3 ms·

Cornered from seizing crimea in 2014 and creating/supporting two Donbas breakaway regions? I don’t think he was cornered at all, just impatient. He’s 70 years

Cornered from seizing crimea in 2014 and creating/supporting two Donbas breakaway regions? I don’t think he was cornered at all, just impatient. He’s 70 years old and the conflict had frozen for 8 years. Barely anyone even cared in western europe/US. That’s perfect for Russia! But can he really live for much longer? He may not think he has many more years to dedicate to the task. Now the invasion has completely backfired and he is in a political corner he backed himself into. If your theory of Russian machismo is correct, he can’t back down from trying to beat up a smaller weaker country - and he simply can’t beat them. So he has to lose in Ukraine, beat the first coup, and consolidate power simultaneously. I believe Putin will be just like Erdogan who used the 2016 “coup” to eliminate political enemies. People died in Turkey in 2016, there was damage- but Erdogan emerged stronger and won subsequent elections. Maybe there will be Russian proscription lists and purges now.

ivan_gammel 3y ago
>Cornered from seizing crimea in 2014 and creating/supporting two Donbas breakaway regions? This is not how it was seen by Russian conservatives like Putin. The threat of NATO in Ukraine was not eliminated by those actions.
- Pigalowda 3y ago
  They saw it incorrectly then. This has been one of the most tremendous unforced errors in Russian history. Now everyone realizes that they are a weak successor state who has completely squandered their military inheritance from the USSR. Russian conservatives may not realize it, which is fine, as they are willing to rapidly expend away their soviet inventory. Their modern weak economy can’t afford to rearm. They have eliminated themselves from the great game. Not only did they fail to stop NATO - it expanded and added 1,340 km of direct border contact.
  - ivan_gammel 3y ago
    No, they saw it correctly — in a world where Russia could not join NATO (Putin claims he was rejected), the threat was persistent and something had to be done with it. The biggest mistake of Putin was to rely on fake intelligence data and fake army to start the war, showing that he had only the visibility of control in recent years which was carefully created by puppet media and his own administration. A dictator in control would plan a war, not a takeover. A democratic leader would just apply for NATO and EU membership according to the procedure and work hard on improving the relationships with neighbors.

ivan_gammel 3y ago

>Cornered from seizing crimea in 2014 and creating/supporting two Donbas breakaway regions? This is not how it was seen by Russian conservatives like Putin. The threat of NATO in Ukraine was not eliminated by those actions.

Pigalowda 3y ago
They saw it incorrectly then. This has been one of the most tremendous unforced errors in Russian history. Now everyone realizes that they are a weak successor state who has completely squandered their military inheritance from the USSR. Russian conservatives may not realize it, which is fine, as they are willing to rapidly expend away their soviet inventory. Their modern weak economy can’t afford to rearm. They have eliminated themselves from the great game. Not only did they fail to stop NATO - it expanded and added 1,340 km of direct border contact.
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
  No, they saw it correctly — in a world where Russia could not join NATO (Putin claims he was rejected), the threat was persistent and something had to be done with it. The biggest mistake of Putin was to rely on fake intelligence data and fake army to start the war, showing that he had only the visibility of control in recent years which was carefully created by puppet media and his own administration. A dictator in control would plan a war, not a takeover. A democratic leader would just apply for NATO and EU membership according to the procedure and work hard on improving the relationships with neighbors.