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May result in a nuclear war, if he's sufficiently crazy

• avmich 5y ago
  And that's what allows such an approach to continue. Whenever Putin feels it, he decides that another aggressive take on Russia's neighbors is justified, and can't be countered - because he has nuclear bombs and willingness - untested, of course - to use them.
• VincentEvans 5y ago
  How would that work? “Conduct commerce with me or else”? Then why stop there? “Give me your territories or else”. I mean hostile annexation of Ukraine, creation of puppet micro-nations in Georgia, Moldova are already conducted with an implied threat of nuclear war. That threat is ever-present even if you impose an import tax on Russian goods. Where’s the line? What I am most frustrated about is the broad support that Putin’s government enjoys generally from a populace that does not seem to remember where everything they rely on comes from, while enjoying their European and Turkish vacations.
  • avmich 5y ago
    > What I am most frustrated about is the broad support that Putin’s government enjoys generally from a populace that does not seem to remember where everything they rely on comes from, while enjoying their European and Turkish vacations. It's not such a broad support - when Crimea was occupied, the support was higher. It's insufficiently low today though. And the people have 24/7 propaganda coming from TVs, with many of them not very skillful with Youtube and VPN - and it's psychologically hard to withstand a lie which is repeated hundreds of times.