That’s all well and good, but people who like to blame everything on either Putin or the CIA/deep state tend to overlook the fact that there were real expectations among the people too. Take Maidan, for example — sure, maybe the CIA played a role in organizing it, but it didn’t just come out of nowhere. Tension had been building in society for years.
It’s the same with Ukraine now. No matter how Putin is using the situation to his advantage, the Russian people had questions about that country as far back as ’91 — but back then, there was no one to ask. In fact, it was Russia that formally set Ukraine’s modern borders without the slightest regard for its own interests, only for the interests of the elites. So, sooner or later, that was bound to lead to a military conflict.
Honestly, even in American video games from the ’90s, it wasn’t uncommon to see storylines where Moscow and Kyiv were at war. This was all pretty obvious long before anyone had even heard of Putin.
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I agree with you here mostly. Except the defeatist conclusion. It does take an authoritarian leader to attack a neighbouring country. If you guys had a functioning democracy with half-decent checks and balances, you’d never have attacked Ukraine. Even if a non-negligible part of the population have imperialistic ambitions, it’s near impossible to go through with them in that situation.
And what people think in the territories of interest outside of the “mother-nation” doesn’t matter in either scenario.
In case the “mother-nation” is run by a strongman who has decided (with support from a part of his population, yes) that some outside territory “rightfully belongs” to them, it doesn’t matter what people think in the territory in question. Cases in point - Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Gaza (Israel).
In case the “mother-nation” is run democratically, and there is some outside territory where a significant part of the population would like to join with the “mother-nation”, it doesn’t matter. The democratic country won’t go imperialist. Cases in point Südtirol (Austria), Åland Islands (Sweden), Northern Ireland (Ireland).
Anyway, changing the subject a bit. Any good straight-talking Russian ultra-patriotic bloggers left on Telegram? Strelkov got jailed, sends a letter now and then that his wife posts. Alksnis died.
