This article is wonderful and it changed my mind about Russia. Before reading it, I was convinced that Russia was indeed behaving similarly to the USA (in Yugo

This article is wonderful and it changed my mind about Russia. Before reading it, I was convinced that Russia was indeed behaving similarly to the USA (in Yugoslavia, Cuba, Iraq etc). But it seems I was ignoring a lot of differences that I should not have. I had also been blaming the West for not engaging (diplomatically) enough with Russia prior to the start of aggressions (not only with the recent attacks on the whole of Ukraine, but since the Krimea annexation) as it was basically ignoring any kind of argument from the Russians, pushing them to the edge and, in their minds, leaving nothing left to do but launch military attacks to be taken seriously. But this article makes very strong points showing that this was not the case. Russia has been quite aggressive the whole time (with Putin and without him) since the end of the USSR and does not seem at all to have anything in common with the West, or want to arrive at any sort of agreement. This sentence, specifically, hit me hard: "Western policymakers, politicians and populations need to be constantly reminded not only that the people who run Russia are not like them, do not like them and do not wish to be like them, but also that there are good reasons why attempts to find common ground with Russia consistently fail." It makes the prospects for a peaceful resolution of this conflict (as of writing, representatives of both sides are meeting in Belarus to try to arrive at a peaceful solution to this) very, very bleak indeed. Well, I do hope they are wrong, how wonderful would be if they could arrive at some compromise to immediately end this brutal war.