says the Hol-Eagle who accused me of being a Nazi. Do try to at least have a basic understanding of the belligerents in Central Europe. Or ask your nurse to explain it to you.

Kayla did Anfield & Old Trafford

in 1946 the Marshall Plan helped to pick up Europe from the ashes of WWII.

yet, in 1990 the Soviet Union collapsed and people starved. No help from the West. Its our own fault that a dictator like Putin appeared. Another Hitler. Starving angry people always vote for Mr Angry.

Get rid of Putin and just another tinpot dictator will take his place.

Kayla did Anfield & Old Trafford

You're right I don't like to repeat myself, but as it's you I'll go over my perspective one more time. For brevity I'll just focus on the Putin stuff rather than the disaster of a new cold war and what it actually means.

I would disagree with the view that western policy had no affect on Putin's change of attitude towards it.

I would agree that Putin rules Russia as you'd expect a KGB agent to rule it.....like a mafia state. I would also agree that this is his war and while I've increasingly grown concerned over the Ukrainian leadership it is Putin who is responsible for the death and destruction.

However, I don't agree with the concepts promoted that he's mad or irrational. That doesn't make sense to me personally, that's the media relying upon people just nodding along to whatever they say and completely omitting the Russian perspective in the history since the break up of the Soviet Union.

To get a sense of my position we have to go back to the Berlin wall coming down and what the situation was then. Essentially you had a cold war....which was two empires...The US, with its main Nato arm and the Warsaw pack, which was the Soviet empire.

So to understand today, you have to understand 1990, when the US were trying to convince the Russians to give up East Berlin.

A link to a lecture given years ago that predicts where we are today and the bad faith that led us here.

[Link]

A link to a site showing the map of Europe in 1990 and links to documents of assurances given. It also has links to the lies told to the Russians back in the nineties. I had a better link to the actual documents that physically exist in Washington but I've lost it...this will have to do.

[Link]

My perspective is that both western and russian elites had a duty to act in the best interests of peace for both their peoples. Everything should have been done in the spirit of partnership with the west interested in the Russian economy being successful in its transition, just as the US was careful after WW2 in Germany with the Marshall plan, to ensure that Hitler mark two didn't emerge.

What in effect happened was that the west took advantage of Russian weakness, Yeltsin created the oligarchs to help him and that robbed the economy...all supported by the west, as Yeltsin was their man...living standards arrowed down. That produced and saw poverty in Russia, which in turn led to Putin...who Yeltsin himself promoted twice....Putin always had bad faith and a decline in living standards to point at and blame the west for.

Putin for all his problems, took the power away from the oligarchs turned the Russian economy around....here is a link to the improvements in living standards under Putin.

[Link]

Putin wasn't anti western when he took over, he apparently asked Clinton and Nato officials about joining Nato but was rebuffed. He offered the use of his bases after the 9/11 attacks....He attended the WEF, he can be seen with western leaders for many years...that is not the action of someone who wanted cold war 2.

No, Nato refusing to act bilaterally, putting weapons facing Russia into former republics and forgetting just how important Russia is both militarily and economically did that......it changed Putin and apparently the 2014 coup in Ukraine (which I believe had western interference) was his last straw.

Even if the war hadn't happened the argument isn't that Putin is good.....He isn't. He murders dissidents, has destroyed freedom of speech (though several posters on here would like the same for the west) and even though he is a social conservative I can't support any of that.

However that's hardly an issue for the west who have been dealing with and toadying along with the Saudis for decades.....No the issue is that our western elites acted in bad faith and instead of working with Russia, directly worked against them....keeping the flame of the cold war alive instead of extinguishing it for good.

Edited by Stirlingsays (21 Mar 2022 5.33pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Your constant blaming of NATO and the West in general for the actions of the fascist Putin is absurd. The admiration of Putin expressed on here as a tough guy is sickening.

The West playing hardball!!!!!! The problem has been exacerbated because we have not been playing hardball for years. (Never watch Sky News by the way.) What do you watch - Russia Today?

Your comment has nothing to do with anything said.

As stated:

"this is now at least the second time that you've refereed to behaviour that involves the murder of women and children as if it's some kind of fun day out. To you his behaviour may well be the equivalent of the tending of his front porch and back garden. To most it is not. Not everything has to be 'cleansed' through some kind of political lens that removes you from care for those involved."

Unless you're denying the murder of numerous innocents based on well documented attacks by Russia in Ukraine, that is indeed the very thing you're consistently downplaying. While you seem fond of RT, and this isn't highlighted there, it of course doesn't mean it isn't happening. It clearly is. It's nice that you live in enough comfort to repeatedly be so flippant about the pointless murder of women and children. You seem entirely unbothered by it.

Putin's been on a war footing with the West and western ideologies for the longest time. The idea that what amounts to if we'd been 'nice' and 'reasonable' this invasion would never have happened, in naive to the extreme. Russian invasions are hardly new and different versions of the same script are always used to cast blame elsewhere. You're not obliged to buy it.

I don't even think this subservient outlook on Russia is particular common on the right, but instead just those who hold wide enough dislike of those in their own country or 'the west' that they themselves have become detached from allegiance, and laughably look to 'strong leader' Putin and his callous control and mistreatment of his own people as a better option on account that he batters down the same groups and ideas they would love to.

Edited by BlueJay (22 Mar 2022 2.08am)