles and Romanians did to earn more abroad, sent remittances home or save, and then return and live well at home later. In the east the situation is the opposite since they could stay at home and with greater integration with Russia make themselves wealthier at home or work in Russia where they have cultural overlap and improve their lives that way. So there is a serious divide in the country between those who want the west and those that want Russia. The US/NATO backed one faction, the Russians the other. The US/NATO side won by being more ruthless and how Russia is one upping them because they are out of options to keep Ukraine at very least neutral.

Arch Dornan said:

Briton killed in Ukraine believed to be ex-soldier Scott Sibley

Foreign Office says support being provided to families of two British citizens, one killed and a second missing, reported to have volunteered to fight against Russia

www.theguardian.com

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Ugh, the Guardian.
Stay far away from stuff that calls you a Nazi.

Agent23 said:

Ugh, the Guardian.
Stay far away from stuff that calls you a Nazi.

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They had the news of a casualty they care about so I have to include the foreign casualty.

Arch Dornan said:

They had the news of a casualty they care about so I have to include the foreign casualty.

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Don't give them clicks, archive it if you can.
The Guardian is the biggest of libtard cesspits and should not be shared IMHO.

sillygoose said:

Nonsense, the US did the same thing in 2004 and the rest of the color revolutions. The core of US policy towards Russia is the Wolfowitz Doctrine:

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

Russia has been acting defensively against a US/NATO that has been encroaching on it since the collapse of the USSR. Meddling in Ukraine is to give it a buffer zone wherein no potential foe is able to set up to invade them. Not respecting Russian history of it having to face repeated destructive invasions from the west is going to result serious conflict. Same as the US would react to say China couping the government in Mexico and starting to build up their military with Chinese advisors and intelligence personnel.

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Russia would have to be on fucking crack to think Europe is about to go full Napoleon on them.
Russia is in fact continuing an imperialistic policy towards Europe as old as Tsardom. There is nothing defensive about it. Its no more defensive than fucking Mongolian expansion into Europe.

sillygoose said:

It was cultivated by the west. You could say the exactly same thing about the autonomous republics of the Donbass and Crimea; they were anti-Maidan and got Russian support to break off. It isn't like they simply only created by Russia and even western sources have said internal support for Russia is high in those areas.

It is a complex history and ultimately had the west not been pushing right up to the borders of Russia, something everyone knows Russia is VERY sensitive to due to their history, none of this would have been an issue.

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The west should give Russia's oh so convenient "sensitivities" as much importance as Russia gives to the "sensitivities" of its neighbors. Which is about negative. As in they are exploited to threaten them as SOP.

sillygoose said:

Funny to how you say it was simply because of a shitty government when things remained as shitty if not got worse after the 2014 coup. Article from 2021:

Time to rethink Ukraine’s fight against corruption

The ongoing struggle against corruption in Ukraine would benefit from greater coordination among the country's international partners and a longer term strategy, argues Bohdan Vitvitsky.

www.atlanticcouncil.org

https://fcpablog.com/2022/03/07/reassessing-ukraines-failed-anti-corruption-reforms/

The real Zelensky: from celebrity populist to unpopular Pinochet-style neoliberal - The Grayzone

Ukrainian academic Olga Baysha details Volodymyr Zelensky's embrace of widely loathed neoliberal policies, his repression of rivals, and how his actions fueled the current war with Russia. A comedic actor who rose to the country’s highest office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was virtually unknown...

thegrayzone.com

Funny too how Zelensky got into power due to being created by a oligarch who was exiled from the country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi#Relationship_to_Zelenskyy_and_response_to_the_Russian_invasion

Plus he helped finance some of the Azov type militias:

“Democracy” in Ukraine—What is NATO risking a war for?

Honouring war criminals and Nazi collaborators, promoting fascist militias, mafia-like fights between oligarchs, corruption and massive social inequality are the most prominent features of Ukrainian “democracy.”

www.wsws.org

Oh and he also owned Burisma:

How Hunter Biden’s Interests ‘Overlapped’ With Banned Ukrainian Oligarch

Besides being connected through the Burisma energy giant, Hunter Biden did business with Igor Kolomoisky’s bank.

www.dailysignal.com

Not really:

Vladimir Putin offers Ukraine financial incentives to stick with Russia

Moscow to buy $15bn of Ukrainian government bonds and cut gas price after Kiev resists signing EU deal amid mass protests

www.theguardian.com

Literally the same as the EU:

EU offers $15 billion aid package to Ukraine

Aid package offered as the country struggles with dwindling cash and a military standoff with Russia.

money.cnn.com

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Haha, sure, pro-western oligarchs bad, lets stay silent on the matter of pro-Russian ones, or the Russian ones themselves.

sillygoose said:

Given that Russia is at least 300% wealthier per capita than Ukraine ending the corruption and economically working with Russia would have been a boon.

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Only if Russia gives Ukraine half its Siberian oil and gas fields
That's a big factor in their GDP being better. Other than that many people outside of "first tier" cities like Moscow or St.Petersburg tend to be as shitpoor as most of Ukraine.

Russia helping end corruption? You mean making sure only pro-Putin oligarchs are allowed corruption? What kind if ridiculous point is it, Russia is at least as corrupt as Ukraine, and its GDP is floated by resource income and related stuff.
Meanwhile Ukraine is getting less corrupt, while Russia is not, and is slightly more corrupt now:
If Russia can help anyone end corruption, why won't it help end corruption in Russia?

sillygoose said:

Thing is that most of poorest parts of the Ukraine are in the west, so they stand to profit from entering the EU, since they could flee west like Poles and Romanians did to earn more abroad, sent remittances home or save, and then return and live well at home later.

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Dude, wake up, they are doing that since many years already.

sillygoose said:

In the east the situation is the opposite since they could stay at home and with greater integration with Russia make themselves wealthier at home or work in Russia where they have cultural overlap and improve their lives that way.

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If you think Russia will make Ukraine wealthy or improve anyone's lives, you are a bloody clown. Ukraine was a nice little Russian vassal state until late 2000's. Why didn't Russia make them wealthy over all this time?
Guess what, Russia is going to make them as wealthy as it did back then. Which means it won't.

sillygoose said:

So there is a serious divide in the country between those who want the west and those that want Russia. The US/NATO backed one faction, the Russians the other. The US/NATO side won by being more ruthless and how Russia is one upping them because they are out of options to keep Ukraine at very least neutral.

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>US
>more ruthless
>Russia is currently bombing the crap out of Ukraine and war criming away opposition wherever it can

Russia doesn't want Ukraine neutral, Russia wants to own Ukraine, and being "neutral" is just a bare minimum holding position until a good moment to make further moves, because if Ukraine joins up in the west then "special operations" will become much less feasible.

Aldarion said:

*SNIP*

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I'd be willing to agree with maybe 50% of what you say, however most of Russia's expansion has been driven by 2 things.
1) An attempt to secure a warm-water oceanic port that lets them trade and communicate with the rest of the world so as to remove their self-perceived backwardness.
2) A defensive attempt to take out any potentially dangerous invading groups like Mongols, other so called Tatars and Turkic tribes like the Pechenegs, Ottomans, and the Kumans from the East and South, as well as Poles, Livonians and various other threats from the West, or raiders attacking Russian territory and trade convoys, like what the Khanates of Khiva and Bokhara did.
3) Occasionally reclamation of lost territory of historic and strategic importance has Russians living there.

They also had bouts of ideological (pan-slavic or communist) fueled expansionism, and there is also their obsession with Constantinople, but the second is also linked to their desire to have unabated access to warm water ports without their enemies holding a strategic choke point and without said ports freezing over every winter and making defense and commerce impossible.

Well, on the plus side, Putin has certainly helped to convince Sweden and Finland to join NATO.

Aldarion said:

Eh, no. Russia has been an imperial power since the time of the Tsars, and that type of behavior had continued more-or-less unimpeded through USSR and modern-day Russia. Same as how the US have been an imperialist, expansionist power since their very establishment.

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Its considerably more complicated than that. Until it became too expensive to maintain an empire the USSR and the preceding Czarist regimes were imperialists, though arguably in the base of the USSR post-WW2 it as more about maintaining security against any potential external invasion threat. WW2 left deep scars on the Russian psyche.

Post-Soviet Russia is a different situation altogether. It went from superpower status to region power at best and really has just been trying to rebuild a network of friendly regimes around its immediate borders for security reasons, as the US declared in 1992 its goal was to prevent Russia from ever recovering enough to challenge the US on anything and backed that policy up with actions like pushing NATO directly up to Russian borders despite statements that it wouldn't do that while at the same time interfering in Russian internal politics. Plus US demanded reforms put the oligarchs in power and ruined the country economically, causing millions of unnecessary deaths. The US became a hyperpower and made its goal the ruination of Russia and if possible control over its resources so our oligarchs could get rich off of Russia. They've been trying to do that since the late 1800s and I have a source for that if you want.

I'm not claiming Russia is an innocent in world politics, but it is not a threat to the US (beyond potentially given the EU the resources it needs to wiggle out from under the US thumb), while the US has been a massive threat to post-Soviet Russia and is only getting more threatening.

Aldarion said:

East European countries had been joining NATO in response to Russian behavior. In other words, very nature of Russia has to change for it to be viewed favorably.

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No, they started joining because of economic incentives and to prevent the resurgence of the USSR. There were historical reasons for what they did in the 1990s. Everyone had accepted that though and Russia under Putin were willing to play ball with the international order as it stood in the early 2000s provided Russia's interests were respected and they had their buffer states as well as NATO backing off on messing with Russian internal politics. However the US kept getting more aggressive against Russia and leveraging historical hatreds in the East to push their influence eastwards.

That gets into pipeline issues and US fears that the EU/Germany would get enough resources from Russia so as to be able to chart an independent foreign policy that could threaten US global dominance established after WW2 and enhanced after the cold war. Because without the USD being the global reserve currency the US economy would collapse hard. So we've had proxy battles in Middle East as the US tried to dominate the region more totally to control global oil supplies and ensure they could get resources to Europe to prevent Russia and the EU/Germany from getting too close. Syria with Russian and Iranian help managed to defeat the coup attempt, which blocked the US play to get a pipeline to Europe to outcompete Russian pipelines. After all there is a reason the US heavily opposed the Nordstream lines.

So the US has been poking the Bear in Ukraine since 2014 to provide political pretext for the US to get the Russian pipelines to Europe shut down and leave the US the only supplier of energy and the EU dependent on America. That's really how we got to this point. Russia was effectively backed into a corner over the Donbass issue, since with NATO backing the Ukrainians were going to invade the autonomous zones and 'clean house' rather brutally. No way was Russia going to tolerate a NATO trained army destroying their last buffer zone and creating a foreign controlled salient in a very sensitive area of Russia. Excellent base for intelligence operations, especially sabotage, very hard for Russia to defend against and given demography a pressure that would probably break Russia in a generation or so. Then the west could push their own candidate in Russia and go back to the 1990s style economy in Russia which would make it a basket case. Russia legit views this as an existential threat; not a WW2 level one, but one that would mean losing national independence and becoming an economic colony of the west no more than any Latin American banana republic.

sillygoose said:

No, they started joining because of economic incentives and to prevent the resurgence of the USSR. There were historical reasons for what they did in the 1990s. Everyone had accepted that though and Russia under Putin were willing to play ball with the international order as it stood in the early 2000s provided Russia's interests were respected and they had their buffer states as well as NATO backing off on messing with Russian internal politics. However the US kept getting more aggressive against Russia and leveraging historical hatreds in the East to push their influence eastwards.

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Yeah, the majority of the former Eastern bloc basically saw NATO as something that would help them enter the EU and get closer to the west for economic and cultural/political reasons.

Agent23 said:

Stay far away from stuff that calls you a Nazi.

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Was Ukraine right or wrong to want to stay at arm's length from Russia? Make up your mind!

strunkenwhite said:

Was Ukraine right or wrong to want to stay at arm's length from Russia? Make up your mind!

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We are talking real nazis here stunky my boy, not imaginary nazis the western liberal leftards ree about for the simple reason they disagree with their commie neolib bullshit and are on the right of Stalin, e.g. people like 99% of the forum here.

Agent23 said:

We are talking real nazis here stunky my boy, not imaginary nazis the western liberal leftards ree about for the simple reason they disagree with their commie neolib bullshit and are on the right of Stalin, e.g. people like 99% of the forum here.

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There are neo-nazis in Ukraine and in Russia. Neither of them runs the government.

strunkenwhite said:

There are neo-nazis in Ukraine and in Russia. Neither of them runs the government.

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Yeah, sure that is why the Elenski regime threw so much resources to try and pull out the Azov commanders out of Azofstal.

Anyway, for you Americans here is a Ukrainian-connected minister of truth Biden is trying to install:


Nice First amendment you had there, too bad they have to make it temporarily unavailable because of Muhsoggyknee and Putin.

Marduk said:

They are sure trying, but its hard to tell how well will that work out in the future. The progressives are pushing all sorts of things in all sorts of places since a very long time, but that never necessarily means success.

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Left has been winning since 1918., and never stopped. Every time something moved on a major issue it was always to the left.

I mean, when the greatest enemy of Communists in 1930s and 1940s was another bunch of leftists... yeah.

Marduk said:

It is potentially more successful, but also more unstable and more likely to suddenly crash and burn one moment with no safety net to fall back on.
If it was so much more successful, why aren't more or less ideological non-democratic competing powers around the world choosing this model, and are instead doubling down on hard power based models?

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In order to succeed with soft power model, you need to convince people they want what you want. Easiest way is to make them feel like gods, and the best way to do so is through democracy.

sillygoose said:

Its considerably more complicated than that. Until it became too expensive to maintain an empire the USSR and the preceding Czarist regimes were imperialists, though arguably in the base of the USSR post-WW2 it as more about maintaining security against any potential external invasion threat. WW2 left deep scars on the Russian psyche.

Post-Soviet Russia is a different situation altogether. It went from superpower status to region power at best and really has just been trying to rebuild a network of friendly regimes around its immediate borders for security reasons, as the US declared in 1992 its goal was to prevent Russia from ever recovering enough to challenge the US on anything and backed that policy up with actions like pushing NATO directly up to Russian borders despite statements that it wouldn't do that while at the same time interfering in Russian internal politics. Plus US demanded reforms put the oligarchs in power and ruined the country economically, causing millions of unnecessary deaths. The US became a hyperpower and made its goal the ruination of Russia and if possible control over its resources so our oligarchs could get rich off of Russia. They've been trying to do that since the late 1800s and I have a source for that if you want.

I'm not claiming Russia is an innocent in world politics, but it is not a threat to the US (beyond potentially given the EU the resources it needs to wiggle out from under the US thumb), while the US has been a massive threat to post-Soviet Russia and is only getting more threatening.

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But Russia doesn't need to be threat to the US. So long as Kremlin elites are looking with googly eyes at the Imperial and Soviet past of Russia, it is a threat to eastern European countries, none of whom have the US population, economy or nuclear arsenal. So it is natural for them to look to protection, and what is the easiest way of getting the protection? Joining NATO.

Trust me, I understand how Russia sees expansion of NATO (although that "promise" is likely false, or at least I have been unable to find anything reliable on US promising not to expand NATO). I had even linked an article which discusses that, and I agree with basically everything written in it (I think everybody here would do well to read it). But Russian opinion is not the only one that matters. Putin had made several favorable statements about USSR, among other things calling its collapse a genuine tragedy. Russia has also invaded basically every country that bordered it and wasn't NATO member. So Ukraine wanting to join NATO is hardly a surprise.

Fundamentally, Ukraine wanting to join NATO is no different from Iran wanting to acquire nuclear weapons: both are genuine and understandable defensive response to potential threat from a great power (Russia for Ukraine, USA for Iran).

sillygoose said:

No, they started joining because of economic incentives and to prevent the resurgence of the USSR. There were historical reasons for what they did in the 1990s. Everyone had accepted that though and Russia under Putin were willing to play ball with the international order as it stood in the early 2000s provided Russia's interests were respected and they had their buffer states as well as NATO backing off on messing with Russian internal politics. However the US kept getting more aggressive against Russia and leveraging historical hatreds in the East to push their influence eastwards.

That gets into pipeline issues and US fears that the EU/Germany would get enough resources from Russia so as to be able to chart an independent foreign policy that could threaten US global dominance established after WW2 and enhanced after the cold war. Because without the USD being the global reserve currency the US economy would collapse hard. So we've had proxy battles in Middle East as the US tried to dominate the region more totally to control global oil supplies and ensure they could get resources to Europe to prevent Russia and the EU/Germany from getting too close. Syria with Russian and Iranian help managed to defeat the coup attempt, which blocked the US play to get a pipeline to Europe to outcompete Russian pipelines. After all there is a reason the US heavily opposed the Nordstream lines.

So the US has been poking the Bear in Ukraine since 2014 to provide political pretext for the US to get the Russian pipelines to Europe shut down and leave the US the only supplier of energy and the EU dependent on America. That's really how we got to this point. Russia was effectively backed into a corner over the Donbass issue, since with NATO backing the Ukrainians were going to invade the autonomous zones and 'clean house' rather brutally. No way was Russia going to tolerate a NATO trained army destroying their last buffer zone and creating a foreign controlled salient in a very sensitive area of Russia. Excellent base for intelligence operations, especially sabotage, very hard for Russia to defend against and given demography a pressure that would probably break Russia in a generation or so. Then the west could push their own candidate in Russia and go back to the 1990s style economy in Russia which would make it a basket case. Russia legit views this as an existential threat; not a WW2 level one, but one that would mean losing national independence and becoming an economic colony of the west no more than any Latin American banana republic.

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NATO has nothing to do with economy, beyond promoting the sales of US weapons, I think. That being said, most of what you wrote here is correct. It is just that Russia isn't exactly innocent either, and those "autonomous zones" were basically Russian puppet states. Why would Ukraine invading them be a problem, exactly, considering they had broken away from Ukraine in the first place?

Best option would have been for Ukraine to remain independent of either West or Russia, but that might not have been realistic. For the rest, see above.

Aldarion said:

Such as? NATO already provides military benefits. As for the EU, Bruxelles bureaucracy is actively destroying European economies through overregulation, common currency, austerity, migration, bureocracy... the only benefit I see of the EU is the possibility to maybe regulate the Big Tech, and even that is a big if.



Not likely, unless we end up having World War 3.



And part of the reason for that is that Poland has already experienced Communism with its true face, which has, to a degree, provided inoculation against Western pretend-humanist version of Communism. Largely because of this, situation in the Eastern Europe is far better than it is in the West.

And yeah, bolded part is true: I have experienced that first hand.



Better in that Soviet Union, after the disastrous experiments of 1920s., was in fact more socially conservative than modern-day Western countries. Better in that Communists, while evil, were more obviously evil than Western democrats and progressives, who are far more insidious and less obvious while being no less evil than the Communists. Better in that Communists at least cared not to completely destroy their societies (they would have nothing to rule), while progressives have that destruction as a primary goal.

Communism made a token effort to cloak its evil in humanist rhetoric, but it was nowhere as successful as modern-day progressivism or Western liberalism. And no, Russian imperialists will be far easier to overthrow than the Western ruling class, which hides behind non-governmental organizations, lobbyists and far-left parties participating in elections, such as DNC and GOP in the US.



Eh, no. Russia has been an imperial power since the time of the Tsars, and that type of behavior had continued more-or-less unimpeded through USSR and modern-day Russia. Same as how the US have been an imperialist, expansionist power since their very establishment.

East European countries had been joining NATO in response to Russian behavior. In other words, very nature of Russia has to change for it to be viewed favorably.

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You forgot rampant money printing and negative interest rates.

sillygoose said:

Going by the title not going to tell me much I didn't already know, but I'll give it a look. Without a doubt Russia was interfering as well, but it is their backyard, not the US's. See how the US reacted to Russia meddling in Latin America...well really any European after the Monroe Doctrine.


Not in the EU, but it wanted much close economic ties and cooperation. Same thing with joining NATO if their strategic interests were respected.

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Did you ever consider that many protecting Latin America from European imperialism could have been in Latin America's own best interests? That was the original purpose of the Monroe Doctrine before TR added his Roosevelt Corollary to it in 1904.

Would Russia have been content with an arrangement where this would have been done but where Ukraine would have been included in the EU? Because its 2013 actions certainly don't suggest so!

Aldarion said:

Eh, no. Russia has been an imperial power since the time of the Tsars, and that type of behavior had continued more-or-less unimpeded through USSR and modern-day Russia. Same as how the US have been an imperialist, expansionist power since their very establishment.

East European countries had been joining NATO in response to Russian behavior. In other words, very nature of Russia has to change for it to be viewed favorably.

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Yep, based on what I have read, Russia has never actually emotionally reconciled itself to the collapse and breakup of the USSR.

Agent23 said:

You forgot rampant money printing and negative interest rates.

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I lost you here - surely the twain do not hand in hand go?

As to warm water ports - with the warm stage of the current interglacial, Vladivostok no longer freezes over. Sankt Peterburg - to much lesser degree. Two months max.
And in both cases icebreakers help in keeping them running throughout - or most of - the winter.
Murmansk is ice free but Russia never bothered to develop it commercially.
Archangielsk - which does freeze, is more important commercially (being connected to Volga by canal might have something to do with it) than Maurmansk. However, the exit of the Belomor Kanal - which also is connected to the Volga - was never developed to handle trade.

I know that the analogy is not perfect - but even though The Sund was as important to Russian trade as The Straits (if not more), Russia never developed a Copenhangen obession ...

Zachowon said:

You are drunk.
Abhorsen is not 23.
One is American one is Bulgarian.

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It's funny because I actually made that post while drunk. I stand corrected.

brb getting drunk again

planefag said:

It's funny because I actually made that post while drunk. I stand corrected.

brb getting drunk again

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Okay, that explains a lot...